And so the primitive Christians thought who very honestly and sincerely declared as much in their words and actions witness not only the opinions of all the Writers in behalf of Christianity not one excepted that ever had occasion to mention this matter but the Decree of as good a Council as was to be had at that time I mean the Eliberitan in the famous Canon to that purpose Can. 36. It pleaseth us to have no pictures in Churches lest that which is worshipped be painted upon walls It is a pleasant thing to see what work our Adversaries make with this innocent Canon sometimes it is a meer forgery of hereticks I wonder such men do not say the same of the second Commandment sometimes the Bishops that met there were not so wise as they should have been no nor Moses and the Prophets nor Christ and the primitive Christians in this matter sometimes that they spake only against pictures upon walls because the Salt-Peter of the walls would be apt to deface them or because in case of persecution they could not do as Rachel did carry their Teraphim along with them but that which Petavius sticks to is that the Memory of Heathen Idolatry was yet fresh and therefore it was not thought expedient to have Images in the Oratories or Temples of Christians So that after all the tricks and shifts of our Adversaries the thing it self is yielded to us viz. that this Canon is against such Images as are now used and worshipped in the Roman Church But saith he the reason doth not hold still for then the memory of Heathen Idolatry was not out of mens minds It is a wonderful thing to me that these Spanish Bishops should be able to tell their own reason no better than so You say you will have no Images in Churches why so I beseech you Lest that say they which is worshipped be painted upon walls worshipped by whom do you mean by Heathens no we speak of the Churches of Christians But why may not that which is worshipped be painted We think that reason enough to any man that considers the Being worshipped and that which is painted and the mighty disparagement to an infinite invisible Being to be drawn in lines and colours with a design to honour him thereby This to me seems a reason that holds equally at all times For was the Being worshipped more unfit to be drawn so soon after Heathen Idolatry than he would be afterwards methinks it had been much better done then while the skilful Artificers were living But those were Heathen Idolaters suppose they were you must make use of them or none if that which Tertullian and others say hold true that it is forbidden to Christians to make Images which surely they would never have said if they had thought the time would come when the Heathen Idolatry should be forgotten and then the Christians might worship Images Well but all this is only against Pictures upon walls but for all that saith Bellarmin they might have Images in Frames or upon Veils It seems then that which is adored might be painted well enough provided it be not upon a wall but methinks it is more repugnant to an infinite Being to be confined within a Frame than to be drawn upon a wall and the Decree is to have no pictures in Churches but if they were in Frames or upon Veils would they not be in Churches still What made Epiphanius then so angry at seeing an Image upon a Veil at Anablatha Was not Heathen Idolatry forgotten enough yet It seems not for it was coming in again under other pretences But that good mans spirit was stirred within him at the apprehension of it and could not be quiet till he had rent asunder the Veil and written to the Bishop of Hierusalem to prevent the like enormity One would have thought by this time the jealousie of Offence might have been worn out the Heathen Idolatry being suppressed but yet it seems Epiphanius did not understand his Christian Liberty in this matter Nay so far from it that he plainly and positively affirms that such an Image though upon a Veil and not the Walls was contra autoritatem Scripturarum contra Religionem nostram against the Law of God and the Christian Religion But it may be this was some Heathen Idol or Image of a False God no so far from it that Epiphanius could not tell whether it was an Image of Christ or of some Saint but this he could tell that he was sure it was against the Authority of the Scriptures And was Epiphanius so great a Dunce to imagine a thing indifferent in it self and applyed to a due object of worship should be directly opposite to the Law of God Men may talk of the Fathers and magnifie the Fathers and seem to make the Authority of the Fathers next to infallible and yet there are none who expose them more to contempt than they who give such answers as these so directly against the plainest sense and meaning of their words I confess those speak more consonantly to their principles who reject the Authority of this Epistle at least of this part of it but there is not the least colour or pretence for it from any M S. and Petavius ingenuously confesseth that he sees no ground to believe this part added to the former epistle God be thanked there is some little ingenuity yet left in the World and which is the greater wonder among the Iesuits too for not only Petavius but Sirmondus owns the Epistle of Epiphanius to be genuine quoting it to prove the Antiquity of Veils at the entrance of the Church If it be good for that purpose it is I am sure as good for ours and so it was thought to be by those who were no Iconoclasts I mean the Author of the Caroline Books and the Gallican Bishops who made use of this Testimony although themselves were against rending of painted Veils But commend me to the plain honesty of Iohn Damascen who saith one Swallow makes no Summer and of Alphonsus à Castro who tells us that Epiphanius was an Iconoclast i. e. a terrible heretick with a hard name materially so but not formally because the Church had not determined the contrary It seems it was no matter what the Law or Christian Religion had determined for those were the things Epiphanius took for his grounds But he good man was a little too hot in this matter and did not consider that when the Pagan Idolatry was sufficiently out of mens minds then it would be very lawful to have Christ or Saints not only drawn upon Veils or Screens but to have just such Statues as the Pagans had and to give them the very same worship which the Prototypes deserve provided that the people have forgotten Mercury Apollo and Hercules and put S. Francis or S. Ignatius or S. Christopher or S. Thomas Beckett instead of them O the Divine power of names
that only reads T. G. and doth not understand the practice of the Roman Church would imagine all the dispute between him and me were whether the Saints in Heaven be capable of receiving any honour from men and whether that honour being given upon the account of Religion might be called Religious Honour or no This were indeed to wrangle about words which I perfectly hate I will therefore freely tell him how far I yield in this matter that he may better understand where the difficulty lyes 1. I yield that the Saints in Heaven do deserve real honour and esteem from us and I do agree with Mr. Thorndike whose words he cites therein that to dispute whether we are bound to honour the Saints were to dispute whether we are to be Christians or whether we believe them to be Saints in Heaven For on supposition that we believe that the greatest excellencies of mens minds come from the Grace of God communicated to men through Iesus Christ and we are assured that such persons now in Heaven were possessed of those excellencies it is impossible we should do otherwise than esteem and honour them For honour in this sense is nothing else but the due apprehension of anothers excellency and therefore it must be greater or lesser according to the nature and degree of those excellencies Since therefore we believe the Saints in Heaven are possessed of them in a higher degree than they were on earth our esteem of them must increase according to the measure of their perfections 2. That the honour we have for them may be called Religious honour because it is upon the account of those we may call Religious excellencies as they are distinguished from meer natural endowments and civil accomplishments On which account I will grant that is not properly civil honour because the motive or reason of the one is really different from the other And although the whole Church of Christ in Heaven and Earth make up one Body yet the nature of that Society is so different from a Civil Society that a different title and denomination ought to be given to the honour which belongs to either of them and the honour of those of the triumphant Church may the better be called Religious because it is an honour which particularly descends from the object of Religion viz. God himself as the fountain of it as civil honour doth from the Head of a Civil Society 3. That this honour may be expressed in such outward acts as are most agreeable to the nature of it And herein lyes a considerable difference between the honour of men for natural and acquired excellencies and divine graces that those having more of humane nature in them the honour doth more directly redound to the possessor of them but in Divine Graces which are more immediately conveyed into the souls of men through a supernatural assistance the Honour doth properly belong to the Giver of them Therefore the most agreeable expression of the honour of Saints is solemn Thanksgiving to God for them for thereby we acknowledge the true fountain of all the good they did or received However for the incouragement of men to follow their examples and to perpetuate their memories the primitive Christians thought it very fitting to meet at the places of their Martyrdom there to praise God for them and to perform other offices of Religious worship to God and to observe the Anniversary of their sufferings and to have Panegyricks made to set forth their vertues to excite others the more to their imitation Thus far I freely yield to T. G. to let him see what pittiful cavils those are that if men deserve honour for natural or supernatural endowments surely the Saints in Heaven much more do so Who denyes it We give the Saints in Heaven the utmost honour we dare give without robbing God of that which belongs only to him Which is that of Religious worship and consists in the acknowledgements we make of Gods supream excellency together with his Power and Dominion over us and so Religious worship consists in two things 1. Such external acts of Religion which God hath appropriated to himself 2. Such an inward submission of our souls as implyes his Superiority over them and that lyes as to worship 1. In prayer to him for what we want 2. In dependence upon him for help and assistance 3. In Thankfulness to him for what we receive Prayer is a signification of want and the expression of our desire of obtaining that which we need and whosoever beggs any thing of another doth in so doing not only acknowledge his own indigency but the others power to supply him therefore Suarez truly observes from Aquinas that as command is towards inferiours so is prayer towards Superiours now to this saith he two things are requisite 1. That a man apprehends it is in the power of the Superiour to give what we ask 2. That he is willing to give it if it be asked of him The expectation of the performance of our desire is that we call dependence upon him for help and assistance and our acknowledgement of his doing it is Thankfulness Now if we consider Prayer as a part of Religious worship we are to enquire on what account it comes to be so not as though thereby we did discover any thing to God which he did not know before nor as though we hoped to change his will upon our prayer but that thereby we profess our subjection to him and our dependence on him for the supply of our necessities For although prayer be looked on by us as the means to obtain our requests yet the consideration upon which that becomes a means is that thereby we express our most humble dependence upon God It being the difference observed by Gul. Parisiensis between humane and divine prayer that prayer among men is supposed a means to change the Person to whom we pray but prayer to God doth not change him but fits us for receiving the things prayed for This one consideration is of greater importance towards the resolution of our present question than hath been hitherto imagined for the Question of invocation doth not depend so much upon the manner of obtaining the thing we desire i. e. whether we pray to the Saints to obtain things by their merits and intercessions which is allowed and contended for by all in the Roman Church or whether it be that they do bestow the things themselves upon us which they deny but the true State of the Question is this whether by the manner of Invocation of Saints which is allowed and practised in the Roman Church they do not give that worship to Saints which is only peculiar to God Now we are farther to consider wherein that act of worship towards God doth lye which is not in an act of the mind whereby we apprehend God to be the first and independent cause of all good but in an act of dependence upon him for the
Imprimatur G. Iane R. P. D. Henr. Episc. Lond. Ã sac domesticis June 3. 1676. A DEFENCE OF THE DISCOURSE Concerning the IDOLATRY Practised in the CHURCH OF ROME In ANSWER to a BOOK Entituled Catholicks no Idolaters By ED. STILLINGFLEET D. D. Chaplain in Ordinary to His Majesty The two First Parts London Printed by Robert White for Henry Mortlock at the Sign of the Phoenix in St. Pauls Church-yard and at the White-Hart in Westminster-Hall 1676. TO THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER in GOD HENRY Lord Bishop of LONDON One of the Lords of His Majesties Most Honourable Privy Council My Lord I Have heard that in some famous Prophetick Pictures pretending to represent the Fate of England the chief thing observable in several of them was a Mole a creature blind and busie smooth and deceitful continually working under Ground but now and then to be discerned by the disturbance it makes in the Surface of the earth which is so natural a description of a restless party among us that we need no Iudge of Controversies to interpret the meaning of it Our Forefathers had sufficient Testimony of their working under Ground but in our Age they act more visibly and with that indefatigable industry that they threaten without great care to prevent them the undermining of our Church and the Ruine of our established Religion Which since they cannot hope so easily to compass alone they endeavour to draw in to their Assistance all such discontented parties who are so weak if any can be so to be prevailed on to be instruments to serve them in pulling down a Church which can never fall but they must be stifled in its Ruins One would think it were hardly possible for any to run into a snare which lies so open to their view or to flatter themselves with the vain hopes of escaping better than the Church they design to destroy But such is the admirable Wisdom of Divine Providence to order things so above all humane Discretion that when the Sins of a Nation have provoked God to forsake it he suffers those to concurr in the most pernicious Counsels for enslaving Conscience who pretend to the greatest zeal for the Liberty of it So that our Church of England in its present condition seems to stand as the Church of Corinth did of old between two unquiet and boisterous Seas and there are some very busie in cutting through the Isthmus between them to let in both at once upon it supposing that no strength will be able to withstand the force of so terrible an inundation It is a consideration that might dishearten those who are engaged in the Defence of our Religion against the common Adversaries to see that they promise themselves as much from the folly of some of their most seeming Enemies as from the interest and Power of their Friends thus like S. Paul in Macedonia we are troubled on every side without are fightings and within are fears If men did but once understand the things which belong to our Peace we might yet hope to weather out the storms that threaten us and to live as the Church hath frequently done in a tossing condition with waves beating on every side But if through Weakness or Wilfulness those things should be hid from our eyes the prospect of our future condition is much more dreadful and amazing than the present can be If it were reasonable to hope that all men would lay aside prejudice and passion and have greater regard to the Common Good than to the interests of their several parties they could not but see where our main strength lies by what our enemies are most concerned to destroy And that no men of common understanding would make use of disunited Parties to destroy one Great Body unless they were sure to master them when they had done with them And therefore the best way for their own security were to unite themselves with the Church of England That were a Blessing too great for such a People to expect whose sins have made our Breaches so wide that we have too great reason to fear the common enemy may enter through them if there be not some way found out to repair those Breaches and to build up the places which are broken down For my own part I cannot see how those who could have joyned in Communion with the Christian Church in the time of Theodosius the Great can justly refuse to do it in ours For that is the Age of the Church which our Church of England since the Reformation comes the nearest to Idolatry being then suppressed by the Imperial Edicts the Churches settled by Law under the Government of Bishops Publick Liturgies appointed Antiquity Reverenced Schism discountenanced Learning encouraged and some few Ceremonies used but without any of those corrupt mixtures which afterwards prevailed in the Roman Church And whatever men of ill minds may suggest to the disparagement of those times it is really an Honour to our Church to suffer together with that Age when the Christian Church began to be firmly settled by the Countenance of the Civil Power and did enjoy its Primitive Purity without the Poverty and Hardships it endured before And the Bishops of that time were men of that exemplary Piety of those great Abilities of that excellent Conduct and Magnanimity as set them above the contempt or reproach of any but Infidels and Apostates For then lived the Gregories the Basils the Chrysostoms in the Eastern Church the Ambroses and Augustins in the Western and they who can suspect these to have been Enemies to the Power of Godliness did never understand what it meant It were no doubt the most desirable thing in our State and Condition to see the Piety the Zeal the Courage the Wisdom of those holy Bishops revived among us in such an Age which needs the conjunction of all these together For such is the insolency and number of the open contemners of our Church and Religion such is the activity of those who oppose it and the subtilty of those who undermine it as requires all the Devotion and Abilities of those great Persons to defend it And I hope that Divine Spirit which inflamed and acted them hath not forsaken that Sacred Order among us but that it will daily raise up more who shall be able to convince Dissenters that there may be true and hearty zeal for Religion among our Prelates and those of the Church of Rome that Good Works are most agreeable to the Principles of the Reformation Nay even in this Age as bad as it is there may be as great Instances produced of real Charity and of Works of Publick and pious uses as when men thought to get Souls out of Purgatory or themselves into Heaven by what they did And if it were possible exactly to compare all Acts of this nature which have been done ever since the Reformation with what there was done of the same kind for a much longer time immediately before
it if the Protestant Charity should seem to fall short in outward Pomp and Magnificence it would be found much more to exceed it in number and usefulness Which makes me so much the more wonder to hear and see the ill effects of the Reformation in this kind so much insisted on of late to disprove the Goodness of it If some Great men had sinister ends in it when was there any great Action of that nature wherein some Persons did not aim at their own advantage by it Who can excuse all the Courtiers in the time of Constantine or all the Actions of that Great Emperour himself Must Christianity therefore be thought the worse because it did prevail in his time and very much by his means And there were some partial Historians in those dayes that impute the demolishing of Heathen Temples and the suppressing of Idolatry to the Rapine and Sacriledge of the Times For even those Heathen Temples were richly endowed and it is not to be supposed that when such a Tree was shaking there would be no scrambling for the Fruit of it However we are not concerned to justifie the Actions or Designs of any particular Persons how Great soever but that which we plead for is that the Reformation it self was a just pious prudent and necessary thing and had both sufficient Authority to warrant it and sufficient Reason to justifie it We read in the Spanish History a remarkable Precedent which vindicates the proceeding of our Reformation in England The Gotthick Nation had been infected with Arianism two hundred and thirteen years when by the means of Leander Bishop of Sevil the King Reccaredus being duly informed in the Orthodox Faith called a Council at Toledo wherein Arianism was renounced by the declaration and subscription of the King himself being present in Council and afterwards by the Bishops who joyned with him and the Great men which being done the Council proceeded to make new Canons and Constitutions which the King confirmed by his Edict declaring that if any Bishop Priest or Deacon refused to observe them he was sentenced by the Council to excommunication if any of the higher rank of the Laity the penalty was paying half their estates to the Exchequer if others confiscation and banishment All which is extant in the Records of that Council The Arian Bishops as Mariana relates such as Athalocus and Sunna with others having the old Queen Goswinda and several of the Nobility to joyn with them made all the disturbance they could to hinder the Reformation But God not only carried it through but wonderfully preserved the Life of the King notwithstanding many conspiracies against him after whose death the Arian faction was very busie and made several Attempts by Treason and Rebellion to be restored again and they once thought themselves sure when they had gotten Wittericus of their party to the Throne but his short Reign put an end to all their Hopes I find some of the latter Spanish Historians much troubled to see all done in this Reformation by the King and the Bishops and Great men without the least mention of the Popes Authority Lucas Tudensis therefore saith that Leander was the Popes Legat but Mariana confesses that the very Acts of the Council contradict it He would have it believed that they sent Legats to the Pope afterwards to have the Council confirmed by him but he acknowledgeth that nothing appears in History to that purpose and if any such thing had been it would not have been omitted in the Epistles of Gregory who writ to Leander a Letter of congratulation for the conversion of Reccaredus But then National Churches were supposed to have Power enough to Reform themselves provided that they proceeded according to the Decrees of the Four General Councils And this is that we maintain in behalf of the Church of England that it receives all the Creeds which were then received and hath reformed those Abuses only which have crept into the Church since that Time This My Lord is the Cause which by Command of my Superiours I was first engaged to defend among whom Your Lordships Predecessour whose constant Friendship and Kindness I must never forget was one of the Chief Since that time I have had but little respite from these not so pleasing to me as sometimes necessary Polemical Exercises and notwithstanding all the Rage and Malice of the Adversaries of our Church against me I sit down with that contentment that I have defended a Righteous Cause and with an honest Mind and therefore I little regard their bitterest Censures and Reproaches In the midst of such a Croud of Adversaries it was no unpleasant entertainment to me to see the various methods with which they have attacked me some with piteous moans and outcries others grinning and only shewing their teeth others ranting and Hectoring others scolding and reviling but I must needs say the Adversary I now answer hath shewed more art and cunning than all the rest put together and hath said as much in Defence of their Cause as Wit and Subtilty could invent I wish I could speak as freely of his Fair dealing and Ingenuity Him therefore I reserved to be answered by himself after I had shaken off the lesser and more barking Creatures What I have now done I humbly present to Your Lordships hands and I am very glad of this opportunity to declare what satisfaction the Members of Your own Church and the Clergy of this great City have to see a Person of so Noble Birth so much Temper and Prudence so firm an Assertor of the Protestant Religion and Church of England appointed by his Majesty to have the Conduct and Government of them That God Almighty would assist and direct Your Lordship in those things which tend to the Peace and Welfare of this Church is the hearty Prayer of My Lord Your Lordships most dutiful and obedient Servant ED. STILLINGFLEET May 30. 1676. TO THE READER IT hath been long expected that I should have published an Answer to T. G. as the most considerable Adversary that appeared against me but it is very well known that before his Book came out I had undertaken the Answer of several others which when I had set forth a Person of Honour who had been pleased to defend me against one of my keenest Antagonists was assaulted by him whom I was in the first place obliged in gratitude to ease of any farther trouble Since that time I have applyed my self to the consideration of T. G.'s Book as much as health and other business would permit And finding such confusion in most Discourses about Idolatry and that till the Nature of it were fully and clearly Stated men would still dispute in the dark about these matters in my last Summers retirement I set my self to the strict examination of it by searching with my utmost diligence into the Idolatries practised in all parts of the world by the help of the best Authors I could
this first principle yet they all agreed in this that it was immortal and not only good in it self but the fountain of all good Which surely was no description of an Arch-Devil But what need I farther insist on those Authours of his own Church who have yielded this when there are several who with approbation have undertaken the proof of this in Books written purposely on this subject such as Raim Breganius Mutius Pansa Livius Galantes Paulus Benius Eugubinus but above all Augustinus Steuchus Eugubinus who have made it their business to prove that not only the Being of the Deity but the unity as a first principle the Wisdom Goodness Power and Providence of God were acknowledged not meerly by the Philosophers as Plato and Aristotle and their followers but by the generality of mankind But I am afraid these Books may be as hard for him to find as Trigautius was and it were well if his Principles were as hard to find too if they discover no more learning or judgement than this that the Supreme God of the Heathens was an Arch-Devil But T. G. saith that the Father of Gods and men among the Heathens was according to the Fathers an Arch-Devil Is it not possible for you to entertain wild and absurd opinions your selves but upon all occasions you must lay them at the doors of the Fathers I have heard of a place where the people were hard put to it to provide God-fathers for their Children at last they resolved to choose two men that were to stand as God-fathers for all the Children that were to be born in the Parish just such a use you make of the Fathers they must Christen all your Brats and how foolish soever an opinion be if it comes from you it must presently pass under the name of the Fathers But I shall do my endeavour to break this bad custome of yours and since T. G. thinks me a scarce-revolted Presbyterian I shall make the right Father stand for his own Children And because this is very material toward the true understanding the Nature of Idolatry I shall give a full account of the sense of the Fathers in this point and not as T. G. hath done from one single passage of a learned but by their own Church thought heretical Father viz. Origen presently cry out the Fathers the Fathers Which is like a Country Fellow that came to a Gentleman and told him he had found out a brave Covie of Partridges lying in such a Field the Gentleman was very much pleased with the news and presently asked him how many there were what half a score No. eight No. Six No. Four No. But how many then are there Sir saith the Country Fellow it is a Covie of one I am afraid T. G 's Covie of Fathers will hardly come to one at last Iustin Martyr is the eldest genuine Father extant who undertook to reprove the Gentiles for their Idolatry and to defend the Christian worship In his Paraenesis to the Greeks he takes notice how hardly the wiser Gentiles thought themselves dealt with when all the Poetical Fables about their Gods were objected against them just as some of the Church of Rome do when we tell them of the Legends of their Saints which the more ingenuous confess to be made by men who took a priviledge of feigning and saying any thing as well as the Heathen Poets but they appealed for the principles of their Religion to Plato and Aristotle both whom he confesses to have asserted one Supreme God although they differed in their opinions about the manner of the formation of things by him Afterwards he saith That the first Authour of Polytheism among them viz. Orpheus did plainly assert one Supreme God and the making of all things by him for which he produces many verses of his and to the same purpose an excellent testimony of Sophocles viz. that in truth there is but one God who made Heaven and Earth and Sea and Winds but the folly and madness of mankind brought in the Images of Gods and when they had offered sacrifices and kept solemnities to these they thought themselves Religious He farther shews that Pythagoras delivered to his disciples the unity of God and his being the cause of all things and the fountain of all good that Plato being warned by Socrates his death durst not oppose the Gods commonly worshipped but one may guess by his Writings that his meaning as to the inferiour Deities was that they who would have them might and they who would not might let them alone but that himself had a right opinion concerning the true God That Homer by his golden chain did attribute to the Supreme God a Power over all the rest and that the rest of the Deities were near as far distant from the Supreme as men were and that the Supreme was he whom Homer calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God himself which signifies saith Iustin 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the truely existent Deity and that in Achilles his Shield he makes Vulcan represent the Creation of the world From these arguments he perswades the Greeks to hearken to the Revelation which the true and Supreme God had made of himself to the world and to worship him according to his own Will In his Apologies to the Roman Emperours Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius and the Roman Senate and People for so Baronius shews that which is now called the first was truely the second and that not only written to the Senate but to the Emperour too who at that time was Marcus Aurelius as Eusebius saith and Photius after him he gives this account of the State of the Controversie then so warmly managed about Idolatry that it was not whether there were one Supreme God or no or whether he ought to have divine worship given to him but whether those whom the Gentiles called Gods were so or no and whether they or dead men did deserve any divine honour to be given to them and lastly that being supposed whether this honour ought to be given to Images or no For every one of these Iustin speaks distinctly to As to their Gods he denies that they deserved any divine worship because they desired it and were delighted with it From whence as well as from other arguments he proves that they could not be true Gods but evil Daemons that those who were Christians did only worship the true God the Father of all vertue and goodness and his Son who hath instructed both men and Angels for it is ridiculous to think that in this place Iustin should assert the worship of Angels equal with the Father and Son and before the Holy Ghost as some great men of the Church of Rome have done and the Prophetick Spirit in Spirit and truth In another place he saith that they had no other crime to object against the Christians but that they did not
Ceres and Bacchus and the madnesses and wickedness of the Greeks in celebrating their Religious mysteries but he saith all things that concerned Religion were said and done among the Romans with greater gravity than among the Greeks or Barbarians By this he would not have any think him ignorant that some of the Greek Fables might be useful to some persons either for natural or moral Philosophy or other purposes but upon the whole matter he did much more approve the Roman Theology because the benefit of those Fables was very little to any and those very few but the common people who are not versed in Philosophy are apt to take these things in the worst sense either from thence to learn to contemn their Gods or to follow their examples I do not undertake to defend all the Roman Theology nor can it be said that the Romans did in all things maintain that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or decency of worship which Dionysius magnifies them for as appears by the many indecencies which the Fathers charge the practice of their Religion with but as they were not to be excused in other things so we ought not to charge them with more than they were guilty of I mean when all the Poetical Fables of Iupiter are applyed to Iupiter O. M. that was worshipped in the Capitol at Rome But some Writers are to be excused who having been bred up in the Schools of Rhetoricians and practising that art so long before when they came to be Christians they could not easily forbear giving a cast of their former employment As when Arnobius had been proving the natural notion of one Supreme God in the minds of men he brings in the Romans answering that if this were intended against them it was a meer calumny for they believed him and called him Jupiter O. M. and built a most magnificent Temple to him in the Capitol which he endeavours to disprove because God is eternal and their Jupiter was born and had a Father and Mother and Uncles and Aunts as other mortals have Which indeed was an infallible argument that Iupiter of Crete could not be the Supreme God but for all that might not the Romans call the Supreme God by the name of Iupiter O. M The Question is not whether they did wisely to make use of a name so corrupted and abused by abominable Fables but whether under this name they meant the Supreme Being or no and they thought it a sufficient distinction of him from that infamous Iupiter of the Poets that they called him Optimus Maximus which Lactantius confesseth were the titles the Romans alwaies gave him in their prayers Quid horum omnium Pater Iupiter qui in solenni precatione Opt. Max. nominatur Which not only shews the titles they gave him but the supplications they made to him and the believing him to be the Father of Gods and Men and yet after this Lactantius rips up all the extravagancies of the Poets as though the Romans at the same time believed him to have done all those things and to have been the Supreme Governour of the world as he confesses they did Regnare in coelo Iovem vulgus existimat id doctis pariter indoctis per suasum est quod Religio ipsa precationes hymni delubra simulacra demonstrant Which words are a very plain testimony that they not only believed him to be Governour of the world but that they did intend to give solemn worship to him by prayers and hymns and sacrifices But when he immediately adds that they confess the same Jupiter to have been born of Saturn and Rhea he might have done well to have explained himself a little more for not long after he acknowledges that many did reject the Poets in these matters as guilty not only of lying but of sacriledge and besides these the Philosophers he saith did make two Ioves the one natural the other fabulous i. e. in truth they made but one rejecting the other as a figment of the Poets But he saith they were to blame in calling him Iove and what then this is only a dispute about the name whereas the question is whom they understood by that name and some think it was the most proper name they could have used Iove being only a little varied from the name the Supreme God was called by in the Scripture And Lactantius himself confesses they had the knowledge of the Supreme God among them and what other name had they to call him by especially when they joyned those two attributes of Power and Goodness as sufficient to prevent any mistake of him That the character given of this Iupiter O. M. by the Romans can belong only to the Supreme God S. Augustin confesses that they believed him whom they worshipped in the Capitol to be the King of the Gods as well as men and to represent this they placed a Scepter in his hand and built his Temple upon a high hill and that it is he of whom Virgil saith Iovis omnia plena and the same in Varro 's opinion that was worshipped by some without any Image by whom he means the Iews saith S. Augustin Luc. Balbus in Cicero saith by Iove they understood Dominatorem rerum omnia nutu regentem praesentem ac praepotentem Deum which are a full description of Gods infinite power and presence and Government of the world When we call Iupiter Opt. Max. and Salutaris and Hospitalis and Stator we mean saith Tully that the safety of men depends upon his protection And that they gave him the titles of Opt. Max. to express his Power and Goodness but first Opt. then Max. because it is a greater thing to do good than to exercise power You may safely saith Seneca call God by the titles of Jupiter Opt. Max. and Tonans and Stator not from stopping the Roman army but because all things do stand by him And you may give him what names you please while you thereby express his divine power and efficacy as Liber Parens because he is the Authour of all things Hercules because of his irresistible force Mercury for his Wisdom If you had received a kindness from Seneca and you should say you owed it to Annaeus or Lucius you would not change the person but his name for what name soever you call him by he is the same person still you may use what name you please while you mean the same thing And lest we should think this only a Philosophical subtilty in Seneca he tells us elsewhere that their Ancestors were not such Fools to imagine that Jove as they worshipped him in the Capitol and elsewhere did send forth thunderbolts from his hand as his Image was there placed sitting in a chair of State with sometimes a Scepter sometimes a Globe in one hand and a Thunderbolt in the other but by Jove they meant the same that we do the preserver
signifying Daughters implies the lesser Deities and Olla taal the Supreme God as the words signifie which he proves from Sharestanius that the old Arabs did acknowledge Abraham Ecchellensis speaking of the Religion of the old Arabians saith that those who were of the Sect of Chaled went upon this principle that there was one Creator and Governor of all things most Powerful and most Wise Besides these there were those who worshipped Intelligences or Celestial Spirits and these saith he although they confessed one Creator of the World most holy wise and powerful yet they said we had need of Mediators to him therefore they invoked those Spirits with all rites of Religious worship and these saith he were called the Daughters of God as they are in the Alcoran not much different from these were the worshippers of Images whom he describes as we have done before But he tells us there was a Sect of Dahritae among them whom he calls Philosophers who were meer Atheists and asserted the Eternity of the World and these being excepted he saith that the ancient Arabs did believe the creation of the world and he tells out of them their particular history of it But Ecchellensis was aware of the parallel between the worship practised in the Church of Rome and that among the Arabians supposing they acknowledged one true God and therefore puts the Qustion whether they did worship their Idols for Gods without relation to any Superiour or only took them for second causes and gave them the name of Gods only Analogically It was a question seasonably put but not so wisely answered For as if he had quite forgotten what he had said before he saith without all doubt the most of them looked upon the Gods they worshipped as of Supreme Authority and Majesty and Independent of any other What although they acknowledged but one Supreme God and called all the lesser Deities his Daughters Although all of them a very few excepted believed the creation of all things by one most Wise and Powerful Being But alas he did not think of this Question when he said the other things and he was not bound to remember them now but to say what served best for his present purpose to clear the Roman Church from Idolatry I will not deny then but there might be a Sect of Dahritae who did only in name own any thing of God and Religion that did assert the Eternity of the world and that there were no other Gods but the Sun Moon and Stars both among the Phoenicians and Chaldeans as well as Arabians but I say these were Atheists and not Idolaters those who where charged with Idolatry among them were such as believed a Supreme Deity but gave Divine Honours to Beings created by him The like is suggested by some concerning the Persians as though they attributed omnipotency and divine worship only to the Sun and those who take all things of this nature upon trust meerly from Herodotus or Iustin or other Greek and Latin writers may think they have reason to believe it but if we look into those who have been most conversant in the Persian writings we shall find a different account of them Iac. Golius in his Notes on Alferganus saith that the Persians gave the names of their Gods to their Months and Days according to the ancient Religion of the Persians and Magi whereby they did believe their Gods to preside over them for it was a principle among them as well as other Nations of the East that the things of this lower world are administred by Angels and accordingly they had their particular prayers and devotions according to the several Days and Months and not only so but their very meat drink clothing and perfumes were different and they had their Tables or Rubricks to instruct them And what worship they gave to the Planets was not saith he to themselves but to those Intelligencies which they supposed to rule them nay they supposed particular Spirits to rule over all the material parts of the world the Spirit over fire was called Adar and Aredbahist the Spirit over Herbs and Trees Chordad the Spirit over Bruits was Bahmen the Spirit over the Earth was Asfendurmed and so they had an Angel of Night and another of Death and the Spirit over the Sun was called Mihrgîan from Mihr the Sun whence the word Mithras but above all these they believed there was one Supreme God whom they called Hormuz and Dei and the Persian Writers say that Zoroaster appointed six great Festivals in the year in remembrance of the six days creation And to this is very agreeable what the Persees in Indosthan do to this day deliver of the principles of their Religion for they affirm God to be the maker of all things but that he committed the Government of the world to certain Spirits and they worship the fire as a part of God and call the Sun and Moon Gods great witnesses and the description of them in Varenius fully accords with this that they acknowledged one Supreme God every where present that governs the world but he makes use of seven chief Ministers for the management of it one over men another over bruits another over fire as is before described and under these they place 25 more who are all to give an account to the Supreme God of their administration With this account agrees the relation of Mandelslo concerning them who saith that the Parsis believe that there is but one God preserver of the Universe that he acts alone and immediately in all things and that the seven servants of God for whom they have also a great veneration have only an inferiour administration whereof they are obliged to give account and after the enumerating these with their particular charges he reckons up 26 under them with their several names but they call them all in common Geshoo i. e. Lords and believe he saith that they have an absolute power over the things whereof God hath intrusted them with the administration Whence it comes that they make no difficulty to worship them and to invocate them in their extremities out of a perswasion that God will not deny them any thing they desire on their intercession Schickard relates a particular story of the Persian King Firutz or Perozes which shews the acknowledgement of a Supreme Deity among the Persians in his time which was about the time of the Council of Chalcedon there happened a mighty drought in Persia so that it rained not for seven years and when the Kings granaries were utterly exhausted and there was no hope of further supplies he called his People out into the open Fields and there in a most humble manner he besought the great God Lord of Heaven and Earth to send them rain and gave not over praying till a plentiful shower fell upon them which saith he is another example after the Ninivites of Gods great mercy
after a publick and solemn repentance But that this Prince was yet a worshipper of the Sun appears by what follows when the Emperor Zenâ— had him at his mercy and made him promise fidelity to him by bowing of himself to him he to avoid the reproach of it among his People carried himself so that he seemed only to them to make his Reverence to the Sun according to the custom of his Country But it will add yet more to the conviction of T. G. and to the discovery of the Nature of Idolatry to shew that those Nations which are at this day charged with Idolatry by the Church of Rome have acknowledged one Supreme God And I shall now shew that those Idolaters who have understood their own Religion have gone upon one of these three principles either 1. that God hath committed the Government of the world under him to some inferiour Deities which was the principle of the Platonists and of the Arabians and Persians Or 2. that God is the Soul of the world and therefore the parts of it deserve divine honour which was the principle of Varro and the Stoicks Or 3. That God is of so great perfection and excellency that he is above our service and therefore what external adoration we pay ought to be to something below him which I shall shew to have been the principle of those who have given the least external adoration to the Supreme God These things I shall make appear by giving a brief account of the Idolatry of those parts of the world which the Emissaries of the Church of Rome have shewed their greatest zeal in endeavouring to convert from their Idolatries There are two Sects in the East-Indies if I may call them so from whom the several Nations which inhabit there have received what principles of Religion they have and those are the Brachmans and the Chineses and the giving account of these two will take in the ways of worship that are generally known among them For the Brachmans I shall take my account chiefly from those who have been conversant among them and had the best reason to understand their Religion Francis Xaverius who went first upon that commendable imployment of converting the Indians saith that the Brachmans told him they knew very well there was but one God and one of the learned Brachmans in his discourse with him not only confessed the same but added that on Sundays which their Teachers kept very exactly they used only this prayer I adore thee O God with thy Grace and Help for ever Tursellinus saith that he confessed this to be one of their great mysteries that there was one God maker of the world who reigns in Heaven and ought to be worshipped by men and so doth Iarricus Bartoli not only relates the same passages but gives this account of their Theology that they call the Supreme God Parabrama which in their language signifies absolutely perfect being the Fountain of all things existing from himself and free from all composition that he committed to Brama the care of all things about Religion to Wistnow another of his Sons the care of mens rights and relieving them in their necessities to a third the power over the elements and over humane bodies These three they represent by an Image with three Heads rising all out of the same trunk these are highly esteemed and prayed to for they suppose Parabrama to be at perfect ease and to have committed the care of all to them But the Brachman Padmanaba gave a more particular account of the management of all things to Abraham Rogers who was well acquainted with him and was fifteen years in those parts Next to Brama they make one Dewendre to be the Superintendent Deity who hath many more under him and besides these they have particular Deities over the several parts of the world as the Persians had They believe both good and evil Spirits and call them by several names the former they call Deütas and the other Ratsjaies and the Father of both sorts to be Brachman the son of Brama In particular cases they have some saith Mr. Lord who conversed among them and to whom Mons. Bernier refers us to one who gave a faithful account of them whom they honour as Saints and make their addresses to as for Marriage they invocate Hurmount for Health Vagenaught for success in Wars Bimohem for Relief Syer c. and I suppose incontinent persons may have someone instead of S. Mary Magdalen to pray to The custom of their daily devotion as the Brachman Padmanaba said was first to meditate of God before they rise then after they have washed themselves they repeat 24 names of God and touch 24 parts of their bodies upon Suâ— rising they say prayers and pour down water in honour of the Sun and then 〈◊〉 down upon their knees and worship him and after perform some ceremonies 〈◊〉 their Idols which they repeat in the evening The particular devotion which theâ— have to their Saints and Images aâ—â— Reliques is fully described by Boullaye-le-Gouz in his late Travels into those parts Mandelslo saith that in the time of the publick devotions they have long Lessâ—â— about the Lives and Miracles of the Saints which the Bramans make use 〈◊〉 to perswade the people to worship them Intercessors with God for them Amoâ—â— their Saints Ram is in very great estimâ—tion being the restorer of their Religiâ—â— and a great Patron of their Braman Kircher supposeth him to be the 〈◊〉 with him whom the Iaponese call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Chinese Ken Kian 〈◊〉 Kircher 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Kia saith Marini and those of Tunquin Chiaga or as Marini Thic-Ca in all which parts he is in very great veneration him they look on as the great propagator of their Religion in the Eastern parts and they say he had 80000 disciples but he chose ten out of them all to disperse his opinions From whence it is supposed that the Religion of the Brachmans hath spread it self not only over Indosthan but Camboia Tunquin Cochinchina nay China it self and Iapan too where it is an usual thing for persons to drown burn or famish themselves for the honour of Xaca This Sect was brought into China 65 years after Christ from Indosthan as Trigautius or rather Matthaeus Riccius tells us for Bartoli assures us that Trigautius only published Riccius his papers in his own name which he supposes was brought in by a mistake for the Christian Religion and surely it was a very great mistake but for all that Trigautius hath found a â—trange resemblance between the Roman Religion and theirs For saith he they worship the Trinity after a certain manner with an image having three Heads and one Body they extol coelibate 〈◊〉 a high degree so as to seem to condemn marriage they forsake their Families and go up and down begging i. e. the Order of Friers
to their Gods but they have Temples for Heaven and Earth in Nankin and Pekim in which the King himself offers the sacrifice and in the Cities they have Temples for Tutelar Spirits to which the Mandarins do sacrifice as to the Spirits of the Rivers Mountains and four parts of the World c. and there are Temples to the honour of great Benefactors to the publick and therein are placed their Images Trigautius saith that he finds in their ancient Books that the Chineses did of old time worship one Supreme God whom they called King of Heaven or by another name Heaven and Earth and besides him they worshipped Tutelar Spirits to the same purpose with Semedo and the same he saith continues still in the learned Sect among them whose first Author was their famous Confutius to him they have a Temple erected in every City with his Image or his name in golden letters whither all the Magistrates every new or full Moon do resort to give honour to Confutius with bowings and Wax-candles and incense the same they do on his birth-day and other set times there to express their gratitude for the mighty advantages they have had by his Doctrine but they make no prayers to him and neither seek nor hope for any thing from him They have likewise Temples to Tutelar Spirits for every City and Tribunal where they make oblations and burn perfumes acknowledging these to have power to reward and punish Bartoli saith it is not out of any contempt of Religion but out of reverence to the Deity because of the excellency of his Majesty that they suffer none but the King to offer Sacrifice to him and accordingly the larger Power the Tutelar Spirits are supposed to have the greater Magistrates are to attend their service and the lesser those of Cities and Mountains and Rivers But that which is more material to our present business is to consider the Resolution of a case of Conscience not long since given at Rome by the Congregation of Cardinals de propagandâ fide after advising with and the full consent of the Pope obtained 12 Sept. 1645. Which resolution and decree was Printed in the Press of the Congregation the same year with the Popes Decree annexed to it and his peremptory command for the observation of it by all Missionaries and that Copy of the Resolution I have seen was attested by a publick Notary to agree with the Original Decree which case will help us very much to the right understanding the Notion of Idolatry according to the sense of the Church of Rome The case was this The Missionaries of the Society of Iesuits having had a plentiful harvest in China and many of the Great men embracing the Christian Religion by their means the Missionaries of other Orders especially the Franciscans had a great curiosity to understand the arts which the Iesuits used in prevailing with so many Great persons to become Christians and upon full enquiry they found they gave them great liberty as to the five Precepts of the Church as they call them viz. hearing Mass annual Confession receiving the Sacrament at Easter Fasting at the solemn times and Tenths and First-fruits besides they did forbear their Ceremonies of baptism their oyl and spittle in the ears and salt in the mouth when they baptized Women and giving extreme Unction to them because the jealousie of their Husbands would not permit them to use them but that which is most to our purpose is the liberty they gave the Mandarins in two things 1. To go to the Temple of the Tutelar Spirit in every City as they are bound by vertue of their office to do twice a month or else they forfeit their places and there to prostrate themselves before the Idol with all the external acts of adoration that others used and swearing before it when they enter into their office so they did secretly convey a Crucifix among the flowers that lay upon the altar or hold it cunningly in their hands and direct all their adorations to the Crucifix by the inward intention of their minds 2. To go to the Temple of Keum-Fucu or Confucius twice a year and to perform all the solemnities there that the rest did and the same as to the Temples of their Ancestors which are erected to their honour according to the precepts of Confucius because the Chineses declared that they intended only to give the same reverence to the memory of their Ancestors which they would do to themselves if they were still living and what they offer to them is nothing but what they would give them if they were alive without any intention to beg any thing from them when they know them to be dead and the same allowance they gave as to the Images of their Ancestors about which many Ceremonies were used by them The Missionaries of S. Francis order being well informed of the Truth of these things from the Philippines they send a Memorial to the King of Spain concerning them who by his Ambassador represents it to the Pope whereupon the Congregation of Cardinals was called and after great deliberation and advising with the Pope about it they made their Decree wherein they by several resolutions declare it unlawful upon any of those pretences to use acts in themselves unlawful and superstitious although directed by their intention to the worship of the true God And lest any should imagine it was only matter of scandal which they stood upon as T. G. doth about worshipping towards the Sun they make use of several expressions on purpose to exclude this for so they resolve the seventh Quere nullatenus licere it is by no means lawful and the eighth nullo praetextu under no pretence whatsoever and to the ninth expresly that it could not be salved propter absentiam gentilium if there were no gentiles present from this Resolution we may observe several things to our purpose That Idolatry is consistent with the belief of the Supreme God and reserving soveraign worship as due only to him For the Congregation calls the Image of the Tutelar Spirit an Idol and consequently the act of adoration must be Idolatry yet it is very clear that the Chineses especially the Christians did never intend to give to the Tutelar Spirit the honour proper to the Supreme Deity And Bartoli hath at large proved that the Chineses did of old acknowledge the true God and his Providence over the World and that their Princes do worship the same God still to whom they offer Sacrifice and they call him by two names Scianti which signifies supreme Monarch and Tienciù Lord of Heaven and as he tells us they put an apparent difference between Tienciù and Tienscin i. e. between God and Angels and say that the power of forgiving sins belongs only to God and not to them that upon a debate among the Missionaries about the use of these words for the true God and some scruples raised from some
misinterpretations of it by an Atheistical Sect among them they were satisfied by plain and perspicuous testimonies out of their Books that they could mean no other than the true God and that he to whom the King every year offers sacrifice is a pure Mind free from all mixture governing all things and therefore to him all the acts of soveraign worship are performed such as Sacrifices Vows Prayers and thanksgivings Therefore the worship they give to the Tutelar Spirits or Guardian Angels as they suppose them must be of an inferiour nature and yet the Congregation of the Cardinals by the direction of the Pope condemn this for Idolatry That giving an Inferiour Worship on the account of created excellency when it appears to be Religious is utterly unlawful among Christians For this is the only imaginable reason why the Congregation did so absolutely condemn the worship of Confutius and their Ancestors and Hurtado in the explication of this decree confesses that the Chineses did not esteem Confutius as a God but only looked on him as a holy and vertuous Philosopher yet saith he because they did those acts to him which are only proper to God they commit manifest Idolatry in it For saith he they who give to a creature the worship due only to God do commit Idolatry and from hence the Gentiles who acknowledged one God were Idolaters because they gave to the creatures the honour due to him in the doing of which they made an acknowledgement of divine excellency in the things they gave it to By which it appears that there are some external acts of worship so proper to God that although a man hath never so clear apprehension in his mind of the Supreme excellency of God above the creatures he worships yet the giving that worship to them makes his act Idolatry The Iesuits to excuse these things speak very high things of Confutius and of his admirable Life and doctrine and surely not without great reason if their relations hold true as I see no reason to suspect them but the more Confutius is extolled the worse they make their own case for all these acts of external worship towards him are condemned for Idolatry and how then comes the worship of Ignatius Loyola to be otherwise who I dare say never was so great a Philosopher nor did so much good in the world as the Iesuits say Confutius did But at last they would have all these honours to Confutius to be only civil honours although Trigautius confesses that he hath a Temple in every City that his Image with that of his Disciples is set up in it that these Disciples are looked on as a sort of Divi i. e. as Canonized Saints that bere they make use of all the rites of adoration genuflections wax-candles incense oblations prayers only excepted but we see notwithstanding all their pretences the Pope and Congregation of Cardinals have condemned them as guilty of Idolatry That the Pope and Congregation of Cardinals were not of T. G 's mind that acts do certainly go whither they are intended For all these acts of worship were directed by the intention of the persons to the secret Crucifix which lay among the flowers upon the Altar but notwithstanding this in their opinion were a fit object of worship yet other circumstances did so much alter the nature of it that they declare these acts to be in themselves unlawful By actions going whither they are intended I do not mean as T. G. suggests that the Physical act of the mind doth not pass to the object whither the act is directed i. e. that I do not think of that which I do think of but my meaning is that such a directing the intention of the mind doth not give a moral denomination to the nature of the action viz. that it becomes lawful or unlawful by vertue of such an intention of the mind but that the Law of God may so determine the nature of our acts of worship as to make them unlawful whatever the intention of the mind be And thus the Congregation of Cardinals here resolves the case the Persons used only those acts of adoration that may be directed to God by a secret intention of the mind they suppose a Crucifix a fit object for divine worship and going together into an Idolatrous Temple and using all the external equivocal acts as T. G. calls them which the rest did they direct their acts by vertue of this intention to the Crucifix yet although the Congregation thought this intention rightly directed they condemn the acts as in themselves unlawful But of these things hereafter the first observation being sufficient to my present purpose viz. to shew that according to the present sense of the Roman Church the practice of Idolatry is consistent with the acknowledgement of one Supreme God From the Idolatry of the East-Indies I proceed to that of the Tartars whose Dominion hath extended it self over that vast Continent from the utmost North-East parts to the borders of Europe that way and this acount I shall give from the least suspected witnesses in this matter viz. the Emissaries of the Roman Church who had conversed most among them and made it their design to understand their Religion In A. D. 1246. after the horrible devastations made by the Tartars in Poland and Hungary Pope Innocent 4. sent Iohannes de Plano Carpini as his Legat or Nuncio to them and after a year and four months stay among them he gives this account of their Religion unum Deum credunt quem credunt esse factorem omnium visibilium invisibilium credunt eum tam bonorum in hoc mundo quam poenarum esse factorem non tamen orationibus vel laudibus aut ritu aliquo ipsum colunt They believe one God whom they believe to be the maker of all things visible and invisible and to be the Author of all worldly goods and punishments and yet he saith they had no manner of worhip of him but their worship they gave to Images which he there at large decribes But there is an inferior Deity whom he calls Itoga Paulus Venetus Natagay which they believe to be the God of the earth and him they worship with great superstition and besides they worship the Sun Moon and Fire and make oblations to the Image of their first Emperour and the same thing is affirmed by Vincentius Bellovacensis After him Lewis the ninth of France sent William de Rubruquis a Franciscan A. D. 1253. who passed through the several Courts of the Tartarian Princes and gave an exact account to his Prince of the Religion he found among them In the conference he had with Mangu-Chan who was then Emperour about Religion the Emperour told him We Moals which is the name they call themselves by that being the name of the Tribe from whence Iingiz-chan came the Tartars being another Tribe but better known to the Europeans We saith he believe that
by an Image since Images are intended to represent the absent but God is every where present But if there ought to be any Image of God which he calls simulachrum Dei and surely doth not signifie an Idol in T. G's sense and I hope here he will not charge me with want of fidelity in translating it Image it ought to be living and sensible because God lives for ever therefore that cannot be the Image of God that is made by the Work of mens hands but Man himself who gives all the art and beauty to them which they have but poor silly men as they are they do not consider that if their Images had sense and motion they would worship the Men that made them and brought them into such a curious figure out of rude and unpolished matter Who can be so foolish to imagine there can be any thing of God in that Image in which there is nothing of man but the meer shadow But their minds have the deepest tincture of folly for those who have sense worship things that have none they who think themselves wise things that are uncapable of Reason they that live things that cannot stir and they that came from heaven things that are made of earth What is this saith he but to invert the order of Nature to adore that which we tread upon Worship him that lives if ye would live for he must dye that gives up his Soul to things that are dead And after he hath fully shewn his Rhetorick in exposing the folly of worshipping Images he concludes very severely quare nonest dubium quin Religio nulla sit ubicunque simulachrum est Wherefore there can be no true Religion where there is the worship of Images no although it be simulachrum Dei the worship of God by an Image for his reason holds against all Religion saith he is a divine thing and whatever is divine is heavenly but whatever is in Images is earthy and therefore there can be no Religion in the worship of Images What sport do Tertullian Minucius and Arnobius make with the Images which were consecrated to divine worship from the meanness of the matter they are made of the pains and art that is used to bring them into their shape the casualties of fire and rottenness and defilements they are subject to and many other Topicks on purpose to represent the ridiculousness of worshipping such things or God by them O saith Arnobius that I could but enter into the bowels of an Image and lay before you all the worthy materials they are made up of that I could but dissect before you a Jupiter Olympius and Capitolinus Yet these were dedicated to the worship of the Supreme God Would men ever have been such Fools to have exposed themselves rather than such Images to laughter and scorn if they had used any such themselves or thought them capable of relative divine worship How easily would a Heathen of common understanding have stopt the mouths of these powerful Orators with saying but a few such words to any one of them Fair and soft good Sir while you declaim so much against our Images think of your own what if our Iupiter Olympius or Capitolinus be made of Ivory or Brass or Marble what if the Artificer hath taken so much pains about them what if they are exposed to Weather and Birds and Fire and a thousand casualties are not the Images of S. Peter and S. Paul or the several Madonna 's of such and such Oratories liable to the very same accusations If ours are unfit for worship are not yours so too if we be ridiculous are not you so and so much the more because you laugh at others for what you do your selves So that we must either think the first Christians prodigious Fools or they must utterly condemn all Images for Religious Worship and not meerly the Heathens on considerations peculiar to them And that we may not think this a meer heat of Eloquence in these men we find the same thing asserted by the most grave and sober Writers of the Christian Church when they had to deal not with the rabble but their most understanding Adversaries We have no material Images at all saith Clemens Alexandrinus we have only one intellectual Image who is the only true God We worship but one Image which is of the Invisible and Omnipotent God saith S. Hierome No Image of God ought to be worshipped but that which is what he is neither is that to be worshiped in his stead but together with him saith S. Augustin Where it is observable that the reason of worship given to this Eternal Image of God is not communicable to any Image made of him as to his humane Nature for it cannot be said of the humane nature it self that it is God much less of any Image or representation of it Therefore let T. G. judge whether the worshipping Christ by an Image be not equally condemned by the Fathers with the worship of God by an Image but of that hereafter Eusebius answering Porphyrie about the Image of God saith What agreement is there between the Image of a man and the Divine understanding I think it hath very little to a mans mind since that is incorporeal simple indivisible the other quite contrary and only a dull representation of a mans shape The only resemblance of God lies in the soul which cannot be expressed in Colours or Figures and if that cannot which is infinitely short of the Divine Nature what madness is it to make the Image of a man to represent the Figure and form of God For the Divine Nature must be conceived with a clear and pure understanding free from all corruptible matter but that Image of God in the likeness of man contains only the Image of a mortal man and that not of all of him but of the worst part only without the least shadow of Life or Soul How then can the God over all and the Mind which framed the World be the same that is represented in Brass or Ivory S. Augustin relating the saying of Varro about representing God by the Image of a mans body which contains his Soul which resembles God saith that herein he lost that prudence and sobriety he discovered in saying that those who first brought in Images among the Romans abated their Reverence to the Deity and added to their errour and that the Gods were more purely worshipped without Images wherein saith S. Augustin he came very near to the Truth And if he durst speak openly against so ancient an errour he would say that one God ought to be worshipped and that without an Image the folly of Images being apt to bring the Deity into contempt Is it possible to condemn the worship of God by an Image in more express words than S. Austin here does 2. Because the worship of God by Images is repugnant to his Will Clemens Alexandrinus mentions the
of Divine worship and see upon what grounds they become guilty of Idolatry which will not reach home to themselves Card. Bessarion hath written an elaborate vindication of Plato against Trapezuntius wherein he shews that Plato did assert the Unity Power and Goodness of God and the Creation of all things by him and that he doth this frequently and constantly in his Parmenides Phaedrus Phaedo Philebus Timaeus Sophista Laws Politicks Epistles every where But Trapezuntius charges Plato that although he did acknowledge God he did not worship him and that he sacrificed only to the inferiour Gods to this Bessarion answers that in his Books of Laws which were made for the People he doth not expresly prescribe any worship to God under the name of One or First or Ineffable which were the Titles he had given him in his Dialogues and were not known to the People but in his eighth book of Laws he appoints twelve solemn Feasts to the twelve Gods of whom Iupiter was chief under which name the Supream God was known among the People than which name in the proper importance of it none could have been more significant of the Nature of the Supreme God and that he retained the other common names of the Gods worshipped among them that he might not seem to innovate any thing in Religion although the Philosophers understood them in another sense than the common people did by Iove they meant the First Being or Supreme Deity by Minerva Wisdom by Mercury Reason by Saturn Eternity by Neptune Form by Iuno Matter by Venus Nature by Apollo the Sun by Pan the Universe but when they spake to the People about the worship of them they did not mention Wisdom or Reason or Eternity but Minerva Mercury Saturn and he saith it would have been folly in them to have done otherwise the People being accustomed to worship the Gods under these names and nothing more was requisite but to make them understand them aright But for Plato himself he saith he worshipped the Supreme God after the best manner i. e. with inward Reverence and adoration in Plato's own expressions by thinking the best and most worthy things of him which Bessarion interprets in Spirit and in Truth and he adds that Plato looked on Sacrifices and Images as unworthy of him who was a pure mind and could not be represented by any Image to men But Plato's Adversary charges him with giving the worship of Latria to inferiour Gods and Creatures to which Bessarion saith that Latria among the Heathens signified only a stricter kind of service which some men paid to others that were above them and that the worship by sacrifice by a long custome from the time of Zamolxis and Orpheus was looked on as common to all things worshipped by them but saith he he referred all that worship which others gave to many and different Gods to the First and Chief Principle of all things and again mentions that saying in his Epinomis that the most suitable worship of God is to think honourably of him Which I suppose Plato would have said was the same thing which those of the Church of Rome call Latria and that he could by no means understand how sacrifices come to be appropriated to it and to this purpose Bessarion quotes the saying of Porphyrius that God is to be worshipped in Silence and with a pure mind and with the sacrifice of a good life And as to other Deities which Plato allowed to be worshipped he saith that he supposed them to be inferiour and subordinate to the Supreme and dependent upon him and that he did not worship empty Statues but one God the principle of all Which being compared with Plato's Law and practice about worshipping according to the Custome of the Countrey doth imply that he worshipped Images with a respect to the True God Let now the Reader judge whether according to the judgement of this learned Cardinal Plato was guilty of worshipping only the Images of false Gods But Trapezuntius still urges hard upon Plato that if he allowed the worship of a second and third Order of Gods which were but creatures he might on the same ground worship any creatures because all creatures are infinitely distant from the Creator Bessarion like an understanding man tells him that this argument would hold as well against the Church of Rome as against Plato which worships Angels although they be Creatures but yet he doth not think the argument will reach to the worship of all creatures because though all creatures be equally distant as to existence yet some come nearer than others as to perfection This Trapezuntius takes off by saying that Plato worshipped Daemons which Bessarion grants but by Daemons he saith Plato and Aristotle and other Philosophers did not understand such evil Spirits as we do but certain aereal Beings lower than Gods and above men whom they looked on as Mediators and intercessours between God and men but for evil Spirits he saith they were not received into their Religion and that Lucifer was looked on as accursed by them under the name of Ate. And he shews farther from S. Augustin that all the Poetical Theology was rejected by Plato So that the whole dispute with Plato about worship must come to these two points 1. Whether it be lawful to worship the Supreme God by external and visible representations supposing that a man direct his intention aright towards the honour of God by them 2. Whether it be lawful to give an inferiour worship to any Created Beings whose excellencies are supposed to be far above mens in order to their intercession between God and Us And now let T. G. judge whether I have not brought my Discourse home to their own doors I omit Marsilius Ficinus as a man that may be supposed too partial to Plato but I hope Augustinus Steuchus Eugubinus may pass for a sound Catholick being an Italian Bishop and a Roman Courtier that had so much zeal as to vindicate Constantines Donation against Valla and therefore his Testimony cannot be rejected He undertakes at large to prove that Plato acknowledged one True and Supreme God and that all other Beings are created by him and when he seems to attribute Divinity to other things it is only a Divinity by way of gift and participation such as Angels and holy men are said to have which doth not hinder our believing them to be all at first created by one God There were three sorts of inferiour Deities he saith asserted by the Philosophers viz. Daemons or Gods with aërial bodies who have a particular care of humane affairs Intelligences or the Spirits which animate and move the Stars and Coelestial Deities who converse with the Supreme God now all these he makes appear from many passages in Plato especially the famous one in his Timaeus to have been made by God And that when in his Books of Laws and the Epinomis or Appendix to
for that which would have been Idolatry downright Paganish Idolatry under the former names becomes good Catholick Worship under the latter But I do not see that any of the Primitive Christians did ever think that the change of names or persons would have wrought such wonders but that the worship of Images would have continued the same thing whatever names had been given to them And what pleasant stories soever Epiphanius the Deacon tells in the second Council of Nice concerning the disciples of the elder Epiphanius placing his Image in a Church dedicated to him in Cyprus yet Petavius confesses that in his time there were no Images in the Churches of Cyprus which he takes to be the reason of his mighty zeal against them Any thing rather than that which himself gives viz. the Authority of Scriptures and the Christian Religion In the Theodosian Code we find a Law of Theodosius M. against the several parts of the Heathen Idolatry the sacrifices libations incense lights c. and after the rest it comes particularly to their worship of Images in these words Si quis vero mortali opere facta avum passura simulachra imposito ture venerabitur ac ridioulo exemplo metuens subito quae pro se simulaverit vel redimita vitis arbore vel erectâ effossis arâ cespitibus vanas imagines humiliore licet muneris praemio tamen plena Religionis injuriâ honorare temptaverit is utpote violatae Religionis reus eâ domo seu possessione multabitur in quâ eum Gentilitiâ constiterit Superstitione famulatum The meaning whereof is that it was the forfeiture of house and land for any man to offer incense to Images made by men and that were of a perishing nature or that hung their garlands on Trees or raised Altars of Turf before their Images for although the cost were less yet the violation of Religion was the same This Constitution I grant doth respect Heathen Images but I say it proceeds upon such grounds which are common to all Images unless they be such as drop from heaven such as the Image of Edessa and the rest mentioned by Gretser or that of Diana of Ephesus or some few others that were pretended to have a divine Original for such as these the Constitution doth not reach being Divine and immortal but for all others I do not see how they can escape the Reason of this Law And it is altogether as ridiculous for Christians to worship the things they have formed as it was for the Heathens to do it where T. G. may learn the signification and Etymology of simulachrum à simulando for simulare is the same with effigiare as the Scholiast on that Constitution tells him In the same Constitution they are called sensu carentia simulachra which are words put in on purpose to shew how stupid and senseless the worship of them is and are not all Images among Christians so Have they not eyes and see not and ears and hear not as well as the Heathen Images Or do they worship only living and sensible Images moving I grant sometimes they do such as Themistius upon Aristotle tells us that Daedaelus made that moved by the help of quicksilver or springs such as the Holy Rood of Boxtel in Kent whose secret engines for moving the eyes and lips were laid open and an Anatomy Lecture read upon them at Pauls Cross in Henry the Eighths time by Bishop Fisher. 2. That Notion of Idolatry which the Heathens were charged with by the primitive Christians may be common to Christians with them Therefore if the fear of Idolatry kept them from the worship of Images and the same fear may justly continue where ever Images are worshipped then the Christians rejecting of Images was not upon any reason peculiar to that Age of the Church If men by being Christians were uncapable of being Idolaters without renouncing Christianity there were some pretence for laying aside the fears and jealousies of Idolatry when the Christian Religion had prevailed in the world But S. Paul supposes that Christians continuing so might be Idolaters Neither be ye Idolaters as were some of them Yet these were the Persons who were baptized unto Moses in the cloud and the Sea and did all eat the same spiritual meat and drink the same spiritual drink for they drank of that rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ. Which water they drank of both before and after their Idolatry and since the water followed them at the very time of committing it so that those persons are said to be partakers of Christ who were charged with Idolatry and therefore S. Paul is far from supposing that Idolatry and the profession of Christianity are inconsistent with each other But it is said that there can be no Idolatry to the Images of Christ because the true object of worship is honoured by them nor to the Images of Saints so long as men take them for Saints that is Gods Creatures and give only an inferiour worship to them If this be true there appears to be little danger of Idolatry among those who do not renounce Christianity But against this plea I put in these exceptions 1. That upon the same grounds all the Wiser Heathens must be cleared from Idolatry For 1. They owned the true Object of Divine worship viz. One Supreme God as I have at large proved in the former Discourses both those that went on the Platonick hypothesis of one Supreme Deity and others inferiour and those who believed one God to be worshipped under different representations The former was the principle which Iulian went upon and the latter Platonists who opposed Christianity to the utmost the other was the principle of the Stoicks and others and particularly owned by Maximus Madaurensis who saith that the Heathens did worship one God under several names thereby to express his several powers diffused through the World Now upon this supposition that where there is a true object of worship represented there can be no Idolatry in worshipping the representation I challenge any man to shew how the Heathens that went on these principles were chargeable with Idolatry For is Christ any otherwise a right object of worship than as he is believed to be the True God if then there can be no Idolatry towards an Image of Christ neither can there be towards any representation of the True God 2. The Heathens did assert the difference between God and his Creatures as I have already proved that they looked on their inferiour Deities as dependent on the supreme Being Created and Governed by Him so that if the acknowledgement of Saints to be Gods Creatures doth hinder men from committing Idolatry it must do the same for all those who owned a subordination of Deities which takes in the far greatest part of the Heathen World 3. They allowed the different degrees of worship suitable to the excellencies of the objects as Soveraign worship
such an answer for then all the folly and madness in making the grossest Images of God doth not lye in the Images themselves but in the imagination of the Persons that make them Is it not as great in those that worship them with such an imagination if it be then whatever the Design of the makers was if they be apt to beget such imaginations in those who see and worship them they are in that respect as unlawful as T. G. supposes any Images of God among the Heathens to have been 4. What doth T. G. mean when he makes those Images unlawful which represent the Divinity in it self and not those which represent God as he appeared Can the meer essence of any thing be represented by an Image Is it possible to represent any being otherwise than as it appears But it may be T. G. hath found out the way of painting Essences if he hath he deserves to have the Patent for it not only for himself but for his Heirs and Executors For he allows it to be the peculiar priviledge of an infinite Being that it cannot be represented as it is in it self then all other things may be represented as they are in themselves in opposition to the manner of their appearance or else the distinction signifies nothing Petrus Thyraeus a man highly commended by Possevin for for his explication of this matter saith the meaning is that an Image doth not represent the Nature but the Person that is visible for saith he when we see the Image of a man we do not say we see a Reasonable Creature but a Man Very well and so in the Image of the Deity we do not see the Divine Nature but the Divine Person or in such a way as he became visible The Invisible Nature of God cannot be represented in an Image and can the invisible Nature of Man Therefore saith he it is no injury to God to be painted by an Image no more upon these principles than to a man Bellarmin proves the lawfulness of making Images of God because man is said to be the Image of God and he may be painted therefore the Image of God may be too for that which is the Image of the Image is likewise the Image of the Exemplar those which agree in a third agreeing among themselves To this some answer'd that man was not the Image of God as to his body but as to his soul which could not be painted but Bellarmin takes off this answer by saying that then a man could not not be painted for he is not a man in regard of his outward lineaments but in regard of his substance and especially his Soul but notwithstanding the soul cannot be painted yet a man may truly and properly be said to be painted because the Figure and colours of an Image do represent the whole man otherwise saith he a thing painted could never seem to be the true Thing as Zeuxis his grapes did which deceived the birds Therefore according to Bellarmines reasoning that which represents a Being according to outward appearance although it have an invisible Nature yet is a true and real representation and represents it as it is in it self and as far as it is possible for an Image to represent any thing Wherein then lyes the difference between making the Picture of a man and the Image of God If it be said that the Image of God is very short imperfect and obscure is not the same thing to be said of the Picture of a man which can only represent his outward Features without any description of his inward substance or soul If it be farther said that there is a real resemblance between a Picture of a man and his outward lineaments but there is none between God and the Image of a man then I ask what Bellarmins argument doth signifie towards the proving the lawfulness of making an Image of God For if God may be painted because man may who is the Image of God for the Image of the Image is the Image of the Exemplar then it follows that Man is the Image of God as he may be painted and so God and man must agree in that common thing which is a capacity of being represented which cannot be supposed without as real a resemblance between God and his Image as between a Man and his Picture But T. G. tells us that they abhorr the very thoughts of making any such likeness of God and all that the Council of Trent allows is only making representations of some apparition or action of God in a way proportionable to our Humane Conception I answer 1. It is no great sign of their abhorring the thoughts of any such likeness of God to see such arguments made use of to prove the lawfulness of making Images of God which do imply it 2. Those Images of God which are the most used and allowed in the Roman Church have been thought by Wise men of their own Church to imply such a Likeness Molanus and Thyraeus mention four sorts of Images of the Trinity that have been used in the Roman Church 1. That of an old man for God the Father and of Christ in humane nature and of the Holy Ghost in the Form of a Dove 2. That of three Persons of equal Age and Stature 3. That of an Image of the Bl. Virgin in the belly of which was represented the Holy Trinity this Ioh. Gerson saith he saw in the Carmelites Church and saith there were others like it and Molanus saith he had seen such a one himself among the Carthusians 4. That of one Head with three faces or one body and three Heads which Molanus saith is much more common than the other and is wont to be set before the Office of the Holy Trinity these two latter those Authors do not allow because the former of them tends to a dangerous errour viz. that the whole Trinity was incarnate of the B. Virgin and the latter Molanus saith was an invention of the Devil it seems then there was one invention of the Devil at least to be seen in the Masse-Book for saith he the Devil once appeared with three Heads to a Monk telling him he was the Trinity But the two former they allow and defend Waldensis saith Molanus with a great deal of learning defends that of the three Persons from the appearance of the Three to Abraham and Thyraeus justifieth the first and the most common from the Authority of the Church the Consent of Fathers and the H. Scriptures And yet Pope Iohn 22. as Aventinus relates it condemned some to the Fire as Anthropomorphites and enemies to Religion for making the very same representation of the Trinity which he defends being only of God as an old man and of the Son as a young man and of the Holy Ghost under the picture of a Dove Ysambertus takes notice of this story but he saith they were such Images as were according to
never had life in them but that which hath life and sense and motion hath a greater influence from that Divine Wisdom which governs all things therefore saith he these ought not to be looked on as inferiour representations of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Being than those Images which are made of Brass or Stone by the Workmanship of men and are subject to corruption and destitute of all sense and understanding Whereby we see that Plutarch did put a difference between the common practises of the People and the intention of the wiser men in the Egyptian Idolatry He before takes notice of the follies of the People that worshipped the living creatures themselves as Gods and thereby not only exposed their Religion to the scorn and contempt of others but led some men into horrible superstition and tempted others to turn Atheists and then he gives this as the most reasonable account of the worship of these Animals according to their wiser men whose opinions ought most to be followed in Religion From whence it appears that the distinction of the practice of the People and the Doctrine of Divines hath obtained among the grossest Idolaters and if the Peoples Practice be excused because the Divines teach otherwise the most sottish Egyptian Idolaters are excusable as well as those in the Roman Church For what is there in this principle of worship laid down by Plutarch which may not be defended by the avowed doctrine of the Roman Church Here is 1. a right ultimate object of worship viz. the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Being which orders and governs all things 2. Here is a representation of that object by the perfections derived from that Being to a Creature 3. Here is a right directing the Intention through that representation to the ultimate object And 4. the formal reason of worship is the derivation or participation of that perfection which represents God from the divine Being and therefore this is no Soveraign worship which is given to it The only difficulty here is to shew that the Egyptians did intend to worship the Supreme God by either sort of their Images which is not only affirmed by Plutarch who saith They understood by Osiris the wise Providence of God and by Porphyrie who saith The Egyptians by the several animals they worshipped did express their devotion towards the Almighty power of God and by Apuleius who was initiated in the Egyptian Mysteries and in the conclusion of his Metamorphosis Osiris is called Deus Deum magnorum potior majorum summus summorum maximus maximorum regnator Osiris which are descriptions of no less than the Supremest God but Max. Tyrius yields at last that the Egyptians did worship the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Deity by the worship of Animals as the Greeks did by the Statue of Phidias And there is a considerable Testimony to this purpose in Vopiscus taken out of an Epistle of the Emperour Adrian which he wrote to Servianus from Egypt giving an account of the manners of the Egyptians wherein are these words Unus illis Deus est hunc Christiani hunc Iudaei hunc omnes vener antur gentes They had one God whom Christians and Iews and all Nations worshipped Is. Casaubon suspects this passage but without any reason as Salmasius proves and is apparent because the same thing is said in the beginning of the same Epistle Where he saith that however they differed in other points yet they all agreed in the worship of Sarapis by whom Phylarchus in Plutarch understands That God which Governs the World and Seguinus shews from ancient Coynes and Authors that Sarapis and Iupiter Ammon and Iupiter Pharius and Iupiter rerum omnium potens were all one Thence the Inscriptions D.E.O. I.N.V.I.C.T.O. S.E.R.A.P.I. S.E.R.V.A.T.O.R.I. D.E.O. M.A.G.N.O. S.E.R.A.P.I. and that mentioned by Tristan I.O.M. S.A.R.A.P.I.D.I. P.R.O. S.A.L.V.T.E. I.M.P. From which it appears that supposing the Israelites did relapse to the Egyptian Idolatry it doth not from thence follow that they did not worship the true God by an Image I proceed now to the two Calves of Ieroboam at Dan and Bethel which being made in imitation of the Golden Calf must stand or fall by what hath been said already concerning that But I shall here make good the peculiar arguments to Ieroboam's case which were brought to prove that he did intend to worship the God of Israel by the Calves of Dan and Bethel 1. Because Ieroboam manifests no design of taking the people off from the worship of the true God but only from the worshipping Him at Hierusalem For all that he saith to the People is It is too much for you to go up to Ierusalem behold thy Gods O Israel which brought thee up out of the Land of Egypt If Ieroboam's intention had been to have altered their Religion he would have spoken against that and not only against the place of it and to shew to them that he had no such intention he continued the same Feasts and way of worship which were at Ierusalem To this T. G. answers That Jeroboam 's end was to secure the Ten Tribes to himself and the likeliest way to effect it was the making them such Idols as their Fathers had worshipped in Egypt and the Wilderness and yet soon after T. G. represents him as a great Polititian that would not make any sudden Changes But could there be any change greater or more sudden than to change the true God for Molten Gods and Devils as T. G. saith he did which words if they be understood in T. G's sense for the Egyptian Idols and Devils in them was as great a change as could be made in Religion and too sudden to be made by such a Polititian He should have begun the alteration in the smaller matters if he intended no sudden change and first have gained some of the Great men to him to be ready to joyn with him when opportunity served with hopes of Preferment and Places at Court when these were secured then put in some of the vilest of the people into the Priesthood as he did to render that sacred Office mean and contemptible the better to prepare the people for a change then to send Agents abroad to tamper with the most active among them to allure some and to terrifie others according to their several dispositions then to give liberty to those tender consciences that longed for the Onions and Fleshpots and Bulls of Egypt and when he had by degrees prepared a considerable party that would be sure to adhere to him then by little and little to open the great Design to them which he aimed at all this while But it was too great a Change for such a Polititian to say at the very first to them Come renounce the God of Israel without more ado I have set up other Gods for you to worship and I command you all
inconsistent with the essence of a true Church And since no kind of Idolatry is lawful if the Roman Church hold it to be so she must needs hold an errour inconsistent with some Truth Most profoundly argued He only ought to have subsumed as I think such Logicians as I. W. call it but all Errour is Fundamental and inconsistent with the essence of a true Church or That Infallibility is necessary to the Being of a Church and when he proves that I promise to renounce the charge of Idolatry Now it is not possible saith I. W. that the Roman Church should bold any Idolatry lawful knowing it to be Idolatry unless she holds that some Honour which is due only to God may be given to a Creature I am afraid to be snapt by so cunning a Sophister and therefore I distinguish in time The Roman Church doth not hold any Idolatry lawful which it judges to be Idolatry or the Honour due only to God but the Roman Church may give the real parts of worship due only to God to a meer creature and yet at the same time tell men it is not a part of the Honour which is due to God To make this plain even to the understanding of I. W. The Church of Rome may entertain a false notion of Idolatry or of that worship which is due only to God which false notion being received men may really give the worship that only belongs to God to His Creatures and the utmost errour necessary in this case is no more than having a false notion of Idolatry as that there can be no Idolatry without giving Soveraign Worship to a Creature or that an Idol is the representation only of an Imaginary Being c. Now on these suppositions no more is necessary to the practice of Idolatry than being deceived in the notion of it If therefore T. G. or I.W. will prove that the Church of Rome can never be deceived in the notion of it or that it is repugnant to the essence of a Church to have a false notion of Idolatry they do something towards the proving me guilty of a contradiction in acknowledging the Church of Rome to be a true Church and yet charging it with Idolatry But I. W. saith That 't is impossible the Roman Church should teach or hold any kind of Idolatry whatsoever it be but she must hold expressly or implicitly that some Honour due only to God may be given to a meer Creature Such kind of stuff as this would make a man almost repent ever reading Logick which this man pretends so much to for surely Mother Wit is much better than Scholastick Fooling Such a Church which commits or by her doctrines and practises leads to Idolatry needs not to hold i. e. deliver as her judgment that some Honour due only to God may be given to a Creature it is sufficient if she commands or allows such things to be done which in their own nature or by the Law of God is really giving the worship of God to a Creature Yet upon this mistake as gross as it is the poor waspish Creature runs on for many leaves and thinks all that while he proves me guilty of a contradiction But the man hath something in his head which he means although he scarce knows how to express it viz. that in good Catholick Dictionaries a Fundamental errour and a damnable errour and an error inconsistent with the essence of a true Church are terms Synonymous Now I know what he would be at viz. that Infallibility is necessary to the Being of a Church therefore to suppose a Church to err is to suppose it not to be a Church But will he prove me guilty of contradiction by Catholick Dictionaries I beg his pardon for in them Transubstantiation implies none but whosoever writes against them must be guilty of many If he would prove me guilty of Contradiction let him prove it from my own sense and not from theirs Yet he would seem at last to prove that the practice of any kind of Idolatry especially being approved by the Church is destructive to the Being of a Church Which is the only thing he saith that deserves to be farther considered by enquiring into two things 1. Whether a Church allowing and countenancing the practice of Idolacry can be a true Church 2. Whether such a Church can have any power or Authority to consecrate Bishops or ordain Priests For this is a thing which T. G. likewise objects as consequent upon my assertion of their Idolatry that thereby I overthrow all Authority and Iurisdiction in the Church of England as being derived from an Idolatrous Church These are matters which deserve a farther handling and therefore I shall speak to them 1. Whether a Church may continue a true Church and yet allow and practise any kind of Idolatry And to resolve this I resort again to the ten Tribes Supposing what hath been said sufficient to prove them guilty of Idolatry my business is to enquire whether they were a true Church in that time This I. W. denies saying I ought to have proved and not barely supposed that the Idolatry introduced by Ieroboam was not destructive to the being of a True Church and several Protestants he saith produce the Church of Israel to shew that a true visible Church may cease Alas poor man he had heard something of this Nature but he could not tell what they had produced this as an instance against the perpetual Visibility of the Church and he brings it to prove that it ceased to be a true Church and the time they fix upon by his own Confession is when Elias complained that he was left alone in Israel which was not when the Idolatry of the Calves but when that of Baal prevailed among the people of Israel i. e. when they worshipped Beel-samen or the Sun instead of God Now that they were a true Church while they worshipped Ieroboams Calves I prove by these two things 1. That there was no time from Ieroboam to the Captivity of Israel wherein the worship of the Calves was not the established Religion of the ten Tribes this is evident from the expression before mentioned that the Children of Israel departed not from the sins of Jeroboam till God removed Israel out of his sight And it is observable of almost every one of the Kings of Israel that it is said particularly that he departed not from the sins of Jeroboam 2. That during that time God did own them for his People which is all one with making them a True Church Thus Iehu is said to be anointed King over the People of the Lord. And there is a remarkable expression in the time of Iehoahaz that the Lord was gracious unto them and had respect unto them because of his Covenant with Abraham Isaac and Jacob and would not destroy them neither cast he them from his presence as yet Would God have such