words and Christ then should but only administer matter for this great new rising Sun to quicken On the other side if I be not to follow anothers reason but my own what variety would there be in the world about the same thing not only betwixt man and man but betwixt one man to day and the self same man to morrow for the opinions which be totally from our selves we change continually upon the variety either of our own intrinsick dispositions or casual alterations from without and in each seaven years resolution we find a whole volum of new thoughts and judgments within us contrary to former ones we had of the same things diet clothing pastimes company nature providence books and yet all must ever be true for generally in all the ages of our life we are equally obstinate in that we set upon so that whiles reason is licensed to create a religion not only all the religions which any particular man shall run through in his life time but those also what ever they be which whole kingdoms and nations shall at any time accept of in a word all the religions of the whole earth must needs be justified And he can mean no less who would have that to be religion and only that which reason makes forth Both heretick and catholick both Jew and Christian pagan and Mahometan do all and every one stifly defend that his religion is rational that his best reason is with it and for it and that no right reason can be against it If reason that should follow once go before and lead religion it will sodainly thrust Christ out of his chair and separate at once all his Church from him For if I hold nothing but what reason dictates then is not Christ my master nor will there be any Church that may any more belong to Christ than to Democritus Aristotle or at least dame Nature If any reply that we must take the words from Christ and his gospel but the proper sense which words of themselves cannot carry with them our own reason must make out This indeed is true thus far that as we do understand languages and human words so are we accordingly to conceiv of their meaning as we know those words were either at first imposed or by long use have got the power to make out and if those words speak faith the same Church gives both words and sens together expounding them by her very practis which we daily convers withal but if any will further by his pretens of reason give power to any or all men to make out at his pleasur a particular sense of his own differing from the ancient meaning conveighed together with those words this must needs justifie Calvins private interpretation from which this new doctrin differs but in words whiles that is here called reason which he calls spirit and both do equally exclude the guidance of any Church besides the temple of their own heads in both wayes every one is in deed and reality chief byshop to himself and equally will religion be as various and mutable as our thoughts and answerable to the natur either of our reason or spirit here wide there narrow there none at all Nay what is there in christianity that one reason or other as well as peculiarity of spirit may not deprave and frustrate the gospel may be made to speak Mahometisme with one reason the Alcoran to Evangelise by another S. Paul had no doubt a very sublime intellect and yet he declares that his own and every understanding in the world is to be captivated unto the obedience of Christ and his faith and that all Christians walk by faith and not by species or evidence which is a quite contrary way to this that would have no religion but what coms from reason According to this all are to walk by sight and not by faith but in St. Pauls judgment all Christians are to walk by faith and not by sight this would have faith captivated to the obedience of the understanding St. Paul would have the understanding captivated to the obedience of faith And good reason it should be so for are not most part of the things our Lord revealed contingent and hid from our eyes And if there can be made no demonstration in nature of the things we do see and touch and convers withall as is sufficiently insinuated how can things invisible be reached and confined and concluded by reason and this indeed is the very ratiocination of Jesus Christ to Nicodemus whose word I should beleev although I did not my self know either the antecedent to be true or the inference certain and necessary In my mind it is a poor imagination to think that doctrinal words delivered beleeved and practised in the world for almost two thousand years should now at length be to receiv their true sens from a new doctour in our times which hitherto the whole Christian world wanted and through the universall ignorance of mankind could not till now finde it out and to adde for further countenance of the way that the Church hath three times 't is pitty she is not allowed her quatuor tempora in the first she walked by credulity in the second by probability and in the third which begins in these daies of ours by scientifical demonstration is as weak a fansy as the other for one and the same Church must have the same motives and grounds and practise and articles of religion which must needs be all of them excessively divers if that were true The same conclusions and articles can never issue from a dark credulity a purblind probability and a staring demonstration I know that in the second and all ages of the Church preachers and doctours explicated and declared their faith by congruous similitudes and reasons but neither then nor in any time of Christianity did they frame their faith either by reason or probability nor yet allowed it either to stand or fall by those means St. Austin Eusebius and St. Bernard lived in that which is by our new Rationalists called the age of probability and yet the first in his book de utilitate credendi confutes the Manichees for saying that faith is not to be admitted till a clear reason of every thing be given Eusebius in the fifth book of his history condemns the Arthemonites for straitning faith within the limits of human wit St. Bernard in his epistles confutes Abailard for the same fault And they were all three backt with that great apostle who speaks confidently that fides est rerum non apparentium Heb. 11. And again by another if not the same as great as he who said we preach Christ crucified to the Jews a scandal to the Gentiles folly for the Jews ask a sign and the Gentiles require wisdom 1 Cor. 1. So that in St. Pauls divinity as 't is Judaisme not to beleev without a sign so likewise to suspend our faith upon philosophicall reason is pure paganisme
autority which can onely constitute religion so likewise all anticatholicks both Independent Presbyterian and Protestant have the same power and advantage each one against another which any other may pretend against him scripture easy scripture interiour light and spirit whiles none of them will in the interim admit of any living judg nor of the autority of a foregoing Church wherein they found themselvs when they first went out and changed And I have already said and truly said that no man ever yet was impowred even from heaven to go out of the general flock but to have recours unto it nor considering the order God hath set ever can be Nor is there any surer rule of discerning a fals pretension than that of the Apostle Exierunt ex nobis which if it held good in the Church when that apostle was alive it must needs do so unto all generations so long as the Church remains by vertue of him who promised to confirm it and therein his deity must chiefly appear even vnto the consummation of the world And if we consider the first ingress of all these religions we shall find that the catholick faith entred our land first and chased hence our antient paganisme after it had been here existent a thousand years the Protestant went forth out of it the Puritan by and by out of the Protestant not to mention any further subdivision and the catholick religion entered by vertue of her own powerful integrity all the others by force either of Parliament or Sword that Church as she entered peaceably so she remained quietly all the time of her stay in the Kingdom but the others neither stay nor enter without disturbance she hath a rule to go by and a judg to submit unto in all affairs others as they will be their own judg so must the rule speak as they list and no otherwise which manner of proceeding if it have its free cours must needs work much disorder in a kingdom I have often marvelled that these various wayes of religion here in England which multiply without end or any hope of reconciliation have not all this while appealed to the sacred majesty of the King who hath been acknowledged by all the parties to be supreme in all his kingdoms as well in spirituals as temporals and head as well of the Church as State Certainly had this been don and that all had rested upon his verdict as they ought by reason of their own acknowledgment to do much mischief had been prevented But we were so far all of us from doing so that on the contrary first we secretly murmured against both Queen Elizabeth and King James and then broke forth into open hostility against his son Indeed that private swelling of the murmuring waters were an ill boding omen of the vast tempest which followed afterwards in the reign of our good King Charls with so dismal and violent a rage that it both split the ship and drowned our pilot We did not appeal then with submission to his judgment as by our own law and agreement upon our revolt from Popery we ought to have don but forced him imperiously to our own and when in right reason he could not consent unto it we made no conscience to destroy and cut off not so much his head as our own which being a singular unparallel'd piece of insolent cruelty never yet acted before upon earth it will remain an eternal blemish both upon the men and religion too so long as the world lasteth Did we sincerely think our King to be head as well of Church as of State how then durst we subjugate him to our selves in the affairs of both and under pretens of purity of religion oppress him from whom under God all our religion should be derived as the head and sours of it The body may prepare blood and vital spirits to be presented to the head but of these are not made animal spirits till the head receivs and makes them such for the good of the whole and from the head com down all those influences that be fitted and proportioned unto that life which the animal lives So may and ought every kingdom either apart or in Parliament assemblies to propose affairs unto their head but can take none as authentick till he have determined and derived them to us whether civil or spiritual if so be he be head of both resting quiet within our selves both before and after he hath don it for what hand or foot ever questioned the spirits which the head derived it or pretended either to mend or make them But we have by these our proceedings condemned our selves if we do not indeed think him our spiritual head as we profess in words of vise hypocrisie if we do beleev him so of inconsequent madnes But to remove the Pope the King is head with us and to remove the King the people is head and to remove one another each particular person is his own head So arbitrary a thing it is with us to set up and pull down power at our pleasur It would seem very strang to a rational man that the Pope who is in our esteem the worst of men should keep together the people of many kingdoms which as they be not at all subject to him in civil affairs so are they very divers among themselves both in habits manners language lawes and other weighty respects and inclinations in a constant unity of religion from age to age and yet a noble vertuous prudent King should not be able to do so much among his own subjects all of one guarb one law one language for one age together the Pope all the while we beleev to be a fals and onely pretended Head the King an acknowledged and true one This is a greater secret and yet greater too upon this account that if any should fall away from the Popes religion the apostate runs himself into no more danger upon that account than what he willingly brings upon himself the loss of further communion with him and his Church for the Popes excommunication signifies no more and all the Pope can do is but to excommunicate him who before by his own voluntary act put himself out of his communion But the King hath a temporal sword in his hand to take corporal reveng upon rebellion and apostacy and the people subject to him in faith are likewise subject in other temporal respects and by their rebellion against him hazzard their estates and lives I know well enough that Popes are generally as civil and accomplished gentlemen as be in Europe and for the most part very learned yet can I never beleev but that there be others in the Christian world both priests doctours and byshops as learned as the pope himself and as wise too and accomplisht persons in any perfections either natural or moral and yet can none but He hit upon this feat of guiding the Christian flock in unity and peace Nay which yet augments the
the reason is very good for the true Church wherein Christ really resides is ever in a posture of quietness and defens But they that go out of her and set up new wayes of their own are ever in clamour and dissention which of them should do it best and the cry is heard aloud and without ceas Here Here. Christ is here saith the Protestant and not amongst the Papists nay quoth the Presbyterian by your favour he is Here nay then sayes the Anabaptist Here he is if you be at that quoth the Quaker you are all blinded men if any would find the true light com to us for here it is and no where but here But when all is done truth is not in division but unity not in sedition and clamour but meekness and peace If ten men stand gazing in a street and all agree that they see a thing there but disagree all in the description of it a stranger coming by will rather guess they are all mad than that they see any thing at all One thing I am sure of if all men would be humble minded and sober and cast out of their hearts the great prejudice they have taken up against one another they would see the better for it To conclude this subject for I would say no more than what may help to lop the vain and superfluous excrescencies of faction and dissentions about religion which perhaps none of us do rightly understand and would be loth to cut the tree it self to the quick it may appear sufficiently by what I have said and yet far more if we joyn our own experimental knowledg and ratiocination of further things which I do purposely omit that God is in himself an unsearchable abyss and his essence and counsels past finding out nay he is the great primo genial and father-abyss of all others not to be approached by angels or men but according to such few exteriour conceptions himself hath either revealed or imprinted in them which be far from reaching home either to his counsels or proper essence And who hath been his mate or counsellour that he should tell us news of him never heard before If any news there be of him it is surely to be had from Christ whom we beleev to be his very substantial word and the splendour of his glory and if Christ hath left any secrets of him to be revealed unto mankind we must have them from his Church which is the pillar and foundation and treasury of all his truth and if any Church is to be consulted I should think it should be that and only that which by an uninterrupted succession hath descended from himself which is that very same that first brought Christian religion into this land which without all controversy is the Catholick now by contempt surnamed Papist and if any one be otherwise minded etiam hoc Deus ipsi revelabit In the mean time let us be peaceable and sober §. 7. Obscurity of nature THe second abyss is that of Gods works and the whole creation which all men that have considered it aright find unfoardable and if any have not let me crave his company a while but in a slight survay of this wondrous fabrick and then tell me what he thinks When we confider those myriads of intelligencies angels and spirits and the whole intellectual world the first exteriour issue of divine brightness we are not then much nearer apprehension of any thing in particular than in the first abyss what they are either for substance or place or operation or extent of presence or knowledg or power or motion or order or any thing els in particular In the visible world we begin a little to find our feeling and know at least where we are but not much more Here we see a wonderful face of things but what els what is the basis on which all the frame stands and how is it setled upon it in its various and stupendious motions the order of things little or nothing appears their essences altogether unknown their properties dependances and mutual connexion obscure their limits and vigour and duration and influences doubtful their motions uncertain the mode method and chain of operation utterly hidden And what is it then we know wherein consists the excellency of our science that we should boast our selves and contemn the world and what are we able to determin in the truth of these things without uncertainty and errour This our ignorance of nature is sufficiently insinuated and evinced in that solid piece of moral-divinity in sacred writ commonly called Job from ch 38 to 42. It were worth my pains to insert here all that eloquent discours But becaus the Bible is in every mans hand he that pleases may read it there at leasure And although Doctor Brown say in his Vulgar errours as I remember that the difficulties of nature there propounded will now adayes be easily answered by every puny scholler yet those words of his be unwary both becaus those intricacies of the creation are there propounded by no less a person than almighty God as insoluble and not to be dived into by man as also becaus the Doctour if he consider right cannot but know that he that were able to give a full satsifactory reason even of the smaller things in nature as the winde or rain would be able to tell what weather it would be or what wind would blow every day in the year in any part of the earth until the worlds end so sure and fixed is the whole frame of nature But such kind of puny schollers the world never yet saw And although man sees and knows enough in nature to make him admire and adore the Authour yet not to contend with him in questions and replies about it The whole world is an immens intangled gordian knot which the wisest of men could never yet untye or discern the intermingled series of the many voluminous causes concatenated therein Even the progress of a poor plant from its seed to its decay who can declare or conceiv it so many several seeds both of plants and animals how do they shoot forth so orderly into their parts and organs peculiar each one to themselvs where lies that celestial particle in the little seminal origen which is the spring of life and motion in every thing In the first primogenial sours how is distinguished either kind from kinde or part from part in the same kind and which is that part that is to run forth into the head and which into the arms and how is it done I see wheat and barley elm and oak hors and man to shoot up constantly each one from their own seed in their own proper and peculiar mode and method and perhaps an angel or intelligence may distinctly see the reason of all in the very seeds for som reason is certainly there to be seen but what man can do it how comes such variety of bulk parts odour and colour unto
much in that age as in the first when she took her faith from him that did manifestly so comport himself as if he would be taken for a God and promised his Church by the general spirit he would send her to teach her all truth and strengthen her therein against all opposition even to the consummation of the world which none but God or one exceeding near unto him could make good and if this were not performed the imposture was in the first beginning That building must needs stand firm that rests upon a Deity which hath influence upon the whole fabrick to keep it up and if it be not so kept up and conserved the Church doth but vainly flatter her self when she boasts of the divinity of her support if she fail in her doctrin and faith Christ is not God Whensoever therfor we read either in the Acts of the apostles or other ancient story of the conversion of a Kingdom or people unto the right religion of Christianity we still find it was done not by any private illumination of any one who living before in darknes with the rest was now secretly called to teach others but by a resignation unto a former doctrin brought from Christ by his missioners and preachers by submission to a truth delivered to them from without not rising up within them Faith comes by hearing and every man upon earth that hath ever been approved Christian received it that way and was made thereby not a maister but disciple to the Church Wheras on the other side this spirit and light and such like discoveries we so frequently talk of makes us not schollers but maisters ipso facto and urges not to submit to foregoers but to condemn them not to resign our own but to captivate others understandings not to go to the Church but to go out of it and that upon the single motive of a new illumination which none had before us and we from no body I know well enough that a man cannot be converted and becom a good Christian without the assistance of Gods grace exciting and cooperating with us to our good when the truth is taught and revealed to us But this I suppose is not the Light men talk of for this is rather in the affection and will than in the understanding and bids us hearken to another not to our selves to join with a Church already planted not to begin a new one of our own heads It sayes not to us make a vineyard of your own but go into mine And the intellectuall Light men speak of if we have any we receiv it afterwards as a reward of our humility in that Church where we did not kindle it but found it already burning to guide our feet by it in the wayes of peace Crede intelliges said a great Prophet Beleev and you shall understand but we must beleev first and by that obscure step of beleef which is as a duksy twi-light between the darknes of infidelity we lived in before and the light of truth we go to arrive we to all future happines But we in England that pretend this new Light and secret Spirit are separated by it from a former Church but brought to none nor are we made disciples by it but maisters on the sudden and enabled to teach all men that which we never received from any which is absolutely against the whole cours of Christianity and will if it be admitted set open a gap unto all fanatick fansies St. Paul professes he was apostle not of men nor by men but by God and the reason is becaus his first call was extraordinary from heaven as was likewise the suggestion he had to his mission and yet that God that called him although he showed him so singular a favour yet would he not dispense with his own orders and constitutions even in him but sent him to the good Priest Ananias to be by him instructed and catechised and admitted into his Church and with those people St. Paul found in the profession of that faith did he often conferre even he that was so strangly called from heaven conferred the Gospel which afterwards he preached as himself speaks in his epistle to the Galatians with those people and with that Church he found in actuall possession and profession of that faith least saith he I should have run in vain that is least he should do or think or preach any thing amiss contrary to the truth received unto which he was called which he could no otherwaies by the constitutions Jesus himself had made be assured of but by comparing his doctrin with that which was believed and practised in the Church before him into which he was now incorporated as a member in that body by the assistance of the grace he had received to be first a disciple and then afterwards a maister and teacher and when he did become a doctour he did not make himself one no nor his calling by Christ sufficed to do it but he was made such a one under the hands of the apostles and by their approbation autority and sacred ordination as may be seen in the book of the Acts ch 13. Nor was he to teach without that Churches leav or contrary to her faith but by her direction and in subjection to her This is a faithful speech and worthy of all consideration which seriously pondered would dissipate in a moment all whatsoever pretences of light spirit reason or other thing that shall mov any to a new way by himself contrary to what he hath received seen practised in the Church before him And if any would seriously peruse the Acts of the apostles wherein the footsteps of primitive Christianity fufficiently appear he shall find that all that were called unto Christs religion were brought to the feet of the apostles and priests who received them at the door and brought them into the hous of God by the laver of Baptisme and imposition of hands and confession of sins and it was not onely the ordinary but sole ingress into that Church and none were ever esteemed to be of that body but only by those means which also the pastours of the Church were only to mannage He that comes not in at the door saith Christ is neither sheep nor shepheard but a theef and a robber And true Christian religion consists not in going out of a Church but coming in there to submit to the ancient dictates of piety which Christ revealed §. 13. Independent and Presbyterians Plea TO a judicious man whom a word sufficeth it will already appear that no opinion or way here in England can have any advantage over the other by vertue of discoveries made by any light spirit or reason since there can no such be legally pretended to set up any new religion apart from the former but to join rather with the old which if it be not absolutely true Christ is not God and all Christianity but a human invention But yet
things of catholick profession don by him and the people he converted But partly by the great succeeding persecutions raised by the Roman emperours against Christianity partly by the unwearied endeavours of the Pagan priests here in the land against it about the time of Marcus Aurelius the Roman emperour and year of our Lord 190. there were hardly any remnants of it left in this island Wherefore our noble Brittish King Lucius moved by the fame of that holy faith sent to Eleutherius then Pope in Rome to entreat he would destin into our countrey some of his special pastours to teach us his Christian faith The Pope sent him two good priests Fugatius and Damian who arriving here with some few others who were pleased to accompany them made both the King himself and his Queen and very many of his subjects Christian And this Christianity of the Brittons no man I think will doubt it to be catholick since the whole profession of it both while the Brittons lived in this land and after that they were expelled by the Pagan Saxes into the mountains of Wales doth clearly manifest it if Priests living together in monasteries some hundreds of them many times together and exercising in Churches their priestly functions upon the reall and mysticall body of Christ if praying before crucifixes erecting of crosses solemnizing of feasts keeping of Lent vigils and embers honouring of Saints making oblations and orisons for the dead may as it needs must signifie so much Nor can it be imagined that Pope Eleutherius sent to us by his Priests any other religion than his own And this is called Englands second conversion as that by Joseph of Arimathea the first and both of them equally to one and the same catholik faith and no other which however now by a strange judgment of heaven it be for a time traduced yet in primitive ages it was looked upon as a most sacred and blessed religion and then persecuted by none but such as were profest enemies to Christ himself as I could show at large but I must make haste After two or three hundred years this Religion all that while profest in the land was again banished by the utter overthrow and flight of the Brittons professors of it into our english Alps in Wales where Christian and Christianity lay hid together and the pagan Saxes who had driven them out equally hated both their faith and them Wherefor about the year of our Lord 596 the time of emperour Mauritius Pope Gregory the great of his own proper motion and good will towards us destined unto the conversion of the Saxes or Englishmen who being then pagans had possest themselvs of all the English territories S. Austin byshop and abbot who with forty other Priests his companions all good children of blessed S. Bennet preached here so powerfully that upon one Christmas day he baptised more then ten thousand souls for which good work of our conversion the Kingdom of England ever owned that good Pope for their spiritual patron and apostle And the children of S. Bennet are indeed our very fathers who first begat us in Christ and regenerated our English nation to the life of future bliss This Christian religion brought in by S. Austin the Brittons could not deny it to be conformable unto their own catholick faith received formerly from Pope Eleutherius in all matter of doctrin although they were so transported with passion against the Saxons their antient adversaries that they would neither let their own priests whereof they had more store then they had use of go forth to their conversion nor yet forbear to disturb good S. Austin in his so pious a work But such good Christians did our forefathers the Saxons after their conversion prove that they yielded nothing to the antient Brittons before them yea rather they exceeded them so that all the land was stored by them with goodly monasteries of S. Bennets order brave cathedral Churches fair colledges and libraries manuscript crosses shrines oratories sufficient and wholsom laws for all occasions hospitals corporations and all that might be necessary either to our temporal or spiritual welfar And all our people were wholly attentive to their devout contemplations of a life to com in Christ our great redeemer Church and State being now most piously and prudently provided for when William the Conquerour in the year of our Lord 1066 Constantine Duca being Emperour of the East came in upon us from France and conquered us This valiant captain finding our catholick religion conformable to his own Christianity although he abrogated much of our civil law and used in temporal affairs too too much of violence thereby to subjugate the land more perfectly to himself yet he medled not at all with any alteration in religion nor once excepted against it but lived himself with the rest of his subjects both saxes and normans and died contentedly therein building of his own devotion som fair monasteries to S. Bennet before his death wherein God might night and day be served and praised for his souls greater expiation from that tinctur of bloodshed it might have contracted in his wars and vehement proceedings with the saxon nobility after his victory And in this same catholick religion did both Norman and Saxon live peaceably together and without any the least disturbance upon that account though for civil respects York and Lancaster raised broils enough untill the end of King Henry the eighths reign about six hundred years together after the Conquerours ingress into the land the people offering daily their prayers and orisons before the altar and sacred crucifix together with their priests and prelats all Roman catholicks without any schisme or disturbance From whence we may note first that all the three conversions of our Kingdom wherein we lived unanimously so long together were all of them to one and the same catholick Roman faith secondly that this faith as it represents Christ its divine sours in purity which all men might see if they would have but patience to examine it so likewise both in unity and unchangeablenes as there is but one God and he immutable so is there but one faith and it unchangeable Thirdly that catholick religion is so far from being an enemy to the state-politick as som reformers to its greater disparagement would pretend that it is the great founder and maintainer of it Nor ever had this land for so many hundred years it was catholick upon the account of religion any disturbance at all whereas after the exile of that catholick beleef in our land from the period of K. Henries reign to these dayes we have ever been either in actual disquiet or at least in fears vulgar heads uncontroulable in their fansies since they were by the reformation constituted in effect both judges and contrivers of controversies ever raising som new fangled way or other to disturb or at least to threaten and indanger our peace And it is a thing of much wonder
three things I could not tell what to think of First that both in the Churches of the city and university and countrey whatever the text might be still pope and popery was brought in Secondly that never any good thing was said of it but all evil Thirdly that contradictory opinions and practises were generally put upon that way and yet our ministers who could not but see it did not so much as regard it at all but equally flourished all of them in whatever they said against it without the dislike or check of any or so much as the exception of him who had spoke of it aforetime even contrary things in the same place If Popery thought I be so bad let it passe what a Gods name should we talk so much of a thing that is past and gone and buried with my grandfather and no man sees or is like to be troubled with it any more How coms this nois so frequent in all places about a poor busines as if it were don by design of defamation Are our ministers afraid we should turn Papists who know not but by their report what Papist means nor can no more understand what they be than we can tell what complexion Julius Caesar was of We know this way is every where spoken against and much evil is said of it but that has been don afore now to the best things and a general decrying defamation seems rather a conspiracy of interest than any deserved reproach And to what purpos since it is dead and gon should we speak of it at all much less evil and so much evil too We ought to speak well of the dead at least not ill for dead men do not bite and ghosts afright none but babes and to speak ill of another as it argues a fear we have they may be able to hurt us and a desire by our defamation to disable them from so doing so doth it fill our hearts with rancour which if the party be dead is wholy useles But it is a strang thing that popery or any religion upon earth should be such a fardell of trumpery sin and villany without any good at all in it Such a thing one would think were impossible to be found And it is yet more strang that noble persons should voluntarily lose their estates honours dignities in court and esteem among their neighbours who were it not for that obstacle would dearly love them and somtimes their lives too for a thing hath no goodnes at all in it The old Pagan religion contained in it many good things but this Popery is a hous of Judas all stench and rottennes for our ministers and the word of God must be beleeved And yet again let Popery be what it will if it signifie any one religion it is the strangest thing in the world it should be evil in both extreams that be contradictory and exclude one another Ministers speak ill of it that may easily pass and the highest ill I cannot gainsay it yea and nothing but ill they may have a reason for it But contradictory ills and so many of them and so tangible apparent ones 't is a wonder of wonders that one and the same faith and profession should be able to exhibite And yet I have never heard let a minister say what he will against popery that the byshop ever calls him to an account for it as it is don in other things even of less importance insomuch that Prynnes book against stage-plaies is now questioned Against Popery and only Popery all goes currant No man if he speak but ill enough can speak amiss of it and only here two evil extreams are not opposite One preacher saies that the Papists worship stocks and stones to which they are superstitiously addicted night and day another that all their religion is to worship a piece of bread One that their consciences are so daily tortured and afrighted with the fire of purgatory and doomsday and pennances for their sins that they never have quiet life another that they carry their top and top gallant so high that they will go to heaven without Christ and get eternall glory of themselves without any god-a mercy to him One that murders adulteries lies blasphemies and all sin make up the bulk of popery another that papists are so wholly given to good works that they place in them excessive confidence One that the Pope himself and all his papists fall down to pictures and commit idolatry with them another that the Pope is so far from falling down to any thing that he exalts himself above all that is called God and is very Antichrist himself He that hates and would destroy my person will not surely worship my picture One that they wallow without any conscience or fear of God in their excesses another that they nothing but torture their carcasses with disciplines and fastings as if men could not go to heaven in a whole skin One that in respect of chastity they villifie matrimony which the apostle calls honourable another that by a superesteem of their own they make matrimony a sacrament thereby equalling it with baptisme One that the ignorance of papist priests is so gross and palpable that generally they can hardly read latine another that the little ones which profess the gospel had by their simplicity prevailed over all the vast learning of the subtil popish clergy One that popery began in the twelfth age of the Church another in the ninth another in the sixt another in the fourth another in the very primitive times of the aposstles I cannot now call to minde the numberles contradictories I observed put upon the papists Nor could I ever determine of my grand Sires religion by such reports Wherefor after a year or two I put my self to travel all alone and solitary to make my long intended discovery Humansy speaking it was rashly done of me and I several times thought so when I met afterwards with troubles I did not then foresee that were even ready to sink me For in all my sufferings which were many and frequent I could not but think of my many dear friends whose weeping tears in that my humour I had neglected I beleev to this honour that somthing went before me to provide my entertainment and provoke people againstime for coming to spy the land for as loon as I set my foot on the other shore and ever since afflictions have still accompanied me Nor yet was I ever so much offended with any mans abuse as therefor to think ill of the religion which I knew him to transgress It is not to be expected that all the men of a kingdom should equally imbibe the religion of the place It may well be pardoned if only one in four follow pure sensual nature as they received it from the womb even amongst the best professions Religion is superadded to nature as salt and is several wayes imbibed by men Som drink it in as water and with a little
thing as honey and sugar in nature It is true also that the death of Christ upon the cross was both a true and solemn sacrifice but that is passed away and is the object of our faith not an external rite about which the Church may meet and com together at all times to worship God as is this representation of it which our Lord instituted for that very end before his death Nor is the passion of our Lord proper to us Christians alone as the real figuration of it which himself instituted for all the sacrifices of the old law were accepted in order to that passion to com even as ours in respect of it now past And since there were true sacrifices in the old law amongst the Jews why should there not be also in the new which is beleeved to be more perfect about which Christians should assemble to offer up with it and it order to it all their requests and praises For Christ our Lord took not away those things which God his father in the old law instituted as being not contrary to him but only perfected and changed them into better things both precepts sacraments and sacrifice too and of this last it behooved him to be more careful then all the rest for otherwise sith sacrifice is the only worship proper and peculiar unto God by utterly taking it away he had not augmented but dimished his Fathers glory All other kinds of worship we Christians have for certain which the Jews ever had invocation adoration vows hymnes feasts fasts faith hope charity and prais must only that which only is proper to the almighty be excluded especially sith we have all the reasons to honour God by sacrifice the Jewes ever had we are an extern and visible congregation as they were we have the passion of the Messias to be represetned before our eyes now with us past as with them it was to com we have the same God with the highest worship to be honoured for our sins to be appeased for favours to be invocated for received benefits to be praised But if any will be contentious and not heed all this which is nothing but pious reason let him look upon the primitive Church in the apostles time whereof we have some clear footsteps delivered us in the Acts of the Apostles and he shall find that the apostles and apostolical Christians placed their religion not in hearing or making sermons for they had none but in attending to their Christian liturgy and all antiquity will attest it The sermons mentioned in that book were only in defence of Christianity made to the Jews Pagans for their conversion not to any Christians at all Such was St. Peters first speech to the Jews and Gentiles that brake in amongst the Christians in Jerusalem after their Messach ended and the holy Ghost fallen upon them c. 2. after this to other Jews c. 3. c. 5. then to Cornelius a pagan c. 10. So likewise spake S. Stephen to the Hebrew Priests and Jews c. 7. Saint Philip to the Ethiopian Eunuch c. 8. St. Paul to the synagogue in Pisidia c. 13. to others in Iconium c. 14. to Gentiles in Macedonia c. 16. again to other Jews in Thessalolonica and heathen Philosophers in Athens c. 17. both S. Paul and Apollo to the Jews at Corinth and Ephesus c. 18. c. 19. at Troas also he defended Christ and his religion against all that resisted it speaking even till midnight c. 20. but this was dispute and so the text calls it rather than a preaching and made una sabbati saith the same text cum convenissemus ad frangendum panem so that it was not the work they came together for but an additament to it So likewise he spake to other Jews in Jerusalem c. 22. to Foelix and Agrippa painims c. 24. c. 26. to the Jews in Rome for their conversion c. 28. And no where was ever sermon made to formal Christians either by St. Peter or Paul or any other as the work of their religion they came together for nor be there other sermons in that book but what I have mentioned nor did the Christians ever dream of serving God after their conversion by any such means but only by their Eucharistian leiturgy and sacrifice bread-fraction or Messach as is apparent in that book I will mention but one place in the beginning of the 13. ch which speaks thus Ministrantibus illis Domino jejunantibus dixit spiritus sanctus c. Whiles they were administring to our Lord and fasting the holy Ghost said Separate me Paul and Barnabas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Erasmus renders well and truly sacrificantibus illis Domino which one text gives double testimony both to apostolical sacrifice and priestly ordination For that ministerial function no man can doubt but that it was a publick work of religion and it could be no other than their great Christian Sacrifice as the words do manifestly import since it was made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to our Lord for other inferiour ministeries of the word and Sacraments are not made to God but to the people but the apostles were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 administring leiturgying sacrificing to our Lord whent his segregation of Paul and Barnabas from the laiety to the clergy which cannot otherwise be imagined to be done but by sacredotal consecration was to be effected And all that whole book testifies sufficiently that the apostles and primitive Christians ever came together to their Dominicum or Educhdrist to their liturgy or messach and not to any sermon not ad audiendam concionem but ad frangendum panem It would griev any Christian heart to see the poor Catholicks of England so miserably harassed pillaged imprisoned hated hanged by their own allies and countreymen as they have been now a hundred years for the profession of that great work of Christianity which Christ and his apostles taught them and that they should undergo the same disgrace and ruin by such as call themselves Christians yea the only pure ones for that very self same act of Religion for which both the Apostles themselves and all primitive Christians were so cruelly persecuted by Jew and Pagan But the God of mercies look in his good time both upon the persecutour and sufferer with compassion and favour them becaus they have done it ignorantly in incredulity these becaus for his fear and love they have persevered hitherto through many great afflictions in his service and patiently withstood all opposition even unto bloodshed and death until this day But Catholicks had their lession read them long ago and they have it by heart by this time They will saith their Lord and master lay their hands upon you and persecute you delivering you into custody and prisons dragging you before Kings and presidents for my names sake and ye shall be betraied by parents children kinsfolk and friends and some of you they will put to death and ye shall be a hatred unto all
experience hath proved it for every one hath a text both to defend himself and oppose his neighbour whether it be in earnest or as it often happens in sport and jest whether wrong or rightly applied Nor can the Bible be well translated for the original carries oftentimes so great a latitude and amplitude of senses that it cannot be brought into a vulgar tongue without confineing the signification to the great alteration and perhaps subversion of the holy penmans intention Besides when men write or speak with a special peculiarity of spirit as all indeed do but those holy writers much more this genius of theirs is so lapt up in their own words or sounds that by transmigration out of the coverture in which that Spirit was born and bred as a snail in her shell it doth in a manner quite expire and vanish We find daily that books translated out of one tongue into another lose much of their connatural grace and sweetness if not all the whole genuine power and life they carried in their own character So ticklish and volatile a thing is that hidden genius couched in the rinde of mens words Nor is a man better known by his face than writings I mean if he draw his discours and sens out of his own bowels for otherwise if he be only a book botcher or collectour out of other authours it will signifie little which I take to be the reason why many spiritual books written in these times out of antient contemplatives although the matter is the same and the language mended yet be they in these penmen but dry unsavory stuff which in the first authour was a fragrant ravishing devotion the good things therin contained have by their transmigration lost their own spirit and the latter authour if so I may call him had not another to give them answerable to their nature By all this I would say thus much that the Bible translated out of its own sacred phrase into a prophane and common one loses both its own property and amplitude of meaning and is likewise devested of its peculiar majesty holines and spirit which is reason enough if there were no other why it should be kept inviolate in its own stile and speech Sacred doctrin like the persons is not to pass de domo in domum but remain under that roof which first covered them And as for peoples instructions it is as I said before to be made by the priests and pastours of the religion on whose lips the sacred knowledg hangs and thence drops down upon the assembly out of that book according to occasion and times as holy Church whole book that is shall judge it fit We commit not to children the whole pot of honey whereby they may surfeit and hurt themselves but give them only some few drops upon a stick of licoras so much as they can digest and make use of for their health And if the book wherin religious rites be grounded lawfully may and in reason ought and in practise ever hath been kept segregated in a language not common to vulgar ears much more are the sacred solemn rites themselvs to be performed in a tongue that is segregated from common use answerable to the Book according to which they be executed which custom as it renders that great Act more majestick and venerable so doth it carry with it much of convenience and no inconvenience at all For thus the Church all over the world as opposite to Babel wherein were so many divisions of tongues shall as in heart and faith so also in lip and language be unanimous and linked together and the great work of Religion wherein all Christian people from one coast of heaven to another do unanimously conspire be so uniformly executed that men may in all places of the world meet with their own Christian Church in one mode and fashion both to acknowledg and joyn with it in their orisons Nor could otherwaies any one priest serve in several countries or administer presently in a place which himself or others with him had converted for which caus men studying to get that one language which is stretched as large and wide as is the catholick Church throughout the world have in all places one tongue and that no hard one to convers withall which did not the Church use it in her rites would in time be utterly neglected The Hebrew Church being immured in one Kingdom had not those many reasons which her younger sister whose territories are extended from East to West hath to keep her rites in a language differing from the vulgar and yet she did so Inconvenience in this practis there can be none assigned but only this that if the latin tongue be used at the altar then cannot the vulgar people understand what is said But this is not of any moment For first the people have all the whole scope and purpose and frame of sacred liturgy set down in their own prayer-books and if they will in their hearts and mind whereby they may if they pleas as equally conspire and go along with the priest in their devotions as if he spake in the mother tongue Secondly catholick people come together not for other busines at the Mass but only with fervour of devotion to adore Christ crucified before them and by the mediation of that sacred blood to pour forth their supplications for themselvs and others which being don and their good purpos of serving and pleasing that holy Lord that shed his blood for us renewed they depart in peace This is the general purpos of the Mass so that eyes and hands to lift up knees to bow and hearts to melt are there of more use than ears But thirdly there is no need at all for the people either to hear or understand the Priest when he speaks and prayes and sacrifices to God in their behalf Sermons to the people must be made in the peoples language but prayers presented to God for them if they be made in a language that God understands it is enough This was well enough conceived by the whole congregation of Israel who commonly stood in vaste multitudes without in a large outward court when the priest entered his sanctum sanctorum to offer and pray for them who all the while were so far from hearing that they could not see him this if any doubt he may both discern it in the old law and in our gospel too where Zacharias is said to be praying at the altar when all the people stood without Why then may not the younger sister Church of Christians likewise pleas and pacify her heavenly father with sacred words and rites addressed unto him in the behalf of the people although these do not understand nay not so much as hear what is said And what matters it if I pray for a friend whether he hear me or no so that God unto whom I pray do hear and accept of my humble addresses St. Paul wrote to Rome from
themselves have thought it an addition of honour to sit in that solemn and thrice venerable assembly though in a separated place Shall we I say mock and revile this sacred person Let not such a thing be said of us any more let it not be told in Gath or the streets of Askalon that we use any such rude behaviour lest the very uncircumcised Philistins condemn our vast inexcusable incivility Nor yet let us either envy or malign the respect which Pappists give to Him from whom they received their Christianity and by whose vigilance and care it hath been kept inviolate amongst them from its first ingres into the land even to this very day Shall our eye be therefor evil becaus theirs is good §. 30. Popery IN the more flourishing doctrins of the Catholick Church I could be largely copious but I have said as much as may suffice my intended purpos which was so far to excuse even that religion also that if all do not embrace yet none may persecute and hate it Wherefor I do purposly omit to speak of other more plausible parts of Popery viz. 1. The obligation which all who beleev in Christ have to attend unto good works and the merit and benefit of so doing 2. The possibility of keeping Gods commandements with the assistance of divine grace 3. The liberty and freedom of human will either to comply with grace or resist it 4. The sacred councel and excellency of divine vowes 5. The right and obligation to restitution when any one shall have wronged his neighbour either in his soul or body fame goods or estate 6. The power and autority of of the Church in her tradition and decisions 7. The fasts and abstinence at certain times from som kind of meats which is all the religion we read Adam was injoined to observ in Paradise that we may therby be more apt to acknowledg Gods gifts and goodnes at those times we enjoy other good things of his bounty and at other times them and to sanctify our spirit for divine retirements 8. The divine ordination and unspeakable comfort and benefit of Confession 9. The caelibate and single life of the clergy who thereby freed from much solicitude of this world though not without som troublesom struggling against unseemly lusts of youth may approach the altar like angels of God who neither marry nor are given in marriage 10. The doctrin of indulgencies which be nothing els but a releas from som temporal penalties due to sin after repentance and remission which the Church does generally bestow by commutation as when for example an indulgence of such penalties for so many daies or years is granted unto such as upon the time appointed shall repent and confess fast pray give almes and communicate for the Churches preservation and concord of Christian princes which is a doctrin as rational and well grounded as any in Christianity though we in England will not understand it 11. Finally the ecclesiastick hierarchy and supremacy whereby catholick religion like a flourishing fair tree spreads his boughs in several kingdoms of the earth even from sea to sea so united all of it in all its parts and connexed together that ther is no catholick upon earth but is under som priest all priests subordinated to their byshops these to their metropolitan all metropolitans to the Patriarchs and Patriarchs united in the Papal cone every leaf cleavs to som twig every twig to som branch every branch to som bough every bough to the bole and the bole to the root And several other such like points of the Roman religion which coming all together from once hand have stood unchangeable in all ages the same and depending all upon the verity of the first revealer have an equality of truth though not of weight These and several others with the other half dozen more offensive doctrins I have cleared and explicated our reformers cut off at one blow when they taught us that it would suffice to salvation only to beleev in Christ without any more ado and that other things were popish superstitions whereby we became a strang kind of servants that beleev their maister but heed not either to fulfil his orders or do his commands For they told us and we have hitherto beleeved it That ther be no such things as good works pleasing to God but all be as menstruous rags filthy odious and damnable in the sight of heaven That if it were otherwis yet are they not in our power That with the assistance of any grace to be had Gods commandements are impossible to be kept and it would be therefor vain to attempt it especially sith we have in us no strength of free will to act any thing but evil That it must needs be foolishnes to vow unto God sith we can do nothing we ought to do and no less foolish if we have vowed to pay it That what wrong soever we do to another God is merciful and restitution fruitles both becaus one sin cannot make satisfaction for another nor any thing clear us but the blood of Christ alone unto which if we should concurr our selves by doing good works or satisfying for ill we should be half our own redeemers That the Church which presumes to teach other things than we allow is a fals mistres distracted and knows not what she sayes That to fast from sin is fast enough without depriving our stomachs of good flesh when we have a mind to it and yet becaus we sin in every thing we do neither is that fast possible to be kept That confession is needless How can man forgive sins That our clergy find themselvs men and not angells and love women as well as others and first revolted from popery principally for their sakes preferring a good wife before the whore of Babylon and the altars that kept them asunder are thrown down the honest pulpit standing now solitary speaks for them and brings them happily together That of indulgencies there is no need since obligation to penalties is shaken off long ago by our own autority without any indulgence from another That papal supremacy is the only obstacle to our liberty and therefor it must be abolished And let popery hang together as close as it can it shall go hard but we will find a battery to shake it So much indeed hath sophistry and continual clamour against popery and state punishments lying ever most heavily upon the professours of it prevailed over our judgments that now ther is no goodnes no worth no truth in it no none at all it is all naught all and every part of it naught nothing but naughtines superstition and vanity All that I will say for the present is this If popery be a bad religion more is the pitty for the professors of it suffer as much for it as might well serv for a good one Millions of people for the beleef they have in it and the love they bear its holy counsels and
promises of future reward do voluntarily and of their own accord forsake the world and all worldly pleasures to serv God night and day in poverty humility and chastity and multitudes of others of a secular condition in several parts of the earth have rather chosen to live an afflicted life in this world contemned abused pillaged beaten put to death by their persecutours than to forsake that religion and these too as noble and wise persons many of them as any the earth hath had But if any will yet be contentious and maintain his hatred still against Popery I earnestly request he would seriously ponder these few following Queries which I borrowed of a friend It will not be deny'd but that the Church of Rome was once a most pure excellent flourishing and Mother Church for this is not only by good St. Paul amply testified in his epistle to the said Romans but acknowledged also by Whitaker in his answer to Dr. Sanders by White in his defence of his way by Fulk and Reinolds and also by K. James in his speech to the Parliament This Church could not ceas to be such but she must fall either by Apostasie Heresie or Schism I. Apostasie is not onely a renouncing of the Faith of Christ but the very name and title to Christianity No man will say that the Church of Rome had ever such a fall or fell thus II. Heresie is an adhesion to some private and singular opinion or errour in Faith contrary to the general approved Doctrin of the Church If the Church of Rome did ever adhere to any singular or new opinion disagreeable to the common recived Doctrin of the Christian world I pray satisfie me as to these particulars viz. 1. By what General Councel was she ever condemned 2. Which of the Fathers ever writ against Her Or 3. By what authority was She otherwise reproved For If seems to me to be a thing very incongruous that so great a Church should be condemned by every one that hath a minde to condemn her III. Shisme is a departure or division from the Vnity of the Church wherby the Band and communion held with som former Church is broken and dissolved If ever the Church of Rome divided her self by Schisme from any other body of faithful Christians or brake communion or went forth from the Society of any Elder Church I pray satisfie me as to these particulars 1. Whose company did She leave 2. From what body did She go forth 3. Where was the true Church which She forsook For it appears somwhat strange to me that a Church should be accounted schismatical when ther cannot be assigned any other Church different from her which from age to age since Christ his time hath continued visible from whence She departed If these Queries were well pondered or if men would once beleev as most true it is that by irrefragable principles which all must needs acknowledg who will own a Christianity in general Popery may be proved to be as good a religion as the best then Facta est Lux. But this is a little beyond my intention which aims no further than only to put our passions to a demur for which it may suffice us to think that Popery is not ill And if I should yet say more and endeavour to prove it good those that be of that Way will say I speak too little and they who be not will think I say too much I had a purpos in the three last dialogues of my Reclaimed Papist to make Popery appear not only a good religion but the best and not only the best but the only sole Christianity which Christ planted upon earth and which every right reason that admits of Christ must needs approve But I hope I was therfore discouraged and hindred in that work that it might be left for som better hand and I should my self very much rejoyce to see it don It is now besides my purpos my paper also is already too much swelled my mind calls for freedom and my pen is dulled Acta est pars acroamatica sequitur moralis Fifth Chapter Moral topicks for charity and peace §. 31. Conclusion AS without the indifferency and moderation I have hitherto laboured to implant ther cannot be in us any capacity of a right understanding so ther be yet som moral topicks remaining which are apt to implant this moderation and indifferency as to consider first the sad precipices men have run themselves and others by their headiness and temerarious obstinacy in their opinions and conceits about religion secondly that the connatural excellency of a good Christian consists not in finding new waies to the reformation of other mens thoughts but putting in practis the old received well known dictates of sobriety justice and piety in our selves thirdly that charity which the apostle makes to be the end and highest perfection of religion and indeed all vertue suggests good and moderate thoughts of our neighbour c. But these and such like topicks be a subject fitter for a pious preacher than a civil logician and so leav them What I should speak at this time unto any such purpos take it in the golden words and phrase of the honourable Lord Chancellour the Oratour of the Land Gentlemen the distempers of religion which have too too much disturbed the peace of this Kingdom is a sad argument indeed It is a consideration that must make every religious heart to bleed to see religion which should be the strongest obligation and cement of affection and brotherly kindness and compassion made now by the pervers wranglings of passionate and froward men the ground of all animosity hatred malice and reveng And this unruly and unmanly passion which no question the divine nature exceedingly abhors somtimes and I fear too frequently transports those who are in the right as well as those who are in the wrong and leaves the latter more excusable than the former when men who find their manners and dispositions very conformable in all the necessary obligations of humane nature avoid one anothers conversation and grow first unsociable and then uncharitable to each other becaus one cannot think as the other doth And from this separation we intitle God to the patronage of and concernment in our fancies and distinction and purely for his sake hate one another heartily It was not so of old when one of the most antient Fathers of the Church tells us that love and charity was so signal and eminent in the primitive Christians that it even drew admiration and envy from their greatest adversaries Vide inquiunt ut invicem se diligunt Their adversaries in that in which they most agreed in their very prosecution of them had their passions and animosities among themselvs they were only Christians that loved and cherished and comforted and were ready to dye for one another Quid nunc dicerent illi Christiani si nostra viderent tempora sayes the incomparable Grotius How would they look upon our sharp and virulent contentions in the debates of Christian religion and the bloody wars that have proceeded from those contentions whilst every one pretended to all the marks which are to attend upon the true Church except only that which is inseparable from it Charity to one another My Lords and Gentlemen This disquisition hath cost the King many a sigh many a sad howr when he hath considered the almost irreparable reproach the Protestant religion hath undergone from the divisions and distractions which have been so notorious within this Kingdom What pains he hath taken to compose them after several discourses with learned and pious men of different perswasions you may see by a declaration he hath published upon that occasion by which you see his great indulgence to those who can have any protection from conscience to differ with their brethren And I hope God will so bless the candour of his Majesty in the condescentions he makes that the Church as well as the State will return to that unity and unanimity which will make both king and people as happy as they can hope to be in this world If aught yet remain to be said in the heavenly words of blessed S. Paul I shall conclude it all Quosdam quidam posuit deus c. Some hath God set over us in his Church first apostles secondly prophets thirdly doctours then virtues then graces of healing opitulations gubernations sorts of tongues Are all apostles are all prophets are all doctours are all vertues have all men the grace of healings do all speak with tongues do all interpret But do you emulate the better graces And I do yet show unto you a more excelling way If I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have not charity I am but as sounding brass and tingling cimbal And if I shall have prophesy and know all mysteries and all sciences and if I shall have all faith so that I can translate mountains and have not charity I am nothing c. This is the great rule of our happines and square of all perfection Et quicunque hanc regulam secuti fuerint pax super illos super Israel Dei FINIS
FIAT LUX OR A general Conduct to a right understanding in the great Combustions and Broils about RELIGION here in ENGLAND Betwixt Papist and Protestant Presbyterian Independent To the end That Moderation and Quietnes may at length hapily ensue after so various Tumults in the Kingdom By Mr. J V C. a friend to men of all Religions Jam proximus ardet Vcalegon Tantaene animis coelestibus irae 1661. To the most Illustrious and most excellent Lady the Countess of Arundel and Surrey c. Madam IT often happens in Books what somtime in Children that although obscurely born they are by the benigne aspect of some great Person happily cast upon them entertained and bred up in princely pallaces and flourish as much by happy chance as they could have don by a greater birth I wish with all my heart that this little Off-spring of mine which coms running with a modest confidence to the feet of your glorious Vertues which have only moved it to such a boldnes may find favour in your eyes so that incouraged by the greatness of your Name it may chearfully go in and out conspicuous in the world and do the good my heart desireth To the end it may bear with it some possibility of acceptance both Madam with your Honour and with the world too I have to my power imprinted upon its forehead the general lineaments of noblenes Reason and Civillity But other Ornaments are so far wanting that it may not expect entertainment but where som great part of that Goodnes which hath rendred the Countess of Arundel so renowned and gracious may inhabite The Book carries no other intent but what a Person of Honour may own and its purpos written upon its face answers directly to its heart and spirit It would for sooth pacifie our rurall distempers about affairs of Religion and showes a Light that Madnes may see what it does where it mistakes and how irrationally it rages This is the very end and purpos of my Book laudable enough I may presume and not unworthy the Countenance of Honour were it accomplished with that art so good a purpos requireth Let your own excelling goodness Madam cover the other defects and graciously accept what I humbly offer a sincere though not very profound not a high and eloquent but which is harder in the rude distempers I am to deal withall a peaceable harmles well-meaning Book In my dark obscurity I dye daily but my ashes will joy If it should haply fall out that good be wrought in England unto the promoting of sobernes in any one by the Countess of Arundels FIAT LVX and so will those with me who may chance to receiv any satisfaction from this little Light be bound to your Ladiship whose countenance and favourable assistance has been the instrument of setting it forth wherein you shall ever oblige me to be Madam Your Honours most humble and most devoted Servant J V C. The Chapters First Page 19. THere is no colour of reason or just title may move us to quarrell and judge one another with so much heart about Religion Second Page 66. All things are so obscure that no man in prudence can so far presume of his own knowledge as to set up himself a guide in Religion to his neighbour Third Page 140. No religion or sect or way hath any advantage over another nor all of them over Popery Fourth Page 213. All religions who have opposition to the Catholick are equally innocent to one another as likewise is the Roman religion truly innocent and unblameable to them all Fifth Page 365. Morall topicks for charity and peace The Paragraffs § 1. DIversity of feuds pag. 19 § 2. Ground of quarrels p. 27 § 3. Nullity of title p. 34 § 4. Heats and resolution p. 48 § 5. Motives to moderation p. 54 § 6. Obscurity of God p. 66 § 7. Obscurity of nature p. 82 § 8. Item p. 90 § 9. Obscurity of Providence p. 106 § 10. Help p. 118 § 11. Reason p. 126 § 12. Light and Spirit p. 140 § 13. Puritan plea. p. 155 § 14. Protestant pro and con p. 170 § 15. Scripture p. 182 § 16. Appeal p. 198 § 17. History of religion p. 213 § 18. Item p. 223 § 19. Item p. 229 § 20. Item p. 235 § 21. Discovery p. 244 § 22. Messach p. 254 § 23. B. Virgin Mary p. 267 § 24. Images p. 272 § 25. Latin Service p. 280 § 26. Communion p. 292 § 27. Saints p. 303 § 28. Dirge p. 323 § 29. Pope p. 336 § 30. Popery p. 357 § 31. Conclusion p. 365 FIAT LUX Preface The motive matter and method of the Book THese twenty years of intestin wars and broils principally if not solely upon the account of Religion being now past and the tempest ceased upon the return of our great Pilot to whom such winds and seas ought to obey unto the government of his ship out of which our unruly passion cast him to our own great shame and ruin it is now high time for us to lay our hand upon our heart and be sober An irregular fire of zeal a meteor-lanthorn hath led us into lakes and precipices and there left us But God forbid that for the time to com we should any of us by such deceitfull lights be any more misled And this that we may all heed as it is the earnest desire of all good Christian spirits so is it the onely scope and endeavour of this little book which I humbly offer and present unto the hands of my Countrimen especially the gentler and more refined natures of whose favourable acceptance I do conceiv greater hopes than from any vulgar eye which expecting to read the old common places they are fore-acquainted with in the usual tract and method will I fear when they miss here of both like of nothing But gentlemen by the highnes of birth and greatnes of their education have put on other affections and do somtimes more heed a plain rationall discours unto a commendable end though destitute of all guard but its own single reason than the ordinary large retinue of autorities and texts which may indeed much strengthen and adorn a book but hinder a reader in his progres and generally they dislike any new book that differs no otherwise from former ones than a new moon from an old one These past times between 1640. and 1660. and the horrour of them wherin we were afraid even to think and that in our private closets I intend not here to speak of for posterity should I write true and fully would never beleev it and if fals or imperfectly the present age eywitnes of the truth would slight it Besides I would not willingly now offend any whom I have been aforetime so hugely afraid of Charity also towards my neighbour perswades me that the long Parliament and all their adherents had an appearance of som great good before their eyes which they were not able to wield
for when they had all under their feet that might any waies oppose or binder their design yet could they never bring to pass any of the spetious things they made pretens of the great welfar of our Kingdom settlement of a pure religion liberty of conscience and freedom of the subject unto all which their actions were so contrary all these twenty years together that man could not discern by their doings that they did so much as mean any such thing whether it were that they did indeed never sincerely intend or were not able to compas or by severall concurrencies of affairs were diverted and jusled from that end unto waies utterly opposite both to our good and their own too I was ever of opinion all the while that the account of Religion as the case stands needed not of all other things so highly to incens us one against another unto such injurious outrages as past amongst us and found in my heart several times to put pen to paper and utter my minde but I was retarded by the two reasons of my own small ability and my Countries indisposition at that time to such discours But now people seem more calmly disposed and my self somwhat bettered by reading more books of Quakers Anabaptists Presbyterians and by the society of these and severall others Wel-willers Seekers Atheists Philosophers The books of Roman Catholicks I had perused and digested a forehand our Protestant Religion I understood long ago being born and bred in that way So that an exact knowledg of all I am to speak together with my long observing experience will I hope somwhat supply my other wants One thing incourages me not a little to this enterprize which is that I have frequently observed that it is not alwaies a muchnes either of eloquence learning or wisdom that strikes a stroke in asswaging differences or makes a right understanding between parties but such a hidden caus somtims in the words and gestures of persons as we may rather call it chance than any thing else I have my self pacified neighbours even in their hottest dissentions when others of greater wisdom and acquaintance have prevailed less So that I have thereupon concluded that these kind of feudes against charity may have in them somwhat of the property of the tarantulaes stingings which be cured not by the best musick but the fittest Another thing I must adde that I never yet heard of any that so much as endeavoured to allay our religious distempers by the generall lights I go upon without which notwithstanding every one will remain so fixed in his own way that little good can be wrought as by daily experience we finde it true The Prince of all to picks in the alaying of these kind of combustions is that of Virgil Sed motos praestat componere fluctus Controversies be written on this side and that invective defiances made on all sides without end confutations of Sects bitter enough every where objections and replies endles some for Papists some against them some against our Protestants some for them some by Presbyterians some by Anabaptists some by Quakers against all some by all sorts against the Quakers But all these kind of disputes be so far from quenching that they adde still more fewel to the fire and make it both to flame more vehement and last longer and spread farther whiles every one remains so inveigled and addicted to his own way that he execrates all the rest and cannot let fall a good word for any or acknowledge a truth in them but Popery the devill of Popery we are so transported with the hatred of it that we could tear it in pieces with our teeth My dislike therfore of such mistakes and ungrounded rancour and the love I bear to a right understanding urge me to attempt what I see in this way no others go about a mitigation of groundles but dangerous animosities I had the very same good purpos when I wrote the Reclaimed Papist but Satan hindered me in that and I am resolved now once again for the good of my Countrey which I dearly love to try if I can compas it another way But I am finally inflamed to this work by a sight of his Majesties most gracious Speech together with the Lord Chancellors unto the two houses of Parliament upon their adjournment in September 1660. where one may evidently see our Sovereigns most earnest and even groaning desire of a moderate and prudent comportment in this Land one of us towards another according to the dictamen of our Christianity and right reason in these matters of Religion together with a promis of his utmost endeavours to our generall satisfaction if we in the interim could but have charity one towards another till he may understand how to please us all Could wisdom and goodnes it self desire ought of us that might either be more facil or rationall or more pleasing than that we should be good to our selves And who would not endeavour to his power what he sees so great a Prince desires as a thing necessary to the welfar of our Land which for want of this moderation hath been lately so miserably harassed and undone My Lord Chancellors words upon his Majesties suggestion are these There are two other particulars which I am commanded to mention which were both mentioned and commended unto you by his Majesty in his declaration from Breda the one for confirmation of sales or other recompens for purchases the other for the composing of those differences and distempers in Religion which have too much disturbed the peace of the Kingdom Two very weighty particulars c. For the first his Majesty hath not been without much thought c. the other of Religion is a sad argument indeed It is a consideration that must make every religious heart to bleed to see religion which should be the strongest obligation and ciment to affection and brotherly kindnes and compassion made now by the pervers wranglings of passionate and froward men the ground of all animosity hatred malice and revenge And this unruly and unmanly passion which no question but the divine nature exceedingly abhorres somtimes and I fear too frequently transports those who are in the right as those who are in the wrong c. These be the learned Chancellors words set down more at large in the last § of my book so grave discreet and patheticall that if they were seriously pondered as they deserv might suffice to put us to a stand even in the highest carreer of our most uncharitable animosities upon Religions account How many waies does the honourable Oratour turn himself to move us to our own welfar how wisely does he select his to picks how sweetly unites how vigorously presses ab essentialibus ab effectibus à contrariis ab inconvenientibus à dissimilibus c. to this effect Religion is the ciment of affection must or can that be the ground of malice Surely that is an evil passion by what
histories make mention and it is a pleasant speculation to consider it But the method and severall wais of enhancing fame by inventions and discoveries of truths prosecuted by contemplativ heads what and how various they have been in the Pagan world we may in part gather out of Aristotle Plato Lucretius M. Tullius Cicero and som other few monuments yet kept amongst us What they have been in the Christian world lives more fresh in our memories but these are of two sorts one in explication and defens of faith against all opposition possible to be made by any kind of adversaries Jew Heretick or Pagan and this hath been the emploiment of the most sublime eagles that ever the Christian Church had S. Austin Magister sententiarum Alensis S. Thomas Aquinas Bonaventure Gandavensis Scotus and the like The other in opposition to faith which rose up in severall ages for the exercise of this mystick Body who was in his own person not onely opposed by outward adversaries but deserted by his own I love those eminent Pagan wits and this commendation they have that they are our first masters in all our Sciences that they performed what they undertook to write most solidly acutely and exactly both for judgment clearnes and method and thirdly that they confuted one another for they were divided in opinions as well as we and it was expedient they should be so not in reviling words as we Christians do but in sober and purest reason although the arguments of their discours inferred somtimes very little to the confutation of an adversary becaus they often proceeded upon severall principles not ever rightly understood or at least for more particular advantage wilfully mistaken And in this method of sobriety do our two great Schollers the Lawyer and Physician write when they put forth treatises either one body of art against another or one member and person in particular against another in the same body So likewise did our subtile Schoolmen proceed five hundred years ago with no lesse sweetnes of spirit than profundnes of reason whose intention was to explicate and defend Christianity even in the way of Aristotles Philosophy by which the Pagans had for a thousand yeaâ—… opposed it to the much prejudice of Christian Religion which the Priests and Doctours of ancient times would not undertake to defend by a Philosophy they found so much tending to atheism and in so many things fals that is to say contrary to the principles and faith they had received from Jesus whose word they preferred before all the Philosophers reasons in the world These Schoolmen divided into divers branches by occasion of a severall interpretation of Aristotle either in the way of S. Thomas of Aquin the Dominican whose doctrine for the most part was followed in Cambridge or of subtile Scotus the Franciscan whose chair was at Oxford And in other parts of the Christian world they had their chairs erected according either as chance or favour pleased But all was then don with no less exact charity than sublime reason for they had nothing els to do in their Schools but onely by argument and disputation to try the grounds and solutions whether if a Pagan himself or others antagonist whose person every opponent represents should dispute against them they could then be able to come off in their defensions with applaus and honour and without prejudice of their Faith But when we come to view the opposite judgments in matters of religion commonly called heresies especially in this last age for the rest before these daies have perished by the prevalency of one party against which all the rest bandied together as these be very gross and homly disputes so are they mannaged on the opponents side with so much unseemly behaviour such unmanly expressions that discreet sobriety cannot but loath and abhorr to read them Not reason but defiances not charity but execrations not subtilties but downright defamations not civil respect but vilest disesteem not cool perswasion but precipitous condemnation fills each page we look on and fire and stones fly about where meeknes peace and charity should most appear And all these religion-disputes whether we consider the subject they are about or the manner they are handled or the distracting variety into which they run concerning faith revealed which can be but one I do not see what other effect they can hav upon mankind but to subvert all civill respect and charity and good manners and laws and kingdoms where they come For no man is content if he pretend to have discovered a new way of religion unless all other men embrace it and press and pulpit must ring with loud cries against all that do not be they neighbours or superiours untill the sword it self be sharpened in our hands for battle Thus beginning with the spirit we end with the flesh It is not my meaning to interpose in any particular controversy whose multitude hath already made the world to nauseate but to hold up my discours in such generall tearmes as I shall think may serve if we lay our hands upon our heart and ponder them with a Christian seriousnes so many of us as be now uncharitably bent against our neighbour somewhat to allay and mitigate the many flaming heats of discord raging here in England as much or rather more than any other countrey for opinions concerning faith which as they are taken up at first upon self-conceit interest as experience hath sufficiently shown so are they upon all rules of Christian vertue and prudence if we ever mean to be happy to be deposed Be not many maisters for where all would sway there none obay and so ruin and mischief must needs follow The difficultie is I know not how to express the parties in this religion-feud that I may not offend for so bitterly is each side bent against the other that they will not endure to have them called by their own names But I notwithstanding should deem it not only a civility but a due debt so to do for that is every ones name by which himself will be called and not what an enemy gives him The Protestant is such a one and so to be named though his foe on one side sirname him Papist and his adversary on the other call him heretick so the Catholick likewis by his junior foe is called Papist by his elder enemy a Galilean and altho he may if he will yet do not think him bound to answer either to that appellation or this and therfore if I behave my self civilly towards him I can use neither And as it is for nomination of persons so likewis for the verities of their opinions no party will endure that any one truth of the other side should be acknowledged and he that shall do it will be looked upon as a common enemy by the rest Insomuch danger is even ordinary neighbourhood and civility amongst us when these feuds are once raised I have known good Protestants endangered these times
consisting both of the millions of invisible spirits and the great machin of this visible world he will be found as the only substance and all things besides him a thinne shadow he solid entity and the great univers in comparison of him but a meer show far more differing than the body of a hous or tree and the shadow thereof in the Sun and therefor high contemplativs have called the world a vanity a lye a shadow a non entity and so indeed it is compared with God wherein all being is subsistent in its substantial primogenial perfection It must needs be so whereby we may see how deeply the sensual and carnal men of this world are deceived in their judgments whilst they look upon this world and the things of this world especially that part of it they use for their pleasur and delight as things of true real and solid substance but God the authour of all as an aiery flying fansy taking the substance for the shadow and the shadow for the substance so grosly do we delude our selves in our conceits of God and for his good deeds towards us dishonour him in requital But the inveiglement of pleasures brings us below our manhood and makes us think like beasts The obscurity of this most high God and his unaccessible light not to use any further argument than what is vulgar and before our eyes will be made more than manifest if we do but cast our eyes upon the sons of men round about this globe of earth our selves inhabit and their various both inquests after him and conceptions of him If men could do this one thing exactly all further pains of implanting in us true humility instead of pride amazement in place of arrogance fear in the room of presumption self denial in exchange of that prodigious self-confidence that abounds and rules in us might soon ceas Who is he that dare presume in any way of his own invention when he considers as very true it is all mankind so many several wayes in all ages groping after a deity like so many blind men in a vast plane by the help not of eyes for who can discover or see him but of that pittiful reed of weak imagination And are not all these equally his creatures do they not equally show their love in seeking after him have they not at their birth equal right to his favour which before they were born they could no wayes demerit And how then can infinite goodnes so neglect infinite wisdom so far unheed infinite power so desert this poor wretched worm that very fain would love him would be very glad to find him would think it a happines to serv him and for this end seeks after him so incessantly so variously and by reason that he is a hidden God so fruitlesly as he does In this perplexity remains mankind till there appear a prophet or teacher to each nation who may direct and lead them But when this happens how much is poor man the nearer There be haply as many several prophets as there be nations upon earth for though two or three nations may follow one yet some one nation hath two or three and all these equally pretend to be divine tho their laws and rules and religious rites be not only divers but oftimes opposite What can we think when we contemplate this where is truth and how shall we have it sith we cannot find it out our selves if not from the hands of such as pretend to come from God And yet they cannot all be true which then is fals and who is true is there any way in nature to know it for all establish their own way and honour by all inventions possible within their reach somtimes by miracles which their own disciples believ tho others deride them oftentimes by visions and prophecies generally by a show of sanctity with a concours of threats and promises both present and future to the violatours and observers of their law And therefor if any be true as it is but a surmise to think it so is it a meer chance to hit it which is generally done by birth or casual circumstance of perswasion Besides a religion once established be it true or fals when it is once received it is then taken for true in the space of some succeeding ages is reformed anew by other teachers or interpreters who in time lead men out of the former way into their own somtimes slowly gradually and insensibly that they are brought into another religion before they be aware sometimes by open hostility to the former which whether by covin or violence yields at last to the ingres of a new one This is the right case and business concerning religion in the world people still being vehemently bent upon that they fasten upon tho haply it be quite opposite to the former wherein both themselvs and forefathers lived Such is the miserable instability of mankind which is a sign that God and his truth how confident soever men may be is ever hidden and in-evident for men do not use to depart from evidence let Philosophers dispute never so subtilly to prove snow is black they will get no followers a contrary evidence detains even them that cannot tell how to answer their arguments from a submission unreasonable Nor is there all this while any one sect upon earth but condemns all other wayes besides his own which he no less admires than he disesteems them yea separating from a former religion to another either in all things opposite or a part onely men are apt to inveigh as bitterly against that now as then they did against this and with equal confidence of truth in both places Where then is truth and who sees it Is not God indeed hidden does he appear at all to any for although all say they see him and his truth with their eyes it is evident enough by the mutations both personal and national that be made in the world there is no such matter from God and from truth no man does willingly depart as also by the opposite professions of it with such equal confidence that it is not in the power of any man to say of himself assuredly where it is Archimed had an opinion that he could move the whole earth had he but a place out of the earth to set his foot on and so must he who shall judg of this controversie stand in some place a part where he may oversee all not interested in any in a word he must be out of the earth nor is the atheist a fit judg although he may bear himself for one for as none can judg of men but he that owns such a thing as humanity so neither can he give any plausible judgment of religions who acknowledges none nor yet is it an easy thing to pluck up the general connatural seeds of religion implanted in mans spirit and sprouting forth rather into the profession of a fals religion than none Who dare
the scales But whether she do this or no is not to my purpos now in hand who intend onely to insinuate unto such as multiply opinions about religion both without and against that Church that even nature it self is vastly obscure and unknown to man who lives in it and nothing in a manner but only what enters our senses can be so certainly known and concluded by any that he may prudently either swagger or fight for his opinion And religion and the things of another world must needs be yet more obscure than those of this It is observable that Christ and Moses and other holy Apostles and Prophets when in their discours they touch incidentally upon things of nature their chief purpos being ever to teach the way of vertue and true piety they comply oftentimes to the capacity and judgement of the hearer what ever it be So Christ our Lord told us that at the finall day the stars shall fall from heaven insinuating by that amongst his other expressions the great disturbance of nature then to happen wherein comets which the vulgar calls stars may shoot indeed but the Philosophers stars cannot fall upon us out of the firmament except all return to the old Chaos and one System mix with another Moses calls the sun and moon the two greater lights and the stars of the firmament the lesser altho contrary to philosophicall truth when he intended to declare unto the people that have vulgarly such conceptions of them that sun and moon and all the other stars and planets were created by that God he revealed The Psalmist under the similitude of an Eagle which renews his youth expresses moral renovation which he might well do sith men had so fansied of the eagle whether indeed he do so or not The like compliance was used by him who told the people that the stars in their ranks fought against their enemies in which phrase he insinuated Gods providence in battles condescending to the peoples imagination who looked upon the stars as a pitched field of champions under the Lord of those hosts of heaven to defend the innocent Thus leaving us in the same imagination about things of nature they found us in they endeavoured all of them onely to chalk us out the right way unto that felicity whereof the knowledg of these and other wonderments of Gods power shall be the least part by serving him as we ought from whom have issued prodigies we shall never know in this life and who is himself the wonder of all wonders onely to be seen and known in the other Having seriously perused the Schools and learning of the ancient Pagan Philosophers this I finde that their disciples however conceited of their demonstration and knowledg did rather beleev than know any thing and the first maister invented himself properly speaking not so much a philosophy as faith Take Aristotle and his School on one side Democritus and Epicure on the other these two schools were mainly opposite both in their principles and whole body of learning And yet none that understand them well can tell by any strength of nature or force of their arguments which of them is with truth According to learned Democritus and Epicure all things began in time by a fortuite concours of atomes which in all eternity filled the immensity of space and as these made the world so do they by their incessant mobility work continually insensible alterations till after long time they fly all asunder again and make casually another world either here again or in som other part of the immens space quite of another mode and fashion unto this so that matter upon this account is all and does all According to Aristotle the world had no beginning but partiall generations daily wherin form gives the act and essence and matter is so far from being all that it is but a pure potentiallity and prope nihil almost just nothing These were the opposite principles of two differing Philosophies But were they known or evident to either of the maisters If they had sought for an argument to prove them they had laboured in vain one therfor conceited that matter was all things the other that matter was nothing c. and upon this conceit which nothing but the autority of the maister to whom they would adhere fastened upon the disciples they raised a Philosophy which being thus founded upon a human faith or fansy all their following ratiocinations could never effect that it should be rather called knowledg than beleef or fantosme And this is the reason why the ancient Christian Priests grave and learned men who had entertained an esteem of their maister above all mortall men would never give way that the articles of Christian faith should be tried by the principles either of Aristotelian or Epicurean beleef and since the disciples of those men would adhere so firmly to fals and indemonstrated principles of human teachers they thought it much more reasonable that they should hold constantly what they had received from a divine maister and not submit to the test of such ungrounded inevident and contradicting principles of men as much opposite one to another as all perhaps to Christian faith even Aristotles philosophy as well as the rest What more assured pillars be there in Aristotles school than these Ex nihilo nihil fit 2. quod incipit esse desinit esse 3 quae conveniunt in aliquo tertio conveniunt inter se 4 accidentis esse est inesse 5. ex duobus entibus in actu non fit unum 6. Ã privatione ad habitum non datur regressus not to mention others And yet those catholik priests perceived well enough that Christian principles were contrary unto these and these to them the first to creation the second to the souls immortality the third to the Trinity fourth to the Eucharist fifth to the Incarnation sixth to the resurrection Some ages after rose our Christian philosophers whom we commonly call Schoolmen and raised a fine piece of art upon Christian principles defended and made good even in Aristotles way And these becaus the forenamed and such other Aristotelian axioms carried a plausible appearance of truth in the ear they did accept them indeed but in a sens of their own so that they do not in this Christian school make out that sens they did in the others though they bear the same sound And it is pretty to see how one and the same axiom is made in several schools to butteres up waies that be destructive to one another God made the world in time saith the Christian and none but he could do it for it is not in the power of any creature no not of the highest intelligence to make a thing of nothing for ex nihilo nihil fit of nothing is nothing made namely by the power and force of nature though it may by God the first caus so speaks he The world is eternal saith Aristotle and could not be made
not in that manner the Evangelist uses or if he did he could not intend to affirm that which neither he nor God himself can make good Nor will we grant any thing to Christ but what we can do our selves or understand at least how it may be don If there were upon earth any speaking oracle unto whom all parties would submit in these affairs disputes would soon end if such a one be excluded or denied the very rising of them is as ominous as the blazing of a comet or coming of a whale into a river and portends great disturbance and desolation The world had that fearful apprehension when they first beard that Luther would shine with his own light and defy the stars of heaven But they were more than assured of much approaching mischief when they once understood that Calvin had left the Roman Sea to show himself and domineer and sport in the fresh waters of Geneva §. II. Reason WHo shall then set up himself for a guide to his neighbour in affairs of religion which must needs carry an obscurity far above all that is in nature and how and which way will he do it that a good disinterested judgment may approve of his pretensions There can no other way whereby any should now afresh after Christian religion has been above sixteen hundred years profest in the world set up himself a new extraordinary directour be thought of or imagined but either som high inconfutable reason internal special light or purer interpretation of formerly received Scripture And what man is there in the world can now wisely begin to pretend any of these things to the disparagement of the rest of the Christian world Reason carries the fairest show and seems most civil and manly and if it lean upon principles of faith formerly received it may do much good for the strengthning or securing of religion in weak beleevers but then it makes not saith but supposes it and must know withal and if it be right reason cannot but know that all argumentations are answerable which if they rely upon obscure suppositions may according to the height of the maisters conceit pretend much but can prove nothing irrefragably Did religion com at first by reason or must it only begin now A good beleever cannot but think that Christ the great maister had a reason for what he taught but he must beleeve first before he can think so and altho he had a reason himself yet since he taught us none we can have from him no other reason but his autority and this may be beleeved but not evidently proved for his miracles recorded and not seen are as pure an object of faith as his autority and person nay if I had seen them I could not have told my self unto whom the intricacies of whole nature are so much unknown whether nature and art might compas them or no and so might I conclude him to be some ingenious person or great naturallist but not a god Nor is it likely that Christ ever meant that reason should frame our religion both becaus he constituted such men to plant faith as were not any maisters of arts and if reason had been the business it had been fitter to send them about the world to learn than to teach as also becaus himself though he did oftentimes with subtil and most rational argumentations confute the Pharisees errours yet did he never by any reason that I can remember establish his own doctrin nor answer to any Quomodo though he was often put to it but still when the Jews demanded How can this or that be How can man forgiv sins How can this man give us his flesh to eat he repeated again his own assertion and doctrin and might perhaps confirm it by miracle but he proved it not by reason And it was very fitting if so be he were such a person as we beleev him to be that he should be taken upon his word and not stand to give his vassails a reason of his will If Christ our Lord had been no more than an ordinary wise legislatour yet could he not rationally intend at once both the unity of his Church upon earth and the guidance of all men in it onely by reason of their own for my reason is not his and may well prove contrary as well to it as that of my neighbours whence will result together not onely not one religion but also no religion whiles one neighbours reason differs from another and perhaps both from Gods Wherfore wise and holy Church hath in all ages both forbid her children to dispute their principles of religion in the sense they had received them and also refused to be tried before any Senate by the philosophy of any pure man to stand or fall by his axioms This is apparent not only by ancient writings of Christian doctours but by a fact of Emperour Julian who falling from Christian religion amongst other oppressions he deprived Christians of their schools of literature throughout the Roman Empire telling them by way of jeer that Christians need not any learning unto whom this one word Credo is sufficient And indeed it is sufficient for faith and must needs be both the sufficient and only means of conserving a Church in uniformity for religion must be somthing which may be common to all persons that profess it and equally proportioned to all capacities and conditions and such a thing is to Beleeve but not to ratiocinate all men both rich and poor wise and unlearned prince and peasant may equally beleev one and the same thing and so hold it uniformly from time to time but if that very thing were to be set up unto each one by his own proper reason the several kinds of beings in sensitiv or vegetative nature even from the oak to the mustard seed would not more differ than that one judgment in several men have there not been fifty or threescore several interpretations of these few words Hoc est corpus meum c. and almost a hundred opinions amongst the masters of reason about their summum bonum And if any say that it is enough for som great master in these times by the strength of his reason to rais a religion that is onely to be accepted and others of weaker abilities may either take all that from him or only follow and hold what themselvs are able by their own reason to reach This cannot satisfie at all for first if I must take a religion upon the credit of some great masters reason which my self cannot judg or comprehend I had as good take it from the first master and beleev as I do and not suffer another in these dayes to make himself lord over me and lead me another way of his own and he indeed that does so does not only by this slight put himself into the place of Him who conveighes faith but of Christ himself who made it for the sense is the life and spirit of all
I will not burden my paper with the testimonies of those ancient heroes who professedly affirm that they all rely wholly upon obscure faith and not upon any reason either topicall or demonstrative for their religion St. Gregory and Theodoret shall serv for all Fides non habet meritum saith the first in his homilies upon the Gospel ubi humana ratio praebet experimentum speaking of human reason that should precede faith Theodoret in his graecanicis affectibus speaks thus Cur nostrum credulitatis fidei titulum accusatis quodque nostris sententiis tradendis nullam demonstrationem praetendamus solam vero illis fidem atque credulitatem insinuare conemur quos rebus divinis imbuendos suscepimus Annon ratione plenum est quod Deo absque demonstratione credamus Which made St. Gregory Nazianzen tell Emperour Julian when he objected to the Christians their rusticity and ignorance that the one word Credere was the same to Christians that Ipse dixit to the Pythagorians But this way of setting up and holding that only to be religion which right reason will make forth and justifie is a rare and untrodden path and which ordinary spirits dare not venture upon and 't is held forth only by some wits here in London I suppose to dash out of countenance that grosser way of maintaining all by Scriptures texts and it will serv well enough for exercise and discours when good wits meet together as Cicero showed his eloquence in defending Paradoxes but it must needs be dangerous if it be once believed and reduced to practis nor is it easie to say whether solitary reason or a text privately interpreted would caus more and greater inconveniences this makes the skirts of the Church too narrow that inlarges them too wide even so wide that all Jewes Turks and Pagans would by this reckoning be in the truth which in effect is onely to say there is no religion at all quod ubique est nusquam est and so much is easily collected by the generall axiom joined with our own particular experience to the contrary for if nothing is to be beleeved but what can be demonstrativly proved and we find by experience that nothing can be demonstrativly proved either about Gods will his providence or nature it will thence necessarily follow that nothing at all is to be believed and he that holding the axiom endeavours withall himself to demonstrate the whole body of religion creates the like conclusion in mens minds without further words when they find he has demonstrated nothing The power of reason then will not suffice to set up a new guide and he that pretends this for his own preheminence before others must either actually in words or at least vertually in effect disable the whole reason of mankind besides his own which to sober men will not exalt his caus but rather render him and all his reason contemptible Some will object how can our faith then be rational or how can we give a reason for our faith if indeed we have none for it I answer that faith has his reason as science hath his and both be good reasons but very much differing the reason of science is drawn from the very intrinsick bowels of the truths that be known but faith draws his reason from the autority of him who delivered it this serves one and the same for the stability of all articles be they never so many and diverse as the Trinity for example and sacraments creation and the life to come whereas every several conclusion in science must have his own proper reason And one of these must not have nor can it admit of the reason that is peculiar to the other for then it should not be it self if science should have an extrinsecal reason from autority it would then not be species but fides not evidence but faith and if faith should have an intrinsical one it would not be faith but evidence He gives the best reason in the world for his faith that resolves it into an autority which is the best can be had and he that resolves it into his own reason as he cannot but run himself into danger considering the wondrous frailty and darkness of mans judgment in all things so likewise considering that the very essence and quiddity of faith requires to rely ultimately upon the credit of a revealer instead of defending faith he destroyes it To beleev no more then we see is indeed to beleev nothing Let wise Salomon and Christ our Lord make up the concluding argument Man saith Salomon can find out nothing of the works which God hath wrought from the beginning to the end nor of all the works of God almighty can he find out any reason of the things that are done under the sun and the more he labours to seek the less he finds although the wise man or philosopher should say he knows them he cannot do it Thus speaks Salomon arming us aforehand against the temptations of any who might endeavour to mislead us by a pretens of demonstration into erroneous wayes to our own prejudice Then comes Christ our Lord in his discours with Nicodemus wherein he teaches him the regenerating power of Baptisme which Nicodemus could not understand and makes up the argument to this effect If you cannot comprehend even the things you see and feel and convers with here on earth this is Salomons antecedent as the wind for example which you do not know either whence it comes or whither it goes much less must you expect to comprehend the invisible and celestial secrets of religion this is Christs consequence as if he had said these things are sublime and forreign and brought to you from another superiour place you know not and therefor to be submitted unto by faith and not to be measured with your poor reason which does not so much as know the things that be at home And it is an argument à minore ad majus And as for the two other pretenses of interiour light and pure sens of Gods word which be held forth more generally for the victory and preheminence in the contest somthing I have said already and somthing more shall speak in the following paragraff Third Chapter No religion or sect or way hath any advantage over another nor all of them over Popery §. 12. Light and spirit BY reason of this great obscurity of things whereby we are led into so many petty differences where otherwise there would be none we are so withheld from diving into weightier affairs that not one of a thousand does so much as think of them so that greater things we take hand over head and boggle at lesser which in reason must needs follow upon the admittance of the former The caus of all this is the narrow restraint of our judgments and considerations which seldom look forth out of our own doors And hence it is that if any one by casualty of birth society books or personal fansy adjoin
himself once to any one opinion here in England he sodainly entertains such a prejudice against all the rest that there is left in him no further place for counsel for all other wayes besides his own are condemned as soon as his own is accepted and he does no sooner think himself sure but all others must in the same time be lost And yet he hath but his own judgment for it neither supported only with the appearances of I know not what spirit or internal light which he and his enjoy and all others want And if a man press him once to further difficulties than himself hath thought on though without the reflection upon them he could never be able to settle any firm judgment about these things in particular one shall soon find that he heeds not any of those things without which the other could not be judiciously concluded nor is able even by the help of that light or spirit of his to satisfy therein either himself or other man which argues plainly that the spirit and light he pretends is nothing but his own private resolution not sufficiently amplified and yet irrationally fixed against all autority and counsel The Christians in antient times especially for the first four hundred years after Christ had many serious and grave disputes with the Jew and pagan which being rational and weighty and about the foundations of Christianity whereon the other articles were built did pusle even the wisest of their clergy to answer but after all the ratiocination ended whether it sufficed or no they still concluded with this one word Credo which the love of Christ had fastned upon them as emperour Julian comonly surnamed the Apostate testifies of them And this although in philosophy and logick it had been a weak answer yet in religion it was the best and only one to be made so that all the burden fell at length upon the autority of Jesus Christ who being both a man and one too that was crucified as a malefactor undertook to send forth religion into the world under the title of a divine Prophet and the onely Son of God almighty maker of heaven and earth which could not but at first make a disturbance both among the Jewes and Gentiles where it should be preached And the great mystery begins here and here it must end for this autority being once admitted from the Church that brings it all other catholick truths will follow by a kind of consequence from the same hands and therefor this autority of his which can never be demonstratively proved unto us that live now but only by vertue of the Church that derives it us Christ must maintain himself by signs and wonders and such signall proofs of his divine providence over his Church from time to time that his deity may somewhat appear in his Churches progres and defence and all other doctrins must be made good by it and the Church that first preached it to us In any age of the Christian Church a Jew might say thus to the Christians then living Your Lord and maister was born a Jew and under the jurisdiction of the high Priests these he opposed and taught a religion contrary to Moses otherwise how coms there to be a faction but how could he justly do it no human power is of force against Gods who spake as you also grant by Moses and the Prophets and divine power it could not be for God is not contrary to himself And although your Lord might say as indeed he did that Moses spake of him as of a Prophet to com greater than himself yet who shall judg that such a thing was meant of his person for since that Prophet is neither specified by his name or characteristicall properties who could say it was he more than any other to come And if there were a greater to com than Moses were surely born a Jew he would being com into the world rather exalt that law to more ample glory than diminish it And if you will further contest that such a Prophet was to abrogate the first law and bring in a new one who shall judge in this case the whole Church of the Hebrews who never dreamed of any such thing or one member thereof who was born a subject to their judgments This is the great oecumenicall difficulty and he that in any age of Christianity could either answer it or find any bullwark to set against it so that it should do no harm would easily either solv or prevent all other difficulties should arise by the same autority by which it was cleared For if Christ were not only a lawfull Teacher but even one that was greater than Moses as Christians beleev him to be and both the one and the other pretended this great work of establishing a Church surely Christ must do it in as great an excellency as Moses and with some advantage the doctrin and disciplin must be as sublime and stated as permanently as his and Christ who wrote no law must so provide notwithstanding that his Church might otherwise have one from him and keep it as uniformly as the Hebrew Church did theirs Wherefore as Moses after he had done all things which belonged to himself to do constituted Aaron and his Successours to be guides rulers overseers and judges of all Controversies that might arise in the tribes about any points of their religion he had written them So must St. Peter and his Successours be inabled by some equall if not more speciall means sith they also were constituted by Christ to govern his flock to captivate all men to the obedience of Christs will otherwise his Church could not go on so uniformly in all ages which uniformity is the glory and indeed the very life and conservation of a Church as that of the Hebrewes did Nor may any body prudently imagin that the Spirit of Jesus in his Church and all the members thereof cooperates in every one immediately unto truth as it does to grace for then why should he constitute doctours and pastours and bishops over us as the good apostle learnedly asserts in his epistle to the Ephesians Ipse de dit quosdam quidem apostolos quosdam autem prophetas alios vero Evangelistas alios autem pastores doctores ad consummationem sanctorum in opus ministerij in aedificationem corporis Christi donec occurramus omnes in unitatem fidei agnitionem filii dei in virum perfectum in mensuram aetatis plenitudinis Christi ut jam non simus parvuli fluctuantes circumferamur omni vento doctrinae in nequit â hominum in astutia ad circumventionem erroris Most excellent pathetical words where we have first the doctrin that pastours are set over us in the Church to guide us then the end of that constitution which he declares first positively then negatively the positive end is a perfect unity of faith which by that means must vegetate and fructify and grow up in one
witty jest and jeer and so having given it a flap with a fox tail they pass on soberly to other matters in hand as is commonly done in the pulpits of witty preachers or if they handle it more seriously they do either for their own advantage mistake the doctrin or the proofs they bring against it whether through fraud or ignorance 't is hard to say and the foundations of catholick religion which be tradition and scripture they do so variously expound in severall times and places that one text shall have twenty several interpretations which if they be not catholick pass all for good here and at one time an autority of a father or councel shall be accepted and diversly interpreted in another time and place quite rejected now one piece of catholick doctrine shall be vehemently cryed down and at another time taken up again and maintained and at one and the same time in several parts of the world twenty points for example of catholick faith shall all of them be somewhere received and somewhere rejected amongst Protestants for they being still their own maisters may choos and throw away what they pleas and as long as they list without controul wheras the Romans keeping still one and the same treasury of religion and faith afford matter for them all either to take or leave either to approve or laugh at as they lâ—st as a well furnished table affords wanton children both what they may feed upon themselves and what being full they may spoil and play with and cast to the dogs §. 15. Scripture ANd whence com all these divisions only from this that every man hath a reason an interpretation a light a spirit of his own by which the bible which is now in all mens hands is made to speak what we pleas and our thoughts and tongues are our own what lord shall us controul This is a sad case while all of us upon those only motives which all men may take up at any time to abuse his innocent neighbour proceed to mutual hostility without end The very books that have been written against Roman catholick this last hundred years as they be furious and virulent so be they also so many and various that they would if they were all brought together fill up the Tower of London and by them have people been inflamed to such a height against the Romans that their bodies dignities honours fame houses and goods have been ineffably harrassed to this day And yet no body can say what ill that religion ever did in the world until Henry the eights dayes when it was first rejected and persecuted and when we have laid them in the dust we fly upon one another and pull and tear upon the same motiv all that stands in our light Reflect countrimen upon your selves shall we continue in a contest that can never possibly be ended and being prosecuted to the utmost must needs infer a general ruin upon all for whatsoever we say against any one may be said by any other against our selves and proved by the same argument and the same thing may be done to us upon the same account we do it to another All appellation to a visible judg is by anticatholicks jointly excluded and to the Roman catholick with whom unity hath ever dwelt we will not return nor can it be yet expected for the general disrepute unto that way hath so filled our ears and hearts that hating the very name of Papist we have not power to consider soberly what their religion may be Nay we are verily perswaded even from our nurses milk that Protestants are the only professors and Papists enemies to the gospel although to all the world besides the gospel is well enough known to be the Roman catholicks own and sole religion by which they walked and lived here in England many hundred years unto a fruitfulnes of all good works before Protestancy appeared and we pretend to fight against them only for the gospel and with the gospel whiles they forsooth are beleeved to have nothing at all to defend themselvs but a little traditional trumpery of mans inventions with a greater heap of vices of their own And upon this account proceed all our books that are written against Papists and popery in effect like unto that picture that was carried not long ago up and down the Protestant world wherein was drawn a fair ballance as a type of the two religions in whose left hand scale hanged beads girdles cardinals caps monks hoods fryars cowles disciplines crosses to signifie Popery in the other a fair great Bible to signifie Protestancy which hanging upon the ground quite weighed up the other scale into the air as light as very vanity And so credulous is the generallity of mankind that by such toies as these we are carried away unto not onely a dislike but even the highest detestation and contempt of a sacred religion without further examination But what do I speak of the generallity of the vulgar Even our sober and most judicious men who in other things speak and think like oracles in this busines of popery are not abashed to speak like children that talk of hobgoblings in the dark so prevalent is a prejudice brought upon us by the virulent impression of often iterated calumnies Nor are we able by the restraint of this great prejudice either to read the books or ponder seriously the reasons of our catholick neighbours for their faith Yea I have heard som Protestants in other things most wise and judicious to say openly that as for Papists he loved their persons but their religion he hated in his heart the reason is clear he knew the one and not the other And as we do all of us by this old imbibed prejudice detest Popery though we know not what it is so by any new-received dislike when we have once bodied with any one faction we revile all the rest and none will yield to another although in all reason that religion that hath precedency of time with all the other helps any juniour way can pretend unto might one would think have so much if not precedency yet equallity of respect as not to be by a way that is new in the world so bitterly reviled especially when all that venemous bitterness which by any junior sect is cast upon his foregoer may and is as heavily thrown upon himself by his successour But thus rancour and malice spreads abroad in our hearts and whole kingdom against his rule and doubtles to his great displeasure who carefully obliged us to the contrary rules of love and which is to be lamented the first sours and origin of all these defamations is the Pulpit where both by word and example we are taught to defame and hate even those we do not know We may fear som great curs lies upon our poor nation for these our unnatural disorders even so far as to blind us that we cannot see the truth Unto his dogs set upon
both and let me once give a freedom to my thoughts I shall as soon question one as the other and if I do reject one proceeding rationally I must cashier the other also Surely the Pope canot but smile to see his book which is the ground and guide of the catholick faith he delivered with it to be made by the Protestant to speak protestantisme presbyterisme by the Presbyterian anabaptisme by the Anabaptist and quakerisme by the Quaker even as doubtles it would be a sport to Virgil if he were alive to see his Arma virumque cano turned epithalamist by one a prophetist by another an evangelist by a third whereas the poem it self intends none of these things but only the travels and wars of Eneas and doubtles our scripture it self might be made by these tricks of wit to speak forth the passions of Queen Dido Without all doubt and controul it is a most high inconsequence so passionately as we do to plaspheme a byshop who is and ever was acknowledged in the world for Pape or Father of Christianity as the most wicked man alive and a grand seducer and yet to hugge a book in our bosomes which we took at first upon his credit as an oracle of truth and then again first to fall out with him and then with one another amongst our selves about the meaning of that book wherein his own catholick beleevers all the while unanimously agree without any end pelting one another with texts and verses unto the utter ruin of charity not understanding for the most part either the uncertainty of our own reasonings or the dangerous consequence of our wayes I will utter a bold word but what I know to be true both by experience and irrefragable reason As the gospel cannot prove any thing being separated from the Church and the living and speaking oracle of him that sent it unto whose judgment both defendant and disputant must submit so neither without the help of that autority can it prove it self either by any argument which it uses none or by vertue of miracle recorded in it sith those signs and wonders there related are now as far from my knowledg as be the truths of any doctrins to be ratified by them so that I shall have as much ado to beleev them as any piece of doctrin they may confirm being all of them equally either motives or objects of beleef as I pleas my self And it is all one to me that am born in these dayes so long after those signs were wrought to beleev the miracles by Gods incarnation or Gods incarnation by the miracles since I may beleev both but can evidently know neither of them to be true so far as that I may use one of them as a medium to demonstrate the other If the gospel laid before me should work of it self any strang wonder in my sight then I might haply have some motive to beleev it but we in England inveigh bitterly against the present miracles that are shown in the catholick Church ascribing them all if they be true unto the operations of Satan so that according to this way I should not know what to think neither if the bible should do som strang thing before me and as little conclude of the past miracles there recorded §. 16. Appeal AS it is impossible to be assured that the bible is the word of God if we condemn him from whom it first came of imposture so is it certain that upon that book wrested out of the hands of catholicks against him and his who first presented it we ground all the several wayes of religion here in England whereof each body and faction does so far presume as to condemn all to death who will not approve them And yet if we did but proceed like rational men we could not but remain all of us in great humility and fear upon these surmises Does not the Pope pretend the spirit of Christ as well as we do not all catholicks so had we not the bible from them do they not ratiocinate out of it and show their religion thence as well as we only they do it uniformly we differently and upon their principles they build up Church and State we pull down all Put case we were all at this instant in our antient state of paganisme and a Priest or two should com to us from Rome to convert us now as then they did to Christianity with the gospel in their hands which they should tell us to be pure truth and Gods word which we never heard before if we should reject and disesteem them as cheating seducers could we rationally accept and beleev the book or would we not therefor cast into the fire that volum of theirs wherein were contained the summe of all their mission and news if we looked upon the men that brought it as impostours Consider seriously and think not to pull the snail out of her shell and then to keep one apart and crush the other without which it cannot liv Church and Gospel were both born together but the Church first at least in a priority of nature and must both liv together Christ the head must be authorised before he could teach and the Church established before any of her children could write a gospel nor can they with authentick autority write any thing but what the mother Church constituted by her espous the sours of all heavenly truths that earth can expect shall set her seal unto So that in any age to deny the Church and to accept of her writings to profess Christ and condemn her that brought us the first news of him is at one and the same time to take her autority and reject it to say she is fals and yet true in the same affairs As she gave testimony to Christ so did Christ unto her The same gospel ratifies both Christ and his Church the same Church both Christ and the gospel the same Christ both gospel and the Church too which himself established So then reason light scripture power of interpretation being equally to be found at least pretended in all anticatholick wayes and the Roman catholick although he have withal a surplusage of true and right autority from the Church and her pastour whom he ever follows yet since he never denied but strongly and effectuoussy maintained that he hath with him as much of true interpretation light and reason as any can pretend and so far more peculiar and excelling as the judgment of the universal Church in all ages from whence he drew that reason and light of his is in matters of religion that are not invented but derived to be preferred before the conceit of any one person who contrary to the very essence and nature of antient Christianity shall go out of the Church wherein he found himself it may most manifestly appear that as the catholick hath all the right and preheminence that any other may pretend for himself and yet a far greater too even that
when this was don it had ceased again had not Presbyterian Anabaptist and Independent sprung out of the Puritan disturbed one another and all the land by the same stratagems Thus Haslerig and Vane two grand Puritans antient and mortal enemies both of them unto Roman catholicks when at length they fell out and jarred in this last Rump Parliament they did both in publick and private with the utmost rage imaginable object Popery to one another which they judged both of them to be both the extremest vilification could be cast upon any one and also most advantageous to him that objects it every mouth and book in the long Parliaments time said no less of the Kings army wherewith he defended himself that they were all Papists and Popishly affected all the adherents of Tectour Oliver after he had broken and shamefully dismist the long Parliament said the like of it the friends of the dissolved long Parliament which were a considerable part of the land asserted the like of Oliver and his souldiers and so did great store of good Protestants otherwise grave men say confidently that the red coat souldiers were all Jesuites and Papists and the same red coat soldiers both swindged and pillaged all the land upon the same account laying popery to us all and made us smart for it over and over as if the very notion and name of Popery had even turned our brains and made us all mad If we do but hear any one say of his neighbour that he is a Papist our blood rises presently against him whom we never saw and if we know him one we shall beleev any evil that is spoken of him be it never so incredible or even impossible and are apt to imagin and speak it our selves in any place A rational man would hardly beleev that som English men should report confidently even in Rome to the citisens there that the Parliament men and judges who murdered our good King here in England were most of them papists who indeed were all of them more profest enemies to the Papist or Catholick than to the King himself So that the malice of popery once taken away and as it expresses catholick religion it deserves none we should not know in our religious feudes what to object to one another for disparagement It would seem a strang thing if after all our warres and the mischiefs we have either done or intended one another upon the account of popery it should prove at last so good and sincere a religion that we can never more truly commend our neighbour than when we lay popery to his charg deservedly nor ever act greater iniquity than when we persecute him upon that account But indeed if popery be taken as it is now conceived for a fardel of iniquity fraud and treachery then it will least agree to them it is most put upon and is indeed proper only unto them who impose it upon others Hitherto I have endeavoured to take all men off from any basis of private interpretation reason or light within themselvs whereupon they may raise a new religion and wars and broils to maintain it against the Church out of which they sallied And by this the Independent loses his conceived advantage against the Presbyterian this his against the Protestant and the Protestant his against the Roman Catholick What we are to fix upon I have here and there intermingled although very sparingly and he told us it long ago who said If any will be my disciple let him deny himself Fourth Chapter All Religions who have opposition to the Catholick are equally innocent to one another as likewise is the Roman religion truly innocent and unblamable to them all §. 17. History of religion I Have proceeded hitherto with a kind of negligent carefulnes as I may so call it not lapping up my discours with pithy argumentations and a formal order but letting it flow loose and intermingled that it may delight all and withall profit any that will read seriously but now that these contents of my fourth chapter may connaturally appear unto the sight of every one I will to refresh my readers appetite a little leave even that method too and that he may discern of himself without any further discours of mine both how all the several wayes of religion here in England are equally innocent and withall that the Roman catholick is absolutely unblamable I will make a brief narration of the ingress and progress of Christianity in this land unto these present times and leav the concluding inference unto every mans own judgment Truth needs not the help of art and it s very natural appearance is the best argument can be made for it I know there be many eaglesighted men that are able to trace the proceedings of states and policy and religion from far yet becaus generally men live at home and see no further than the present which suffices nothing at all for judgment in these our turbulent affairs I must crave leav of those great heroes very briefly to run over that story which although they do well enough know already yet to the generality of Englishmen whom in this my discours I serv and labour for is so utterly unknown that they do not so much as dream of any such thing In the thirty fifth year of our Lord when Sulpitius Galba and Cornelius Sylla were consuls all the Christians in Jerusalem except only the apostles being disperst abroad upon that great persecution which cut off St. Stephen the Church of God did spread and propagate upon that occasion into several countries not only of Judea and Samaria but Phaenicia Cyprus Antioch Damascus and round about beyond the borders of Palestin At that time Lazarus Mary Magdalen Martha with Marcella her handmaid Maximin a disciple and Joseph of Arimathea that noble decurion against whom the Jews were more vehemently incensed were after much pillaging and many injurious affronts put together into a ship without sail in which notwithstanding by the conduct of that providence they worshiped they arrived safe at last in Marselles in France where Joseph of Arimathea so far companion of the common danger with them left them to divine protection and is said haply by means of some Brittish merchant in those coasts to have sailed thence into this our isle of Britanny where by the power of his words and holy life having converted many of our Brittons unto faith he ended his dayes the testimony of whose sanctity that strange thorn of Glasenbury abbey which grew green and flourished every Christmas day remained even to our times This story of a fact so long ago atchieved although it be obscured by that vicissitude of time which at length buries all things yet it servs so much as we have of it to shew that the religion he brought was catholick since the same antiquities that speak his arrival here and his conversion of people mention their erection of crosses shrines oratories altars monasteries and the like
labour are quite concorporared with it and make as it were one body with the spirit thereof such were the glorious saints of the Church Som take it in as powdered beef or other flesh unto a perfect seasoning yet so as that still the flesh is more and hath the denomination these are upright good men preserved by the power of their religion from putrefaction and unsavorines although they be men still upright men Som take it in as clay in a less degree and more imperfect mixture but yet they shew it in their lives and conversation for it keeps them together and if in one action they miss of grace in another they recover it But som again in the fourth place are like a marble stone or brick which rubbed over with salt imbibes nothing and such as these have the name of religion upon them nothing in them and they may be met with every where especially in outward society and commerce for they are still abroad even when better people are retired and sometimes they will for their own interest get into inclosures too where they procure much disturbance and vexation to the saints In a word catholick religion is wondrous good and fruitful as it was said of Canaan and brings forth huge clusters of lovely grapes all over the land but there be also giants and the sons of Anak to be met with there and I escaped not their hands But God knew the innocence of my heart and I beleev his good angel supported me For the main I got the end I went for and having passed through some part of Holland and Germany France and Flanders returned to my countrey to participate of the miseries which our civil wars then commenced upon pretens of a purer reformation and further elongation from popery did bring upon us And out of the love I bear my protestant countrimen I set forth this little Light that they may no more be inveigled to infect their hearts and hands with the hatred and ruin of the innocent For catholick faith which we call popery is in it self a most sacred and pure religion it makes million of saints though it permit some bad ones even as protestancy which brings all things to a naked beleef that must suffice what ever life we lead though it suffer some honest men not apt by the light of reason to transgress so oft as they may makes a million of loos and wicked ones but this is the difference that there the few evil ones have som remors for doing ill here the multitude of desperadoes have none at all Catholicks cannot doubt of their faith if Christ who promised to be with his Church unto the worlds consummation be a true prophet and again if he be a true prophet then all reformers who jointly affirm the Church to have failed for so many ages must needs be in an errour But I com to my travels and particular observations so much as may serv to my present purpos §. 22. Messach I Was edified and amazed to see catholick people flocking to Church not upon sundaies only but every day in the week to their sacred orisons the bells ringing to that purpos all the town over not only every several hower in the morning until midday but at verspers compline and even at midnight mattens when all the religious of a kingdom are called up in the very depth of their sleep to chant forth psalms hymnes and canticles to the prais and glory of the almighty It deighted me to enter their Churches which be kept so sweet and clean and in such a religious quiet retirednes that it would make a man at his entrance into them as they say of the kingdom of Florida in a sweet spring day to forget wife and children and all worldly busines But when I beheld the deep reverence and earnest devotion of the people the majesty of their service the gravity of their altars the decency of their priests certainly said I within my self this is he hous of God and gate of heaven Alas our Churches in England as they be now be as short of those either for decency use or piety as stables to a princely pallace there they be upon their knees all the week long at their prayers many of then constantly an hour together in the morning and half an hour he that is least and my hous saith God is the hous of prayer but our Churches are either shut up all the week or if they be open are wholly taken up with boies shouting running and gamboling all about On Sundaies indeed our people sit quiet and decently drest but to bow the knee is quite out of fashion and if any one chance to do it as he is rare to behold so is he very nimble at it and as soon up as down as if he made a courtship with his knees or only tried if his nerves and sinews were as good to bow as stand upright And our whole religious work here is to sit quietly whiles a minister speaks upon a text conferring notes answering difficulties expounding words drawing conclusions and putting together for ampler dilucidation one text to another as if he were reading to students in the school some piece of Aristotles Perihermenias And thus we spend all our daies ever learning and teaching and our whole religion is to teach and learn as if religion were only to lend the ear to one who cries Hearkens or an art of knowing how to speak an hour upon two or three words of a vers which for my part as I am well enough assured that it is not the great work of Christian religion so neither is it the true work of Christian preaching whether we consult reason or presidents of antiquity to find it For as all sermons left us by greek and latine fathers are grave short and pithy such namely as they being all priests used to deliver at the altar between the Evangile and Creed so were they ever most free from any such verbal comparing of text with text vers with vers and the like various vanities which so take up our English preachings that our sermons be little or nothing else and only serv to spend time and vent our own frivolous verbosity If it do happen that a more learned Protestant do make a sermon of solid matter as sometimes they will he will be sure before he make an end by one conceit or other to have a fling at the Papists to the end that people may think as indeed they do that Papists have no such doctrine though the preacher know himself that he got it all out of their books which is a pretty piece of legerdemain but very frequent in this land Another thing I have observed and it is worth observation that of all the sermons I have ever heard in England I have never known any to deliver ex proposito the proper and peculiar doctrin of protestancy by which and for which we first revolted from the catholick
Church as that our good works be all mortal sins and damnable before God that we have no will or power to do good or avoid evil that the commandements of God are impossible to be kept c. but rather all contrary as if we were ashmed of our own doctrin and afraid to speak before the people what we know in reason could not but offend Christian ears But all generally do preach when they preach any good thing the doctrin of catholicks though ever abused with their own modes and mixtures For every sect as it hath a peculiar spirit so hath it a mode and vein and method proper to it self The Independent speaks many good words but inconsequent and unconnexed so much roving up and down as if he had a mind to be prophet errant and before he gives over to say somthing of every thing The Presbyterian ever pursues some Platonick idea for example the ingoing and outgoings of Christ which is so thin and bodiles that he is forced to assign six or seven wayes to discern it then gives twelv consequent effects nineteen wayes to get c. in which wayes he does even tire himself as you may perceive by his melting and breathing when he comes to the high hills of eighteenthly and ninteenthly and after some months labour and travel in these his wayes at last with much ado he finishes his text which before he handled it was good and easy doctrin but is now by his tedious exercise rendered obscure intricate and full of doubts The Protestant cuts his text out logically into so many parts and then walks through them all with an even rhetorick adorned with witty conceits and flowers of common places still bringing un that parcel of the text he is handling with such proportion and measure in the close that a man must needs say when he has done that he has shewed a featous piece of art and when his or Presbyterian or Independents sermon is ended then is the great work of their religion done though all to little purpos for a dead mans foot say what you will to him will never warm is shoo But the Catholick if he speak like himself having gravely and pithily prest the intention of the gospel for such a day unto the peoples practis and devotion falls to the great works of sacrifice if it be in the morning and of evensong in the after noon adoration prayer and charity which is the summe wherein his religion consists and all his preaching servs but as a pair of bellows to make those coles burn Nor does any good old catholick that is well grounded in the constant practis of his faith care at all for any further instruction knowing aforehand that it can tend to nothing els than what before he knew and yet endeavours to practis For with him pure religion and undefiled is not to hear words but do deeds to reliev the orphan and widow and to keep our selvs unspotted in this world which unspottednes we attain by complying heart and hand unto the rule and sacraments of Jesus Christ Nor did the primitive Christians for three hundred years ever hear any sermon made to them upon a text all their whole life time but meerly flocked together at their priests appointment to their messach or dominicum or Leiturgy or by what other name for they used many at several times to avoid the pagans discovery their Christian sacrifice was called And it is most strang that we should pretend here in England to be Christians and the only good ones and yet reject those two great things which were by all Christendom esteemed in every age the very essences of Christianity the tribunal of absolution and the great Legacy of Jesus his body to his spous the Church insisting wholly upon preaching which as it is an accidental and relative work of our Christianity so is it common with us an all religions both Mahometan Jew and Pagan whose sermons if any should hear he could not tell by the morality of the master to what religion they belonged It is hard to say why against all the vogue of antiquity we should be so violent as to abolish the Christian sacrifice pull down the altars banish the priesthood yea and persecute it unto death except we mean to repaganise our selvs Our protestant forefathers when they first rose found manifestly all the Christian world over that this incruent sacrifice according to the order of Melchisedeck was and had ever been the sum of all apostolical devotion for which our many goodly fair Churches shrines and altars were built which hang now forlorn and desolate in our hands like great dead carkasses after the soul is departed for the inshrined body of Jesus was the life and soul of our Churches which then died all of them when he departed mouldring away ever since into dust and rottennes And therefor Martin Luther with his Kate the Adam and Eve of protetestancy did not for that reason presume to pull down the altars although they would not keep them up without the mixtur of som errour of their own But we in England in our strang heat tore down all without either president of the catholick world or our own reforming forefathers We cannot but see if indeed we see any thing that every law and religion hath been still annexed with a corresponding sacrfice Yea so surely and universally that sacrifice seems both to be born with religion and with religion to be extinguished The first men who worshipped God in the world as Cain and Abel are said to have don it with a sacrifice after the flood with religion again renewed was also sacrifice renewed by Noah and when afterwards through divers persecutions religion was brought into hazzard nothing did the prophets so much lament as the ceasing of their sacrifice as may be be seen in the book of Kings and Daniel And not without reason for all other kinds of good things offered or don to God are common also unto creatures only sacrifice is a worship so due to the Almighty as none either in heaven or earth may partake with him in it an other sacrifice properly socalled besides this according to the order of Melchisedeck there never was any amongst Christians For although faith hope and prais be by way of analogy called a sacrifice in an improper and translated locution to set forth the worth and acceptablenes of them yet this is so far from derogating to the great and solemn sacrifice properly so called that it presupposes and establishes it for the other could not have that analogical name except that thing were unto which they may bear analogy prais could not be commanded as sacrifice if there were no such thing as sacrifice thence the commendation should be drawn and to whose worth it should allude as it were impertinent and foolish to express the sweetnes of any oratory by the name of honey and sugred rhetorick if we did beleev there were no such
I came I beheld great store of pictures and images in Churches of Roman catholicks which being in the postures either of their bloody martyrdoms which for their religion they underwent or apostolical sacrifice or sacred retirements meditations or other exercise of their faith hope or charity either towards God or their neighbours apostles martyrs confessours hermites monks virgins kings queens byshops as they made a goodly show so did they mightily assist the fansy unto a more united thought of the religion people came into the Church to fulfil and solemnise But the altar is seldom without the pourtraicts of Jesus and his Virgin Mother but never without the Crucifix the sight of all which is apt to cast into the mind of such as enter into the Church that meditation of the apostle in his epistle to the Hebrewes Non accessistis ad tractabilem montem accensibilem ignem c. Ye are not com to the high towring mount flaming fire and whirlwind and darknes and storm and sound of trumpet and nois of words which they that heard excused themselves and requested to hear it no more and it seemed so terrible that Moyses himself stood trembling and affrighted but ye are come to Mount Sion to the city of our living God to celestiall Jerusalem and society of angels the Church of primitive Christians conscript in heaven to God the Judge of all to the spirits of just perfect men to Jesus the mediatour of a new testament and to the Aspersion of blood speaking better things than Able And all these representations so much concurring to devotion and piety as they do the doctrine and men who tore them down and cast them out of our English Churches and broke and hewed them in pieces with so much rage could not be any friends whatever they might pretend either to our mount Sion or the citty of our living God the celestial Jerusalem society of angels the Church of primitive Christians or to the spirits of just men perfected or to Jesus mediatour of the new testament or lastly to the aspersion of blood speaking better things than Abel all which was there pour-traited and described It is the judgment of all men that the violation of an Image redounds to the Prototype and therefore Kings not only in Christendom but beyond it use to punish a grand traitour either deceased or fled even in his effigie Every particular person loves to behold the picture of him he esteems and again if he hate the person he detests the face thus even our late rebells here in England after they had murthered our good King shot his pictures with bullets and broke them with their cimiters and spears all the land over Thy adversaries saith the Prophet have roared and raged in the midst of thy synagogues and for thy ensigns have set up their own banners as once of those who with strong exes cut up the thickest of timber unto the temples structure it was esteemed an honourable and noble work in them so is it countd now if any on the contrary break in pieces thy sculptures with axe hammers they were Gods enemies then that did all this and that brake down his sculptures and by those very works of theirs concluded to be his enemies by a great Prophet who well enough understood who was Gods friend and who his foe If any would consider the constitution and exigence of mans nature he would soon find not only the convenience but necessity of such helps as ocular representations afford us for the fansy hath nothing but what it receives from the senses and the intellect works upon nothing but what it has from fansy and therfore did God make man in the last place after heaven and earth was framed to the end that in so great a variety of sensible objects he might find somthing to think of even in the first instant of his being wheras if he had been made before other things he had stood like a stock or stone without any possibility of a thought Now nothing administers to the fansy and consequently to the mind with that variety and life and power as doth the eye the supplies of the ear care but dead things to it especially in the account of exciting desire and love let Cicero speak a whole day upon the beauties of a princely seat countrey city man or woman yet when the eye comes once to see the thing in its own properties it discerns and represents more at one glance than could his or all the oratory in the world ever by the help of the ear imprint into the mind Indeed who is so ignorant that he has not observed ere this that the eye has a hundred fold the actuosity of the ear nor is it unknown what strange melting affections are caused in the heart by a continual sight and meditation of some sacred pictur of the Crucifix when sermons float by and effect little or nothing in comparison even as worldly objects so long as they are coached in aiery words pass away like wind but once seated in the throne of the eye they move impetuously Nor can all the ministers in the world give me a reason why the eye in a sacred purpos may not have the helps of her species as well as the ear have hers or why the minde that is to be moved and can never be moved too much in such things may not as well have the quicker as duller assistance For when any one preaches upon the Passion of Christ does he do any thing els but labour to work out such representations in the ear and minde as oratory may effect for the moving of affections corresponding to such an object and if such good meditations put into a book of devotion be assisted with an ocular representation which is more quick and full and carries more of life with it what harm is it surely he that deprives me of the more lively helps never means whatever he pretend I should have any cordial feeling of the things he talks of And verily the Protestant pretenses for their removal of images out of our Churches are but simple ones and the simpler they be the the better it seems they serve the deluded vulgar First say they God has in his commandements forbidden the making of graven images Good and has he so do you not find too that he commanded it see if he did not give order in the same scripture for Cherubins and Seraphins to be made and set up in his sanctum sanctorum over the ark what then did God or Moses forget himself and contradict his own words or are you blind or only catholicks fools or what is the matter Look seriously and you shall find that Moses forbad prophane and forreign images but he commanded his own though he disliked the ugly face of Molech Dagon and Astaroth yet did not he therefor will his people should tear down his own Cherubins And Christians likewise have not any images of Simon
Magus although they have St. Peters the Crucifix they will keep and use and honour not the portraict of Him with a cloven foot if they esteem the memory and effigies of great Constantine yet not of wicked Dioclesian if we find in their Churches the image of blessed S. Bennet or good Saint Francis yet shall we never meet there with the face of Luther or Calvin so that here in the catholick Church as well as in Moses law is both Thou shalt make graven images and again Thou shalt not Thus much Anticatholicks might themselvs understand if they would consider any thing seriously by the very words of the text Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven image not make to thy self As if he had said when you com into the land amongst the gentiles let none of you be inveigled either by their example or words to make to himself any of the images he shall see there set up by the inhabitants contrary to the ceremonies of Moses and practis of the synagogue which doth so honour her own Cherubins that she abominates all idols and their sculptures And thus if any catholick should make to himself and upon his own head and fansy contrary to what is allowed any peculiar image of the planets for example or wicked men to worship it for sacred I beleeve he will be punished for his transgression So that images are not forbidden in the general notion of images but only of such or such a kind as if I should forbid my servant who travels with me into France and keeps my purs to make unto himself any cloathes I intend not that he shall go naked but only that he make no cloathes but what and when and in what fashion I approve Secondly they say it is idolatry But this is spoken without logick Except the thing represented be an idol devil or somthing opposite to God or below man whom yet he will worship the honour and use of the image cannot be idolatry If I may respect and love the person I may love and respect the image too sith this my esteem is terminated ultimatly only upon the prototype Moses never feared idolatry with his own Cherubins and yet he had as much reason to fear it as the Christian Church can have The honour of an image is but a natural resultancy from the exemplar represented in it and this can be no other affection but what is due to that as any man may perceive by four several images set before him the first of his king the other of his father a third of his sweet-heart a fourth of his mortal adversary upon the sight of all which he conceivs and can conceiv no other but that passion he bears the prototype or thing resembled honour to one duty to the other tender love to the third and hateful disaffection to the last Now that the saints and angels of God spirits assisting to Gods glory and worship and administring to our necessities deserv a veneration at our hands I shall speak anon and from the image can result no other but what is their due As they be no Gods so neither can their image make them so the image of my enemy makes him not my sweet heart nor can the picture of my neighbour make him my king And how can the representation of Gods saints and servants make them otherwise than what they are But all these petty arguments are taken from the rancourous Jewes who were never bent against images in general till they saw the Christians to keep and worship the figure of Jesus Christ whom they all hated And if Protestants can love Jesus Christ crucified and hate the representation of his cross which two things how they can consist together no reason of man can comprehend yet let us not maligne the innocent Papists for doing that which the reason of all mankind allows What person soever I may love I may like his image also §. 25. Latin Service THe catholick liturgy is and ever was all over the western empire in the latin tongue This general custom of keeping both mass and bible in an unknown tongue from vulgar hands as it may be made to carry with with it a plausible surmise either of fraud or envy so hath it been the great engine used by Protestants both to draw and keep a vast number of people from the bosom of the catholick Church The busines of Scripture I have already hinted at For catholicks have the summ of scripture both for history and dogme delivered them in their own language so much as may make for their salvation good orders being set and instituted for their proficiency therein and what needs any more or why should they be further permitted either to satisfy curiosity or rais doubts or to wrest words and examples there recorded unto their own ruin as we see now by experience men are apt to do Besides the book is sacred and therefor not to be sullied with every hand What God hath sanctified let not man make common It is against the natur of a thing segregated to divine use to be vulgarly mixt with our prophane utensils and touch and talkings and indeed it is a contradiction in rearms for if it be segregated from them how is it mixed with them if it be mysterious how can it be vulgar And this is the judgment of the whole world both present and past Not onely mahometans and pagans who evermore kept the book that spake forth the secrets of their religion still in that one language it was delivered in but the Hebrewes too as well as the Christian Church Nor was the bible the law of Moses or the prophets or hagiography ever put out of their hebrew into syriack either in Moses time or after either by his command or any permission of the high priests that followed Nay it was so far from that that it was not touched or looked upon by the people even in its own language but kept privately in the ark or tabernacle and brought forth at times to the priest who might upon the sabboth day which is our saturday read som part of it to the people and put them in mind of their laws religion and duty Whereas the Christian bible is in the hands of all who understand either greek or latin So great is the indulgence of the Catholick Church and so good an opinion hath she above all others of her children though every one is not permitted to prattle and dispute about it as I think no wise man will think it fit they should And this retirednes of sacred doctrin and rare approach unto the eye and ear with high reverence and solemnity works in the minds of people a wonderful great awe and impression of respect whereas familiar usage renders it contemptible Indeed after that sacred book becomes once to be slightly thrown about with ordinary touch and tongue what doth it work but self will and conceit contentions pride schismes and wars
popish Breviary and Missal To revile and hate a custom whence we do our selves receiv so much benefit and no body and harm is fals latin in morality §. 26. Communion EVen as to pleas the people and to draw and keep them from the catholick Church we threw the Bible amongst them telling them withall that as it is easie to understand so is every man inabled to interpret it although our Protestant Church does now too late repent it and wish with all their hearts it had never been done so likewise another plausible advantage we took against the Pope and Church wherein those people communicate commonly but under one kind by giving all communicants a spoonful of wine together with their mouthful of bread which stratagem has given as ample content as if people had been treated at my Lord Majors Feast For who would not drink with their meat and what reason can be given that they should not or that a feast with wine should not caeteris paribus be better than without it But a little to abate our insulting over a grave religious people let me argue a little for them after my plain manner Protestant countreymen you cannot but know at least you ought to know that the catholick Church uses the cup in communion as much as we in England do and in sacrifice more for so I distinguish at this time that the sacrifice is for the priest communion for the people more I say than we ever mean to do for the deacon or minister at the altar after the priest had communicated the people with the hoast carries the cup after him to all the said communicants to drink before which action of communion the Priest to prefigure Christs passion upon the altar and his blood effused had both consecrated and consummated both the kinds himself Is not this enough to silence you I should think it were since you are taken so clearly in a dissimulation at least that I may speak no more when you say that Catholicks have not the cup in communion concealing what you ought to acknowledg both that the people have as much as ours and that the priest consecrates and consummates both which others do not Oh but you will say they give not the people the consecrated challice which is the very blood of Christ very good no more do Protestants do we give the people any more then a cup of natural wine they do so too if you answer it is blest wine know and remember that when you speak against the Priests consecration Oh then that blessing is nothing but when you would argue against the communion in one kind then you make something of it so likewise your own blessing of the cup when you talk against puriritans o 't is a great and venerable secret but when you plead against Catholicks then 't is but an empty ceremony Where shall any one hold such slippery cells But to omit these cavills May not Anti-Romans be ashamed to say that Catholicks use not the cup which they use as much as any and to as much effect as we will allow it to be used and yet more too The catholick people in communion I must say it again that I may be understood do drink of such a cup as Protestants do affirm to be the only cup and no other and over and above this communicate the very body of their redeemer animated with his soul and sacred blood and hypostatically united to his deity which thing Protestants neither do nor will allow it although gospel do both direct and command it And yet we will be talking of I know not what defect of catholick communion not remembring too as we forget other things that all the vertue of consecration is attributed by Protestants only to our feeding upon Christ by faith which no man can deny but that it may be totally done and compleated without touching either bread and drink and therfore have they mightily laboured to make good that when our Lord saith in St. John My flesh is meat indeed and my blood is drink indeed that he speaks not one word of sacramental eating or drinking but only of feeding upon him spiritually by the mouth of faith May not Catholicks say the like to any text that shall be brought for the people communion of the challice He is surely a mad man that so belabours his adversary in one argument that by the same he knocks out his own brains in another So then Protestants take from the people both the real body and blood of Christ united and effused and then exclaim against Catholicks for not using the effused species as well in communion as sacrifice We who hold neither as we ought condemn them for withholding one who hold both and call that in them a sacriledge with we our selves esteem but a ceremony The catholick Church feeds her people with real meat we feed ours with signs and husks Though others might upbraid the witholding of one kind if it were so yet surely we cannot ingenuously do it who have taken away the reallity of both Whatsoever Protestants do truly hold and teach concerning this sacrament the same do catholicks from whom they had it maintain too and what more ought to be done the Catholick Church does it and Protestants do it not Must we feed upon Christ crucified by faith Catholicks do it and it is the very end of their religion Must the Eucharist be taken in remembrance of him and commemoration of his death They do it Must both kinds be blest and taken they do that too Must the people drink wine out of a cup in communion Catholik people do the like On the other side Catholicks do really partake of the animated and living body of their Redeemer this ought to be done to the end we may have life in us And yet Protestants do it not Catholicks have it continually sacrificed before their eyes and the very death and effusion of their Lords blood prefigured and set forth before them for faith to feed upon This Protestants have not they do it not and yet this ought to be done for so our Lord commanded when he said to his apostles hoc facite this do ye which you have seen me to do and in that manner you see me do it exercising before your eyes my priestly function according to the order of Melchizedech with which power I do also invest you and appoint you to do the like even to the consummation of the world in commemoration of my death and passion exhibiting and shewing forth your Lords death till he com This I say Protestants do not and we are mad angry that the Papist does what his redeemer injoined him Thus far ad hominem The consecrated challice is not indeed ordinarily given by the priest to people in private communion And it is neither expedient it should be so nor necessary to any effect of communion nor yet is ther in gospel any precept for it It is not
living Honourable mention of Saints deceased proves an immortality of the soul and this immortality renders the saints even after their deceas still more honourable so that he that honors them must needs believ this and he that truly beleevs this will be apt to honour them I am God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob God is not the God of the dead but of the living so argues and disputes our Lord Christ proving the souls immortality by the honourable mention of souls departed And his argument is good and very subtile for if God be the God even of souls departed then souls departed are not nothing but som subsisting thing for God cannot be said to be the God of that which is not And these two effects a beleef of our immortality and a pronenes to imitate their good works so highly crowned hath this memorial of saints wrought all over the catholick world where ther is not a man but will urge himself somtime or other for the respect he bears to such a glorious saint who by shedding his blood or mortifying his body magnified God and his religion upon earth to do somthing either of pennance or charity superabundant over and above what he should have thought upon himself without that help in imitation of the good pattern of him who being once a man compassed with the same infirmities that we now be hath shewed us notwitstanding both by his life and doctrin that such good works are both feasible by frail man and very commendable too and beneficial even to the reward of never ending glory And to this end do Catholicks read their saints lives labouring each one to the degree of his devotion to rais up in himself the lively sparkles of hope and faith and charity by those examples which he sees not confined only to the one age of the apostles but translucent in all times and places by his continued goodnes to his Church whose mercy endureth for ever Nor are those saints lives so prodigious and incredible as we in England take them to be I speak of solid authenticated legends For I have my self seen with mine own eyes and known hundreds of living men that have equalled them in those practises And he that knows the vigorous nature and life of Gospel where it is really put to practise and not only verbally profest will wonder at nothing If ye say to this mountain remove hence saith our Lord to aright beleever all things are possible and I am confident by what I have seen my self that ther be now as bad a world as it is an immens number of people among Catholicks as eminent in all perfections as ther have been in any age and som of them equall too even to the glorious saints of old whose legends we read For thousands of people do make it their very profession even as people here in London set up and profess a trade to lead their lives exactly according to the tenour of gospel noting every evening before they sleep all the deviations even of their very thoughts and making resolutions in the morning for the renewed practis of all such vertuous actions that may probably lye in their way and in particular such a vertue to day that to morrow this in the third and so they end their lives All the Catholick world knows I do not lye And all this is don not by any force of nature but against it by the meer power and vertue of their religion whereby I have known many men to subdue corrupt nature even to amazement and miracle And the various examples both of good people yet alive and of eminent saints departed whose cells and vestments and beads and books are yet reserved amongst them incourage Catholicks unto this vertuous adventure while not only by sight of their lives who live amongst them and of the mortified figures of the holy persons deceased and bloody necks of their martirs but also by sermons and the continual rites of the Church prefiguring before them the conversation and passion both of Jesus himself and his many glorious followers who have imitated his steps that none might think but that the same life might be led though not in the same degree and the same valour be shown in undergoing both carnal castigations and death even by meer man through the grace of him who strengthens us to all things they are made continually to remember and seriously lay to heart both what they are to do and whom to imitate by which reflections they are more moved towards all the good works of piety than without them such a poor weak spirit as mans is housed in mouldring clay could ever bee And that this hath been the practis of the Christian Church in all times to set before the people the lively pourtraits of their holy and well deserving foregoers for their greater incitation unto semblable good works unto which their religion calls them I could easily show throughout all ages but that I intend here to speak no more than what may somwhat allay the preconceived prejudice we have taken up against the Popes religion especially in the few particulars I touch upon of which I speak no more than what I think may suffice to unbeguile such as list seriously to ruminate upon the truth And if in these things which seem harder to us their caus be just I should think the lesser prejudices should fall away of themselvs and we at length love one another as we ought for no man I think does willingly hate the innocent Only two testimonies of the primitive respect unto saints and their images amongst Christians taken not out of the bowels of the Church but from her enemies one from the Jew the other from the Pagan sufficiently known in history I cannot but here mention The Jews in the first three ages of the Church even from the apostles to Constantine the great accused the Christians not only in private but even before the Roman emperours and Senate of three great violations of Moses law first that they broke the sabboth and had turned it from the seventh day of the week unto the first making that holiday which Moses ordained for work and that a working day which Moses made holy secondly that they worshipped images of their saints and kept them not only in their houses but in their oratories and chappels thirdly that they brought in a strange God Jesus Christ they meant which neither they nor their forefathers knew all which seemed expresly against the letter not only of the general law but of the two tables of the ten commandements The pagan all over the empire laughed at the Christians for three ridiculous worships of theirs namely of a breaden God of the priests genitals and of an asses head the first whereof proves the primitive sacrifice of which I have already spoken the second their confession the third their use and respect they had of images for the Jewes had defamed Jesus Christ our Lord whose
that they do pray for their brethren and adoptives of the same bliss both reason and holy writ sufficently assure us Nor is this way of expressing our desires unusual in holy Scripture Bless ye our Lord all the works of our Lord bless ye our Lord O angels of God O sun and moon bless ye our Lord O stars of heaven bless ye our Lord praise ye and magnifie him for ever c. Thus pray the three confessours in Daniel And the whole 148. Psalm runs in the same tenour Prais our Lord all ye angels of his prais him all his powers prais ye him O sun and moon prais him all the stars of light c. Here is an invocation direct in words not only of the saints and angels but stars and meteors earth and seas frost and snow heat and cold light and darknes And yet I am not bound who use that devotion to make it good that the sun and moon or other things there invocated hear me when I speak to them in this manner sith I do but only express my affection and desire that sun and moon heaven and earth frost and snow heat and cold mountains and hills be in their manner instrumentall to the almighties prais and honour whether in words I speak directly to the sun and moon as I do in that Psalm or express my self otherwise saying May the sun moon heaven and earth concurre with me to the honour and prais of God mighty the affection and meaning is still the same Nay the kings and princes of the earth whom in that same Psalm I invocate to my assistance do not more hear me when I say that Psalm in my chamber than do the mountains and hills In like manner it is all one for me to say either thus Let the prayers of the saints and angels of God assist my condition with the almighty holy one or thus Pray for me O saints and angels of God to assist my poor condition with God almighty and holy The devotion is as good this way as the other and all one and the same thing And the antient Christians used indifferently either the one way or the other according as they deemed either this or that more agreeable and pathetical to the exciting of their devotion and obtaining their desires with God Nor did those wise and devout people over enter into the curiosity whether the spirits of another world did either see or hear or know what we speak or think or do in this much less did it ever enter into their creed that they do so After a thousand years arose our Schoolmen who amongst other of their subtilities raised the difficulty Whether Saints in another life hear and see all our motions in this and generally they defended and neatly declared both that they did it and also how it might be done namely by the mirrour of divine essence seen and enjoyed by the blessed But this is a meer nice theological subtility and no busines of faith at all neither for the mode how it is done nor yet for the doctrin that it is done And if those schoolmen thought this their doctrin necessary for any practis of saints-invocation in the Church they showed themselvs not so good rhetoricians as they were logicians He that will defend pure naked faith is not bound to enter upon any such dispute with the adversary or go any further than his faith reaches for so he does but intangle religion and expose it to needles doubts But this is a great mistake of many men otherwise of very great parts that they think what they have heard in the schools of S. Thomas or Scotus is all of it de fide not considering that the schoolmen raised a thousand questions and invented several declarations like ramparts about the cittadel of Faith to inable men to speak against all opposition several wayes either in the way of St. Thomas or Scotus Gandavensis Durandus Aureolus or other doctour not to oblige them to defend those waies as the cittadel it self when it shall com by any adversary to be opposed And although with som Antichristian great wits as Plotin Porphyrius Julian such subtilities may be spoke of yet still with this caution it must be done that they first understand that Christians are not bound when they defend the simplicity of their faith to make good those subtilities besides it But with a grosser textual opponent as our Protestant is such curiosities are not at all to be touched For he concludes presently that invocation of saints is not to be used if any one go about to tell him that they hear our prayers and make it not sink into his head how they can do it And thus catholick faith is prejudiced for want of wise comportment in the defendant There is also another little defect in som late catholick writers that in their controversies with Protestants wherein they hold that it is lawful to pray unto saints they consider not that they mean it one way and their adversary another This should first have been cleared before they had proceeded to perswade what could never enter into our Protestant heads in the sens they understood it For properly and strictly speaking to pray saints or by them is one thing to pray to them is another that intimates the means this the final end and object of our prayer and the Catholick uses it in the first sens the Protestant understands it in the latter as I know by my experience and conversation with them in all places St. Paul in his epistle to the Romans as elswhere very frequently calls the Christians Sanctos saints and in the end of that epistle earnestly importunes them to help him in their prayers for him unto God And yet will Protestants never be perswaded for all that that S. Paul prayed to saints and indeed in their sens he did not but that he did pray to saints in the catholick sens that is prayed saints or prayed by saints no rational man can deny And such and no other is the devotion of catholicks in this kind save only that their practis is more plausible than that of St. Paul now mentioned If the prayers of such as be in viâ and sinners in som part of their conversation though saints in profession be so useful and may commendably be desired much more those of consummate saints in patriâ absolute friends of God and partakers of his glory these the sacred text assures us that they pray for their brethren but men in this life although they be requested may neglect to do it their prayer is surely effectual one way or other to our good when men of this life may obtain for us haply nothing at all Nor is it of any purpos whether they hear us or no sith we do but pray them to do for us what we are assured they do for all and so apply the benefit of their prayers to our selvs or pray by them not to
which move Planets or bodies unto us here altogether invisible except we either rise higher or they descend towards us in their motion warmed and vegetated by their fires as we by our sun If it be thus as well it may for aught I can know of my self what a strange consort of hymnes and praises rise up in the univers continually and without ceas as incens in several keys of musick unto that great holy One who made us all to supply the defects of those small pittiful services we poor worms perform unto him in this our earthly system This may seem far more rationall thank to think that we gross corporeall creatures and sensuall sinners are the only people in the univers who serv the almighty and that all those eminent bright shining systems above us whose order method properties bulk and nature is so obscure are there set and appointed for nothing else but onely for our use which we cannot yet say what it is and when we have imagined our utmost is not of the value of any one star in the firmament or that bodies of their vast capacity should be utterly empty and have no creature at all within them I should of my self be so far from thinking that the stars of the firmament are onely for our use that I should doubt whether the very elements amongst which we live and breath earth aier and water and the beasts minerals and plants contained in them are onely made to serv us tho chiefly intended for our benefit The very gradual perfections of nature hath in it self a worth and decency beseeming the Creatour tho man had never been And if all had been onely aimed for our use would not a less sea have served our turn and fewer birds beasts fish and plants What use have we of all the great depth of earth under us to the center or larg vast aether about us And if we were such absolute lords of the world as we conceiv our selves to be how is it that nothing at all in natur is at our command not the sea not the aier not the earth it self nor any thing upon it or in it will either come or go or alter or stop his course at our pleasure which King Canutus observed well when standing with his nobles by the Thames side he perceived the tide to rush upon him altho he had commanded it to com no nearer What kind of vassails be these inferiour natures under man that will obey us in just nothing Besides when any one is absolute maister of a hous wholly destined to his use surely such a one can go and com into any room thereof without controul but let man walk down either into the bottom of his seas to see his fish there or into the cellars of his earth amongst the mettals and tell me if he be not stifled as soon as other creatures But if he once attempt to mount the upper rooms of his habitation tho it be but into the first or second region of the aier he shall fail at the very first step for his ethereal greeces will not bear the gross unweildly bulk of their Lord so ill is the house fitted for the maisters constitution from the very top to the bottom Can we not honour and bless God for the use he hath lent us of all these things which is great and various but we must by the vanity of our hearts appropriate and monopolise the univers to our selvs as if it were for no other use at all but ours The manifold use and services we have of the stars and elements beasts birds fish and plants which do all administer unto man in somthing or other according to the exigence either of his necessities thence to be supplied or his corporal delight or mental speculation to be furnished from that great body which the divine goodnes therefor made before man that in the first instant of his being he should want nothing ought to make us thankful but not proud And so the holy prophet admiring the excellency and perfection of place that mankind by his creators goodnes hath over other visible creatures amongst whom he livs and the various uses he hath of them doth in one of his sweet psalms invite man thereupon to magnifie this his great benefactour who set him in so high a place when he needed not to have put him in any and if man do so he shall do well But he must not appropriate more to himself than is given or instead of being thankful for the dominion he has received vainly conceit a dominion he has not Aristotle fansied our earth to be the center of the Univers and the stars to be a sift essence differing from all the four elements placed in the circumference but the great wits of the world that lived before him Pythagoras Empedocles Anaxagoras Democritus Epicure were of another mind And although our Christian Schoolmen have now for five of six hundred years explicated and defended the principles of their religion even in the way of Aristotle by which for a thousand years it had been opposed by the pagan yet do they not intend to mix his philosophy with those principles of their faith nor does the great Christian Church therefore canonise his philosophy for truth becaus she suffers her own truths to be declared and explicated by it If Christianity be true it fears no antagonists but will bear the test of any right philosophy but yet philosophy that it may be right indeed must be corrected and ordered by this divine truth as well as this explicated in som things by it And if another Christian philosopher should explicate his faith now afresh in the way of Democritus or Pythagoras as in the first times of the Church it was declared in the way of Plato and in these latter ages by Aristotle so he do it piously and warily and square not his rule of faith by them but them by it I cannot see why it may not commendably be done But then as he does use those explications to satisfy a pythagorean or epicurean so must he confidently reject as dissonant to right reason what he finds unapt to square with the received truths of Jesus Christ as we do now deal with Aristotle This if it were done as Christian religion will be justified when it is perceived to stand with the right reason of any Philosophy so likewise when another Philosophy contrary to Aristotles is once understood all the whole univers both for number weight and measure its essences relations concatenation origin life and qualities would hang as loose suspence and doubtful as if nothing had been ever said of it Aristotles reasons will make Democritus and his disciples doubted and again the great learning and subtility of Democritus Anaxagoras Epicurus Empedocles will as much disable Aristotle and the doubt may be as pregnant among Christians as other men where the catholick Church interposes not the autority of some received tradition to cast