be convicted of moral evil and so unconcernedly to omit the weightier matters of the Law as Judgment Mercy or Charity in Vnity and Faith what can Charity call this but meer Pharisaism and where must such Pharisaism end at length but in Sadducism even denying of the Blessings and Curses of a Future Life For as Drusius hath Si Patres nostri selvissent mâ—râ—â—â—s resurrecturâ— praemia manere â—ustos â—â—st hanc vitam nâ—n tantoperè râ—bellassent Drusius in Mat. c 3. v. 7. Item in c. 22 23. observed it was one Reason alledged by the Sadduces against the Resurrection If our Fathers had known the dead should rise again and rewards were prepared for the Righteous they would not have rebelled so often not conforming themselves to Gods Rule as is pretended by all but conforming the Rule of Sin and of Faith it self to the good Opinion they had of their own Persons and Actions which Pestilential Contagion now so Epidemical God of his great Mercy remove from us and cause health and soundness of Judgment Affection and Actions to return to us and continue with us to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. THE CONTENTS OF THE CHAPTERS Chap. I. OF the Nature and Grounds of Religion in General Which are not so much Power as the Goodness of God and Justice in the Creature And that Nature it self teaches to be Religious Chap. II. Of the constant and faithful assurance requisite to be had of a Deity The reasons of the necessity of a Divine Supream Power Socinus refuted holding the knowledge of a God not natural Chap. III. Of the Unity of the Divine Nature and the Infiniteness of God Chap. IV. Of the diversity of Religions in the World A brief censure of the Gentile and Mahumetan Religion Chap. V. Of the Jewish Religion The pretence of the Antiquity of it nulled The several erroneous grounds of the Jewish Religion discovered Chap. VI. The vanity of the Jewish Religion shewed from the proofs of the true Messias long since come which are many Chap. VII The Christian Religion described The general Ground thereof the revealed Will of God The necessity of Gods revealing himself Chap. VIII More special Proofs of the truth of Christian Religion and more particularly from the Scriptures being the Word of God which is proved by several reasons Chap. IX Of the several Senses and Meanings according to which the Scriptures may be understood Chap. X. Of the true Interpretation of Holy Scriptures The true meaning not the letter properly Scripture Of the difficulty of attaining the proper sense and the Reasons thereof Chap. XI Of the Means of interpreting the Scripture That they who understand Scripture are not for that authorized to interpret it decisively The Spirit not a proper Judge of the Scriptures sense Reason no Judge of Scripture There is no Infallible Judge of Scripture nor no necessity of it absolute The grounds of an Infallible Judge examined Chap. XII Of Tradition as a Means of understanding the Scriptures Of the certainty of unwritten Traditions that it is inferiour to Scripture or written Tradition No Tradition equal to Sense or Scripture in Evidence Of the proper use of Tradition Chap. XIII Of the nature of Faith What is Faith Of the two general grounds of Faith Faith divine in a twofold sense Revelation the formal reason of Faith Divine Of the several senses and acceptations of Faith That Historical Temporarie and Miraculous Faith are not in nature distinct from Divine and Justifying Faith Of Faith explicite and implicite Chap. XIV Of the effects of true Faith in General Good Works Good Works to be distinguish'd from Perfect Works Actions good four wayes Chap. XV. Of the effect of Good Works which is the effect of Faith How Works may be denominated Good How they dispose to Grace Of the Works of the Regenerate Of the proper conditions required to Good Works or Evangelical Chap. XVI Of Merit as an effect of Good Works The several acceptatations of the word Merit What is Merit properly In what sense Christians may be said to merit How far Good Works are efficacious unto the Reward promised by God Chap. XVII Of the two special effects of Faith and Good Works wrought in Faith Sanctification and Justification what they are Their agreements and differences In what manner Sanctification goes before Justification and how it follows Chap. XVIII Of Justification as an effect of Faith and Good Works Justification and Justice to be distinguished and how The several Causes of our Justification Being in Christ the principal cause What it is to be in Christ The means and manner of being in Christ Chap. XIX Of the efficient cause of Justification Chap. XX. Of the special Notion of Faith and the influence it hath on our Justification Of Faith solitary and only Of a particular and general Faith Particular Faith no more an Instrument of our justification by Christ than other co-ordinate Graces How some ancient Fathers affirm that Faith without Works justifie Chap. XXI A third effect of justifying Faith Assurance of our Salvation How far a man is bound to be sure of his Salvation and how far this assurance may be obtained The Reasons commonly drawn from Scripture proving the necessity of this assurance not sufficient c. Chap. XXII Of the contrary to true Faith Apostasie Heresie and Atheism Their Differences The difficulty of judging aright of Heresie Two things constituting Heresie the evil disposition of the mind and the falsness of the matter How far and when Heresie destroys Faith How far it destroys the Nature of a Church Chap. XXIII Of the proper subject of Faith the Church The distinction and description of the Church In what sense the Church is a Collection of Saints Communion visible as well as invisible necessary to the constituting a Church Chap. XXIV A preparation to the knowledge of Ecclesiastical Society or of the Church from the consideration of humane Societies What is Society What Order What Government Of the Original of Government Reasons against the peoples being the Original of Power and their Right to frame Governments Power not revocable by the people Chap. XXV Of the Form of Civil Government The several sorts of Government That Government in general is not so of Divine Right as that all Governments should be indifferently of Divine Institution but that One especially was instituted of God and that Monarchical The Reasons proving this Chap. XXVI Of the mutual Relations and Obligations of Soveraigns and Subjects No Right in Subjects to resist their Soveraigns tyrannizing over them What Tyranny is Of Tyrants with a Title and Tyrants without Title Of Magistrates Inferiour and Supream the vanity and mischief of that distinction The confusion of co-ordinate Governments in one State Possession or Invasion giveth no Right to Rulers The Reasons why Chap. XXVII An application of the former Discourse of Civil Government to Ecclesiastical How Christs Church is alwayes visible and how invisible Of the communion
Prophet in the name of a Prophet shall receive a Prophets reward And he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a Righteous mans reward And so to those that suffer for Christ which is reputed amongst the chief of Good deeds Rejoyce and be exceeding glad Mat. 5. 12. for great is your reward in heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets And Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water Mat. 10. 42. only in the name of a Disciple verily I say unto you he shall in no wise loose his reward And in St. Luke Christ saith But love your enemies and do good Luk. 6. 35. and lend hoping for nothing again and your reward shall be great and ye shall be the Children of the Highest For he is kind unto the unthankful and evil Here besides the positive promises is added a reason to assure all that shall do good works that great shall be their reward viz. because Gods goodness and mercy is such that he imparteth of the same unto the wicked he doth good unto the ill-deserving and shall he not much more do good to those that are good and abound in Good works To ascribe therefore so much to a modern notion of Faith as many do though the Learneder favourers of it closely dealt with are constrained to depart from this new rigour as I could show by divers instances as to divide it from it self that is the works of Faith from Faith the fountain in order to Justification and Sanctification and Salvation is in effect to denie the Christian Faith and introduce one of their own invention to the great dishonour of God and reproach of Christian Faith which consisteth in these two things principally Evangelical Obedience and a Glorious reward And now least some prejudiced mind may suppose that I have stated this point too favourably to the Roman sense and injuriously to the Franckness of Gods grace and mercy in relation both to our Sanctification and Justification and also to the vertue and efficacie of Faith in order to them I shall end this discourse with the Stating of this cause as I find it by Vortius a most severe and rigid Calvinist as they call such men in this negative Vort. disput Select Part. 2. p. 728. 726. way The Controversie therefore said he between us and the Papacie First is not Whether good works are to be done For we affirm it 2. Neither whether they be necessary and profitable to salvation we affirm both 3. Neither whether they are pleasing to God which we affirm 4. Nor whether God grants a Remuneration and Reward to them For we affirm it 5. Nor whether it be lawful to do good works with an eye to the reward We say so 6. Nor yet whether good works are sins we stoutly deny 7. Nor lastly Whether the just be worthy of a Crown For this we yield with this limitation Not out of their own worth but the worthiness of God c. And if all this be honestly and fairly agreed to I see no reason to fear the empty cavils and vain exceptions of some men who have run themselves they can scare well tell whether themselves from Popery but I may venture to tell Why viz. Partly out of a blind implicite Faith in the Teachers they raise to themselves and partly to save their Credit and purses by a strange and monstrous notion of Faith rather then their souls But the main block of Offense taken not given by this doctrine seems to be an opinion of Merit favoured hereby Of this therefore we shall speak next CHAP. XVI Of merit as an effect of Good Works The several acceptations of the word Merit What is Merit properly In what sense Christians may be said to merit How far Good Works are Efficacious unto the Reward promised by God TO merit is of a very various and ambiguous sense among the the Ancients humane and divine It were superfluous to note all and to omit all injurious to our present design These three are the most needful to be observed For sometimes it is used in prophane Histories for Service military as the souldier under such a Commander is said to merit Mereri under him Meruit sub Servitio Isaurico in Cilicia sed brevi tempore c. Suet. de Julio Caesare in Vita Aere mereâ—t parvo Lucan lib. 9. Vocabulum merendi apud veteres Ecclesiasticos Scriptores fere idem valet quod consequi seu aptum idoneumque fieri ad consequendum Id. Cassand Schol. in Hymnos Ecclesiast p. 179 It is likewise frequently used by humane and Ecclesiastical Authors for to obtain or acquire only by just and due endeavours without any just deserts of the Partie said to merit but rather of Grace and favour of him who hath appointed and promised freely to reward such actions as are enjoyned and assigned with such ends and remunerations which far exceed the proportion or value of the work For surely in publick and antient Games from which practice St. Paul hath borrowed many a Metaphor describing the service and contention of Christians in the service of God to outrun and prevent by footmanship him that was matcht with one did not properly deserve such a vast reward as was usually conferred on him who excelled his Fellow For what title of justice can the hasting to take a crown give to him that receives it yet was he said to deserve it and that either comparatively because he in reason ought to be preferred before any other that came behind him and therefore merit it rather than he Or because the Authors of such rewards having solemnly and fairly quitted all their Rights and by publick promise setled the same upon other upon certain conditions they shall judge fit there is a conditional Right thereby devolved upon others yet not out of the worthiness of the acts leading to the accquiring the same But a third notion of merit implies such a proportion between the Act and the end or recompence that it were no less than unjust and unreasonable for him who is concerned in the reward to denie it to him or detain it from him the work being accomplished It being a Principle of common justice what Christ pronounces as Christian reason too The Labourer is worthy of his hire i. e. he merits it And therefore Luk. 10. 7. Jam. 15. 4. James saith well in the like case Behold the hire of the labourers which have reaped down your fields which is of you kept back by fraud crieth and the cries of them which have reaped are entred into the ears of the Lord of Sabbath i. e. they crie for justice against them who are indebted to them for such service which deserve much reward Upon these general grounds thus premised we shall have easier access to the difficultie of meriting in relation to God and the reward he holdeth forth to his
only foundation besides which none can â—ay any other neither is there any other name under Heaven whereby a man may be saved Christ Jesus this Faith is so active and operative in holy works proceeding from it that the Person is qualified thereby according to the frankness of Gods Covenant made with him in Christ to become capable of the benefit and end of the Covenant Viz. More Grace here and fruition of Glory hereafter For notwithstanding a the sufferings no not of Martyrdom for Christ of this life are not worthy of themselves nor indeed by the accession of Gods Grace to be compared to the glory to be revealed yet may they be a means and a Rom. 8. â— way leading to the same And though b Tit. 3 5. We are saved Not by Works of Righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy by the washing of regeneration and renuing of the holy Ghost Yet this we are not capable of so freely but c Gal. 5. 6. by Faith working by Love Which moveth the Apostle to exhort us thus d Phil. 2. 12. My beloved as ye have always obeyed not as in my presence onely but now much more in my absence work Out your own salvation with fear and trembling And left any man should conceive amiss of the Grace of God as perfecting all things without our concurrence or should presume so far of his own strength as to judge himself able of himself to effect that it is most wisely and seasonably added e v. 13. For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure Whence it is that Eternal life is termed expresly f Rom. 6. 23. The gift of God Nay moreover the means conducing hereunto next under God is acknowledged owing unto God by the same Apostle to the Ephesians g Eph. 2. 8 9. For by Grace are ye saved through Faith and that not of your selves it is the gift of God Not of Works least any man should boast Yet notwithstanding these and many other places of holy Scripture magnifying the grace of God are not Works of Faith excluded any more then Faith it self from their proper vertue in obtaining the promises For still the reward is not of Debt but of Mercy as some of late distinguish and yet it is not so of mercy as that Justice subsequent and conditional to the promise should be wholy exploded For what can the Scripture else intend when it saith If we confess 1 Joh. 1. 9. our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness And doth not St. Paul joyn them both together saying That Rom. 3. 26. he might be Just and the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus Is it not here as plain as words need make it that the Apostle concerneth the justice of God in the justification of him that believeth How then can these be reconciled but by distinguishing a twofold Justice in God in reference to the work of Man An absolute or antecedent Justice before his promise freely made and a consequent conditional Justice supposing a free stipulation made by God which never could be deserved neither is deserved by the completion of the terms to which Man stands obliged to God So that St. Paul joyns them both together thus considered without any suspition of contrariety For saith he to the Thessalonians It is a righteous 2 Thes 1. 6 7. thing and that is no less then just with God to recompence tribulation to them that trouble you And to you who are troubled rest with us c. But some have said concerning the reward in such cases as holy faithful working promised that it is promised to the Person and not to the Work Which if it were so as upon tryal would scarce prove so what an evasion doth this prove Seeing in such cases it is most absurd to divide and oppose those two which are inseparable For God neither doth reward the work without the person neither the person without the work but the person working as the person believing Therefore when St. Paul saith in his second Epistle to Timothy I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the Faith he declareth his holy Life and good works and when he addeth Henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness which the Lord the Righteous or just Judge as the old Translation had it shall give me at that day and not unto me only but unto all them also that love his appearing doth sufficiently implie an inseparableness of the person from the work and that which puts the person into a capacity of the reward or Crown is the dutifulness of the person towards God So that there must of necessity be a Causality in good deeds in order to our Salvation though considering the most vulgarousness of the word merit and not the sense diluted with the abovesaid qualifications it is both immodest and unsafe to applie the same to Acts which are Good neither for their own sake nor for the Agents sake but for Christs sake and the liberal promise sake of God So that to say That Christ merited that we might merit is very improperly as well incroachingly spoken upon the Grace of God but to say That Christ merited to the end we might effectually work out our Salvation is to say no more then St. Paul intendeth in his Epistle to the Thessalonians where he affirmeth that God hath not appointed us to wrath but to obtain Salvation by â—â—hes 5. 9. our Lord Jesus Christ And how obtain the words going before and following speaking of good works sufficiently declare and yet shall be more fully explained in the succeeding Chapter CHAP. XVII Of the two special Effects of Faith and Good Works wrought in Faith Sanctification and Justification what they are Their Agreements and differences In what manner Sanctification goes before Justification and how it follows it WE have shewed the Effect of Faith to be Good Works we have also shewed how and in what sense the Effect of good Works is Salvation but there remains two other effects both of Faith and works of Faith here to be considered before we proceed and they are Sanctification and Justification For good Works are fruitful not only in reference to an ample and manifold reward but in Serva ergo mandata Dei-Sanctifica cor tuum ut Deus inhabitet in te Et quotidie magis magis invenies Deum Opus Imperfect in Mat. Him 4. reference to good Works as the Parable of our Saviour in the twenty fifth of Mathew plainly informs us where it is said Then he that had received the five talents went and traded with the same and made them other five talents These five talents acquired to the first five cannot be interpreted the reward ultimate for that is expressed afterward to be the Joy of the Lord
such opinion of it as in truth agrees only to God He directly intends who really supposes falsly any Creature to be God and intends to worship it as God or certainly he who otherwise out of perverted affection desires to worship that which he well knows to be a Creature as God He intends indirectly who no ways intending directly to honour a Creature as God yet outwardly notwithstanding this doth bestow divine honor on the Creature as God So that in the judgment of sober men he may be thought to account the Creature for God as if any man through fear of death should sacrifice to Idols Therefore if actually a man worships that which is not God his intention to worship only the true God can relieve him no farther than his opinion and intention to accompany with his own wife excuses him from Casual Adultery in lying with another woman and that is but little unless circumstances be such as may render the ignorance of the Fact invincible as they say or unavoidable And the intention and opinion if they be against ordinary presumptions to the contrary do not excuse Now to apply it to the last Case of Christ corporally present in the Sacrament This is agreed upon by us that what Christ saith to be so is infallibly true seem it never so contrary to our outward senses But seeing the words of Christ according to the like expressions in Holy Writ where things that bear Analogy with one another are said positively to be one another as where St. Paul saith Believers are Christs bone and Christs flesh which is not true in the natural sense but Metaphorical for otherwise unbelievers might be said so to be which St. Paul never intended do not necessarily infer that sense and all the ends imaginable are attainable no less by the spiritual sense and metaphorical acceptation of the words than by the more gross and natural And lastly to suppose what is said above concerning this subject testimony of senses bear witness to the contrary as much after Consecration as before the upshot of the business will be this Whether there remains any such infallible inducements to produce an opinion of such a thing there being whether such gounds unresistible there be for to found such an intention that may excuse from errour And therefore I absolutely deny Spalatoe's opinion saying I answer I acknowledge no Idolatrous De Republ. Eccl. Lib. 7. cap II. num 2. crime in the adoration of the Eucharist so long as the intention is directed aright For they who teach that Bread to be no longer bread but the body of Christ c. For if they knew that the Body of Christ did not lye hid under the Species and his blood under those of Wine they would not so worship This I say satisfies not because they have no sufficient grounds that so it is or so Christs words are to be understood Secondly and as to this point principally because Idolatry is primarily a defect and errour in the understanding as their own men confess and only secondarily and by consequence in the will or purpose which altogether overthrows the moderate sense of Forbes likewise to Forbes ubi supra p. 439. say no more For as for that other evasion and purgation whereby they would fetch off Papists from Idâ—latrous worship in the Eucharist because there can be no doubt made but Christ may be adored as Austins known words are in the Eucharist with all outward and bodily as well as mental worship is much less to the purpose For This quite changes the question which is wholly about the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the ancients call them the objects appearing whether they be Christ and to be worshipped as Christ For Christ in the Sacrament we may worship without exceptions of any divine or corporal manner Christ's body and blood are really present in the Eucharist we grant and in a more eminent manner then in other places or divine ordinances but when we hear him say The faithful receive the body and blood of Christ in Forbes ibid. themselves corporally but yet after a spiritual miraculous and imperceptible manner we grant the manner to be wonderful and imperceptible but we cannot grant it to be Corporally and Spiritually in the same respect without a contradiction For What is corporally to receive a thing but modo corporali after a corporal manner and therefore to correct as it were that Expression with that which follows viz. Modo tamen spirituali yet after a spiritual manner is quite to destroy what he seem'd to say before For Nothing can be received Corporally after a spiritual manner And it is much more intelligible than that of the Romanists which saith That the Body of Christ may be received spiritually and bodily For the body according to them is taken into the mouth and so bodily received by the wicked and unbelievers and it is by the faithful besides received by Faith spiritually which may stand together But to suppose any spiritual way to explicatory of the corporal way of receiving Christ is to suppose contradictions But this belongs to another place Let us now touch the third exception I make against the distinction of Material and Formal Idolatry taken from the Novelty of it and singularity as never heard of before late dayes when extremities put mens wits to study for new forms of Speech to dress up the new body of Divinity framed to themselves Why did not the Heathen come off so For surely they might Why did not this enter into the head of the ancienter School-men who I dare say make no mention of it How comes it about that the aneient Fathers and Councils knew no other Idolatry than that which even moderner Papists approve of when the soberer mode is on them viz. The worshipping as God that which is not God without any notice taken of Material and Formal worship contenting themselves with the general distinction of Ignorance of the Law and Ignorance of the Fact or wilful Ignorance and unwilling Or vincible and invincible Surely this implies somewhat singular in this case which they either are ashamed to express or can not which latter is my case For I confess I see no reason why we may not distinguish two sorts of Heresie as well two sorts of Schism two sorts of Adulterie two sorts of Drunkenness and Murder Material and Formal as of Idolatry And yet we hear little or no mention of this distinction but only as it is applyed to Idolatry which besides what is abovesaid renders it more suspected and the coyners and users of it Fourthly and lastly The dangerousness of this distinction and apparent damage it doth to Christian Religion declares it to be wicked and intollerable while it both opens a way to all carelessness in worshipping we know not how nor what contrary to our Faith and then when we may receive competent information of our error and should repent it lulls us asleep
the several Senses and Meanings according to which the Scriptures may be understood IT being found what is the Letter of the Word of God It is necessary to know what is the true sense of it For this is only in truth the Word and not the Letters Syllables or Grammatical words To know this we must first distinguish a Sense Historical and Mystical The Historical Sense is the same as the Literal so called because it is that which is primarily signified and intended by such a form of words And this is twofold For either these words are to be taken in the proper and natural signification as I may call that which is in most vulgar use or in their borrowed and mataphorical Sense As when I call a thing hard and apply it to Iron or Stone I speak properly and according to the Natural sense but when I apply Hardness to the heart I speak improperly and Metaphorically and yet Literally too intending thereby to signifie not any natural but moral quality in the heart The Seven Ears saith Joseph in Genesis are seven years and the Seven fat Kine are Seven years And so Christ in the Gospel This is my Body and infinite others in Scripture are Metaphorical and Literal Senses both The Mystical Sense is that which is a translation not so much of words from one signification to another as of the entire Sense to a meaning not excluding the Historical or Literal Sense but built upon it and occasion'd by it And is commonly divided into the Tropological Allegorical and Anagogical which some as Origen make coordinate with the former saying The Scripture is a certain Intelligible world wherein are four Parts Origen Homil 2. In Diversos as four Elements The Earth is the Literal Sense The waters is the profound Moral Sense The Air is the Natural Sense or natural science therein found And above all the sublime sense which is Fire In another place he mentions only the Historical Moral and Mystical And generally Idem Homil. 5. in Leviticum the Fathers do acknowledg all these though with some variation not distinguishing them as we have as might be shown were it needful to enlarge here on that subject The Moral Sense is that which is drawn from the natural to signifie the manners and conditions of men The Allegorical is a sense under a continuation of tropes and figures The Anagogical a translation of the meaning of things said or done on earth to things proper to heaven The Oxe being suffered to eat while he trod out the Corn according to St. Paul in the Moral sense signified that the labourer was worthy of his hire Mount Sinah and Mount Sion as the same Gal. 2. 24 25. Apostle saith signified the two Cities of God Earthly and Heavenly Allegorically And the Church of God upon Earth the Church Triumphant in heaven It is therefore without reason and modesty both that some strickt Modern Divines have set themselves against the Antient in contracting all these senses into one so as to allow no more which is of very ill consequence to the Faith both of Jew and Christian For generally all the hopes of the Jews concerning the Messias to come and all the proofs of the Christian taken from the Old Testament That he is come would come to little or nothing seeing there is manifestly a Literal or Historical sense primarily intended upon which the Mistical is built So that the arguments of the Evangelists and St. Paul in his Epistles convincing that Christ was the true Messias must needs be invalid seeing their quotation to that purpose had certainly another Literal Sense And it is against the condition of the whole Law it self which as St. Paul Heb. 10. 1. saith was a Shadow of good things to come and not the very things themselves It is here replied commonly That all these are but one Literal Perkins on Galâ—â— 22. sense diversely expressed which is to grant all that is contended for but with a reservation of a peculiar way of speaking to themselves that having been so infortunate as to judge of things amiss they may in some manner solace themselves with variety of phrase too commonly found amongst such as resolve to say something new where there is no just cause at all And to that which seems a Difficultie That no Symbolical sense can be argumentative or prove any thing in Divinity we answer That it cannot indeed unless it be known first to be the true Mistical sense of the words alledged For neither is the Literal sense it self until it be known that such was the true intent of the Speaker But those things which were symbolically and Mystically delivered in the Law being well known to Christ and his Apostles as likewise to the Learnedest of the Jewish Doctors by a received current tradition amongst them were of force to the ends alledged by them But where such a Mystical sense is not received nothing can be inferred from thence which is conclusive CHAP. X. Of the true Interpretation of Holy Scriptures The true meaning not the letter properly Scripture Of the difficultie of attaining the proper sense and the Reasons thereof IT availeth a Christian as little to have the Letter of the word of God without the genuine sense as it doth a man to have the shell without the Kernel For the sense is the word of God not the Letter Wicked men yea the Devil himselfe maketh use of the Letter to contradict the truth it self as St. Hierome hath observed and other Fathers and constant experience certifieth not without the consent of the Scripture it self which saith of it self In it are some things hard to be understood which 2 Pet. 3. 16. they that are unlearned and unstable wrest as they do all other Scriptures to their own destruction Therefore because it is very necessarie to be informed of the difficulties and dangers in misinterpreting Scripture before we can throughly apply our selves to prevent and avoid them we will First shew briefly That many things are difficult in Scripture and the Reasons why and after proceed to the most probable means rightly to interpret the same And these obstacles in attaining the true sense of Gods word are either found in our selves or in Gods wisdome and Providence or lastly in the Word of God it self Some indeed piously but inconsiderately make all the reason of difficulties not denied by them altogether in the Scripture to be in Man supposing they hereby vindicate Gods Providence from that censure it might otherwise be liable unto if so be that God should deliver such a Law to man which could not well be understood but apt to mislead men into errour And therefore say they It is the darkness and perversness of mans understanding and will that make things in Scripture obscure and not the condition of the Scriptures themselves But this no ways doth attain its end For when did God deliver his written word unto Mankind
private reason perswade him That he hath found out the truth and yet at the same time assure him That he is no less fallible than another man and therefore may possibly embrace and hug a false conception with as much fondness as a true and withal That private Judgements are not in themselves so safe as publique nor single as many What violence were this to his reason nay how much more rational than the first simple Act to comply with the Reason of others whom reason also requires to listen to and obey and Scripture much more From hence we may rightly conclude against both extremes in these days who yet agree in this very ill-grounded opinion That there must be an Infallible Director or Judge or we cannot submit to them in matters of Faith and our Salvation This is absolutely untrue both in humane and divine matters Who sees not indeed that it were to be wished for and above all things desired Who sees not the great inconvenience for want of such a standard of opinions as this But can we rationally conclude therefore that so it is Or hath God or ought he of his necessary goodness and wisdom as some have ventured to affirm to grant all things that are infallibly good for man Is it not sufficient that a fair though not infallible way is opened to attain the truth here and bliss hereafter but every one must find it Is it little or no absurditie That infinite never come to means of truth and so great that many who enjoy them do not receive the benefit by them Again Are good manners and virtues no less essential to Salvation than Faith and is there no infallible Judge of manners Is there no infallible Casuist And must there be of points of Faith How many have the infallible Rule of holy Life and yet mistake either in the sense or application of it so far as to perish in unknown Sins And yet none have to prevent that great and common evil call'd for an infallible Censour whose determinations might settle doubtful consciences in greatest safety and silence all apologies which are wont to be made for our sins and errors and so bring us nec essarily to truth or leave us under self and affected condemnation But The Ground of this mistake being farther searched into will be found very weak and fallacious An infallible Faith say they must have an infallible Judge And of these some assume thus There is no man infallible Therefore no man can be Judge of Faith Others assume thus But there is and must be an infallible Faith Therefore there must be an infallible Judge So that we see both would have infallible Judges but differ only in their choice of them For The former would have the Scriptures Judge and Rule which is very honest but very simple The later would have some external Judge which hath much more of reason in it And fails only in the choice of this Judge or in the description of him For There is nothing more unreasonable than to ordain that which is under debate to be Judge of it self besides the great absurdity of confounding the Rule or Law and the Interpreter and Judge And There is nothing more fallacious than to confound Causes and occasions together as the later opinion doth For If the Church or whatever Judge may be supposed were the true direct cause of our Faith then indeed it would necessarily follow That our Faith could no wayes be infallible unless the Judge were also infallible the effect not exceeding the cause nor the Conclusion the Premises or propositions from whence it was deduced But Because the Church is only on Occasion or a Cause without which we should neither believe the Scriptures in general to be the Word of God nor any sentence to be duly drawn from the same there is no necessity at all of such a consequence For The Infallibility now spoken of is either the thing believed which is the Word of God of which the Church I hope is no Cause or the Grace of Faith excited and exercised by us through the Spirit of Grace in us the mynistery of the Church serving thereunto acording to St. Paul saying We therefore as workers together with 2 Cor. 6. 1. him beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain For as in things natural He that applies Actives to Passives that is the Cause proper to the matter about which the Action is is not the proper or natural cause of the Effect but the occasion only yet is said vulgarly so to be as when a man applies fire to combustible matter he may though improperly be said to burn it when it is the fire and not he that burns it So the Church or Judge of Scriptures sense applying the same to a capable subject the effect is true and infallible Faith but it is not the effect of the Church or instrument or mean rather but of the Holy Spirit of Grace which taketh occasion from thence to produce Faith and that infallible For Were this Infallibility we now speak of the Churches then when ever the Church should so propound and urge points of Faith they must needs have an effect in the Soul For if they say The Church teaches in an humane way they say she teaches in a fallible way which overthrows all And from this is cleared that difficulty which opposeth a Judge of Scripture and Faith because none could be found infallible For not making the Judge the cause of Faith but occasion he may be necessarily required to Faith God who is the only principal cause with his holy word seldom or never concurring without those outward means And therefore though I readily enough grant That the Scriptures are so plainly written that a single simple person wanting greater helps to attain to the abstruser sence of them and using his honest and simple endeavour may easily find so much of the Rule of Faith and holy Life as to be saved by them yet I cannot say the same of any men who presuming on Gods power against his promise which includeth the use of outward meanes or mistaking his promise for absolute when it is conditional shall look no farther than their own wits shall lead them Now The outward meanes to which God hath annexed his promise of Grace may be these First That which we have here handled a general and sober submission to the Guides of our youth and our spiritual Fathers and Pastors in Christ which to forsake is the part of a wanton and fornicating Soul according to Solomon This common Reason and nature it self seem to require of all Prov. 2. 17. under Autority by the disposition of Almighty God That they in the first place hearken unto the voice and explication of the Church wherein they are educated until such time as a greater manifestation of truth shall withdraw them unwillingly from the same For so long as Senses are equally probable on both
decision I wish with all my heart so far am I from an evil eye or niggardly affection towards Scripture they could make their words good when they tell us all things are contained in Scripture It is a perfect Rule of all emergent doubts and acts in the Church It is Judge and Law both of Controversies but alas they cannot For they take away from it more then by this rank kindness they give to it Gods word is Perfect as a Law and so far as he intended it but it must cease to be a Law and take another nature upon it if it were a Judge too in any proper sense And the Canon of Scripture must be it self variable and mutable if it could particularly accommodate it self to all occasions and exigencies of Christians But this is not only absurd but needless For God when he made men Christians did not take away from them what they before had as Men but required and ordained that humane judgement and reason should be occupied and sanctified by his divine Revelations He in brief gave them another and far better Method Aid and Rule to judge by and did not destroy or render altogether useless their Judgement even in matters sacred To the Law and Esay 8. 20. to the Testimonie saies the holy Prophet if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them This indeed plainly declares the Rule by which we are to walk and Judge but it doth not tell us that the Law it self doth speak but men according to it And this is to Judge Now because no one man no one age no one Church should judge for all no nor for it self contrary to all doth the necessity and expediencie of Tradition not to affront or violate but secure the written word of God and that in two special respects appear First as giving great light and directions unto the Rulers of the Church and limiting the uncertain and loose wit of man which probably would otherwise according to its natural pronitie flie out into new and strange senses dayly of holy Scripture The Records of the Church like so many Presidents and Reports in our Common Law giving us to understand Low Consuetudo etiam in Civilibus rebus pro Lege suscipitur cùm deficit Lex nec differt Scripturd an ratione consistat quando Legem ratio commendet Tertul. de coron mil. cap. 4. such places of Scripture were formerly understood and on which side the case controverted passed And why this course in divine matters should not be approved I see not unless unquiet and guilty persons shall seek under colour of a more absolute appeal to Scripture which is here supposed to be sincerely appealed unto before to wind themselves into the seat of Judicature and at length not only as fallibly but also usurpingly decree for themselves and others too This event hath so manifestly appeared that there is no denying of it or defending it They therefore who professedly introduce Tradition to the defeating and nulling of Scripture deal indeed more broadly and in some sense more honestly as being what they seem than they who give all and more then all due to it in language but in practise overthrow it But we making Tradition absolutely subordinate and subservient to Scripture and in a word of the nature of a Comment and not of the Text it self we are yet to seek not what deceitfully and passionately for we know enough of that already but soberly can be objected against it For if it be said Tradition is it self uncertain it is obscure it is perished it contradicts it self and so can be of little use we readily joyn with them so far as to acknowledge that such traditions and to them to whom they so appear can with no good reason be appealed to But we deny that there are none but such and that such as prove themselves to be true and honest men upon due trial and examination ought to be hang'd out of the way because they were found in company with thieves and Cheats Supposing then That such honest Traditions are to be found in the Church another great benefit redoundeth to the Church from thence in that it doth in some cases supply the defects of the Law it self the Scripture But here I must first get clear of this reputed Scandal given in that I suppose the Scriptures defective or imperfect I have already and do again profess its plenitude and sufficiency as far as a Rule or Law is well capable of Now what God by his infinite wisdom and power might have done I cannot question in contriving such an ample Law as should comprehend all future and possible contingencies in humane affairs but this I say That he disposing things by another Rule viz. to act according to humane capacity and condition never did or so much as intended to deliver such an infinite Law Is not Moses and Gods dealing to him and his ministry to God and the people frequently alledged as a notable argument to convince us of the amplitude of the New Testament Moses say they was faithful in all his house And therefore much Heb. 3. 2. more was Christ Very good and what of all this As much as comes to nothing For wherein did the faithfulness of Moses consist In powring out unmeasurably all that might be said touching divine matters Or rather in delivering faithfully and exactly all that God commanded him This truly did Moses and therefore was very true and faithful to him that sent him and gave him his charge This did Christ and this did the Apostles of Christ and his inspired servants and therefore were all no less faithful to God than Moses But did not Moses leave more cases untouched in the Administration of the Jewish Policie then were litterally expressed Yes surely judging it sufficient that he had laid down general Rules and Precepts according to which Emergencies which might be infinite should by humane prudence be reduced and accordingly determined And so choose they or refuse they must they grant did Christ and his Instruments leave the Law of the Gospel which yet not wanting all that can be expected from a Law cannot modestly be pronounced imperfect notwithstanding as is said manifold particulars are not there treated of Now those are they we say Tradition doth in some measure supply unto us and the defect of Tradition it self which hath not considered all things is made good by the constant power of the Church given by the Scriptures themselves in such cases which require determination of circumstances of time place order and manner of Gods service according to the Edification of the Church of Christ CHAP. XIII Of the nature of Faith What is Faith Of the two general grounds of Faith Faith divine in a twofold sense Revelation the Formal reason of Faith Divine Of the several senses and acceptations of Faith That Historical Temperance and Miraculous Faith are not in nature
to the world Upon this Innovating Hereticks were forced to seek subterfuge from revelations and extraordinary discoveries promised as they corruptly understood Scripture by Christ in St. John saying I have yet many things to say unto you but ye Joh. 16 12 13. cannot bear them now Howbeit when the Spirit of truth shall come he will guide you unto all truth c. Hence they collected That Christ communicated not all to his immediate Disciples but reserved diverse things to be imparted extraordinarily to them and the phansie of such extraordinary favours from God is such a bewitching device that few not soundly setled in Faith can chose but expect and thirst after and at last conceit that so God doth deal with them when there is no such matter And of this Sacrilegious and Heretical folly are those Churches no less than simple single persons guilty which under pretense of power in the Church which must not be denyed of declaring the sense of Scripture and Faith do in very deed invent and introduce new Articles of Faith and absurd Scholies unheard of before either in substance or form and say They do but explain only what was before implyed and included in holy Writ For all Articles of Faith all necessary and due Discipline all true Administration of Sacraments wherein the truth of Christian Churches are generally affirmed to consist must long since have been discovered from the Rule of all these or otherwise they who were ignorant of or defective in these could not lay any just claim to be true Churches of Christ So that in truth Antiquity thus understood is an excellent Note of the true Faith and the true Faith not contradicted in worship as is possible more than a Note or Sign of a true Church it is the very Being it self But where Antiquity it self is obscure the condition of a Note according to the Canvasers of this point being to be more cleer than that which is in question it cannot do this good office for us And to argue backward as too many do very incongruously endeavouring to prove that which should prove is to discover the fondness of their opinions and falsness of their cause at the same time For instance to say the Church cannot err in Doctrine therefore we must believe this to be most ancient And to affirm that no man can precisely declare the time and place when such a Doctrine entred the Church taxed for innovation is very absurd as commonly and confidently as it is used For St. Augustine on whose grounds they seem to build this supposition supposed that First no time could be instanced in when such an usance was not in the Church but many times this can be done against pretences to Apostolicalness though the direct time when it began may not be instanced in For whenas most Doctrines of Faith have some practical worship proper 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aristoteles Polit Lib 5. 8. 175. to them and evidencing them such as are the form the matter the rites of prayer none of which recorded in the Church insinuate any such opinions in that age of the Church especially of publick approbation is it not an argument more than conjectural there was then no such thing believed in the Church though we be not able to determine when it first sprung up Again it is very weak and frivolous which is presumed as unquestionable that all abuses and corruptions in the Church had some proper period wherein they must needs show themselves according to that formality as afterwards they appeared in and became notorious No doubt is to be made but points of Doctrine had their conceptions augmentations and progressions insensible as infinite other things in nature and manners have had and daily have A man may better demand the hour in which an Apple began first to rot or the week in which an old Groat began first to be defaced and loose its form than require a determinate point of time or perhaps the year in which such a Doctrine began to be corrupted into an heretical sense and practise But many of these are very exactly and faithfully set down and found short of immemorialness of Tradition as they term it For Succession another note of the Church I find it by some divided into Succession Doctrinal and Personal meaning better than they speak For I know nothing properly succeeding but where something is departed or lost Now the Doctrine of the Church being incessant and perpetual and not diverse from it self cannot be said so properly to succeed it self as to persevere in the Church But if we should pass that order and allow this language yet the thing it self seems here quite to be mistaken it being not at present enquired into the Faith of the Church which if it were granted to be sound and Catholick doth not of it self necessarily and fully infer a true Church and upon the reasons before agreed to viz. Due administration of Discipline to be essential to a true Church but into the Form constituting it a Visible and Formal Church to which is indispensably required proper Pastors and that by the appointment of Christ as St. Paul thus witnesseth speaking of Christ leaving Ephes 4. 11 12 the earth and ascending into heaven and deputing thereupon certain Officers in his stead in a visible ministration which he ceaseth now to exercise He gave some Apostles and some Prophets and some Evangelists and some Pastors and Teachers For the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ Now it is not necessary here to determine the quarrel about the kind of Officers here mentioned it sufficing to our purpose what is very evident that they who are Governours of the Church must be given to the Church by Christ But Christ acting no longer politically or visibly as hath been said and must be yielded but mystically he cannot be said to ordain any immediately in his own person but by the ministry of others Now how is it possible to distinguish them whom Christ hath appointed to constitute others in the Church from them to whom he hath given no such order but by this succession we now speak of namely a traduction of that faculty which is in one deriving it originally though by many intermediate hands from Christ himself to another succeeding him because as the Apostle to the Hebrews speaks the Priests are not suffered to continue by reason of Death This Hebr. 7. 23. surrogation then of Pastors and Priests is not to be at the pleasure or arbitrement of men to institute but must be by the will of Christ and this will of Christ must be revealed unto us either by the ordinary line and course from himself and Apostles or else must by some extraordinary and miraculous way be made known to men For though we deny it to be Christs practise to commission men to these ends we do not deny it to be
and for ought appears the Schismatical may be in greater unity within it self than the Catholick how can any man discern from unity which is the Catholick or true Church The Unity therefore which may any wise describe or distinguish the sounder part of Christs Church from the heretical must not be taken from that which it holdeth within it self but with some other which is acknowledged for Catholick wherein comes the use of Antiquity again because the Ancient Churches of Christ were saved by the same Faith and Worship that all succeeding Churches must be therefore if it may appear that a Church doth not agree in all necessary or considerable points of Faith Worship and Government with them of former ages supposed to be truly Catholick it self cannot be Catholick or a true Christian Church But they who look no higher than one Age or two and no farther then one place or two and finding convenient agreement amongst themselves do characterise themselves for Christs Church fall into the censure of St. Paul to the Corinthians who measuring themselves by themselves and comparing 2 Cor. 10. 12. themselves among themselves are not wise And in the Revelation of St. John we read of some Nations into whose heart God hath put to fulfill Revel 17. 7. his will and to agree and give their Kingdom unto the Beast until the word of God should be fulfilled I hope this unity of consent will not be taken for any argument of the faithfulness of their consent or Catholickness But more we shall have occasion to speak of Unity in the treating of Schism In the mean time I see no force at all in the places alleadged out of the Old Testament to prove so much as may be well allowed to the unity of the Church as where it is said My Beloved is but one and to the Cantic like purpose For such places taken in relation to Fact and not to Precept and counsel rather that Gods Church should be so and endeavour to keep the Spirit of Unity in the bond of peace as the Apostle speaks can Ephes 4. 3. be understood strictly only of that single Nation of the Jews which was alone chosen so peculiarly to himself Or of the future Coalition of Jew and Gentile into one Body as the same Apostle in the same Epistle speaketh of Christs Passion That he might reconcile both unto God in one Chap. 2. 16. Body by the Cross having slain the enmity thereby i. e. between Jew and Gentile These difficulties and uncertainties in this Note of Unity have constrained the Patrons of the Roman Cause to find out such an Unity which indeed is more apparent and certain to him that commits his Faith to be guided by some outward sign but so much repugnant to all ancient Churches so wholly strange to them and unheard of that it may seem to do them much more mischief than advantage as that which excludes all Antiquity from having any suffrage in this cause And this their Note is Unity Bellarm. de Notis Eccles lib. 4. cap. 10. init with the Bishop of Rome as boldly said and as weakly proved as their enemies could wish St. Hierom indeed saith to Damasus he is resolved to hold as He and that See believed in one particular of the Trinity and used not simply and abstractly consider'd this as a probable argument of Orthodoxness and preserving the peace of the Church but with the concurrence of other Circumstances rendring his Opinion probable But doth he or any ancient Author deserving with themselves the name of a Father teach as they would perswade indefinitely That to hold communion with the Bishop of Rome is to be assured you are of the true Catholick Church Christs Charter much stood upon to St. Peter and the Rhetorical flourishes many times of the Holy Fathers extolling St. Peter and his Successors but never categorically affirming or soberly determining so will not amount to this Hence they proceed to Universality too as a sign of the true Church and an help to Unity it self For it profitteth nothing that there be some one Church and that in one Age and Place which is at unity with it self if it be not universal Christs Church is said to be universal but so many senses are given of Universality it self that it is hard to apply it positively to any pretending to it For nothing so plain as that the Christian Faith doth not and never did possess all Nations nor all the persons of those Nations where it hath flourished No man therefore can know the true Church by that which is not true of it And therefore I make no doubt but the most anciently genuine and proper sense of that expression in the Apostles Creed where it is said I believe the Catholick Church Vide Augustinum Epistolâ— 50. aimed at no more than to cause us to believe that Christs Church was from that time forward no longer to be of one Nation or one Denomination as it was before Christs Incarnation but Catholick that is Universal and indifferently to extend to all People For at that time when the Creed was composed the secondary sense wherein Catholick and sound Believer signified the same thing was scarce at all heard of no not before the Councel of Nice under Constantine Afterwards it was applyed to particular Sees as well Alexandrian Antiochian and some others as Roman In Theodosius the second his dayes which above 400 years after Christ a Sozomenus Ecclesiast Hist lib. 7. cap. 4. Law was made that none should call themselves Catholicks but such as believed aright concerning the Holy Trinity the rest should be termed Hereticks Afterward notwithstanding every Sect and Heresie usurped that name as may appear from that very place corruptly cited out of Austin August Epist ad Epistolam Fundamenti by some to prove the true Church from the Title of Catholick it self For saith he however all Hereticks desire to be called Catholicks yet if any enquired for a Catholick Church they were directed to the Orthodox and not Heretical Churches But if we take the word Catholick in a more restrained sense not for that which is all over the world actually but so far as it doth extend passeth generally through all and that not Places but Ages too where shall we find a Catholick Church Christians never for fourteen or fifteen hundred yeers not conspiring into one belief no not in things held very important to Faith and I mean not only single persons but Societies of Christians Therefore neither from hence can we conclude directly of the true Church in opposition to Heretical And therefore the Patrons of this opinion of the Universality finding themselves harder pursued with difficulties than they can evade being taken in their own snares are forced according to their very vain custom to leave off the tryal of the truth from matter of Fact which is most plain and ready and proceed to say It ought so
who talk of Aquaquula a Little water as if for want of that God should suffer a soul to perish or for want of a Little morsel of bread and a drop or two of wine men should perish everlastingly As if it were not a mercy of God to save some and that by the contemptiblest things in the world and such as his illuminable power and wisdom should choose rather than rigour in binding us to them or to be authours of our own ruin But to protract a disputation to prove that the efficacy of the Sacraments can arise from the Work it self thinking thereby that it must follow that they are not at all efficacious as some very learned men have done is rather to be pitied than persecuted For no otherwise do we ascribe vertue to them Ex opere Operato but as it is opposit to Opus operantis meaning that the instrumental things the Sacraments have not their sufficiencie or efficiencie from the Instrumental Persons the Ministers of them but that these doing the work required of them by the Ordainer the efficacie follows and yet not absolutely from the work but from the will of God CHAP. XXXIV Of the distinction of Sacraments into Legal and Evangelical Of the Covenants necessary to Sacraments The true difference between the Old and New Covenant The Agreement between Christ and Moses The Agreements and differences between the Law and the Gospel MORE contention hath afflicted the Church of God in the disquisition of the number than nature of the Sacraments First then for methods sake We shall divide them into Legal and Evangelical Legal Sacraments were those outward Signs and Rites which God ordained to Abraham and his Seed as Instances and Notices of the Covenant made between him and them And therefore it will not be improper nor unseasonable to interrupt a little the immediate prosecution of the Sacraments and treat of the Covenants God hath made with man as well New as Old seeing all the Sacraments as well Jewish as Christian relate to those Covenants A Covenant is nothing else but an Agreement solemnly made between two distinct Parties with Conditions mutually to be observed as in that between Laban and Jacob That the one should not pass over that leap to the Gen. 31. 52. other for harm So likewise between God and Man a Stipulation and Restipulation is made that the one should perform the part of a Patron and Lord and the other of a faithful Servant to him This Covenant is but twofold in general however it be diversified according to the several occasions of revealing the same The first was properly a Covenant of Nature the second of Grace The Covenant of Nature was first made with Adam at his creation wherein was bestowed on him not only such Faculties and Perfections of Being as necessarily tended to the natural perfection of man but super-added certain supernatural Graces which might dispose him with facility to fulfill the Law and Will of God Notwithstanding which he disobeying God forfeited those more special aids and accomplishments and so dissolved that Covenant God proceeded not upon faithless man according to the rigour of his Justice but out of his free inscrutable favour inclined to renew a Covenant with him again and that was in a third Person not with false man immediately as before And this Person through whom he thus covenant a second time with man was the Man Christ Jesus and then these three are no more Covenants really Yet because this second of sending his Son as a Mediatour between God and Man had such different Forms and Faces upon it according to the several Oeconomies or Dispensations it pleased God to make to man it is often in holy Scripture distinguished into the Old Covenant and the New As by St. Paul to the Galatians saying These Gal. 4. 24. two are the two Covenants The one from Mount Sinai the other from Mount Sion or Jerusalem And to the Hebrews If the first Covenant Hebr. 8. 7. had been faultless then should no place have been found for the second Where he spake of the Covenant of Moses and that of the Gospel But there was a more early Covenant made with Abraham when God promised to him the Land of Canaan and to his Seed But both these agree in the same in that they are tearmed Covenants of Works not that they were so made that they only required working and the second part believing which was under the Gospel For this Covenant made with Abraham and Moses peculiarly to the Israelites did suppose the first solemn Covenant of Faith in the promised Seed of the Woman which should break the Serpents head And therefore this was not another from that but as a Codicil annext in order to some special Promises and Priviledges made over to the Seed of Abraham upon tearms not common to all mankind Such as were temporal blessings and particularly the inheritance of the Land of Canaan But that which is often called the New Covenant or the Covenant of the Gospel is according to the substance of an ancienter date than that made either with Abraham or Moses being the same which was made with Adam the second time in Paradise But is called the New Covenant because it appeared but newly in respect of its dress and clearer revelation at Christs appearing And therefore St. John excellently expresses this when he seemeth to speak on both sides saying Brethren I write no new Commandment to you but an old Commandment 1 Joh. 2. 7 8. which ye had from the beginning the old Commandment is the Word which ye have heard from the beginning Again a new Commandment I write unto you which thing is true in him and in you signifying unto us in what sense the Gospel was new and in what Old It was new in comparison of the more conspicuous manifestation of it it was old in respect of its Ordination For to this end the Apostle to the Colossians speaking of the Gospel calleth it the Mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations Coloss 1. 26. but now is made manifest to his Saints c. But the nature of this Covenant and the vulgar confusions made in treating of the Old and New will more clearly appear from a short consideration of the Agreement and Differences between these two Covenants And the first Agreement is that we now have insinuated that the substance of them both was the same Secondly they agree in their Author For contrary to some ancient Hereticks the same God was the Author of the Old who was Author of the New Law Thirdly they agree in the Principal Minister and Mediatour of both which was Christ Jesus who is therefore said to be the same yesterday to day and for ever because Hebr. 13. 8. both before the Law and under the Law and after the Law of Moses Christ was the same Mediatour Fourthly they were one as to their end which next to
defines it 1. Qu. 8. Ar. 1. 2. The communication of one thing with another so many waies as a Body imparts it self to another so many may it be said to be Present to it And these ways are commonly resolved to be two First by immediate contact and conjunction Secondly by a Virtual or Effectual communication with it the Substance it self continuing remote So that though Christs body should be determined to one certain place in Heaven yet may it by its vertue communicate it self to us in the Sacrament and be said to be Present really though not Corporally after the manner of bodies in their natural state by contiguity And what we now say of the Subject of this Sacrament will hold no less in the Case of Participation of Christs Body and Blood in the Eucharist For as Christs Body may be said to be really though not Corporally Present and immediately So may it be said to be received Really and not Phantastically only though not Corporally after the manner that other bodies are received For they that affirm that Christs body is Corporally Sacramentally received do say if not what they know not themselves yet what no body but themselves can apprehend For either these terms are really distinct or Not. If they be not then are they either superfluous or at most explicatory one of another but this latter cannot be said because Sacramentally is more obscure than Corporally and Corporally signifies a much grosser degree of Presence than the Framers of this distinction will admit to agree with these Divine Mysteries If they be distinct whence shall we fetch the nature of this Sacramental Presence whenas there is nothing to be found in Nature to resemble or explain it but it must be described by it self And Sacramentally Present is no more than to be present in the Sacrament But what it is to be present in the Sacrament or how a thing may be said to be present in the Sacrament otherwise than in other Cases we shall ever be to seek and consequently never learn Therefore we must be constrained at length to reduce this large and unintelligible Presence Sacramental to one of the two old sorts of the Presence of Influence only or Presence of Substance it self or Suppositum So that either the Influence only of Christs Body and Blood should be found in the Eucharist and the vertue of them be therein communicated unto us or the very natural Substance also We have hitherto spoken of the Presence it self precisely taken from its Causes and manner external For according to Philosophers there is a Modus Essentialis and a Modus Accidentalis The Essential manner is simply to be after the intrinsique natureof a thing as the intrinsique nature and manner of a Body is to be Corporally and of a Spirit to be Spiritually that is As a Body and as a Spirit But as a Body ordinarily and naturally palpable and visible may remain a true real Body and yet not be seen or felt so may a Spirit remain a Spirit in substance and yet appear as a Body So that it is possible Christs Body may be present corporally in the essentials and formal nature of a Body and yet not appear in the accidental or separable formalities of a Body which are actually to be seen and felt at a competent distance These I call accidental because they may be wanting as well by reason of the defect of the senses which should perceive them as of the sensiblenes of such objects For a Divine power may take away the one as well as the other by impeding the sense though seeing the very nature and essence of a Body consisteth in being extended and quantitative it cannot be conceived how a Divine Power can divide them which mutually constitute one another though it may render them imperceptible to outward sense And so Christs Body may be in the Eucharist so far corporally as to have all real and essential modifications of a Body but not so Corporally as to appear in the proper forms of a Body But granting or supposing rather that Christs Body were in this Latter sense present in the Sacrament there appears no great reason why this should be called a Sacramental Presence more than that presence when he was with his Disciples at Supper and as the Scripture saith Vanished out of their sight Luk. 24. 31. that is as the word and sense import not translating his Body suddainly to another place but disappearing in that place or ceasing to be seen by them answerable to the contrary power shewn in his sudden appearing without any previous Act and standing in the midst of them before they V. 36. could be aware of it or suppose any such thing which was occasion of their great Affrightment and amazement supposing him to be a Spirit 37. But it is one thing to be Possibly and another Actually so to be And yet farther Actually for Christs Body and Blood so to be present and to be so Present as there should remain nothing substantial or material besides them and the Signs to be changed into the things signified by them absolutely and totally the shew or Accident only excepted So that the Question is double First Whether those Substances of Bread and Wine remain after consecration really the same they were before or be totally abolished Secondly It is inquired not so much whether Christs Body and Blood be really present in the Sacrament but whether it be really the Sacrament it self as it must necessarily be if so be that they be in such manner really present as there remains no other substance besides them For the former of these the knowledge of the Real Presence of Signs Bread and Wine do exceedingly conduce to the understanding of the Real Presence of the Body and Blood of Christ under or through those Signs And it should seem that the Roman Advocates of the New sense of a Real Presence of Christs Body and Blood proceed not in the proper and natural method rightly to found their Doctrine For as according to them there must be in order of nature though not of time a Desition or abolition of the Elemental substances before there can succeed those Divine substances so should they have first by sound and sufficient arguments proved the destruction of the preceeding Bodies and then have inferred the succeeding But on the contrary They first presume on the Second upon what grounds we shall hereafter see viz That Christs Body is so really subsisting there and then conclude that the Elements are not there subsistent For he that holds that the Sacramental Signs do not exclude the Body and Blood of Christ doth likewise hold that the Body and Blood of Christ are not inconsistent with the Real Presence of the Elements It must not be denied that those texts of Scripture which are commonly alleadged to Parallel Christs words and consequently to give a more favourable sense than that of Transubstantiation do not exactly
fit the Case For when the Scripture saith Christ is a Door or Christ is a Vine or a Lamb it is not the same formally as to say that a Lamb is Christ or a Door or a Vine is Christ Yet if that rigour must be observed in Scripture Propositions to have them true that without a Trope or Figure they must be understood otherwise we must be reproached to deny Scripture the foresaid speeches must as necessarily inferr a Transubstantiation of Christ into the Nature of a Door or Vine or Lamb as his bare words at the Celebration do inferr a Transubstantiation of the Elements into his Nature And no apparence of disparity can be here shown if so be Christs Literal meaning must be here urged as they do Now That the Signs which were before are Really Present in the Sacrament after Consecration doth appear from the most-Essential thing to a Sacrament A Sacrament we have defined to be a Visible Sign with Austin and infinite others I say a Visible and Real Sign and not Visibly Apparently or Seemingly a Sign or a Sign of a Sign as the deluding Specieses remaining after supposed Transubstantiation are said to be And it is an Impossible thing as is before shewed in the general treating of Sacraments that the Sign should be the thing signified For if some Sign could be the thing signified then something signified should be a Sign and so both wayes the Relate and Cor-relate should be the same too and two should be one and one should be two and if this may be what may not be or at least said to be For as to the instances given That in some Cases a thing may be a Sign and the thing signified it hath been showed how defective they are in that they are a Sign of the same nature perhaps or rather some qualification of it and not of the same thing numerically as the individual Sign in the Lords Supper is believed to be of that it is Therefore from hence they are put to their choice Whether of the two they will suffer the loss of the Sacrament or the absence of Christs Body in their sense For not only the nature of the thing now expressed require Sacramental Signs as well as the thing signified but the manifold Autorities of the Ancientest of the Greek and Latin Fathers have for this reason called the Sacramental Elements Signs Figures Representations Types Antitypes of Christs Body and Blood as might at large be shewed our Adversaries not denying it But what answer do they make to them The Modern Greeks as Cardinal Bessario who is herein followed by some more modern than himself Latinizing answer confessing that the Fathers Bessario Do Eucharist Sacramento often so speak but say they they speak only of the Bread and Wine before Consecration and not after Here is some wit in this shuffle and evasion but no truth at all For before Dedication and Consecration they are not Signs or Figures or Antitypes at all They have no more relation to the Body and Blood of Christ than the like Elements at our Common tables and therefore they must be understood to speak of them after Consecration But the Answer of the Scholastical managers of this controversy in the Latin Church shows less modesty and no more truth For Aūg. in Psal 3. they say St. Austin who calls the consecrated Elements a Figure of Christs Body spake not of every empty Figure but of a Figure of a thing really present All this we grant willingly viz that the Signs Sacramental are not Signs of things future or Absent This is nothing at all to the purpose And the Second answer is notoriously and boldly false saying That St. Austin might there speak as Manichee who denied the Real Body Contra Adamant C. 12. of Christ For it was in confutation of Manicheans And of Tertullians words who likewise calls the consecrate Elements Signs they make non-sense joyning head and tail together that they may really signifie nothing least they should signify that for which we alleadg them Tertullian saies Hoc est Corpus meum Id est Figura Corporis mei Figura Corporis mei saies one after his greater Doctors is referred not unto Corpus meum as an Fisher Jes explication thereof but unto Hoc in this manner Hoc id est Figura Corporis mei est Corpus meum i. e. This that is the Figure of my Body is my Body If it be not sufficient conviction of their Errour and confusion that they are driven to such unnatural tossing of mens words against common sense and Grammar and having so done to affect nothing but what is directly false or unintelligible as this Scholie is making the Figure and the Body the very same thing I confess I have nothing to say For this is the subject we have at present in hand That the Sign and thing signified must by eternal necessity be distinct but this opinion of Transubstantiation destroys this and destroying this destroys the Sacrament For whereas they say That the remaining Species supply the place of the Substance abolished and are Signs This cannot consist with the impossibility of such Accidents without a subject in that contrary to their definition they should stick and not stick to a thing in that they are Accidents their nature requires that they should have a subject and the nature of this mutation requires they should have none And where as they argue That what any Creature can do the Creatour can much more do and therefore if the Creature can sustain Accidents the Creatour God Almighty can I answer If the Creature could sustain Accidents without a subject then doubtless could God the Creatour but doth it follow that because the Creature can be a subject to them therefore the Creatour can also All that a Creature can Do the Creatour can do but all that the Creature can Suffer I trow the Creatour cannot But to be the subject to Accidents is a Passion and imperfection and no Action and therefore nothing can be concluded from hence Therefore they proceed one strain higher not doubting to say That what the Creature can do by its Passive Capacity the Creatour can do by his Active which if it did not imply a contradiction in nature itself I should easily grant but this it doth For first it is to make an Accident a Substance For t is the nature of a Substance to subsist of it self without the aid or support of any other thing distinct from it Not that the Secondary being can subsist without the First God himself but without any thing Created And therefore seeing that Substance it self cannot continue in its Being without Gods omnipotent hand supporting it this doth equalize the nature of Accidents to that of Substance in that it supposeth that Accidents by a divine power may subsist of themselves as well as Substance For substance cannot subsist at all without a Divine power and thus Accidents by a
Divine power should be of the nature of Substance but such confusion and havock in nature to bring in an unnatural Dogm is no ways to be admitted not out of any defect in the Divine Power but an incapacity of the Creature to be so order'd against its nature And as this Condition of Species subsisting or existing separately of themselves is contrary to their nature So the significativeness of these Species is contrary to Christs Intention and Institution which were to make a representation of his death and passion by Bread and Wine and not by the Similitudes of Bread and Wine And this is to be noted That when the Ancient Fathers both Greek and Latin do affirm that Christs Body or Blood are present under the Species and Forms of Bread and Wine they do not mean such Species as the Schools of Aristotle have introduced for I find not that they took any notice of them distinct from the subject to which they relate but they took them in a more plain sense for the thing it self so affected and formed and Under the Species signified with them as much as Under the Kinds of Bread and Wine Christs Body was present And they never destroyed the Sacrament it self to give an extraordinary Being to the Body of Christ therein CHAP. XLIII The principal Reasons for Transubstantiation answered AND If this be once made good That there is a Proper Sacrament remaining after Consecration it will be much less difficulty to agree upon the manner of Christs presence in the Sacrament For the doubt will not be so much about the Concomitance and co-existence of it with the Sacramental Signs as Whether that which we See with our eys and touch and taste be properly and not denominatively and Figuratively only the Body of Christ And in effect Whether it be the very Sacrament it self or whether only in the Sacrament The Doctrine of the Church of Rome determines not only that There it is but directly and expresly This it is and this we deny as that which indeed must include such a Transubstantiation as is by them affirmed and the chiefest grounds whereof we are now to examine And First from Scripture they are wont to argue and that from the Old Bellarm Lib. 1. Cap. 3. De Sacram. Eucharist Testament where are recorded many Types and Figures of Christ and particularly his Passion which were no less if not much more clear than the representations in the Eucharist if Christ himself be not there otherwise than Figuratively For the Paschal Lamb slain seems to represent Christs Passion more Lively and expresly than the Sacramental Elements Therefore if that the Sacraments of the Gospel might exceed them of the Law it is necessary that what was done there Figuratively only should be properly and really performed in our Sacraments Answ But first supposing Transubstantiation is Christ more clearly in the Sacrament than if there were no such thing Or can the Sacrament of the Gospel be said to be more clear for this when in truth it is more Mystical and abstrufe But though it be not more clear to the sense or Reason yet it is in it self more really present For otherwise the Legal Sacrament must have been only a Figure of this Figure of Christs Body and not of the Bertramus Body it self But the answer of Bertram to this about eight hundred years ago is sufficient to this purpose that both the Paschal Lamb and the Sacramental Elements both Figured and represented Christs body The former Christs Body future and its Passion and the other Instant as at the Institution or Part and compleated So that in truth a great preheminence there is in the Sacraments of the New Testament above them of the Old which is the thing contended for But Christ was really received in both The next Argument taken from Christs words in the sixth of John where he saith amongst many other things I am the Bread of Life And again Verily Joh. 6. 48. 53. 54. Verily Except ye eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood ye have no life in you For my Flesh is meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed Is answer'd two ways First from a consent on both sides by some of the Learnedest That Christ spake not of a Sacramental Eating and Drinking of him but Ordinary in receiving him by Faith preached But because as many on both sides affirm that he pointed at the Eucharist in these words therefore I think it most reasonable and equal to take in both senses and that Christ intended the receiving of him by Faith in the word preached and in the Eucharist too And though Christs Flesh be meat indeed and his Blood drink indeed it doth not follow at all that it is properly so For things Metaphorically such are really though not Properly And Christ doth not say Caro mea est verus cibus or Sanguis meus verus est potus i. e. My Flesh is true meat or Proper My Blood is true Drink but My Flesh is Meat indeed and my Blood is drink indeed that is verily and really And besides the difference before intimated between these expressions and that at the Celebration of the Eucharist when he calls the Bread his Body is very great especially with the precise stickers to the Letter For according to these Christ Transubstantiated Bread into his Body but here according to the same Rule of interpretation he should convert his Body into Bread the words being alike operative But if Christ did at no time make a Transubstantiation of his Flesh or body into bread though he affirmed his Body to be bread What reason is there we should believe upon no better grounds than he affirming bread to be his Body should thereby change it into his proper Body A Third principal Argument is taken from the words of Christ at the Celebration viz This is my Body and This is my Blood And upon the proper acceptation of these words they make no doubt to put to silence all seeming oppositions and contradictions and impossibilities in nature For be it say they how it will Christ saying it who is truth it self no doubt is to be made of it For as they teach the vulgar to speak If Christ should say that this stone were his Body we ought to believe it All which is granted But we must distinguish as all sober men do between Loquela and Sermo He that rehearses a certain number of Articulate words doth Loqui or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but he only who doth deliver the word conceived in his mind which is his meaning at his mouth doth Sermocinari or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Now if it can be proved by any certain Circumstance that Christ meant these words in a proper sense and not improper in which he delivered no small part of his doctrine in the Gospel we have done the Controversy is at an end we are to lay our hands on our mouths and
freely to conclude with them But until this be better evinced what make they with so many zealous professions of their believing of Christ or protestations against others that herein they believe not Christ It becomes then the principal doubt of all not what were Christs words but what was the drift and purpose of them And surely they must needs grant this to be worthily doubted of when they consider how sundry of their eminent Doctors do yield such an Indifferency in the words as that they are capable of both senses as might easily be made apparent But saying that We ought to take the Scriptures always literally where it will consist with the analogy of Faith they say no more than we But if it happens as here it doth that our Analogy of Faith differs from theirs what are we the neerer For our Faith tells us Christs words were spiritual as well here as in St. John where he expresly testifies so much saying Joh. 6. 63. The words that I speak unto you they are spirit and they are life that is spiritually and not properly to be understood And Literal sense we understand two ways First as being the same as the prime signification of the words according to common use And this Literal sense we deny of these words But affirm them literally to be taken taking Literal for that which by the same words was immediately and primarily intended by the speaker in which way all Metaphorical speeches are Literally to be taken For he that says of a vicious man He is a Beast doth literally mean that he is of beastly qualities and not the very nature of a Beast So that Metaphorical and Literal are not opposite but Metaphorical and Natural and Natural and Spiritual We say then That this Proposition as in the Eucharist is Metaphorical and yet Literal But it is a weak and spiteful slander to say That because we say this therefore we hold that Christs Body is only Metaphorically and Figuratively in the Eucharist For we profess it to be really and properly and really and properly received in the Sacrament and not as they would fain perswade the World of us imaginarily only But the figurativeness is not so much in the Presence of Christ as the Predication of Christ of the visible Elements We say plainly the Elements are Christ only Figuratively and improperly and as St. Ambrose hath Ambros de Sacrament Lib. 4. C. 4. it or rather had it before a false Cause here as elswhere constrained men to foul practises After Consecration that which was remains and yet is changed into another It retains its nature it is changed to its name to its use and ends and effects and these are sufficient The Fathers who are alledged to prove Christ spake here properly do speak of many changes made in the Elements but then they do as often deny the substance to be changed sometimes they say The Nature is changed but we know Nature is somtimes used more largely than to imply the very Being and Essence it self We say commonly Such a man is quite of another nature from what he was We do not mean his very Essence or Being is changed but his condition It is said in the first Book of Samuel 1 Sam. 10. v. 9. that after his anointing to the Kingdom God gave Saul another heart I hope not in substance but in disposition But it is neerer to our Case what St. Paul saith of Christ and us in his Epistle to the Ephesians We Eph. 5. 30. are members of his body of his flesh and of his bones Can any thing be more expresly affirmed than this to signifie a corporeal unity and identity with Christ if the Verb Copulative Are must here be taken Substantively as they say Is must in these words This Is my Body As they profess with much ardour and zeal they will believe Christ say he what he please and be the thing never so contrary to our common sense and reason so do we And no less do we believe St. Paul speaking by the same spirit This he hath said and therefore we must not dispute but believe He hath said as plainly as words can make it that we are the very flesh of Christ and the bones of Christ and that he cannot be understood of the same in Kind but number is manifest from his argument when he saith No man ever hated his own flesh but as his flesh is anothers in nature we know there is nothing more common Now the like if not same interpretation will satisfy the Scripture in one place and other And not only so but the Fathers who are urged for the literal signification of the words rather than Literal sense of the Author of them speak diverse times of a Real change of the foresaid Elements but saying the same in other cases as in the holy Chrysm after Benediction and specially the water of Baptism we would have one give meaning to the other And the Modern Greeks who are arrived at higher expressions and sense than their forefathers yet when occasion serves can affirm the substance of Bread and wine to remain and would never fully receive the term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Transubstantiation as the Latins do which declare how much they suspect an Evil sense in the Roman Church Again as they are defective in their characterizing this change to that degree so are they excessive according to the Latins opinions in ascribing too great a change upon Consecration For they make no such distinction as the other between Nature or substance and the Accidents And they deny as much there remains any Accidents as any substance of Bread wherein they seem to take Christ more Literally than the Papists For if as they give out we must take Christ at his word and hold him hard to the Letter we must and ought to do it no less in reference to the Accidents than the Substance For Christ made no distinction and then why should we By vertue therefore of his words the Accidents must be changed as well as the Substance And so in truth we believe and to make our meaning clear will allow no effect of Christs words upon the one which we will not upon the other And if they oppose sense to discriminate the Cases saying that we see and feel that the Specieses and Accidents are the same We must tell them in their own words and that without fraud or dissimulation that we believe Christ rather than our own senses And were it not so yet we cannot teil that they are the same individual Accidents which were before consecration though like them and appearing so to be And I could never as yet meet their reason worth the noting 〈◊〉 remembring which should move them to be lead by their senses to interpret Christs words when he saith Positively and with the same Verb Suâ—â—â—an â—â—ve This Cup IS the New Testament in my blood and commands them to drink the Cup
and to deny Luk. 22. 20. V. 17. their senses when he saith This is my Body And as reasonles and frivolous are their Answers to St. Augustine who 1 Cor. 11. 27. affirms it to be a Prophane and blasphemous sense to understand Christ of Aug. de Doctrina Christ his proper Body and to eat it For can any thing be more Elusorie and ridiculous than to Scholie on him with a That is As meat is bought and sold in the Shambles Nam Sacramentum Alâ—ptionis suscipere dignatus est Christus et quando circumeisus est et quando baptizatus est et potest Sacramentum adoptionis Adoptio â—uncupari sicut Sacramentum coâ—poris et sanguints jus quod est in pane poculo consecrate Corpus jus sanguinem diciâ—us Non quod proprie corpus ejus sit panis poculum sanguinis Sed quod in se Mysterium coâ—poris ejus et sanguinis ejus contineant Hinc ipse Dominus Benedictum panâ—m Calicem quem Discipulis tradidit corpuaae sanguinem ejus voâ—â—vit Quocirea sicut Christi fideles sacramentum Corporis sanguinis ejus accipientes Corpus et sanguinem ejus recte dicuntur accipere c. Facundus Hâ—rmianensts Pro. 3. Capitulis Lib. 10. Cap. 5. But if it be possible to express any thing more clearly Facundus Hermianensis and that as set forth by Syrmondus doth both expound St. Austins meaning and our Saviour Christs yet more irrefragably writing against the Eutichians in these words For Christ vouchsafed to take on him the Sacrament of Adoption both at his Circumcision and at his Baptism and the Sacrament of Adoption may he called Adoption as the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ which is the Bread and Cup Consecrated we call his Body and Blood not that properly his body is Bread or his Blood the Cup but that they contain in then the Mystery of the Body and Blood of him Whence our Lord himself called the Blessed Bread and Cup which he delivered to his Disciples his Body and his Blood Wherefore as Christian believers taking the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of him are said truly to take the Body and Blood of Christ So Christ when he took the Sacrament of Adoption of Children might truly he said to take the Adoption of Children Thus he and Syrmondus in his notes upon this place doth confess these to be very harsh expressions like unto some of St. Austins there mentioned And to our urging the name fruit of the Vine given to the Consecrated substance and thence concluding that the real nature of Wine remains they answer that it is not unusual to give the name to a thing as a little before it was or seems to be Which we deny not And by the parity of reason return upon them to their loss For we know it is not unusual for a thing to be called by the name not which is proper to its nature but which it represents And to the eye of Faith the consecrated Elements Heb. 5. are the Body and Blood of Christ and so may not unaptly be so called by those whose senses are exercised as the Apostle speaks to discern both good and evil though in nature they be farr otherwise Some indeed as I conceive have been but too free of the Figures in this question supposing that the very word Est or Is must not be taken in its proper sense but stand for as much as Significat Signifies but this is without ground in Grammar or Divinity For he that saith as St. Paul 2 Tim. 4. 17. is interpreted to speak Nero is a Lion doth not lay the agreement upon Est or Is but upon the subject Nero For the Verb Substantive is equally indifferent to Comparative and Proper Speeches and continues so applied to any thing The Signification or Similitude lies in the two Terms Nero and a Lion and Bread and Wine and the Body and Blood of Christ Now there being no difference between a Similitude and a Metaphor but that the one is at large and in many words what the other is in one To say Christ is a Lamb or This which is bread is Christ is no more than to say Christ is as a Lamb and Bread is as Christs Body For the many agreements between the natural and Spiritual senses The one and that principal is that of Sacrifice which ought here to be briefly explained CHAP. XLIV Of the Sacrifice of the Altar What is a Sacrifice Conditions necessary to a Sacrament How and in what sense there is a Sacrifice in the Eucharist GREAT contentions have been about the Sacrifice of the Altar and perhaps though with just Cause yet not so great as is generally believed For these two Terms do much illustrate one the other For neither is the Altar upon which Christians offer properly an Altar any more then as is said before the Lords-Day now observed is properly a Sabbath nor is the Sacrifice thereon performed properly a Sacrifice Some will have that only truly called a Sacrifice which consisted of living Creaturs slain and offered to God Dixerunt aliqui quia Sacrificium non est nisi de Animalibus et erraverunt in hoc c. Guliel Parisien de Legib. Cap. 3. and to this sence do I most incline For there must be in all things some one thing which is as a Rule and Law and gives denomination to others according as they agree with it Now if all offerings to God as fine Flower and fruits of the Earth be called a Sacrifice in an equal sence to the most proper then have we no Rule to go by in Judging of Sacrifices And therefore Gulielmus Parisiensis who rejecteth the former acceptation because we Read in Leviticus 20. of a Sacrifice of fine Flower and Exodus 31. Sweet Smell seemeth himselfe to erre as he saith others do in the Notion of a Sacrifice For either these things and such-like were more properly called Oblations than Sacrifices or when they were called Sacrifices they were so called because of the Proper bloudy Sacrifice as the principal thing to which they were adjuncts Five things are said to be required to constitute a Sacrifice 1 A Proper Lessius de Ju. Just it Minister who is the Priest Heb. 5. Secondly the Matter must be sensible 3. The form of that matter must be changed and that after the nature of it Thirdly It must be directed and devoted to a Good end God And fiftly It must be offered in a proper place But not all these are certain and constantly true For Cain and Abel and Noah and Abraham and the rest under the Law offered proper Sacrifices but that they had peculiar Temples or Altars is not true For until that injuction of God in Deuteronomie Take heed to thy selfe that thou offer not thy burnt offerings in Deut. 12. 13. 14. every place that thou seest But in the place which the Lord shall
Sanctified by the word and â— Tim. 4. 5. Prayer But the word and Sanctification there are no preaching or consecration but only signify that God by the Gospel which is his word proper removed the sentence of uncleannesse from things so judged to be under the Law and set them as free as other reputed Clean But prayer's proper Act and Office it is to bring down a special Benediction upon Sacramental and Familiar food On the other side the difference being so vast and Sacred between Common Creatures of bread and Wine and the Sacramental it was lookt upon as a thing of greatest use and concernment to all believers to know whether such consecration was performed or not But where the form was so loose and indetermined as it must needs be consisting in the various and Prolix office belonging thereunto how could it possible be diserned when the Host was consecrated and whether seeing neither the whole Canon could be said thereunto absolutely necessary nor could it be assigned what part thereof essentially and essectually performed he Consecration Hereupon the Latine Church hath taken upon them to define the Conversion of the Elements into Christ for that they make Consecration to a very few precise words used by Christ at the First Institution of his Holy Supper viz This is my Body and This is my Blood And I have not found how the Arguments on either side can be well answered while the Opinion of trans-elementation or such supposed conversion stands Good and is accepted but otherwise it is no hard matter to answer Both. For supposing not a change of the proper natures and substances of the Elements into the Body of Christ naturall What inconvenience would it be to be undetermined by a certain number of words when the mystical change was wrought granting that this change Relative is made by the word and Prayer as the change of water in baptism is made not by any special number or form of words but by the Office whether longer or shorter And therefore the necessitie of putting the whole virtue in those few words recited was received presently upon the doctrine of Transubstantiation which is an argument that the Greek Church never admitted it in the Latin sense however I know they would not in their Councels contend with them about that but kept themselves to the tradition of their Predecessors who restrained not the Consecration to such number of words but must have with the like prudence and necessity have done so had they so apparently and expresly received such a simple conversion as being true all Christians ought to be so punctually assured of and venerate that nothing in their Creed could be more necessary and not contented themselves with the Relative change only of the things themselves which precisely to know stood them not so much in hand seeing the Reverence given to the Visible objects could not exceed that communicable to Creatures It may be granted therefore that the words of Christ are so necessary that Consecration cannot rightly be performed without them but yet denied to be so operative that upon the plain recitation of them they should presently effect that great alteration of them as the Story I make no doubt feigned to beget belief of this new opinion implieth telling us That certain Shepheards while it was the custom to pronounce the Canon of the Mass openly having learned it Henorius in Gemma Animae 1. 103. and recited it over their bread and wine which they had before them in the field as they were at their ordinary Meal the bread was turned visibly into Christs body and the Wine into his Blood and that the Shepheards were struck dead from heaven Whereupon it was decreed in a Synod that from thence forward no man should rehearse the said Canon Audibly or out of Sacred Places or without Book or without Holy Vestments or without an Altar A tale as likely to be true as the thing they would prove by it And so let them pass together while we proceed to the CHAP. XLVI Of the Participation of this Sacrament in both Kinds The vanity of Papists allegations to the Contrary No Sacramental Receiving of Christ in One kind only How Antiquity is to be understood mentioning the receiving of one Element only The pretended inconveniences of partaking in both kinds insufficient Of Adoration of the Eucharist SECOND Thing formally necessary to this Sacrament which is Celebration in both Kinds or Bread and Wine In treating whereof we must do so much Justice to the Cause as to acknowledge a reasonable distinction between the Sacrament it self and the Communicants in it To the former I suppose it is agreed that indispensably both Elements are necessary and Essential and that there can be no Sacrament without them both whatever solemnity may be acted to the eye or ear For the Sacrament noâ— being a thing of natural force or vertue but instituted the very formality of the Institution consisting in the joint concurrence of both Elements the Removing of One is the Adulteration of the Whole and destruction neither can that be said to be a Sacrament of Christs Institution but if at all of mans devising Neither do I see how the argument should not hold in the Participation of that Sacrament as well as Consecration viz that as consecration in one Kind only maketh not a Sacrament so communication in one Kind where both are in being should be receiving the Sacrament For the natures of things as Aristotle hath it are like numbers which with the addition or Substraction of one change their kind We do not make Bread of the Nature of Wine or on the contrary but we make them both equally of the nature of that Sacrament which by Christs own Institution was an Aggregate thing constituted of both and therefore to withdraw or deny one is in effect to deny both And the Evasion to salve this is both ridiculous and prophane which saith The blood is contained in the Body of Christ and therefore in taking one both are received But 't is nothing so For the Blood of Christ in the Sacrament is no more contained in the Body than the Body in the blood And besides we say that he who not at all receives the Cup cannot at all receive the signified body of Christ but only the signifying Again How can this assertion consist with the opinion of an Incruent Sacrifice For either the Sacramental Body of Christ hath Blood in it or it hath not If it hath then is it a Bloody and not Incruent Sacrifice For I think there is no ground for a man to say a Sacrifice was called Bloody or Cruent because only Blood was shed before it was Sacrificed and not because even at that time it contained blood in it For Cruent and Incruent are the same in the Law from whence the Gospel borrows this Phrase as Animate and Inanimate Sacrifices If it hath not how can it be said to have the blood
and Beasts neither can there many as different in kind as Man and Beast are distinct nor in number as men differ one from another so neither can there be One differing as it were from it self in Parts or other like composition of nature as man doth For seeing as Boetius hath observed God Boetius Consoâ—â—â— Lib. 3. â—â—os 10. is that which is most absolute and perfect and than which nothing more excellent can be conceived by the mind of man If more than one could be in nature or number there could not be one most absolute but One more absolute and simple might by the Understanding of Man be conceived which necessarily must be thought to be God rather than those diverse ones And if we should suppose the Nature Individual of God to be made up of several sorts of things and naturesas the Body of man then did we not pitch upon the true Notion of God which we must alwayes suppose to be most perfect But we have more than conjectural knowledge that some things in the world are not compounded at least as we are but of a more pure and simple substance such as we call Spirit And we maâ— well believe that all of that nature are not of equal perfection or if possibly they should that still there is a possibility of a more transcendent purity of subsisting than they are of until we come to the most absolute pure and perfect Being than which nothing can be or conceived to be more Pure and Perfect and that must of necessity be God Again such a composition would destroy the nature of God because such it must be that nothing either in act or Cogitation can possibly precede it but where there are distinct parts or humors concurring to make one Entire thing there a real priority at least of nature must needs be because it cannot be supposed but the Cause must in some manner go before the Effect and such supposed compositions have of the nature of a material Cause to such a thing as they so constitute Thirdly all things of a differing nature concurring to make One cannot move themselves nor of themselves meet with such concord as to make one thing without the power and wisdome of some third Superiour Agent bringing them so together So that to suppose such a God is to suppose one Above and before him who should Effect all this which is repugnant to the nature of God Lastly nothing can be so well set together but it may be supposed to be undone and dissolved again either by the nature of things themselves tending to separation or by the same power or if they will fortune as some have called it which brought them together This is yet further confirmed unto us from the Holy Scriptures which were best able to reveal the nature of God unto us so far as was expedient or perhaps for us in this life possible to understand where God most admirably describeth himself thus I am that I am which is his name for Exod. 3. 14 15. ever which no created thing can claim to it The like to which is that name Jehovah whereby he calls himself signifying an absolute essential Being For nothing besides God can define God Every thing but he is defined by another thing which differs in some manner from it but God is defined by himself because nothing can be Higher than he and nothing in him is really distinct from him as in other things And therefore truly may it be said of God The Lord thy God is one Lord i. e. One in number nature Deut. 6. 4. and Simplicity of Being And therefore such definitions of God as Joh. 4. 24. 1 Tim. 1. 25. Psal 90. 2. Jer. 23. 23. 34. Psal 130. v. 7. 1 Tim. 6. 16. this God is a Spirit or Substance Spiritual Uncreated Most Pure Eternal Infinite Incomprehensible Immutable Everliving c. Are rather to be understood Negatively than Positively that is that God is so a Spirit that he is infinitely above the nature of Corporeal Beings though he be not so a Spirit as to be of the Nature of Angels or such like Spirits but much more transcends them in excellency than they do the most gross and earthly Bodies And said to be Infinite because no limitation of his Being or Power or Presence can be supposed which is commonly called the Negative way of attaining knowledg of Gods nature viz by removing or excluding all imperfections of the Creature from God the Creatour And Positively ascribing all things to him which appear to humane understanding most Perfect and Excellent CHAP. III. Of the Vnity of the Divine Nature as to the Simplicity of it And how the Attributes of God are consistent with that Simplicity BUT against the fore said Simplicity seem to make several things ascribed unto God and believed of him as First Attributes of God as Most Holy Most Wise most Just Most Merciful and such like Secondly the descriptions made of God in Holy Scripture Thirdly The Existence of God in a triplicity of Persons Of the first we shall here speak most briefly as no difficulty For we are to understand them not as really distinct things from the Nature of God himself which is most simple but only Relatively and after the manner of mans conception who being able no otherwise than from sensible and natural occasions to understand God must of necessity frame to himself such affections and severally distinguish them for to exercise the several Acts of Service due to God For if Man consider'd God altogether under one manner of Being then could he not sometimes humble himself under his wrath and displeasure conceived for his sins Then could he not at other times rejoyce in his mercy and express his thankfulness for his grace and Goodness received Then could he not implore his aid against unjust dealings and injuries suffered in the world Then could he not Pray unto him to relieve him in his necessities and straits none could crave supply from his bounty and fulness in his wants These distinct conceptions therefore of God are requisite though God be absolutely the same And God having vouchsafed to express himself in such manner in his Word doth thereby give warrant for us to be affected alwayes provided that we proceed not to any gross imagination of him as really so affected and compounded but according to a Metaphorical or Metonymical sense familiarly used in all authors as well as in the Scriptures For it is to be noted the Scriptures do choose to speak 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrysost Homil. 15. in Joann in compliance with mans capacity not according to the dignity of the subject of which it treats nor according to the Splendour and illuminated state of the Understandings receiving divine Revelations but according to the proportion of mens ordinary apprehensions to which they are directed as Philosophy hath observed that All Agents do work agreeable to the condition of the
be made apparent in how many and great things they have degenerated in their Doctrine and Worship since it pleased God to withdraw his holy Spirit from that Church upon their rejecting of the true Messias sent them and to translate it to the Church of the Gentiles And no wonder that they who observe not that now should argue against it as a thing not to be done and moreover deny that ever it was believed or practised by their Forefathers for there remains no other way to excuse themselves in their present error but to maintain that it was never otherwise held This is a common evasion of all Hereticks and Sectaries But that the Scriptures of the Old Testament contained this Doctrine in substance though the more perspicuous and glorious manifestation of the same was reserved for the New is not to be denied especially if we consider how that many of their own Doctors and Rabbies have so interpreted the same And some have admired the Hebrew Language as the holy Tongue not so much as some of moderner standing amongst them have given out because of the neat and modest expression of things of impure and obscene nature for it is very plain that the most obscene things are there as broadly and manifestly expressed as elsewhere but from the matter which it treats of generally very divine and particularly from the nature of that Tongue in every word of which being a Radix or original the Mystery of the Trinity is implied in that it consists but of three principal Letters which Letters make but one word But there are more sure words of Prophesie than they and such are these together with the Comment and approbation of the Chaldee Paraphrast Gen. 3. v. 8. it is said They heard the voice of the Gen 3. 8. Lord God walking in the Garden which words Onkelos renders thus And they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God where we see that Voice and Word are distinguished the one being taken for the Word spoken the other for the Word subsisting or personal And again v. 22. where the Hebrew hath And the Lord God said c. Jonathans or as some more properly the Hierusalem Targum hath The Word of the Lord said And the same Hierusalem Targum on Deuteronomy the 33. 7. hath The Word of the voice of the Lord heard Judah where the Original and other Translations have Hear Lord or receive Lord the voice of Judah And so in other places which doth argue a Personality ascribed unto the Word of God Which doth farther appear for that the action of Creation extending the Heavens and Repenting is attributed unto the Word of God But I leave the asserting of the Mystery of the Trinity from the Scriptures of the Old Testament interpreted by the learnedst and most renowned of the Jewish Doctors to such who have made it their design to convince them from testimonies of their own Authors as Petrus Galatinus and more exactly Josephus de Voisin in his Comments on Prigro Christianae Fidei and especially de Trinitate I shall only add here that memorable passage in Bibliander out of the Jewish Rabbies upon that place in Bibliander de Paschate Israel Gen. 28. 11. Gen. 28. And he lighted upon a certain place and tarried there all night because the Sun was set and he took of the stones of the place and put them for his pillows and lay down in that place to sleep Where some Rabbies saith Bibliander do understand that he took two stones but others as Rabbi Nechemias that he took three and in this manner prayed to God If God shall write his Name upon me as he did his Name upon mine Ancestors let all these become one and he found them all one By which type of the stone they give to understand God to be the Original of all things for the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in Hebrew is a stone implies in a mystery the Trinity for in Aben Ab intimates the Father Ben signifies the Son and ◠or N. Neshanna or Spirit Thus they Which their interpretation whether it hath not more of wit than solid Argument I am not here to determine it sufficing our present purpose to shew that the Doctrine of the Trinity is no invention of Christians as moderner Jews vainly give out for if their forefathers mention the same though their grounds may not be of the soundest it argues they knew and received it Other Texts from the Old Testament implying this Mystery are chiefly these 2 Sam. 23. 2. Isa 48. 16 17. and chap. 61. 1. and chap. 63. 9. Psal 33. 6. compared with Joh. 11. 1 2 3. Haggai 2. 5. compared with Gen. 1. 26. Isa 6 3 c. Concerning all which it is to be observed First That it is not to be expected the testimonies of the Old Testament whose design it was to deliver all things more covertly and obscurely should be altogether so literally and expresly taken as that none other may be found as proper as that sence given by Christians but it may suffice that an apt accommodation may be made to the confirmation of our Faith and that by the chief enemies to it Secondly That the Tradition of the Jewish Church differed from the historical or literal sence Hence our Saviour Christ proves the Messias to be God out of Psalm 110. v. 1. The Lord said Psal 110. Matth. 22. 42. unto c. arguing to this effect He who was greater than David himself from whom the Messias should come must needs be God David calling him in Spirit Lord but David in Spirit calls the Messias his Lord whereas David being himself absolute Soveraign had no mortal greater than he therefore he must be God This was then generally received amongst the wisest of them That the Messias was there intended though the words might be capable of a more literal sence And the like may we judge of the Arguments of St. Paul drawn out of the Old Testament to confirm the Doctrine of the New and particularly this for it is confessed that he bringeth many proofs as do also the other sacred Pen-men out of the Books of the Old Testament which have a literal sence much differing from that purpose to which they are alledged But it is certain that the ancient Jews did maintain two sences a Literal and a Mystical and that St. Paul being educated in the prime Traditions and Mysteries of their Divinity used them according to the known sence of the learned For otherwise it had been as easie then for the Jews to have put in their exceptions against his Doctrine as now it is for Jews to cavil at them But besides the Autority of the Old Testament principally to be used against Jews the Autority of the New must be enforced against the Heresies of Christians against this great Mystery Go ye saith Christ in St. Matthew and teach all Nations baptizing them in the Name of the Father Matth.
28. 19. and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost which plainly distinguishes three Persons And Take heed saith St. Paul in the Acts therefore unto your Acts 20. 28. selves and to all the Flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made you Overseers to feed the Church of God which he hath purchased with his own bloud Here we have two persons distinct expressed The Holy Ghost whose act of making Overseers doth infer an Agent and that Agent a Person And in that it is said God purchased the Church with his bloud there is an express Character of Christ in his Passion to whom is expresly given the title of God for that God the Father died nor Christ as God though Christ God is manifest Now of God the Father no Christian can make doubt after so many manifest Texts expressing the same And Rom. 9. v. 5. Whose Rom. 9. 5. are the Fathers and of whom concerning the flesh Christ came who is over all God blessed for ever The Scholie of Socinus and his followers being meerly cavillous and forced contrary to common reading The Confession likewise of Thomas upon the Miracle wrought by Christ proveth the Deity of Christ crying out My God and my Lord. And in the Epistle to the Colossians Joâ— 20. v. 28. Col. 2. 9. the God-head is said to dwell in Christ bodily i. e. in opposition to figuratively or improperly To these bare Testimonies add we these rational proofs from the Attributes proper to God given to Christ 1. Eternity Micah 5. 2. His goings-out are from everlasting 2. Omnipotence Micah Joh. 3. 31. Joh. 3. 31. He that cometh from above is above all but only God is above all An instance likewise of Christs Omnipotency is given us by St. Paul to the Philippians where speaking of Christ he saith Who shall change our vile Phil. 3. 21. body that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body according to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself 3. Immensity another property of God is given to Christ Mat. 18. 20. Where he promiseth Where two or three shall be gathered together in his Name he will be in the midst of them which is not possible for him that is not God Christs Church being in all places diffused 4 Divine worship given to Christ implies a divine nature in him but both Old and New Testaments agree herein that Christ the Messias is to be worshipped In the Psalms thus it Psal 72. is written of him Yea all Kings shall fall down before him and all Nations shall worship him And in the second Psalm David adviseth to kiss the Son Psal 2. that is worship him lest he be angry and ye perish from the right way when his wrath is kindled but a little blessed are all they that put their trust in him Now we know the same Psalmist saith Put not your trust in Princes Psal 146. 3. nor in any Son of man in whom there is no help And believing in Christ is a special part of worship but this is required by Christ of his Disciples saying Ye believe in God believe also in me Prayer likewise is made to Joh. 14. 1. Acts 7. Christ by St. Stephen for in the Acts it is written how Stephen was stoned calâ—ing upon Christ and saying Lord Jesus receive my spirit The third Person in the holy Trinity is the holy Ghost which we have shewed in part that the learnedest of the ancient Jews were not ignorant of though more obscurely delivered in the Old Testament than in the New The first thing then we are to prove is That the holy Ghost is a Person for that it is there needs no other proof than the words themselves so often used in Scripture And that it subsists personally and not only as an Act or Grace will appear from these two general heads The Acts of it an the Attributes given to it And first In what sense the Scriptures use evil Spirit in the same sense may it be said to use the good Spirit but evil Spirit is frequently used for a Person who is the author of mischief to mankind and therefore the good Spirit must be a Person the author of 1 Joh. 4. 6. Rom. 11. 8. Eph. 2. 2. 1 Sam. 16. 14. 2 Chron. 18. 20 21. good to man We read in Scripture of a Spirit of error and the Spirit of slumber and the Spirit of disobedience and of an evil Spirit that possessed Saul and of a lying Spirit that entred into and moved the false Prophets and in the New Testament as well as humane Authors of divers who have been infested with evil Spirits Now all these were real and personal Subsistences and therefore in parity of reason so should the good Spirit of which we so often read both in the Old and New Testament under the appellation of the Spirit of the Lord as the Spirit of the Lord moved upon the waters at the beginning and the Spirit of the Lord fell upon such persons And if it be here replyed That we are to understand the good Spirits after the same manner we understand the evil and that the evil Spirits being evil Angels the good Spirit should be good Angels only We answer not denying That Spirit may be so used in Scripture divers times and that by the same parity of reason that it is insinuated unto us that the evil Spirit hath one Prince and chief amongst them called Lucifer so the good Spirits have one supreme over them that good Spirit of God Secondly That where Scripture speaks of Spirit absolutely there the divine Spirit is constantly to be understood as St. Hierome hath observed Again We read from the Acts of the Spirit as interceding for us being Rom 8. 26. Eph. 4. 30. Mat. 3. 16. grieved and descending upon Christ in a bodily shape at his Baptism and Christs speech to his Disciples saying in St. John I will ask the Father and he shall give you another Comforter Christ was the one Comforter not only by his Graces but personal presence among his Disciples and answerable to this must the holy Spirit be also here promised And that this divine Person is distinct from the other appeareth from the general Doctrine of the Trinity above and specially out of St. Matthew where Christ saith Baptizing them in the Name of the Father Mat. 28. and of the Son and of the holy Ghost which must imply a distinction And St. John Chap. 1. He that sent me to baptize with water the same said unto Joh. 1. 33. me Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him the same is he which baptizeth with the holy Ghost And so Joh. 14. 16. Joh. 15. 26. From the same place of St. Matthew appeareth the equality of all these three Persons and especially from the immediate operation the Spirit had upon Christ who was God and Man for of it Isaiah thus
denied him as having no pre-existent matter out of which they can be said to be fram'd It must be consessed the word Create and Creation in Scripture is not so strictly used as in Philosophers Books but imports any notable production as well as that simple one without pre-existence Yet the thing it self is affirmed as where it is said All things were made by God for there nothing is excepted or exempted from his Power as Heb. 11. Heb. 11. 13. Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the Word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear and he only can preserve all things who maketh all things But God in Christ or Christ through God upholdeth all things by the word of his Power Heb. 1. 3. Rev. 4. 11. And in the Revelations it is said Thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure Chap. 10. 6. they were and are created And in the tenth Chapter the Angel sweareth by him that liveth for ever and ever who created Heaven and the things that are therein and the Earth and the things that therein are and the Sea and the things that are therein And aptly do the words of the Psalmist answer the History of the Creation who speaking of the particulars Psal 148. 5. of this natural world saith of God He commanded and they were created this being the only means and method that we read all things to have been produced viz. the word of his Power Let there be Light Let there be the Firmament c. which being a demonstration of his immediate will most wisely implieth as some eminent Philosophers have with great admiration observed the proper Power of God Almighty to whom nothing is difficult that he willeth should come to pass Now where there is no limitation upon an agent but what proceeds from its own will there nothing is impossible and if it be possible for God to will as must be seeing man may desire to produce somewhat from nothing it must be possible to come to pass what so is willed by him otherwise God should be disappointed and frustrated in his intentions than which nothing can be thought more absurd or repugnant to the Nature of God And thus at the same time it appears as well what God made as how viz. That there is nothing extant whether visible or invisible but what was framed by him and that absolutely as the Apostle more expresly testifieth to the Colossians By him were all things created that are in heaven and that are in Col. 1. 16. earth visible and invisible whether they be thrones or dominions or principalities or powers all things were created by him and for him By which we understand that all the Angels and several orders of those invisible Spirits in Heaven were the effect of his Power no less than were inferior and visible Creatures And though there be no particular mention of the time order place or manner of the Creation of Angels yet that they were so created general assurance we have from the Word of God the holy Ghost advisedly omitting and mens wits only conjecturing at the other things to prevent pride and curiosity in man to whom it was sufficient to make a description of those things which related to this visible world and concerned him to know So that the Heavens themselves with the glorious and numerous Lights thereof are no farther explained unto us than as their influences concern the nature and actions of Man It is a true Axiom that all things were made for man but it is not true that they had no other end why God created them namely Heavens heavenly Bodies and heavenly Spirits but for to serve the uses of man next to the ultimate end of all his own Glory For though it be said of Angels and we take the word in the properest sense and not as it may be for the several Messengers and Dispensers of Gods will and Word to the several Ages of men Are they not all ministring Spirits Heb. 1. 14. sent forth to them who shall be heirs of salvation Yet we look on their attendance in such cases as an honorary command and tuition over us and secondary end to their first Institution rather than any thing of subjection or servility For when the Shepherd looks to his Flock and when the King is said to be for the People we are not in reason or sobriety to imagine a worth in the governed above the governour as some have sondly wretchedly and dangerously concluded For that Rule The end is more excellent than the means or thing ordained to that end holds true only when the thing is so ordain'd that its own end and good is not equally or more eminently included in the same or when the end is the principal agent in instituting such a thing to such an end But the Sheep never appointed the Shepherd to serve to rule and protect them nor did men oblige Angels to wait upon them nor as is above demonstrated the People firâ—t erect or constitute Governors or Governments over themselves these were done by a superior Power over them neither at this day can they that is ought by any imaginary 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theodoretus Haeret. Fabular lib. 5. cap. 7. Charter alter the Archetype of Gods Institution And they that do attempt and have pretended to confer Power sometimes on Governors can at all do it directly and validly But they seem and are interpreted by many so to do when they unwarrantably and unreasonably deny it to others and submit to their own favourites though how lamely and improperly these acts of strength and not of right are carried on is also elsewhere shewed For no question but if the common sort of men could extend their presumptuous Power to Spirits as they do to Princes they would take such offence against their tutelary Angels as to put them out of office when they find themselves crossed in their inclinations or designs by them or perswading themselves they are neglected by them choosing others in their places and justifie such their acts from a dignity supposed in themselves from being the end of their care and ministration If indeed we appointed Spirits or Princes over us as men do choose servants to do their work for them and serve them then surely we might as justly turn them off again when ever they became unserviceable and prejudicial to us but seeing both are appointed by God we are to know our distance notwithstanding the good offices they do for us And that considering secondly That their own ends are no less principally and primarily served in such ministrations than the ends of others And yet I make no doubt but many persons to whom God hath given holy and righteous Spirits to protect and preserve them being ungoverned and refractory lewd and licentious contrary to the mind and motions of them presiding over them do in effect
Apostle speaks of the state of Evil or Condemnation in the next of the state of Restitution and Justification For as all persons were included in the Condemnation of Adam so were all included in the Justification of Christ But as of all them only some many were through his disobedience made Sinners that is became such sinners as not to return to actual Righteousness and Salvation so by the obedience of Christ not all who were called and chosen came to Life and Holiness but many only were made Righteous actually and not all Or if we take the word Sin as he of whom we speak doth not so much for the real inward vitiousness of the soul but for any outward defect and which is yet more for the Punishment of Sin in which sense the Sacrifice for sin was called Sin in the Old Law and Christ in the New Testament is said to be made Sin for us that is a Sacrifice for Sin so that to be made sinners should import as much as to be made lyable to the punishment of sin the matter is the same But because this Authour not only inclines to the Opinion of Pelagius and of Socinus after him making the corruption of nature nothing and therefore exempting Infants from any such natural infection as we here suppose but uses the same evasion of Imitation of Adams sin and not propagation as the original of all Evil to us therefore let us hear what St. Austins argument was against that Opinion If saies he the Apostle spake Aug. Epist 87. of Sin by imitation and not propagation entring into the world he could not have said that by one Man Sin entred into the world but rather by the Devil for he sinned before man and as the Wiseman saith Through envie Wisd 2. 24. of the Devil came death into the world And Christ tells us how aptly the Devil may be said to propagate sin by imitation as well as Adam thus reprehending the Jews Ye are of your Father the Devil and the Lusts of John 8. 44. your Father ye will do he was a murderer from the beginning and abode not in the truth because there is no truth in him when he speaketh a lye he speaketh it of his own for he is a lyar and the Father of it And when St. Paul saith We were by nature the children of wrath as well Ephes 2. 3. Psalm 51. 5. as others And the Psalmist Behold I was shapen in iniquity and in Sin did my mother conceive me that these places must be accounted hyperbolical and not to have a proper sense is the special evasion of Modern Wits not comparable to Ancienter Judgments more simply understanding them I know a more colourable interpretation is made by others who interpret Conceiving in sin as relating to the Parents and not to the Children But this is less probable than the ordinary and obvious sense applying it to David For though it may be probable enough that Parents may offend in acts of Procreation and so the child may be said to be conceived by them in sin yet David being at the speaking of these words in deepest repentance for his own sins cannot be said to leave off that subject and to confess the sins of others and charge his parents with that which concerned him not Again when he says He was shapen in iniquity nothing could he say more intimately to signifie his proper state at the time of his first conception But the Scriptures do not only barely say we are originally thus infected and sinful but by the effects and certain other indications declare the same The first and chiefest of which may be Death and punishments sticking close to infants at their birth and even before they come into the world Now the Law of God being unalterable that punishment should follow and not go before sin it must be that somewhat of the nature of sin must prepare the way for such sufferings Secondly That all men come to years of discretion are effected with Actual sin few of the opposers of Original sin deny But according to Reason and Scripture both the fountain being so infected and corrupted whatever flows from it must of necessity partake of the same evil For Job 14. 4. Jam. 3 11 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Anâ—ae Gazaei Thâ—â—â—hrastus Biblioth P P. pag. 392. To. 8. Non eniâ— es ex â—â—lis qui modo nova quaedam gannire câ—perunt dicentes nullum reatum esse ex Adam tractum qui per baptisâ—um in infante sâ—lvatur Aug. Epist 28. Hieronymo Ad neminem ante bona mens â—enit quam mala Omnes prâ—â—ccupati sumus Sen. Ep. 50. Nemo difficulter ad naturam reducitur nisi qui ab â—a defecit ibid. who saith Job can bring a clean thing out of an unclean not one And St. James Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter Can a fig-tree my brethren bear olive-berries either a vine figs so can no fountain yield both salt water and fresh From whence it follows by way of just Analogy That the Fountain being corrupt there must be derived to the Rivolets the like unsoundness And thirdly we see this by experience that both bodily and mental infirmities and disorders are traduced from Father to Son in actual Evils as the Gout Stone and Leprosie are transinitted to posterity from the Father and Anger and other passions in like manner It may as well be said That the Son hath the Gout and halts by imitation and not by propagation as that such other affections which are common to Father and Son so proceed Fourthly The Argument which St. Augustine could never by the Pelagians be answered taken from Baptism For this they could not deny but the Church universally practised Paeda-baptism that is held an opinion manifested in practise that Children were capable of that Sacrament and received the benefit of it however some particular persons deferred the same and held it of use unto them for the entring into the Kingdom of Heaven Therefore surely there must be some impediment and that impediment could be nothing but what hath the nature of sin in it therefore they bring sin with them into the World Pelagius had a good mind indeed as Austin observed to have denyed the use of Baptism but as bold as he and his great second Julian of Capua was the general Judgment of the Church declared in the practise of it put a stop to his inclinations but Socinus bolder than any Heretick before him sticks at no such thing but flatly denyes the use of it to all but such as are converted newly to the Christian Faith as in the times of the Apostles This was freely and roundly invented and uttered and which suffices alone to convince us of the former errour denying Original Sin which was alwayes held a principal cause of Baptism Lastly Thus much may be observed by natural Reason to the confirmation of Original Sin
They are of three sorts Some profess him to be God but deny him to be true and real Man Others believe him to be Man but deny him to be God But the Faith truly Christian professes both viz. That Christ was God and Man We shall remit for brevities sake the Reader to what hath been said before proving the mystery of the Trinity out of the Scriptures and that Christ the second Person in the Trinity is the Son of God by natural Generation supernatural to us And to prove the second out of the word now there is scarce one such Heretick who denyes it may seem superfluous That which is to be demonstrated is That there was time of union of that second Person in the Trinity with Man and that this union was such that it constituted not two Persons but one as St. Paul plainly writeth to Timothy There is one God and one Mediatour between God and man the Man Christ 1 Tim. 2. 5. Jesus And therefore whatever doctrine so speaks of this Mystery as to divide the Natures into two Persons as if there were two Mediatours two Saviours two Christs between God and Man destroyeth the Faith of a Christian no less than that doth which denyes these two Natures to concur in one Person the Eternal and Divine Nature and Person assuming in the fulness of time humane Nature inconfusedly into the Divine To the proving this we take that as a sure ground and founadtion which St. John hath laid to build his Gospel on That there was an Eternal Divine Nature in and from the beginning and that this Divine Nature was diversified by three distinct Persons that one of these Persons is called the Word For he saith In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with John 1. 1. God and the Word was God Ridiculous are the violences offered to these words by Hereticks who first take here Beginning not for that highest and higher than the Creatures comprehension can mount to of all durations which none is afore and none come properly after but for a tearm of time properly fixt and for want of more remarkable do pitch upon the first publication of the Gospel as that beginning answerable forsooth unto that speech of Moses In the beginning God created the heaven and the Gen. 1. 1. earth but the agreement is too little to make such interpretation because it is plain that heaven and earth not only had a beginning but gave beginning to time it self measured and observed by them And it is plain that the Gospel did not begin so soon by almost thirty years as Christ began according to his humane nature And if it be taken of the Person of Christ What can be more absurd than to say In the beginning was the Word that is Christ began when he began Therefore the word here can neither be taken for the Gospel or Word preacht but it must be meant of a word superiour and anteriour to both as doth yet more plainly appear from the phrase used The Word was with God and the Word was God For the heavens and earth which are said in Genesis to be made in the beginning cannot be said either to have been with God or to have been God nor can the humane nature of Christ not extant till some thousands of years after the first Creation be said to have been in the beginning with God and much less to have been God And the like may be said of the Word spoken by Christ and his Apostles which the Scriptures do not reckon to have begun at Christs birth nor many years after For thus saith St. Peter in his Sermon to Cornelius That Word ye know which was published throughout all Acts 10. 37. Judea and began from Galilee after the Baptism which John preached The Word therefore according to this account was not at the beginning but after Johns Baptism But this is not all this is nothing in comparison of what is added The Word was God The humane nature of Christ precisely taken was not God therefore another Word must be allowed to be God And that must be the Word Eternal and Personal And if this be doubted of I thus argue from the words following In that sense that Christ is said to be Light is he said to be the Word but Christ is said to be Light and the Light is said to be Christ and St. John Baptist disavows that Light John 1. 7 8 9 10. and ascribes it to Christ And therefore as the Person of Christ is signified by the Light so is it by Word And how can we possibly make sense of Christs words in St. John if Christ prae-existed not before he came into the World in the flesh And now glorifie thou me O Father with that glory which I had with thee before John 18. 5. the foundation of the World It may be said that before the foundation of the World such decree of glory might be given to one future but thus it cannot be said of him who is described to be actually possessed of it before the foundation of the World and that a man is said to be possessed of which he is said to have had as here And how could Christ say truly Before Abraham was I am when he was not Fifty years old according John 8. 57 58. to the Jews account And that he puts a distinction between his comming from the Father and his seeing the Father otherwise than any before him or of his time proves a prae-existence and presence singular with God Not any man hath seen the Father save he which is of God he hath seen the John 6. 46 62. Father And to this adde what follows What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before Doth not this plainly imply that as Christ did really ascend after his Resurrection and sate at the right hand of God in his humane nature so he was there before some way or other and no way can be thought of but his Divine nature as St. Paul intimated to the Ephesians He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above Ephes 4. 10. all heavens Now if any will be so captious as to except against this because the Divine Nature cannot properly be said to descend because it filleth all things it is true in rigour of speech what they say but not according to the form of speech frequent in Scripture which then affirmeth God to descend when as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrha he appeareth Gen. 18. 21. and revealeth himself more sensibly as Christ did taking humane nature on him And this prae-existent Nature of Christ to his humane being proved that these were so united together must be also shown And to this the single express testimony of St. John may suffice an equal mind The Word John 1. 14. was made Flesh and dwelt amongst us And we beheld his glory the glory
12. 24 who was Moses in like manner Christ is called the Mediatour of a New Covenant in the Epistle to the Hebrews because the tearms of that Covenant were obtained of God by Christ and that Covenant was delivered unto him to manage and transact Another Act of Christs mediation was by Prayers and Supplications as it is in the Epistle to the Hebrews Who in the dayes of his Flesh when he had offered up Prayers and Supplications with Hebr. 5. 7. strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death was heard in that he feared And in this respect he is called our Advocate by St. John saying If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father Jesus 1 John 2. 1. Christ the Righteous A third Act of Christ in his mediation related to Man by offering to him the tearms and means of Reconciliation in knowledge and sanctification and moving him to accept of so favourable free and gracious tearms of Reconciliation as the doctrine of the Gospel presented to him thus fully expressed by St. Paul All things are of God who hath 2 Cor. 5. 18. reconciled us unto himself in Jesus Christ and hath given unto us the ministry of reconciliation To wit that God was in Christ reconciling the World unto himself not imputing their trespasses unto them and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation Now then we are Embassadours for Christ as though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christs stead be ye reconciled unto God But the second way of Mediation and Reconciliation is that which is most proper to Christ the former being communicable to man in some sense namely as the received power and authority from Christ as is even now shewed to minister in Christs stead as inferiour Instruments under him And this is by making himself a Sacrifice and Satisfaction for sin according to that of St. Paul to Timothy There is one God and one Mediatour between 1 Tim. 2. 5 6. God and Men the Man Christ Jesus Who gave himself a ransom for all to be testified in due time And to the Ephesians he saith And walk Ephes 5. 2. in love as Christ also hath loved us and given himself for us an Offering and a Sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour And when he saith For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin it is manifest that sin in the 2 Cor. 5. 21. first place is used according to the Hebrew word for a Sacrifice for sin Now nothing can be more frivolous in the ears of rational men or more sacrilegious in Gods ears than to draw this to such a kind of figurative speech as Socinus and his Fellows do as should imply an occasionalness and exemplariness only in Christs death to take away sin and not to satisfie Gods Justice for them And so to satisfie as a Doctour showing us the way and as a President leading us the way towards peace with God This I say can in no propriety of speech be the meaning of holy Writ assuring us first That Christ was a Propitiation for us as Romans 3. Whom God hath Rom. 3. 25. 1 John 2. 2. Ephes 2. 16. set forth as a Propitiation through Faith in his bloud And St. John He is the Propitiation for our sins And St. Paul to the Ephesians tells us how he became such a propitiation for us That he might reconcile both unto God in one Body by the Cross having slain the enmity thereby Is Reconciliation of God and Man and that by delivering up his body to death upon the Cross no more than to give us good instructions how to serve God so as to reconcile our selves to him Is slaying the enmity or extinguishing the enemy to us the Devil or the Enmity which was between God and us no more than by good example to direct us how so to do Saint Paul likewise to the Romans plainly affirmeth that he reconciled us to God Rom. 5. 10. by his death Secondly Who by purging us or any man else could understand before these dayes no more than good words and counsels But St. Paul sayes he By himself purged our sins And that we may see that St. Hebr. 1. 3. Paul was far from any such intention and forced sense as is modernly imposed on him he writes thus also It was therefore necessary that the paterns of Heb. 9. 22 23. things in the heavens should be purified with these but the heavenly things themselves with better Sacrifices than these For Christ c. The meaning of which words must necessarily be this that whereas the errors and sins under the Law which were paterns or types of the Gospel were expiated by bloud and sacrifices But the heavenly things were purged by better things i. e. The Sacrifice of Christ Therefore if it cannot be said that such things were purified only by good precepts and documents given but real bloud was shed for that purpose Real though much better and more precious bloud was shed for the expiation and purification the sins of the Gospel which bloud was Christs And thirdly how most abusively must the tearms Redeeming and Redemption and Redeemer be used by the Scripture beyond all other writings or speeches if it signifies not a real recovery or purchase of somewhat lost or necessary to one Now such expressions applyed to Christs mediation are so plain and frequent that it may seem superfluous to recite them St. Matthew saith The Son of Man came to give his life a Matth. 20. 28. Titus 2. 14. 1 Pet. 1. 18 19. ransome for many St. Paul saith He gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity St. Peter by his comparison used sheweth what manner of purchase it was saying Ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your vain conversation received by tradition from your Fathers but with the precious bloud of Christ as of a Lamb without blemish without spot But redemption with silver and gold is proper and expiation by the bloud of Lambs was proper and real therefore also must the redemption by the bloud of Christ be so too And in the Epistle Heb. 9. 12. 13 14 to the Hebrews is the like comparison used most aptly and at large Fourthly the tearms Offering and Sacrifice so often ascribe unto Christ must needs import more then verbal or exemplary mediation divers of which places we have noted before to which we may adde what in the Hebrews is directly Hebr. 7. 27. spoken of Christ Who needed not daily as their High Priests to offer up Sacrifice first for his own sins and then for the peoples for this he did once when he offered up himself And St. Paul to the Corinthians Christ our Passover 1 Cor. 5. 7. John 1. 29. is offered for us And St. John The Lamb of God that taketh away the sin
is exercised it may very properly and truly be said because of the good discerned and affected in the object But if it should be asked How the Will is moved and by vertue of what ability it so moves to that object there could be no greater incongruity than to affirm That the object was the cause of it For here the efficient cause is sought after As when a man goes to Church if doubt should be made why he goes to Church it were easily answered because he apprehends a spiritual good in that act this is the final cause but doth this give his leggs strength and his nerves and sinews power to walk Sure no man will say so This then is that we enquire concerning the wills inclination to and election of spiritual things not why or to what end for the end is the same to all mens wills but by what means it is fitted and enabled to move thitherward rather than the contrary ways The answer to this must if a man will speak appositely be taken from the efficient cause Now this sufficiencie or efficacie in the will is either natural and common to all which all modest Divines explode or adventitious and of free undeserved and undesired Grace and Gift of God Hence another ascent is made towards the Question of the manner of acceptation of grace and mercy objectively taken For as it is plain that God putteth a difference and not Man between the understanding of one man and another revealing that to one which he doth not to another And of those that know the truth putting a difference between the wills of men in that some that have known the saving truth have rejected it and others embraced it as is yet farther manifest from St. Paul to the Romans What Rom. 11. 7. then Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for but the Election hath obtained To some then who know the truth God gives Grace to some he doth not or scarce discernable A third step to this then must be about the degree and essicacie of this first Grace of God preventing and preparing the will to such noble ends which it could never of it self affect or desire And whether God doth give the like Grace at least in proportion to all he hath so far called illuminated and affected as to have spiritual principles of Life and Motion or not It were too curious to enquire here about the Arithmetical proportion or quantity because that all mens constitutions and dispositions are not alike and therefore like more even timber or plyant clay may be wrought into due form by less forcible means but Whether considering all disparities and disproportion in the matter the influence fashioning the same be of it self sufficient to any one called and outwardly elected to the truth Or whether there be any sufficient Grace which is not efficacious and consummative of the end which is the thing denyed by Jansenius against a stream of Adversaries But Thomas who next to Augustine ruled these Disputes most of all and that upon Austin's doctrine and grounds sayes no less and so do such as stick close to him notwithstanding the strong opposition made by a Modern Order who think to change the world and make it take all doctrines from them to the contempt of their Predecessors and the recalling the exil'd Tenets of Pelagians and such as serve though at a distance under him They profess against him and hold for him They deny his Conclusions but approve and justifie his Principles and Premisses from which they certainly follow Neither can they give St. Augustine a good word whom none openly before them ever presumed to confront in that manner Or if they do speak kindly of him yet they take their own course and speak their own upstart sense For do they not place God as an idle Spectatour yea a servile Attender of the wills self-determination first and then bring him in as Auxiliarie to its Actions This is rancide Divinity yea and Philosophy too Do they not fall directly into that Opinion of Origen confuted by Thomas against the Gentiles thus Certain men not understanding Thomas cent Gent. l. 3. c. 89. how God causeth the motion of the will in us without prejudice to the liberty of the will in us have endeavoured to expound these Autorities above-mentioned in his former Chapters amiss as to say God causeth in us To will and to do in that he giveth us power to will but not so as to cause us to do this or that as Origen expounds it in his Third Periarchon defending Free will against the foresaid Autorities And from hence the Opinion of some seemeth to have proceeded who said Providence was not concerned in those things which related to Free will that is Elections but external matters only who are confuted by that one place of Esay Thou Isaiah 26. 12. also hath wrought all our works in us Whether these words of the Prophet may not be eluded I will not dispute but they plainly declare that according to Thomas his mind All our inward motions as well as outward acts and effects are governed by God For the immediate concurse of God being generally granted by Philosophical Divines necessary to the Act of limited and necessary causes whose principle is more certain and operative then Free Agents are What honest or sober doubt can be made of the immediate hand of God in moving the will free and void of such natural Laws and Propentions as irrational Agents are compelled by There seems much less use of it here than there It may be they fear Gods hand should light so heavy upon the will of Man as to hurt the Freedome of it Which were to be feared indeed if God so concurred with Free Agents as with Natural and proportioned not his Influences agreeable to the subject but surely God worketh not so rudely Or if the Act of God being as natural to the Creature as its own yea unseparable from that of the Creature were not a Total cause together with the Creatures of such Elections But as Thomas saith It is apparent that not in the like 〈◊〉 l. 3. c. 70. manner an effect is ascribed to the Natural Cause and to the Divine Power as if it proceeded partly from God and partly from the Natural Agent but it is wholly from both in a diverse respect as the whole effect is attributed as well to the Principal Agent as the Instrument Thus he From whence we conclude the Grace of God is not given in a common manner or competently to leave the will still separately without particular excitations and prae-motions effectually and immutably as Thomas speaks inclining it to embrace Christ exhibited in the Means of Grace And that no man originally causes himself to differ from another in electing good But supposing the like proportion of Grace given to two persons equally otherwise qualified the reason why one refuses the Good and chooses the Evil is not
fishes some were taken in one haven and some in another and eaten of others And again these men that have eaten these fishes which devour'd the man happen to dye in other Countries and that perhaps devoured by wild beasts Such a confusion and dissipation being made how shall that man rise again Who is he that reduces the dust again But why O man dost thou thus speak and patches a long train of tales together and offerest it as insoluble For answer me What if that man doth not go to Sea and be not drownd If no fish eat him nor the fish be afterward eaten of infinite men but that he be laid decently in his Coffin and neither worms nor any thing else molest him How shall that dust and ashes be compacted together again Whence shall that body flourish again Is not this unanswerable If they be Greeks Heathens who doubt of these things We can answer a thousand things But what Because there are some amongst them who put souls into Plants and Fruit-trees and Doggs Tell me which is easier for a soul to recover its own body or another Again there are others who says that fire shall catch them that their garments shall arise and their shooes and no body laughs at them And some introduce Atomes But we have nothing to say to them But to Believers if we may call them believers who thus doubt we shall say with the Apostle All life is subject to corruption all plants all seeds Seest thou not c. Here that eloquent Father expatiates in the mysteries and subtilties of nature shewing how little we understand of them and concludes this point thus But these things humane reason is to seek in But when God works all things yield to him In another place he doubts whether he be an Infidel or Christian who calls in question the Resurrection and the reason hereof is because as the power of God is infinite so infinite wayes there are for his infinite wisdome to bring to pass his own pleasure and to make good his words in which he hath caused his servants to trust CHAP. XIX Of the most perfect effect of Christs Mediation in the Salvation of Man Several senses of Salvation noted That Salvation is immediately after death to them that truly dye in Christ And that there is no grounds in Antiquities or Scripture for that midde state called Purgatory the Proofs answered Of the Consequent of Roman Purgatory Indulgences the novelty groundlesness and gross abuse of them The Conclusion of the first Part of this Introduction SAint Paul where he disputes the manner of Gods free Election of his people to the grace of the Gospel doth also declare unto us the end of such Election to be another Election and that to glory as in these words That he might make known the riches of his glory Rom. 9. 23. of Grace on the vessels of mercy which he had before prepared unto glory This is yet more fully expressed by St. Peter in this order Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again to a lively hope by the Resurrection 1 Pet. 1. 3. of Jesus Christ from the dead To an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and that fadeth not away reserved in heaven for you who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time But before we engage far in this subject of Salvation it is requisite we observe a twofold Salvation frequently mentioned and promised in Scripture A Temporal and Eternal For herein common mistakes have surprised many who willing to amplifie and extend all the promises of Gods deliverance equally to us of this last Age of the Church and to them of the former and Apostolical do willingly interpret many places of Scripture peculiar to them as concerning us to which cannot be literally done though figuratively it may For the Church of Christ being in those first Ages in continual conflicts with her enemies Jewish and Gentile and most violent persecntions harrassing and wasting the tender body of the Infant-Church many weak Christians were of desponding minds and looked upon the same as Job upon natural man as having a short time to live and full of sorrows Which moved the Apostolical Writers to confirm the Hope and Faith of them by the assurances of deliverances and salvation And none can deny this to be the literal meaning of St. Paul in his eighth Chapter to the Romans from whence so many draw an Argument to prove the innumerable purpose of God towards particular persons in predestinating and electing and glorifying them when upon faithful examination nothing more was primarily intended then assurance of Gods temporal preservation of the Church and making it outwardly glorious in despight of all its adversaries so that none should separate the flook of Christ so far from the love of Christ by persecution tribulation distress or famine or nakedness or peril or sword but that at length it should be more than conquerer through him that loved it And that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities nor things present nor things to come c. should cause God to forsake it And no other is the meaning of the same Apostle in his thirteenth Chapter to the Romans where he saith And that knowing the time that now it is high Rom. 13. 11. time for us to awake out of sleep for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed i. e. having continued thus long in the faith the time now draweth near we should be secured and saved from our enemies And the Salvation to be revealed in the last times spoken of by St. Peter was the Deliverance which at last should be manifested to the Church in constant expectation of which they were kept by Faith and confidence of Gods mercy And if we shall consult the Apocalypse we shall scarce find the word Salvation used in any other sense then that of temporal deliverance Rev. 7. 10. 12 10. 19 1. of Gods Church But withal most certain it is that by Salvation is very often indended by Gods word the deliverance from the miseries of sin and suffering in this world into a state of such perfect bliss as man is capable of in which sense St. Paul saith The Gospel is the power of God unto Rom. 1. 16. salvation And that with the mouth confession is made unto Salvation which salvation was in those dayes the destruction of them that confessed Christ For St. Paul to animate the weak Believers to a stout and resolute profession of Christ against the terrors of death threatning those that were known to be Christians tells them that if they so boldly confessed Christ with their mouth as to dye in that profession they should be saved And when St. Paul advises the Philippians to work out their salvation Phil. 2. 12. with fear and trembling he means without
following these words For it is most certain that the Apostles aim was to discover and oppose false teachers start up to the prejudice of the true Apostles of Christ and laying at least in shew another foundation of faith v. 10 11. than Christ had laid or building otherwise upon St. Pauls foundation than became them Now what think we doth St. Paul abruptly leave the subject he was treating of and the persons he was confuting of and warning the Corinthians against and pass to the Doctrine nothing at all depending upon what went before or after of Purgatory Or if he did not altogether desert his subject but as may be granted by them declare what would be the end of such Doctours or Doctrines after they were all dead and gone would this satisfie the expectation of such who stood in need of present advice and directions to secure themselves from such Impostures Surely no. St. Paul therefore doth certainly in this Metaphorical or Allegorical manner apply himself to the present state of the Corinthians whom he adviseth to beware of such dangerous teachers And how doth he this First under the Metaphor of a Workman insinuating the teacher himself Secondly under the Metaphor of a piece of Work figuring the Doctrines taught and instilled into men Thirdly by Fire certifying the manner of discerning the true Doctrine from the false and that fire is afflictions and persecutions which then were actually on the Church but were soon after like to fall more heavily on it Fourthly by hay stubble wood he means corrupt and erroneous Doctrines by gold silver precious stones sincere and sound Doctrine Now collect we all into one and can any man desire any plainer and more current consonancie between the figurative speech as most infallibly this is and the proper intention of the Apostle I have begun amongst you O v. 10. Corinthians to preach Christ I have lald the foundation of saving Faith like a wise Master-builder yet there are some who building partly upon my Doctrine and partly laying another foundation of their 11. own heads when in very truth there can be no other foundation laid by any man than that is already laid by me which is Jesus Christ Now if any man build upon this foundation thus laid gold silver 12. precious stones wood hay stubble that is sound or unsound ye shall know which Doctrine is as gold silver and precious stones sound and valuable and which as wood hay and stubble that is refuse and corrupt For the day shall declare it What day The day of tryal What tryal the tryal by fire for the fire shall try every mans work of what sort it is But what fire The fire of Persecution 1 Pet. 4. 12. or fiery tryal as St. Peter speaks And this is the second ground of this interpretation taken from the frequencie of this phrase Fire signifying in Scripture no more than afflictions or persecutions which may convince us of the true acceptation here Christ in the Gospel of St. Luke saith I am come to send fire on the earth and what Luke 12. 49. will I if it be already kindled And that this fire was no other than persecutions and troubles with which the followers of Christ were to contend and struggle is manifest from the following words And Tertullian taking occasion to speak of those words saith Ipse melius interpretabitur ignis illius qualitatem c. He Christ himself explains better the condition of that fire Do ye think that I came to send peace on v. 51. the earth St. Peter commeth much nearer to our present case where he saith That the tryal of your faith being much more precious than of gold 1 Pet. 1. 7. that perisheth though it be tryed with fire might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearance of Jesus Christ The Psalmist saying Thou hast caused men to ride over our head we went through fire and Psalm 66. 12. through water c. what can we understand but afflictions And no need of any more instances to the purpose i. e. either to show in general that Fire in holy Scripture imports afflictions or that so it is here with St. Paul used Yet the words immediately following agree so exactly with it that it is yet farther put out of question what should be the meaning of the former viz. If any mans work abide which he hath built thereupon he shall receive a reward If any mans work shall be burnt he shall suffer loss but he himself shall be saved yet so as by fire That is if any man hath so built upon the foundation Christ Jesus as his work abides the tryal and so be found good and laudable then he shall have his due reward for his pains But if otherwise his work shall be burnt that is upon tryal not be found as gold and silver which cometh out of the fire better and purer but Persecutions and Examinations shall reveal or manifest it to be dross vain and corrupt then shall such an one suffer loss he shall have lost his labour and his reputation yet may we not despair of him For however he be found defective in his Doctrines yet himself may be saved upon his repentance so as by fire i. e. by having passed himself through such persecutions as may bring him to the sincere profession of the Faith though his erroneous Doctrines perish and come to nought And to this sense of the Apostle do I stick though I am not ignorant how diversly he is interpreted by as well Ancient as Modern Divines to whom to be tyed when they are so dissonant were too hard measure especially when the simplicity of a literal sense offers it self so fairly as here and the greatest part of the expositions agree hereunto Thirdly It is not very strange that the words of St. Paul elsewhere to the Corinthians should be drawn this way too viz. What shall they do 1 Cor. 15. 29. Hic locus apertè convincit quod volumus si bene intelligatur Bellar. de Purg. l. 1. c. 6. that are baptized for the dead and that as he that alledges them saith manifestly making for what they would have them when as immediately he brings six several senses given of them Can they then be so very plain He well therefore adds If they be rightly understood And when are they rightly understood according to him Not until they make for Purgatory It were too tedious and polemical to refute all brought for the vindicating these words to the use of Purgatory or to contend about the sense of them farther then what Epiphanius long since hath with great judgment and simplicity lead us too which I profess to adhear to and with which most imaginary senses are answered For says he there were a certain sort of Hereticks crept into the Church in St. Pauls dayes which maintained such a necessity of Baptism to be saved that they would baptize
their friends after their death supposing that by proxie a man might receive the benefit of Baptism And yet some of these denyed the Resurrection Now St. Paul argues thus If there be no Resurrection of the dead to what end do they baptize the living instead of the dead what can it avail them according to their own judgments and opinions And thus what becomes of Purgatory But lastly The words of Christ in St. Matthew and St. Luke agree Matth. 5. 25 26. Luke 1258. with c. Verily I say unto thee thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing are thought of no mean force to infer a Purgatory But alas such havock do men make who would so have it of the words such hooks and tenters do they apply to wring and draw them to their purpose so do they play fast and loose with Antiquity about them that a man had need be well setled in a perswasion of the thing it self before he can brook such a reason as this affords The plain and simple sense therefore shall suffice to ward off all force against it viz. That Christ meant no more than they who made not their peace and reconciliation with God before they go out of this world shall be cast into Hell from whence they shall never return until they have paid all the punishment they ow to God for their sins to a farthing that is absolutely satisfied which by a Periphrasis or in many words as much as to say in one Never Besides they that are such stout defenders of the Virgin Maries perpetual Virginity against the ill sense given by Helvidius and his followers of those words in St. Matthew Until she had brought forth her First-born know very well how to give another sense to Until then a certain inference of somewhat to ensue that Period so fix'd and that it implies not necessarily that ever such payment of the utmost Farthing shall be made but upon supposition that it be paid such event as is there mentioned should follow But Antiquity and that of both Eastern and Western Churches are is alledged in confirmation of the present Roman Purgatory To which we oppose this assertion That Purgatory as now defended was never heard of in the Latin Church for four hundred years together after Christ nor received into it with common approbation until six hundred years after Christ Austin began to doubt of it and is scarce constant to himself in it Gregory the Great set it up upon its leggs and advanced it far if so be that the Dialogues bearing his name were truly his as 't is most probable they are not or that they are corrupted For how could Gregory who flourished about the year of our Lord 590. and was succeeded by Boniface Greg. M. Dial. l. 3. c. 2. the third about the year 606. take notice of Justinian the elder as elder unless he had known Justinian the younger who was Emperour about the year 685. long after the true Gregory was dead But from about that time this erroneous opinion got footing and began to spread but was never thoroughly setled in the Church of Rome it self until the time of John the Seventeenth or as others compute it the Nineteenth about the year 1003 when he instituted the Feast of All-Souls in which men were enjoyned to pray for the deliverance of Souls out of Purgatory But the Council of Florence in the year 1439. put it out of all future dispute when it decreed it so to be But the Greeks who were there present refused that sense however they gave way to the Name Purgatory Neither do they admit it unto this day so vain and bold a task doth Bellarmine undertake with other Pontificians to bring and that of old the Greek Church to consent with the Latin herein upon whose attempts we find modern Assertours of the Roman Cause to call them to witness too and when diligent search proves prejudicial to them to bring Osiander a man of small judgment and no command of his passions in his free censures of Antiquity wherever his History leads him to observe any thing there which he likes not and many times understands not and Sir Edwin Sands a Gentleman of excellent abilities as an Historian but finding the word Purgatory among Grecian Authours of modern times concluded that it was the same with the Roman but was much mistaken For 't is well known some modern Greeks as Nilus Thessaloniensis have writ purposely against the Roman Purgatory And this will farther appear from the two general defects running through almost all the Arguments brought by Romanists to prove Purgatory from the ancient Fathers and Councils of both Churches which being noted may suffice for Answers to them in this point especially in this place For first they argue from the word Purgatory where-ever they find it in Greek and Latin Fathers But Purgatory fire with them was quite another thing from that now in credit amongst us Origen and he the first that we meet with invented a Purgative fire and divers Fathers catching at that discoursed dubiously upon that subject but with this Fivefold difference from Roman Flames First They exempted no man from this Purgation not Saints or Martyrs but supposed all should be purged before they entred entirely into Heaven the moderner Purgatory frees eminent Saints from that fiery tryal Secondly They held this purgation principally useful to the purification of the gross matter of the body to a finer substance before it could be meet to enter into heaven together with the soul but these make it to seize principally if not only on the soul separate from the body and to cleanse that Thirdly They never intended theirs to purge off the stain of sins or satisfie for what souls were behind in going out of this world but the Romanists affirm and defend it in this sense Fourthly They never maintained any immediate purgation or torments from the departure of the soul from the body but affirmed only a general and momentaneous transmutation by Fire at the Day of Judgment to be fitted the better for Heaven Fifthly They never imagined that the Prayers of Living did relieve the miseries of the afflicted in Purgatory as do these or that there was any such passing from that state to Heaven before the Day of Judgment And what need we travel on this subject when we have the testimony of chief men against them herein Roffensis Artic. 18. against Luther says directly Amongst the Ancient there is little or no mention made of Purgatory and that the Greek to this day hold it not The very same says Alphonsus de Castro contr Haeret. lib. 8. tit De Indulgentia But the second Argument of Romanists will clear this drawn out of many Fathers to prove they held Purgatory because they held Prayer for the dead of which Prayer none they suppose can be capable but such as are in this middle state between
both possible and laudable And that it is lawful to vow Celibacie or Widowhood No Presidents in the Old Testament favouring Virginity The Virgin Mary vowed not Virginity no Votary before the Annunciation VVE now come to speak more particularly of Vows as to their matter And because the matter of Vows may be infinite as good and evil to which they extend themselves to Good affirmatively and Evil negatively I shall confine my Discourse at present to the three most noted things in Vows in which we have said the states of serving God principally consisteth A Clerical state a state Virginal or Vidual and a state Monastical all which ordinarily do or may relate to the worship of God in a more eminent manner yet not with such inseparable vertues to that end that it may not and doth not often happen that they expose to greater mischiefs But it must alwayes be remembered that we nor any man else do not compare the vices of a single life with the vertues of a married life nor compare the vices of a separate and claustral life with the sobriety of a political life For who is so fond and blind a Patron of them as to commend them before these And yet we find most of the Adversaries of the said states to argue from this most unequal supposition that the one lives contrary to his Rule and Order and the other agreably to his and then having thus disadvantageously stated the Case triumph in a vain and silly victory they presume to have obtained But put the Case as in all justice and reason it ought to be between a person that keeps to the rules and ends of separate and single life and him that keeps to the rules and ends of a conjugal life or political and then let the matter be fairly debated and determined which is to be preferred before other Now that such a supposition may be made and that a separate state from women and on the other side of women from men may be laudably made good which too many are so hard of belief as to judge next to impossible will appear from these three heads From the Scripture From Examples And from the favourable sense to be made of such estates First our Saviour supposes it done and implicitly recommends the doing of it to others which he would never have done had there been no moral possibility of observing the same For saying in St. Matthew There be Matth. 19. 12. Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heavens sake He that is able to receive it let him receive it Is there any Expositour of account in the Church who can deny that Christ spake here of marriage Can they deny that Christ gives his approbation of that Eunuchism voluntary or denyal to a mans self the ordinary use of women Can they deny that he advises to it upon supposition that a man is able How then can they deny the moral possibility of Virginal Chastity And doth not St. Paul wishing that All men were as he 1 Cor. 7. 7. was wish that they lived in single estate at least if not Virginity And doth he not in the forecited place to Timothy condemn those persons who have 1 Tim. 5. violated their troth given to Christ to live sequester'd from men I know late Interpreters have drawn the Apostles words to another sense but contrary to the received and therefore easily not received by any man These and many other places of Scripture especially in the Seventh Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians which do prefer and exhort to single life do much more advise us of the possibility of duly persevering in that state and at the same time of the Eligibleness of that state above the contrary Secondly The examples of the pure and holy life of unwedded persons are innumerable and so glorious as it puts me to the blush for them who cannot blush to oppose such a cloud of witnesses of Fathers and Councils and Canons Special concerning the tuition and value of such Livers rather than Injunctions to that state and eminent lights of Examples as all Ecclesiastical Histories abound with They are confessedly many great and certain and therefore I shall spare the labour of instancing in any of them as likewise of the many and rich ornaments of Rhetorick wherewith the ancient Fathers have decked and commended that state even to that degree that they may be thought sometimes to have overdone in the point And do often put in seasonable and serious Cautions that the eminence of Aug de Sanct. Virginitar c. 1. cap. 8. cap. 11. 1 Cor. 7. 35. Ecclesia Christi gratid ejus qui pro se crucifixus est roberata c. Origen Hom. 3. in Genes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c Chrys Hom. 61. Tom. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrys Hom. 77. in Matthaeum that condition should not give them the temptation of high-mindedness and pride As Augustine saying Virginitas is not only to be magnified that it might be loved but admonished that it be not puffed up And afterward For even that it self is not honorable so much because it is Virginity but because it is dedicated to God So that in another place he saith I speak not rashly a Woman that is married is better then a Virgin to be married for she hath what the other desireth It is not therefore simply good but only as it renders a person more apt to serve God with better attention less distraction as St. Paul intimateth and more devotion and is a great victory over the natural will and a self denyal of the lawful use of the world as Origen upon Genesis noteth For saith he the Church of Christ being fortified by the Grace of him that was crucified for her not only abstaineth from unlawful and abominable beds but also from lawful c. St. Chrysostome commends the state of Religion under the Gospel from this that under the Law Virginity is not so much as mentioned any farther then by way of Prophesie as to be in the New Law of Christ and that particularly in Psalm 45. v. 14 15. And in another Homily he gives us the reason why Virginity was not commanded in the New Testament viz. because of its Excellencie which all good Christians could not attain to And perhaps which is a third thing to be noted in devoting single life to God the severities and fears are too much aggravated by some and the difficulties of preserving the soul and mind chast and pure wherein true Virginity consisteth rather than in corporal Integrity as the Fathers and particularly St. Austin grants and proves at large For when Chastity is vowed certainly all evil motions and inward lustings Aug. de Civ Dei lib. 1. cap. 17 18. are declared against as well as outward impurities but alwayes with a supposal of humane frailties and allowances for suddain unadvised and unapproved evil cogitations Nay perhaps though a person fails so far as to
his Son for marrying without his liking and approbation fall into the guilt of those Hereticks against which the Scripture and Antiquity both make who simply condemn Marriage in it self as unclean and evil No more surely doth that Church which prohibits it conditionally to her children We hear of many husbands dying who leave their wives such an additional Estate as they could not by any Law challenge so long as they continue unmarried or upon condition of continuing in the state of widowhood And so may a Father gratifie and oblige his children if he pleases without incurring the suspicion of holding marriages unlawful whatever other censure may pass upon them And when the Church saith she will not admit any to minister in her Family more immediately before God what doth she say more than that Master of a Family who will not have a married servant in his house about him but likes it very well to use his service in other matters And does this deserve such noise and out-cryes as are made against it Undoubtedly it is as free for the Church to judge of persons fit and unfit for her use as for any Lord or Master whatever And to make a Law not absolute that such a thing should not be done but that none that do such things should beimplyed in such offices And what reason is there that Civil Policie shall directly deny this but Ecclesiastical prudence may not Are there not many other Societies as well as Ecclesiastical which without reproach do the very same thing Men have a Freedom to do the thing or not to do it and more the Scripture hath not left us but to do it without observing any condition from Superiour neither the Law of God or Man hath left free Can there be therefore any more moderate or equal course than so to leave the matter that the one singleness of life shall be commended above the other and peradventure countenanced and encouraged but the other accepted too Yet neither extream will be content with this But one will have a Law to abstract and the other as it should seem by their reasons out of Scripture have it enjoyn'd though they put a stop to the conclusion and will not have it contain what if their Premisses be good it must For if every Bishop must be the husband of one wife and every Priest be a Bishop surely every Priest must marry And if innocencie and purity can be no otherwise maintained surely the Scripture requiring these requires that too But now we come to the conveniencies and incommodities of the state Virginal and Vidual in reference to the Clergy For now waving the supposition of any Divine injunction several Divine and Political reasons have been invented sufficient to determine against Priests some of which being ridiculous some profane and some heretical we shall mention only such as have somewhat of sobriety The first whereof may be That it becometh such as attend on so sacred a thing as Gods Altar to be pure of body and mind too And therefâ—re to abstain from all fleshly acts We know how that Flesh in Gods word goes under suspicion generally of somewhat impure and contrary to spiritualness and true purity and so indeed all fleshliness must be avoided But in it self it implies no more than a state of imperfection not inconsistent with though much inferiour to spiritual acts In the first sense Covetousness Ambition Pride and such like are Fleshly lusts no less than Venery In the second Conjugal acts and state are in the sense of the Gospel no more Fleshly than eating and drinking But whereas we find many to have been willing to be mistaken in so colourable a piece of Religion as to declare even against the natural pollutions as they may be called as prejudicial in themselves to spiritual perfection whether the will concurs thereunto or not and though proper circumstances be duly observed I cannot excuse them from Munichaean errour wholly or at least Judaical And Zonaras hath in a learned and sober Tractate on purpose declared Zonaras apud Leunclavium Jur. Graeco Lat. Tom. 1. p. 351. Chrysostom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tom. 6. Serm. 19. the contrary showing it no more a pollution of the Flesh than a foul nose may to which I refer the learned as also to a peculiar Treatise Chrysostome hath of Virginity where he satisfies both the superstitious and brutish Christian him who though he declares against ancient Heresies concerning lawful marriage yet advances such arguments to commend and prefer Virginity which Hereticks were condemned for using this man in that he at large disputeth against Marcion Valentinus and Manes by name for their excessive magnifying Virginity to the absolute condemnation of marriage and yet withal abounds in the praise and prelation of Virginity and sheweth that it is necessary to hold marriage lawful and of God before any man can please God in virginity He sheweth first that no such Heretick as condemns Marriage absolutely shall be rewarded for their pretended purity He proveth next They shall be damn'd rather for it while the Catholicks shall be promoted to the Societies of Angels become bright Lamps in Heaven and which is above all abide with the Bride He showeth they are worse than the Heathen Greeks who so judge of Virginity and Marriage The Gentiles saith he shall surely go to Hell but yet with this advantage that they enjoy the pleasures of Marriage Riches and other worldly comforts for a time But Hereticks shall be punished both here and hereafter Here they they are punished by voluntary abstinences there by involuntary Plagues The Gentiles shall neither be the better nor worse for their Fastings and Chastities but Hereticks shall suffer extream punishment for the things they expected ten thousand thanks For Fasting and Virginity are neither good nor evil in themselves but only according to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chrys ib. the choice of them that use them they may be either Nay says he afterwards the sobriety of Hereticks is much worse then the riotousness of any Heathens For this only opposes Man but that fights against God And afterward Hereticks professing Chastity not only pollute their souls but bodies also And again He that condemneth marriage injureth Virginity also And much more to this purpose Now if after all this he abounds in the extolling of Virginity above Marriage making it an Angelical life at which Puritans are wont to mock and scoff which have stood them in more stead then Scripture it self to make way for their opinions with what pretense of antiquity can the Levellers of all orders and states of Christianity object against Virginal or Vidual Chastity either as not possible or not lawful or not more commendable than a wedded state And with what hazard of incurring the censure upon ancient Hereticks do modern Patrons of Chastity raise their building upon their rotten foundations as too many who are ashamed of it do notwithstanding Surely this may
of devotion must be held before the eyes as if they were asham'd of what they did whereas St. Paul saith plainly every man praying or prophesying having his head covered 1 Cor. 11. 4. dishonoureth his head and again For a man ought not to cover his head c. 7. But surely he who covereth his face with his hat or such liâ—â— doth altogether as much thwart the design of the Apostle as he that covereth it with his hair I wonder much who could be the author of such an indecent and absurd custom but more to find it defended in some sort by Calvin Calvinus in Esaiam cap. 38. 2. upon Esay and reasons rendered for the same by Amesius in his Cases of Conscience the best he can devise being these two Either to prevent avocation of mind which may be occasioned by the eye Or to conceal such singular gestures Ames de Conscient lib. 4. c. 18. quaest 3. which may be some times necessary to us but seem silly and hypocritical to others These two occasions being taken away Covering the head agrees rather to women than men 1 Cor. 11. 4 5. Thus he And that these are not sufficient causes thus appears because such an accidental inconvenience as is the former ought not to null a direct good but publique and open profession of our duty reverence and devotion to God is that which God doth require as an act of worship and the good example to others should preponderate that particular possible inconvenience And as for the other no man ought to use such absurd and ridiculous ceremonies in his face being in publique as should be apt to give offence but compose his whole man to such gravity and decency as might become the place wherein he is which is in every mans power as it is his part And 't is very unreasonable and somewhat more that men should abhor to receive ceremonies of Communion and uniformity from the Church and yet be more superstitious in inventing and introducing private Ceremonies into the Church and unapproved by it such as this is But though all postures and gestures be alike in nature yet nothing must be done in publique but what is reputed sober modest and grave as well in respect of the persons assembled as for the place sake of which if we had a due opinion it would be superfluous to multiply arguments to extort reverence therein And what need we any farther proofs of the dignity of it then that it is Gods house as hath been shewed and the place where his honour dwells and our happiness especially And therefore before I end this I cannot forbear giving all good Christians warning of one of Mr. Perkins absurd and false dogmes which I doubt not but hath deceived many into prophaness in publique In regard of Conscience Holiness and Religion all places are holy and alike in the New Testament since the coming of Christ The Perkins Cases of Conscience lib. 2. c. 6. qu. 3. §. 3. House or the Field is as holy as the Church And if we pray in either of them our prayer is as acceptable to God as that which is made in the Church All this we look upon as prophane and false Let us hear how out of Scripture he proves his new paradoxes For now saith he the days are come which were foretold by the Prophet where in a clean offering should be offered to God in every place Mal. 1. 11. which Paul expounds 1 Tim. 2. 8. of pure and holy prayer offered to God in every place Of these words of St. Paul which I acknowledge to be the sense of the Prophet I have already given the true meaning and so answered both to this effect That whatever the Scripture prophetically delivers concerning the diffusion of Gods worship or the Apostle actually declares as come to pass comes to no more but that God should be more purely served under the Gospel by the Sacrifice of prayer c. than he was by the Sacrifice of beasts to him and such like and that the service of God should be as well performed out of Jerusalem as in it and in Christian Temples in what Country or Angle of the world soever they were built as in that of Hierusalem but that it was ever intended that he should be as well served in the fields or private houses as in Churches raised for that purpose when necessity constrained not men otherwise doth not in the least appear And the same answer likewise we give to the words of Christ to the woman of Samaria Joh. 4. 25. of which we also spake before As also to that of Christ Matth. 6. 5. reproving the affected hypocritical practise of the Pharisees praying in all publick places to be noted Then which kind of Devotion no doubt but a Prayer in the Closet is much more acceptable to God But doth it therefore follow that such a prayer as is so acceptable in the closet would not be as acceptable in the Temple and more too surely nothing of this which ought to be the conclusion is contained in the argument Now proceeds Mr. Perkins the opinion of the Papist is otherwise It is so and is much truer than the Puritans and more agreeable to the word of God For he thinks that in the New Testament hallowed Churches are more holy than other places are or can be and do make the prayers offered to God in them more acceptable to him than in any other and hereupon they teach that private men must pray in Churches and private prayers must be made in Churches if they will have them heard All this they teach indeed but do they teach this as Papists or as Christians Did not the doctrine and constant practise of all ages and places when and where there were Churches teach the very same Nay doth not Bucer one of the most eminent Reformers for judgment and Quantâ— jam religione sunt loca cultui Dei consecrata huic uni reipate facienda supra aliqua ex parte ostendimus Adeo autem vulgo obtinuit horum locorum horrenda sane prophanatio c. Bucerus de Regno Christi l. 2. c. 11. learning say in a manner as much in these words With what religiousness therefore are places consecrated to Divine worship to be opened to this one thing and to be preserved most sacred we have in some measure before shewed But vulgar custom has far prevailed in a horrible profanation of these places while men having thrown away all reverence of a Deity in them walk in them for their recreation as in walks void of all sacredness and in them exchange all sorts of prophane and impure discourse so that to remove this so unseasonable dammage to the Divine Majesty severe Laws of godly Kings and Princes are requisite and ready and constant vindications of such Laws besides the devout exhortations of holy men whereby it should be brought to pass that Gods holy Temple should not be
oppressed truth they could in no tolerable sense be called a Church at all But by reason of that small struggling for Life in that Church they may be termed a Church out of Charity at least if not verity For Charity believeth all things CHAP. XV. Of Idolatry in the Romish Church in particular viz. In worshipping Saints Angels Reliques and especially the supposed blood of Christ No good foundation in Antiquity or the Scriptures for the said Worship FROM what hath passed may we with greater expedition conclude what remains of the Object of Worship and the superstition even to Idolatry committed in worshipping of Saints and Angels not only in themselves but Reliques For certainly Prayer to them or invocation of them is a proper Act of adoration no man doubts it And therefore see in what degree men pray to them they worship them as likewise what outward honor they give them or their Remains or Images And for the Spirits of just men made perfect as also their Reliques really such we allow due respect proper for such Objects But for the Images of Saints we know none proper to them as not at all belonging to them no part of them bearing no relation to them but as it shall please vain men to appoint it Yet though we hold no reverence at all is due to the Image of Saints or Angels for their own sakes or for the sakes of them they represent yet also hold we it unlawful to offer any indignity to them unless constrained from the abuses and superstitions used toward them which when they arrive at that height as to be made objects mediate or immediate of religious worship may lawfully suffer the same fate with the brazen Serpent in Hezechiah's dayes But first of Invocation of Saints in any sense How can we sufficiently wonder at the uncertainty yea contradiction of the greatest Patrons of it Whereof not only some affirm and some deny but the same Persons sometimes affirm and sometimes deny any such thing to be required or mentioned in Scripture Pighius and Cope give their reason why Saints were not worshipped under the Old Testament to be because they were not then partakers of the beautiful Vision as afterward Bellar. de Batitud Sanct. l. 1. c. 19. And this reason gives Bellarmin likewise yet for all that presums to alledg the words of Jacob Gen. 48. very ridiculously First because he confessed the Old Testament afforded no Presidents or Precepts for it Secondly because those words have quite another Sense than that he would draw them to I shall therefore cut off all that may be answered to the frivolous allegation of Scripture in that behalf as duly examined making more suspected of error than point than confirming it so very violent is the use of them And enquire rather first about the manner and then the reason and lastly the Authority or Tradition for this very briefly Of the three several distinct wayes wherein we are said to pray unto Saints one is not to pray to Saints at all but unto God For the first named by learned men which is to pray to God that upon intuition or consideration of Saints worth or prayers or intercession he would hear us doth not make Saints at all the Object of our prayers but the subject or matter of them which whether convenient to be used or not is besides our present question and belonging to another place and therefore may well be passed over and rather granted to be lawful and useful than disputed For certainly he that petitions a King to grant him any thing for such a Favorites sake who is about him and is his friend doth not thereby petition such a Courtier himself And this may be proved out of the ancient offices of the Church A second way is when we directly pray to them but not Particularly supposing they should either particularly understand all that we do or beg but by a general Petition desiring that they would pray for us A Third way is when we desire of Saints and Angels such things as are proper only to God to give us As if we should pray unto them to forgive us our sins to give us grace of mind and health of Body But these two do not seem to be distinct kinds but only differing in extent and matter For in the first a man doth make the matter of his request that they would promote that request which tendeth principally to God and ultimately In the second that they would procure to them the things prayed for which two differ in degrees not kind of Invocation Again they are wont here also to distinguish of Civil worship and religious And of Religious worship again into Divine proper and improper As for the former I see no reason how common soever it is to grant any such thing to Saints or Angels seeing all the ground of civil reverence given from one to another as in profession of our service honor and obedience to our Parent Masters or Governors wholly dependeth upon our civil and visible communion with them and civil Acts passing from one to another which communion or relation is extinguished quite by their natural death and departure out of this world as appeareth in the most intimate of all relations between men in this world which is that of Man and Wife which Nature Reason and the Scripture teach us to be as free as if they had never met together or known one another after the decease of either And surely all civil relations being founded on flesh and blood or Nature the foundation taken away must also cease and come to nothing Should a subject ask a Petition of his Soveraign that were alive but some hundred miles distant or out of hearing or of whose capacity to hear his prayers he had no competent assurance I cannot tell what more to call it but I am sure it were very absurd and ridiculous Now whether the communion of Saints and Angels which generally is no more than mystical and not at all civil or natural with us be such as doth not wholly render them unsensible of our Acts though directed to them here I at present determine not but this I may say that the bond of civil communion is quite broke between us and them and therefore are all Acts of that nature vain and groundless So that I may pray any Christian brother to pray for me here while we hold both civil and religious communion together but thiâ— being built upon that ceaseth together with that and becoms no longer of a mixt nature partly religious and partly natural or civil but purely Mystical and not to be exercised by such mixt acts as Invocation or outward veneration there being no known intercourse or reciprocation civil between us Therefore of necessity whoever maintains worship to be given to Saints must ascribe and defend divine worship to them and so in express terms we find them to do however they please to mollifie and extenuate
which themselves grant to be so viz. To worship that as God which is not God For first this is most generally believed by the Church of Rome that they have many small Remains of the bloud of Christ Next it is generally believed and required that Divine worship is to be given unto that blood in like manner as to Christ Now that this reputed bloud of Christ is not really the bloud of Christ not we only but the learneder of themselves teach directly yea Thomas proves it Thomas Sum. 3. Qu. 54. 2. corp ad 3. cannot possibly be because all the bloud that was shed from Christs body must of necessity be recollected and so was miraculously restored to his body again otherwise Christ had not risen again in that integrity of his human nature that he suffered in But it is manifest saith Thomas That flesh bones and bloud are pertaining to the human nature of Christ and therefore must all rise perfectly with him Now because the scruple is obvious to all Whence that reputed bloud presented solemnly as the very bloud of Christ should proceed if not from Christs body from whence we hear it cannot come He answers thus That bloud which in some Churches is preserved in Reliques of his did not flow from Christs side but is affirmed to have flown miraculously from a certain Image of Christ which was smitten Thus he And I could give an account of diverse Images which according to their own writers having been so smitten by spiteful Jews have bled in this manner And is it not as plain as can be that this is not Christs bloud And if it be not Christs bloud is it not also as evident that Idolatry is committed when divine adoration is given to it I make no doubt but there are innumerable in the Church of Rome who have more Faith and knowledg than to throw themselves thus heedlesly into such precipices of Superstition as are to be found there And therefore Grotius his design of a Reconciliation with the Church of Rome quite overthrown as he imagineth by holding it Idolatrous was not well laid For he that affirms that the Church of Rome is Animad in Animad Rivet Artic. 21. Idolatrous doth not say that all who hold communion with the Church of Rome are Idolaters as he supposeth Though they hold it unlawful upon peril if not of personal guilt of Idolatry very hardly to be avoided there of Communicative Idolatry which all true Christians ought to shun with greatest care and resolution CHAP. XVI Of the Fourth thing wherein the Worship of God consisteth viz. Preaching How far it is necessary to the Service of God What is true Preaching Of the Preaching of Christ wherein it consisteth Of Painful Preaching That the Ministery according to the Church of England is much more Painful than that of Sectaries The negligence of some in their Duty contrary to the Rule and Mind of the Church not to be imputed to the Church but to particular Persons in Authority VVE come now to speak of the Fifth General wherein the exercise of Gods worship consisteth and that is Preaching of which having so far already treated as to make discovery of the great error of Sectaries about it and the sacrilegious abuse of the true and proper Worship of God by Idolizing a Sermon and making the House of God and all acts of Religion void in comparison of it we may be here briefer in what remains of that subject For we find an opinion too prevalent amongst Christians which not only overthroweth the worship of God for Preachings sake but which is more to be wonder'd at overthroweth Preaching too for the Sermons sake For to that Superstition are they arrived in their opinions of teaching and hearing that if it be not performed without book if not out of the Pulpit if not a text formally taken out of the Bible If this text be not reduced to Doctrine and Use If there be not a formal I do not mean a Form of Prayer before and after it with the common sort it scarce deserves the name of Preaching And when all those conditions concur it is not only Preaching and a Sermon indeed but the Word of God without more ado and accordingly to be reverenced and valued And it were to be wish'd that were all and the Scriptures themselves not esteemed or not much listen'd to in comparison of them Thomas Cartwright the Great Church-wright as I may so call him of Schismatiques hath expresly affirm'd That the Scriptures avail little unless expounded by themselves surely and yet they also hold an opinion which no man can reconcile to this that the Scriptures contain all things necessary to Salvation and that plainly but let that go And let us know how a Sermon in its formalities now mentioned became the Word of God and in what sense and in what age and by what autority It is more than probable that Christ and his Apostles seldom used a Prayer before or after their Preaching It is most apparent out of Justine Martyrs second apology and Tertullians Apologetique that Preaching was used in their publique Assemblies and that principally as subservient to Prayer and Communicating and not set to domineer over them and be made the chief of Gods worship And so long as their Prayers were unprescribed was Preaching unstudied for and extemporary chiefly according to the manner insinuated in the Acts of the Apostles where it is said After the reading of the Law and Prophets the Rulers of the Synagogue sent unto them Acts. 13. 15. Paul and his company saying Ye men and Brethren If ye have any word of Exhortation for the People say on And by St. Paul to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 14. 29 30. saying Let the Prophets speak two or three and let the rest judge If any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by let the first hold his Peace These speeches were after the President of the Jewish Assembly had either himself read or caused the Law to be read and never without leave first obtained from him Which custom was for some time imitated by Christians When the Bishop only first spake to the people and then by his leave some other began an Exhortation to the People But this bringing certain inconveniences into Christian Assemblies in tract of time quite ceased and nothing was said but by the Bishop himself and that not every time much less in every place where Christians assembled to the Service of God there being for a long time after Christians were multiplyed and spread far not above one Sermon in a Diocess and that in the Principal City of that Country whither people that had a mind to hear a Sermon or communicate resorted for the good of their souls as men do now adayes to Market for the food of their bodies Which being there purchased the faithful Christian carried it home to his Family and dispensed to it of the same following herein the Counsel
two Tables and hanging all on one string Charity which saith St. Paul is the fulfilling of the Law as many Beads or Jewels make but one Bracelet Yet according to the several forms and distinct matter are they often distinguished Origen Hom. 10. super Exod Non ut simplicioribus videtur cuncta quae statuantur Lex dicitur c. Psal 19. 7 8. as by Origen in these words It is not as may seem to the simpler sort that all things that are constituted are the Law Lex but some truly are called Law some Testimonies some Commands some Righteousnesses some Judgments which the 18 or 19 Psalm plainly teaches us saying The Law of the Lord is a perfect Law converting the soul the Testimony of the Lord is sure making wise the simple The Statutes of the Lord are right rejoycing the heart the Commandment of the Lord is pure enlightning the eyes Neither doth Gulielmus Parisiensis much vary from his sense who makes seven Parts of the Law of God the First whereof is Testimonies Sunt autem partes Legis hujus Dei septem quarum prima est Testimenia c. Gul. Parisiens de Legibus cap. 1. and these are of Truths and therefore to be believed The Second Commands and these are of Honest things and therefore to be fulfilled The Third Judgments and these are of Equity and therefore to be obeyed The Fourth are Examples and these are to be imitated The Sixth is Threatnings to wit of Punishments and these are to be feared The Seventh are Ceremonies and these are to be reverenced and observed Thus he But whether these do not concern rather the whole Body of the Law than the Decalogue in particular may justly be doubted but shall not here be disputed though upon this account it may seem to concern this also For if the Ten Commandments be the sum of the whole Law of Moses as is credibly taught how can it so be unless it vertually comprehends the several distinct parts thereof which will be farther cleared in the brief consideration of these three Particulars concerning the Decalogue 1. The Institution of this Law 2. The Nature or Use of it and Thirdly The Explication of it The Authour and Institutour of this Law was insallibly God himself as of all the Writings of Moses the Prophets Evangelists and Apostles received amongst us for Canonical But whether there were any more immediate act of God and as I may say personal in delivering these Commands than in communicating his will by Moses to the Israelites upon other occasions is not so well resolved The Learned of the Jewish Doctours do put a distinction between the Divineness of the Pentateuch wrote by Moses and the rest of holy Scripture of the Old Testament making that the Ground and Rule as it were of other prophetical Writings and so do many suppose the Law to be more Sacred than the other parts of Scripture and to be more Sacred because more solemnly and formidably and with greater manifestation of Gods Glory and Majesty delivered to Moses yea and because written with the finger of God himself as the Scripture witnesses which seems to speak as if God herein had not used the ministery of Angels as at other times and upon other occasions but spake and acted immediately in his own person These words saith Moses in Deuteronomy the Lord Deut. 5. 22. spake unto all your assembly in the Mount out of the midst of the fire of the cloud and of the thick darkness with a great voice and he added no more and he wrote them in two Tables of Stone and deliveted them to me And when the people in Exodus beg of Moses saying Speak thou with us and we will Exod. 20. 19. hear thee but let not God speak with us least we dye it seems to imply that God himself was the speaker Nay God saith afterward Ye have seen that v. 22. I have talked with you from heaven And to this effect the holy Scripture elsewhere as Deut. 4. 36. Nehem. 9. 13. Deut. 5. 4. Exod. 33. 11. from all which there is nothing more certain then that the voice was sensible and after humane manner audible contrary to some Jews who as Buxtorf tells us presume to say it was imaginary only And what do not the Jews superstitiously devise to magnifie this Law and by implication themselves above other people so favoured by God For they not only say that God with his own mouth spake these Ten Words but with his own hands made the two Tables as may be seen in Buxtorf and Buxtorf de Decalogo amongst others Rabbi Simeon writes That both Tables were created by God immediately and that before the world began not regarding how contradictory to Scriptures such an assertion is Exod. 34. 1 2 3 4. and Deut. 10. 1. which they would understand only of the Second Tables but without reason But if we consider first how dubiously and ambiguously the word God is used in Scripture signifying Angels often and sometimes Men of Renown and Command and the Finger of God to be the same sometimes with the Spirit of God sometimes with the Power of God Exod. 8. 19. Luke 11. 20. And secondly That then according to our apprehension and the Scriptures phrase God is said to do a thing himself when he doth it not by any humane instrument or help though he imployeth invisible Spirits therein there will be no such necessity of Consequence as may seem at first view and thus Calvin upon these words of Exod. 31. 18. interprets the matter not amiss And if we consider secondly what sense the Writers of the New Testament take them in the other opinion which holds that these Commands were delivered by the mediation of Angels will appear most probable For so saith St. Stephen expresly in the Acts to the Jews Who received the Law by Acts 7. 53. Gal. 3. 19. the disposition of Angels and have not kept it And St. Paul It was ordained by Angels in the hands of a Mediatour And in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is called The word spoken by Angels Some may say here That by Law is here to be understood not the Decalogue only but the whole Law of Moses at the least which cannot be absolutely denyed though the contrary seems most probable But if it be so does not the whole include the parts If the Law in general was so dispenced does it not follow that this Law in particular was so ordained Though if it be granted that this Law particularly was so delivered it doth not follow that the whole Law of Moses was so given by the ministery of Angels and not only by Divine inspiration without any Angels officiating towards it as in this Case we suppose And Perkins on the Galatians affirmeth directly that this Law was given by the Perkins Gal. 3. 19. ministery of Angels And to confirm this I shall adde a Scholastical Reason For if it
be true what St. John saith that No man hath seen God at any time and what the John 1. 18. Schools teach as I believe that fleshly eyes cannot possibly discern God immediately may we not much more truly say that we cannot hear Gods voice with our fleshly ears and live any more than see God and live But God says expresly No man shall see me and live But as God maketh certain Exod. 33. 20. representations of himself to our eye which are not himself but yet bear his name in Scripture so God produceth or causeth to be produced audible sounds which are not really and properly his voice yet represent so much to the ear of man which when it comes attended with more than natural or ordinary circumstances as did the voice at the giving of the Law it is more especially and signally ascribed unto God as his Lastly It is said in Exodus that Moses wrote upon the Tables the words of Exod. 34 28. the Covenant the Ten Commandments which in the beginning of the Chapter God is said to write I will write upon these Tables the words that were Exod. 34. 1. in the first c. which moved the Fathers as Cyprian and Austin whom Lyra follows to understand them so that God wrote Autoritatively and Moses Ministerially But later Jewish and Christian Expositours have thought good rather to refer the later part of these words And he was there with the Lord fourty dayes and fourty nights he did neither eat bread nor drink water and he wrote upon the Tables the words of the Covenant the Ten Commandments to God not without some violence to the sense more current otherwise But in such variety and obscurity as is here I see no remedy but men must judge for themselves However I suppose the second thing propounded is from hence competently clear concerning the Nature of this Law That as it is undoubtedly Divine so from the Authority delivering it it hath no more force or obligation upon us than other words of God extant in holy Scripture Nor is it easily to be conceived how any thing can be said to be more or less divine which is acknowledged to come from God by vertue of any manner of delivering it whether mediately or immediately by a still and quiet inspiration or by a publick and majestick declaration but from the matter it may And Buxtorf in his forementioned Tractate on Buxtorf in Decalog num 51. Priscis temporibus c. the Decalogue hath these words In ancient times it was a custome among the Jews that the Decalogue should every day in the Morning Prayers be publickly and privately rehearsed and repeated This laudable custom in latter times they have abolished the reason whereof the Talmud renders to be lest the people should believe that the Decalogue had any â—ore divineness in it than other parts of Scripture From whence we may observe First That anciently the Jews had a constant Form of Worship Secondly That there is no such ridiculousness in Prayers publick and private to repeat the Creed and Ten Commandments as certain pretenders to giftedness have presumed Thirdly That the Jewish Doctours discerning the great inconvenience that might happen from admitting degrees of Sacredness in Divine Revelations chose to prevent such errours by taking away the presumed occasion For however some have distinguished between Divine Right and Apostolical making this a mean between humane purely and divine yet in propriety of speech all Constitutions are either divine purely or purely humane And therefore Apostolical Right can be no more than humane Right when it is distinguished from Divine This we speak of Constitutions taken in their formality not as oftentimes they are used for the things themselves so ordained For no doubt but as there are degrees of sins against Laws so these degrees are estimated from the weightiness or lightness of the matter against which offences are committed And thus we may hold that the Ten Commandments are more Sacred that is contain more important matters than generally the rest of the Scriptures do that is again in the like number words being certainly the most perfect and plain and compendious form of serving God that the Jews had any where revealed unto them if not a more absolute sum of our practical duties towards God and Man then we find collected together in so few words in the Gospel and therefore not unworthily inserted into the Second part of the Office of our Church But whether this Decalogue was ever intended by God as such a perfect and compleat Rule of Obedience that nothing to which Jew or Christian was obliged hath escaped it may well be question'd understanding the Question not so much of ceremonial or extrinsecal Duties of Religion as moral and perpetual Many have this last age brought forth who though they look upon it little less than ridiculous to make any use of the Ten Commandments in our worship of God yet ascribe so great perfection to it as a Rule that they suppose they have convinced you of absurdity enough if they drive you to either of these straits To deny any Moral duty to be contained in the Decalogue or to affirm any Ceremonial to be therein included For then they loudly cry concerning the First you make the Law of God an Imperfect Rule And concerning the Second as by name doth Dr. Twisse in his Treatise on the Sabbath with innumerable others If for instance the Fourth Commandment be not Moral what doth it among the Ten Commands And having said this they need they think say no more to confound their adversaries To the former therefore we say that improving the Art of Reduction to the height no doubt but all Moral and Ceremonial duties too may be reduced to some of the Ten Commandments For if our Saviour Christ our Great and Infallible Master reduced these Ten to two and again all things contained in the Law and Prophets which must be all Moral duties to Love of God and Love of our Neighbour in St. Matthews Gospel saying On these two Commandements hang all the Law and the Prophets Nay and Matth. 22. 37 38 39 40. which is yet more St. Paul brings all Christian duties under one Head of Love saying Love is the fulfilling of the Law Do we wonder at or can Rom. 13. 10. we censure those who would have all Christian vertues included and vices and sins excluded by the Decalogue But surely they who contend for such a comprehension as may be useful to a man do not intend that it self should be incomprehensible and illimited which at this rate it must be reducing every thing to any thing but certain Rules have been invented for the limiting and directing of men in this matter which being not taken from the Reason of the thing it self so much as the Arbitrary wit of the Hic video quosdam in hoc elaborasse ut universa proecepta sive jubentia sive
have from the matter it self divided the Commandments so that Four which relate principally to God should be placed in the First Table and Six in the Second which seems to be most rational though no less arbitrary than the other There are likewise among the Jews who agree not in the very matter it self of the Ten Commandments For some as the Talmudists and others following them do make that we call properly The Proaem or Preface I am the Lord thy God to be part of the First Commandment which is denyed by Aberbenel and others of them as well as most of us For this Proposition or Sentence I am the Lord thy God is as we say properly Enunciative or Indicative or purely affirmative and not Imperative or Commanding as all Precepts must be which are so properly called The First Commandment therefore is this Thou shalt have no other Gods §. I. but me Where it is first to be observed that almost thorow the whole Decalogue some variety in words is to be found in Exodus and in Deuteromy the Fifth where it is repeated The Reason whereof Grotius thinks to be this That here Moses did set down or rather took precisely what was spoken or written by the Angel but in Deuteronomy he rehearses the same himself without such absolute Punctualities of words or expressions and yet must we not dare to say or believe that Moses transgressed his own Rule given by God in the Fourth Chapter before viz. Ye shall not adde unto Deut. 4. 2. the word which I command you neither shall ye diminish ought from it that ye may keep the Commandments of the Lord your God which I command you So that it is a vain Scholie some would give us upon that and such like Texts of Scripture that nothing at all must be added to Gods word more than we find the Letter to require For undoubtedly such speeches mean no more than that we should do or say neither more or less to overthrow the intention of God in his Commandments For otherwise all the large and far fetched senses devised and applyed by the precise Masters and Mistakers of that Rule to each particular Precept in the Decalogue would be found either Superstitious or Sacrilegious inventions though not inconsistent with the Analogy of Faith Furthermore Laws are of two sorts generally Affirmative or Negative In the Negative of which this is one the ordinary method of explication is first to declare those sins of Commission which are prohibited and then the Duties Graces and Vertues which are there implicitly required on the contrary this being one general Rule of expounding the Decalogue that where any vice or sin is forbidden there the contrary vertue is commanded And on the other side Where any vertue or holy act is required there the contrary vice or evil is interdicted As for Example Here it is forbidden that we should have or make or worship any other God but the one true God therefore on the contrary there is an implicite injunction duly and faithfully to serve that one true God And though the sense Negative is most current and general through the whole Decalogue yet were the Affirmative duties they which God principally aimed at and intended For Negatives do not make us holy to God in themselves but only as they are necessary introductions and good beginnings to the more perfect performance of Positive Duties It would avail a man very little towards the fulfilâ—ing of this First Commandment not to worship more Gods than one for so he mâ—ght worship none at all and be a greater offender than the Idolater that worships many We are therefore in the first place to enquire what are those Vertues and Graces God commands and so shall we more readiâ—y and easily conceive what errours and sins we are hereby commanded to avoid Some of both sorts we shall here instance in to make more compleat that rude and imperfect account given above of the Acts of Obedience and Holiness owing from every good Christian to God but as in a Table rather than in a Treatise The Supposition then that this first Precept requires of us the true worship of God doth infer all that train of Graces thereunto necessary which are commonly reduced to these three Theological Vertues Faith Hope and Charity Of the nature of Faith as well in General as Particular have we spoken largely in the first Part Yet rather in a speculative than practical or obediential way which is proper to this place By the duty of Faith then it is first required that we should have a competent knowledge of God and of his will for some knowledge must of necessity go before Faith There is a twofold knowledge One of simple apprehension or intelligence and this must go before Faith For how Rom. 10. 14. saith St. Paul shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard It is impossible a man should worship God before he believes there is a God And impossible he should believe there is a God before he hath some notion or apprehension of a God either by hearing which is the ordinary way or by some inward suggestion And therefore we read that Paul inquiring of the Acts 19. 2. Novices in Christianity at Ephesus Have ye received the Holy Ghost they answered We have not as yet heard whether there be an Holy Ghost or no. And there is another knowledge of Assurance which assurance is caused in Humane Sciences by an orderly and necessary connexion of natural causes one with another but in Divine matters by Faith which causes that or greater perswasion than any outward artificial Demonstrations And therefore both the encrease of our knowledge and the encrease and strengthning of our Faith are much required by this Precept according as we have the Scriptures more particularly advising us and that by St. Peter 2 Pet. 1. 5. And beside all this giving all diligence adde to your faith vertue and to vertue knowledge and to knowledge temperance c. And so in his first Epistle 1 Pet. 2. 3. 1 Tim. 2. 4. Taste and see how good the Lord is And St. Paul to Timothy God will have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth And infinite other places Next to knowledge of God seems to be the fear of God according as Acts 9. 39. the Scripture hath it And the Churches were edified walking in the fear of the Lord. Next to Fear comes Repentance and Sorrow for sins past then Renovation or that properly called Obedience in Newness of Life with many others not here to be insisted on The second Grace is Hope which excites to walk and act according to the Gospel from the consideration of the many Promises and upon the intuitiâ—n of an excellent reward to follow certainly the fulfilling the will of God Of which we have spoken in treating of Gods works Lastly Charity with its retinue of Divine Graces is required
to do another a mischief must he necessarily speak conformably or do conformably and make good his bad intentions If a man intends to do one a kindness and give him an estate may he not carry himself towards him and all others as if he never intended any such thing But it may be he would restrain this to positive Speeches and Acts which he would have alwayes conformable to inward conceptions And so they are when a man intends to deceive and doth deceive But that the general appearances must conform to the reality of the Intention his own concessions above-noted will not admit It is true therefore only when it is justly required And this suffices to cut the throat of all as they are now called deservedly Jesuitical Aequivocations and Mental Reservations and External dissimulations viz. because none of their real or pretended Superiours can give them any power not to answer according to the serious intention and expectation of legal Enquirers and legal Enquirers they are who have legal Authority in that Nation Again unless their Superiours can give them power of Life and Death as it is an opinion amongst them they may especially the Pope over free Princes and their Subjects they can give them no power to deceive by positive acts or words lawful Powers contrary to the common and received sense and meaning of Enquiries and Answers Thirdly neither of a mans self nor by any Civil Authority how great or good soever nor upon any Case how important soever can a man lawfully use the Name of God in attestation of what is false or confirmation of what his Conscience and Judgment assures him is otherwise than he declares it to be Neither can any man give instance that God ever permitted it or any good or holy man in Scripture presumed to do so And therefore oequivocation in any oaths whether lawfully or unlawfully administred is directly unlawful and to be detested of all men as it is of God The Vertue then which this Commandment requires in opposition to bearing false witness is first a love and veneration of Truth as the sacred daughter of God himself and that in all things and at all times not excepted but more especially Authority and publick Justice requiring it The Inducements hereunto abbreviated Perkins hath collected thus to my hands in the forementioned place 1. Gods command James 3. 14. 2. Lying is a conformity to the Devil 3. We are sanctified by the word of truth John 17. 17. 4. Truth is a Fruit of Gods Spirit Galat. 5. A mark of Gods children Psalm 32. 2. and 15. 2. 5. Destruction is the reward of a Lyar Psal 5. 6. And thus far of the Ninth Commandment The Tenth is Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours house Thou shalt not covet § X. thy neighbours wife nor his servant nor his maid nor his Ox nor his Ass nor any thing that is his Which the modern Roman Church having carefully turned the second out of doors as a quarrelsome and troublesome companion are necessitated to divide into two to make up the compleat number of Ten For which fact they have no ground but St. Austin and them who precisely followed him But none of these or any ancient proceeded on their grounds viz. because the Second Commandment gave offence Now seeing many more in number and antiquity have otherwise than Austin considered this Commandment as one entirely The Reasons why they so judge of it are worth enquiring For some eminently learned among them especially in the Scriptures have declared expresly against it as Oleaster and Mercerus Petrus Galatinus inclining that way as Buxtorf hath observed Buxtorf de Decal num 74. 59. And as a little before he hath noted the Jewish Doctours who are to sway much in this Case unless the Papists please to distinguish the Decalogue as they have audaciously the Canon of the Scriptures of the Old Testament into Jewish and Christian or Ecclesiastical have unanimously conspired to make this but one Commandment Aben Ezra and Abarbenel mentions indeed such an opinion as the Roman Church maintains but rejects the same as a very fond and vain conceit And the like may be said Estius in Sentent l. 3. Dist 40. §. 3. of Estius his answers and evasions of the reasons on our side which are First That the object of the sin here forbidden is not to distinguish the Command so much as the Act Concupiscence of the mind or heart united in one because then we should have more than two One prohibiting lusting after another mans wife another lusting after his Servants another lusting or coveting his cattle and a fourth his possessions and moveables But St. Paul speaking of this Concupiscence maketh it but one where he Rom. 7. saith I had not known lust except the Law had said Thou shalt not covet The other Precepts therefore having provided against the Acts outward of sin This in the Conclusion goeth as it were over all of them again and interdicteth all inward motions towards any of the sins before forbidden To say therefore with Estius St. Paul saith Thou shalt not lust is as much as if a man should say Thou shalt love which doth not make all the Commandments but one is very idle seeing the word Lust is there taken in an evil sense and may reasonably extend to all the Negative precepts at least as Love doth concern them all and is the sum of the Decalogue But we find no such particular Precept as Love indefinitely taken And besides we are not so much to enquire after matter of Right what might be or ought to be but of fact what is And to collect what is done we are not so much to consult the holy Writ of the New Testament which uses no precise or determinate speech in reference to the number or order of these Commandments but the thing it self which ever amongst the Jews was thus distinguished as we do and generally the Greek Church and the Latin likewise until Austin's dayes And it is certain the Holy Spirit here doth not affect Logical Divisions or Rhetorical Partitions or Methods but delivers things grosly to a rude people inculcating the same thing under diverse forms of speech For according to one of the Rules of expounding the Decalogue viz. That where the outward act is forbidden the inward act is also forbidden and where the Effect there the Cause is also forbidden this should rather seem to be none other Precept than what went before in the seventh and eighth Commandments forbidding Adultery and Theft and by Implication the inward acts of Lusting after the Persons or Possessions of others For that is the beginning and cause of those outward Effects and scandalous sins Another Reason for the entireness of that we call the Tenth Commandment is the order observed in Exodus where Lusting after our Neighbours House is set before Lusting after his Wife or other Persons and then again follow his Goods which shows that
there was no intention to divide that Period into two Precepts For then in all probability the Persons should have been ranked by themselves and the Goods by themselves so to distinguish them but no heed being given to this no intention seems to be for that To this they answer most colourably That in Deuteronomy the order is otherwise Coveting ones Neighbours wife being first prohibited and Deut. 5. 21. that the Law as there repeated and revised is to be a President to us But first the contrary to this is most true That the Law was more exactly delivered in Exodus than in Deuteronomie in all those points which are in common to them as hath been shewed out of Grotius For Deuteronomy according to its Name being indeed a Repetition in a compendious manner of what was more expresly and at large handled in the four first Books of Moses it cannot be supposed but many if not all things should be in them more plainly and accurately treated of than in this For as St. Augustine Evangelista autem Lucas in oratione Dominicà Petitiones non septem sed quinque complexus est c. Aug. Enchirid ad Laurent cap. 115. hath observed of the diverse manner of reciting the Lords Prayer in Saint Matthews Gospel and St. Lukes St. Matthew setting down seven Petitions and St. Luke but five and thereupon directs us to make St. Matthews words the Rule of understanding St. Lukes So questionless where a thing in the Pentateuch is more distinctly and fully expressed there ought we to take our measures for the interpretation of what is more confusedly or breifly rehearsed elsewhere and by consequence the Law in Deuteronomy is to be regulated by that of Exodus But farther The order of persons or things is not in Deuteronomie observed For first it is said Thou shalt not desire thy Neighbours Wife then Neither shalt thou covet thy Neighbours House and then follows his Servants and then again his Goods which shew that God would not have us too rigorously to seek for methods in his word but matter Therefore the sum of all is this That God knowing how imperfect mans understanding was in the matter wherein his senses were concerned and how willing he was to be deceived and ignorant of his duty and lastly how prone a man is to proceed from evil thoughts to evil deeds he doth here inform his people in an higher point of Sobriety and Justice than Gentile Philosophers or common light of Nature could direct men For Saint Paul saith he had not known lust to be a sin except the Law had said Thou Rom. 7. 7. Matth. 5. 28. shalt not covet And our Saviour in the Gospel interdicteth all vain and lascivious looks whereby Lust may be conceived The reason of all which is this because as the Scripture often intimates unto us God accepteth the heart for the act and the will for the deed where there is a defect of power to bring things to perfection which are righteous and holy so doth God judge that Evil to be done against him which is so conceived and resolved upon in the mind as to want nothing but ability and opportunity to put in execution For as an holy Father saith No man is righteous who cannot do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Basil Mag. Per hoc etiamsi minora mala faciant quia minus possunt non minus tamen mali sunt quia nollent minus esse si pâ—ssent amiss And as another speaks of wicked mens inclinations By this though peradventure they commit less evil they are no less evil because they would not be less wicked if they could tell how to shift it Thus Salvian And necessary was this Commandment not only for the reasons now given but also for the general pronity of all men to fall into this sin All men naturally having this unnatural called sometimes for the commonness Natural Concupiscence in them inclining and urging them to evil none but Christ himself not the Virgin Mary being exempted from it in the root and first seed called Original sin But Original sin is not here forbidden as that which surprises a man inevitably and cannot possibly be prevented but the actuating or drawing that evil principle which lurks in our nature forth Neque enim ea dimitti nobis volumus quae dimissa non dubitamus in baptismo sed illa c. Aug. Epist 108 to particular evil motions of the will For as St. Austine hath observed We do not pray God to forgive us those sins which we doubt not but are forgiven in baptism but those which through human frailty creep upon us unawares which though small are frequent So are we not here advised to pray against or resist Original sin which is irresistible but the vermine of evil thoughts which are apt to breed in the remains of natural Concupiscence as Snakes in a dunghil which coming to get strength creep out in evil outward acts to the endangering of the soul Hence it is that the Scriptures exhort us to avoid the occasions and resist the Devil at first and by Faith to quench these fiery darts of the Devil that shall be shot into our souls with some of which proper and useful means so to do I shall conclude this Chapter First the outward occasions of wicked thoughts are carefully and resolutely to be avoided such as are Idleness evil Objects evil Authours and evil Company Secondly Not to give way to the least friendly entertainment to the first motions or injections of the Tempter but crush the Cockatrice egg and quench the spark and growing flame at the very first For as when an enemy without throws in a Granado into a Fort to ruin it if they within take it up presently and throw it back again before it breaks it confounds the Enemy rather then them in the Fort so do evil thoughts cast into the Soul by the Devil rather torment him than hurt the Soul when they are rejected suddainly and cast out Thirdly By being instant and fervent Wisd 8. 21. Matth. 17. 21. in prayer whereby God is called to the assistance of the labouring Soul as some good hand by crying out is ready to pull out one sinking in waters Fourthly Imploying a mans self constantly and carefully in some laudable and profitable actions much secures him from the vain illusions of the mind from whence do spring that Lust of the Flesh Lust of the Eyes and Pride of Life against which St. John warns us and all which with their particular branches are forbidden by this last Commandment CHAP. XXI Of Superstition contrary to the true Worship of God and Christian Obedience AS Heresie is a corruption of the Faith or Doctrine of the Church and Schism of its Unity and Christian Communion so necessary to its well being so is Superstition a degeneration and corruption of the true worship of God now last spoken of And therefore as to the more compleat
handling of the two former we took in their Contraries Heresie and Schism so now doth it appear in like manner expedient for the conclusion of the latter to treat briefly of Superstition the Enemy to the true Service of God There are two extreams saith Clemens Alexandrinus of Ignorance Atheism 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Id. Strom. lib. 7. and Superstition The former is a total Renunciation of a Deity The latter a vehement and excessive addition to a Deity without judgment or sobriety Fearing Doemons or Spirits instead of God and deifying every thing or mistaking the worship of the true God And to make a fuller discovery we shall not much trouble our selves with the various acceptations or uses of the word Superstition Whether it is derived from Supra statutum or Supra stare it matters but little provided we can arrive to the due knowledge of the thing intended by that word which men have endeavoured of late to render very uncertain and mutable as their several opinions and fears and interests of Religion lead them But undoubtedly Superstition is a Religious Passion of the mind as Atheism is a Passion of the Inferiour Senses and a Stupidity of the Mind as Clemens Alexandrinus now cited truly tearms it Now what Passion can it be so properly called as Fear in excess and Fear not directed to Man but God not cowardise but confusion It may be answerable to the description given us by the Wiseman in these words Wickedness condemned Wisd 17. 11 12. by her own witness is very timorous and being pressed with Conscience alwayes forecasteth grievous things For fear is nothing else but the betraying of the succours which reason offereth And we know the most generally received word with the Greeks expressing Superstition is compounded of a word signifying Fear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Latine word which we retain in our Language Superstition comes very much short in significancie to the Greek For that implyeth in it both the Act of him that is superstitious and the Object about which such Superstition is used And that is a Fear of somewhat of the nature or esteem of God Daemons Whis is not much amiss For though Evil Spirits or Good Spirits being the object of our Worship inevitably turn it into Superstition yet may there be Superstition in the manner of Worship as well as in the Object when a man worships the true Object God in an undue manner But the Latin word Superstition seems to import no more than an errour in the choice of our Object which it maketh to be somewhat superviving even beyond our Senses or common Reason Such as were the Spirits of men dead and yet believed to be alive in their souls and honoured either for their great vertues or the servent affection the superstitions person bare to him in his life time And thus Tully and Varro took the meaning of the word not amiss however Lactantius rejected this account I suppose because it was too narrow to contain the whole Evil of Superstition which truly relates to the irregular manner of serving God as well as to the thing we worship For certainly there is a Pharisaical Superstition and an Athenian and the one we find reprehended by our Saviour Christ in St. Mark where he accuses them for admiring and preferring their own Traditions before Gods express and more necessary Laws and Laying Mark 7. 9 10 11. aside the Commandment of God and holding the Tradition of men supposing surely that by such commutation they should satisfie to the full if not exceed the main intent of Gods Commandment which was a very vain and presumptuous supposition The like to which if any stomacher of Ecclesiastical Prescriptions and Constitutions could in the least degree of probability prove to be either done or intended by Ecclesiastical Ceremonies and Orders they had all the reason in the world to stand it out as they do to the utmost and contend resolutely for the Faith and pure Worship so endangered but this being impossible to be made good as will by and by appear it will there also appear that Superstition as properly pertaineth to them as any other The Athenian Superstition or Gentile ignorant of the true God is that which giveth Religious Worship to an Object uncapable thereof which was that St. Paul condemns them for in the Acts of the Apostles saying Ye men of Athens I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious viz. for their infinite and endless Acts 17. 22. sollicitude in multiplying objects of Divine Worship when in truth there was but one And this is the most ancient sense of Superstition amongst the Gentiles as Clemens Alexandrinus noteth speaking thus The Atheist is he who acknowledges no God But he is superstitious who 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Alex. 7. Strom. feareth Daemons Spirits or False Gods and Deifies as it were all things So sensible and fearful is he of a Divine Power that he thinks he cannot extend his Devotion wide enough unless he takes in all he can imagine to himself or others vainly suggest unto him And least after all he should incurr the displeasure of any one adds honour likewise To the unknown God Neither knowing that any such there is or what he is but to make all sure worships at a venture without rule of Reason or Revelation for fear of the worse From this consideration the Schoolmen do make all Idolatry a main part of Superstition and all combination and confederacie or consultation of Spirits whether Angelical or Humane both Idolatrous and Superstitious it being death by the Law of Moses to deal in such Merchandise and judged very irrational and irreligious by the Prophet so to apply ones self And when they shall say unto you Seck unto them that Isaiah 8. 20. have familiar Spirits and unto Wizards that peep and that mutter should not a people seek unto their God For the living to the dead To the Law and to the Testimony signifying that the revealed will of God called the Law and Testimony is altogether sufficient and necessarily requires our squaring our Worship thereby at least as to the Object of it And therefore St. Paul to the Colossians well adviseth Let no man beguile you of Coloss 2. 18. your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of Angels intruding into those things which he hath not seen vainly puft up by his fleshly mind c. declaring unto us the dangerous Superstition of engaging in such Worship for which there is no ground to be seen in his Word but only in the vain and fleshly mind of man which is curious in searching into that which is not made known to him of God and to please himself in such bold inventions This certainly is Superstition But this is not only Superstition but that also which invents an essential form of Worship to the prejudice of that truly divine and ordained and may truly be distinguished into two