A Seasonable Discourse Shewing the Unreasonableness and Mischeifs OF IMPOSITIONS In Matters of RELIGION Recommended to Serious Consideration By a Learned Pen. LONDON Printed and are to be Sold by R. Baldwin 1687. A SEASONABLE DISCOURSE THE Christian Religion as first Instituted by our Blessed Saviour was the greatest security to Magistrates by the Obedience which it taught and was fitted to enjoy no less security under them by a Practice conformable to that Doctrine For our Saviour himself not pretending to an Earthly Kingdom took such case therefore to instruct his Followers in the due Subjection to Governors that while they observed his Precepts they could neither fall under any Jealousy of State as an ambitious and dangerous Party nor as Malefactors upon any other account deserve to suffer under the Publick Severity So that in this only it could seem pernicious to Goverment that Christanity if rightly exercised upon its own Principles would render all Magistracy useless But although he who was Lord of all and to whom all Power was given beth in Heaven and in Earth was nevertheless contented to come in the form of a Servant and to let the Emperors and Princes of the World alone with the use of their Dominions he thought it good reason to retain his Religion under his own cognizance and exempt its Authority from their Jurisdiction In this alone he was imperious and did not only practise it himself against the Laws and Customs then received and in the face of the Magistrate but continually seasoned and hardned his Disciples in the same confidence and obstinacy He tells them They shall be brought before Kings and Governours for his Name but sear them not he will be with them bear them out and justify it against all Opposition Nor that he allowed them hereby to violate their Duty to the Puplick by any resistance in defiance of the Magistracy but he instructed and animated them in their Duty to God in dispight of Suffering In this manner Christanity did at first set out and accordingly found reception For although our Blessed Saviour having fulfilled all Righteousness and the time of his Ministry being compleated did by his Death set the Seal to his Doctrine and shew the way toward Life and Immortality to such Belivers as imitate his Example yet did not the Heathen Magistrate take the Government to be concerned in Point of Religion or upon that acount consent to his Execution Pontious Pilate then Governour of Iudea though he were a Man unjust and cruel by Nature and served Tiberius the most tender jealous and severe in point of State or Prerogative of all the Roman Emperors though he understood that great multitudes followed him and that he was grown the Head of a new Sect that was never before heard of in the Nation yet did not he intermeddle But they were the Men of Religion the chief Priests Scribes and Elders and the High Priest Caiphas And yet altho they accused him falsly That he taught that Tribute was not to be given to Caesar that he was a Fifth Monarch and made himself a King and as it is usual for some of the Clergy to terrifie the inferiour Magistrates out of their duty to Justice out of pretence of Loyalty to the Prince threatned Pilate that if he let that Man go he was not Caesar's Friend he understanding that they did it out of Envy and that the Justice and Innocence of our Saviour was what they could not bear with would have adventured all their Informing at Court and first have freed him and then have exchanged him for Barrabas saying that he found no fault in him but he was overborn at last by humane weakness and poorly imagined that by washing his own hands he had expiated himself and wiped off the Guilt upon those alone who were the occasion But as for Tiberius himself the growth of Christianity did never increase his cares of Empire at Rome nor trouble his sleep at Capreae but he both approved of the Doctrine and threatned the Informers with Death nor would he have staid there but attempted according to the way of their Superstition upon the intelligence from Pilate to have received Christ into the number of their Deities The Persecution of the Apostles after his Death and Martyrdom of Stephen hap'ned not by the interposing of the Civil Magistrate in the Matter of Religion or any Disturbance occasioned by their Doctrines but arose from the High Priest and his Emissaries by suborned Witnesses stirring up the Rabble in a brutish riotous manner to execute their cruelty How would the modern Clergy have taken represented it had they lived in the time of St. Iohn Baptist and seen Ierusalem Iudaea and all the Region round about Jordan go out to be baptized by him Yet that Herod for any thing we read in Scripture though he wanted not his Instillers apprehended no Commotion and had not Caligula banished him and his Herodias together might in all appearance have lived without any change of Goverment T was she that caused Iohn's imprisonment for the conveniency of her Incest Herod indeed feared him but rather reverenced him as a just Man and an holy observed him and when he heard him he did many things and heard him gladly Nor could all her subtilty have taken off his Head but that Herod thought himself under the obligation of a Dance and an Oath and knew not in that Case they ought both to be dispensed with But he was exceeding sorry at his death which few Princes are if Men lived to their jealousie or danger The killing of Iames and imprisonment of Peter by that Herod was because he saw he pleased the people when the Priesls had once set them on madding a Complaisance to which the most Innocent may be exposed but which partake more of Guile then Civility or Wisdom But to find out what the disinteressed and prudent Men of those days took to be the wisest and only justifiable way for the Magistrate to proceed in upon Matters of Religion I cannot see any thing more pregnant than the concurrent Judgment of three Persons of so different Characters and that lived so far asunder that there can be no danger of their having corrupted one anothers Understanding in favour to Christianity Gamaliel the Deputy of Acaia and the Town-Clerk of Ephesus the first a Jewish Doctor by Sect a Pharisee one of the Council and of great Authority with the People who when the chief Priest had cast the Apostles in Prison and charged them for preaching against the Command he had before laid upon them yet gave this advice confirming it with several fresh Precedents Acts 5. That they should take heed to themselves what they intended to do with those Men and let them alone for if this Counsel saith he or this Work be of Men it will come to nought but if it be of God you cannot overthrow it lest ye be found fighting with God. So that his Opinion
Priests could not but observe a great decay in their Parishes a neglect of their Sacrifices and diminution of their Profit by the daily and visible increase of that Religion And God in his wise Providence had so ordered that as the Iews already so the Heathens now having filled up their measure with iniquity Sprinkling the Blood of his Saints among their Sacrifices and the Christians having in a severe Apprentiship of so many Ages learned the Trade of Suffering they should at last be their own Masters and admitted to their Freedom Neither yet even in those times when they lay exposed to Persecution were they without some Intervals and catching seasons of Tranquillity wherein the Churches had leisure to reap considerable advantage and the Clergy too might have been inured as they had been Exemplary under Affliction so to bear themselves like Christians when they should arrive at a full prosperity For as oft as there came a just Heathen Emperor and a lover of mankind that either himself observed or understood by the Governours of his Provinces the innocence of their Religion and Practices their readiness to pay Tribute their Prayers for his Goverment and Person their faithful Service in his Wars but their Christian valour and contumacy to Death under the most exquisite Torments for their holy Profession he forthwith relented he rebated the Sword of the Executiner and could not find in his heart or in his power to exercise it against the exercise of that Religion It being demonstrable that a Religion instituted upon Justice betwixt Man and Man love to one another yea even their Enemies Obedience to the Magistrate in all Humane and Moral Matters and in Divine Worship upon a constant exercise thereof and as constant Suffering in that cause without any pretence or latitude for resistance cannot so long as it is true to it self in these things fall within the Magistrate's Jurisdiction But as it first was planted without the Magistrates hand and the more they plucked at it so much the more still it flourished so it will be to the end of the world and whensoever Governors have a mind to try for it it will by the same means and method sooner or later spoil them but if they have a mind to pull up that Mandrake it were advisable for them not to do it themselves but to chuse out a Dog for the Imployment I confess whensoever a Christian transgresses these bounds once he is impoundable or like a Waif and Stray whom Christ knows not he falls to the Lord of the Mannor But otherwise he cannot suffer he is invulnerable by the sword of Justice only a Man may swear and damn himself to kill the first honest Man he meets which hath been and is the case of all true Christians worshipping God under the power and violence of their Persecutors But the Truth is that even in those times which some Men now as oft as it is for their advantage do consecrate under the name of Primitive the Christians were become guilty of their own punishment had it not been as is most usual that the more Sincere Professors suffered promiscuously for the Sins and Crimes of those that were Carnal and Hypocrites their Persecutors may be looked upon as having been the due Administrators of God's Justice For not to go deeper if we consider but that which is reckoned the Tenth Persecution under Dioclesian so incorrigible were they after nine preceding what other could be expected when as Eusebius l. 3. c. 1. sadly laments having related how before that the Christians lived in great trust and reputation in Court the Bishops of each Church were beloved esteemed and reverenced by all mankind and by the Presidents of the Provinees the Meetings in all the Cities were so many and numerous that it was necessary and allowed them to erect in every one spacious and godly Churches all things went on prosperousty with them and to such an height that no envious Man could disturb them no Devil could hurt them as long as walking yet worthy of those Mercies they were under the Almighty's care and Protection after that our Affairs by that too much Liberty degenerated into Luxury and Laziness and some prosecuted others with Hatred and Contumely and almost all of us wounded our selves with the Weapons of the Tongue in ill Language when Bishops set upon Bishops and the People that belonged to one of them stirred Sedition against the People of another then horrible Hypocrisie and Dissimulation sprung up to the utmost extremity of Malice and the Iudgment of God while yet there was liberty to meet in Congregations did sensibly and by stops being to visit us the Persecution at first discharging it self upon our Brethren that were in the Army But we having no feeling of the Hand of God not endeavouring to make our Peace with him and living as if we believed that God did neither take notice of our Transgressions nor would visit us for them we heaped up Iniquity upon Iniquity And those which seemed to be our Pastors kicking under-foot the Rules of Piety were inflamed among themselves with mutual Contention and while they minded nothing else but to exaggerate their Quarrels Threats Emulation Hatred and Enmities and earnestly each of them pursued his particular Ambition in a Tyrannical manner then indeed the Lord then I say according to the Voice of the Prophet Jeremy he covered the Daugheer of Sion with a cloud in his anger and cast down from Heaven to Earth the beauty of Israel and remembred not his footstool in the day of his Anger And so the pious Historian pathetically goes on and deplores the Calamities that in sued to the loss of all that stock of Reputation Advantage Liberty and Safety which Christian people had by true Plety and adhering strictly to the Rules of their Profession formerly acquired injoyed but had now forfeited and smartly and defervedly suffered under Dioclesian's persecution And it was a severe one the longest too that ever happened ten Years from his beginning of it and continued by others by which time one might have thought the Church would have been sufficiently winnowed and nothing left but the pure Wheat whereas it proved quite contrary and the holiest and most constant of the Christians being blown away by Martyrdom it seem'd by the succeeding times as if nothing but the Chaff and the Tares had remained But there was yet such a Seed left and notwithstanding the defection of many so internal a vertue in the Religion it self that Dioclosian could no longer stand against it and tired out in two Years time was glad to betake himself from rooting out Christianity to gardening and to sow Pot-herbs at Salona And he with his Partner Maximiamus resigned the Empire to Galerius and Constantius the excellent Father of a more glorious and Christian Son Constantine the Great who in due season succeeded him and by a chain of God's extraordinry providence seemed to have been let
Arrian Books to be burned and whoever should be discovered to conceal any of Arrius his Writings to die for it But it fared very well with those who were not such fools as to own his Opinion All they were entertain'd by the Emperor at a magnificent Feast received from his hand rich Presents and were honourably dismist with Letters recommending their great Abilities and performance to the Provinces and enjoining the Nicene Creed to be henceforth observed With that stroke of the Pen Socr. l. 1. c. 6. For what three hundred Bishops have agreed on a thing indeed extraordinary ought not to be otherwise conceiv'd of than as the Decree of God Almighty especially seeing the Holy Ghost did sit upon the Minds of such and so excellent Men and open'd his Divine Will to them So that they went I trow with ample satisfaction and as they could not but take the Emperor for a very civil generous and obliging Gentleman so they thought the better of themselves from that day forward And how budg must they look when they return back to their Diocesses having every one of 'em bin a principal Limn of the Oecumenical Apostolical Catholick Orthodox Council when the Catacheristical Title of the Church and the Clergy were so appropriate to them by custom that the Christian People had relinquished or forgotten their Claim when every Hare that crossed their way homeward was a Schismatick or an Heretick and if their Horse stumbled with one of them he incurr'd an Anathema Well it was that their Journeys lay so many several ways for they were grown so cumbersom and great that the Emperor's High-way was too narrow for any two of them and there could have been no passage without the removal of a Bishop But soon after the Council was over Eusebius the Bishop of Nicomedia and Theognis the Bishop of Nice who were already removed both by Banishment and two others put in their places were quickly restor'd upon their Petition wherein they suggested the Cause of their not Signing to have been only because they thought they could not with a safe Conscience subscribe the Anathema against Arrius appearing to them both by his Writings his Discourses and Sermons that they had been Auditors of not to be guilty of those Errors As for Arrius himself the Emperor quickly wrote to him It is now a considerable time since I wrote to your Gravity to come to my Tents that you might enjoy my Countenance so that I can scarce wonder sufficiently why you have so long delayed it therefore now take one of the publick Coaches and make all speed to my Tents that having had experience of my kindness and affection to you you may return into your own Country God preserve you most dear Sir. Arrius hereupon with his Comerade Euxoius comes to Constantine's Army and offers him a Petition with a Confession of Faith that would have pass'd very well before the Nicene Council and now satisfied the Emperor Socr. l. 1. c. 19 20. insomuch that he writ to Athanasius now Bishop of Alexandria to receive him into the Church but Athanasius was of better mettle than so and absolutely refused it Upon this Constantine writ him another threatning Letter When you have understood hereby my Pleasure see that you afford free entrance into the Church to all that desire it for if I shall understand that any who desires to be admitted into the Church should be either hindred or forbidden by you I will send some one of my Servants to remove you from your Degree and place another in your stead Yet Athanasius stood it out still tho other Churches received him into Communion and the Heretick Novatus could not have bin more unrelenting to lapsed Christians than he was to Arrius But this joined with other Crimes which were laid to Athanasius his Charge at the Council of Tyre though I suppose indeed they were forged made Athanasius glad to fly for it and remain the first time in Exile Upon this whole Matter it is my impartial Opinion that Arrius or whosoever else were guilty of teaching and publishing those Errors whereof he was accused deserved the utmost Severity which consists with the Christian Religion And so willing I have been to think well of Athanasius and ill of the other that I have on purpose avoided the reading as I do the naming of a Book that I have heard tells the story quite otherwise and have only made use of the current Historians of those Times who all of them tell it against the Arrians Only I will confess that as in reading a particular History at adventure a Man finds himself inclinable to favour the weaker Party especially if the Conqueror appear insolent so have I been affected in reading these Authors which does but resemble the reasonable pity that men ordinarily have too for those who though for an erroneous Conscience suffer under a Christian Magistrate And as soon as I come to Constantius I shall for that reason change my compassion and be doubly engaged on the Orthodox party But as to the whole matter of the Council of Nice I must crave liberty to say that from one end to the other though the best of the kind it seems to me to have been a pitiful humane business attended with all the ill circumstances of other wordly affairs conducted by a spirit of ambition and contention the first and so the greatest oecumenical blow that by Christians was given to Christianity And it is not from any sharpness of humor that I discourse thus freely of Things and Persons much less of Orders of men otherwise venerable but that where ought is extolled beyond reason and to the prejudice of Religion it is necessary to depreciate it by true proportion It is not their censure of Arrianism or the declaring of their Opinion in a controverted point to the best of their understanding wherein to the smalness of mine they appear to have light upon the Truth had they likewise upon the measure that could have moved me to tell so long story or bring my self within the danger and aim of any captious Reader speaking thus with great liberty of mind but little concern for any prejudice I may receive of things that are by some Men idolized But it is their Imposition of a new Article or Creed upon the Christian world not being contained in express words of Scripture to be believed with Divine Faith under Spiritual and Civil Penalties contrary to the Priviledges of Religion and their making a Precedent follow'd and improv'd by all succeeding Ages for most cruel Persecutions that only could animate me In digging thus for a new deduction they undermined the fabrick of Christianity to frame a particular Doctrine they departed from the general Rule of their Religion and for their curiosity about an Article concerning Christ they violated our Saviour's first Institution of a Church not subject to any Addition in matters of Faith nor liable to Compulsion either in Belief
saith he wittily do not worship God but the Imperial Purple It was the same Themistius that only out of an upright natural apprehension of things made that excellent Oration afterward to Valens which is in Print exhorting him to cease Persecution wherein he chances upon and improves the same notion with Constantines and tells him That he should not wonder at the Dissents in Cstristian Religion which were very small if compared with the multitude and crowd of Opinions among the Gentile Philosophers for there were at least three hundred differences and a very great dissention among them there was about their resolutions unto which each several Sect was as it were necessarily bound up and obliged And that God seemed to intend more to illustrate his own glory by that diverse and unequal variety of Opinions to the end every each one might therefore so much the more reverence his Divine Majesty because it is not possible for any one accurately to know him And this had a good effect upon Valens for the mitigating in some measure his severities against his fellow Christians So that after having cast about in this Summery again whereby it plainly appears that according to natural right and the apprehension of all sober Heathen Governours Christianity as a Religion was wholly exempt from the Magistrates jurisdiction or Laws farther than any particular person among them immorally transgressed as others the common rules of human society I cannot but return to the Question with which I begun What was the matter How came it about that Christianity which approved it self under all Persecutions to the Heathen Emperours and merited their favour so far till at last it regularly succeeded to the Monarchy should under those of their own profession be more distressed But the Answer is now much shorter and certainer and I will adventure boldly to say the true and single cause then was the Bishops And they were the cause against reason For what power had the Emperours by growing Christians more than those had before them None What obligation were Christians Subject under to the Magistrate more than before None But the Magistrates Christian Authority was what the Apostle describ'd it while Heathen not to be a terror to good works but to evil What new Power had the Bishops acquired whereby they turned every Pontificate into a Caiaphat None neither 2 Cor. 10. 8. Had they been Apostles The Lord had but given them Authority for edification not for destruction They of all other ought to have Preached to the Magistrate the terrible denunciations in Scripture against usurping upon and persecuting of Christians They of all others ought to have laid before them the horrible Examples of God's ordinary Justice against those that exercised Persecution But provided they could be the Swearers of the Prince to do all due Allegiance to the Church and to preserve the Rights and Liberties of the Church however they came by them they would give them as much scope as he pleased in matter of Christianity and would be the first to solicite him to break the Laws of Christ and ply him with hot places of Scripture in order to all manner of Oppression and Persecution in Civils and Spirituals So that the whole business how this unchristian Tyranny came and could entitle it self among Christians against the Christian priviledges was only the case in Zech. 13. 6. 7. And one shall say unto him What are these wounds in thy hands Then he shall answer those with which I was wounded in the house of my Friends Because they were all Christians they thought forsooth they might make the bolder with them make bolder with Christ and wound him again in the hands and feet of his members Because they were Friends they might use them more coarsly and abuse them against all common civility in their own house which is a Protection to Strangers And all this to the end that a Bishop might sit with the Prince in Iunto to consult wisely how to preserve him from those people that never meant him any harm and to secure him from the Sedition and Rebellion of men that seek nor think any thing more but to follow their own Religious Christian Worship It was indeed as ridiculous a thing to the Pagans to see that work as it was afterwards in England to Strangers where Papists and Protestants went both to wrack at the same instant in the same Market and when Erasmus said wittily Quid agitur in Angliâ Consulitur he might have added though not so elegantly Comburitur de Religione Because they knew that Christian Worship was free by Christs Institution they procured the Magistrate to make Laws in it concerning things necessary As the Heathen Persecutor Iulian introduced some bordering Pagan Ceremonies and arguing with themselves in the same manner as he did Soz. l. 5. c. 16. That if Christians should obey those Laws they should be able to bring them about to something further which they had designed But if they would not then they might proceed against them without any hope of pardon as breakers of the Laws of the Empire and represent them as turbulent and dangerous to the Government Indeed whatsoever the Animadverter saith of the Act of Seditious Conventicles here in England as if it were Anvill'd after another of the Roman Senate the Christians of those Ages had all the finest tools of Persecution out of Iulian's Shop and studied him then as curiously as some do now Machiavel These Bishops it was who because the Rule of Christ was incomparable with the Power that they assumed and the Vices they practised had no way to render themselves necessary or tolerable to Princes but by making true Piety difficult by Innovating Laws to revenge themselves upon it and by turning Make-bates between Prince and People instilling dangers of which themselves were the Authors Hence it is that having awakened this Jealousie once in the Magistrate against Religion they made both the Secular and the Ecclesiastical Government so uneasie to him that most Princes began to look upon their Subjects as their Enemies and to imagine a reason of State different from the Interest of their People and therefore to weaken themselves by seeking unnecessary and grievous supports to their Authority Whereas if men could have refrain'd this cunning and from thence forcible governing of Christianity leaving it to its own simplicity and due liberty but causing them in all other things to keep the Kings and Christs peace among themselves and towards others all the ill that could have come of it would have been that such kind of Bishops should have prov'd less implemental but the good that must have thence risen to the Christian Magistrate and the Church then and ever after would have been inexpressible But this discourse having run in a manner wholly upon the Imposition of Creeds may seem not to concern and I desire that it may not reflect upon our Clergy nor the Controversies which have so unhappily