For Images they venerate for so the Council of Trent loves to speak rather than to say adore or worship with the second Synod of Nice those of Christ the true God and of such as they esteem real Saints in Heaven and not the Statues of the Sun or of Universal Nature or of the Soul of the World or intentionally those of Devils or damned spirits In the Worship of Angels Saints Images they forbear Sacrifice as proper to God Whereas the Heathen did not appropriate it to Him for some of them offer'd only their Minds to the Supreme Deity and their Beasts to inferior gods And the greater number offer'd Victims and their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Prayers used in sacrificing both to God and Daemons Yet it must be confessed that thus far the Church of Rome hath gone towards Sacrifice to Saints It hath appointed Masses which it esteemeth proper Sacrifices or Offerings of the Body of Christ to the Father in honour of her Saints Insomuch that such Masses bear the names of their Hero's and nothing is said more commonly than the Mass of St. Anthony the Mass of this or the other Saint But in this case the Council of Trent hath given caution and would not have it believ'd that the Sacrifice is offered to the Saint but to God only Now that which I have hitherto shewed is the fair side of the Church of Rome in reference to the Idolatry with which she is charged Neither hath my Pen dawbed in the representation it hath done her but justice But there is besides this already exposed to view a cloudy side of that Church which calleth her self the Pillar of Christian Truth This that we may the better discern let us first view it in the Council of Trent or in any later Popish Synods and then in its own subsequent Acts and see how far first in the point of Invocation of Saints and next of Images it doth directly or by plain consequence and not meerly by accidental abuse usurp any honour which belongeth to God PART 3. Of the Idolatry charged on the Papists in their Worship of Saints FIrst touching the Invocation of Saints the Council of Trent determineth that the spirits of holy men reigning with Christ are to be venerated and invoked And that they offer Prayers to God for us Also that it is good and lawful to pray to them and to flie to their Prayers their help and aid through Christ the only Saviour and Redeemer of men In pursuance of this Decree the Church of Rome hath continued her practice of worshipping Saints according to certain Forms of words prescribed in such Books as her Breviary and Missal which the Popes by virtue of another Decree of the same Council have revised and for common use established Now the forms and signs of Worship used in that Church are of such a nature that they seem at first view at least to give to the Saints if not that honour which is incommunicable yet that which God though he might have given it hath reserved to himself It may suffice to illustrate this matter if I select some Forms used in the Officium Parvum of the holy Virgin which maketh a part of the Romish Breviary set out in pursuance of the Decree of Trent by Pius the fifth In that Office the Virgin is worshipped in these Forms Establish us in peace Unloose the bonds of the guilty Bring forth light to the blind Drive away our evils Make us absolved of our faults meek and chaste Vouchsafe us a spotless life Thou art most worthy of all praise Let all who commemorate thee have experience of thy assistance Vouchsafe that I may praise thee O Sacred Virgin give me power against thy Enemies Let the Virgin Mary bless us and our pious off-spring Mary Mother of Grace Mother of Mercy do thou defend us from the Enemy and receive us at the hour of death We also find in that little Office this Exhortation ascribed to Bernard Let us embrace my Brethren the footsteps of Mary and let us cast our selves at her blessed feet with most devout supplication Let us hold her and not let her go till she bless us for she is able These Forms are agreeable to many others in the former part of the Roman Breviary out of which I will transcribe only the following Suffrages Holy Mary succour the miserable help the weak-hearted refresh the weeping pray for the people mediate for the Clergy intercede for devout women Let all who celebrate thy Commemoration feel Thy Aid Hail O Queen Thou Mother of mercy life sweetness and our Hope we salute thee To thee we the banished children of Eve do make our supplication To thee we sigh mourning and weeping in this valley of tears Go to therefore our Advocatress turn towards us those thy merciful eyes and shew us after this our banishment Jesus the blessed fruit of thy womb O mild O pious O sweet Virgin Mary Many of these Suffrages taken in their plain and common meaning do manifestly intrench upon the Prerogative of God And of this kind also are those Romish Prayers which are mentioned by Mr. Thorndike in the last part of his Epilogue in which he treateth of the Laws of the Church The third sort said he of the Prayers of Romanists unto Saints is when they desire immediately of them the same blessings spiritual and temporal which all Christians desire of God There is as he proceeds a Psalter to be seen with the name of God or rather Lord changed every-where into the name of Virgin There is a Book of Devotion in French with this Title Moyen de bien Servir prier adorer la Vierge Marie The way well to serve pray to and adore the blessed Virgin The Prayers of this third sort taking them at the foot of the Letter and valuing the intent of those that use them by nothing but the words of them are meer Idolatries As desiring of the creature that which God only gives which is the worship of the creature for the Creator God blessed for evermore And were we bound to make the Acts of them that teach these Prayers the Acts of the Church because it tolerates them and maintains them in it instead of casting them out it would be hard to free that Church from Idolatry which whoso admitteth can by no means grant it to be a Church The Letter then of Romish Forms being very scandalous those who justifie the use of them must shew some other words wherein the Romish Church hath so explained her self to the World that men may plainly know she never intended them in their common and native acception but in a sense agreeable to the tenure of Scripture and of such a sense Mr. Thorndike in the place before cited hath judged them capable If such an Interpretation be by her promulgated to the World the force of
the Objection against such Forms will be abated abated I say but not quite removed For still such Forms are perilous amongst the vulgar who follow the received sense of words notwithstanding their contrary Interpretations There may indeed be a very arbitrarious use of signs and if an Humorist will give this caution to his neighbour that when he useth the word black he must be interpreted as meaning white he shall not lye to him when he tells him that the Snow is black and that the Crow is white or when he writes himself Blacklous instead of Thomas Albius But amongst others to whom such caution is not given and who understand nothing of this absurd humor his reserved meaning will not salve the veracity of his word Now let it be examined Whether the Church of Rome hath made before the world a plain interpretation of the abovesaid Forms in such sort that men cannot without breach of charity put upon them any other than this or the like construction avowed by many Doctors Holy Mary pray for us in order to the obtaining these or other blessings from the alsufficient God Otherwise that Church is answerable for the common and scandalous meaning of the Latine words which are not now proper to Rome but the language of the World If such an Interpretation be divulged we must look for it either in the Council of Trent or in some following Synods or in the Decrees of the Popes or in the Catechism Breviaries Missals or some other such Books which are publickly authorized by that Church For the Breviarie and Missal their Forms have been already produced neither have I omitted any Antecedents and consequents which may decipher some hidden meaning in them It is true some Litanies subjoin the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Have mercy only to the Persons of the Sacred Trinity using to Saints and Angels the Form of Orate pro nobis or pray for us But they who in one Prayer desire the Saints only to pray for them do not barely by that one Prayer manifest to the World that they still mean no more than the requesting of their Intercessions when in an hundred other Forms they call upon them to bestow this and that benefit upon them and sometimes a benefit which is not to be expected but from the Almightiness of God For the Council of Trent such Forms in the ratification at least of their common use following by virtue of its Decree they seem rather to be Explications of the sense of the Council than to be by it explained For that were to make the Key first and the Lock which it should open afterwards But if the Breviary and Missal be explained by the Council they receive a very dark Interpretation and therefore next to insufficient For the common sense of its Forms is naturally or by custom plain and therefore their Explication in a forced sense though exceeding open will scarce be admitted by the vulgar who judg by that which is just before them They like ordinary Travellers plod on in the common road which is before their eyes and mind not the directions which are engraven or written on Pillars which stand on their right or left hand That Church should have been careful of the scandalous sound of Idolatrous Forms considering how tender Religion is of the Honour of God and it should have taken further care against the peril of that Idolatry which attendeth them considering the weak capacities of the people who will construe Idolatrous Forms in an Idolatrous sense If the Pope shall set forth a thousand Declarations concerning the Worship of one true God and yet shall pray in this Form 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Baal have mercy instead of this ancient one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lord have mercy the World would judg of him as of a well-wisher to Baal though the name does signifie no more than Lord because the common acceptance of it hath rendred it the sign of a false god In such manner the World would judg if he should call on God by the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though it be but the word DEUS or God with a very little alteration It appeareth then that in some Forms a forced Interpretation doth not effectually shew the sense which is vail'd under the Letter or rather where the Letter looks a contrary way And for the Forms of the Church of Rome the Council of Trent does not give any open Interpretation of them or so much as suggest that nothing is meant by them but an Ora pro nobis For the Council where it treateth of the Invocation of Saints it doth not only mention the usefulness of their Prayers but also of their help and assistance which assistance if it be no other than that of their Prayers the addition of the words Help and Aid to that of Prayers may seem very superfluous Something else that Church meaneth and it is elsewhere expressed by Patrocinium the aid of a Patron or rather of a Guardian for that it intendeth In the little Office of the blessed Virgin this Collect is prescribed We pray thee Lord let all thy Saints every-where help us that whilst we celebrate their merits we may feel their Patrociniâ—… or Protection I here interpret Patrocinie by Guardianship aid and protection not only because the word will bear that sense for in Festus Patrocinium is Tutela defensio and in Cicero Patronus is Custos defensor Coloniae but because those prayers refer to their Saints as to Patrons and Patronesses of persons places and things of which more at large in the pursuit of this Argument In the sixth Council of Milan it is said To be agreeable to pious Reason by Divine Offices and Litanies to implore the Intercession or Patrocinie of the Patrons of Cities and Provinces From such Patrons they expect other aids besides those of their prayers and they tell how they appear in times of danger and how active they are in effecting their deliverance In the Catechism of Trent that Church owneth Christ as the only that is as they mean it the principal Patron And as it intends not to signifie by that word that Christ doth no otherwise give aid to his Church than by his Intercession so neither doth it mean the like by the Patrocinie of the Saints The Council of Trent mentions their Aids besides their Prayers and accordingly the people pray for them in such Forms as these O holy Mary stretch abroad the hand of thy mercy graciously hear us in all our needs and necessities and leave us not comfortless nor alone without help in that dreadful day and hour when our souls shall go out of our bodies but assist and help us that we may then safely come and enter in at the gates of Paradise To thy help O Virgin Mother of God poor women labouring in childbirth do fly refuse them not in their necessities but help them in
be invisible and the Son to be visible are exceedingly different from those of the Arians For the Arians degrading the Son to the condition of a Creature another a lesser a second God as Eusebius of Caesarea is bold to call him They suppose him to consist of a visible substance So Maximinus the Arian remembred by St. Austin makes the Son invisible only as the Angels by non-appearance and the Father invisible by reason of his superior and immutable essence In the mean time this was the Creed of the Catholicks that the whole Trinity was invisible in one Divine substance It was also their belief that the Son appeared and not the Father not from any difference of nature but of order only the Father being as it were the root or head of the Trinity and therefore not so fitly appearing as his Substitute the second Person And they could perceive no more mutability in the Logos when he appeared than in the Father when he not in shape but by voice did own him as his only begotten Son And by this reason Saint Austin might have answered the Arians without asserting as he does that in the Old Testament the whole Trinity appeared For the manner in which this Appearance of the Son of God was effected I conceive it to have been done by the Assumption of some principal Angel upon the greatest and most solemn occasions without any vital or personal union and by the ministry of some other holy spirits together with an extraordinary motion sometimes in the air and thence in the brain and sometimes in the brain only And in this opinion I have been the more confirmed since I found the concurrence of the very learned and judicious Mr. Thorndike in great measure If I were now to guess what Angel was assumed I would fasten my conjecture on Michael the Arch-angel whom the Hebrews call the Prince of Faces or the Prince of the Presence By the Son the Father made the World and what if I say he governed it also as by his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Word For in God we do not distinctly apprehend his way of working but conceive of it under the more general notion of his will and command If I declare that the Son always acted in the Father's name I make but the same Profession which Tertullian did many ages ago and avoid the Anathema which Marcus Arethusius or rather which others in the Council of Sirmium denounced against all who confess not that the Son ministred to the Father in the Creation of all things and who maintain that when God said Let us make man the Father said it not to the Son but to himself Accordingly where God is said in the Old Testament to have appeared they seem to mistake who ascribe it to an Angel Personating God and not to the second Person as the Shechinah or as Tertullian calleth him the Representator of the Father To this purpose it hath been often noted by others and ought by me in this argument to be again brought to remembrance how often there is mention in the ancient Paraphrases of the Jews of the Word of God Neither doth it enervate the force of this observation that what we translate the Word does often signifie I Thou or He. Both because several of the places will not admit of that other sense and because the Jews themselves so commonly own this and so often mention the Logos or Word of the Father Philo is very frequent in speaking of the Divine Logos as the Substitute and Image of the invisible God both in his Book of Dreams and of the Confusion of Tongues It is said Philo in that latter Book a thing well becoming those who so join together fellowship and science to desire to see God If that cannot be they must content themselves with his sacred Image his Word A saying which Eusebius esteemed worthy of an Asterick and accordingly transcribed it into his Book of Evangelical Preparation The same Jew giveth to the Logos the title of the shadow or Portraict of God adding that God Almighty used him as his instrument in framing the World It is true that by the Logos Philo doth often understand the World which by the greatness order and beauty of it declareth naturally the Power Wisdom and goodness of God and pleadeth with him in the quality of the Workmanship laid before the feet of the Workman But it is as true and manifest that he speaketh also of the Logos of this inferior Logos as the maker and governour of it In his Book de Mundi Opificio he calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divine Word or the Word of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Image of God And he says further of it that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a super-coelestial Star the fountain of all the sensible or visible Luminaries And he had said in the former Page That the World was the Image of the Image or Archetypal Exemplar of the Logos of God PART 3. Of the Shechinah of God from Adam to Noah THis Substitute and Shechinah of God made Adam and he that gave him his Being gave him most probably the Law of it For so the Fathers interpret that in St. John The Word was God That or He was the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world And in this sense we are to expound St. Justin the Martyr where he speaketh of the Knowledg of God in Socrates by the Word He meaneth not that he was naturally a Christian but that so far as he was indued with such principles of Religious reason as Christianity owneth he had derived it from the Logos or Word of God who made the World and in it man a reasonable Creature To him he appeared as well as to others who sprang from him helping the mind as soon as it was seated in this thicker region of bodily fantasms And to Adam the Logos appeared I know not whether I should say in the shape of man or in the way of a bright cloud moving in Paradise when the wind began to rise and asking with a voice of Majesty after his rebellious subject And that this was the Son of God is insinuated by the Targum of Onkelos in the eighth verse of the third of Genesis The Text of Moses is thus translated And when they our first Parents heard the voice of the Lord God But this is the sense of the words of Onkelos And they heard the voice of the Word of the Lord God And amongst Christian Writers I may alledg Tertullian and St. Hilary of Poictiers who aboundeth in this Argument as also Theophilus Antiochenus whose words are so pertinent that I cannot forbear the enlarging of my discourse with the translation of them You will object said Theophilus that I teach that God cannot be circumscribed and yet that I say
and Causes of Idolatry being considered I intend in the next place to inquire into the time of its Birth so far as the silence or uncertainty of Tradition will permit It is one of the Aphorisms of Philo the Elder if he were the Author of the Book of Wisdom that Idols were not from the beginning And it is a question among the Learned whether Idolatry was any of those pollutions which defiled the old World and brought the deluge upon it It doth not appear that it was extant before the flood and many believe it to be no older than Cham. Tertullian it is true was of opinion that Idolatry began in the days of Seth and that Enoch restored true Religion and is for that Reason said in Scripture to have walked with God He hath given us his opinion but he hath concealed the grounds of it And I can think of nothing so likely to move him to this belief as the reverence he had for the fictitious Prophesie of Henoch which he often citeth and in which are contained severe Comminations both against the makers and worshippers of Idols S. Cyril of Alexandria is much of another mind affirming in his first Book against Julian the Apostate That all men from Adam to the days of Noah worshipped that God who by nature was one And he strengtheneth his opinion with this Reason Because no man is by Moses accused as a worshipper of other gods and impure Demons If that false Religion had then set foot in the World it would scarce have escaped that Divine Historian but he would in likelihood both have mention'd it plainly and severely reproved it For this is no sin of a mean stature It is in the judgment of Tertullian the principal crime of mankind the chief guilt of the world the total cause of Gods judgment or displeasure He meaneth that it is a kind of Mother-sin containing in it all other evils on which the Judg of the World passeth sentence of condemnation Lactantius goeth higher still in his censure of it giving to it the name of an inexpiable wickedness And S. Gregory Nazianzen sheweth what apprehension he had of the greatness of this guilt when he calleth it The last and first of evils So monstrous a sin if it had been in those early times committed it would a man would think have been as soon reflected on by Moses as the violence or injustice which then filled the earth or the unclean mixtures of the sons of God with the daughters of men That is as I guess in the same sense in which the tall Trees of Lebanon are called the Cedars of God the unbridled appetites of the High and Potent who made their Power subservient to their lust In the infancy of the World there were many Causes which might prevent the sin of Idolatry By the fresh date of it from the Creation in which God almost beyond miracle it self discovered his Almighty Being and Oneness by the appearance of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Son of God to Adam and others of which appearance largely afterwards by the long-lives of Adam and Seth and the rest of the Holy Line who could often inculcate to their families what themselves were so abundantly assured of and possibly also by the conviction of him who was the head of the degenerate Line unrighteous Cain himself who having seen God in his Shechinah could not propagate either direct Atheism or Idolatry though he was the Father of evil manners By these and perhaps by other Causes to us unknown it might come to pass that the worship of Idols was either not in being or at least not in frequent exercise in those first Generations We know nothing of those times but by the Pen of Moses and a doubtful word of his hath inclin'd some to refer the Origine of Idolatry to the days of Enos In his time saith Moses men began to Profane as some would render his Text instead of translating it as our Church doth to call upon the Name of the Lord. It is true that the Hebrew word Hochal doth sometimes signifie Prophaned But there is no Reason which may enforce such an exposition of it in this place the Name of God having been formerly profaned and with great irreverence abused in the irreligious Families of Cain and Lamech Neither is the termination of our worship on the creature instead of the Sovereign God the only prophanation of his Holy Name A rude Tongue and an immoral Life commit that offence and not only an Idolatrous mind or body Such profaneness the Arabian Metaphrast imputeth to that time whilst he thus turneth the Hebrew of Moses Then began men to recede from their obedience to God But to me the Chaldee Interpreter seemeth to come nigher to the scope of the Words the sense of which he expresseth in this manner In those days men began to make supplications in the name of the Lord. That is the numbers of Families increasing in the days of Enos they appointed more publick places for Gods service in which at set-times they might together and in a more solemn Congregation worship their great Creator I must confess that this exposition doth much disagree with the mind of Maimonides For he doth not only refer the beginning of Idolatry to the times of Enos but he accuseth Enos himself of that gross and stupid wickedness For thus he begins that short Book which he hath written on that Subject In the days of Enos men erred very greatly and the minds of the wise-men of that age were overborn with stupidness Even Enos himself was one of them who thus erred Now this was their error the worship of the Stars A very rash and rude reflexion upon so holy a Patriarch and relishing of Rabbinical dotage For certainly divers of those Writers if any others have had a flaw in their Imaginations though Maimonides amongst them all may be allowed the largest intervals of sobriety From Cham therefore rather than from Enos the Learned derive the beginning of Idolatry though I know not whether under him it may not be dated a little too soon The heart of Cham being before the flood deeply depraved it was rather hardened by the escape than warned by the mighty danger of that general Deluge Insomuch that it was just with God to give him up to the further seducement of his sensuality and to the visible power of the old Serpent who may seem to have been for a time chained down by the Curse in Paradise but was now as I conjecture let loose again for the punishment of those whom Gods severe and miraculous discipline did not cleanse of their folly He therefore is esteemed the Father of Idolatry that Monster in Religion which in his corrupt Loyn was by degrees multiplied into innumerable heads But S. Cyril of Alexandria in two places beginneth Idolatry at the confusion of Languages and with Belus rather than
or the subtler and less excusable sort of them Of that number were Celsus and Julian Celsus demandeth Whether any man besides a sottish Ideot who has not a grain of salt in his mind can believe Stone Wood Brass or Gold formed by an Artificer to be a God and not rather a Statue sacred to the Gods The Excuse of Julian is not unlike to that of Celsus We worship Images said that Apostate Emperour not that we think them to be very Gods themselves but that by them as Symbols we may worship the Gods This Petavius the Jesuit in his Note on the Margent calleth a frigid Evasion I grant it is so but is not the like Apology used in justification of Image-worship by that Society of which Petavius was a a Brother So goes the world even the Learned world the same reason is by factious Partiality called a piller in one mans Cause and a straw in anothers But let us return to our Argument from this short digression In pursuit of it it ought to be taken notice of that the Writers of the Old Testament seem to speak very differently from Celsus and Julian in this matter of the Worship of Images and Statues They seem to upbraid the Gentiles as the Worshippers of the very Statues themselves without further reference unto God or Demons There stood in Zion then a Fort of the Jebusites certain brazen Images as Talismanical Protectors of it in them the people trusted believing that David could not take that Fort till he had removed those divine Guards With these David reproached the people calling them the Blind and the Lame which his soul abhorred that is such Idols as had eyes and saw not feet and walked not Other Prophets argue with Idolaters from their own experience and appeal to them whether their Idols could hear or see or help them and whether they were not the works of mens hands which they adored They mock them as such who prayed for a prosperous Journey to an Idol that could not move and who worshipped one part of a dead Tree which by the other part of it served for fuel for fuel not for their Altars but for the ordinary fires of their Kitchin They do not deride them as vain men who trusted in a creature which had no power or virtue in it but what it derived from God as a late French Author seems to suggest but as such who depended on an Idol on a thing which neither in it self nor from any foreign cause supreme or subordinate contained or dispensed the virtue they ascribed to it One would be apt to conclude from such scoffs of the Prophets that the Gentiles made their very Images their ultimate Gods They did so by interpretation but not by direct intention of mind unless they were the very scum of the scum of the world Those who had any measure of understanding discoursed after the manner of Clinia in Plato's Eleventh Book of Laws Of the Gods said Clinia some are seen to others which we see not we erect Images and Statues And though these Statues be in themselves without life yet we esteem them animated Deities and believe whilst we worship them that they are very favourable to us The barbarous Americans made the same distinction with the Philosophical Clinia They were upbraided by Frier Gage for worshipping an Idol of black wood which they had placed in a Cave of the Earth But instead of putting them to silence he received this answer from them They told him that themselves believed the Image to be but wood of it self but that they knew also by their own ears that it had spoken to them they thence concluded that a God was in it and that on such a miraculous voice they rightly founded their devotion This excuse then was common but so was not such extraordinary operation as the Americans spake of If it had been vulgarly notorious among the Egyptians Chaldeans and Assyrians the Prophets would scarce have appealed to them whilst they discoursed of the nullity and vanity of their Images for then the people might have refuted their Argument by professing their experience of signs and wonders But nothing was done Supernaturally by many of their Statues Their Priests and Statesmen deluded them frequently with their Tales and Arts and they sacrificed many of the Provisions for their BELS to their own stomack Haly speaketh of Images in Egypt known to himself which could move very strangely as did the Dove of Archytas Ruffinus mentioneth an Iron-Image of Serapis at Alexandria and Pliny one of the same metal in the Temple of Arsinoe sustained by Magnets to the intent that the people might behold them with admiration as supported in the air by nothing but Miracles Dionysius Halicarnassensis telleth of the Mother of Marcius Coriolanus and of other Women sent in Embassy to him by the Senate when he had made defect to the Volsci that prevailing with him to restrain his Forces the Senate out of the publick Treasury built to Fortune a Temple and an Image and the Women erected a second Image at their private charge Of this second Image he reporteth out of the Pontifical Records Registers of their own cheats under better names and colours that it spake Latine in the audience of many What it spake was it seems to this sense O ye Matrons ye by the Holy Law of the Commonwealth have made this dedication of me Where there was not this deeper art much was contributed towards the delusion of the people by the solemn worship the costly and pompous dress the stately Processions the secret Repositories of the Idols of the Heathen Distance procured reverence and the splendor of Gold of which some consisted and the gilding by which others were made very glorious created amusement in the eyes and fancies of the Vulgar who have scarce reason enough to correct their senses The Statuaries were not masters of much true Art we see little of proportion in their Images or of Ordonance in their Tables That of Isis shews an ill hand and a worse judgment But of such Art as might amuse and astonish either with pleasant or frightful magnificence there was enough among the rudest Gentiles In Goa the Heathens of East-India built a Temple of black stone and shaped their Pagods or Idols in figures of horror In Pegu they abounded with Idols of pure gold whose Crowns were enriched with valuable Jewels One of these was of a prodigious heighth and they called him Apalita and supposed him to be a Guide to Pilgrims They had also a statue of silver in the proportion of a Giant and he was such a Patron among them as Mars was among the Greeks and Romans Peter Della Valle speaks of an Image in Ahineli in the same India called Virena It stood as he describes it at the upper-end of a Temple upon a Tribunal in a dark and solemn place It had many
betwixt the Papists and the Reformed PART 3. Of the Worship of the Golden Calf THE Golden Calf was either the ultimate Object of the peoples Worship or a Symbol of some Deity which they finally honoured Cardinal Cajetan in his Commentary on Exodus supposeth the former and thinketh them to speak properly in that form which they used These are thy Gods or this is thy God who brought thee out of the land of Egypt As if those Worshippers though sufficiently brutish were as stupid as the very Idol it self As if they could believe that their deliverance was miraculously wrought for them by a Statue which they saw formed after the time that they were delivered Wherefore Cardinal Bellarmine contendeth that the speech hath a Figure in it and that the Calf was a Symbol of a Deity yet not of the true God but of the Idol Apis which they had seen honoured with singular reverence in Egypt That it was not the ultimate Object but a Symbol or Image is suggested by Tertullian who calleth it Simulachrum Vituli not a God but the Image or Idol of the Calf Neither ought it to be dissembled that Philo Lactantius and St. Hierom believe the Calf to have been the Statue of Apis. To the great name of Bellarmine I oppose that of Tostatus who affirmeth those words of the people These are thy gods to carry this sense with them O Israel God who was without Body and unseen and who brought thee out of Egypt and gave thee a passage through the Red Sea is he whom thou now seest that is his Divine virtue resideth in that Golden body Nay I may oppose to Bellarmine the greater Authority of the Council of Trent the Catechism set forth by order of that Council doth teach though not directly yet by consequence that the Calf of Aaron was a Symbol of Jehovah seeing it owneth the Calves of Dan and Bethel to have been worshipped as his Statues Now this latter it acknowledgeth because it owneth them in Israel who halted betwixt God and Baal as also the Samaritans to have been divided betwixt the true God and false Deities or Idols What Deities then were the extreams betwixt which these unstable and giddy Israelites did visibly stagger Did not they stagger betwixt the new Religion of Baal learned from the Zidonians and the more ancient and less corrupt yet too much depraved one of the God of Israel who as appeareth by his Name and Rites used there was worshipped by those Symbols taken without Divine allowance from the Cherubim on the Ark which were only Appendages of the Shechinah and not intermediate Objects of the High Priests Reverence If these Symbols had not been used as the Shechinah of the true God Jeroboam would not have been so severely blamed for making the lowest of the people Priests of the high Places for the vilest and meanest people the lees and dreggs of the world had been the fittest instruments in the servicc of Idols Like Deity like Worshippers Now to this Worship at Dan and Bethel Jeroboam was moved by his Political interest which made it necessary for him to continue the Schism not by dividing the Israelites from their God whom they would not wholly renounce but by setting apart distinct places and Symbols of his especial presence There were in Israel secret Worshippers of God after a right negative manner no less than seven thousand who served God only But such as these were not visible to the Prophet who bemoaneth himself as if the Church the Church of Israel was confined to his own person He therefore meaneth not by his halters such as sometimes worshipped the true God in holier manner than Jeroboam prescribed and sometimes Baal a name common both to the new and old Idols For them he could not openly upbraid of whom he had no knowledg His meaning Jehu expoundeth when he opposeth the Priests of Baal to the servants of the Lord For what other servants than the Priests of Jeroboam did then publickly officiate in Israel For Ahab succeeded his Father Omri who had established the Vanities or Idols of the Calves and sinned beyond Jeroboam himself And Ahab was so far from restoring Gods pure Worship that he outwent his Father Omri in encouraging that which was false and degenerate So properly may the AEtas Parentum in Horace be here applied Against the Authorities of Philo Lactantius and S. Hierom before-cited I put into the ballance the words of Aaron Aaron called the Idolatrous Festival a Feast to Jehovah making use as Micah did afterwards of the most Revered name of God I argue not here from the bare imposition of that word for Idolaters did learn to give to Creatures that incommunicable Name But I argue from the reverence which is due to Aaron the select high Priest of the God of Israel He offendeth extremely against charity and good manners who thinketh of such a person that he would pacifie a clamorous people with so vile a condescension He had a better design howsoever the madness of the people perverted it It cannot be thought that the God whom he served in so Sacred an Office should be so soon forgotten by him and so ungratefully and wretchedly dishonoured in a base Egyptian Idol passing under the most separate name of Jehovah It was ill enough that he set up a Symbol of Gods presence where he had not appointed him It was a crime sufficiently high that he had erected an undue Statue or an arbitrarious external sign of Gods presence though not an Image of him for such the Cherubims were not For I suppose he took his Pattern from part of what he saw in the Holy Mount when the Shechinah of God came down upon it attended with Angels Of them some were Cherubims or Angels appearing with the Faces of Oxen as I afterwards shew Now it was a great presumption to worship God in any other than in his proper and allowed Symbol as rightly Altisiodorus though it happened to be a Cherub and not Apis. The Sacrifices offered in the Worship of the Calf were not agreeable to any Egyptian Idol For amongst them at that time the blood of a Bull was as great an abomination as was the blood of a Swine to the Hebrews At that time I say for after the Macedonian Conquest the Idol Apis it self had in the Suburbs beasts solemnly offered in Sacrifice to it Also before those times all the Egyptians sacrificed clean and male Bullocks if Herodotus be an Author of credit And it appeareth by the History of Elijah that Beasts were offered upon the Altars of the Zidonian Baal or Sun from whom they had expectation of an answer by fire But he was either asleep at that time with his eye closed by the air then in disposition for clouds or in his journey of Diurnal motion and did not or rather could not mind
we are daily delivered from the greatest dangers of Soul and Body For the Books of publick Offices their Forms have been already produced neither can I see where the Comment of any Rubrick removeth the scandal of their Text. Concerning Manuals they are usually composed by private Doctors or devout Students who often intermix the Glosses of their own Reason But nothing less than the Church it self can authentickly explain its Universal practice And for such Manuals as are authorized by the Church to me they seem to transcend rather than to come short of the Forms of the Missal and Breviarie Such a Manual is that of the Hours of of the Blessed Virgin in which if there had been any such Explication of the Forms used to her it had been shut up together with other Manuals from the common view of the Christian world by the Interdict of any vulgar translation of it For to every Country has not been granted the Sclavonian priviledg That people have been allowed the Books of their Religion in their vulgar tongue with advice notwithstanding to embrace the Latin though to them an unknown language In the Province of Mexico it was decreed by the Synod That no Books of Religion should be read without the permission of the Ordinary And the Manuals which were appointed for the use of the people whether Spanish or Indian were not likely to expound to them the meaning of the Roman Forms for their Contents were these The Lords-prayer The Salutation by the Angel The Apostles Creed The Articles of Faith those in the Creed of Trent The Precepts of the Decalogue The Precepts of the Church The seven Sacraments the seven deadly Sins and the Salve Regina This Antiphona called Salve Regina has been already repeated and it is one of the higher Forms of the Worship of the Virgin And Father Paul did in some measure shew his dislike of it in forbearing to repeat it as did his Brethren at the end of the Mass. But it is true that he coloured his aversness with such an excuse as this that he was not to observe a Decree of Thirty Fryars against the Order of the whole Church Now in the abovesaid Synod of Mexico there is a special inforcement of the singing of Salve Regina daily and with all solemnity during a great part of Lent And the Bishops are there much pressed to procure in this manner with all solicitude the increase of pious devotion towards the holy Virgin The English Romanists have had often in their hands the Manual of Godly Prayers published at St. Omers by John Heigham In the sixth Edition of that Book I find no Explication of the Worship of Saints but much which seemeth to advance it to a degree too high for it Under the first or in our account the second Commandment the Penitent is there taught to confess this as one breach of it that he hath not daily recommended himself to God and his Saints In the Litany of our Lady he hath these Forms O holy Mary stretch abroad the hand of thy mercy and deliver our hearts from all wicked thoughts hurtful speeches and evil deeds O holy Mary we worship thee we glorifie thee Words which are a part of that Religious Thanksgiving which the ancient Church offered to God and called the Angelical Hymn Horstius in his Manual called the Paradise of the Soul reprinted lately at Colen and adorned with Sculptures seems as devout as Heigham now cited for thus he prays or comments on Gratia Plena O blessed Virgin be graciously pleased to pour forth that Grace of which thou art full that the vein of thy benignity overflowing the guilty may receive absolution the sick medicine the weak in heart strength the afflicted consolation those that are in danger help and deliverance O that I could but deserve one drop of such great fulness for the refreshing of my dry and parched heart For the private Oral Instructions of the Romish Ecclesiasticks concerning the use and intent of such Forms I pretend not to be well acquainted with them But as to their publick Preaching I am not ignorant of one very common and no less scandalous usage For the Preacher after a short Preface which introduceth his Text or Subject exhorts the Congregation to say Ave Maria in order to a blessing upon that holy business about which they are assembled And this the Reader may see not only in the more private Sermons of Monsieur de Lingendes but likewise in the more publick one of John Carthenius a Carmelite at the Provincial Synod of Cambray By this Discourse it plainly appeareth that the Letter of the Roman Forms in the Invocation of Saints does to the most vulgar ears sound as Idolatrous as also that that Church hath not provided any publick direct clear Interpretation of them in its subsequent Synods Missals Breviaries Catechism Decretals Authentick Manuals or what I likewise may add in its Bullarium which as shall anon be shewed exalteth the Canonized into the condition of Patrons and Guardians of men There then remaineth this only to be said by the learned of that Communion That they who hear the Church professing plainly its Faith in one supreme God in Trinity cannot think it meaneth by any words whatsoever to give to the Creature the supreme Honour of that Trinity which it so solemnly acknowledgeth And indeed seeing all the Romanists believe the Apostles Creed seeing many of them appropriate all Latria to God seeing they teach in their Manuals that therefore all Prayers are ended with Through Jesus Christ our Lord to signifie that whatsoever we beg of God the Father we must beg it in the name of Jesus Christ by whom he hath given us all things some allowance is to be made them in the Exposition of those Forms which sound as if the Saints were invoked with Latria But yet it may be demanded whether the Forms and practice of a corrupt Church may not contradict their general Rule of Faith Whether the Roman Forms be applied to that Rule of Faith by any but prudent Ecclesiasticks and Laicks who are not the greater number Whether amongst them they take not away some honour from God though not that which is absolutely incommunicable And whether a Church which calleth it self Christian and Catholick should not be more careful of publick Forms of speaking in Prayer such as may render the Supplicants Idolaters in themselves in the ignorant use of them and to others by the external scandal whatsoever license the world takes in phrases of common speech And here it were well if those who so often alledg Mr. Thorndike in favour of their cause would weigh the words of a Letter of his said to be written about a year before he died To pray to the Saints saith he for those things which only God can give as all Papists do is in the proper sense of the words Idolatry If they
observed This if it needeth to be avouched by authority after a serious view of the state of Egypt and Israel in their parallel and disparity I may cite to my purpose that excellent Interpreter of the Scriptures St. Chrysostome At what time said he God delivered the Hebrew people from the Egyptian troubles and barbarous tyranny of Pharaoh seeing them still to retain the Relicks of Impiety and to be addicted even to madness to all things which fall under the senses and to be struck with the admiration of beautiful Temples he himself commanded that a Temple should be made for them excelling and obscuring all others not only in the magnificence of the matter and variety of art but also in the form of its structure And as a good Father who has at length received a Son returning to him after much time spent in dissolute company does with honour and safety put him into circumstances of greater abundance lest being reduced to any straits he calls to mind his former pleasures of debauchery and be afresh affected with a desire of them So God perceiving the Jews infected most sottishly with propenseness to sensible things does in these very things make something for them highly excellent that they might never for the future linger after the Egyptians or after the things of which they had experience whilst they sojourned amongst them PART 5. Of the Shechinah of God from Moses to the Captivity BEfore this Temple was built or shewn so much as in the model of it to Moses the Word of God assuming an Angel appeared to him in the luster of flame in a bush on Mount Horeb. Moses calleth him in the second verse of the third of Exodus the Angel of God and God in verse the fourth and in the sixth verse he stileth himself the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob and in the eighth verse he is said to have descended “ Now he saith Justin Martyr that called himself the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob was not the Universal Creator but the minister of his will With him agree Eusebius St. Hilary and St. Ambrose The words of St. Ambrose are to this sense The God himself who was seen by Moses saith my name is God This is the Son of God who is therefore called both Angel and God that he might not be thought to be he of whom are all things but he by whom are all things Philo the Jew himself calleth the Voice to Adam to Abraham to Jacob to Moses from the Bush the effect of the Logos of God This Lord afterwards when the people of Israel had under the Conduct of Moses begun their Journey from Egypt did miraculously direct them by the continued Shechinah of a Pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night This we read in the 13th of Exodus He who in that Chapter is called the Lord is in the following Chapter called the Angel of God who as formerly he had gone before the Camp for their Guidance so now the Egyptians pursuing he stood behind it as their defence With allusion to this appearance Eusebius having first proposed it as the Title of his Chapter That the Logos of old appeared and then began the Chapter with some places of Scripture relating to the cloudy Pillar he proceedeth in making this demand Who was he that spake but the Pillar of Cloud which had formerly appeared to the Fathers in the figure of Man And indeed whilst Moses is not contented with the promise of an assistant-Angel but expresly petitioneth for the continuance of Gods Presence he leaveth not us in want of a Commentator to tell us what kind of Angel was present with him That Angel no doubt it was who is called by that name in the Hebrew of the 6th Verse of the 5th of Ecclesiastes but by the Seventy Interpreters the Face of God Lactantius will have this Angel to have gone before the Israelites and divided the Waters His Power might do it but that his Shechinah did so is contrary to the Sacred Text The people being arrived nigh Mount Sina in Arabia Moses especially beheld the Shechinah of God whilst the Word assuming it may be a principal Angel and being attended as Jupiter by his Satellites if I may compare small things with great by a numerous retinue of other blessed Spirits did with solemnity and terror deliver the Law Where the Psalmist alludeth to that Solemnity in which God appeared with many Chariots of the Heavenly Host he in the very next verse useth the words which the New Testament interpret of Christ Thou art gone up on high thou hast led captivity captive As if both at Sinah and Sion and the Mount of the Messiahs Ascension God had triumphed in the Shechinah of his Son He saith Tertullian who spake to Moses was the Son of God who was always seen That is whenever the Divinity vouchsafed a visible appearance it was not by the Father but by the Son This Pamelius reckoneth as one of the Errors of Tertullian but by doing so he perhaps ran into one himself Tertullian doth not only affirm this but secondeth his Authority with a reason For Jesus said he not Moses was to introduce the people into Canaan Theodoret in his Commentary on the second to the Colossians mentioneth certain defenders of the Law who induced others to worship Angels saying that the Law was given by them They had been much more in the right if they had urged the worship of Christ the Angel of that Covenant The Law was given by Angels in the hand of a Mediator which whether it be meant of Moses or of Christ is a dispute amongst many though the margent of some of our English Bibles interpreteth it of the former That Title might have been as well applied to Christ not yet God-man yet the Minister of the Father And so St. Chrysostome and Theophylact do apply it And St. Chrysostome teacheth that therefore Christ gave the Law that he might have Authority when it was convenient to put an end to it And they who stiffly oppose such Ministration of the Logos give suspicion to jealous heads as if they look'd towards Racovia For if there were a second Person he surely must be fit for that great Office But I forbear to urge a place of uncertain sense and chuse rather to consider what the same Apostle saith in his first Epistle to the Corinthians He there saith concerning the Israelites that they tempted Christ in the Wilderness And this Christ whom they tempted is in the Old Testament called Jehovah Hence therefore it followeth that he who appear'd to the people in the Wilderness was the Logos of God This opinion which ascribeth to the Logos the delivery of the Law is by the learned Hugo Grotius in his Notes on the Decalogue branded with the name of a grievous error And it is not the manner of
the form of a a flying fiery Serpent whose body vibrated in the air with luster and may be fitly described by the Image of such a sword And whereas Maimonides interpreteth this Sword of the property of an Angel of which the Scripture speaketh as of a flame of fire he saith nothing distinctly applicable to the second Angel but what was common also to the Cherub whilst something is pointed at in the Text as peculiar to the second Angel called a flaming-sword It may be further noted to our present purpose that the word Saraph or Seraphim is used in Scripture both to denote as was said a fiery flying Serpent and also an Angel of a certain order whom Isaiah representeth as having wings and flying to him with a coal from the Altar Accordingly Buxtorf in his little Lexicon in the word Saraph thus discourseth Saraph signifies a fiery and most venemous Serpent Seraphim is likewise a name of Angels who from the clearness and brightness of their Aspect are seen as it were flaming and fiery But there is an authority in this Argument to me more valuable not for the notation of the word but for the sense so accommodate to my notion It is that of Tertullian in two places The first place is in his Book de Praescriptione Haereticorum There he suggesteth from others That Eve gave attention to the Serpent as to the Son of God The second place is in his Book against the Valentinians There he saith That the Serpent from the beginning was one that sacrilegiously usurped the Divine Image This soundeth as if the Devil in Serpentine form had represented part of the Shechinab of the Logos and that Eve conceived him to be an Angel appertaining to his glorious presence and a minister of his pleasure and now come forth from him Now I here suppose the Seraphim or Urim to be two Golden winged Images not from the number of the word Urim for the Jews use that number frequently of a single thing or person but from that of the Images called Cherubim which were two Symbols placed on the Ark which is typed in the Pectoral And I do not think so much as doth Maimonides that the Cherubim were therefore two lest the form of a single one should have been mistaken for the Figure of the one God as that these two like the Model of the Temple had reference to Earth as well as Heaven and besides Angels represented Moses and Aaron as the Ministers of the Logos under the Law as the four Creatures in the Vision of Ezekiel typed out the four Evangelists as Christs servants under the Gospel Neither did the number of the Cherubim prevent misconstruction For St. Hierom reporteth of some that by the two Seraphim Cherubim he meaneth they understood the Son and the Holy Ghost In the Pectoral I suppose Seraphim and not Cherubim this being an Oracle for Civil affairs and not properly the Oracle of the Temple and the Cherubim being according to St. Hierom before cited the seven Spirits about Gods Throne and according to David the Chariots on which he rides and the Seraphim of inferior attendance though Appendages of the Shechinah and of more frequent ministration abroad in Temporal matters such as that of the Captivity of Judah in the declaration of which to Isaiah a Saraph assisted For the Answer of God by Urim I suppose it not to have been conveyed through the mouths of these Images which were to be put into the Ark whilst nothing is mentioned of the taking them out But it seemeth most probable that as the Logos spake with a voice out of the Glory above the Cherubim and not by them their mouths being turned from the High-Priest so the High-Priest who here was the Logos of the Logos the Substitute and Type of Christ spake by Inspiration over the Pectoral and Saraphs Neither is it fully proved from the Book of Samuel that God spake Vivâ voce as the Annotations published out of the Library of the Archbishop of York would have it to be for it may well be said that God spake when through miraculous inspiration he spake by the mouth of his Prophets or Priests The Urim or Seraphim were put into the Pectoral and not set upon it as the Cherubim were on the greater Ark not so much for the concealment of them from the eyes of the people prone to Idolatry as for some other cause for the Ark was often carried in Procession with the Cherubims on it unless we shall say that the upper cover of the Ark or Mercy-seat which is mentioned in Scripture as a distinct piece of Artifice from it was not taken along with it But to me this seemeth one reason the High-Priest was here the Type of Christ-Incarnate who in the days of his flesh though he had Angels ministring to him did not often please to occasion their appearance It may be here objected That this Notion of the Seraphim in the Ark ascribeth to God the setting up as part of his Shechinah the Image proper to the Devil for such is that of the Serpent I answer that the contrary is here true for the groveling Serpent doomed by God is such a Symbol and such a one the Heathens worshipped Neither was any other distinctly used in Egypt or so far as I have read in any other Country of the world For though the Egyptian Cneph had wings yet he was not a winged Serpent but a compounded Symbol of which the tayl of the Serpent was but a small part adjoined to the breast wings and head of an Hawk or Eagle And Eusebius relateth from Philo Byblius that the Egyptian Hieroglyphick of the World was a Circle of which the Serpent the Symbol of a good Daemon as they conceived was but the Diameter the whole figure being almost like to the great Θ of the Greeks And by that it appears that the sacred Egyptian Serpent was the creeping one and not the winged one of Arabia whose company they so detested that they deified the Bird Ibis for destroying it But now the glorious winged Serpent was the Symbol of a good ministring Angel And accordingly God used such a one in the Wilderness and it is known by the name of the Brazen-serpent or Saraph Of that inferior kind of Shechinah it is proper to speak here it being to be understood from the Contents of the foregoing Discourse This then seemeth no other than a winged Saraph put on a Pole or standard like a Roman Eagle and constituted as a Symbol of the presence of the Logos so far as concerned his Divine Power and Goodness in healing them by miracle who were bitten with fiery Serpents That this was some sort of the Presence of the Logos appeareth from himself in the New Testament where he opposeth to it as Antitype to Type the natural body of himself crucified As Moses said he lifted up the
wings the mysteries of the Ark how strongly from thence I will not say that there is a more deep sense of the Text of Moses PART 6. Of the cure of Idolatry by the Image of God in Christ God-man AMongst the Mosaic Symbols the Ark certaâ—…nly was none of the meanest This Holy vessel without peradventure had most singular reference to Christ as God-man who at least from his Baptism hath been in that quality of God-incarnate exhibited to the World as the Divine Shechinah At Bethlehem the Son of God was Born the Town where the settled place for the Ark of God was discovered to David So much we learn from the words of Solomon in the sixth verse of the Hundred and second Psalm He there repeateth a saying of David his Father concerning the Ark Lo we heard of it at Ephrata Castalio plainly confesseth that he understood not what that expression meant For my part whilst I am in pursuit of the present Argument I cannot think the Text to be tortur'd by St. Hilary who will have it to confess Christ as the true Ark of God discovered typically at Bethlehem to David and afterwards manifested in the flesh to the World in the same City of David It is heard of in Ephrata Ephrata saith he is the same with Bethlehem where our Lord was born of the Virgin Mary There therefore the rest of God is heard of where first of all the only begotten God inhabited a body of humane flesh This is the Ark which rested in the Tribe of Judah for out of that Tribe our Lord sprang To this Ark as soon as he came into the World the very Princes or Wisemen of the Gentiles bowed down in the Cave at Bethlehem the star or miraculous meteor as an appendage of the Shechinah standing above it This Ark tabernacled among men and they saw his Glory when Baptized when transfigured This Ark giveth through Jordan or the Baptismal Laver a passage into the mystical Canaan On this Ark or Holy vessel of Christs body when he was Baptized by John in Jordan the glory of the Shechinah appeared a mighty lustre as Grotius hinteth hovering after the fashion of a Dove upon these waters of the second Creation On him the Holy Ghost dwelt or rested as God was said to do in the Tabernacle In him as the Law of God in the Ark and the Will of God known from the Oracle of the Shechinah were deposited all the treasures of wisdom and knowledg He is the great Oracle of God whom by a voice from Heaven out of a bright Cloud or Gods excellent Glory we are commanded to hear In him was the sum of the Law and the Prophets and he was the light of Israel of the Gentiles of the whole world To this Logos Clemens Alexandrinus ascribeth the mysteries of the Jews and Gentiles as to the great Teacher of them before his Incarnation So that he as a Divine subsistence and substitute of the Father giving the Law of Reason to Adam the Jewish Law to that people by Moses and to all the world the Christian Law or Will of God no Title could be more proper for him than that of the Divine Word And this Logos was not only the Wisdom but the Power of God and meriteth the name of the Ark of Gods strength In him dwelt the fulness of the Godhead bodily The Deity sojourn'd in an Ark of flesh or within the vail of it And in this sense I think some of the Ancients are to be interpreted who called Christ so often 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a God-carrying-man as our Language may truly though harshly render the Greek word though Nestorius abus'd the signification of it so far as to make it intimate a duality of persons in Christ. This Ark was the face or visible presence of God and he that had seen him as Messiah had in that sense seen the Father This body was not the very Godhead as Muggleton blasphemeth but the Godhead did in it shew forth it self to men in signs of mighty Power Holiness and Wisdom This Evangelical Ark was the Image of the invisible God not indeed the very picture or statue but as St. Hilary stileth him the Personator of his Essence It is true he saith of some of the Jews That they had never seen the shape of the Father his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Appearance And this he saith truly in two respects though him they saw when he thus spake to them For first there were none of them who saw him baptized or transfigured for in the same place he denies that they ever heard the voice of God And then these were unbelieving Jews and therefore saw him as meer man as one of the worst of men in their conceit an Impostor and Magician and not as the Messiah the Son the Incarnate Shechinah of God To such therefore as under those misapprehensions of him he saith elsewhere Why call you me good there is none good save one that is God However Christ in truth though not to the eyes of Infidels was the Image of the invisible Father and one whose design was to put all the Idols and Images of the Superstitious world under his feet Of this the Prophets foretold and this the world hath seen fulfilled Oracles by degrees ceasing and now scarce any footsteps remaining of that Triumvirate of gods for their gods had been men and those some of them no Heroes in virtue Jupiter the god of the Heavens Neptune of the Sea Pluto of the Earth It is said by the Arabick Author of the Prodigies of Egypt that when Noah named one God Idols fell prostrate It is more true of him who began the new world of the Gospel that when he appeared as the Image of the one true God Idolatry vanished before him And the Fathers will have it that when in his Childhood he went into Egypt and was brought to Memphis the Egyptian Idols fell at his feet And St. Hierom whose manner is as much to cite in his Commentaries the opinions which he had collected as to set down his own does tell of some who applied to Christ and the Virgin those words of Isaiah Behold the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud and shall come into Egypt and the Idols of Egypt shall be moved at his Presence From this Image of God in his Son Incarnate this Ark of flesh Divinity often shone on earth before his Instalment at Gods right hand The mighty power of God in his Life Miracles Preaching and sometimes in his Attendants the Angels and in his very bodily appearance Thus at his Transfiguration his raiment shone as the light he being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the brightness of the Glory or Shechinah of God And afterwards such Heavenly Majesty shewed it self in him that those who came to apprehend him as a Malefactor fell
Abrenuntias Satanae Resp. Abrenuntio Int. Et omnibus operibus ejus Resp. Abrenuntio Int. Et omnibus pompis ejus Resp. Abrenuntio b Rit Rom. ib p. 29. Horresce Idola respue simulacra c S. Aug. in Psal. 96. Non colimus mala Daemonia Angelos quos dicitis ipsos nos colimus virtutes Dei magni ministeriâ—… Dei magni a In Conc. 2. Nic. Act. 4. p. 247. Sic Tharas Omnes qui sacras Imagines se venerari confitentur adorationem autem recusant a sancto Patre h. e. Anastasio Episc. Theopol tanquam hypocritae redarguuntur b Hor. Serm. l. 2. Sat. 3. Prudens placavi sanguine Divos c Concil Trid. Sess. 22. c. 3. de Missis in Hon. Sanct. p. 853. Quamvis in hon mem Sanctorum nonnullas interdum Miss as Ecclesia celebrare consueverit non tamen illis Sacrificium offerri decet sed Deo soli qui illos â—…oronavit a Concil Trid. Inter Conc. Max. p. 895. See the Bull of Pius the 4th p. 944. b Conc. Trid. de Indice Librorum c. p. 918. See Conc. Aqu. p. 135. c Offic. Parv. B. M. p. 89. Ed Antverp Anno 1583 p. 96 c. a Ib. p. 90. b Ib. p. 102 107. c Ib. p. 103. d Ib. p. 107. e Ibid. p. 94. Lect. 3. Mens Octob. f Brev. Rom. in Commem de Sanctâ Mariâ p. 103. g See this Form with Additions in Serm. 2. de Annun which some ascribe to St. Austin h Brev. Rom. ad Completor p. 107. i Mr. Thornd Epil part 3. p. 356 357. a Servir answers to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 b Consider whether the Church of Rome doth not make such Prayers it self by making th e foregoing publick Forms a See S. Cressy's Exomolog Sect. 3. c. 3. p. 438. Ed. 3. This is only that they would intercede for us c. In his Answer to Dr. Pierce's Serm. c. 16. of the Invoc of Saints p. 196. this only accord to Card. Perron Prier pour Prier i. e. to desire them to pray for us a Conc. Trid. Sess. 25. Decr. de Invocat c. Sanct. p. 895. bonum atque utile ad eorum Orationes opem auxiliumque consugere b Offic. parv B. Virg. p. 97. c Conc. Milev 6. c. 3. de cultu Sanctorum p. 717. a Catech. ex Decr. Conc. Trid. p. 392. b In the Manual of John Heigham in our Ladies Litany for Saturday p. 380. c Ibid. p. 382. d Ibid. Prayers for Women travelling with child p. 519 520. e Ibid. the Lit. for Saturday p. 386. a J. H. Man Pr. at S. Omers An. 1620. p. 584. b Concil Rhem. sub Pio Quarto p. 139. Tolet. p. 757. Rothom p. 823. Rhem. sub Greg. 13. p. 886. Burdig p. 946. Turon p. 1005. Biturg p. 1069 p. 1075. Aquens p. 1122. Mexic p. 1351. Tolos p. 1380. Mechlin p. 1542. Narbon p. 1576 1580. c Concil Camer Ann. 1565. p. 176. a See Modum recitandi Oratdomin una cum memoriâ—… veneratione sanctorum in Horst Parad. Animae Sect. 2. c. 4 p. 107. c. b Corp. Jur. Can. l. 7. c. 4. p. 3. c L. 7. Decret c. 3. Tit. 5. p. 126. d Catech. â—…x Decr. Conc. Tridpart 4. c. 6. Sect. 1. num 3. p. 512. a Brev. Rom. in Fest. Pur. p. 721 In Offic. B. M. p. 89 c. b Offic. B. M. p. 97. See Miss Rom. in Oct. â—…mn Sanct. p. 527. Fac nos quae sumus c. c Horst Par. An. Sect. 2 p. 105. e Catech. Conc. Trid. Lugd. 1569. p. 390. d Brev. Rom. ad Complet p. 106 107. f Ibid. p. 392. g Ibid. p. 389. a Concil Mediolan 3. p. 379. Tolos c. 11. de llb. prohib p. 1423. Aven p. 1440 1441 comp with Concil Trid. Decret de Edit usu Sacr. Libr. p. 747. b See Concil Aqu. p. 1482. of the Books permitted in the Illyrican Tougue c Syn. Mexic p. 1201 1203 1204. d Fulgentio in the Life of Father Paul the Venetian p. 43. e Syn. Mexic Sect. 12. p. 1298. a Manual of J. H. p. 596. b Man of J. H. p. 380. c Ibid. p. 381. d Horst Paradis An. Sect. 7. Sect. 7. de B. Virg. p. 446. a Concil Camer p. 225. Et vos Reverendissimi Domini mei Patres optimi und mecum obsecro summi Patris filiam speciosam summi filii matrem formosam summi Paracleti sponsam gratiosam totiusque coelestis ac terrenae Ecclefiae Reginam Gratiae ac misericordiae matrem salutare dignemini dicsntes Ave Maria c. b Abridg. of Christ. Doctr. in the Expos. of the Mass. p. 294. a Dr. H. M. of the Idol of the Church of Rome p. 321 322. b See the like sense in Mr. Thornd Epil part 3. p. 356 357. cited here c. 10. part 3. c Ass. Annot. in Gen. 1. 1. The Hebrew word Bara is a word in its proper sense proper and peculiar to God and therefore should not be attributed to men how great soever Yet it is a familiar phrase in the stile of the Court to say such a one was created Earl or Marquess or Duke c. a Confess Wirtemb p. 122. Talis Petitio exigit ut is qui rogatur sit ubique praesens exaudiat pelitionem Haec autem Majestas soli Deo competit si tribuitur Creaturae creatura adoratur b Arnob. adv Gent. l. 6. p. 204. c Holden in Div. Fid. Analyâ—…i l 2. c. 7. p. 294. a Col. 2. 18. b Instit. spirit l. 2. c. 2. p. 54. Visum fuit memoriam instituere sanctorum non omnium sed quorundam quos selegi majore quadam devotione cultu prosequendos c. p. 58. S. Bernardin Alex. SS Sept. Dorâ—…ient S. Placid c. c Ms. ap M. R. W. de S. J. d Bish. Mont. in his Treatis of the Invoc of Saints p. 98. a Bish. Mont. Ibid. p. 97 98. a Abridg. of Christ. Doctr. in Expos. of 1. Command p. 123. a Horst Parad. Animae de cultu Ven. SS Ang. Praecip Ang. Cust. Admon Sect. 2. c. 2. p. 94 c. b Instit. Spirit l. 2. c. 2. p. 58. Cum iis quos mihi in Patronos Patronas elegi singularis quantum quisque posset totis viribus cultus rever debeatur c. Horst Parad. 〈◊〉 Sect. 2. 〈◊〉 3. de Patronis è Sanctorum numâ—…ro â—…ligendis indies peculiari devotione colendis p. 100 101 c. d Horst Parad. An. Sect. 2. p. 100. Patronum è Sanctorum numero c. e Instit. Spir. p. 63. Docebar Sanctorum c. See Cardin. Perron in res Resp. Reg. Jaâ—…obi l. 5. c. 3. a Horst Parad. p. 101. Sancta Tâ—…in miserere nobis Sancta Maria Ora pro nobis Sancte Michael Arch angele Ora. b Instit. Spir. P. 55. c Ead. ibid. P. 58. d Horst Parad. An. Sect. 2. P. 95 96. e Horst ib. in Dedic ante Sect. 2. p.