invention to extricate my self out of this Labyrinth But doth not T. G. remember the old woman in Seneca that thought the Room was dark when she lost her sight and no doubt would have pleased her self to think she left Children in the dark when the Sun shined I would desire T. G. to look for the Labyrinth nearer home for I cannot discern any unless it should be in the perplexity of his own thoughts for I am unwilling to believe that he doth this with a design to play tricks and to fly-blow my words on purpose to make others distaste them But what if after all this Sophistry T. G. very mercifully yields me the thing I pleaded for viz. that the worship which God hath forbidden cannot be terminated upon himself For he saith that if God have forbidden himself to be worshipped after such a manner the giving him such worship will be a dishonouring of him though the Giver intend it never so much for his Honour I see T.G. after all is a good natured man and although he will shew a thousand tricks rather than be thought to have it forced from him yet let him alone and he will give as much as a man would desire For what could I wish for more than he here grants Prohibited worship he grants is dishonouring God though a man intend it never so much for his honour and worship he yields to be an external signification of honour then God is honoured when he is worshipped how then can he be worshipped by the same act by which he is dishonoured for so he would be honoured by that by which he is dishonoured which comes much nearer to a contradiction than any thing he charges me with But all this while he cannot understand that this is terminating the honour due to God on the Image I ask him then where that honour rests it must be some where not on God for he confesses God is dishonoured and therefore it can be no where else but on the Image and consequently it is real Idolatry and not meerly Metaphorical or by extrinsecal denomination 3. I now proceed to shew that the Christian church hath condemned those for Idolatry who have been guilty only of applying some external appropriate acts of divine worship to other things besides God What made the Church of Alexandria be so severe with Origen for but holding the incense in his hands which those about him cast from thence upon the Altar yet for this he was cast out of the Church saith Epiphanius In the Acts of Marcellinus which Baronius produces he is condemned for offering incense in the Temple of Vesta out of complyance with Dioclesian yet he was only guilty of the external act of Idolatry saith Bellarmin having no infidelity in his mind and this was the common case of the Thurificati viz. of those who offered incense only out of fear and not with an intention to honour the Idol by it yet these were looked on as lapsed persons and great severities of penance were prescribed them as appears by the Canons of Ancyra and many others But if there be no external appropriate acts of divine worship if burning inâ—ense be an indifferent thing and may be used to God or the Creature if Idolatry depends on the intention of the mind I desire to know what the fault of the Thurificati was For if it were lawful to burn incense to a creature what harm was there in the doing it by Marcellinus at the request of the Emperour if he intended it for no more than a civil respect to him But it was in the Temple of Vesta and therefore was divine worship Then say I an act in it self equivocal becomes appropriate to divine worship being performed with the circumstances of Religion which is that I have been hitherto proving But if external acts receive their denomination from the inward intention of the mind no doubt the Iesuits in China were far more in the Right than the primitive Church and by this doctrine of directing the intention in outwards acts of worship the lives of many thousand Martyrs might have been saved For in the Roman Martyrology Decemb. 25. we find in Nicomedia at one time many thousand Martyrs destroyed by Dioclesian being met together in a Church rather than they would escape by offering a little incense at their coming out the Greek Menology saith they were twenty thousand too great a number to lose their lives for so indifferent a ceremony as T.G. accounts it might not they when they were bid to offer incense to Iove direct their intention to the Supream God and then T. G. would assure them the act must pass whither it was directed and it was meer ignorance of the nature of humane acts for men to imagine otherwise What great pity it is so saving a doctrine to the Lives at least though not to the Souls of Christians had not been known in that age when so many poor Christians suffered Martyrdom for the want of it How admirably would T. G. upon his principles have perswaded those Christians of Nicomedia to resolution and constancy in suffering What is it the Emperour requires of you to save your Lives O Sir say they it is to burn incense To burn incense is that a thing for you to venture your Lives for I am ashamed of your ignorance what do not you know that burning incense at least now in the New Law is an indifferent ceremony and may be used to God or to men O but we are required to burn incense to Jove What have none of you looked over Aristotles threshold that you do not know that actions go whither they are intended well let me give you this advice when you burn the incense direct your intention aright to God and my life for yours the act will pass to him and not to Iove as surely as an Arrow well level'd hits the mark that is aimed at I see plainly this threshold of Aristotle would have done more service to have saved the Christians Lives than all the precepts of Christ or his Apostles But I find none of the primitive Christians had peeped through Aristotles Keyhole much less had they stept over his threshold unless they were those Philosophical Christians the Gnosticks for they perfectly understood this principle and ordered their actions accordingly for they had a mighty care of their intention and kept a good sound faith within and for all the outward acts of worship among the Gentiles they could do them with the best of them and only they did by them as they do with Pigeons in the East they bound their intention fast about them and with them then they were sure they would fly to the place they intended them But why doth S. Augustine find such fault with Seneca for complying with the outward acts of worship among the Heathen Idolaters and with the rest of the Philosophers for the same things Why doth
force and violence offered to them if there be any harm what is it Idolatry or not if only scandal why were they not put in other words if Idolatry then T. G. himself charges them with Idolatry that understand their prayers by Lilly's Grammar unless he thinks it much better for them not to understand them at all But I shall beg the Favour of one of their Church-Dictionaries to interpret this late Ode of Rapin to the Lady of Loretto so as to make me construe it to be only praying to her to pray for them Ad Divam Virginem Lauretanam Diva quam rebus trepidis benignam Rure Piceno veneratur Orbis Cui suos sternit facilis moveri Adria fluctus Si qua Pastoris tibi Vaticani Cura vel Sacri superest Ovilis Italis Thracem procul inquietum Finibus arce Si faves totis trepidabit undis Bosphorus rupes Scyticae pavebunt Turca pallebit timidumque cornu Luna recondet Namque te dudum pelagi potentem Non semel verso tremuere ponto Mersa Threissi rate dissipata Arma Tyranni Ne tibi fidam pavor ille gentem Angat aut saevis male turbet armis Quos tuis laeti meditamur aris Ponere honores If this be not making a Goddess of her surely the Heathen Poets never made one of Minerva and yet I hope Rapin a Iesuit and a Scholar did well enough understand what was agreeable to the doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome Yet supposing T. G's sense were all that were understood by the Church of Rome in this matter it doth not acquit them from giving that Religious Worship which Invocation imports to something else besides God For let us suppose that the Arrians only looked on Christ as a powerful intercessor with God and on that account did in their publick offices of Religion make their solemn Addresses to him to intercede and pray for them to God were this giving him any part of Divine worship or no Especially when performed with all the external acts of adoration which are proper to God If this were not any part of Divine worship the Fathers were extreamly out in their proofs that Christ could be no creature because the external act of adoration was given to him if it were a part of divine worship then those in the Church of Rome do give it to a creature when with all the solemn Acts of Devotion they pray to Saints which they use to God himself although it be only to be intercessors with God for them especially when they do not only pray thus to them but rely upon them for their help and assistance and return thanks to them when they receive the Blessings they prayed for Would not the Fathers have called this bringing in Polytheism and reviving the antient Idolatry of the Heathens Since the great principle of Christianity they said was the reserving all parts of Religious worship to God alone Nay some of the Writers of the Roman Church have been so ingenuous in this matter to confess that if the modern practice of Invocation of Saints had been introduced in the Apostolical times it would have looked too like the introducing of Gentilism again Franciscus Horantius in his Answer to Calvins Institutions confesses that Invocation of Saints was not expresly commanded under the Gospel nè gentiles conversi crederent se iterum ad cultum terrigenarum trahi lest the Gentile Converts should believe that they were again drawn to the worship of Creatures which words he had borrowed from Eccius and the same are repeated by Harpsfield Martinus Peresius Ayala a learned Spanish Bishop assigns this for the reason why he could meet with no footsteps either of the invocation or intercession of Saints before the time of Cornelius Bishop of Rome viz. that the Apostles would have been thought to have made themselves Gods if they had delivered the doctrine of invocation and intercession of Saints By which we see these persons did truly apprehend a great affinity between their practice of Invocation of Saints and the Heathen Idolatry or else there was no danger one should be mistaken for the other And although T. G. tells us he never met with any Catholick so ignorant as not to understand the sense of their prayers to be to desire the Saints to help them with their prayers yet I meet with some men who understood Catholicks as well as T. G. and yet do give a quite different account of them For the same Spanish Bishop thinks the people had great need to be better instructed in this matter of worship lest saith he they make Gods of the Saints nam multos inveni in hac parte non satis Christianè institutos I have found many not well instructed in this matter it seems not only the people committed Idolatry but their Teachers did not instruct them well enough to avoid it And Ludov. Vives was not so lucky a man as T. G. for he saith that many Christians do most times offend in a good thing i. e. giving honour to Saints for he saith they worship them no otherwise than they do God neither do I find in many things any difference between their opinion of the Saints and the Heathens of their Gods T.G. takes notice of this passage of Vives and blames me for leaving out in re bona in a thing good in it self let him make as much of this as he please for it only shews that he was a through Papist although he charged the people with the downright practice of Idolatry and if it only implyes an error and abuse in practice yet he shews both these were too common among them and that the Catholicks in his time were not so wise as those T. G. hath met with But it may be he means no more than that if they be asked the Question in their Catechism they answer it as he saith which is as good a way to free them from the practice of Idolatry as if a man should be suspected of Adultery and T. G. should answer for him that cannot be for he understands better than so for when I asked him the Commandments he said he ought not to commit Adultery Polydore Virgil was not so happy as T. G. for speaking of the solemn Rite of Supplication when the Images of Saints are carryed in procession he saith I fear I fear we rather please the Heathen Gods than Christ by such practices which without all question he saith was taken from the Heathen customs And what he saith of the worship of Images is as true of that of Saints that the people were arrived to that degree of madness that their worship differed very little from Idolatry Cassander saith that the people trusted so much to the Patronage and Intercession of the Saints whom they worshipped with dull not to say profane Ceremonies that they hoped for the pardon of their sins although they did not amend their
lives on the account of their intercession for them and that they trusted more to them especially to the Blessed Virgin than to Christ himself And that what interpretations soever some men put upon those titles of the Queen of Heaven Mother of Mercy c. the common people did not understand them according to their sense of them Nay Erasmus goes farther saying that their very Preachers worshipped the Blessed Virgin with more Religion or devotion than they did Christ himself or his Holy Spirit calling her the Mother of Grace By all which we see that the doctrine of Divine worship is not so clearly stated by them but that the more ingenuous men who have lived and dyed in the communion of that Church have thought not only the people but the Teachers very much to blame in it 2. My business now is to give an account of the sense of the Fathers in this dispute about the notion of divine worship not to handle particularly the Testimonies of the Fathers in dispute between us which belongs to the Question of Invocation of Saints but to shew that they went upon the same principles I have here laid down in the distinction between the Honour and the Worship of them and while they speak most for the Honour of the Saints they deny any Religious worship to be performed to them Origen in the beginning of his Book against Celsus makes that to be the property of the doctrine of Christ that God only was to be worshipped but that other might be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 worthy of honour but not of worship And in another place he speaks as plainly as words can express his meaning although saith he we should believe that Angels were set over these things below yet we only praise and magnifie them but all our prayers are only to be made to God and not to any Angel and only Iesus Christ is to offer up our prayers to God and lest any should imagine he meant only some kind of prayers he saith expresly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all prayer and supplication and intercession and saith that we ought not to pray to them who pray for us But now what saith T. G. to these places which excepting the first I had objected against the practice of invocation of Saints and Angels in my former discourse Why truly he saith that Origens meaning is partly that we are not to pray to them in the same manner that we do to God but we may pray to them after another manner But is that inferiour sort of prayer prayer or not when we desire them to pray for us is not that desiring their intercession for us but Origen denyes that any prayer is to be made to them or any one to be prayed to although it be only to intercede with God for us but only the Son of God I remember an answer of a devout servant of the Blessed Virgin much like this of T. G. For when it was objected that she could not be the Mother of Redemption for mankind because it is said Isa. 63.3 I have trodden the wine-press alone and of the people there was no man with me True saith he there is no man with thee but there might be a woman for all that So doth T. G. deal with the testimonies of the Fathers let them be never so express against all sorts of prayers and Invocations they hold only of such a sort of prayer but there may be another and inferiour sort notwithstanding But is there any sort that is not comprehended under all And that Origen cannot be understood in these passages of such prayer only as supposeth the supream excellency in God most evidently appears by the dispute between Celsus and him which was not about the worship of the Supream God but of Inferiour Spirits and Ministers to him as hath been fully proved already The Church of Philomelium in that noble Testimony concerning the Martyrdom of Polycarp makes the same distinction between honour and worship for they utterly deny giving any worship to a creature as inconsistent with Christianity but at the same time they confess the honour and esteem they had for the Martyrs which they expressed by meeting at the places of their Martyrdom keeping their Anniversary dayes and recommending their examples to the imitation of others In the former Discourse I produced the Testimonies of Iustin Martyr Theophilus Antiochenus and mentioned many others to the same purpose viz. that all Religious worship was due only to God and with this double caution to prevent cavils 1. That it was without making any distinctions of absolute and relative worship which they must have been driven to in case they had given Religious worship to any besides 2. That when the Christians refused to give adoration to the Emperour it could not be understood of the adoration proper to the Supream God for none can be so sensless to imagine they required that but such kind of Religious worship as they gave to the Images of their Gods To all this T. G. replyes I. That these Testimonies are impertinent because they are to be understood only of that divine worship which is due to God alone and not of the Inferiour worship which belongs to Saints or Angels Might he not as well have said that they prove that no man might be worshipped but a woman might For the force of the Testimonies did not lye meerly in this that they attributed divine worship only to God but that they made use of the most general terms which signified worship without any distinction of the nature and kind of that worship supposing it to be on a Religious account For no men of common sense would have written as they did if they had believed that some sort of Religious worship were lawful to be given and another not Doth T. G. think that he should ever escape censure in his Church if he should say peremptorily that it is unlawful to give any kind of Religious worship to a creature when the very Indices of the Fathers cannot escape the Index Expurgatorius for blabbing so great a Truth No we should have T. G. presently out with his distinctions worship is of two sorts Supream called Latria inferiour called Dulia Religious may be taken in two senses 1. That which proceeds from the vertue of Religion and that is proper to God 2. That which tends to the honour of Religion and that may be given to creatures And thus would the Fathers have written if they had ever looked over Aristotles threshold and been of T. G's mind and therefore my argument which proceeded upon the general terms of the Fathers without intimating any such distinction doth hold good that either they did not write like understanding men or they knew no such distinctions as these 2. That although Justin Martyr and Theophilus deny divine worship to be given to Emperours yet they both imply that lawful worship
after a publick and solemn repentance But that this Prince was yet a worshipper of the Sun appears by what follows when the Emperor Zenâ— had him at his mercy and made him promise fidelity to him by bowing of himself to him he to avoid the reproach of it among his People carried himself so that he seemed only to them to make his Reverence to the Sun according to the custom of his Country But it will add yet more to the conviction of T. G. and to the discovery of the Nature of Idolatry to shew that those Nations which are at this day charged with Idolatry by the Church of Rome have acknowledged one Supreme God And I shall now shew that those Idolaters who have understood their own Religion have gone upon one of these three principles either 1. that God hath committed the Government of the world under him to some inferiour Deities which was the principle of the Platonists and of the Arabians and Persians Or 2. that God is the Soul of the world and therefore the parts of it deserve divine honour which was the principle of Varro and the Stoicks Or 3. That God is of so great perfection and excellency that he is above our service and therefore what external adoration we pay ought to be to something below him which I shall shew to have been the principle of those who have given the least external adoration to the Supreme God These things I shall make appear by giving a brief account of the Idolatry of those parts of the world which the Emissaries of the Church of Rome have shewed their greatest zeal in endeavouring to convert from their Idolatries There are two Sects in the East-Indies if I may call them so from whom the several Nations which inhabit there have received what principles of Religion they have and those are the Brachmans and the Chineses and the giving account of these two will take in the ways of worship that are generally known among them For the Brachmans I shall take my account chiefly from those who have been conversant among them and had the best reason to understand their Religion Francis Xaverius who went first upon that commendable imployment of converting the Indians saith that the Brachmans told him they knew very well there was but one God and one of the learned Brachmans in his discourse with him not only confessed the same but added that on Sundays which their Teachers kept very exactly they used only this prayer I adore thee O God with thy Grace and Help for ever Tursellinus saith that he confessed this to be one of their great mysteries that there was one God maker of the world who reigns in Heaven and ought to be worshipped by men and so doth Iarricus Bartoli not only relates the same passages but gives this account of their Theology that they call the Supreme God Parabrama which in their language signifies absolutely perfect being the Fountain of all things existing from himself and free from all composition that he committed to Brama the care of all things about Religion to Wistnow another of his Sons the care of mens rights and relieving them in their necessities to a third the power over the elements and over humane bodies These three they represent by an Image with three Heads rising all out of the same trunk these are highly esteemed and prayed to for they suppose Parabrama to be at perfect ease and to have committed the care of all to them But the Brachman Padmanaba gave a more particular account of the management of all things to Abraham Rogers who was well acquainted with him and was fifteen years in those parts Next to Brama they make one Dewendre to be the Superintendent Deity who hath many more under him and besides these they have particular Deities over the several parts of the world as the Persians had They believe both good and evil Spirits and call them by several names the former they call Deütas and the other Ratsjaies and the Father of both sorts to be Brachman the son of Brama In particular cases they have some saith Mr. Lord who conversed among them and to whom Mons. Bernier refers us to one who gave a faithful account of them whom they honour as Saints and make their addresses to as for Marriage they invocate Hurmount for Health Vagenaught for success in Wars Bimohem for Relief Syer c. and I suppose incontinent persons may have someone instead of S. Mary Magdalen to pray to The custom of their daily devotion as the Brachman Padmanaba said was first to meditate of God before they rise then after they have washed themselves they repeat 24 names of God and touch 24 parts of their bodies upon Suâ— rising they say prayers and pour down water in honour of the Sun and then 〈◊〉 down upon their knees and worship him and after perform some ceremonies 〈◊〉 their Idols which they repeat in the evening The particular devotion which theâ— have to their Saints and Images aâ—â— Reliques is fully described by Boullaye-le-Gouz in his late Travels into those parts Mandelslo saith that in the time of the publick devotions they have long Lessâ—â— about the Lives and Miracles of the Saints which the Bramans make use 〈◊〉 to perswade the people to worship them Intercessors with God for them Amoâ—â— their Saints Ram is in very great estimâ—tion being the restorer of their Religiâ—â— and a great Patron of their Braman Kircher supposeth him to be the 〈◊〉 with him whom the Iaponese call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Chinese Ken Kian 〈◊〉 Kircher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Kia saith Marini and those of Tunquin Chiaga or as Marini Thic-Ca in all which parts he is in very great veneration him they look on as the great propagator of their Religion in the Eastern parts and they say he had 80000 disciples but he chose ten out of them all to disperse his opinions From whence it is supposed that the Religion of the Brachmans hath spread it self not only over Indosthan but Camboia Tunquin Cochinchina nay China it self and Iapan too where it is an usual thing for persons to drown burn or famish themselves for the honour of Xaca This Sect was brought into China 65 years after Christ from Indosthan as Trigautius or rather Matthaeus Riccius tells us for Bartoli assures us that Trigautius only published Riccius his papers in his own name which he supposes was brought in by a mistake for the Christian Religion and surely it was a very great mistake but for all that Trigautius hath found a â—trange resemblance between the Roman Religion and theirs For saith he they worship the Trinity after a certain manner with an image having three Heads and one Body they extol coelibate 〈◊〉 a high degree so as to seem to condemn marriage they forsake their Families and go up and down begging i. e. the Order of Friers
that only reads T. G. and doth not understand the practice of the Roman Church would imagine all the dispute between him and me were whether the Saints in Heaven be capable of receiving any honour from men and whether that honour being given upon the account of Religion might be called Religious Honour or no This were indeed to wrangle about words which I perfectly hate I will therefore freely tell him how far I yield in this matter that he may better understand where the difficulty lyes 1. I yield that the Saints in Heaven do deserve real honour and esteem from us and I do agree with Mr. Thorndike whose words he cites therein that to dispute whether we are bound to honour the Saints were to dispute whether we are to be Christians or whether we believe them to be Saints in Heaven For on supposition that we believe that the greatest excellencies of mens minds come from the Grace of God communicated to men through Iesus Christ and we are assured that such persons now in Heaven were possessed of those excellencies it is impossible we should do otherwise than esteem and honour them For honour in this sense is nothing else but the due apprehension of anothers excellency and therefore it must be greater or lesser according to the nature and degree of those excellencies Since therefore we believe the Saints in Heaven are possessed of them in a higher degree than they were on earth our esteem of them must increase according to the measure of their perfections 2. That the honour we have for them may be called Religious honour because it is upon the account of those we may call Religious excellencies as they are distinguished from meer natural endowments and civil accomplishments On which account I will grant that is not properly civil honour because the motive or reason of the one is really different from the other And although the whole Church of Christ in Heaven and Earth make up one Body yet the nature of that Society is so different from a Civil Society that a different title and denomination ought to be given to the honour which belongs to either of them and the honour of those of the triumphant Church may the better be called Religious because it is an honour which particularly descends from the object of Religion viz. God himself as the fountain of it as civil honour doth from the Head of a Civil Society 3. That this honour may be expressed in such outward acts as are most agreeable to the nature of it And herein lyes a considerable difference between the honour of men for natural and acquired excellencies and divine graces that those having more of humane nature in them the honour doth more directly redound to the possessor of them but in Divine Graces which are more immediately conveyed into the souls of men through a supernatural assistance the Honour doth properly belong to the Giver of them Therefore the most agreeable expression of the honour of Saints is solemn Thanksgiving to God for them for thereby we acknowledge the true fountain of all the good they did or received However for the incouragement of men to follow their examples and to perpetuate their memories the primitive Christians thought it very fitting to meet at the places of their Martyrdom there to praise God for them and to perform other offices of Religious worship to God and to observe the Anniversary of their sufferings and to have Panegyricks made to set forth their vertues to excite others the more to their imitation Thus far I freely yield to T. G. to let him see what pittiful cavils those are that if men deserve honour for natural or supernatural endowments surely the Saints in Heaven much more do so Who denyes it We give the Saints in Heaven the utmost honour we dare give without robbing God of that which belongs only to him Which is that of Religious worship and consists in the acknowledgements we make of Gods supream excellency together with his Power and Dominion over us and so Religious worship consists in two things 1. Such external acts of Religion which God hath appropriated to himself 2. Such an inward submission of our souls as implyes his Superiority over them and that lyes as to worship 1. In prayer to him for what we want 2. In dependence upon him for help and assistance 3. In Thankfulness to him for what we receive Prayer is a signification of want and the expression of our desire of obtaining that which we need and whosoever beggs any thing of another doth in so doing not only acknowledge his own indigency but the others power to supply him therefore Suarez truly observes from Aquinas that as command is towards inferiours so is prayer towards Superiours now to this saith he two things are requisite 1. That a man apprehends it is in the power of the Superiour to give what we ask 2. That he is willing to give it if it be asked of him The expectation of the performance of our desire is that we call dependence upon him for help and assistance and our acknowledgement of his doing it is Thankfulness Now if we consider Prayer as a part of Religious worship we are to enquire on what account it comes to be so not as though thereby we did discover any thing to God which he did not know before nor as though we hoped to change his will upon our prayer but that thereby we profess our subjection to him and our dependence on him for the supply of our necessities For although prayer be looked on by us as the means to obtain our requests yet the consideration upon which that becomes a means is that thereby we express our most humble dependence upon God It being the difference observed by Gul. Parisiensis between humane and divine prayer that prayer among men is supposed a means to change the Person to whom we pray but prayer to God doth not change him but fits us for receiving the things prayed for This one consideration is of greater importance towards the resolution of our present question than hath been hitherto imagined for the Question of invocation doth not depend so much upon the manner of obtaining the thing we desire i. e. whether we pray to the Saints to obtain things by their merits and intercessions which is allowed and contended for by all in the Roman Church or whether it be that they do bestow the things themselves upon us which they deny but the true State of the Question is this whether by the manner of Invocation of Saints which is allowed and practised in the Roman Church they do not give that worship to Saints which is only peculiar to God Now we are farther to consider wherein that act of worship towards God doth lye which is not in an act of the mind whereby we apprehend God to be the first and independent cause of all good but in an act of dependence upon him for the
in another place he tells us what that worship did consist in which he there calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which we are certain what he meant by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 before and so he reckons up 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the first place their prayers or supplications and then vows hymns oblations and sacrifices the giving of any of these to Saints were to worship them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not as the ignorant or wilfully blind Writers of the Roman Church when they meet with this word they cry out presently mark that not with Latria and presently imagine that what sense a word hath obtained among them if they meet with it in the Fathers it must needs signifie the same thing when the sense of words hath been so strangely perverted by them as will more particularly appear by this very distinction of Latria and Dulia which they make S. Augustine the Author of but have carried it far beyond his meaning I come therefore to consider S. Austins mind in this matter which I am the more obliged to do since T. G. so unreasonably triumphs in S. Austins opinion in this matter and is not only content to drag me at his Chariot wheels but he makes a shew of me and calls people to see by my example to what miserable shifts and disingenuous arts they are put who will shut their eyes and fight against the light of a noon-day truth when I first read these words I began to rub my eyes and to look about me and to wonder what the matter was and I find my self as willing to see light as another and my conscience never yet accused me of using disingenuous arts in dealing with them if T. G. can clear himself as well it is the better for him I am sure by standers have not thought so as appears at large by Dr. Whitby especially in his last Chapter against him But it is not my business to recriminate hopeing sufficiently to clear my self in this matter It seems I had said that S. Augustine denyes that any Religious worship was performed to the Martyrs this T. G. again saith I could not affirm without shutting my eyes and yet I thank God by the help of my eyes I find S. Augustin saying the same thing still For is it not S. Augustin that saith non sit nobis Religio cultus hominum mortuorum let not the worship of dead men be any part of our Religion for if they have lived piously they do not desire such honours from us but they would have us to worship him by whom we may become partakers of their happiness honorandi ergo sunt propter imitationem non adorandi propter Religionem Is it possible for any man to speak plainer than S. Austin doth that they are not to have Religious worship given to them but such honour as may excite us to an imitation of them And this not by chance or in some incoherent passage but in a set discourse on purpose where he argues with strong reason against the Religious worship of Angels as well as Saints to the end of that Book And saith the utmost they expect from us is the honour of our love and not of our service and therefore S. Augustin did not by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 understand the service of Saints and Angels which he there disputes against from our happiness coming only from God our being the Temples of God the Angels prohibiting S. John to worship him and bidding him to worship God and that the very name of Religion is from tying our Souls to God alone Whosoever of the Angels loves God saith he loves me for worshipping him and he that hath Gods favour hath the favour of all that are good Therefore let our Religion bind us faster to one omnipotent God between whom and us there is no creature interposed with much more to the same purpose Is it not the same S. Austin that saith Haec est Religio Christiana ut colatur unus Deus this is the Christian Religion to worship one God and that for this reason because God only can make the Soul happy for saith he it is made happy only by the participation of God and not of a blessed Soul or Angel Not as though this were intended only against the expectation of our blessedness wholly from Saints or Angels but he makes use of this as an argument to prove that we ought to worship God alone who only is able to make us happy Is it not the same S. Austin that saith this is the character of the true Religion that it unites us only to one God without giving worship to any other Being how excellent soever and he looks on this as a divine and singular part of the Christian doctrine nullam creaturam colendam esse animae that no creature have the worship of our Soul what did he then think of praying to creatures not only with our voyce but our mind too as the Council of Trent saith it is profitable for us to do and not only for their prayers but for their help and assistance but saith good S. Austin the most wise and perfect man the most accomplished and happy soul is only to be loved and imitated and honour given to it according to its desert and order for thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve Could any man speak more plainly and fully against giving any Religious worship to creatures than he doth Is it not the same S. Austin that tells Maximus Madaurensis that in the Christian Church none that were dead were worshipped and nothing adored as God that is made by God but only one God who created all things Here T. G. smiles and thinks to avoid this presently for S. Austin speaks of any thing being adored as God which they abhor to do but his smiling will be soon over if he considers what being adored as God there means for no one ever suspected that the Christians believed the Martyrs to be the Supream God but only that they worshipped them as Gods of a lower rank by participation from the Supream And is not the very same thing said and defended in the Roman Church that the Saints are Gods by participation and they have the care and government of the Church committed to them and on that account are worshipped and if this be not being adored as Gods in S. Austins sense I know not what is Is it not the same S. Austin that undertakes to prove against the Platonists that good Spirits are not to be worshipped per tale Religionis obsequium by such Religious worship very right saith T. G. not by the worship of Sacrifices but S. Austin saith neither Sacris nor Sacrificiis which two comprehend all the Rites of Religious worship which were then used For he makes use of several phrases to express the acts of Religious worship sometimes by joyning those two
for that which would have been Idolatry downright Paganish Idolatry under the former names becomes good Catholick Worship under the latter But I do not see that any of the Primitive Christians did ever think that the change of names or persons would have wrought such wonders but that the worship of Images would have continued the same thing whatever names had been given to them And what pleasant stories soever Epiphanius the Deacon tells in the second Council of Nice concerning the disciples of the elder Epiphanius placing his Image in a Church dedicated to him in Cyprus yet Petavius confesses that in his time there were no Images in the Churches of Cyprus which he takes to be the reason of his mighty zeal against them Any thing rather than that which himself gives viz. the Authority of Scriptures and the Christian Religion In the Theodosian Code we find a Law of Theodosius M. against the several parts of the Heathen Idolatry the sacrifices libations incense lights c. and after the rest it comes particularly to their worship of Images in these words Si quis vero mortali opere facta avum passura simulachra imposito ture venerabitur ac ridioulo exemplo metuens subito quae pro se simulaverit vel redimita vitis arbore vel erectâ effossis arâ cespitibus vanas imagines humiliore licet muneris praemio tamen plena Religionis injuriâ honorare temptaverit is utpote violatae Religionis reus eâ domo seu possessione multabitur in quâ eum Gentilitiâ constiterit Superstitione famulatum The meaning whereof is that it was the forfeiture of house and land for any man to offer incense to Images made by men and that were of a perishing nature or that hung their garlands on Trees or raised Altars of Turf before their Images for although the cost were less yet the violation of Religion was the same This Constitution I grant doth respect Heathen Images but I say it proceeds upon such grounds which are common to all Images unless they be such as drop from heaven such as the Image of Edessa and the rest mentioned by Gretser or that of Diana of Ephesus or some few others that were pretended to have a divine Original for such as these the Constitution doth not reach being Divine and immortal but for all others I do not see how they can escape the Reason of this Law And it is altogether as ridiculous for Christians to worship the things they have formed as it was for the Heathens to do it where T. G. may learn the signification and Etymology of simulachrum à simulando for simulare is the same with effigiare as the Scholiast on that Constitution tells him In the same Constitution they are called sensu carentia simulachra which are words put in on purpose to shew how stupid and senseless the worship of them is and are not all Images among Christians so Have they not eyes and see not and ears and hear not as well as the Heathen Images Or do they worship only living and sensible Images moving I grant sometimes they do such as Themistius upon Aristotle tells us that Daedaelus made that moved by the help of quicksilver or springs such as the Holy Rood of Boxtel in Kent whose secret engines for moving the eyes and lips were laid open and an Anatomy Lecture read upon them at Pauls Cross in Henry the Eighths time by Bishop Fisher. 2. That Notion of Idolatry which the Heathens were charged with by the primitive Christians may be common to Christians with them Therefore if the fear of Idolatry kept them from the worship of Images and the same fear may justly continue where ever Images are worshipped then the Christians rejecting of Images was not upon any reason peculiar to that Age of the Church If men by being Christians were uncapable of being Idolaters without renouncing Christianity there were some pretence for laying aside the fears and jealousies of Idolatry when the Christian Religion had prevailed in the world But S. Paul supposes that Christians continuing so might be Idolaters Neither be ye Idolaters as were some of them Yet these were the Persons who were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and the Sea and did all eat the same spiritual meat and drink the same spiritual drink for they drank of that rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ. Which water they drank of both before and after their Idolatry and since the water followed them at the very time of committing it so that those persons are said to be partakers of Christ who were charged with Idolatry and therefore S. Paul is far from supposing that Idolatry and the profession of Christianity are inconsistent with each other But it is said that there can be no Idolatry to the Images of Christ because the true object of worship is honoured by them nor to the Images of Saints so long as men take them for Saints that is Gods Creatures and give only an inferiour worship to them If this be true there appears to be little danger of Idolatry among those who do not renounce Christianity But against this plea I put in these exceptions 1. That upon the same grounds all the Wiser Heathens must be cleared from Idolatry For 1. They owned the true Object of Divine worship viz. One Supreme God as I have at large proved in the former Discourses both those that went on the Platonick hypothesis of one Supreme Deity and others inferiour and those who believed one God to be worshipped under different representations The former was the principle which Iulian went upon and the latter Platonists who opposed Christianity to the utmost the other was the principle of the Stoicks and others and particularly owned by Maximus Madaurensis who saith that the Heathens did worship one God under several names thereby to express his several powers diffused through the World Now upon this supposition that where there is a true object of worship represented there can be no Idolatry in worshipping the representation I challenge any man to shew how the Heathens that went on these principles were chargeable with Idolatry For is Christ any otherwise a right object of worship than as he is believed to be the True God if then there can be no Idolatry towards an Image of Christ neither can there be towards any representation of the True God 2. The Heathens did assert the difference between God and his Creatures as I have already proved that they looked on their inferiour Deities as dependent on the supreme Being Created and Governed by Him so that if the acknowledgement of Saints to be Gods Creatures doth hinder men from committing Idolatry it must do the same for all those who owned a subordination of Deities which takes in the far greatest part of the Heathen World 3. They allowed the different degrees of worship suitable to the excellencies of the objects as Soveraign worship
Imprimatur G. Iane R. P. D. Henr. Episc. Lond. Ã sac domesticis June 3. 1676. A DEFENCE OF THE DISCOURSE Concerning the IDOLATRY Practised in the CHURCH OF ROME In ANSWER to a BOOK Entituled Catholicks no Idolaters By ED. STILLINGFLEET D. D. Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty The two First Parts London Printed by Robert White for Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the Phoenix in St. Pauls Church-yard and at the White-Hart in Westminster-Hall 1676. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER in GOD HENRY Lord Bishop of LONDON One of the Lords of His Majesties Most Honourable Privy Council My Lord I Have heard that in some famous Prophetick Pictures pretending to represent the Fate of England the chief thing observable in several of them was a Mole a creature blind and busie smooth and deceitful continually working under Ground but now and then to be discerned by the disturbance it makes in the Surface of the earth which is so natural a description of a restless party among us that we need no Iudge of Controversies to interpret the meaning of it Our Forefathers had sufficient Testimony of their working under Ground but in our Age they act more visibly and with that indefatigable industry that they threaten without great care to prevent them the undermining of our Church and the Ruine of our established Religion Which since they cannot hope so easily to compass alone they endeavour to draw in to their Assistance all such discontented parties who are so weak if any can be so to be prevailed on to be instruments to serve them in pulling down a Church which can never fall but they must be stifled in its Ruins One would think it were hardly possible for any to run into a snare which lies so open to their view or to flatter themselves with the vain hopes of escaping better than the Church they design to destroy But such is the admirable Wisdom of Divine Providence to order things so above all humane Discretion that when the Sins of a Nation have provoked God to forsake it he suffers those to concurr in the most pernicious Counsels for enslaving Conscience who pretend to the greatest zeal for the Liberty of it So that our Church of England in its present condition seems to stand as the Church of Corinth did of old between two unquiet and boisterous Seas and there are some very busie in cutting through the Isthmus between them to let in both at once upon it supposing that no strength will be able to withstand the force of so terrible an inundation It is a consideration that might dishearten those who are engaged in the Defence of our Religion against the common Adversaries to see that they promise themselves as much from the folly of some of their most seeming Enemies as from the interest and Power of their Friends thus like S. Paul in Macedonia we are troubled on every side without are fightings and within are fears If men did but once understand the things which belong to our Peace we might yet hope to weather out the storms that threaten us and to live as the Church hath frequently done in a tossing condition with waves beating on every side But if through Weakness or Wilfulness those things should be hid from our eyes the prospect of our future condition is much more dreadful and amazing than the present can be If it were reasonable to hope that all men would lay aside prejudice and passion and have greater regard to the Common Good than to the interests of their several parties they could not but see where our main strength lies by what our enemies are most concerned to destroy And that no men of common understanding would make use of disunited Parties to destroy one Great Body unless they were sure to master them when they had done with them And therefore the best way for their own security were to unite themselves with the Church of England That were a Blessing too great for such a People to expect whose sins have made our Breaches so wide that we have too great reason to fear the common enemy may enter through them if there be not some way found out to repair those Breaches and to build up the places which are broken down For my own part I cannot see how those who could have joyned in Communion with the Christian Church in the time of Theodosius the Great can justly refuse to do it in ours For that is the Age of the Church which our Church of England since the Reformation comes the nearest to Idolatry being then suppressed by the Imperial Edicts the Churches settled by Law under the Government of Bishops Publick Liturgies appointed Antiquity Reverenced Schism discountenanced Learning encouraged and some few Ceremonies used but without any of those corrupt mixtures which afterwards prevailed in the Roman Church And whatever men of ill minds may suggest to the disparagement of those times it is really an Honour to our Church to suffer together with that Age when the Christian Church began to be firmly settled by the Countenance of the Civil Power and did enjoy its Primitive Purity without the Poverty and Hardships it endured before And the Bishops of that time were men of that exemplary Piety of those great Abilities of that excellent Conduct and Magnanimity as set them above the contempt or reproach of any but Infidels and Apostates For then lived the Gregories the Basils the Chrysostoms in the Eastern Church the Ambroses and Augustins in the Western and they who can suspect these to have been Enemies to the Power of Godliness did never understand what it meant It were no doubt the most desirable thing in our State and Condition to see the Piety the Zeal the Courage the Wisdom of those holy Bishops revived among us in such an Age which needs the conjunction of all these together For such is the insolency and number of the open contemners of our Church and Religion such is the activity of those who oppose it and the subtilty of those who undermine it as requires all the Devotion and Abilities of those great Persons to defend it And I hope that Divine Spirit which inflamed and acted them hath not forsaken that Sacred Order among us but that it will daily raise up more who shall be able to convince Dissenters that there may be true and hearty zeal for Religion among our Prelates and those of the Church of Rome that Good Works are most agreeable to the Principles of the Reformation Nay even in this Age as bad as it is there may be as great Instances produced of real Charity and of Works of Publick and pious uses as when men thought to get Souls out of Purgatory or themselves into Heaven by what they did And if it were possible exactly to compare all Acts of this nature which have been done ever since the Reformation with what there was done of the same kind for a much longer time immediately before
it if the Protestant Charity should seem to fall short in outward Pomp and Magnificence it would be found much more to exceed it in number and usefulness Which makes me so much the more wonder to hear and see the ill effects of the Reformation in this kind so much insisted on of late to disprove the Goodness of it If some Great men had sinister ends in it when was there any great Action of that nature wherein some Persons did not aim at their own advantage by it Who can excuse all the Courtiers in the time of Constantine or all the Actions of that Great Emperour himself Must Christianity therefore be thought the worse because it did prevail in his time and very much by his means And there were some partial Historians in those dayes that impute the demolishing of Heathen Temples and the suppressing of Idolatry to the Rapine and Sacriledge of the Times For even those Heathen Temples were richly endowed and it is not to be supposed that when such a Tree was shaking there would be no scrambling for the Fruit of it However we are not concerned to justifie the Actions or Designs of any particular Persons how Great soever but that which we plead for is that the Reformation it self was a just pious prudent and necessary thing and had both sufficient Authority to warrant it and sufficient Reason to justifie it We read in the Spanish History a remarkable Precedent which vindicates the proceeding of our Reformation in England The Gotthick Nation had been infected with Arianism two hundred and thirteen years when by the means of Leander Bishop of Sevil the King Reccaredus being duly informed in the Orthodox Faith called a Council at Toledo wherein Arianism was renounced by the declaration and subscription of the King himself being present in Council and afterwards by the Bishops who joyned with him and the Great men which being done the Council proceeded to make new Canons and Constitutions which the King confirmed by his Edict declaring that if any Bishop Priest or Deacon refused to observe them he was sentenced by the Council to excommunication if any of the higher rank of the Laity the penalty was paying half their estates to the Exchequer if others confiscation and banishment All which is extant in the Records of that Council The Arian Bishops as Mariana relates such as Athalocus and Sunna with others having the old Queen Goswinda and several of the Nobility to joyn with them made all the disturbance they could to hinder the Reformation But God not only carried it through but wonderfully preserved the Life of the King notwithstanding many conspiracies against him after whose death the Arian faction was very busie and made several Attempts by Treason and Rebellion to be restored again and they once thought themselves sure when they had gotten Wittericus of their party to the Throne but his short Reign put an end to all their Hopes I find some of the latter Spanish Historians much troubled to see all done in this Reformation by the King and the Bishops and Great men without the least mention of the Popes Authority Lucas Tudensis therefore saith that Leander was the Popes Legat but Mariana confesses that the very Acts of the Council contradict it He would have it believed that they sent Legats to the Pope afterwards to have the Council confirmed by him but he acknowledgeth that nothing appears in History to that purpose and if any such thing had been it would not have been omitted in the Epistles of Gregory who writ to Leander a Letter of congratulation for the conversion of Reccaredus But then National Churches were supposed to have Power enough to Reform themselves provided that they proceeded according to the Decrees of the Four General Councils And this is that we maintain in behalf of the Church of England that it receives all the Creeds which were then received and hath reformed those Abuses only which have crept into the Church since that Time This My Lord is the Cause which by Command of my Superiours I was first engaged to defend among whom Your Lordships Predecessour whose constant Friendship and Kindness I must never forget was one of the Chief Since that time I have had but little respite from these not so pleasing to me as sometimes necessary Polemical Exercises and notwithstanding all the Rage and Malice of the Adversaries of our Church against me I sit down with that contentment that I have defended a Righteous Cause and with an honest Mind and therefore I little regard their bitterest Censures and Reproaches In the midst of such a Croud of Adversaries it was no unpleasant entertainment to me to see the various methods with which they have attacked me some with piteous moans and outcries others grinning and only shewing their teeth others ranting and Hectoring others scolding and reviling but I must needs say the Adversary I now answer hath shewed more art and cunning than all the rest put together and hath said as much in Defence of their Cause as Wit and Subtilty could invent I wish I could speak as freely of his Fair dealing and Ingenuity Him therefore I reserved to be answered by himself after I had shaken off the lesser and more barking Creatures What I have now done I humbly present to Your Lordships hands and I am very glad of this opportunity to declare what satisfaction the Members of Your own Church and the Clergy of this great City have to see a Person of so Noble Birth so much Temper and Prudence so firm an Assertor of the Protestant Religion and Church of England appointed by his Majesty to have the Conduct and Government of them That God Almighty would assist and direct Your Lordship in those things which tend to the Peace and Welfare of this Church is the hearty Prayer of My Lord Your Lordships most dutiful and obedient Servant ED. STILLINGFLEET May 30. 1676. TO THE READER IT hath been long expected that I should have published an Answer to T. G. as the most considerable Adversary that appeared against me but it is very well known that before his Book came out I had undertaken the Answer of several others which when I had set forth a Person of Honour who had been pleased to defend me against one of my keenest Antagonists was assaulted by him whom I was in the first place obliged in gratitude to ease of any farther trouble Since that time I have applyed my self to the consideration of T. G.'s Book as much as health and other business would permit And finding such confusion in most Discourses about Idolatry and that till the Nature of it were fully and clearly Stated men would still dispute in the dark about these matters in my last Summers retirement I set my self to the strict examination of it by searching with my utmost diligence into the Idolatries practised in all parts of the world by the help of the best Authors I could
God-head which was to be seen by the things that were made so as to leave them without excuse Was this their knowing of God and that incorruptible God whose glory they turned into the Image of a corruptible man c Was all this nothing but Iupiter of Crete and the Arch-Devil under his name But what will not men say rather than confess themselves Idolaters Although these Testimonies of Scriture be never so evident yet I am not sure but T. G. may be the Polus mentioned in Erasmus now whom he mentions for my sake more than once and may espy a red fiery Dragon even the old Serpent there where I can see nothing but the discovery of the True God Therefore supposing that the Testimony of Heathens or the Scriptures may not weigh much with him methinks he might have considered what the Learned men of their own Church have said to this purpose Th. Aquinas confesseth that the most of the Gentiles did acknowledge one Supreme God from whom they said all those others whom they called Gods did receive their being and that they ascribed the name of Divinity to all immortal substances chiefly by reason of their wisdom happiness and Government Which custom of speaking saith he is likewise found in Scripture where either the holy Angels or Men and Iudges are called Gods I have said Ye are Gods and many other places Franciscus Ferrariensis in his Commentaries on that place saith that Aquinas his meaning was that the Scripture only agreed with the Heathens as to the name but that they called their Gods properly so whereas the Scripture speaks of them only by way of participation And did Aquinas mean any otherwise of the Heathens when he saith that all their inferiour Gods derived their very being from the Supreme The same Aquinas in his Book purposely written against the Gentiles gives this account of their Principles of Religion that some of them held one God the first and universal principle of all things but withall all they gave Divine Worship Latriam next to the Supreme God to intellectual substances of a heavenly nature which they call Gods whether they were substances separated from bodies or the Souls of the heavenly Orbs and Stars in the next place to intellectual substances united to aerial bodies which they called Daemons whom they made Gods in respect of men and thought they deserved divine worship from men as being Mediatours between the Gods and them and in the last place to the Souls of good men as being raised to a higher state than that of this present life Others of them suppossing God to be the Soul of the World did believe that divine worship was to be given to the whole world and the several parts of it not for the sake of the Body but the Soul which they said was God as a wise man hath honour given him not for the sake of his Body but of his mind Others again asserted that things below men as Images might have divine worship given to them in as much as they did participate of a Superiour nature either from the influence of heavenly bodies or the presence of some Spirits which Images they called Gods and from thence they were called Idolaters And so he proves that they were who acknowledging one first principle did give divine worship to any other being because it weakens the notion and esteem we ought to have of the Supreme Being to give divine worship to any other besides him as it would lessen the honour of a King for any other Person to have the same kind of respect shewed to him which we express to the King and because this divine worship is due to God on the account of Creation which is proper only to him and because he is properly Lord over us and none else besides him and he is our great and last end which are all of them great and weighty reasons why divine worship should be appropriated to God alone But saith he although this opinion which makes God a separate Being and the first Cause of all intellectual Beings be true yet that which makes God the Soul of the World though it be farther from truth gives a better account of giving divine worship to created Beings For then they give that divine worship to God himself for according to this principle the several parts of the world in respect of God are but as the several members of a mans body in respect of his Soul But the most unreasonable opinion he saith is that of animated Images because those cannot deserve more worship than either the Spirits that animate them or the makers of them which ought not to have divine worship given them besides that by lying Oracles and wicked Counsels these appear to have been Evil Spirits and therefore deserve no worship of us From hence he saith it appears that because divine worship is proper only to God as the first principle and none but an ill disposed rational Being can excite men to the doing such unlawful things as giving the worship proper to God to any other Being that men were drawn to Idolatry by the instigation of evil Spirits which coveted divine honours to themselves and therefore the Scripture saith they worshipped Devils and not God From which remarkable Testimony we may take notice of these things 1. That he confesseth many of the Gentiles whom he charges with Idolatry did believe and worship the Supreme God as Creator and Governour of the world 2. That divine worship is so proper to the true God that whosoever gives it to any created being though in it self of real excellency and considered as deriving that excellency from God is yet guilty of Idolatry 3. That relative Latria being given to a creature is Idolatry for so he makes it to be in those who supposed God to be the Soul of the world And I desire T. G. or any other cunning Sophister among them to shew me why a man may not as lawfully worship any part of the world with a relative Latria supposing God to be the Soul of the world as any Image or Crucifix whatsoever For if union contact or relation be a sufficient ground for relative Latria in one case it will be in the other also and I cannot but wonder so great a judgement as Aquinas had should not either have made him justifie the Heathens on this supposition or condemn the Christians in giving Latria i. e. proper divine worship to the Cross. For there is not any shadow of reason produced by him for the one which would not held have much more for the other For if the honour of the Image is carried to the Prototype is not the honour of the members of the Body to the mind that animates them If the Image deserve the same worship with the person represented by it is not much more any part of the body capable of receiving the honour due to the Person as the
this first principle yet they all agreed in this that it was immortal and not only good in it self but the fountain of all good Which surely was no description of an Arch-Devil But what need I farther insist on those Authours of his own Church who have yielded this when there are several who with approbation have undertaken the proof of this in Books written purposely on this subject such as Raim Breganius Mutius Pansa Livius Galantes Paulus Benius Eugubinus but above all Augustinus Steuchus Eugubinus who have made it their business to prove that not only the Being of the Deity but the unity as a first principle the Wisdom Goodness Power and Providence of God were acknowledged not meerly by the Philosophers as Plato and Aristotle and their followers but by the generality of mankind But I am afraid these Books may be as hard for him to find as Trigautius was and it were well if his Principles were as hard to find too if they discover no more learning or judgement than this that the Supreme God of the Heathens was an Arch-Devil But T. G. saith that the Father of Gods and men among the Heathens was according to the Fathers an Arch-Devil Is it not possible for you to entertain wild and absurd opinions your selves but upon all occasions you must lay them at the doors of the Fathers I have heard of a place where the people were hard put to it to provide God-fathers for their Children at last they resolved to choose two men that were to stand as God-fathers for all the Children that were to be born in the Parish just such a use you make of the Fathers they must Christen all your Brats and how foolish soever an opinion be if it comes from you it must presently pass under the name of the Fathers But I shall do my endeavour to break this bad custome of yours and since T. G. thinks me a scarce-revolted Presbyterian I shall make the right Father stand for his own Children And because this is very material toward the true understanding the Nature of Idolatry I shall give a full account of the sense of the Fathers in this point and not as T. G. hath done from one single passage of a learned but by their own Church thought heretical Father viz. Origen presently cry out the Fathers the Fathers Which is like a Country Fellow that came to a Gentleman and told him he had found out a brave Covie of Partridges lying in such a Field the Gentleman was very much pleased with the news and presently asked him how many there were what half a score No. eight No. Six No. Four No. But how many then are there Sir saith the Country Fellow it is a Covie of one I am afraid T. G 's Covie of Fathers will hardly come to one at last Iustin Martyr is the eldest genuine Father extant who undertook to reprove the Gentiles for their Idolatry and to defend the Christian worship In his Paraenesis to the Greeks he takes notice how hardly the wiser Gentiles thought themselves dealt with when all the Poetical Fables about their Gods were objected against them just as some of the Church of Rome do when we tell them of the Legends of their Saints which the more ingenuous confess to be made by men who took a priviledge of feigning and saying any thing as well as the Heathen Poets but they appealed for the principles of their Religion to Plato and Aristotle both whom he confesses to have asserted one Supreme God although they differed in their opinions about the manner of the formation of things by him Afterwards he saith That the first Authour of Polytheism among them viz. Orpheus did plainly assert one Supreme God and the making of all things by him for which he produces many verses of his and to the same purpose an excellent testimony of Sophocles viz. that in truth there is but one God who made Heaven and Earth and Sea and Winds but the folly and madness of mankind brought in the Images of Gods and when they had offered sacrifices and kept solemnities to these they thought themselves Religious He farther shews that Pythagoras delivered to his disciples the unity of God and his being the cause of all things and the fountain of all good that Plato being warned by Socrates his death durst not oppose the Gods commonly worshipped but one may guess by his Writings that his meaning as to the inferiour Deities was that they who would have them might and they who would not might let them alone but that himself had a right opinion concerning the true God That Homer by his golden chain did attribute to the Supreme God a Power over all the rest and that the rest of the Deities were near as far distant from the Supreme as men were and that the Supreme was he whom Homer calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God himself which signifies saith Iustin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the truely existent Deity and that in Achilles his Shield he makes Vulcan represent the Creation of the world From these arguments he perswades the Greeks to hearken to the Revelation which the true and Supreme God had made of himself to the world and to worship him according to his own Will In his Apologies to the Roman Emperours Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius and the Roman Senate and People for so Baronius shews that which is now called the first was truely the second and that not only written to the Senate but to the Emperour too who at that time was Marcus Aurelius as Eusebius saith and Photius after him he gives this account of the State of the Controversie then so warmly managed about Idolatry that it was not whether there were one Supreme God or no or whether he ought to have divine worship given to him but whether those whom the Gentiles called Gods were so or no and whether they or dead men did deserve any divine honour to be given to them and lastly that being supposed whether this honour ought to be given to Images or no For every one of these Iustin speaks distinctly to As to their Gods he denies that they deserved any divine worship because they desired it and were delighted with it From whence as well as from other arguments he proves that they could not be true Gods but evil Daemons that those who were Christians did only worship the true God the Father of all vertue and goodness and his Son who hath instructed both men and Angels for it is ridiculous to think that in this place Iustin should assert the worship of Angels equal with the Father and Son and before the Holy Ghost as some great men of the Church of Rome have done and the Prophetick Spirit in Spirit and truth In another place he saith that they had no other crime to object against the Christians but that they did not
worship the same Gods with them nor offer up libations and the smoak of sacrifices to dead men Nor crown and worship Images that they agreed with Menander who said we ought not to worship the work of mens hands not because Devils dwelt in them but because men were the makers of them And he wondered they could call them Gods which they knew to be without soul and dead and to have no likeness to God it was not then upon the account of their being animated by evil Spirits that the Christians rejected this worship for then these reasons would not have held All the resemblance they had was to those evil Spirits that had appeared among men for that was Iustins opinion of the beginning of Idolatry that God had committed the Government of all things under the heavens to particular Angels but these Angels prevaricating by the love of Women did upon them beget Daemons that these Daemons were the great corrupters of mankind and partly by frightful apparitions and by instructing men in Idolatrous rites did by degrees draw men to give them divine worship the people not imagining them to be evil Spirits and so were called by such names as they liked best themselves as Neptune Pluto c. But the true God had no certain name given to him for saith he Father and God and Creator and Lord and Master are not names but titles arising from his works and good deeds and God is not a name but a notion engrafted in humane nature of an unexpressible Being But that God alone is to be worshipped appears by this which is the great command given to Christians Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve with all thy heart and with all thy strength even the Lord God that made thee Where we see the force of the argument used by Iustin in behalf of the Christians lay in Gods peremptory prohibition of giving divine worship to any thing but himself and that founded upon Gods right of dominion over us by vertue of creation In his Book of the Divine Monarchy he shews that although the Heathens did make great use of the Poets to justifie their Polytheism yet they did give clear testimony of one Supreme Deity who was the Maker and Governour of all things for which end he produces the sayings of Aeschylus Sophocles Orpheus Pythagoras Philemon Menander and Euripides all very considerable to this purpose In his works there is extant the resolution of several Questions by a Greek Philosopher and the Christians reply in which nothing can be more evident than that it was agreed on both sides that there was one Supreme God infinitely good powerful and wise Nay the Greek Philosopher looks upon the ignorance of God as a thing impossible because all men naturally agree in the knowledge of God But there are plain evidences in that Book that it is of later date than Iustins time therefore instead of insisting any more on that I shall give a farther proof that in his time it could be no part of the dispute between the Christians and Heathens whether there were one Supreme God that ought to be worshipped by men and that shall be from that very Emperour to whom Eusebius saith Iustin Martyr did make his second Apology viz. M. Aurelius Antoninus It is particularly observed of him by the Roman Historians that he had a great zeal for preserving the Old Roman Religion and Iul. Capitolinus saith that he was so skilful in all the practices of it that he needed not as it was common for one to prompt him because he could say the prayers by heart and he was so confident of the protection of the Gods that he bids Faustina not punish those who had conspired against him for the Gods would defend him his zeal being pleasing to them and therefore Baronius doth not wonder that Iustin and other Christians suffered Martyrdom under him But in the Books which are left of his writing we may easily discover that he firmly believed an eternal Wisdom and Providence which managed the World and that the Gods whose veneration he commends were looked on by him as the subservient Ministers of the Divine Wisdom Reverence the Gods saith he but withal he saith honour that which is most excellent in the world that which disposeth and Governs all which sometimes he calls the all-commanding reason sometimes the Mind and Soul of the World which he expresly saith is but one And in one place he saith that there is but one World and one God and one substance and one Law and one common reason of intelligent beings and one Truth But the great objection against such Testimonies of Antoninus and others lies in this that these only shew the particular opinions of some few men of Philosophical minds but they do not reach to the publick and established Religion among them which seemed to make no difference between the Supreme God and other Deities from whence it follows that they did not give to him any such worship a◠belonged to him Which being the most considerable objection against the design of this present discourse I shall here endeavour to remove it before I produce any farther testimonies of the Fathers For which we must consider wherei◠the Romans did suppose the solemn and outward acts of their Religion to consist viz. in the worship appropriated 〈◊〉 their Temples or in occasional prayers and vows or in some parts of divination whereby they supposed God did make known his mind to them If I can therefore prove that the Romans did in an extraordinary manner make use of all these acts of Religious worship to the Supreme God it will then necessarily follow that the controversie between the Fathers and them about Idolatry could not be about the worship of one Supreme God but about giving Religious worship to any else besides him The Worship performed in their Temples was the most solemn and frequent among them in so much that Tully saith therein the people of Rome exceeded all Nations in the world but the most solemn part of that Worship was that which was performed in the Capitol at Rome and in the Temple of Iupiter Latialis in Alba and both these I shall prove were dedicated to the Supreme God The first Capitol was built at Rome by Numa Pompilius and called by Varro the old Capitol which stood at a good distance from the place where the foundations of the great Temple were laid by Tarquinius Priscus the one being about the Cirque of Flora the other upon the Tarpeian Mountain There is so little left of the memory of the former that for the design of it we are to judge by the general intention of Numa as to the worship of the Deity of which Plutarch gives this account That he forbad the Romans making any Image of God either like to men or beast because the First Being is
invisible and incorruptible and can only be apprehended by our minds From hence saith he it was that the Romans although they built Temples and holy places yet for 160. years had no graven or painted Image of God accounting it a prophane thing to represent the more excellent by what was below it and because we cannot come near to God any other way than by our understanding I do not deny that Numa did allow the worship of inferiour Deities as of Iuno Minerva and of Deified men as of Quirinus as Dionysius Halicarnassaeus saith but since it is plain from hence that he acknowledged a First invisible incomprehensible Being since he deduced the reason of Divine worship from considerations proper to him since he appointed a Flamen Dialis as the chief of all the rest as Livy tells us and erected a Capitol to Iove it is incredible that he should design it for any other than the Supreme Deity What force was there in Numa 's reason against Images if the First and invisible Being were not worshipped by him to what end were reasons framed against a thing never intended and which would not hold against the worship of Deified men unless the worship of them were supposed to be carried at last to the Supreme God But not only Plutarch attested this but Varro saith that for 170. years the Romans worshipped their Gods without Images i. e. till the New Capitol were erected which was vowed by Tarquinius Priscus in the Sabine War but he was only able to prepare the place and lay the Foundations Servius Tullius carried it on Tarquinius Superbus was at vast charge upon it designing saith Livy a Temple of such a capacity as might become the King of Gods and men which was the common phrase whereby Ennius Plautus and Virgil did set forth the Supreme Deity This magnificent Temple which according to Dionysius stood upon 800. foot of ground was not finished till after the expulsion of Tarquin and was then dedicated with great solemnity by Horatius Pulvillus being both Consul and Pontifex And from that time this was accounted the great seat of God and Religion among them it was sedeâ— Iovis in Livy Iovis Summi arx in Ovid terrestre domicilium Iovis in Cicero Sedes Iovis Opt. Max. in Tacitus which are all as plain Testimonies that this Temple was designed for the Supreme God among them as can be desired buâ— if any thing more can be added it is only what Pliny saith in his Panegyrick that God was as present there as he wâ—â— in the heavens To this Temple thâ— greatest resort was made especially by the Magistrates on all solemn occasions hither the Consuls came and made theiâ— vows and offered sacrifices before theâ— went into their Provinces on the verâ— day they entred upon their Office saitâ— Livy for it was one of the charges again Flaminius that he went away withoâ—â— doing it hither those that triumpheâ—â— came and offered up their Laurels anâ— laid them in the lap of Iupiter O. M. here the great Souldiers consecrated theâ—â— Arms and hung up the Spoils of the Enemies by which means it came to incredible riches Here the great Scipâ—â— was observed to be very often conversant in the night in cella Iovis anâ— Alexander Severus never missed attending the service of the Capitol if he were in the City every seventh day as Lampridius saith in his Life by which we see in what extraordinary esteem the service of Iupiter O. M. in the Capitol was among the greatest persons in Rome from whence Lactantius saith it was summum caput Religionum suarum publicarum the very top of their Religion and Isidore thinks it was called Capitolium because it was Romanae urbus Religionis caput summum so that it was not only the worship of the Supreme but a higher degree of worship than was used at any other Temple in Rome If any worship can be supposed more solemn than this it was that of Iupiter Latialis upon the Mountain of Alba whither the Roman Coss. went upon the Feriae Latinae and there met the Ambassadours sent on purpose from the whole Society of the Latins where they all joyned together in a common sacrifice to the same Iove as Dionysius Strabo and Livy relate I con foresee but 2. Objections against this evidence for the worship of the Supreme God among the Romans 1. That Jupiter was not worshipped alone in the Capitol but Juno and Minerva too 2. That this Jupiter was not the Supreme God but Jupiter of Crete To these I answer 1. I confess that Iuno and Minerva had their Images in the Capitol but we are to consider that it was a rule in their Pontifical Law that a Temple could be consecrated only to one God and therefore M. Marcellus could not dedicate the same Temple to Honour and Vertue because the Pontifices saith Livy told him unum Templum duobus numinibus non rectè dedicari But there might be Images or little cells of other Gods besides as T. G. knows in a Church dedicated to God or the B. Virgin there may be Chappels to Saints which do not hinder the main design of the worship being to God and so it was in this and many other things among the old Romans as Diana and the Muses were in the Temple of Apollo and the Graces of Phidias in the Temple of Iupiter Olympius but Livy particularly saith as to this Temple of the Capitol that they cleared the ground as much as they could of all worships besides ut area esset tota Jovis that it might wholly belong to Iove The only question then is whether by this Jove they meant the Supreme God or Jupiter of Crete For which we are to observe 1. That the Poetical Fables were rejected at Rome 2. That the character given of Jupiter by the Romans can belong only to the Supreme God That the Poetical Fables were rejected at Rome I do not mean only that they were rejected by their Wisemen as Varro Seneca and others but by their most ancient Laws about Religion Marlianus mentions a Table of the Laws of Romulus preserved in the Capitol among which this is one DEORUM FABULAS NE CREDUNTO And that this was no invention of his own appears by what Dionysius Halicarnassaeus at large discourseth on this subject where he shews that although the customes and rites of Religion instituted by Romulus were agreeable to the best among the Greeks yet he utterly rejected all their Fables concerning their Gods which are indeed so many blasphemies and reproaches of them as wicked unprofitable and indecent and not becoming good men much less those which were worshipped for Gods And that he disposed the minds of men to speak and think things worthy of that blessed nature they supposed them to have And he particularly instances in the Fables of Saturn and Iupiter and the Mysteries of
and overthrows the worship of the Poetical Gods upon this principle because they were not eternal and were confessed to be at first made out of matter and why should we worship them which are material and generated and lyable to all sorts of passions according to the Poets description of them But it may be this was nothing but Poetical figments and they ought all to be understood of the natures of things as Empedocles explains them why then saith he should we attribute the same honour to matter which is subject to corruption and mutation as to the eternal unbegotten and immutable God Jupiter according to the Stoicks was the most active and fiery principle of matter Juno the air Neptune the water but they all agreed that by their Deities were understood the several parts of the Universe although with different manners of explication Now saith he against the Stoicks I thus argue and here Athenagoras knew that the Emperour M. Aurelius would think himself particularly concerned If you own one Supreme God eternal and unbegotten and all other things to be made up of matter and the Spirit of God to receive different names as it passes through the various changes of matter then these several kinds of matter will make up one body whereof God is the soul and consequently upon the general conflagration which the Stoicks acknowledged all the several names of matter will be lost by the corruptions of the kinds and nothing will be then left but the Divine Spirit why should we therefore look on those as gods that are lyable to such a change And so he proceeds to argue against the other hypotheses as the Egyptians and others whereby all their Deities were reduced to the principles of nature too from the same principle viz. that because these things were made and corruptible they were not capable of receiving divine honour from us By all which we see that the fundamental principle which Athenagoras went upon in this elaborate discourse of his to one of the Wisest Emperours Rome ever had was this that nothing but the eternal God ought to receive Divine Worship from men whether they called it Soveraign or Relative or what name soever they gave it nay although they did acknowledge one supreme God yet if they gave divine worship to his Creatures as the Stoicks did the Christians thought it so unlawful that they would rather die than comply with them in it And here I appeal again to T. G 's conscience for since he hath shewed me the way I hope I may follow him in it whether he think so Wise and Vertuous an Emperour as Antoninus was would not have preserved the Christians from suffering persecution as they did very smartly in his days if they would have declared themselves to have understood the principles of the Roman Religion after the Emperours own way viz. by believing one Supreme God and worshipping the several parts of the Universe under the names of those Deities that were commonly received and they might have directed this worship as they had thought fit and have disowned all the ridiculous and prophane stories of their Poetical Gods as the Stoicks did and what principle then could hinder the Christians from complying with the Laws but this that they accounted it Idolatry to give divine worship to any created Being From Athenagoras I proceed to Clemens Alexandrinus who understood the principles of the Heathen Theology as well as any and exposes all their Poetical Fables and Greek Mysteries with as much advantage as any Christian Writer in his Admonition to the Greeks After he hath sufficiently derided the Poetical Theology and the Vulgar Idolatry he comes to the Philosophers who did he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 make an Idol of matter the Images whereof were not surely the representation of a thing not existent as a Centaur or Sphinx and yet called an Idol and after reckoning up Thales Anaximenes Parmenides Hippasus Heraclitus and Empedocles he calls them all Atheists because with a foolish kind of Wisdom they did worship Matter and scorning to worship Wood and Stones did Deifie the Mother of them And so runs out after his way into a discourse about the several Nations that despised Images and worshipped the several parts of the Universe and the symbols of them as the Scythians Sarmatians Persians and Macedonians who he saith were the Philosophers Masters in the worship of these inferiour Elements which were made to be serviceable to men Then he reckons up other Philosophers that worshipped the Stars as animated beings others the Planets and the World and the Stoicks who said God passed through the meanest parts of matter yet after all this he confesseth that there is a certain divine influence distilled upon all men especially on those who apply themselves to learning by vertue of which they are forced to acknowledge one God incorruptible and unbegotten who is the only true Being and abides for ever above the highest Heavens from whence he beholds all the things that are done in Heaven and Earth who according to Euripides sees all things without being visible himself And for the proof of this he brings the Testimonies of Plato Antisthenes and Xenophon who all acknowledge Gods incomparable excellency as well as unity and then adds the Testimonies of Cleanthes and the Pythagoreans and not contented with the Philosophers he heaps the testimonies of the Poets to the same purpose as Aratus Hesiod Orpheus Sophocles Menander Homer and Euripides In the fifth Book of his Miscellanies for so his Stromata truely are he falls upon this subject again and then saith to the same purpose that there is a natural knowledge of one omnipotent God among all considering men he grants the Stoicks opinion about God to be agreeable to the Scriptures and shews that Thales confessed Gods eternity and omnisciency that Epicharmus attributed omnipotency to him and Homer the creation of the world which he described in the shield of Achilles and then makes this observation as though it were purposely intended for T. G. he that is called both in Verse and Prose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Iupiter carries our apprehension to God not to the Arch Devil as T. G. saith and therefore he is said to be all things and to know all things and to give and take away all things and to be King over all that Pindar the Baeotian being a Pythagorean said there was one maker of all things whom he called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Wise Artificer and then he repeats several of the Testimonies which he had produced before to which he adds that of Xenophanes Colophonius proving God to be one and incorporeal and of Cleanthes reproving the opinion of the vulgar about the Deity and of Euphorion and Aeschilus about Iupiter which for T. G 's better information I shall set down 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Iupiter is
aether and Earth and Heaven and all things and if there be any thing above all Jupiter is it and Clemens is so far from thinking this an improper speech that he saith it was spoken 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with a great deal of decency and gravity concerning God By this it appears that they who boast so much of the Fathers are not over conversant with them but Father Bellarmine or Father Coccius serves them for a whole Iury of them But I commend T. G. for his modesty for when he had said this was the sense of the Fathers he produces no more but good Father Origen and he is so kind hearted to him that though I believe he hath heard how he hath been condemned for a Heretick yet he with great judgement supposes that what he said was the common sense of the Fathers But besides this Clemens quotes a saying of Heraclitus approved by Plato wherein the only Wise Being is called by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Iove And to shew that one Supreme Being was received among the Greeks he cites farther an express testimony of Timaeus Locrus wherein he saith there is one unbegotten principle of all things for if it were begotten it were no first principle but that out of which it were begotten would be that principle which Clemens parallels with that saying of Scripture Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one God and him only shalt thou serve I omit the testimonies of Authors cited before but to them he adds Diphilus the Comaedian who was a little younger than Menander and lived in the time of the first Ptolemy who speaks plainly concerning the omniscience providence and justice of God in the verses cited out of him and calls God the Lord of all whose very name is dreadful and whose words afterwards are so full of Emphasis that I cannot forbear setting them down although I beg pardon for mixing so much of a foreign language in an English discourse he bids those men look to it who presume upon Gods patience because he doth not at present punish them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Look to it you that think there is no God There is there is if any man do ill Let him think time is gain For certainly Suffer he shall for what he hath done amiss But withal he quotes a saying of Xenocrates Chalcedonius wherein he calls God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Supreme Iove and another of Archilochus Parius a very ancient Poet in the 23 Olympiad saith S. Cyril of Alexandria wherein he begins 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O Iove thy Power is in Heaven and thou seest all that is done there whether good or evil and Menander saith that God is in all things good and Aeschylus celebrates the mighty power of God to this purpose Think not that God is like to what thou seest Thou knowest him not for he is like to that which cannot be touched or seen He makes the mountains tremble and the Sea to rage when his commanding eye doth on them look For the great God can do what he thinks fit But Diphilus saith yet farther Honour him alone that is the Father of all good things From all which Clemens concludes that the East and West the North and South have one and the same anticipation concerning the Government of one Supreme Disposer of things because the knowledge of his most common operations have equally reached to all but especially to the inquisitive Philosophers of Greece who have attributed a wise Providence to the invisible and only and most powerful and most skilful contriver of all things Although these things might be sufficient to convince a modest man that the Gentiles who were charged with Idolatry by the Primitive Fathers did agree in the acknowledgement of one Supreme Deity and were so thought to do by those who managed that charge against them yet I shall proceed from Clemens to Origen his disciple and see if the state of the Controversie were altered in his time The dispute between Celsus and him did not at all depend on this whether there were one Supreme God or no or whether Soveraign worship did belong to him for Celsus freely acknowledged both these I know Origen several times charges him with being an Epicurean but whatever his private opinion was he owns none of the Epicurean principles about Religion in his Book against the Christians wherein he declares himself to be both for God and Providence He calls God the universael Reason he acknowledges him to be the maker of all immortal beings and that all things are from him and saith that God is common to all good and standing in need of nothing and without envy nay he calls him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the great God and saith that men ought to undergo any torments rather than to think or speak any thing unworthy of him that he is at no time to be forsaken by us neither night nor day in publick or private in our thoughts or actions but our soul ought always to be intent upon him Thus far Celsus seems a good Christian what is the matter then between Origen and him that they could not agree about Divine Worship since Celsus doth acknowledge the supreme excellency of God and consequently that Soveraign Worship is only due to him Why the dispute lay in this point Celsus contended with great vehemency that since God made use of inferiour spirits to govern the World that those ought to have divine honours given to them according to the customs of their several Countries that this tended more to the honour of the supreme Deity for that devotion saith he is more perfect which passeth through all to him that it was not to be conceived that God should envy the honour of his own Ministers but we ought rather to suppose that the Great God is better pleased with it So that all that Celsus pleaded for was either an inferiour service of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or at the utmost but a Relative Latria a divine worship which was to fall after an inferiour manner upon the lower Gods but to be finally terminated upon the supreme To this Origen answers two ways 1. By shewing that these inferiour Deities were not good Angels but Daemons i. e. evil Spirits which he proves many ways but chiefly by this that they seemed so covetous of divine worship from men 2. By insisting on this as the fundamental principle of worship in the Christian Religion that divine worship is to be given only to God himself and to his Son Christ Iesus This he inculcates upon all occasions this he lays down in the beginning of his Book that God alone is to be worshipped all other things whether they have beings or have not are to be passed by and although some of them may deserve honour
signifying Daughters implies the lesser Deities and Olla taal the Supreme God as the words signifie which he proves from Sharestanius that the old Arabs did acknowledge Abraham Ecchellensis speaking of the Religion of the old Arabians saith that those who were of the Sect of Chaled went upon this principle that there was one Creator and Governor of all things most Powerful and most Wise Besides these there were those who worshipped Intelligences or Celestial Spirits and these saith he although they confessed one Creator of the World most holy wise and powerful yet they said we had need of Mediators to him therefore they invoked those Spirits with all rites of Religious worship and these saith he were called the Daughters of God as they are in the Alcoran not much different from these were the worshippers of Images whom he describes as we have done before But he tells us there was a Sect of Dahritae among them whom he calls Philosophers who were meer Atheists and asserted the Eternity of the World and these being excepted he saith that the ancient Arabs did believe the creation of the world and he tells out of them their particular history of it But Ecchellensis was aware of the parallel between the worship practised in the Church of Rome and that among the Arabians supposing they acknowledged one true God and therefore puts the Qustion whether they did worship their Idols for Gods without relation to any Superiour or only took them for second causes and gave them the name of Gods only Analogically It was a question seasonably put but not so wisely answered For as if he had quite forgotten what he had said before he saith without all doubt the most of them looked upon the Gods they worshipped as of Supreme Authority and Majesty and Independent of any other What although they acknowledged but one Supreme God and called all the lesser Deities his Daughters Although all of them a very few excepted believed the creation of all things by one most Wise and Powerful Being But alas he did not think of this Question when he said the other things and he was not bound to remember them now but to say what served best for his present purpose to clear the Roman Church from Idolatry I will not deny then but there might be a Sect of Dahritae who did only in name own any thing of God and Religion that did assert the Eternity of the world and that there were no other Gods but the Sun Moon and Stars both among the Phoenicians and Chaldeans as well as Arabians but I say these were Atheists and not Idolaters those who where charged with Idolatry among them were such as believed a Supreme Deity but gave Divine Honours to Beings created by him The like is suggested by some concerning the Persians as though they attributed omnipotency and divine worship only to the Sun and those who take all things of this nature upon trust meerly from Herodotus or Iustin or other Greek and Latin writers may think they have reason to believe it but if we look into those who have been most conversant in the Persian writings we shall find a different account of them Iac. Golius in his Notes on Alferganus saith that the Persians gave the names of their Gods to their Months and Days according to the ancient Religion of the Persians and Magi whereby they did believe their Gods to preside over them for it was a principle among them as well as other Nations of the East that the things of this lower world are administred by Angels and accordingly they had their particular prayers and devotions according to the several Days and Months and not only so but their very meat drink clothing and perfumes were different and they had their Tables or Rubricks to instruct them And what worship they gave to the Planets was not saith he to themselves but to those Intelligencies which they supposed to rule them nay they supposed particular Spirits to rule over all the material parts of the world the Spirit over fire was called Adar and Aredbahist the Spirit over Herbs and Trees Chordad the Spirit over Bruits was Bahmen the Spirit over the Earth was Asfendurmed and so they had an Angel of Night and another of Death and the Spirit over the Sun was called Mihrgîan from Mihr the Sun whence the word Mithras but above all these they believed there was one Supreme God whom they called Hormuz and Dei and the Persian Writers say that Zoroaster appointed six great Festivals in the year in remembrance of the six days creation And to this is very agreeable what the Persees in Indosthan do to this day deliver of the principles of their Religion for they affirm God to be the maker of all things but that he committed the Government of the world to certain Spirits and they worship the fire as a part of God and call the Sun and Moon Gods great witnesses and the description of them in Varenius fully accords with this that they acknowledged one Supreme God every where present that governs the world but he makes use of seven chief Ministers for the management of it one over men another over bruits another over fire as is before described and under these they place 25 more who are all to give an account to the Supreme God of their administration With this account agrees the relation of Mandelslo concerning them who saith that the Parsis believe that there is but one God preserver of the Universe that he acts alone and immediately in all things and that the seven servants of God for whom they have also a great veneration have only an inferiour administration whereof they are obliged to give account and after the enumerating these with their particular charges he reckons up 26 under them with their several names but they call them all in common Geshoo i. e. Lords and believe he saith that they have an absolute power over the things whereof God hath intrusted them with the administration Whence it comes that they make no difficulty to worship them and to invocate them in their extremities out of a perswasion that God will not deny them any thing they desire on their intercession Schickard relates a particular story of the Persian King Firutz or Perozes which shews the acknowledgement of a Supreme Deity among the Persians in his time which was about the time of the Council of Chalcedon there happened a mighty drought in Persia so that it rained not for seven years and when the Kings granaries were utterly exhausted and there was no hope of further supplies he called his People out into the open Fields and there in a most humble manner he besought the great God Lord of Heaven and Earth to send them rain and gave not over praying till a plentiful shower fell upon them which saith he is another example after the Ninivites of Gods great mercy
to their Gods but they have Temples for Heaven and Earth in Nankin and Pekim in which the King himself offers the sacrifice and in the Cities they have Temples for Tutelar Spirits to which the Mandarins do sacrifice as to the Spirits of the Rivers Mountains and four parts of the World c. and there are Temples to the honour of great Benefactors to the publick and therein are placed their Images Trigautius saith that he finds in their ancient Books that the Chineses did of old time worship one Supreme God whom they called King of Heaven or by another name Heaven and Earth and besides him they worshipped Tutelar Spirits to the same purpose with Semedo and the same he saith continues still in the learned Sect among them whose first Author was their famous Confutius to him they have a Temple erected in every City with his Image or his name in golden letters whither all the Magistrates every new or full Moon do resort to give honour to Confutius with bowings and Wax-candles and incense the same they do on his birth-day and other set times there to express their gratitude for the mighty advantages they have had by his Doctrine but they make no prayers to him and neither seek nor hope for any thing from him They have likewise Temples to Tutelar Spirits for every City and Tribunal where they make oblations and burn perfumes acknowledging these to have power to reward and punish Bartoli saith it is not out of any contempt of Religion but out of reverence to the Deity because of the excellency of his Majesty that they suffer none but the King to offer Sacrifice to him and accordingly the larger Power the Tutelar Spirits are supposed to have the greater Magistrates are to attend their service and the lesser those of Cities and Mountains and Rivers But that which is more material to our present business is to consider the Resolution of a case of Conscience not long since given at Rome by the Congregation of Cardinals de propagandâ fide after advising with and the full consent of the Pope obtained 12 Sept. 1645. Which resolution and decree was Printed in the Press of the Congregation the same year with the Popes Decree annexed to it and his peremptory command for the observation of it by all Missionaries and that Copy of the Resolution I have seen was attested by a publick Notary to agree with the Original Decree which case will help us very much to the right understanding the Notion of Idolatry according to the sense of the Church of Rome The case was this The Missionaries of the Society of Iesuits having had a plentiful harvest in China and many of the Great men embracing the Christian Religion by their means the Missionaries of other Orders especially the Franciscans had a great curiosity to understand the arts which the Iesuits used in prevailing with so many Great persons to become Christians and upon full enquiry they found they gave them great liberty as to the five Precepts of the Church as they call them viz. hearing Mass annual Confession receiving the Sacrament at Easter Fasting at the solemn times and Tenths and First-fruits besides they did forbear their Ceremonies of baptism their oyl and spittle in the ears and salt in the mouth when they baptized Women and giving extreme Unction to them because the jealousie of their Husbands would not permit them to use them but that which is most to our purpose is the liberty they gave the Mandarins in two things 1. To go to the Temple of the Tutelar Spirit in every City as they are bound by vertue of their office to do twice a month or else they forfeit their places and there to prostrate themselves before the Idol with all the external acts of adoration that others used and swearing before it when they enter into their office so they did secretly convey a Crucifix among the flowers that lay upon the altar or hold it cunningly in their hands and direct all their adorations to the Crucifix by the inward intention of their minds 2. To go to the Temple of Keum-Fucu or Confucius twice a year and to perform all the solemnities there that the rest did and the same as to the Temples of their Ancestors which are erected to their honour according to the precepts of Confucius because the Chineses declared that they intended only to give the same reverence to the memory of their Ancestors which they would do to themselves if they were still living and what they offer to them is nothing but what they would give them if they were alive without any intention to beg any thing from them when they know them to be dead and the same allowance they gave as to the Images of their Ancestors about which many Ceremonies were used by them The Missionaries of S. Francis order being well informed of the Truth of these things from the Philippines they send a Memorial to the King of Spain concerning them who by his Ambassador represents it to the Pope whereupon the Congregation of Cardinals was called and after great deliberation and advising with the Pope about it they made their Decree wherein they by several resolutions declare it unlawful upon any of those pretences to use acts in themselves unlawful and superstitious although directed by their intention to the worship of the true God And lest any should imagine it was only matter of scandal which they stood upon as T. G. doth about worshipping towards the Sun they make use of several expressions on purpose to exclude this for so they resolve the seventh Quere nullatenus licere it is by no means lawful and the eighth nullo praetextu under no pretence whatsoever and to the ninth expresly that it could not be salved propter absentiam gentilium if there were no gentiles present from this Resolution we may observe several things to our purpose That Idolatry is consistent with the belief of the Supreme God and reserving soveraign worship as due only to him For the Congregation calls the Image of the Tutelar Spirit an Idol and consequently the act of adoration must be Idolatry yet it is very clear that the Chineses especially the Christians did never intend to give to the Tutelar Spirit the honour proper to the Supreme Deity And Bartoli hath at large proved that the Chineses did of old acknowledge the true God and his Providence over the World and that their Princes do worship the same God still to whom they offer Sacrifice and they call him by two names Scianti which signifies supreme Monarch and Tienciù Lord of Heaven and as he tells us they put an apparent difference between Tienciù and Tienscin i. e. between God and Angels and say that the power of forgiving sins belongs only to God and not to them that upon a debate among the Missionaries about the use of these words for the true God and some scruples raised from some
misinterpretations of it by an Atheistical Sect among them they were satisfied by plain and perspicuous testimonies out of their Books that they could mean no other than the true God and that he to whom the King every year offers sacrifice is a pure Mind free from all mixture governing all things and therefore to him all the acts of soveraign worship are performed such as Sacrifices Vows Prayers and thanksgivings Therefore the worship they give to the Tutelar Spirits or Guardian Angels as they suppose them must be of an inferiour nature and yet the Congregation of the Cardinals by the direction of the Pope condemn this for Idolatry That giving an Inferiour Worship on the account of created excellency when it appears to be Religious is utterly unlawful among Christians For this is the only imaginable reason why the Congregation did so absolutely condemn the worship of Confutius and their Ancestors and Hurtado in the explication of this decree confesses that the Chineses did not esteem Confutius as a God but only looked on him as a holy and vertuous Philosopher yet saith he because they did those acts to him which are only proper to God they commit manifest Idolatry in it For saith he they who give to a creature the worship due only to God do commit Idolatry and from hence the Gentiles who acknowledged one God were Idolaters because they gave to the creatures the honour due to him in the doing of which they made an acknowledgement of divine excellency in the things they gave it to By which it appears that there are some external acts of worship so proper to God that although a man hath never so clear apprehension in his mind of the Supreme excellency of God above the creatures he worships yet the giving that worship to them makes his act Idolatry The Iesuits to excuse these things speak very high things of Confutius and of his admirable Life and doctrine and surely not without great reason if their relations hold true as I see no reason to suspect them but the more Confutius is extolled the worse they make their own case for all these acts of external worship towards him are condemned for Idolatry and how then comes the worship of Ignatius Loyola to be otherwise who I dare say never was so great a Philosopher nor did so much good in the world as the Iesuits say Confutius did But at last they would have all these honours to Confutius to be only civil honours although Trigautius confesses that he hath a Temple in every City that his Image with that of his Disciples is set up in it that these Disciples are looked on as a sort of Divi i. e. as Canonized Saints that bere they make use of all the rites of adoration genuflections wax-candles incense oblations prayers only excepted but we see notwithstanding all their pretences the Pope and Congregation of Cardinals have condemned them as guilty of Idolatry That the Pope and Congregation of Cardinals were not of T. G 's mind that acts do certainly go whither they are intended For all these acts of worship were directed by the intention of the persons to the secret Crucifix which lay among the flowers upon the Altar but notwithstanding this in their opinion were a fit object of worship yet other circumstances did so much alter the nature of it that they declare these acts to be in themselves unlawful By actions going whither they are intended I do not mean as T. G. suggests that the Physical act of the mind doth not pass to the object whither the act is directed i. e. that I do not think of that which I do think of but my meaning is that such a directing the intention of the mind doth not give a moral denomination to the nature of the action viz. that it becomes lawful or unlawful by vertue of such an intention of the mind but that the Law of God may so determine the nature of our acts of worship as to make them unlawful whatever the intention of the mind be And thus the Congregation of Cardinals here resolves the case the Persons used only those acts of adoration that may be directed to God by a secret intention of the mind they suppose a Crucifix a fit object for divine worship and going together into an Idolatrous Temple and using all the external equivocal acts as T. G. calls them which the rest did they direct their acts by vertue of this intention to the Crucifix yet although the Congregation thought this intention rightly directed they condemn the acts as in themselves unlawful But of these things hereafter the first observation being sufficient to my present purpose viz. to shew that according to the present sense of the Roman Church the practice of Idolatry is consistent with the acknowledgement of one Supreme God From the Idolatry of the East-Indies I proceed to that of the Tartars whose Dominion hath extended it self over that vast Continent from the utmost North-East parts to the borders of Europe that way and this acount I shall give from the least suspected witnesses in this matter viz. the Emissaries of the Roman Church who had conversed most among them and made it their design to understand their Religion In A. D. 1246. after the horrible devastations made by the Tartars in Poland and Hungary Pope Innocent 4. sent Iohannes de Plano Carpini as his Legat or Nuncio to them and after a year and four months stay among them he gives this account of their Religion unum Deum credunt quem credunt esse factorem omnium visibilium invisibilium credunt eum tam bonorum in hoc mundo quam poenarum esse factorem non tamen orationibus vel laudibus aut ritu aliquo ipsum colunt They believe one God whom they believe to be the maker of all things visible and invisible and to be the Author of all worldly goods and punishments and yet he saith they had no manner of worhip of him but their worship they gave to Images which he there at large decribes But there is an inferior Deity whom he calls Itoga Paulus Venetus Natagay which they believe to be the God of the earth and him they worship with great superstition and besides they worship the Sun Moon and Fire and make oblations to the Image of their first Emperour and the same thing is affirmed by Vincentius Bellovacensis After him Lewis the ninth of France sent William de Rubruquis a Franciscan A. D. 1253. who passed through the several Courts of the Tartarian Princes and gave an exact account to his Prince of the Religion he found among them In the conference he had with Mangu-Chan who was then Emperour about Religion the Emperour told him We Moals which is the name they call themselves by that being the name of the Tribe from whence Iingiz-chan came the Tartars being another Tribe but better known to the Europeans We saith he believe that
that there is but one God through whom we live and die and we have an upright heart towards him and he added that as God had given to the hand five fingers so he hath given many ways to men But there was a Sect of Idolaters among them whom he calls Tuinians who held two first Principles and many Gods but it seems by their discourse that they acknowledged the Superiority of one above all the rest For when the Frier said there was but one God the Tuinian who disputed with him before Mangu-Chan said Fools say there is but one God but wisemen day there are many are there not great Lords in your Country and here is a greater Lord Mangu-Chan So is it of the Gods because in divers countries there are divers And afterwards he acknowledged that there is one Highest God in the Heavens whose Generation we know not yet and ten are under him and under them there is one Inferiour and in the earth there are infinite And of another Sect called Iugurs he confesses that they believe on God and yet make Idols from whom the Tartars had their letters and he affirms the same of the Moals or Tartars in general and yet they make and worship many Images and their Priests pray by their Beads having a string with a hundred or two of Nutshels upon it and the repeating of certain words with them they account meritorious at Gods hand Haithon the Armenian agrees with the former saying of the Tartars that they confess one immortal God Gregorius Abul-pharajius brings several examples of Iingiz-Chans acknowledging one Supreme and omnipotent God who laid the foundation of the Tartarian Empire as when he made his prayers to him upon the injury of Gayer-Chan when he owned his Power to be given him from the God that is King over all and omnipotent and therefore Haithon makes that the first command of Jingiz-Chan to his followers that they ought to believe and obey the immortal God by whom he obtained his Empire And that the Tartars who have not embraced Mohometism did still acknowledge and worship one Supreme God maker of Heaven and Earth is confessed by Iacobus Navarchus among the Indian Epistles and the same Nicephorus Callistus affirms of the ancient Turks who were a race of Tartars living beyond the Bactrian Mountains The like might be easily discovered of the most considerable Nations of the West-Indies if it would not have swelled this discourse into too great a Bulk in general we take this remarkable Testimony of Iosephus Acosta a learned Spanish Iesuit who lived seventeen years in those parts They saith he speaking of the Indians do commonly acknowledge a Supreme Lord and Author of all things which they of Peru call Viracocha and gave him names of great excellence as Pachacamac or Pachaiackachic which is the Creator of Heaven and Earth and Usapu which is admirable and such like Him they did worship as the chiefest of all whom they did honour in beholding the Heaven The like we see amongst them of Mexico and China and all other Infidels Which accordeth well with what is said by S. Paul in the Acts of the Apostles where he did see the inscription of an Altar Ignota Deo To the unknown God whereupon the Apostle took occasion to preach unto them saying Him whom you worship without knowing him do I preach unto you In like sort those which at this day do preach the Gospel to the Indians find no great difficulty to perswade them that there is a high God and Lord over all and that this is the Christians God and the true God As it is therefore a truth conformable to reason that there is a Soveraign Lord and King of Heaven whom the Gentiles with all their Infidelities and Idolatries have not denied as we see in the Philosophy of Timaeus in Plat. in the Metaphysicks of Aristotle and in the Asclepius of Trismegist as also in the Poesies of Homer and Virgil So the Preachers of the Gospel have no great difficulty to plant and perswade this truth of a Supreme God be the Nations to whom they preach never so barbarous and bruitish But it is hard to root out of their minds that there is no other God nor any other Deity than one and that all other things of themselves have no power being nor working proper to themselves but what this great and only Lord doth give and impart to them To conclude It is necessary to perswade them by all means in reproving their errours as well in that wherein they generally fail in worshipping more than one God as in particular which is much more to hold for Gods and to demand favours and help of those things which are not Gods nor have any power but what the true God their Lord and Creator hath given And in another place he saith Hoc enim commune apud omnes pene barbaros est ut Deum quidem omnium rerum Supremum summe bonum fateantur This is common among almost all the barbarous nations to acknowledge one Supreme God infinitely good But there is so pregnant a Testimony concerning the acknowledgement of a Supreme Deity among the Yncas of Peru that it ought not to be slightly passed over The thing it self is confessed not only by Acosta but by Eusebius Nierembergius Augustinus de Zarate Antonius de Calancha who was himself a Peruan born and afterwards an Augustinian and these two mention the conference between Atahuallpa the last of the Yncas and Vincentius de Valverde about Religion wherein the Ynca told the Spanish Priest that they believed in Pachacamac the Creator of the World and after him they worshipped the Sun and Moon for their universal influence on the World But the most perfect account of their way of worship is delivered by Garcilasso de la Vega who was himself of the blood of Yncas by the Mother and he corrects several mistakes of Acosta and other Spanish Authors which were occasioned by their ignorance of the Peruvian language and Customs He saith that Manco Capac who was the founder of the Empire of the Yncas did reduce the barbarous Indians from the promiscuous Idolatry of almost all sorts of creatures before to the worship of the Sun as the great instrument of Pachacamac in the Government of the World but although they had a great veneration for the Moon as Wife and Sister of the Sun yet he cannot find that they did ever worship her as a Goddess or offer Sacrifices and build Temples to her Thunder and Lightning they called the Executioners of the Iustice of the Sun and did not look on them as Deities as the Spaniards imagined But the main thing he discovers as to their Religion is that they had only two Deities the one visible the Sun the other invisible the Creator of the World whom they called Pachacamac from Pacha which signifies the World and Camac from the verb
believe the seasons of the year and the affairs of humane life to be managed by certain Spirits under him whom they endeavour to propitiate by certain rites of worship Leo Africanus testifies concerning some of the ancient African Idolaters that they worshipped Guighimo i. e. the Lord of Heaven which part of Religion he saith was not delivered to them by any Prophet or Teacher but was inspired into them by God himself Varenius takes notice of the false and imperfect description which is commonly given of the Religion of the Negroes and saith he understood by those who lived long among them that although they worship many Gods yet they acknowledge one Supreme whom they call Fetisso and believe him to be the Author both of the good and evil they receive and therefore endeavour to appease him by many Sacrifices Ceremonies and Prayers Mandelslo saith of the Inhabitants of Madagascar that he was informed that they believe there is one God who made Heaven and Earth and will one day punish bad actions and reward the good Ioh. de Barros saith that the Inhabitants of Monomotapa believe in one God whom they call Mozimo and if we believe him they worship nothing else besides him the same others say of the Mordui a people that inhabit the farther parts of Muscovy who declare that they worship only the Creator of the Universe to whom they offer the first fruits of all things even of their meat and drink casting some parts of them towards Heaven but they have no Idols nor baptism and say they live according to nature but Brietius saith they worship Idols or are Mahumetans Texeira and Pimenta say that the Sect of the Baneans called Lon Kah worship only the Supreme God without Idols but Mexery hath Idols and doth worship them Iosephus Indus a Native of Cranganor saith that the Gentile Idolaters there did worship the God of Heaven under the form of a Statue with three faces and his hands folded whom they called Tambram and he saith the King of Calecut is of the same Religion with them of Cranganor and Ludovicus Vartomannus saith that in Calecut they call the Great God Tamerani whom they believe to be the maker of the World but he adds that they believe him to live at ease and that he hath committed the Government of the world to Deumo whose Image they worship having on his head saith Vartomannus just such a Crown as the Popes of Rome have only it hath three horns upon it and the same is confessed by Iarricus The people of Narsinga likewise believe one Supreme God but worship Idols as the rest of the Indians do Linschoten gives this general testimony of them that although they worship the Sun and Moon yet they acknowledge one God Creator and Governor of all things and do believe the rewards and punishments of another life to be according to mens good or bad actions in this life But withall they worship Idols called Pagodes after such a terrible representation as we make of Devils whom they assert to have lived formerly upon earth and to have been famous for sanctity and miracles and to whom they address themselves as Mediators to the Supreme God for them The Kingdom of Siam is supposed to have been the ancient Seat of the Bramans from whence the Religion of the Indies did spread it self and here Schouten who lived long among them saith that the common perswasion of the Gentiles although different in other points is that there is one Supreme God who created all things and after him many inferiour Gods in Heaven that men shall receive rewards and punishments in another life according to their actions here And that this Religion hath been delivered down to them by the succession of many ages and confirmed by the Testimony of Saints whose memory they worship in their Images which they have set up like so many lesser Deities who have merited Heaven by their good Works The Ceremonies of their worship the nature of their Images the manner of their Oblations the customs of their Talapois or Friers are such that some few things excepted one would imagine no great difference between the Varelles of Siam and the Iesuits Church and devotions there M. de Bourges who hath given an account of the late French Mission into those parts confesses that their external devotion to their Images is extraordinary that they offer no bloody sacrifices but all their oblations are of the fruits of the earth and that they free themselves from the charge of Idolatry because they acknowledge and worship one God who is Lord over all and that their Images are intended to preserve the Memories of their Saints that by the sight of them the people might be excited to imitate their vertues And it is very true saith he that the Priests of Siam do thus answer the Christians who charge them with Idolatry and think themselves no more guilty than the Missionaries of the Church of Rome who charge them But he thinks he hath cleared the difference between them by saying that those of Siam are more uncertain in the belief of the Supreme God and defective in giving any peculiar worship to him and that they terminate their worship absolutely upon their Idols and ask of them those things which God alone can give As to the former we have seen the general consent of the Indians in the belief of a Supreme God which is no token of their uncertainty and that many of them did think internal worship most proper to him and for the latter if they suppose those Deities to be so by participation and subordinate to the Supreme I do not see how the difference is made appear between the addresses they made to their Saints by their Images and those made in the Church of Rome unless it be sufficient to say that the Pope at Rome hath only power to Canonize Saints and not the High-Priest of Siam And therefore Campanella very wisely confesses upon these principles the Heathens were no more guilty of Idolatry than themselves in case the persons they worshipped had real vertues and he doth not blame the wiser Gentiles but the common people who forgot the true God and worshipped their Varelles or Images with the worship of Latria which the Church of Rome likewise gives to the Cross but of these things afterwards If from the Indies the model of this Discourse would allow us to search into the Idolatries of these Northern parts we should find that the Nations which were the deepest sunk into Idolatry did yet retain a sense of one Supreme Deity Among whom we may justly reckon our Saxon Ancestors and yet from the Gothick Antiquities which have been lately published we have reason to believe that there was a Supreme God acknowledged among them too For in the Edda of Snorro Sturleson which contains the ancient Religion of the Goths the first
subjects to give homage to him and another day to be placed upon the Altar as he is after his election by the Orders of the Roman Church there to receive adoration from the Cardinals as the Vicar of Christ would any man say he could see no difference in these because the same postures may be used in both Although then the outward acts may be the same yet the signification of those acts may be far from equivocal because determined by the circumstances which do accompany them I grant then that the meer external act of adoration in bowing or kneeling may be given both on the account of honour and worship i. e. upon the account of excellencie and superiority as some of the Patriarchs bowed to Angels as a token of honour of their excellencies and not out of Religious worship and men may bow and kneel to their Soveraign Princes on the account of civil worship and Children to their Parents in token of their subjection to them as well as creatures to their Creator in their solemn acts of devotion but I say in all these cases the different signification of these acts is to be gathered from the circumstances of them And that acts of Religious and civil worship might be distinguished from each other came the appointment of set times and places and solemn rites for the performance of Religious worship From hence Cicero gives that definition of Religion Religio est quae superioris cujusdam naturae quam divinam vocant curam ceremoniamque affert therefore they thought the solemn rites and circumstances of Religious worship were sufficient to discriminate the nature of that worship from any other and these they thought so peculiar to the divine nature that whatever Being they gave this solemn worship to they thought to deserve the name of a Deity although inferiour and subordinate because these acts of worship were appropriated to a Divine Being Aquinas cannot deny that there are some external acts of Religion so peculiar to God that they ought not to be given to any other and on this account he makes Religion a moral vertue and a part of justice because it is its office reddere cultum debitum Deo to give God the worship which belongs to him now saith he because the excellencie of God is peculiar to himself being infinitely above all others therefore the worship which belongs to him ought to be peculiar Ad Religionem pertinet saith Cajetan exhibere reverentiam uni Deo secundum unam rationem in quantum sc. est primum principium creationis gubernationis rerum But since this reason of Religious worship from the creation and government of the world is so peculiar to God as to be incommunicable to any else besides him is there not all the reason in the world that the Acts of this worship should be peculiar to him too And upon this ground Aquinas doth grant it in the case of sacrifice hoc etiam videmus in omni Republica observari quod summum Rectorem aliquo signo singulari honorant quod cuicunque alteri deferretur esset crimen laesae Majestatis ideo in lege divina statuitur poena mortis iis qui divinum honorem aliis exhibent From whence we infer not only that there ought to be peculiar external acts of Religious worship appropriated to God but that the giving the worship done by those acts to any creature is a crime of the highest nature The same Aquinas disputing against the Heathens saith that it is an unreasonable thing to those that hold one first principle to give divine worship to any other besides him and we give worship to God not that he needs it but that hereby the belief of one God may be confirmed in us by external and sensible acts which cannot be done saith he unless there be some peculiar acts of his worship and this we call divine worship Besides this external worship is necessary to men to raise in their minds a spiritual reverence of God and we find that custom hath a great influence on mens minds but it is a custom among men that the honour or worship given to the Supreme Governour should be given to none else therefore it ought to be much more so towards God because if a liberty be allowed of giving this worship to others of a higher rank and not only to the supreme then men and Angels might give divine worship to one another To which he adds that the benefits we receive from God are peculiar to him as that of creation and preservation and that he is our Lord by a proper title and Angels and the best of creatures are but his servants therefore we ought not to give the same worship to them that we do to God as our Lord. In his disputation about Idolatry he shews that the command Exod. 20. doth reach to external as well as internal worship and he argues against those who pleaded that all visible and external worship ought to be given to other Gods and only internal to the supreme God as being much better upon this principle that the external belongs only to him to whom the internal belongs and he disputes against those Hereticks who thought it lawful in time of persecution to give external worship to Idols as long as they preserved the true faith in their minds for saith he the external worship is a profession or sign of the internal but as it is a pernicious thing for a man to speak contrary to his mind so it is to act contrary to it and therefore S. Augustin condemned Seneca as so much the more culpable in the worship of Idols because he acted against the sense of his own mind In the next article he shews that Idolatry is a sin of the highest nature for saith he as in a commonwealth it is the greatest crime to give the honour due to the Soveraign to any other for this is as much as lies in a man to put all things into disorder and confusion so among the sins that are committed against God that seems to be the greatest whereby a man gives divine worship to a creature and saith that it includes blasphemy in it because it takes away from God the peculiarity of his dominion Cajetan there saith that the Idolater as much as in him lies tollit à Deo suam singularem excellentiam qua solus est Deus robs God of that peculiar excellencie whereby he is God alone Thus we see the necessity of some peculiar external acts of divine worship is asserted by these men in order to the preserving the belief and worship of one God in the world Suarez grants that as the excellency of God is singular and above all creatures so he ought to have a singular and incommunicable worship as is plain from those words of Scripture Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve but then he makes this worship
Divines do confess That sacrifice doth not naturally signifie any worship of God but only by the imposition of men and that which it signifies say they is Gods being Author of Life and Death and if we take away this imposition it contains nothing of divine worship in it so Suarez who saith he follows St. Augustin in it How comes the destruction of any creature under our command to signifie the inward subjection of our selves to God What pleasure can we conceive the Almighty should take in seeing us to destroy his creatures for his sake Our minds may be as far from submitting to God as these things are of themselves from signifying such a submission Nay how comes a sacrifice to stand so much in our stead that because we take away the life of that therefore we own God as our Lord It might rather of it self signifie that we have the power of life and death over Beasts than that God hath it over us yet all that Sacrifice signifies saith Vasquez is that God is acknowledged thereby to be the Author of life and death and to this end saith Ysambertus it is necessary that the thing be destroyed because the reason of Sacrifice lies in the destruction of a thing offered to God Be it so but of all things in the world it would never have come into my mind nor I think into any mans well in his senses to offer up God himself unto God as a Sacrifice in order to the testifying the devoting of our selves unto him and yet this after all their talk comes to be that external Sacrifice which is the only appropriate sign of the absolute worship of God viz. the Sacrifice of the Mass wherein the Priest is believed to offer up God himself under the species of Bread and Wine to the Eternal God in token of our subjection to him Methinks yet it were somewhat more reasonable to offer up brute Creatures that are under us than God that is so infinitely above us and such is the weakness of my understanding that this seems to be rather an argument of our power over God than of our subjection to Him But since the formal reason of a Sacrifice is said to lie in the destruction of it Good Lord what thoughts must these men have in their minds if they have any when they think it in their power first to make their God by speaking five words then to offer him up as a Sacrifice then to suppose him destroyed and all this to testifie their submission to God! I want words to express the intolerable blasphemy and absurdity of these things Yet this saith T. G. is so appropriate a sign of the absolute worship of God that that Religion which admits no external visible Sacrifice must needs be deficient in the most signal part of the publick worship of God What external visible Sacrifice have you that we have not besides that of God himself whom you believe to be personally present as the object of divine worship under the species of Bread and Wine and yet when you have pleaded so much for this presence to justifie your Adoration you then make a Sacrifice of Him and that he may be so you grant it is necessary there be some destruction of what was before i. e. if to the purpose of him that was the Sacrifice otherwise the species are made the Sacrifice and not the body and blood of Christ. But suppose you only make him a Sacrifice as to his body and blood and not as to his divine nature what becomes then of the body and blood of Christ for it must be destroyed to make a Sacrifice where how by what means comes the body and blood of Christ to be destroyed When you say it is there without the qualities of a body that it cannot be seen or felt or tasted and yet is capable of being destroyed suppose all this be passed over how comes the offering up the very body and blood of Christ to God to signifie our absolute worship of him Will nothing else satisfie to testifie that we are his subjects unless we offer up to him the body and blood of his own Son Is this indeed the most signal part of divine worship which we must be deficient in if we have it not We do from our souls praise God for that unvaluable Sacrifice the Son of God was pleased to make of his own life when he was incarnate in our nature We do frequently commemorate this Sacrifice of his according to his own institution and in the doing of that we offer up our selves unto Him as a reasonable service We adore and magnify Him for all His mercies especially the sending of His Son to die for us as the greatest of all But we dare not let it enter into our thoughts that we should ever eat or swallow down the very body and blood of Christ and then pretend we have offered it up to God as a Sacrifice and that in token of our absolute worship of Him But setting aside the nature of this Sacrifice which is the only external and visible sign of appropriate worship to God they pretend to have I desire yet to know how a Sacrifice doth come to signifie this absolute worship more than adoration Not by nature for the lowly submission of our bodies seems more naturally to signifie the behaviour of our minds than anything without us can do if it be by institution it must be either Gods or mans if mans then either offering Sacrifice to a creature is Idolatry or not if not then giving absolute worship to a creature is no Idolatry if it be then it is Idolatry to make use of the outward signs of divine worship which mankind have agreed upon to any thing else but God If it be said to be Gods institution then it follows that the applying any outward signs of worship which God hath appropriated to himself to any Creature is Idolatry which is as much as I desire for then it will equally hold for Religious Adoration especially if the principle of Arriaga hold true true that the value of Sacrifice lies in the act of adoration performed by it But T. G. pleads That the act of adoration is equivocal that is that we read in Scripture that it hath been given to men as well as to God and therefore cannot be such an appropriate sign of divine worship To this I have already answered by distinguishing the Act and the signification of it the external act I grant may be performed upon several grounds As 1. Civil subjection as by Nathan to David 1 Kings 1.23.2 Civil respect as by Abraham to the Children of Heth Gen. 23.7.3 Religious respect or as some call it Moral Reverence i. e. out of an opinion of great sanctity without superiority as Nebuchadnezzar to Daniel Dan. 2.46 And so Abraham bowed to the Angels Gen. 18.2 if he knew them to be what they were but if not as
wayes as worship may become due Idolatry may be committed Cannot God make any of the former appropriate acts of worship to become due only to himself cannot he tye us to perform them to him and then they become due to him and cannot he restrain us from doing them to any other and then they become due only to him and is not then the doing of any of these prohibited acts to a creature the giving to them the worship due only to God Is the outward act of sacrifice due only to God antecedently to a prohibition or no If it be due only to God antecedently to his will it is alwayes and necessarily due to him and to him alone and let T. G. at his leisure prove that antecedently to any Law of God it was necessary to worship God by sacrifice and unlawful so to worship any else besides him If it depends on the will of God then either it is no Idolatry to offer sacrifice to a creature and then the Sacrifice of the Mass may be offered to Saints or Images or if it be then real Idolatry may be consequent to a prohibition But he thinks he hath a greater advantage against me by my saying that any Image being made so far the object of divine worship that men do bow down before it doth thereby become an Idol and on that account is forbidden in the second Commandment This is downright trifling for if I should say that taking away a mans goods against his consent is Theft and on that account is forbidden in the eighth Commandment would any man imagine that I must speak of Theft antecedent to the Command for it implyes no more than that it is contrary to the Command But as it is in the case of Theft that is alwayes a sin although the particular species of it and the denomination of particular acts doth suppose positive Laws about Dominion and Property so it is in the case of Idolatry the general nature of it is alwayes the same viz. the giving the worship to a creature which is due only to God although the denomination of particular acts may depend upon positive Laws because God may appropriate peculiar acts of worship to himself which being done by him those acts being given to a creature receive the denomination of Idolatry which without those Laws they would not have done So that still the general notion of Idolatry is antecedent to positive Laws but yet the determination of particular acts whether they are Idolatry or no do depend on the positive Laws which God hath given about his worship And if T. G. had understood the nature of humane acts as he pretends he would never have made such trifling objections as these For is it not thus in the nature of the other sins forbidden in the Commandments as well as Idolatry that are supposed to be the most morally evil antecedent to any prohibition Suppose it be murder adultery or disobedience to Parents although I grant these things to have a general notion antecedently to any Laws yet when we come to enquire into particular acts whether they do receive those denominations or no we must then judge by particular Laws which determine what acts are to be accounted Murder Adultery or Disobedience as whether execution of malefactors be prohibited Murder whether marrying many Wives be Adultery whether not complying with the Religion of ones Parents be disobedience These things I mention to make T. G. understand a little better the nature of Moral Acts and that a general notion of Idolatry being antecedent to a prohibition is very consistent with the determining any particular acts as the worship of Images to be Idolatry to be consequent to that prohibition But I perceive a particular pleasure these men take to make me seem to contradict my self and here T. G. is at it as wisely as the rest thus blind men apprehend nothing but contradictions in the diversity of colours by the different reflections of light but the comfort is that others know that it is only their want of sight that makes them cry out contradictions But wherein lyes this horrible self-contradiction Why truly it seems I had said that an Image being made so far the object of divine worship that men do bow down before it doth thereby become an Idol and on that account is forbidden in the second Commandment Well! and what then where lyes the contradiction Hold a little it will come presently in the mean time mark those words on that Account but I say that the worship which God denyes to receive cannot be terminated on him but on the Image Is this the contradiction then No not yet neither The conceit had need be good it is so long in delivering but at last it comes like a thunder-showre full of sulphur and darkness with a terrible crack either I mean that this worship cannot be terminated on God antecedently to the Prohibition because on that account the worship of an Image is forbidden in the second Commandment or if it cannot be terminated on the account of the Prohibition then it is not on that account forbidden What a needless invention was that of Gunpowder T. G. can blow a man up with a train of consequences from his own words let him but have the laying of it Could I ever have thought that such innocent words as on that account should have had so much Nitre and Sulphur in them For let any man read over those words and see if he can find any thing antecedent to the prohibition in them For having in that place shewed that the words Idolum sculptile imago are promiscuously used in Scripture I presently add By which it appears that any Image being made so far the object of divine worship that men do bow down before it doth thereby become an Idol and on that account is forbidden in this Commandment By which it appears mark that this T. G. pares off as not fit for his purpose i. e. from the sense of the word in Scripture that any Image being made so far the object of divine worship that men do bow down before it i. e. if men do perform that act of worship to an Image which God hath forbidden the doing towards it what then then say I it becomes an Idol for whatever hath divine worship given to it is so and on that account i. e. of its having that act of divine worship done to it by bowing before it it is forbidden in this Commandment i. e. it comes within the reach of that prohibition the meaning of all which is no more than to shew that adoration of Images is Idolatry by vertue of that Commandment But thus are we put to construe and paraphrase our own words to free our selves either from the ignorance or malice of our Adversaries But with this fetch T.G. stands and laughs through his fingers at the trick he hath plaid me and bids me with a secret pleasure at his notable
Aquinas quote these passages with approbation Did they know the intention of Seneca or the Philosophers Why doth Cajetan say that a man that commits only the external act of Idolatry is as guilty as he that commits the external act of theft To both which he sayes no more is necessary than a voluntary inclination to do that act not any apprehension in the mind that what he worships is God nor any intention to direct that act only to the Image Nay why doth Gregory de Valentia himself say that outward acts of worship may be so proper to God either from their own nature or the consent of mankind that whosoever doth them whatever his inward intention be ought to be understood to give the honour proper to God to that for whose sake he doth them And this he calls an implicit Tannerus an indirect intention but neither of them suppose it to be either an actual or virtual intention of the mind but only that which may be gathered from the outward acts Nay T. G. himself saith that on supposition the Philosophers did believe one God and yet joyned with the people in the practice of their Idolatry they were worthily condemned by the Apostle though but for the external profession of praying and offering sacrifice to their Images Say you so and yet do outward acts certainly go whither they are intended Suppose then these Philosophers intended to worship the true God by those Images where this Idolatry or no if not why were they so much to blame for giving worship to the true God by an Image which T. G. commends as a very good thing Was it the figure of their Images displeased him that could not be for the Statue of Iupiter Capitolinus might as fitly represent God to them as that of an old man in their Churches and young Iupiter in the lap of Fortune an Image Cicero mentions might put him in mind of one of the most common Images in their Church and by the help of a good intention might be carryed to a right object And why might not intention do that which their Church afterwards did when it changed the Temple of Hercules to S. Alexius because he was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that of the two Brothers Romulus and Remus or as Bellarmin saith Castor and Pollux to Cosmas and Damianus and the Pantheon to Omnium Sanctorum If there be no harm in the thing there could be none in the intention Or was it the scandal of their practice but to whom was the scandal given it would have been rather scandal among them not to have done it So that if a secret Intention doth carry that act whither it is intended and it be lawful to worship God by Images I do not see wherein the Philosophers were to blame in complying with those outward acts whose good or evil according to T. G. depends upon the intention of the doers of them But if they were really to blame it was for doing those external acts of worship to creatures which belong only to the worship of God and so the Apostle by condemning them doth prove that which I intended viz. that there are such peculiar external acts of divine worship that the doing of them for the worship of a Creature is Idolatry But my Adversary thinks to clear the Church of Rome from the charge of Idolatry by two general answers which serve him and his Brethren on all occasions viz. 1. That there are two sorts of worship one called Latria or Soveraign worship which is proper to God and another called Dulia or inferiour worship that may be given to creatures on the account of excellencies communicated to them from God 2. That the worship they give to any inanimate creatures that have no proper excellencies of their own is not absolute but a relative Latria they intending thereby only to worship God In the examining of these two I shall clear the last part of this Discourse viz. 3. How the applying the acts of Religious worship to a creature doth make that worship Idolatry 1. I shall consider the different sorts of worship which T. G. insists upon to clear the Church of Rome from the practice of Idolatry The Question at present saith T. G. between Dr. St. and the Church of Rome is not whether Divine worship be to be given to Saints for this is abhorred of all faithful Christians but whether an inferiour worship of like kind with that which is given to Holy men upon earth for their Holiness and near relation to God may not be lawfully given to them now they are in Heaven Again he saith if by Religious worship I mean that honour which is due to God alone it is true what the Fathers say that it is not to be given to the most excellent created Beings but nothing at all to the point in debate between us if I mean that honour of which a creature is capable for Religions sake and that relation which it setleth he will he saith shew it to be false that the Fathers deny any such honour to be given to the Holy Angels or Saints and if I prove that this worship ought not to be called Religious he tells me from S. Austin that it is but a meer wrangling about words because Religion may be used in other senses besides that of the worship due to God And by the help of this distinction between the Religious worship due to God and that of which a creature is capable for Religions sake he saith he can clearly dispell the mist I have raised from the Testimony of the Fathers and let the Reader see that I have perverted their meaning and yet said nothing to the purpose Thus he answers the testimonies of Iustin Martyr Theophilus Origen S. Ambrose or the Writer under his name Theodoret S. Austin and if they had been a hundred more it had been all one they had been all sent packing with the same answer let them say what they would they must be all understood of Divine worship proper to God and not of the inferiour worship which creatures are capable of which from S. Austin he calls Dulia as the former Latria The whole strength of T. G's defence as to the Worship of Saints and Angels lyes in this single distinction which I shall therefore the more carefully consider because it tends to clear the nature of Divine worship which is my present subject To proceed with all possible clearness in this debate which T. G. hath endeavoured to perplex I shall 1. Give a true account of the State of the Controversie 2. Enquire into the sense of the Fathers about this distinction about Soveraign and inferiour worship whether those acts of worship which are practised in the Roman Church he only such as the Fathers allowed 1. For the true state of the controversie which was never more necessary to be given than in this place For any one
foregoing Discourse But T. G. seems to understand no difference between titles of respect and acts of worship between expressions of esteem and devotion between Religious and Civil worship for he blunders and confounds all these together and whatever proves one he thinks proves all the rest these are not the best wayes of reasoning but they are the best the cause would bear Well but yet the matter seems not altogether so clear for the worship we are to give to Princes is as they are Gods Vicegerents and this is given on a Religious account because God commands us to give honour to whom honour is due the place urged by T. G. Rom. 13.7 To this a very easie answer will serve Worship may be said to be Religious two wayes 1. As it is required by the Rule of Religion and so the worship given to Magistrates is Religious 2. In its nature and circumstances as it consists of those acts which God hath appropriated to his worship or is attended with those circumstances which make it a Religious performance and then it is not to be given to Princes or any Creatures but only to God himself This will be made plain by a remarkable instance among the antient Christians While Divine honours were challenged by the Emperours to themselves i. e. the honours belonging to consecrated men for they meant no other the Christians refused giving to them those external acts of Reverence which might be supposed to have any Religious worship in them although they expressed the greatest readiness at the same time to obey their Laws that did not require any thing against Christianity and to pray for their safety and prosperity This being known to be the general practice of Christians Pliny in his Epistle to Trajan mentions this as one of the wayes of trying Christians viz. whether they would Imagini Caesaris thure vino supplicare give Religious worship to Caesars Image by burning incense and pouring out wine before it which were the Divine honours required This Pliny saith all that were true Christians refused to do and those who did it presently renounced Christ. Thus this matter stood as long as the Emperours continued Gentiles who were presumed to affect Divine honours but when Constantine had owned Christianity and thereby declared that no Religious worship was to be given to him the Christians not only erected publick Statues to Emperours but were ready to express before them the highest degrees of Civil worship and respect This Iulian thought to make his advantage of and therefore placed the Images of the Gods among those of the Emperours that either they might worship the Gods or by denying Civil Worship to the Emperours Statues which the custom then was to give they might be proceeded against as disaffected to the Emperour And when he sate on the Throne distributing New-years-gifts he had his Altar of Incense by him that before they received gifts they might cast a little incense into the fire which all good Christians refused to do because as Gothofred observes the burning of incense was the same tryal of Christians that eating of Swines flesh was of Iews But after the suspicion of Religious worship was removed in the succeeding Emperors the former customs of Civil worship obtained again till Theodosius observing how these customs of Civil adoration began to extend too far and border too much upon Divine honours did wholly forbid it in a Constitution extant to that purpose and that for this reason that all worship which did exceed the dignity of men should be entirely reserved to God By this true account of the behaviour of Christians in this matter T. G. may a little better understand what that worship was which the primitive Christians refused to give to Emperours and what difference they made between the same external acts when they were to be done on a Civil and on a Religious account which are easily discerned either by the nature of the acts themselves as the burning incense or the circumstances that attend them as in adoration It were needless to produce any more Testimonies of Antiquity to prove that Divine worship is proper only to God since T. G. confesses it but gives quite another sense of Divine worship than they did for under this they comprehended all acts of Religious worship as appears by the worship they denyed to Emperours It remains therefore to shew that those who spake most for the honour of the Saints did not by that mean any Religious acts of worship but expressions barely of honour and esteem Iulian objected this against the Christians as it was common with the Heathens to object many false and unreasonable things that instead of the Heathen Gods they worshipped not one but many miserable men To this S. Cyrill answers that as to Christ he confesses they worshipped him but they did not make a God of a man in him but he was essentially God and therefore fit to be worshipped but for the Martyrs they neither believed them to be Gods nor gave them the worship which belongs to Gods Which is unquestionably S. Cyrill's meaning or he doth not answer to the purpose For Iulian never charged the Christians with giving that worship to Martyrs which is proper to the Supream God considered as such but that they gave to them that Religious worship which Iulian pleaded to be due to the inferiour Gods as appears by the State of the Question between them This therefore S. Cyrill denyes that they gave to Saints and Martyrs which he calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. to give them the worship which the Heathens gave to their inferiour Deities what they gave to the Martyrs was upon another account it was only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 respectively and by way of honour And lest any should suspect he meant any kind of Religious worship by this he presently explains himself that what he said was only to be understood of those honours they gave to them for their generous suffering for the faith despising all dangers and thereby making themselves great examples to other Christians and after he let us understand what these honours were when he brings the instance of the Athenians meeting together at the sepulchres of those who were slain at the Battel of Marathon for the liberty of Greece and there making Panegyricks upon them and therefore he wonders why Julian should exclaim so much against these honours done to the Martyrs since this was all the reward they could give them And elsewhere he saith these honours consisted in preserving their Memories and praising their vertues and brings the very same instance of the Athenians again but for any matter of worship towards them he utterly denyes it because they were bound to give it to none but God And that we might fully understand what he means when he saith that Christians do not give to Saints the worship the Heathens gave to their inferiour Gods
together sacris sacrificiis sometimes Religione Sacris sometimes Religionis ritibus sometimes Religionis obsequio by all which he understands the same thing viz. the acts of Religious worship which for distinction sake he calls Latria as that service or worship that men owe to one another he saith is called by another name and I confess I cannot find S. Austin applying the term of Dulia to any service we owe to Saints or Angels in Heaven but he avoids the term of Service and denyes it be due to them and only calls it by the name of Love and Fellowship with them and therefore Martinus Peresius had good reason to quarrel with the use of the word dulia because we are only fellow servants with them and Bellarmin gives him no sufficient answer by bringing that place Gal. 5. serving one another in love for that only relates to persons in equal conditions where the mutual offices may be alike which cannot be supposed in this case And therefore I had reason to say that Dulia is used by S. Austin as a term expressing the service we owe to God as our Lord but T. G. thinks he hath run me down by producing the foregoing place which he saith I purposely concealed from the Reader for fear he might infer that if some degree of the service called Dulia might be given by servants to their Masters surely a high degree of it may be given to Holy Angels Very finely argued and as much against S. Austins sense as is possible For he saith in plain terms those Angels that require service from us are Devils for this he makes the character of them that they do invite us ut sibi serviamus but saith he we honour good Angels by love and not by service But T. G. is not more mistaken in S. Austins sense of Dulia than he is about Latria for he saith that he understands it of sacrifices and that when he saith blessed Spirits are not willing we should sacra facere it ought not be rendered equivocally as it is by me to perform any sacred offices but to dedicate and sacrifice to them or consecrate our selves or any thing of ours to them by the Rites of Religion by which he saith it is evident that he speaks of the worship which is due to God alone that is of such dedications and consecrations as were performed by the Heathens to their Daemons as Gods To this I answer that I grant that S. Austin speaks of the worship due to God alone and of those rites of Religious worship which were performed by the Heathens to their Gods but the Question is what he understands by those Religious rites whether only dedications and sacrifices and consecrations or other acts of Religious worship For T. G. cannot be so ignorant as not to know that adorations and prayers were as constant as solemn as proper acts of Religious worship both by the Law of God and the Heathen customs as those he mentions thence orandi causa fanum adire in Cicero Deos immortales precari venerari atque implorare debetis ut urbem defendant and scarce any Greek or Latin Writer that mentions their Religious rites but under them they take notice of adoration and prayers and not only so but some of them give an account of the Forms of them and the manner and order of Invocation in their Litanies for the word is as old as Homer wherein they invocated their Gods in order that they would be favourable and propitious to them and Pliny saith in general that no sacrifice was offered without prayers and Macrobius Servius and Arnobius say they began their invocations with Janus not because they looked on him as chief but as a Mediator who was to carry up their prayers to the superiour powers and they ended in Vesta for the same reason and that these were comprehended under the Sacra is not only manifest from their conjunction with sacrifices but from the old form of obsecration in which they used ob vos sacro for obsecro I would now understand from T. G. why he thinks that S. Austin should purposely leave out in these words Adoration and Invocation which were by all Nations looked on as some of the proper acts of Religious worship especially when he mentions both these before and after For the occasion of the dispute was about the intercession of created Spirits and mens addresses to them and afterwards he joyns adoration together with sacrifice as a thing peculiar to God putaverunt quidam deferendum Angelis honorem vel adorando vel sacrificando c. in a place already cited If this be not shutting ones eyes against noon-day light it is a drawing a curtain before it lest it grow too hot But for all this T. G. is very confident that S. Austin was for the performing Religious worship to Martyrs because he saith expresly that it was the custome of the Christian people in his time to celebrate with Religious solemnity the Memories of the Martyrs and very kindly after his mode he charges me with corrupting the words of S. Austin by translating them thus that it was the custome of the Christians in his time to have their Religious Assemblies at the Sepulchres or Memories of the Martyrs I did not pretend to translate as T. G. knew well enough by the character but ill will never speaks well but I still say and stand to it that this is his sense as will appear by considering the design of his words Faustus the Manichean had charged the African Christians with Idolatry in the honour they gave to the Memories of the Martyrs S. Austin answers that they did so celebrate the Memories of the Martyrs that they erected no Altars to any Martyr but to the God of Martyrs although it was for their memories For who of the Bishops or Priests that officiates at the Altar in the places of their Sepulchres ever said We offer to thee Peter or Paul or Cyprian but that which is offered is offered to God who crowned the Martyrs but it is done at their Sepulchres whom he hath crowned that by the very places our affections may be raised and our love quickned both to those whom we may imitate and to him by whom we are enabled to do it Now I desire to know what part of Religious worship was here performed to the Martyrs If the Christian Sacrifice that were Idolatry according to T. G. and would have justified Faustus to purpose but S. Austin utterly denyes this to be performed to them All that the Martyrs are concerned in as to the Religious Solemnity was no more than that the offices of Religion were performed at their Sepulchres this was an Honour to them I grant but no part of Religious worship And although the design of the worship was only to honour God yet the place of doing it was out of honour to the
by an Egg as Arnoldus Montanus observes In the Itinerary of Alexander Geraldinus to those parts of Africa under the Aequinoctial which was written by him to the Pope when he was Bishop of S. Domingo in the account he gives of the Religion of those parts which is far more particular than is to be met with elsewhere he describes several Images of the Great God which were in mighty veneration among them as in Bassiana the King with all his people do worship the God of Nature in an Image of Marble set upon a high Throne holding the Sun in his right hand and the Moon in his left and the other Stars on either side of him and wherever the King travels he carries such an Image along with him and prays five times a day prostrate before it In Demnasea upon the top of a wall is placed the Image of God holding all things before which the people are bound to pray every morning In Ammosenna they represent the God of Heaven by four Heads coming out of the body of a Lynx looking towards the four quarters of the world to represent his omnisciency and omnipresence whom they call Orissa In Logonsennea the God of Nature is painted in the Image of a man and all other Images of him condemned Now if T. G. were sent on a Mission into any of those parts where God was worshipped after such a manner I have a great desire to understand what his opinion would be concerning this kind of worship whether it were Idolatry or no If not they might still continue in it and be saved as far as men can be saved by the meer light of Nature which herein T. G. thinks they follow exactly for they honour God by worshipping his Image If it be Idolatry how comes it to be so for this is neither the representation of some Pigment but of a real Being nor is it of some real thing falsely taken to be God which is his larger notion of an Idol but it is looked on only as the Image of the True God and that not as a proper Likeness but by Analogical representation and consequently according to T. G. is no disparagement to the Deity But whatever T. G's opinion in this case is the Fathers when they discoursed against the Heathen Idolatry made use of such arguments which held against such Images and representations as these and that upon these two weighty considerations 1. Because such a representation of God was unsuitable to his Nature 2. Because it was repugnant to his Will 1. Because such a representation of God was unsuitable to his Nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Clemens Alexandrinus A visible representation of the Deity lessens his Majesty and it is a disparagement to an intellectual Being to worship him by sensible matter therefore saith he Moses forbad any Image to be made of God that we might ascend above sensible things and thereby declaring God to be invisible and incomprehensible And from hence Zeno the Stoick said no workmanship of man could be worthy of God And in another place he saith the reason why Numa forbad any Image of God like to man or any living creature was because the most excellent Being could be represented only to our Minds and that Antisthenes learnt that from Socrates that God was like to no representation we could make of him and therefore no man could learn any thing of him from an Image and Xenophon that it is apparent that God is great and powerful but we know not how to make any thing like him Is it possible then that such Athenians as these should look on any Images as the proper likenesses of God These wiser Heathens T. G. confesses did mean that the nature of God being spiritual and invisible it could not be represented by any thing like unto it and yet these were Athenian Philosophers as well as those whom he saith S. Paul condemned for supposing their Images to be proper Likenesses and representations of the Divinity But T. G. supposes that the reason why the worship of Images is a disparagement to the Deity and incongruous to the Divine Nature is because the people gave worship to them as Gods or like unto the Gods they worshipped whereas I have now plainly shewed that those who contended for the Worship of Images among them did neither look upon them as Gods nor like to their Gods but only as Symbolical representations of the Divine Nature And the Fathers make use of this acknowledgement of theirs of the incongruity of Images to the Deity from thence to prove the incongruity of the worship of them So that it is not the supposing the Images to be like God which they condemn in them for none of their wiser men were such Fools but the making of such Images and worshipping of them which in their own nature were so infinitely beneath the divine Being did tend to the begetting in mens minds mean and unworthy thoughts of God And therefore they frequently insist upon this that mens imaginations are easily tainted and corrupted by the daily representations of things especially when they are proposed as objects of worship and however the very manner of worshipping an infinite and immaterial Being by a gross and material representation is that which the Fathers condemn as most unsuitable to the Divine Nature For this Justin Martyr saith is not only unreasonable but it is done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the reproach of God whose glory and form is inexpressible Athenagoras saith if God and matter be all one it is then reasonable to worship God by giving worship to sensible matter but if there be an infinite distance between them why are we accused for not doing it And if we refuse to worship the workmanship of God viz. the Heaven and Elements why should we do it to the workmanship of men Origen looks on this as one of the most peculiar characters of the Christian doctrine that it raises mens minds above Images and all worship of Creatures to the Creator of all things and that it is one of the first things the Catechumens are instructed in to despise Idols and all Images He saith it is not only a foolish thing to pray to Images as Heraclitus said but to seem to do it as the Philosophers did If they are worshipped it must be either as Gods which Celsus denyed or as representations of God which cannot be because God is invisible and incorporeal and therefore he saith that the Christians would not endure the worship of God by Images and although other Nations did refuse the worship of Images with whom Celsus parallels the Christians yet it was not upon the same ground that the Christians did viz. because they would not debase and draw down the worship of God towards matter so fashioned and formed Lactantius shews how unreasonable it is to worship God
by an Image since Images are intended to represent the absent but God is every where present But if there ought to be any Image of God which he calls simulachrum Dei and surely doth not signifie an Idol in T. G's sense and I hope here he will not charge me with want of fidelity in translating it Image it ought to be living and sensible because God lives for ever therefore that cannot be the Image of God that is made by the Work of mens hands but Man himself who gives all the art and beauty to them which they have but poor silly men as they are they do not consider that if their Images had sense and motion they would worship the Men that made them and brought them into such a curious figure out of rude and unpolished matter Who can be so foolish to imagine there can be any thing of God in that Image in which there is nothing of man but the meer shadow But their minds have the deepest tincture of folly for those who have sense worship things that have none they who think themselves wise things that are uncapable of Reason they that live things that cannot stir and they that came from heaven things that are made of earth What is this saith he but to invert the order of Nature to adore that which we tread upon Worship him that lives if ye would live for he must dye that gives up his Soul to things that are dead And after he hath fully shewn his Rhetorick in exposing the folly of worshipping Images he concludes very severely quare nonest dubium quin Religio nulla sit ubicunque simulachrum est Wherefore there can be no true Religion where there is the worship of Images no although it be simulachrum Dei the worship of God by an Image for his reason holds against all Religion saith he is a divine thing and whatever is divine is heavenly but whatever is in Images is earthy and therefore there can be no Religion in the worship of Images What sport do Tertullian Minucius and Arnobius make with the Images which were consecrated to divine worship from the meanness of the matter they are made of the pains and art that is used to bring them into their shape the casualties of fire and rottenness and defilements they are subject to and many other Topicks on purpose to represent the ridiculousness of worshipping such things or God by them O saith Arnobius that I could but enter into the bowels of an Image and lay before you all the worthy materials they are made up of that I could but dissect before you a Jupiter Olympius and Capitolinus Yet these were dedicated to the worship of the Supreme God Would men ever have been such Fools to have exposed themselves rather than such Images to laughter and scorn if they had used any such themselves or thought them capable of relative divine worship How easily would a Heathen of common understanding have stopt the mouths of these powerful Orators with saying but a few such words to any one of them Fair and soft good Sir while you declaim so much against our Images think of your own what if our Iupiter Olympius or Capitolinus be made of Ivory or Brass or Marble what if the Artificer hath taken so much pains about them what if they are exposed to Weather and Birds and Fire and a thousand casualties are not the Images of S. Peter and S. Paul or the several Madonna 's of such and such Oratories liable to the very same accusations If ours are unfit for worship are not yours so too if we be ridiculous are not you so and so much the more because you laugh at others for what you do your selves So that we must either think the first Christians prodigious Fools or they must utterly condemn all Images for Religious Worship and not meerly the Heathens on considerations peculiar to them And that we may not think this a meer heat of Eloquence in these men we find the same thing asserted by the most grave and sober Writers of the Christian Church when they had to deal not with the rabble but their most understanding Adversaries We have no material Images at all saith Clemens Alexandrinus we have only one intellectual Image who is the only true God We worship but one Image which is of the Invisible and Omnipotent God saith S. Hierome No Image of God ought to be worshipped but that which is what he is neither is that to be worshiped in his stead but together with him saith S. Augustin Where it is observable that the reason of worship given to this Eternal Image of God is not communicable to any Image made of him as to his humane Nature for it cannot be said of the humane nature it self that it is God much less of any Image or representation of it Therefore let T. G. judge whether the worshipping Christ by an Image be not equally condemned by the Fathers with the worship of God by an Image but of that hereafter Eusebius answering Porphyrie about the Image of God saith What agreement is there between the Image of a man and the Divine understanding I think it hath very little to a mans mind since that is incorporeal simple indivisible the other quite contrary and only a dull representation of a mans shape The only resemblance of God lies in the soul which cannot be expressed in Colours or Figures and if that cannot which is infinitely short of the Divine Nature what madness is it to make the Image of a man to represent the Figure and form of God For the Divine Nature must be conceived with a clear and pure understanding free from all corruptible matter but that Image of God in the likeness of man contains only the Image of a mortal man and that not of all of him but of the worst part only without the least shadow of Life or Soul How then can the God over all and the Mind which framed the World be the same that is represented in Brass or Ivory S. Augustin relating the saying of Varro about representing God by the Image of a mans body which contains his Soul which resembles God saith that herein he lost that prudence and sobriety he discovered in saying that those who first brought in Images among the Romans abated their Reverence to the Deity and added to their errour and that the Gods were more purely worshipped without Images wherein saith S. Augustin he came very near to the Truth And if he durst speak openly against so ancient an errour he would say that one God ought to be worshipped and that without an Image the folly of Images being apt to bring the Deity into contempt Is it possible to condemn the worship of God by an Image in more express words than S. Austin here does 2. Because the worship of God by Images is repugnant to his Will Clemens Alexandrinus mentions the
of Divine worship and see upon what grounds they become guilty of Idolatry which will not reach home to themselves Card. Bessarion hath written an elaborate vindication of Plato against Trapezuntius wherein he shews that Plato did assert the Unity Power and Goodness of God and the Creation of all things by him and that he doth this frequently and constantly in his Parmenides Phaedrus Phaedo Philebus Timaeus Sophista Laws Politicks Epistles every where But Trapezuntius charges Plato that although he did acknowledge God he did not worship him and that he sacrificed only to the inferiour Gods to this Bessarion answers that in his Books of Laws which were made for the People he doth not expresly prescribe any worship to God under the name of One or First or Ineffable which were the Titles he had given him in his Dialogues and were not known to the People but in his eighth book of Laws he appoints twelve solemn Feasts to the twelve Gods of whom Iupiter was chief under which name the Supream God was known among the People than which name in the proper importance of it none could have been more significant of the Nature of the Supreme God and that he retained the other common names of the Gods worshipped among them that he might not seem to innovate any thing in Religion although the Philosophers understood them in another sense than the common people did by Iove they meant the First Being or Supreme Deity by Minerva Wisdom by Mercury Reason by Saturn Eternity by Neptune Form by Iuno Matter by Venus Nature by Apollo the Sun by Pan the Universe but when they spake to the People about the worship of them they did not mention Wisdom or Reason or Eternity but Minerva Mercury Saturn and he saith it would have been folly in them to have done otherwise the People being accustomed to worship the Gods under these names and nothing more was requisite but to make them understand them aright But for Plato himself he saith he worshipped the Supreme God after the best manner i. e. with inward Reverence and adoration in Plato's own expressions by thinking the best and most worthy things of him which Bessarion interprets in Spirit and in Truth and he adds that Plato looked on Sacrifices and Images as unworthy of him who was a pure mind and could not be represented by any Image to men But Plato's Adversary charges him with giving the worship of Latria to inferiour Gods and Creatures to which Bessarion saith that Latria among the Heathens signified only a stricter kind of service which some men paid to others that were above them and that the worship by sacrifice by a long custome from the time of Zamolxis and Orpheus was looked on as common to all things worshipped by them but saith he he referred all that worship which others gave to many and different Gods to the First and Chief Principle of all things and again mentions that saying in his Epinomis that the most suitable worship of God is to think honourably of him Which I suppose Plato would have said was the same thing which those of the Church of Rome call Latria and that he could by no means understand how sacrifices come to be appropriated to it and to this purpose Bessarion quotes the saying of Porphyrius that God is to be worshipped in Silence and with a pure mind and with the sacrifice of a good life And as to other Deities which Plato allowed to be worshipped he saith that he supposed them to be inferiour and subordinate to the Supreme and dependent upon him and that he did not worship empty Statues but one God the principle of all Which being compared with Plato's Law and practice about worshipping according to the Custome of the Countrey doth imply that he worshipped Images with a respect to the True God Let now the Reader judge whether according to the judgement of this learned Cardinal Plato was guilty of worshipping only the Images of false Gods But Trapezuntius still urges hard upon Plato that if he allowed the worship of a second and third Order of Gods which were but creatures he might on the same ground worship any creatures because all creatures are infinitely distant from the Creator Bessarion like an understanding man tells him that this argument would hold as well against the Church of Rome as against Plato which worships Angels although they be Creatures but yet he doth not think the argument will reach to the worship of all creatures because though all creatures be equally distant as to existence yet some come nearer than others as to perfection This Trapezuntius takes off by saying that Plato worshipped Daemons which Bessarion grants but by Daemons he saith Plato and Aristotle and other Philosophers did not understand such evil Spirits as we do but certain aereal Beings lower than Gods and above men whom they looked on as Mediators and intercessours between God and men but for evil Spirits he saith they were not received into their Religion and that Lucifer was looked on as accursed by them under the name of Ate. And he shews farther from S. Augustin that all the Poetical Theology was rejected by Plato So that the whole dispute with Plato about worship must come to these two points 1. Whether it be lawful to worship the Supreme God by external and visible representations supposing that a man direct his intention aright towards the honour of God by them 2. Whether it be lawful to give an inferiour worship to any Created Beings whose excellencies are supposed to be far above mens in order to their intercession between God and Us And now let T. G. judge whether I have not brought my Discourse home to their own doors I omit Marsilius Ficinus as a man that may be supposed too partial to Plato but I hope Augustinus Steuchus Eugubinus may pass for a sound Catholick being an Italian Bishop and a Roman Courtier that had so much zeal as to vindicate Constantines Donation against Valla and therefore his Testimony cannot be rejected He undertakes at large to prove that Plato acknowledged one True and Supreme God and that all other Beings are created by him and when he seems to attribute Divinity to other things it is only a Divinity by way of gift and participation such as Angels and holy men are said to have which doth not hinder our believing them to be all at first created by one God There were three sorts of inferiour Deities he saith asserted by the Philosophers viz. Daemons or Gods with aërial bodies who have a particular care of humane affairs Intelligences or the Spirits which animate and move the Stars and Coelestial Deities who converse with the Supreme God now all these he makes appear from many passages in Plato especially the famous one in his Timaeus to have been made by God And that when in his Books of Laws and the Epinomis or Appendix to
scarce ever any man discovered greater than in so doing and I fear against his own conscience The true state of the case in S. Austin about the worship of Images is this 1. He exposes the worship of Images in general as a silly and ridiculous thing being of things much inferiour to the meanest Brutes and if men are ashamed to worship Beasts that hear and see and live and move they ought to be much more ashamed to worship a dumb stupid sensless Image and they might with greater reason worship the Mice and Serpents which are not afraid of their Images but shelter themselves within them Now it is plain this discourse of S. Austin doth reach to all sorts of Images for whomsoever they are intended For an Image made for the true God hath no more sense or life or motion in it than one of T. G's Idols or an Image made for a Chimera But because the Christian Church knew nothing at that time of the worship of Images therefore he directs his discourse against the Heathens to consider the pleas and excuses they made for it 2. He reckons up their several pleas for their Images 1. Some said that there was a secret Deity which lay hid in the Image and which they worshipped through it 2. Others that thought themselves of a more refined Religion said they neither worshipped Images nor Daemons but only beheld in the corporeal Image the Symbol of that which they ought to worship Which is the place cited by T. G. Now I appeal to the Reader whether this very place doth not prove what I intended viz. that the Heathens did look on their Images as Symbols or representations of that Being to which they gave divine worship Whereby I see T. G. hath done me a kindness indeed which I thank him for i.e. he hath proved that which I did intend and confuted that which I did not But there remains yet another charge of disingenuity to be answered which concerns the quotation of Trigantius the occasion whereof was this I had said if S. Paul had not thought men to blame in the worship of God by an Image he would never have condemned them for it as he doth Rom. 1. But he ought to have done as the Iesuits in China did who never condemned the people for worshipping Images but for worshipping false Gods by them and perswaded them not to lay them aside but to convert them to the honour of the true God and so melted down the former Images and made new ones of them Can we imagine S. Paul meant the same thing when he blames men not for believing them to be Gods but that God could be worshipped by the Work of mens hands and for changing thereby the glory due to God in regard of his infinite and incorruptible Being into mean and unworthy Images thinking thereby to give honour to him These are my words Now observe T. G's ingenuity instead of answering the argument he falls to the exercise of his best Talent cavilling the force of the argument lay in this S. Paul condemns the very manner of worshipping God by Images the Iesuits in China do not that but bid them lay aside their old Images and worship new ones what is the reason that the Iesuits vary from S. Pauls method but only because they differ in judgement i. e. S. Paul thought the worship of Images in general unlawful the Iesuits do not but only the Images of false Gods This was the thing designed by me to which he gives no manner of answer but only for several pages he tells a sad story how hard it was for him to come by the Book of Trigautius when he had it he thought he had gotten a mighty advantage against me because forsooth I render simulachra Images for the whole charge comes to this at last for whereas Trigautius distinguished the Heathen simulachra from the Images of Christ because I did not in the account of the thing for I designed no verbal translation as T. G. knew well enough by the character therefore this is charged to be the effect of some very bad design and an instance of my want of fidelity sincerity honesty ingenuity and what not I am sorry Trigautius was so hard to come by for it is possible if he had not been put to so much trouble in procuring him I might have escaped better But is it in good earnest such a horrible fault to translate simulachra Images I see what a good thing it is to have a good Catholick Dictionary for a hundred to one but others would have rendred it as I have done I had thought Tully's using the words Statuae Imagines Signa and simulachra promiscuously might have been sufficient ground for my translating it by Images But it seems the Ecclesiastical use of the word is otherwise I had thought Isidore a good Iudge of the Ecclesiastical use of a word and he uses it promiscuously with Imagines effigies but I confess Ecclesiastical uses have been much changed since Isidores time And it seems simulachra is only applyed to Heathen Images by no means to those among Christians But why so do they not vultum simulare as Horace expresses it bear a resemblance to what they represent Do they not pariles line as principali ab ore deducere which is Arnobius his description of the proper notion of simulachrum But for all this their Images are not simulachra and shall not be simulachra It seems when Images were baptized Christian they lost their former name and have gotten a new one and very much good may it do them and all those that worship them if the change of name would excuse their guilt Yet Agobardus was of another opinion when he saith that if those who forsook the worship of Devils had been bidden to worship the Images of Saints puto quod videretur eis non tam Idola reliquisse quam simulachra mutâsse I think saith he that it would have seemed to them that they had not left their Idols but only changed their Images Where we see Agobardus is my Author for making simulachra common to the Images of Heathens and Christians And S. Augustin calls the Image of the true God simulachrum But to set aside Authorities I hope the Images used in China before the Gentiles conversion and those after did agree in something common to them both although they were before the Images of false Gods and after of Christ or the B. Virgin yet they were all Images still Might I not be allowed to say that the Jesuits did not perswade the Converts to lay aside the use of Images but to convert them to the honour of the true God and so melted down the former Images and made new ones of them No by no means For them and them coming after one another and the first being the Images of false Gods it was scarce possible for an ordinary Protestant Reader not to
Stoicks forbear adultery and so may the Epicureans but the former do it because it is a thing repugnant to Nature and civil Society the latter because allowing themselves this single pleasure may debar them of many more so saith he in this matter those barbarous Nations forbear Images on other accounts than Iews and Christians do who dare not make use of this way of worshipping God Observe that he doth not say this of the way of worshipping false Gods or Images for Gods but of worshippin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Deity And he gives three principal reasons wherein they differed from those Nations 1. Because this way of worship did disparage the Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 again by drawing it down to matter so fashioned 2. Because the evil spirits were apt to harbour in those Images and to take pleasure in the sacrifices there offered which reason as far as it respects the blood of Sacrifices doth relate to the Heathen Images standing over the Altars at which the Sacrifices were offered But then Celsus might say what is all this to the purpose my question is why you have no Images in your own way of worship therefore he adds his third reason which made it utterly unlawful for Christians as well as Iews to worship them which is the Law of God mentioned before now I say if Origen answered pertinently he must give this as the Reason why Christians used no Images in their own way of worship and consequently was so far from thinking the worship of Images indifferent that he thought Christians ought rather to suffer Martyrdom than to worship them But to put this beyond possibility of contradiction Origen mentions a saying of Heraclitus objected by Celsus that it is a foolish thing to pray to Images unless a man know the Gods and Heroes worshipped by them which saying Celsus approves and saith the Christians were Fools because they utterly contemned Images in totum the Latin interpreter renders it To which Origen thus answers we acknowledge that God may be known and his only Son and those whom he hath honoured with the Title of Gods who partake of his Divinity and are different from the Heathen Deities which the Scripture calls Devils i.e. causally if not essentially as Cajetan distinguisheth but saith he it is impossible for him that knows God to worship Images Mark that he doth not say it is impossible for him that knows the Idols of the Heathens to worship them or the evil spirits that lurk in their Images but for him that knows the true God and his Son Christ Iesus and the holy Angels to do it Is it possible after this to believe that Origen supposed the worship of Images to be indifferent in it self and that God and Christ and Angels might be lawfully worshipped by them Was all this only periculum offensionis jealousie of offence before the Heathen Idolatry was rooted out Which supposition makes the primitive Christians in plain terms jugglers and impostors to pretend that to be utterly unlawful even for themselves to do and to mean no more by it but this yes it is unlawful to do it while there is any danger of Heathenism but when once that is overthrown then we may worship Images as well as the best of them For my part I believe the primitive Christians to have been men of so much honesty and integrity that they would never have talked at this rate against the worship of Images as not only Origen but the rest of them the best and wisest among them did as I have shewed in the foregoing Chapter if they had this secret reserve in their minds that when Heathenism was sunk past recovery then they might do the same things which they utterly condemned now Which would be just like some that we have heard of who while there was any likelyhood of the Royal Authority of this Nation recovering itself then they cry'd out upon Kingly Government as illegal Tyrannical and Antichristian but when the King was murdered and the power came into their own hands then it was lawful for the Saints to exercise that power which was not fit to be enjoyed by the Wicked of the World So these men make the most excellent Christians to be like a pack of Hypocrites The Heathens every where asked them as may be seen in Lactantius Arnobius Minucius and others as well as Origen what is the matter with you Christians that you have no Images in your Churches what if you dare not joyn with us in our worship why do not you make use of them in your own Is it only humour singularity and affectation of Novelty in You If it be you shew what manner of men you are No truly say they gravely and seriously we do it not because we dare not do it for we are afraid of displeasing and dishonouring God by it and we will on that account rather choose to dye than do it Upon such an answer the Heathens might think them honest and simple men that did not know what to do with their lives who were so willing to part with them on such easie terms But if they had heard the bottom of all this was only a cunning and sly trick to undermine Paganism and that they meant no such thing as though it were unlawful in it self but only unlawful till they had gotten the better of them what would they have thought of such men no otherwise than that they were a company of base Hypocrites that pretended one thing and meant another and that the Wicked of the World might not worship Images but the Saints might when they had the Power in their hands although before they declaimed against it as the most vile mean and unworthy way of worship that ever came into the heads of men that there could be no Religion where it obtained that it was worse than the worship of Beasts that it was more reasonable to worship the artificers themselves than the Images made by them that rats and mice had less folly than mankind for they had no fears of what men fell down before with trembling and great shews of devotion These and many such things as these the Fathers speak freely openly frequently on all occasions in all places against the worship of Images and after all this was no more meant by it but only this Thou O Heathen must not worship Images but I may And why not as well might the Heathen reply Thou must not commit adultery but I may Does the nature of the commands you boast so much of alter with mens persons Is that indeed lawful for you that is not for us Where doth the Law of Moses say Thou shalt not worship the Images that we worship but thou maist worship the Images that Christians worship And if the Law makes no difference either leave off your foolish babbling against our Images or condemn your own For to our understanding yours are as much against the Law as ours are
And so the primitive Christians thought who very honestly and sincerely declared as much in their words and actions witness not only the opinions of all the Writers in behalf of Christianity not one excepted that ever had occasion to mention this matter but the Decree of as good a Council as was to be had at that time I mean the Eliberitan in the famous Canon to that purpose Can. 36. It pleaseth us to have no pictures in Churches lest that which is worshipped be painted upon walls It is a pleasant thing to see what work our Adversaries make with this innocent Canon sometimes it is a meer forgery of hereticks I wonder such men do not say the same of the second Commandment sometimes the Bishops that met there were not so wise as they should have been no nor Moses and the Prophets nor Christ and the primitive Christians in this matter sometimes that they spake only against pictures upon walls because the Salt-Peter of the walls would be apt to deface them or because in case of persecution they could not do as Rachel did carry their Teraphim along with them but that which Petavius sticks to is that the Memory of Heathen Idolatry was yet fresh and therefore it was not thought expedient to have Images in the Oratories or Temples of Christians So that after all the tricks and shifts of our Adversaries the thing it self is yielded to us viz. that this Canon is against such Images as are now used and worshipped in the Roman Church But saith he the reason doth not hold still for then the memory of Heathen Idolatry was not out of mens minds It is a wonderful thing to me that these Spanish Bishops should be able to tell their own reason no better than so You say you will have no Images in Churches why so I beseech you Lest that say they which is worshipped be painted upon walls worshipped by whom do you mean by Heathens no we speak of the Churches of Christians But why may not that which is worshipped be painted We think that reason enough to any man that considers the Being worshipped and that which is painted and the mighty disparagement to an infinite invisible Being to be drawn in lines and colours with a design to honour him thereby This to me seems a reason that holds equally at all times For was the Being worshipped more unfit to be drawn so soon after Heathen Idolatry than he would be afterwards methinks it had been much better done then while the skilful Artificers were living But those were Heathen Idolaters suppose they were you must make use of them or none if that which Tertullian and others say hold true that it is forbidden to Christians to make Images which surely they would never have said if they had thought the time would come when the Heathen Idolatry should be forgotten and then the Christians might worship Images Well but all this is only against Pictures upon walls but for all that saith Bellarmin they might have Images in Frames or upon Veils It seems then that which is adored might be painted well enough provided it be not upon a wall but methinks it is more repugnant to an infinite Being to be confined within a Frame than to be drawn upon a wall and the Decree is to have no pictures in Churches but if they were in Frames or upon Veils would they not be in Churches still What made Epiphanius then so angry at seeing an Image upon a Veil at Anablatha Was not Heathen Idolatry forgotten enough yet It seems not for it was coming in again under other pretences But that good mans spirit was stirred within him at the apprehension of it and could not be quiet till he had rent asunder the Veil and written to the Bishop of Hierusalem to prevent the like enormity One would have thought by this time the jealousie of Offence might have been worn out the Heathen Idolatry being suppressed but yet it seems Epiphanius did not understand his Christian Liberty in this matter Nay so far from it that he plainly and positively affirms that such an Image though upon a Veil and not the Walls was contra autoritatem Scripturarum contra Religionem nostram against the Law of God and the Christian Religion But it may be this was some Heathen Idol or Image of a False God no so far from it that Epiphanius could not tell whether it was an Image of Christ or of some Saint but this he could tell that he was sure it was against the Authority of the Scriptures And was Epiphanius so great a Dunce to imagine a thing indifferent in it self and applyed to a due object of worship should be directly opposite to the Law of God Men may talk of the Fathers and magnifie the Fathers and seem to make the Authority of the Fathers next to infallible and yet there are none who expose them more to contempt than they who give such answers as these so directly against the plainest sense and meaning of their words I confess those speak more consonantly to their principles who reject the Authority of this Epistle at least of this part of it but there is not the least colour or pretence for it from any M S. and Petavius ingenuously confesseth that he sees no ground to believe this part added to the former epistle God be thanked there is some little ingenuity yet left in the World and which is the greater wonder among the Iesuits too for not only Petavius but Sirmondus owns the Epistle of Epiphanius to be genuine quoting it to prove the Antiquity of Veils at the entrance of the Church If it be good for that purpose it is I am sure as good for ours and so it was thought to be by those who were no Iconoclasts I mean the Author of the Caroline Books and the Gallican Bishops who made use of this Testimony although themselves were against rending of painted Veils But commend me to the plain honesty of Iohn Damascen who saith one Swallow makes no Summer and of Alphonsus à Castro who tells us that Epiphanius was an Iconoclast i. e. a terrible heretick with a hard name materially so but not formally because the Church had not determined the contrary It seems it was no matter what the Law or Christian Religion had determined for those were the things Epiphanius took for his grounds But he good man was a little too hot in this matter and did not consider that when the Pagan Idolatry was sufficiently out of mens minds then it would be very lawful to have Christ or Saints not only drawn upon Veils or Screens but to have just such Statues as the Pagans had and to give them the very same worship which the Prototypes deserve provided that the people have forgotten Mercury Apollo and Hercules and put S. Francis or S. Ignatius or S. Christopher or S. Thomas Beckett instead of them O the Divine power of names
and if the Testimony of Constantinus Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus there extant may be taken he flourished in the time of Mauricius in which the Iew is introduced upbraiding the Christians with breaking the Commandment of God in the worship of Images and Leontius is put to miserable shifts to desend it And in the dispute between the Iew and the Christian in the fifth Action of that Council the Iew saith I am scandalized at You Christians because you worship Images expresly against the Command of God And in the discourse of Iohn Bishop of Thessalonica the Gentile saith Do not You Christians not only paint the Images of Your Saints and worship them but even the Image of your God too so likewise think that we do not worship the Images themselves but those incorporeal powers which are worshipped through them And this learned Bishop to make out the disparity between the Heathens and them flyes to this lamentable refuge that they did not believe the Angels to be incorporeal as the Gentiles did and therefore might better make Images of them Which is not the thing I now observe but only that as soon as the worship of Images began the Christians were sufficiently upbraided with it by their enemies and therefore it is most unreasonable to suppose that if the same worship had prevailed before the Iews and Gentiles would not have objected the same thing when there were men that wanted neither advantages nor ill will to do it 3. That when the Controversie about the Worship of Images grew hot the defenders of them made use of Treason and Rebellion to maintain their Cause It would make one wonder to see how a late pretended Author of the History of the Iconoclasts in English hath endeavoured to accommodate that History to our Reformation in England making Henry 8. to be Leo Isauricus and Queen Mary to be Irene which is not much for her honour But suppose Henry 8. to be Leo on whose side lay the charge of Rebellion which it is most certain the Pope and his adherents were guilty of towards Leo For Gregory 2. confesses in his Epistle to Leo that the people rebelled against him out of zeal to their Images and Onuphrius saith that by reason of Leo's opposition to Images the Pope deprived him of the remainder of the Empire in Italy And this worthy Historian himself saith that the Romans and others then subject to Leo did not only throw down his Statues from the high places and pillars whereon they stood but would no longer pay him any Tribute or obey his Orders and he confesses afterwards that upon the Popes instigation they began a Defensive Conspiracy for Religion Just such another as the Irish Rebellion which that Author hath heard of only this was far more bloody and cruel than the other But P.T. is concerned for the Popes honour saying that what the Pope intended only for a defensive Confederacy for Religion sore against the Popes will proved an offensive conspiracy against the Emperours temporal Right in so much that all Italy renounced his dominion Was the forbidding the paying Tribute to the Emperour only a defensive confederacy for Religion Yet this Anastasius Bibliothecarius Zonaras Cedrenus Glycas Theophanes Sigebert Otto Frisingensis Conradus Urspergensis Sigonius Rubeus and Ciacconius all agree to have been done by the Pope upon the Emperours declaring against the Worship of Images But I need go no farther than this Historian who delivers this for the doctrine of this Pope in a Synod at Rome on behalf of Images viz. That it is against reason to believe God would have a multitude of men or all mankind to be damned rather than resist with armes false doctrine favoured by one or a few Soveraigns seeing Christ dyed rather to save Souls than to humour Soveraigns Most primitive and Catholick doctrine and happily applyed to the Worship of Images But he goes on as if he had been giving instructions for another Rebellion that the Rule whereby they ought to judge of the time and lawfulness of their resistance must not be their own fancies but a real danger of altering the Catholick Faith and the Soveraigns actual endeavours to do it So that according to this blessed doctrine a Rebellion on the account of Religion is a just and holy War and is it not easie to discern what such men would be at who deliver this as the Doctrine of their Head of the Church in a Council of Bishops If Gregory 2. said such things he did but speak agreeably to his actings if he did not we know at least the mind of this Historian who seems to have calculated his history for a Meridian nearer home 4. It is observable how great and apparent a change was made in the doctrine and practice of the Roman Church in this matter of Images between the time of the two Gregories the first and the second i.e. between A. D. 604. wherein the first Gregory died and A.D. 714. wherein the second was made Pope It would afford a man some pleasure to compare the Epistle of Gregorius M. to Serenus with those of Gregory 2. to the Emperour Leo and yet both these according to the Roman pretence Infallible Heads of the Church We have already seen what the former Gregories opinion was let us now compare it with his Name-sakes He charges the Emperour Leo with using the very same words that his predecessour had done in this matter viz. that we are not to worship the Work of mens Hands whereas saith he very wisely those words were spoken in Scripture for the sake of such Paganish Idolaters who worshipped golden and silver and wooden Animals the Pope calls them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and said these are thy Gods and there is no other God besides as though there ever had been such Fools in the World and for the sake of these Works of the Devils hands we are commanded not to worship them but whatever is made by men for the honour of God ought to be worshipped in spight of his Predecessours definition to the contrary in the very same case And then he tells a very worshipful story of the Pictures that were taken of Christ and his Apostles by their Disciples and of the Image Christ sent for a present to the King of Edessa it is great pity the Veronica was forgotten by him but that piece of Antiquity was not yet known Then he bids the Emperour go among the boys at School and if he should say among them that he was an enemy to Images they would throw their Table-books at his Head because Children alwayes love Pictures and a little after he saith he was like Ozias the King of the Iews that destroyed the brazen Serpent It seems the Bible was then a Book not much studyed by the Head of the Church for was it indeed Ozias that demolished the brazen Serpent and was this such a reproach to Leo to be
such an answer for then all the folly and madness in making the grossest Images of God doth not lye in the Images themselves but in the imagination of the Persons that make them Is it not as great in those that worship them with such an imagination if it be then whatever the Design of the makers was if they be apt to beget such imaginations in those who see and worship them they are in that respect as unlawful as T. G. supposes any Images of God among the Heathens to have been 4. What doth T. G. mean when he makes those Images unlawful which represent the Divinity in it self and not those which represent God as he appeared Can the meer essence of any thing be represented by an Image Is it possible to represent any being otherwise than as it appears But it may be T. G. hath found out the way of painting Essences if he hath he deserves to have the Patent for it not only for himself but for his Heirs and Executors For he allows it to be the peculiar priviledge of an infinite Being that it cannot be represented as it is in it self then all other things may be represented as they are in themselves in opposition to the manner of their appearance or else the distinction signifies nothing Petrus Thyraeus a man highly commended by Possevin for for his explication of this matter saith the meaning is that an Image doth not represent the Nature but the Person that is visible for saith he when we see the Image of a man we do not say we see a Reasonable Creature but a Man Very well and so in the Image of the Deity we do not see the Divine Nature but the Divine Person or in such a way as he became visible The Invisible Nature of God cannot be represented in an Image and can the invisible Nature of Man Therefore saith he it is no injury to God to be painted by an Image no more upon these principles than to a man Bellarmin proves the lawfulness of making Images of God because man is said to be the Image of God and he may be painted therefore the Image of God may be too for that which is the Image of the Image is likewise the Image of the Exemplar those which agree in a third agreeing among themselves To this some answer'd that man was not the Image of God as to his body but as to his soul which could not be painted but Bellarmin takes off this answer by saying that then a man could not not be painted for he is not a man in regard of his outward lineaments but in regard of his substance and especially his Soul but notwithstanding the soul cannot be painted yet a man may truly and properly be said to be painted because the Figure and colours of an Image do represent the whole man otherwise saith he a thing painted could never seem to be the true Thing as Zeuxis his grapes did which deceived the birds Therefore according to Bellarmines reasoning that which represents a Being according to outward appearance although it have an invisible Nature yet is a true and real representation and represents it as it is in it self and as far as it is possible for an Image to represent any thing Wherein then lyes the difference between making the Picture of a man and the Image of God If it be said that the Image of God is very short imperfect and obscure is not the same thing to be said of the Picture of a man which can only represent his outward Features without any description of his inward substance or soul If it be farther said that there is a real resemblance between a Picture of a man and his outward lineaments but there is none between God and the Image of a man then I ask what Bellarmins argument doth signifie towards the proving the lawfulness of making an Image of God For if God may be painted because man may who is the Image of God for the Image of the Image is the Image of the Exemplar then it follows that Man is the Image of God as he may be painted and so God and man must agree in that common thing which is a capacity of being represented which cannot be supposed without as real a resemblance between God and his Image as between a Man and his Picture But T. G. tells us that they abhorr the very thoughts of making any such likeness of God and all that the Council of Trent allows is only making representations of some apparition or action of God in a way proportionable to our Humane Conception I answer 1. It is no great sign of their abhorring the thoughts of any such likeness of God to see such arguments made use of to prove the lawfulness of making Images of God which do imply it 2. Those Images of God which are the most used and allowed in the Roman Church have been thought by Wise men of their own Church to imply such a Likeness Molanus and Thyraeus mention four sorts of Images of the Trinity that have been used in the Roman Church 1. That of an old man for God the Father and of Christ in humane nature and of the Holy Ghost in the Form of a Dove 2. That of three Persons of equal Age and Stature 3. That of an Image of the Bl. Virgin in the belly of which was represented the Holy Trinity this Ioh. Gerson saith he saw in the Carmelites Church and saith there were others like it and Molanus saith he had seen such a one himself among the Carthusians 4. That of one Head with three faces or one body and three Heads which Molanus saith is much more common than the other and is wont to be set before the Office of the Holy Trinity these two latter those Authors do not allow because the former of them tends to a dangerous errour viz. that the whole Trinity was incarnate of the B. Virgin and the latter Molanus saith was an invention of the Devil it seems then there was one invention of the Devil at least to be seen in the Masse-Book for saith he the Devil once appeared with three Heads to a Monk telling him he was the Trinity But the two former they allow and defend Waldensis saith Molanus with a great deal of learning defends that of the three Persons from the appearance of the Three to Abraham and Thyraeus justifieth the first and the most common from the Authority of the Church the Consent of Fathers and the H. Scriptures And yet Pope Iohn 22. as Aventinus relates it condemned some to the Fire as Anthropomorphites and enemies to Religion for making the very same representation of the Trinity which he defends being only of God as an old man and of the Son as a young man and of the Holy Ghost under the picture of a Dove Ysambertus takes notice of this story but he saith they were such Images as were according to
which he hath not the least colour from Scripture or Reason as will appear by the following particulars 2. From the intolerable folly of desiring Aaron to make that God which before he was made delivered them out of the Land of Aegypt For so the People say This is thy God or these are thy Gods which brought thee out of the Land of Aegypt Is it possible to suppose people so extreamly stupid to imagine a God just then made should before it was made deliver them out of Aegypt But T. G. is a notable man and hath made a rare discovery viz. that Calvin said some such thing before me I thank him for the discovery for I do assure him it was more than I had ever read in Calvin but T. G. hath a great mind to make Calvin my Master in every thing I should not be ashamed to learn from a man of so great abilities but it falls out unhappily that I do not find one thing he charges me with following Calvin in but it is from him that I learn what Calvin said And if he had pleased he might have quoted an Author of their own for these words neque enim tam stupidi erant saith Ferus quod crederent Aaron posse facere Deum they were not so stupid to believe that Aaron could make a God and therefore he saith very honestly that the Israelites worshipped the True God by the Calf But suppose Calvin did say this is there ever the less reason in the saying But we can imagine as sottish things of them viz. that they terminate their worship on the Images although they deny any Divinity to be in them Is it indeed so sottish a thing to terminate their worship on the Images what becomes then of all their Divines who plead for it and say that by the Decrees of their Councils worship ought to be terminated on the Images themselves as T. G. may see in the precedent Chapter But the Scripture T. G. saith represents the Israelites as a people void of understanding and they were without learning and oppressed for four hundred years together by the most Idolatrous Nation in the world and served their Gods Ezek. 20.8 I grant the Scripture gives that severe character of them but it was because they did not consider the consequence of their disobedience as appears by the next verse Deut. 32.29 Must we because of this imagine them to be such Fools and Sots that no Idolaters in the World can be parallel'd with them viz. to make a God which did mighty things for them before it was made Therefore the meaning of making a God can be nothing else but making a Symbol or representation of God and the Question then is whether it were the representation of an Aegyptian Idol or the God of Israel That it was not the former I proved 3. From the way of worship used by the Israelites which was an abomination to the Aegyptians Exod. 8.26 To this T. G. returns not the least word of Answer but he shall not escape so for from hence I shall make it appear beyond contradiction that it was not Aegyptian Idolatry which the Israelites fell into for which we must consider the sacrifices that were offered to the golden Calf And they rose up early on the morrow and offer'd burnt-offerings and brought peace-offerings and the people sate down to eat and to drink and rose up to play S. Stephen saith And they made a Calf in those dayes and offered sacrifice unto the Idol and rejoyced in the Works of their own hands Now the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings are expressed Exod. 20.24 to be their Oxen and their Sheep and immediately before Moses his going up into the Mount it is said that they offered burnt-offerings and sacrificed peace-offerings of Oxen unto the Lord where the very same words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are used and the LXX there render the word we translate oxen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Vulg. Lat. Vitulos the same word which is used for the Golden Calf Now I shall shew that nothing could be more repugnant to the Aegyptian Idolatry than such sacrifices as these For which we have this considerable Testimony of Horus in Macrobius Nunquam fas fuit Aegyptiis pecudibus aut sanguine sed precibus ture solo placare Deos. It was never lawful for the Aegyptians to sacrifice with Cattel and blood but only with prayers and incense and from thence he proves that the Worship of Saturn and Serapis were but lately received among the Egyptians in the time of the Ptolemies and after they were received their Temples were without the Cities that they might not be polluted with blood within the Cities And every one knows that the Feasts were upon their sacrifices but the Satyrist says of the Egyptians Lanatis animalibus abstinet omnis Mensa nefas illic foetum jugulare capellae Anaxandrides in Athenaeus saith that a Greek could have no conversation with an Egyptian because the one worshipped an Ox which the other sacrificed and Herodotus saith that the Egyptians would not touch so much as the knife or spit or pot which the Greeks had used so great an aversion had they from those who either eat or sacrificed the Creatures they worshipped Herodotus indeed saith that the Thebans abstained from sheep and offered Goats the Mendesians on the contrary abstained from Goats and offered Sheep but this was on the account of the particular Religion of those two Provinces for they differed very much among themselves as to particular animals but all the Egyptians agreed as Herodotus there saith in the worship of Osiris and Isis Now Diodorus Siculus affirms that Apis and Mneuis the Bulls of Heliopolis and Memphis were sacred to Osiris Plutarch saith that the Ox was the Image of Osiris and Strabo that Apis was the same with Osiris and Mela that Apis was the Deity of all the Egyptians Strabo gives the most particular account of the Egyptian worship and what creatures were worshipped in the several Provinces but he saith there were three universally worshipped whereof the first is the Ox and it was an universal practice not to touch or hurt those creatures that were sacred among them as the Oxen were quite through Egypt from whence Moses desired to go into the Wilderness to sacrifice for we shall sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians to the Lord our God Lo shall we sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes and will they not stone us i. e. saith the Targum of Onkelos because the Egyptians worship Oxen. Because Lambs are the Idols of the Egyptians saith Ionathan If we kill saith S. Hierome the things which they worship I leave it now to the consideration of any man whether the Israelites using their accustomed burnt-offerings and sacrifices and Feastings upon them as they did in the Worship of
never had life in them but that which hath life and sense and motion hath a greater influence from that Divine Wisdom which governs all things therefore saith he these ought not to be looked on as inferiour representations of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Being than those Images which are made of Brass or Stone by the Workmanship of men and are subject to corruption and destitute of all sense and understanding Whereby we see that Plutarch did put a difference between the common practises of the People and the intention of the wiser men in the Egyptian Idolatry He before takes notice of the follies of the People that worshipped the living creatures themselves as Gods and thereby not only exposed their Religion to the scorn and contempt of others but led some men into horrible superstition and tempted others to turn Atheists and then he gives this as the most reasonable account of the worship of these Animals according to their wiser men whose opinions ought most to be followed in Religion From whence it appears that the distinction of the practice of the People and the Doctrine of Divines hath obtained among the grossest Idolaters and if the Peoples Practice be excused because the Divines teach otherwise the most sottish Egyptian Idolaters are excusable as well as those in the Roman Church For what is there in this principle of worship laid down by Plutarch which may not be defended by the avowed doctrine of the Roman Church Here is 1. a right ultimate object of worship viz. the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Being which orders and governs all things 2. Here is a representation of that object by the perfections derived from that Being to a Creature 3. Here is a right directing the Intention through that representation to the ultimate object And 4. the formal reason of worship is the derivation or participation of that perfection which represents God from the divine Being and therefore this is no Soveraign worship which is given to it The only difficulty here is to shew that the Egyptians did intend to worship the Supreme God by either sort of their Images which is not only affirmed by Plutarch who saith They understood by Osiris the wise Providence of God and by Porphyrie who saith The Egyptians by the several animals they worshipped did express their devotion towards the Almighty power of God and by Apuleius who was initiated in the Egyptian Mysteries and in the conclusion of his Metamorphosis Osiris is called Deus Deum magnorum potior majorum summus summorum maximus maximorum regnator Osiris which are descriptions of no less than the Supremest God but Max. Tyrius yields at last that the Egyptians did worship the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Deity by the worship of Animals as the Greeks did by the Statue of Phidias And there is a considerable Testimony to this purpose in Vopiscus taken out of an Epistle of the Emperour Adrian which he wrote to Servianus from Egypt giving an account of the manners of the Egyptians wherein are these words Unus illis Deus est hunc Christiani hunc Iudaei hunc omnes vener antur gentes They had one God whom Christians and Iews and all Nations worshipped Is. Casaubon suspects this passage but without any reason as Salmasius proves and is apparent because the same thing is said in the beginning of the same Epistle Where he saith that however they differed in other points yet they all agreed in the worship of Sarapis by whom Phylarchus in Plutarch understands That God which Governs the World and Seguinus shews from ancient Coynes and Authors that Sarapis and Iupiter Ammon and Iupiter Pharius and Iupiter rerum omnium potens were all one Thence the Inscriptions D.E.O. I.N.V.I.C.T.O. S.E.R.A.P.I. S.E.R.V.A.T.O.R.I. D.E.O. M.A.G.N.O. S.E.R.A.P.I. and that mentioned by Tristan I.O.M. S.A.R.A.P.I.D.I. P.R.O. S.A.L.V.T.E. I.M.P. From which it appears that supposing the Israelites did relapse to the Egyptian Idolatry it doth not from thence follow that they did not worship the true God by an Image I proceed now to the two Calves of Ieroboam at Dan and Bethel which being made in imitation of the Golden Calf must stand or fall by what hath been said already concerning that But I shall here make good the peculiar arguments to Ieroboam's case which were brought to prove that he did intend to worship the God of Israel by the Calves of Dan and Bethel 1. Because Ieroboam manifests no design of taking the people off from the worship of the true God but only from the worshipping Him at Hierusalem For all that he saith to the People is It is too much for you to go up to Ierusalem behold thy Gods O Israel which brought thee up out of the Land of Egypt If Ieroboam's intention had been to have altered their Religion he would have spoken against that and not only against the place of it and to shew to them that he had no such intention he continued the same Feasts and way of worship which were at Ierusalem To this T. G. answers That Jeroboam 's end was to secure the Ten Tribes to himself and the likeliest way to effect it was the making them such Idols as their Fathers had worshipped in Egypt and the Wilderness and yet soon after T. G. represents him as a great Polititian that would not make any sudden Changes But could there be any change greater or more sudden than to change the true God for Molten Gods and Devils as T. G. saith he did which words if they be understood in T. G's sense for the Egyptian Idols and Devils in them was as great a change as could be made in Religion and too sudden to be made by such a Polititian He should have begun the alteration in the smaller matters if he intended no sudden change and first have gained some of the Great men to him to be ready to joyn with him when opportunity served with hopes of Preferment and Places at Court when these were secured then put in some of the vilest of the people into the Priesthood as he did to render that sacred Office mean and contemptible the better to prepare the people for a change then to send Agents abroad to tamper with the most active among them to allure some and to terrifie others according to their several dispositions then to give liberty to those tender consciences that longed for the Onions and Fleshpots and Bulls of Egypt and when he had by degrees prepared a considerable party that would be sure to adhere to him then by little and little to open the great Design to them which he aimed at all this while But it was too great a Change for such a Polititian to say at the very first to them Come renounce the God of Israel without more ado I have set up other Gods for you to worship and I command you all
inconsistent with the essence of a true Church And since no kind of Idolatry is lawful if the Roman Church hold it to be so she must needs hold an errour inconsistent with some Truth Most profoundly argued He only ought to have subsumed as I think such Logicians as I. W. call it but all Errour is Fundamental and inconsistent with the essence of a true Church or That Infallibility is necessary to the Being of a Church and when he proves that I promise to renounce the charge of Idolatry Now it is not possible saith I. W. that the Roman Church should bold any Idolatry lawful knowing it to be Idolatry unless she holds that some Honour which is due only to God may be given to a Creature I am afraid to be snapt by so cunning a Sophister and therefore I distinguish in time The Roman Church doth not hold any Idolatry lawful which it judges to be Idolatry or the Honour due only to God but the Roman Church may give the real parts of worship due only to God to a meer creature and yet at the same time tell men it is not a part of the Honour which is due to God To make this plain even to the understanding of I. W. The Church of Rome may entertain a false notion of Idolatry or of that worship which is due only to God which false notion being received men may really give the worship that only belongs to God to His Creatures and the utmost errour necessary in this case is no more than having a false notion of Idolatry as that there can be no Idolatry without giving Soveraign Worship to a Creature or that an Idol is the representation only of an Imaginary Being c. Now on these suppositions no more is necessary to the practice of Idolatry than being deceived in the notion of it If therefore T. G. or I.W. will prove that the Church of Rome can never be deceived in the notion of it or that it is repugnant to the essence of a Church to have a false notion of Idolatry they do something towards the proving me guilty of a contradiction in acknowledging the Church of Rome to be a true Church and yet charging it with Idolatry But I. W. saith That 't is impossible the Roman Church should teach or hold any kind of Idolatry whatsoever it be but she must hold expressly or implicitly that some Honour due only to God may be given to a meer Creature Such kind of stuff as this would make a man almost repent ever reading Logick which this man pretends so much to for surely Mother Wit is much better than Scholastick Fooling Such a Church which commits or by her doctrines and practises leads to Idolatry needs not to hold i. e. deliver as her judgment that some Honour due only to God may be given to a Creature it is sufficient if she commands or allows such things to be done which in their own nature or by the Law of God is really giving the worship of God to a Creature Yet upon this mistake as gross as it is the poor waspish Creature runs on for many leaves and thinks all that while he proves me guilty of a contradiction But the man hath something in his head which he means although he scarce knows how to express it viz. that in good Catholick Dictionaries a Fundamental errour and a damnable errour and an error inconsistent with the essence of a true Church are terms Synonymous Now I know what he would be at viz. that Infallibility is necessary to the Being of a Church therefore to suppose a Church to err is to suppose it not to be a Church But will he prove me guilty of contradiction by Catholick Dictionaries I beg his pardon for in them Transubstantiation implies none but whosoever writes against them must be guilty of many If he would prove me guilty of Contradiction let him prove it from my own sense and not from theirs Yet he would seem at last to prove that the practice of any kind of Idolatry especially being approved by the Church is destructive to the Being of a Church Which is the only thing he saith that deserves to be farther considered by enquiring into two things 1. Whether a Church allowing and countenancing the practice of Idolacry can be a true Church 2. Whether such a Church can have any power or Authority to consecrate Bishops or ordain Priests For this is a thing which T. G. likewise objects as consequent upon my assertion of their Idolatry that thereby I overthrow all Authority and Iurisdiction in the Church of England as being derived from an Idolatrous Church These are matters which deserve a farther handling and therefore I shall speak to them 1. Whether a Church may continue a true Church and yet allow and practise any kind of Idolatry And to resolve this I resort again to the ten Tribes Supposing what hath been said sufficient to prove them guilty of Idolatry my business is to enquire whether they were a true Church in that time This I. W. denies saying I ought to have proved and not barely supposed that the Idolatry introduced by Ieroboam was not destructive to the being of a True Church and several Protestants he saith produce the Church of Israel to shew that a true visible Church may cease Alas poor man he had heard something of this Nature but he could not tell what they had produced this as an instance against the perpetual Visibility of the Church and he brings it to prove that it ceased to be a true Church and the time they fix upon by his own Confession is when Elias complained that he was left alone in Israel which was not when the Idolatry of the Calves but when that of Baal prevailed among the people of Israel i. e. when they worshipped Beel-samen or the Sun instead of God Now that they were a true Church while they worshipped Ieroboams Calves I prove by these two things 1. That there was no time from Ieroboam to the Captivity of Israel wherein the worship of the Calves was not the established Religion of the ten Tribes this is evident from the expression before mentioned that the Children of Israel departed not from the sins of Jeroboam till God removed Israel out of his sight And it is observable of almost every one of the Kings of Israel that it is said particularly that he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam 2. That during that time God did own them for his People which is all one with making them a True Church Thus Iehu is said to be anointed King over the People of the Lord. And there is a remarkable expression in the time of Iehoahaz that the Lord was gracious unto them and had respect unto them because of his Covenant with Abraham Isaac and Jacob and would not destroy them neither cast he them from his presence as yet Would God have such
Mouse-hole but he soon grows too big ever to get out again For Baluzius saith what I affirmed and Agobardus saith no such thing as he affirms of him and in that very Synopsis of his doctrine by Massonus to which he referrs we have just the contrary Picturae aspectandae causâ historiae memoriae non Religionis Images are to be looked on for history and memory sake but not for Religion and what is this but for instruction of the people Whosoever it was that helped T. G. to this citation I desire him as a Friend that he will never trust him more for I would think better of T. G. himself than that he would wilfully prevaricare But if this were Agobardus his opinion why have we it not in his own words rather than those of Pap. Massonus who talks so ignorantly and inconsistently in that very place where those words are but are not set down by him as the judgement of Agobardus If T. G. would have taken no great pains to have read over Agobardus his discourse of Images he would have saved me the labour of confuting him about his opinion for he delivers it plainly enough against all worship of Images though for the sake of the Exemplar but he expresly allows them for instruction I am sorry T. G. makes it so necessary for me to give him such home-thrusts for he lays himself so open and uses so little art to avoid them that I must either do nothing or expose his weakness and want of skill But all this while we are got no farther than towards the middle of the ninth Century the Church of France might change its opinion after this time and assert the Council of Nice to have been a General Council and submit to the Decrees of it I grant all this to be possible but we are looking for certainties and not bare possibilities Hincmarus of Rhemes a stout and understanding Bishop of the Gallican Church died saith Bellarmin A. D. 882. and he not only calls the Nicene Synod a false General Council but he makes that at Francford to be truly so And these latter words of his are cited with approbation by Card. Cusanus and he condemns both Factions among the Greeks of the Iconoclasts and of the Nicene Fathers In the same Age lived Anastasius Bibliothecarius who made it his business to recommend all the Greek Canons and Councils to the Latin Church he was alive saith Baronius A. D. 886. He first translated the eighth General Council at which himself was present and when this was abroad he tells the Pope what a soloecism it would be to have the eighth without a seventh ubi septima non habetur are his very words from whence it appears in how very little Regard that Council was in the Western Church It is true he saith it was translated before but it was almost by all so much contemned that it was so far from being transcribed that it was not thought worth reading This he would have to be laid upon the badness of the translation he hath mended the matter much when in his Lives of the Popes he saith it was done by the particular Command of Pope Hadrian and laid up in his Sacred Library But when he hath said his utmost for the Catholick doctrine of Image-worship as he would have it believed he cannot deny that the admirable usefulness of this doctrine was not yet revealed to some of the Gallican Church because they said it was not lawful to worship the Work of mens Hands After this time came on the Midnight of the Church wherein the very names of Councils were forgotten and men did only dream of what had past but all things were judged good that were got into any vogue in the practice of the Church yet even in that time we meet with some glitterings of light enough to let us see the Council of Nice had not prevailed over the Western Church Leo Tuscus who was a Secretary to the Greek Emperour and lived saith Gesner A. D. 1170. giving an account of the Schism between the Greek and Latin Churches hath these words saith Cassander that among the Causes of the Breach that Synod was to be assigned which was called by Constantine and Irene and which they would have called the seventh and a General Council and he adds moreover that it was not received even by the Church of Rome About the year 1189. was the Expedition into Palestine by Fredericus Aenobarbus and Nicetas Acominatus who was a great Officer under the Greek Emperour Isacius Angelus and present in the Army saith Baronius gives this account of the Germans opinion in those times about the worship of Images When saith he all the Greeks had deserted Philippopolis the Armenians staid behind for they looked on the Germans as their Friends and agreeing with them in Religion for the worship of Images is forbidden among both of them Which being a Testimony of so considerable a Person and not barely concerning the opinion of some Divines but the general practice of the people doth shew that in the twelfth Century the Necene Council had not prevailed all over the Western Church when T. G. affirms it did for many hundreds of years before the Reformation Especially if we consider what the judgement and practice of the Armenians was as it is delivered by Nicon who is supposed to have been a Saint and Martyr in Armenia who saith that they do not worship Images and their Catholick Bishop or Patriarch excommunicates those that do Which is confirmed by what is said to the same purpose by Isaac an Armenian Bishop who lived in the same Century viz. that they do not Worship the Images either of Christ the B. Virgin or the Saints And Pet. Pithaeus a learned and ingenuous Papist confesses that it was but very lately that those of the Gallican Church began to be fond of Images and he writ that Epistle wherein those words are extant A. D. 1568. Surely he did not think the doctrine of the Nicene Council had been received in the Gallican Church for many hundred years But suppose the Nicene Synod were not owned for a General Council yet it might be very wise and judicious Assembly to say that is to reflect on the Emperour Charles the Great and all the Western Bishops in his Dominions And I am sure their expressions would justifie me if I had spoken sharper without an Irony for in the Caroline Book we frequently meet with such expressions as these concerning those grave Fathers ut illi stultissimè irrationabilitèr putant indoctè inordinatè dicunt quam absurdè agant quod magnae sit temeritatis dicere quod non minus omnibus sed pene plus cunctis Tharasius delirasse dignoscitur Deliramento plena dictio Leonis Ut illi delirant ut illi garriunt Ridiculosè pueriliter dictum infaustè praecipitantèr sive insipienter dementia
Ancestors to whom we give 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the second Honours next to the Gods as Celsus calls those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the due honours that belong to the lower Daemons which he contends ought to be given to them From which we take notice that the Heathens did not confound all degrees of divine worship giving to the lowest object the same which they supposed to be due to the Coelestial Deities or the supreme God So that if the distinction of divine worship will excuse from Idolatry the Heathens were not to blame for it 2. If this pretence doth excuse from Idolatry the Carpocratian Hereticks were unjustly charged by Irenaeus Epiphanius and S. Augustin for they are said To worship the Images of Christ together with the Philosophers Pythagoras Plato and Aristotle Wherein lay the fault of these Hereticks was it only in joyning the Philosophers together with Christ If that had been all it had been easie to have said That they worshipped the Philosophers together with Christ but they take particular notice of it as a thing unusual and blame-worthy that they worshipped the Images of Christ which they pretended to have had from Pilat which had been no wonder if there had been as many Images of Christ then extant as Feuardentius pretends viz. the Image of Christ taken by Nicodemus not I suppose when he came by night to our Saviour that at Edessa besides those which S. Luke drew of Him if there had been so many Images abroad of Him in veneration among Christians why should this be pitched upon as a peculiar thing of these Gnosticks That they had some Images painted others made of other matters which they crowned and set forth or worshipped as the Heathens did among which was an Image of Christ as Irenaeus reports it And supposing they had worshipped the Images of Christ as the Gentiles did worship their Images wherein were they to blame if the honour given to the Image be not the honour of the Image but of that which is represented by it And since Christ deserves our highest worship on this pretence they deserved no blame at all in giving divine worship of the highest degree to the Image of Christ. 3. The Primitive Christians did utterly refuse to worship the Images of Emperors although they were acknowledged to be Gods Creatures therefore I say according to their sense acknowledging the Saints to be Gods Creatures is not a sufficient ground to excuse the worship of the Images of Saints from Idolatry As in Pliny's Epistle to Trajan mentioned before one of the tryals of Christians was whether they would Imagini tuae thure ac vino supplicare use the Religious rites that were then customary of Incense Libation and Supplication before the Emperours Image this Minucius calls ad Imagines supplicare to pray before their Images which Pliny saith No true Christian could ever be brought to but would rather suffer Martyrdom than do it S. Hierome speaking of Nebuchadnezzars Image saith Statuam seu Imaginem cultores Dei adorare non debent the worshippers of God ought not to worship an Image Let saith he the Iudges and Magistrates take notice of this that worship the Emperours Statues that they do that which the three Children pleased God by not doing By which we see it was not only the Statues of Heathen Emperours which the Christians refused to give Religious worship to but of the most pious and Christian which out of the flattery of Princes those who expected or received Honours were willing to continue under Christian Emperours but it was at last absolutely forbidden by a Constitution of Theodosius of which I have spoken already in the Discourse about the Nature of divine worship But upon what reason came this to be accounted unlawful among Christians if it were lawful to worship the Images of Saints supposing them to be Gods Creatures Is it possible they should think the Emperours to be otherwise I do not think that the Souldiers who were trepann'd by Iulian to offer Incense to his Image at the receiving the Donative and after they understood what they did were ready to run mad with indignation at themselves crying out in the Streets We are Christians and ran to the Emperour desiring they might suffer Martyrdom for the Christian faith which they were supposed to deny by that act of theirs as Gregory Nazianzen and Theodoret relate the story did imagine that Iulian was any other than one of Gods Creatures or that they had any belief of his being a God but the Christians looked on the act it self of offering incense as unlawful to be done to the Image of any Creature or to the Image it self because it was a Creature and that of the meanest sort viz. the Work of mens hands 4. It is not enough for any of Gods Creatures to be worshipped under the Notion of Saints if any worship be given to them which is above the rank of Creatures i. e. any of that worship which belongs to God For none can have greater confidence of the Saintship of any Persons whose Images they worshipped those excepted which are revealed in Scripture than many of the Heathens had of the goodness of the Deities which they worshipped And if we observe the method which Origen S. Cyril S. Augustin and other Christian Writers took to prove them to be evil Spirits which they worshipped we shall find the great argument was from the Nature of the worship given to them For say they we find in Scripture that good Angels have refused that worship which they seem so desirous of and therefore there is just reason to suspect that these are not good Angels although they firmly believed them to be so and Hierocles saith God forbid we should worship any other And the Heathens in S. Augustin say peremptorily they did not worship Devils but Angels and the servants of the Great God So say I as to those who are worshipped under the name of Saints or Angels if in or at their Images such things are spoken or done which tend to the encouraging that worship which the Primitive Christians refused as Idolatry there is the same reason still to suspect those are not good but evil Spirits under whose name or representation soever they appear For it is as easie for them to play the same tricks among Christians which they did among Heathens for then they pretended to be Good Spirits and why may they not do the same still If we have a fuller discovery of their design to impose upon the world the folly of men is so much the greater to be abused by them and the Gentiles were in that respect far more excuseable than Christians because God had not discovered the Cheat and artifices of Evil Spirits to them so as he hath done to us by the Christian Religion Whatever pretence of miracles or visions or appearances there be if the design of them be to advance a way of
worship contrary to the Law of God we have the same reason to believe that evil Spirits are the Causes of them as the Primitive Christians had that evil Spirits were worshipped by the Heathens under the notion of Good 5. The Arrians believed Christ to be a Creature and yet were charged with Idolatry by the Fathers If it be said that they did give a higher degree of worship to Christ than any do to Saints I answer that they did only give a degree of worship proportionable to the degrees of excellency supposed to be in him far above any other Creatures whatsoever But still that worship was inferiour to that which they gave to God the Father according to the opinion of those Persons I dispute against For if it be impossible for a man that believes the incomparable distance between God and the most excellent of his Creatures to attribute the honour due to God alone to any Creature then say I it is impossible for those who believed one God the Father to give to the Son whom they supposed to be a Creature the honour which was peculiar to God It must be therefore on their own supposition an inferiour and subordinate honour and at the highest such as the Platonists gave to their Coelestial Deities And although the Arrians did invocate Christ and put their trust in him yet they still supposed him to be a Creature and therefore believed that all the Power and Authority he had was given to him so that the worship they gave to Christ must be inferiour to that honour they gave to the Supreme God whom they believed to be Supreme Absolute and Independent But notwithstanding all this the Fathers by multitudes of Testimonies already produced do condemn the Arrians as guilty of Idolatry and therefore they could not believe that the owning of Saints to be Gods Creatures did alter the State of the Controversie and make such Christians uncapable of Idolatry 2. I come to the second Period wherein Images were brought into the Christian Church but no worship allowed to be given to them And I am so far from thinking that the forbearance of the Use of Images was from the fear of complyance with the Pagan Idolatry that I much rather believe the introducing of Images was out of Complyance with the Gentile worship For Eusebius in that memorable Testimony concerning the Statue at Paneas or Caesarea Philippi which he saith was said to be the Image of Christ and the Syrophoenician woman doth attribute the preserving the Images of Christ and Peter and Paul to a Heathen custome which he saith was done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. saith Valesius inconsideratè imprudenter contra veterem disciplinam incautè very unadvisedly and against the ancient Rules of the Church And yet to my great amazement this place of Eusebius is on all occasions produced to justifie the antiquity and worship of Images if it had been only brought to prove that Heathenish Customes did by degrees creep into the Christian Church after it obtained ease and prosperity it were a sufficient proof of it Not that I think this Image was ever intended for Christ or the Syrophoenician Woman but because Eusebius saith the people had gotten such a Tradition among them and were then willing to turn their Images to the Stories of the Gospel Where they finding a Syrophoenician Woman making her address to our Saviour and a Tradition being among them that she was of this place and there finding two Images of Brass the one in a Form of a supplicant upon her Knees with her hands stretched out and the other over against her with a hand extended to receive her the common people seeing these figures to agree so luckily with the Story of the Gospel presently concluded these must be the very Images of Christ and the Woman and that the Woman out of meer gratitude upon her return home was at this great expence of two brass statues although the Gospel saith she had spent all that she had on Physitians before her miraculous cure and it would have been another miracle for such an Image of Christ to have stood untouched in a Gentile City during so many persecutions of Christians especially when Asterius in Photius saith this very Statue was demolished by Maximinus I confess it seems most probable to me to have been the Image of the City Paneas supplicating to the Emperour for I find the very same representations in the ancient Coines particularly those of Achaia Bithynia Macedonia and Hispania wherein the Provinces are represented in the Form of a Woman supplicating and the Emperour Hadrian in the same habit and posture as the Image at Paneas is described by Eusebius And that which adds more probability to this conjecture is that Bithynia is so represented because of the kindness done by Hadrian to Nicomedia in the restoring of it after its fall by an earthquake and Caesarea is said by Eusebius to have suffered by an earthquake at the same time and after such a Favour to the City it was no wonder to have two such brass statues erected for the Emperours honour But supposing this tradition were true it signifies no more than that this Gentile custome was observed by a Syrophoenician Woman in a Gentile City and what is this to the worship of Images in Christian Churches For Eusebius doth plainly speak of Gentiles when he saith it is not to be wondered that those Gentiles who received benefits by our Saviour should do these things when saith he we see the Images of his Apostles Paul and Peter and Christ himself preserved in Pictures being done in Colours it being their custome to honour their Benefactors after this manner I appeal to any man of common sense whether Eusebius doth not herein speak of a meer Gentile custome but Baronius in spight of the Greek will have it thus quod majores nostri ad Gentilis consuetudinis similitudinem quà m proximè accedentes at which place Is. Casaubon sets this Marginal Note Graeca lege miraberis but suppose this were the sense of Eusebius what is to be gained by it save only that the bringing of Images among Christians was a meer imitation of Gentilism and introducing the Heathen customes into the Christian Church Yet Baronius hath something more to say for this Image viz. that being placed in the Diaconicon or Vestry of the Church of Paneas it was there worshipped by Christians for which he quotes Nicephorus whom at other times he rejects as a fabulous Writer And it is observable that Philostorgius out of whom Nicephorus takes the other circumstances of his relation is so far from saying any thing of the worship of this Image that he saith expresly the contrary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 giving no manner of worship to it to which he adds the reason for it because it is not lawful for Christians to worship either Brass or any other matter no not