blinded Prophet amounted to no more then that the Kingdom of Saturn being to be restor'd the celebrated Virgin of the Heathens that is Urania or Astraea would return Of whom Ovid and Juvenal had written That at the Commencement of the Iron-Age the Virgin Astraea the last of the Celestial Deities had relinquished the Earth flowing with Blood So that in the pretended Prophecy of Virgil there is no other Virgin to be sought but Astarte or Hastoreth and Astaroth and Atargatis that famous Goddess of the Sidonians which Salomon ador'd in his old age which the antient Idolaters of Israel and Apuleius and Varro and the Romanes in general called the Queen of Heaven which Philo Biblianus in g Eusebius affirms taking it from Sanchoniathon of Berytus to have been the daughter of Uranus Sister to Rhea and Dione and one of the Wives of Cronus or Saturn her Brother by the Father's side For to lier it is that he particularly gives the Title of Virgin Tertullian calls her the Celestial Virgin who promiseth rain St. Augustine the Celestial Virgin worshipped by the Carthaginians Apuleius an African also and a most superstitious Adorer of this imaginary Deity the Virgin which sumptuous Carthage serves who riding on a Lion ascended to Heaven upon which account it is that in the antient Medals of Severus and Caracalla she is represented riding on a Lion And Lucian who proposes her under the name of the Goddess Tyria or Juno of Hierapolis says in two several places that Lions carry her which is affirm'd also by Macrobius CHAP. XIV Remarks of some less Considerable Mistakes of the Emperour Constantine in the Explication of Virgil's fourth Eclogue THe Observations which we have made of these Principal Mistakes of the plain-dealing Emperour Constantine were enough to take off the Credit of what other Conjectures he may have made upon the Poem of Virgil yet to make his Misapprehensions the more apparent I shall not think much to add these further Remarks He says in the first place That the Poet had written That Altars were to be erected the Temples to be adorn'd and Sacrifices to be offered to the new-born childe but there is not a Syllable to this purpose in all the Eclogue Then he is deceiv'd again when he conceives it is of the same new-born childe that the Poet said He shall lead the life of the incorruptible God for besides that the Latine hath it Ille Deûm vitam accipiet The life of the Gods it is most evident that the words of these Verses and the two next ensuing were by the Authour applied to Augustus under whom had happened the Birth he so much celebrated As to these insinuating Expressions The Flocks shall not be afraid of the great Lions The Serpent shall be crush'd and the noisome Plant destroy'd Assyrian Amomum grews every where upon occasion whereof the Emperour observes that The Faith shall not be daunted at the greatness of Royal Courts that The Serpent and Death are overcome by Jesus Christ that The Church shall spread it self from Syria all the world over I so acknowledg the undeniable Truths of those Remarks as while I admit them to affirm withall that they have not been rationally deduced For Virgil having no more in his fancy then to promise the Reign of Augustus the felicity of that of Saturn makes a Description of the Advantages thereof suitable to the imagination which the Heathens had of the first Race of men and their Lives so as they are represented by Ovid when he says The yet-free Earth did of her own accord Untorn with Ploughs all sorts of Fruit afford Warm Zephirus sweetly blew On smiling Flowers which without setting grew Forthwith the Earth Corn unmanured bears And every year renews her golden Ears With Milk and Nectar were the Rivers fill'd And Hony from green Holly-Oaks distill'd Add to this That from the Analogie and resemblance there may be between the Descriptions of Heathen Poets and those we finde in the Scripture where we read that under the Reign of the Messias There shall be a handfull of Corn sown upon the Top of the Mountains the Fruit whereof shall shake like Lebanon and the People of the Cities shall flourish like Grass of the Earth and The Wolf also shall dwell with the Lamb and the Leopard shall lie down with the Kid and the Calf and the young Lion and the Fatling together and a little childe shall lead them And the Cow and the Bear shall feed their young ones shall lie down together and the Lion shall eat straw like the Ox And the sucking childe shall play on the hole of the Asp and the weaned childe shall put his hand on the Cockatrice's den they shall not hurt nor destroy there is not any ground to conclude That the Idolatrous Writers had any sentiment of the future and That they themselves or their Sibyls were Divinely-inspir'd because there seems to be a consonancy as to the Words and Sense between them and the Prophets For besides that the Bible was Translated into Greek two hundred and nine years before the Birth of Virgil the Writings of the Prophets had not been even before absolutely kept from the knowledg of the Gentiles Nay it being supposed that having had some acquaintance with the Prophetical Oracles they might have adapted the words thereof to the Description of their Mythological Golden Age under the Reign of Saturn and apply'd to things pass'd what the Spirit of God denounc'd as to come there were not any inconvenience at all provided it be remembred that these People have not pronounc'd the Sentences of Celestial Predictions otherwise then as Parrats without meaning or aiming at any thing thereby but to heighten their particular Fancies with something that were strange and borrow'd Thus it is more then probable that Virgil for example it being granted he had seen somewhat of the Prophecy of Esay in the Greek having no other design then in Hyperbolical Terms to express his wishes for the Prosperity of Augustus's Reign and the Felicity of his Friend Pollio had no more in his Fancy then the restauration of the Saturnian Age and accordingly makes a Description of it not onely suitable to that of Ovid in the first Book of his Metamorphoses where to represent the Tranquillity of the first Inhabitants of the Earth not interrupted by any trouble and that as yet there was no object of Fear he says that it was not till the coming in of the Iron Age that Poison began first to be mingled War to be made c. and that after the Deluge the Earth first brought forth Monsters and among others Python whose Serpentine Figure was unknown to the new Race of People but also in a manner the very same with what he makes himself elswhere viz. in the first of his Georgicks speaking of Jupiter Before Jove's time c. All common was and of
〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and his intention had been to tell us that Saint Irenaeus declared the Apocalyps rather then to give us to understand that according to the Declaration of that great Martyr St. John saw his Apocalyps not onely under Domitian but the fourteenth year of that Prince or to express it in his own Terms towards the end of his Reign But with this little distortion of the words of Eusebius St. Hierome in his Catalogue expresses their true sence saying Domitian in his fourteenth year raising after Nero the second Persecution John banished to the Isle of Patmos writ the Apocalyps which Justin Martyr interprets and Irenaeus So that we must not with Cardinal Baronius give that Interpretation to his Discourse as if Domitian had began his Reign fourteeen years after Nero. For though it be indeed true since Nero died the tenth of June 68. and Domitian came into his Brother's place on the eighteenth of September 81. thirteen years three moneths and eight days after the unfortunate End of Nero and consequently about the beginning of the fourteenth year yet was it not the intention of St. Hierome to acquaint us what number of years had passed between the Reign of Domitian and that of Nero but that Domitian in the fourteenth year of his Reign which was the twenty seventh after Nero's Death raised the second Persecution against the Church So that it was inconsiderately done of him who Translated the Greek Version of Sophronius the antient Interpreter of St. Hierome's Catalogue into Latine to make him say as he fancied The fourteenth year after the Death of Nero instead of turning it according to the proper expressions as well of St. Hierome as Sophronius The fourteenth year Domitian raising after Nero the second Persecution nor indeed could it have been without contradiction to St. Irenaeus Clemens Alexandrinus and Eusebius nay to himself and that so much the more notorious by how much the more he pretended to follow the last whose Discourse he hath Translated in a manner word for word The Arabian Prolegomena upon the Gospels published by Peter de Kirstein have these words in them John made his aboad at Ephesus seven and twenty years that is to say six under Nero ten under Vespasian two under Titus and nine under Domitian then was he Banished by Domitian into the Isle of Patmos where he stayed seven years till such time as he was called back by Nero the younger that is to say Nerva By this account the Apostle of God should have retired out of Palaestine into the Proconsulary Asia not as the Greek Fasti very probably suppose in the 68. of our Saviour because of the Revolt of the Jews from the Empire and the Eruption of the War brought into the Heart of their Country by Vespasian immediately upon the retreat of the Church of Jerusalem to Pella but in the year sixty three concurrent with the ninth of Nero and the time of St. John's Abode both at Ephesus and Patmos should have been thirty four years comprehending six years of Nero and the whole Reigns of Vespasian Titus and Domitian For Nero killed himself as hath been already observed the tenth of June 68. Vespasian having news brought him in Palaestina of the Murthering of Galba which happened on the sixteenth of January 69. as also of the Tragical End of Otho on the twentieth of April following and of the Rising of his Friends in Rome assumed the Empire and kept it till the twenty fourth of June 79. and Domitian who had succeeded his Brother Titus dying the 13th of September in the year 81. was violently forced out of the world on the 18th of September in the year 96. leaving the Empire vacant to Nerva who nulled all his Acts and by that means gave St. John the Liberty to return to Ephesus But if this Calculation be receivable in as much as it maintains the common Sentiment of the Fathers concerning the time of St. John's return yet can it not agree with the Relation of St. Irenaeus affirming that almost in his time Domitian began the Persecution towards the end of his Reign and leaving it to be inferred that the Persecution was of no long continuance which could not be said if according to the account of the Arabians we must assign it seven years that is to say a full half of Domitian's Reign and not onely the End whereto St. Irenaeus Eusébius and all the Fathers strictly limit themselves among whom Tertullian Contemporary with St. Irenaeus expresly observing the Violence of that Persecution to have made no great Havock says Domitian an Imp of Nero as to cruelty had designed a Persecution but being also himself a man he easily smothered what he had begun having re-established those whom he had Banished So that according to his Opinion the mischief was stayed by his very Order who had occasioned it But whereas by attributing to him the Re-establishment of the Banished he derogates from the Authority of the Tradition of the Antients which according to Eusebius delayed it till the Reign of Nerva whom the Prolegomena I know not why call Nero the younger I shall by no means presume so much upon his particular Opinion as to oppose it to the common belief of all the Fathers Which having forced us to reduce onely to one the seven years assigned by the Prolegomena for the Banishment of St. John imposes upon us yet a greater necessity to quit the Opinion of the Greek Fasti which place the return of St. John under the twelfth year of Domitian coincident with the ninety third of our Saviour and commit therein an Errour so much the more unmaintainable in that they make the Persecution cease as also the effect it had by the confession of all caused two years before it began and ridiculously presuppose that St. John was by the Decree for his Release restored to his former Liberty before he had been in a capacity to lose it by the unjust Decree for his Banishment He who hath busied himself in writing a Synopsis of the Lives of the Prophets and Apostles under the Name of Dorotheus having by mixture of his own Conceptions corrupted the words of the Synopsis of St. Athanasius imagines that St. John was Banished by Trajan that he lived one hundred and twenty years and returned from Patmos to Ephesus after Trajan's Death But all yet followed as it should seem by Suidas is contrary both to Tradition and the Truth since First Trajan came not to the Empire till the twenty eighth of July in the year 98. the very next to that wherein St. John was restored by Nerva Secondly St. John was according to the Opinion of St. Hierome honoured with the Apostleship in his Youth and while he was yet a Boy so that the hundredth year of our Saviour wherein he was Translated to Celestial glory could not have been much beyond the ninetieth of his Age to
of Rome and the Practice of those of her Communion for some Ages past that a Childe not without some trouble induced either to bewail the misery of his Father or to beg his deliverance out of it shunning the performance of his Duty assoon as he were obliged should forbear applying any remedy thereto Yet is this the manner of proceeding which it seems may be objected to St. Augustine He had stay'd till the Night after his Mother's Death e're he beset himself either to do his Devotions or Weep on her behalf he spent in that Exercise but a small part of an hour and never that we could hear of offered to reiterate it that Night or the next Day or the days ensuing but absolutely gave over as if he had with one word speaking discharged all his Duty And to represent his Action more truly and naturally I have used several Expressions attributing to him either Vows or Devotions or Tears in as much as these words I took a pleasure to weep concerning her and for her do not necessarily signifie I took a pleasure to pray for her but may bear this sence I have wept for her sake and deplored for her not onely that she is Dead but that she was forced to submit to the necessity of Dying e're she had come near Old Age viz. in her fifty sixth year Secondly That she died out of her Country and Thirdly Without any hope of being disposed into the Sepulchre she had prepared for her self at Tagaste For as all these Accidents were prejudicial to him so might they well occasion Tears yet he that shed them not be engaged to pray for her and according to the Rule of Contraries I see no more Reason to conclude He wept for his Mother therefore He prayed for her then that when we read that St. Chrysostome advises in several places to mourn for the Catechumens who died in their Ignorance any one should thence think to conclude that he contrary to the intention of the Church ordered that men should expiate their Crimes by Tears and Prayers that is to say vainly attempt what is impossible 'T is true that most Divines as well Antient as Modern acknowledg that David wept for his Son Absalon and that so much the more bitterly in as much as his affliction was in his judgment at least beyond all consolation since that unhappy Parricide pursued by the Wrath of God and taken away by a violent Death suitable to his Crime was not capable of any assistance either by his Prayers or otherwise But in regard St. Augustine affirms of himself that at the hour of his Mother's Burial the accustomed Service of the Church of his Time was celebrated and that he prayed to God I am willing to grant that he renewed his Supplications the Night following and that when he says He had wept for her his meaning was to have it understood that he had prayed for her weeping So that without debating the matter of Fact and presupposing it such as it may be pretended it shall be my Business to observe First That he neither thought there should be any great accompt made of that kinde of Office since he conceived he had discharged his Duty in the performance thereof though he had spent in it but a small part of an hour nor that there was any great necessity of it since he continued it not nor that it was well-grounded since he conceived there might be Sin in it in as much as according to the true Belief of the Church of Rome he engaged himself to demand a thing already done praying for her whom he esteemed as advanced to Glory not to stand in need thereof To give this last Consideration its full Weight and to raise it to an higher Pitch of Evidence I am onely to produce what he adds immediately after fastening his Discourse to the Time when he Writ his Confessions Ego autem c. But now my heart being recovered of that Wound for which it might be blamed of a carnal affection I pour out to thee O our God in the behalf of that thy Servant a kinde of Tears far different which flow from a contrite Spirit out of a consideration of the danger of every soul that dies in Adam Where I intreat the Reader to note that he attributes to an Heart wounded with carnal affection and such as was worthy blame the Tears he had shed for his Mother the night after her Decease and that making it his Business to give us a Relation of it he was obliged to change his former Disposition and all this no less then nine years after that Accident in as much as his Mother died at Ostia on the fourth of May 389. and was interred the same Day Secondly That the Night between the Fourth and the Fifth he wept concerning her and for her Thirdly That in the year 389. according to the Observation we have of his own in his Retractations he writ his Confessions which he there acknowledges composed after his Questions dedicated to Simplicianus already Arch-Bishop of Milan and who according to the Antient Order of Ordinations could not before Sunday April the twelfth the day of Quasi-modo have taken the place of St. Ambrose who departed this World on Easter-Eve April the fourth 397. And whereas after he had dried up his first Tears and recovered of the Wound of his Heart whereof he had been his own accuser in the beginning of the tenth year after his Mother's Death he thought good to open another Source of Tears proposing to himself with a compassionate Spirit his deceased Mother exposed to some danger and withall that it were neither just nor becoming the respect we ow his Blessed Memory uncircumspectly to impute to him what the Poet said of Persons in Love that sibi somnia fingunt as if this Great Man merely to exercise his Wit coud have taken pleasure in imagining Accidents without any occasion and feigning especially speaking to God what was not Let us see how far his Discourse may agree with his own Principles and forbearing to interpose our Judgment in what concerns his manner of proceeding be content to receive it from himself and absolutely to submit to his own Rules In the first place it is manifest he admitted but two Receptacles for the Souls that had left their Bodies for thus he determines in the tenth Treatise upon the First Epistle according to St. John Ille qui vixit morticus est rapitur ad alia loca anima ipsius corpus ipsius ponitur in terra an fian illa verba an non fiant non ad eam pertinet tamen aliud agit aliud patitur aut in sinu Abrahae gaudet aut in igne aeterno aquae modicum desiderat c. He who hath been alive is also dead his Soul is carried away into other places his Body is put into the Earth whether those words which he recommended expiring come or come not to pass
of the particular devotion which Augustus had for Apollo to whom not many years after he dedicated a magnificent Temple in the Mount Palatine and that in his secret Debauches as for instance in his Banquet sirnam'd Of the twelve gods he had represented Apoâ—… and that with the greater Analogie in regard of his being the great King among men as the Sun amongst the Starrs and was then in the prime of his age being four and twenty years old as the Sun who never growing old looks always with the same countenance According therefore to his first mis-representation Constantine imagin'd that Virgil had by the multitude of new men meant the Christian Church But it is clear that his imagination ran onely upon that race which he supposed was under the Consulship of Pollio to begin the Golden-Age after the expiration of that of Iron From thence the Emperour comes to make this Remark What can there be more manifest for he adds The Oracle of the Cumaean Prophecy is come to its period clearly signifying the Cumaean Sibyl And I acknowledge that Virgil speaking of the coming of the last Age of the Cumaean Prophecy reflected on that of the Cumaean Sibyl but I affirm withall First That to alledge any such thing is manifest to shoot wide from the Mark and not to say any thing pertinent to the Discourse which had preceeded that is to say that Cicero had copied out and translated the Acrostick attributed to the Erythraean Sibyl Erythraea and Cumae are they the same thing And to persuade people that those who had spoken of the Inhabitress of one of those two places are at no difference with the Authours who maintain the other was it not necessary to make it appear before-hand that she made her residence in both successively Secondly I say that this supposition being allow'd it would not follow from the words of Virgil that he had or could have read the Sibylline Prophecy since he was neither Patrician nor Quindecem-vir to whose Colledge that priviledge was reserv'd nay indeed not of a competent age to be entertain'd into that Society which consisted onely of antient men and not of young men such as Virgil then was as being about the thirtieth year of his Age. Thirdly That though he had been one of the Quindecem-viri yet can it not be granted he could have any knowledg of those Cumaean Oracles which had been brought to Tarquin for they were destroyed fourty three years before in the time of Sylla those which Rome was possessed of in the time of Cicero and Augustus were according to the observation of Dionysius Halicarnassaeus certain Collections gotten out of a thousand several places and went under the name of the Cumaean improperly onely in as much as they were disposed into the place of the real Cumaean ones Fourthly That though it were granted that the true Cumaean Writings which had nothing common with those reputed such at this day had been preserv'd entire and that Virgil had been of the number of those to whom the reading thereof was allow'd yet had he according to what is suppos'd discover'd therein any thing of Prediction concerning the Saviour of the World he would not as he hath done wholly have adapted the Sence of the Oracle to Pollio and his Son and principally to Augustus not onely in that place but also above sixteen years after in the sixth Book of the Aeneids where he introduces Anchises saying to his Son Aeneas of the Prince so highly qualified in the â—…ucoliks and called Heav'nly race great progeny of Jove c. There there 's the Prince oft promis'd us before Divine Augustus Caesar who once more Shall Golden days bring to th' Ausonian Land I' th Kingdoms where old Saturn did command All therefore that can be with any reason gather'd from the allegation which he hath in a word made of the Cumaean Prophecy is that being carry'd away as well as others of his time with the common perswasion that the Oracles which were kept at Rome in the place of the Cumaean and upon that occasion went under their name contained the Fate as well of that City which pretended to Eternity as of the Universe and consequently were to regulate both till the return of the great Platonical year which should reinstate the world in the felicity of the Age of Saturn and accordingly to flatter the growing power of Augustus and to heighten with extravagant hopes the Ambition of Pollio one of his greatest Benefactours and most intimate Friends he seems to have held it as a thing most manifest that that Age crown'd with peace and glory would be restored under the Monarchy of Augustus and take its Commencement from the Consulship of Pollio The Emperour prosecuting his design saies Virgil is not satisfied with this but pressing farther there being a necessity of his Testimony what hath he more to say This sacred Order of Ages is rais'd for us the Virgin comes the second time conducting the desirable King Who then shall be the returning Virgin but she who is full of and hath conceived by the Divine Spirit And who hinders but that the Virgin who hath conceived and is full of the Divine Spirit still is and continues a Virgin He will also come the second time and upon his coming will comfort the Universe To this I answer First That there is a great distance between the Greek and the Latine which as it were particularly to point at the great Revolution of the Platonick-Year and the Restauration of the Saturnian Age and to discard all other speculations spoke thus much Now Time's great order's born again The Maid returns and the Saturnian reign So that to render it exactly it should have been written 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Secondly That though the perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mother of our Lord and Saviour and the Conception of that great Saviour by the Holy Spirit and his happy return at the last Judgment ought to be acknowledg'd by all the World yet doth it not thence follow that Virgil had any knowledg thereof and much less that he spoke ought of it Besides that in rigour it cannot be said of the Blessed Virgin-Mother that she return'd into the World when she Conceiv'd our Saviour so as that having been before upon Earth she had been absent from it to the end she might return thither again in the fulness of time or haply that having been brought forth once before she was snatch'd out of it and then return'd again into the World by a second Production and consequently That which way soever it be taken this Imagination will still have a savour of Origenism if not some thing worse To conclude therefore since it is impossible without great Inconveniences to adapt to the sacred Virgin this Discourse of Virgil who neither did nor could have thought of her there will arise a â—ecessity to acknowledg that the Phantasie of this poor
of Israel asking Why is this mad fellow come to thee And Schemaiah the Nehelamite stirring up Zephaniah and the other Priests against Jeremiah writ to them The Lord hath made thee c. that ye should be Officers in the House of the Lord for every man that is mad and maketh himself a Prophet And Saint Ambrose doth in appearance acknowledg it by this Discourse There are certain Madnesses and alienations of spirit which are true and it may be of the Prophets who being transported as to their understanding Prophecied being so filled with the Spirit of God that to some they seemed mad when not minding their own safety many times naked and bare-foot as Esay the Prophet did they ran among the People crying not what they would themselves but what the Lord commanded them But for the beter understanding of all these Passages the Christian Reader is onely to remember that as the Prophets though they did not any action that was irregular or void of reason passed for Mad men in the apprehension of the profane such as might be the Captains at Ramoth-Gilead and Shemaiah the Presecutour of Jeremiah so the Devils egged on their Foretellers of things to come to play the Apes and imitate the Prophets and to brag even when they were at the height of their Extravagance of Inspirations equal with theirs So that if the true Prophets moved by Celestial Grace discovered the operations of it by some action suitable to their condition upon which account Saul being among them stripped himself of his Royal Robe and lay upon the ground humbling himself before God and celebrating the glory of his Infinite Power according as the Spirit gave him to speak on the contrary when he was overpressed with Melancholy and tormented by the evil Spirit which put him into Madness and Ecstasie he spoke also in that condition as if he had Prophecyed And Saint Ambrose minds us of the difference there is between the servile transportation of Possessed Persons which darkens the light of their minds binds up its Faculties makes their Reason unprofitable and forces them to violent motions and that holy Ravishment of the Prophets which filling them with admiration and joy refined their understanding and left them the free use of their ratiocination yet in such manner as to diver them from all humane Considerations and bend their thoughts to an extraordinary submission to God Upon which account he said They cryed not what they would themselves but what he commanded intending to express thereby the violence they did themselves by renouncing their own will that they might the more freely pursue the motions of his Grace and observed further that they minded not their own safety representing that they regarded not the preservation of their Lives nor their own convenience but were always ready to Sacrifice themselves and protest with St. Paul None of these things move me neither count I my life dear unto my self Nor did he absolutely pronounce that the action of the Prophetick Spirit upon the Person who was thereby inspired made him a Fool or so drew him out of himself as that he was without reason and had no other motion then what was forced but that inclining him to do not what his own ratiocination suggested to him but what it self advised him to it many times put him upon such extraordinary actions that those who vouchsafed not to consider the signification thereof were by their own corrupt judgment induced to attribute them to Madness and Extravagant Transportation which obliged him to say not that He was but that To some he seemed Mad. Tertullian went yet much further when drunk with the cup of Montanus he esteemed highly of those Ecstasies and Transportations which so ravish a man out of himself that he looses either wholly or in part the freedom of his Ratiocination But in regard Justin Martyr as well as he was of opinion That those Alienations which he pretended to have been in the Cumaean Sibyl might proceed from Divine Inspiration it is of some consequence as well to clear up his sentiment as to consider what judgment Antiquity hath made thereof and that the rather for that we have now some Divines who imagine That God does sometimes send such strong and violent Irradiations of his Love as strike through the Hearts of men like Thunder-bolts force those who receive them to cry out and do so cast them down that they are as it were dead Further That the Persons who are honoured with such an Illumination have motions of Piety so impetuous that they cannot pray unto God and when they attempt it suffer incredible pains their Bodies not being able to bear the vehement motions of so great a Devotion In his Book Of the Soul he hath this Discourse which Pamelius unjustly applies to Prisca or Maximilla dead fifty years before There is at this day among us a Sister on whom are fallen the Gifts of Revelations which she endures in spirit in the Church during the Divine Solemnities by Ecstasie And in another place having supposed that the Ecstasis that is to say the deep sleep that fell upon Adam was the force of the holy Spirit working Prophecy he adds God sent him an alienation of spirit which is a spiritual force wherein Prophecy consists and lower We say That Ecstasie is a sally out of sound sence somewhat like Madness Item This shall be the property of the said alienation of spirit that it comes not through any injury done to health but according to natural reason for it does not exterminate the understanding but force it out of the way It is one thing to shake another to move it one thing to overturn it another to exercise it What therefore proceeds from the Memory argues the sound constitution of the Mind if the soundness of the Soul be stupified the Memory remaining entire it is a kinde of Madness Wherefore we are not said to be Mad but to Dream and so it is then if ever that we are wise for our knowledge though in Umbrage yet is not extinct save that it may then seem to be wanting And elsewhere wresting to a wrong sence the words of the Gospel concerning Saint Peter's not knowing what he said he put this Question How not knowing was it through simple errour or want of reason Wresting also the sence of Saint Paul's Discourse he hath these Expressions Let him take out some Psalm some Vision some Prayer in a spiritual way onely that is in Ecstasie in alienation of spirit And against Praxeas Neither Peter nor John nor James were sensible of the Vision of God without a denial of Reason and alienation of spirit for which we maintain in the cause of new Prophecy that Ecstasie that is alienation of spirit is consistent with Grace For it is necessary that the man ravished in spirit especially when he sees the glory of
God or when God speaks by him disclaim his own sentiment being overshadowed by the power of God concerning which there is a Dispute between us and the Psychici And indeed Saint Hierome expresly numbers among the Books written by him against the Church six Volumes Of Ecstasie and a seventh Against Apollonius wherein he endeavours to maintain whatever the other quarrels at his Design being to vindicate Montanus who had written thus Behold man is like a Viol and I am the Bow man lies him down to rest and I watch Behold the Lord who takes mens Hearts out of them and who also bestows Hearts on them and Maximilla who held this strange Discourse The Lord hath sent me c. forced me I being both willing and unwilling to learn the knowledg of God The Church therefore formally condemning the Opinion of those who believed that God made Ecstatick and transported such as he inspired and that he exercised violence on their spirits expressed her self By Claudius Apollinaris Bishop of Hierapolis to this effect Montanus through an insatiable covetousness of Primacy giving access in his Soul to the Adversary being of a sudden transported in mind and out of himself was inspired and began to speak and to pronounce strange words and his Prophetesses were filled with an adulterate spirit so as that they spoke with a transportation of their understanding unseasonably and after a strange manner and Theodotus his Complice was besides himself and delivered up to the spirit of Errour By Miltiades Disputing against the same Montanus b That false Prophet being in a Transport of spirit which is attended by Confidence and want of Fear began by a voluntary Ignorance which turned into an involuntary Madness of the Soul in which manner they cannot shew that any Prophet either of the Old or New Testament hath been transported By St. Irenaeus who set forth in the same colours one of the Prophetesses of the Marcosians Being foolishly swollen and puffed up by the said words and having her Soul warmed by the expectation of what she should Prophecy and her Heart beating more then it should she presumed to utter things Fantastick and whatever occurred to her thoughts vainly and audaciously in regard she is set on by a vain spirit according to what a better then we hath said of such People to wit that a Soul enflamed by vain air is a presumptuous and shameless thing By Clemens Alexandrinus giving the Impostours of his Time this Touch They Prophecied in Ecstasie as the servants of an Apostate By Origen who esteemed that kind of Emotion unworthy the Holy men of God The Prophets were not as some imagine alienated in spirit and spoke not through any violence of the spirit If any thing saith the Apostle be revealed to another that sitteth by let the first hold his peace Whence he shews that he who speaks is at liberty to speak when he will and to hold his peace when he will By St. Basil who presses the same Doctrine in these Terms There are some who say that the Saints Prophecied being out of or besides themselves the humane understanding being shadowed by the Spirit but this is contrary to what the Divine presence doth promise that it should alienate in spirit him who is seised of God and that when he is full of Divine Instructions he should himself be deprived of Ratiocination and while he contributes to the advantage of others should reap no benefit from his own Discourses In a word How does it stand with Reason that through the Wisdom of the Spirit a man should become as one besides himself And that the spirit of Knowledg should deliver what is incohaerent For neither is light the Authour of Blindness but stirs up the Visual Faculty implanted by Nature nor does the spirit cause obscurity in mens minds but raises the Understanding to the contemplation of things intelligible cleansing it from the stains of sin Nor is it improbable that through the Design of the evil Spirit who lays his Ambushes to ensnare humane Nature the mind is confounded but to say that the same is effected by the presence of the Holy Spirit is impious By St. Epiphanius who strongly seconding him says When there hath been any necessity the Holy men of God have foretold all things with the true spirit of the Prophets and a strong Ratiocination and an understanding reaching the sence of what was said Again The Prophet spoke with a clear ratiocination and consequently saying all things with a certain vigour as Moses the servant of God who was faithfull in all his House The Prophet in the Old Testament is called the Seer The Vision of Isaiah the Son of Amos which he saw c. I saw the Lord c. And after he had heard what the Lord said unto him coming towards the people he saith The Lord saith these things Do you not see that this is the Discourse of one who comprehends and not of one who is besides himself and that he expressed not himself as one that was transported in his understanding In like manner Ezechiâ—l the Prophet hearing the Lord speak thus to him Take thou also unto thee Wheat and Barley and Beans c. and bake it with dung that cometh out of man answers Ah! Lord God behold my Soul hath not been polluted for from my youth up have I not eaten of that which dieth of it self or is torn in pieces neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth For knowing that the Oracle had come to him from the Lord to serve for a Threat he was so far from being distracted in his understanding that he delayed to do it but that he was of that Opinion is to be attributed to the settledness of his thoughts which may be argued from his expostulation Ah! Lord God c. This indeed being proper to the true Prophets to have their reason fortified by the Holy Spirit by Instruction and Discourse Daniel also had not he knowledg and skill in all Learning and Wisdom and comprehended his own imaginationsâ— He who resolved the Riddles of Nebuchadnezzar and explicated in such manner what the other had seen in his Dreams that he presently gave him the Interpretation thereof with a settled spirit and out of a superabundance of the gift of God having an intelligence of things above all men through the riches of the spirit truly instructing the Prophet and those who by the means of the Prophet were honoured with the Precepts of Truth But what these promise to Prophecy they declare being not well in their wits nor comprehending the meaning thereof for their words are elusive ambiguous and such as are uncapable of a right sence By St. Chrysostome who writes Hence we learn also another thing to wit That the Prophets were not as those who foretell things to come for there when the Devil breaks in upon
contrary made no account of what the Heathen esteemed and confining themselves to the Rhapsody of the eight Books which go under the Title of the Sibylline Oracles were deceived thinking them to be the antient Sibyls and consequently the Testimony of neither Heathens nor Christians is not strong enough to authenticate them in as much as the former have charged them with Forgery and the later who made account of them were circumvented and their Design to bring them into credit proves ineffectual upon this account that according to the Civil Maxim The consent of him who is mistaken is null Secondly St. Paul neither was nor could be the Authour of the Recommendation attributed to him but some Apocryphal Writer who impiously-bold took his Name upon him to deceive the World with more ease Thirdly Eusebius does not so much as name the Sibyls in the fifth Book of his History Fourthly The Name of Stratonicus was never heard of among the Fathers of the Church Cumae is not found to have produced any Ecclesiastical Writers and Possevin himself grants as much for that he does not allow his Stratonicus any place in his Apparatus Sacer. Fifthly It was no hard matter for Galarza to finde a Conformity between the Prophets and the Writings of the Counterfeit Sibyl since she was whatever she may seem to the contrary a Christian by Prosession and that she writ them one hundred thirty and eight years after the Birth of our Saviour onely it is to be remembred that this Conformity is not such as is imagined and that the pretended Prophetess to whom it is attributed was full of Errours and a corrupt Divine If therefore we must with Possevin blame Opsopoeus the Printer of Basil it should be for having inserted this confused Medley into the Body of Orthodox Writers and added thereto the Oracles of the false Gods when nothing of it is Orthodox or ought to finde place in the Christian Library And as to what is added by Possevin That It had been more expedient to set apart some few things of many and particularly what might be taken as most certain out of the Writings of the Fathers with Notes or a Paraphrase thereupon such as Constantine the Great hath put before the Cumaean Sibyl cited by Virgil or Lactantius before Firmianus or Augustine before the Acrostick produced by Cicero it is an Errour infinitely beyond what he was guilty of before For it will never be expedient to propose to Christians as a Direction the Stumbling-Blocks against which the Fathers fell much less to raise them into an admiration of Supposititious Pieces Besides it is inconsiderately done by some to alledg either the Paraphrase of Constantine who hath put Virgil and his Poem so unmercifully to the Rack or the Acrostick of the eighth Book of the Sibylline Oracles which Cicero no more thought on then he did on the Story of Apuleius's Ass The End of the First Book OF THE SIBYLS The Second Book Of the CONSEQUENCES arising upon the Supposititiousness of the Writing pretended to be Sibylline ADVERTISEMENT TO revenge the antient Injury done to the Church in whose Bosom it is now above fifteen hundred years that some have been willing to fasten the Supposititious Work of the Sibylline Writing and to Truth which hath been miserably disguised thereby and lastly to the Fathers who have been surprised by the unheard-of Impudence of the Impostour who presenting them with a counterfeit Jewel instead of a right Diamond made them take Coals out of Hell-fire for a Divine Treasure I have been forced to search into the very Roots of so deep an Imposture as such as whereto many of our Time even among the Protestants are still inclined to give Credit And in what I have done out of this Design I have cherished a certain Hope that those who shall be any way offended at the seeming Novelty of my Sentiment will vouchsafe to consider it without Prejudice that upon their acknowledgment of the solidity of its Grounds they may acquiesce therein or if they think otherwise of it with Reason correct it In the Interim presupposing it as well and sufficiently proved I shall intreat the Reader 's Attention to consider the Consequences of the Doctrine unjustly attributed to the Counterfeit Sibyl and to proceed therein with some Order Observe First In what Year precisely the Apocalyps whereof the false Prophetess attempts to wrest the true Sence was written by the Apostle Saint John Secondly About what time the extravagant Imaginations of the pretended Sibylline Writings came first abroad Thirdly By how strong a Prejudice they were possessed who were out of an excessive Easiness of Belief induced to admit them A TREATISE OF THE SIBYLS BOOK II. CHAP. I. An Enquiry thout the Time wherein Saint John wrote his REVELATION AS we have on the one side the Consent of Antiquity assigning the Life of Saint John to have ended on Sunday the 27th of December in the third year of Trajan coincident with the hundredth year after the Birth of our Saviour according to the Computation now used so have we on the other Saint Irenaeus who suffered Martyrdom in the one hundred ninety and eighth year of Christ affirming in the thirtieth Chapter of his fifth Book cited by Eusebius both in the eighth Chapter of the third Book and the eighth Chapter of the fifth Book of his History that the Apocalyps was written about the end of Domitian ' s Reign which is confirmed by Clemens Alexandrinus about the year 200. writing at the place Copied out by Eusebius that St. John returned from Patmos after the Tyrant ' s Death that is to say after the eighteenth of September in the year ninety six on which Domitian was Assassinated Eusebius seems the more absolutely to acquiess in their Sentiment in that having further published and observed in the seventeenth Chapter of his third Book that Domitian towards the end of his Reign became the Successour of Nero in his enmity and War against God he certifies in the nineteenth Chapter that Domitilla was Banished for the Profession of Christianity in the fifteenth and last year of that Prince's Reign which falls in with the ninety sixth of our Saviour Further that the Tradition of the Antients affirmed that St. John was called back from Patmos by Nerva and in his Chronicle upon the fourteenth year of Domitian which he makes coincident with the second of the two hundred and eighteenth Olympiad that Domitian was the second after Nero who persecuted the Christians and that in his Reign the Apostle St. John then banished to Patmos had seen the Apocalyps as Irenaeus declares Which words manifestly relate to the place of that holy Prelate which he had Transcribed twice in his History and which yet St. Hierome as well in his Version of Eusebius's Chronicle as in his Catalogue wrests to another sence turning it Which Irenaeus interprets as if Euschius had written not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
the Tree were for the healing of the Nations The same Imagination so gained upon the holy Fathers that lived after the middle of the second Age that those good Souls prepossessed by the Opinion they had conceived of the pretended Sibylline Writing took literally and apprehended after the Jewish sence whatever they met with in Esay and Saint John concerning the First Raesurrection of those who died for the Testimony of Jesus their reign of a thousand years and all the glory of the celestial Jerusalem Thus Justin Martyr in his Dialogue against Trypho answering that Jew who page 306 had asked him Whether he acknowledged that Jerusalem should be rebuilt and the Christians assemble there and rejoyce with Christ in the company of the Patriarchs Prophets c. not onely confesses it but maintains further that he had already averred it reflecting no doubt on those words of page 271. where he saith that Christ being raised should come again inâ—â— Jerusalem and then drink anew and eat with his Disciples And secondly that he had signified unto him that Many among those who were not of the pure and religious sentiment of the Christians acknowledged it not whereupon he adds I and as many others as are of the right and truly Christian sentiment in all things know that there must be a Resurrection of the Flesh and the Prophets Ezechiel Esay and others confess that after Jerusalem shall be built adorned and amplified a thousand years shall be spent there alledging to that purpose the sixty fifth Chapter of Esay and the twentieth of the Apocalyps And reinculcating it page 340. where he says He viz. Jesus is the eternal Light which is to shine in Jerusalem and page 369. where he writes of the Christians that they know with whom Christ they shall be in that Land viz. Judaea which he had called the Land of all the Saints and that they shall inherit eternal and incorruptible goods Eusebius in the nine and thirtieth Chapter of the third Book of his Ecclefiastical History attributing the same opinion to Papias Bishop of Hierapolis who had been a follower of the Disciples of Saint John hath this Discourse He affirms also many other things that are more fabulous among which he saith that there are a certain thousand of years to pass after the Resurrection and that Christ shall reign corporally in the same Land Things which I think he hath onely imagined upon a misapprehension of the Apostolical Expositions Saint Irenaeus in the thirty fifth Chapter of his fifth Book does not onely agree with Papias but relyes upon his authority citing out of his fourth Book these words which Papias attributed to Saint John The daies shall come wherein there shall grow up Vines having each of them ten thousand Branches and upon every Branch ten thousand Boughs and on every Bough ten thousand Buds and on every Bud ten thousand Bunches and on every Bunch ten thousand Grapes and every Grape pressed shall yield twenty five Measures of Wine And when any one of the Saints shall take one of the Grapes another shall cry I am a better Grape take me and bless God by me In like manner one Corn of Wheat shall bring forth ten thousand Ears and every Ear shall have ten thousand Crains and every Grain shall give ten Pounds of clear and fine Flower and all other Fruits Seeds and Herbs proportionably Was ever the Synagogue cut off from the Covenant of God delivered of an Extravagance more deserving contempt then this which feigns Bunches of Grapes speaking and Vines yielding infinitely beyond all imaginable force of Nature millions of millions of measures of Wine And yet the Holy Martyr Saint Irenaeus out of an excess of respect by no means excusable in him preferring the authority of Papias deceived by the counterfeit Sibyl before all reason blindly swallowed it and in his two and thirtieth Chapter inferred from it that The Just shall reign here below before the day of Judgment that on the day of the Sabbath of the Just they shall have a Table furnished from God who shall replenish them with all manner of Viands That The Wolves shall feed with the Lambs and the Lyon shall live on Straw and in the thirty fifth Chapter that The Just shall reign on earth in the thirty sixth that proportionably to the fruit they have brought forth an hundred sixty or thirty for one they shall be placed either in Heaven or in Paradise or in Jerusalem and that In that regard it was that the Son of God said In my Father's House are many Mansions Tertullian who lived near the same time to shew us that he was carryed away with the same Prejudice cryes out in the twenty fourth Chapter of his third Book Against Marcion We confess that the Kingdom is promised us upon Earth for a thousand years after the Resurrection in the City of Divine workmanship Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven There is some ground to think that Meliton Bishop of Sardes Contemporary with Justin Martyr was of the same Opinion with him concerning the temporal Reign of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem in asmuch as to maintain it he writ upon the Revelation of Saint John the words whereof have been extreamly wrested by the Patrones of that Imagination but in regard I am nothing pressed and have onely Conjecture to inferr it from I shall forbear to urge it I come to Nepos the Aegyptian Bishop reverenced by Dionysius of Alexandria for his Faith and great Learning in the attainment whereof he had spent himself to the Last Of this Prelate Eusebius saies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Teaching that the Promises made to the Saints in the Holy Scriptures were to be accomplished after the manner conceived by the Jews supposing that there were to pass a certain thousand of Years in the pursuit of corporal Enjoyments upon Earth and being of opinion he might confirm his Supposition by the Revelation of John He writ concerning the said Revelation a certain Discourse entituled A Reprehension of the Allegorists as not able to endure that men should take otherwise then Literally the Promises proposed by the Holy Spirit for the comfort of the Church nor that they should be understood mystically About fifty years after appeared our Victorinus Bishop of Poictiers who suffered Martyrdom on the second day of November in the year 303. after he had composed divers Treatises great indeed in respect of the sense and slight in respect of the contexture of the Words according to the observation of Saint Hierome which cannot be contradicted since there is nothing left of them and that the Commentary upon the Apocalyps which goeth under his name contains at this day nothing of what the Antients had read in it But Saint Hierome assuring us that he was of the number of those who expected to come from Heaven a Jerusalem adorned with precious Stones and Gold we need not fear upon his Affirmation to
either abolished or so altered that they contain not any thing of what was in them before of greatest consideration And thence it is come to pass that in those who go under the name of St. James St. Peter St. Basil and St. Gregory we meet not with as in the first Prayers to God for the Saints but Prayers to the Saints the fear of making them equal with Jesus Christ being by degrees vanished and experience forcing us to acknowledg that all the imaginations of men as well what are good as what bad pass away but that Jesus Christ alone is and shall be the same eternally as St. Paul to our comfort gives us to observe in the 8th Verse of the 13th Chapter to the Hebrews CHAP. XX. The Motive of Dionysius the pretended Areopagite taken into consideration HE who about the year 490. took upon him the name of St. Denys the Areopagite to gain the greater credit to his Books Of the Celestial and Ecclesiastical Hierarchies grounds upon one onely consideration the Commemoration of the departed which was made in his time in the Publick Service and declares his sentiment with the ordinary ostentation in these Termes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The recitation of the sacred Rolls which is made after the kissing of the Pax declares the names of those who have lived holily and who are irreturnably gone to the perfection of virtuous life exhorting and leading us to the most blessed and Godlike condition by resemblance of them and pronouncing them as it were living and as Theology expresses it not dead but passed from death to a most divine life But withall observe that they are reposited by sacred Memorials in the Remembrance of the Deity and not according to the manner of men transmitted from the fancy to the memory but to speak suitably to God according to the venerable and irrecoverable knowledg of the God-like deceased which is in God For as the Oracles say he knows those who are his and The death of his Saints is precious in his sight the death of the Saints being named instead of their accomplishment in sanctity Think devoutly upon this viz. that the venerable Signs whereby Christ is signified and participated having been placed upon the divine Altar immediately after follows the Description of the Saints declaring thus much that they are inseparably conjoyned by the supercelestial and sacred union which is between them This Discourse which makes no mention of any thing but the recital of the Names of the Departed denoting the perpetuity of the blessed life they enjoy in consequence of their living conformably to the will of God might stand without the use of any Prayer made on their behalf by the living But in the seventh Chapter he not onely speaks very clearly but expresses his meaning of it thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. The divine Hierarch or President over things sacred advancing makes the holy Prayer for the Person departed and after the Prayer the same Hierarch kisseth him and afterwards all that are present do the like Now the prayer requires of that Goodness which divinely governs all things that whatsoever sin the departed hath through humane frailty committed might be forgiven him and that he might be placed in Light and in the Region of the Living in the Bosoms of Abraham Isaac and Jacob whence trouble and sorrow and sighing shall flee away Thus does this learned but insincere Authour ground what he says on the sixty of St. Epiphanius's Motives as the most rational of all and hath perswaded thereto all the Modern Greeks And as St. Epiphanius's alledging of several other Considerations argues he writ before the pretended Areopagite ever thought of his Supposition so this latter's copying the words of the Constitutions attributed to St. Clement and above transcribed and not allowing of Prayer for the damned shews that his work is later and of as little authority CHAP. XXI The Motives of Tertullian examined TErtullian before any of these Authours alledged two Motives of praying for the Dead that is to say their refreshment and the hastening or advancement of their Resurrection For this Great man I know not how bewitched by the pretended Sibylline Writing supposed that before the last Judgment the Son of God being descended upon Earth to establish a new Kingdom in Jerusalem and to govern it himself should bring together all his Faithfull and should there fill them with all delights even corporeal for the space of a thousand years And whereas St. John had foretold in his Apocalyps that the Old Serpent being bound for a thousand years there should be a first Resurrection in favour of their Souls who were beheaded for the witness of Jesus he with Justin Martyr Papias St. Irenaeus and all those who have since gone under the name of Millenaries took that Praediction literally and wresting it to a contrary sence imagined that during the thousand years of Christ's Reign which he pretended should be in Jerusalem the most eminent for Sanctity among the Faithfull departed should rise again before the rest of mankind but successively and every one at this appointed time so as that if one took possession of his body in the first of the thousand years another should not have that privilege till a hundred two or three hundred years after and so to the end of that period of ten Ages and that those should have least advantage thereof whose Resurrection should be either delayed till near the end of the thousand years or put off till after it and referred to the last day assigned for the general Resurrection as well of the rest of the Just as the Wicked To induce us to embrace that Opinion St. Irenaeus in the thirty fourth Chapter of his fifth Book making a coherence between the words of St. John in the twentieth Chapter of the Apocalyps and those of the Son of God in the twelfth of St. Luke said Hoc est quod à Domino dictum est c. This is it which is said by our Saviour Blessed are those servants whom the Lord when he cometh shall find watching Verily I say unto you that he shall gird himself and make them to sit down to meat and will still come forth and serve them and if he come in the Evening-Watch and finde them so doing they are blessed because he shall make them sit down and shall serve them nay though it be in the second or the third Watch they are blessed The same thing saith also John in the Apocalyps Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first Resurrection For comparing the Faithfull departed to the Servants that wait for the return of their Lord he would have those that are raised the first those who next to them and those who after them designed by those who are visited at the first second and third watch And Tertullian having embraced the same Opinion presupposes that the Faithfull might either
Jason nor yet in what Language Jason had first writ them nor whether he was more antient then Josephus who finished his Work Of the Antiquities in the year of our Lord 94. concurrent with the thirteenth of Domitian and the fourty fourth before the Forgeries of the counterfeit Sibyl appeared nor lastly whether that Abridgment came betimes into the hands of the Christians it appearing not that any of them had seen it before the year of our Loâ—d 200. Seventhly That it is absolutely impossible that any of the Christians of the second third and fourth Ages should in their Prayers for the dead have proposed to themselves for a Pattern the Example of Judas Maccabaeus and the Judgment which either Jason the Cyrenian or his Abridger made of it And that for these reasons First Because it was not cited by any of the Fathers till 280. years after the first coming abroad of the pretended Sibylline Writing For St. Augustine having first cited it in the year 416. Prosper Africanus followed him about the year 450. It was afterwards cited by Bacchiarius in his Epistle to Januarius about the year 460. and Julian of Toledo about the year 680. in the one and twentieth Chapter of the first Book of his Prognosticks and Damascene about the year 760. in his Oration De dâ—…nctis and Peter sirnamed the Venerable Abbot of Clugny about the year 1150. in the second Epistle of his first Book and Ecbert a Priest of Bonne near Cullen about the year 1160. Adversus Cathar serm and Guy of Perpignan first General of the Order of the Carmelites afterwards Bishop of Majorca about the year 1318. De Haeresibus Secondly Because we do not finde that any of the Fathers have cited or so much as made the least discovery that they had seen the second Book of the Maccabees before Clemens Alexandrinus and Origene among the Greeks about the year 200 and 240. the former in the fifth of his Stromata and the later in the first Chapter of the second Book De Principiis and his third Homily upon Solomon's Song and his eighteenth Tome upon St. John and upon the fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Romanes and St. Cyprian among the Latines in the year 252. in his four hundred and fifty sixth Epistle De exhortatione Martyrii the eleventh Chapter and Zeno of Verona about the year 360. Sermone de Resurrectione De Sancto Arcadio Thirdly In regard that as not any one of the Greek Fathers either in Councel or in any particular Writing held the second Book of the Maccabees for Canonical so many of the Latines for instance Tertullian in his fourth Book Adversùs Marcionem carmine scripto cap. 7. St. Hilary in his Prologue upon the Psalms Philastrius Bishop of Brescia in the Chapter de Apocryphis St. Hierome in his seventh Epistle and the one hundred and third and his Prologue upon the Book of Kings and Solomon Ruffinus upon the Crede the Priests of Hilary's Epistle to St. Augustine Primasius Bishop of Adrumetum in Apocal. lib. 1. cap. 4. Junilius another African Prelate in the seventh Chapter of his first Book De partitione Divinae Legis St. Gregory in the seventeenth Chapter of the nineteenth Book of his Morals upon Job the Authour of the Book De mirabilibus Sanctae Scripturae lib. 2. cap. 33. Beda De sex aetatibus In Reg. lib. 4. In Apocal cap. 4. Ambrose Ansbert In Apoc. lib. 3. cap. 4. Alcuinus Adversùs Elipand lib. 1. Charle-Maigne in his Capitulary of the year 789. cap. 10. and the Commentaries attributed to St. Victorinus Bishop of Poictiers those to St. Ambrose Bishop of Millain and those to St. Augustine upon the fourth Chapter of the Apocalyps have all in imitation of the Greeks especially of the Councel of Laodicea put this Book out of the Canon that is out of the List of the Writings inspired by God to be received as a Rule of Faith And this Remark seems to be the more necessary in as much as it contributes to the reconciling with the Greek Fathers and with the Latines that have been of the same Opinion those others of the Latine Church who have comprehended within the Canon of the Holy Scriptures as well the Maccabees as the other Books accounted Apocryphal by the Jews and several of the Christians For if the Councel met at Carthage on the twenty fifth of August 397. during the Popedom of Siricius and since adapted by I know not what Rhapsodist under the Name of the Sixth Councel of Carthage to the twenty fifth of May 419. under the Papacy of Boniface the First if St. Augustine in the eighth Chapter of his Second Book Of Christian Doctrine writ immediately after the Councel of the year 397. if Innocent in his Epistle written to Exuperus Bishop of Tolosa on the twentieth of February 405. if the Councel assembled at Rome in the year 494. under Pope Gelasius and if Isidore Arch-Bishop of Sevil in the sixth Chapter of his first Book of his Etymologies sent to Braulio Bishop of Saragossa after the year 626. inserting the Books of the Maccabees into the Canon of the Scriptures had taken the words Canon and Holy Scriptures in the same sence as the Jews the Greeks and the Latines adhering to their Sentiment concerning the List of the Books bestowed on the Church for a Rule of Faith since they have esteemed Canonical the Books which the rest of the Fathers formally excluded out of the Canon and that holding in appearance one the affirmative the other the negative of the same Proposition they seem to be formally contradictory it were absolutely impossible to reconcile them all and there would be a necessity of charging with prevarication contrary to the judgment of the Romane Church declared by Innocent the First and the Councel assembled under Gelasius Gregory the Great who expresly qualified not-canonical the Maccabees received into the Canon of the Holy Scriptures by Innocent and numbred by the Councel under Gelasius among the Prophetical Scriptures Histories of the old Testament Nay it would be contrary also to that of the African Church declared by the Councel of Carthage and by St. Augustine Primasius and Junilius Africans who formally confined themselves to the Canon of the Jews nay it were hard to avoid making St. Augustine contradict himself in as much as after he had affirmed that the Maccabees were held by the Church to be Canonical he presently adds That they are not among the Holy Scriptures called Canonical saying Supputatio Temporum non in Scripturis sanctis quae Canonicae appellantur sed in aliis invenitur in quibus sunt Maccabaeorum libri quos non Judaei sed Ecclesia fro Canonicis habet c. The computation of Times is not found in the Holy Scriptures which are called Canonical but in the others among which are also the Books of the Maccabees which are held to be Canonical by the Church but not by the Jews
And that among the Liturgies of the Greeks Armenians c. there are onely two viz. those of St. Basil and St. Chryâ—ostome drawn up one by the other which have onely this word of it by the way 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Resting in hope of Resurrection and eternal life Where it is evident to any one that hath but common sense that he who pronounces the Prayer desires not for the Dead either Resurrection or Life but onely declares that both of them have ever been the Object of their hope To be absolutely silent in it as the Canon of the Latine Mass is or to speak uncertainly of it without making any request is that proposing to one's self the pretended Example of Judas Maccabaeus and the Tradition of the antient Synagogue Or can it either enter into any man's Imagination to say they imitate who neither in their Discourses nor in their Actions express any thing of what is contained in the Original If it be said that the Latins in the Office of the Dead added to the Canon demand the Resurrection of the departed Person whom they recommend to God in their Prayers it will be easie to reply that of three and fourty Prayers whereof that Office consists one onely viz. the fifth proposes in one word that kinde of supplication saying Partem Resurrectionis accipiat Anima famuli tui c. That the soul of thy servant may participate of the blessed Resurrection three others which spake of the Resurrection presuppose it without making any demand and amount to no more then to require onely the effect of it as for instance the second layd down in these Terms Inter Sanctos Electos tuos resuscitati gloriâ manifestae contemplationis perpetuò satientur c. That thy servants being raised again may be perpetually silled among the Saints and Elect with the glory of a manifest contemplation the fourth which hath Ad propria corpora quandoque reversuras Sanctorum tuorum caetibus aggregari praecipias c. That thou wouldest command that the souls of all the Faithfull which are one day to return to their bodies may meet together in the Assemblies of thy Saints and the nine and thirtieth which contains these words In Resurrectionis gloria inter Sanctos Electos tuos resuscitati respirent c. That thy servants of both Sexes being raised up may live among thy Saints and Elect in the glory of the Resurrection From all which Forms it necessary follows that the Latine Church never thought of framing her Service according to the Example of Judas Maccabaeus and that it is vainly and without any shadow of Proof that any Venture at this day to maintain it never considering that if the first Authours of Praying for the Dead among Christians had had any design to build their Form of Service upon the pretended Pattern of the Maccabees they could not without prevarication from their own Intentions fo far have missed the Lineaments thereof as to have omitted in their Canon what they had proposed to themselves to put in Practice or not to insist on it but obliquely and perfunctorily not making it as they should have done their Principal business CHAP. XXXII That the Primitive Sence of the Prayers whereby the Remission of Sins is demanded for the Dead is not embraced by any THe Prayers which the antient Church made for Remission of Sins on the behalf of the Faithfull departed did not onely proceed from the Hypothesis of the Sibylline Writing concerning the consinement of all Souls in Hell and of Justine Martyr concerning the power of the Devils even over those of the greatest Saints but is also an effect of their Opinion who imagined that our Saviour and his Apostles after his Example being after their departure descended into Hell had preached there and in effect converted many of those who were gone thither in the state of Sin For looking upon as reduced to the Trial of some punishment those whose Beatitude was during their restraint in the common prison of the Dead deferred and conceiving that their Condition was capable of being changed into better they inferred very suitably to these Opinions that it was necessary to implore the mercy of God and to demand on their behalf the forgiveness of their Sins which for a time kept the Gates of glory shut against them and exposed them in some manner to the violences of Evil spirits till such time as that by their own supplications and the suffrages of their surviving Friends they might better their Condition We have already produced Examples of those Prayers and there is not any Expression so strong or efficacious which we finde not employed to make us comprehend that heretofore the surviving Faithfull were of a Belief that their departed Brethren were treated as Malefactours and in a manner covered with the wrath of God But from the beginning of the Third Age and afterwards those among the Fathers who had more attentively considered the Oracles of God affirming That There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus That No man is able to pluck them out of his hand That They are at the hour of death taken away from the evil to come That They depart out of the Body to be with the Lord That Their iniquity shall be sought for and there shall be none because God hath pardoned them That as soon as they are dead in the Lord they rest from their labours and according to what we finde in express Terms in the Canon of the Mass sleep a sleep of Peace as being actually in Peace and freed from Sin which deprives a man of it and makes a separation between the Lord and him that commits it the Fathers I say not discontinuing out of the respect they had for their Ancestours the Prayers inserted by them upon prejudications both ill-grounded and extremely mistaken into the Service of the Church do by the formal Confession of the insufficiency of those Principles make a certain disclaim of the Prayers enough to justifie that according to them being taken literally they are absolutely unprofitable as being destitute of Truth and a maintainable Foundation Hence is it that in the year 252. St. Cyprian tells us of the advantage which accrews to the Faithfull at their death Lucrum maximum jam nullis peccatis vitiis carnis obnoxium fieri c. It is a very great gain not to be any longer subject to sins and the lusts of the flesh St. Cyril of Jerusalem about the year 350. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Remission having its Ordinance onely in this life St. Epiphamus in the year 375. in the nine and fiftieth Haeresie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is not any progress either of Piety or Repentance after death St. Ambrose about the year 378. Qui hic non acceperit remissionem illic non erit c. He who shall not have received remission here shall not
every where that all Souls are produced by God at the very instant of their infusion into the Bodies they are to animate and that for as much as they were not at all before they were united to their Bodies they could not either be or sin in Heaven or consequently descend thence as St. Ambrose presupposed that which is not absolutely neither having before it is any Being nor pre-existing nor capable of either Action or Motion from one place to another or of any Passion any way conceivable by us But as to the main point it is manifest that St. Ambrose and all the Church of his Time had absolutely rejected the first Hypothesis derived from the pretended Sibylline Writing maintaining that all Souls without exception descend into Hell after their departure out of the Bodies wherewith they every one as to its own particular constituted humane Persons and that that other Branch of Errour which had prepossessed the Spirit of Justine Martyr and his Contemporaries whereby they imagined that the Souls of the greatest Saints during their pretended detention in Hell were in some sort subject to the power of Evil Spirits and upon that accompt stood in need of being relieved by the Prayers of the Living imploring on their behalf the Protection of God and his good Angels was no longer held it being the perswasion even of those who continued to make the same Prayers as they who had been of that Belief that the true Christians departing out of the Body were with the Lord in an eternal rest and absolute safety In so much that these who recommended the Dead to God grounded not their so doing on either of these two Motives St. Ambrose telling us plainly concerning Valentinian the Second Requiescamus inquit anima pia in Castellis ostendens illic esse quietem tutiorem quae septo Coelestis refugii munita atque vallata non exagitatur soecularium incursibus Bestiarum c. Let us rest says the Faithfull soul in Towers shewing that there where she is received there is a more assured Repose which being encompassed and fortified with the Enclosure of celestial refuge is not disturbed by the Incursions of the Beasts of this World that is to say Evil Spirits and Wicked Men. And concerning Theodosius Lapsum sentire non poterit in illa requie constitutits c. Being seated in that Rest he cannot be subject to fall from it And Paulinus not long before the Death of St. Ambrose to Pammachius concerning his Wife Paulina deceased in the year 396. Satis docuit Rex Propheta c. The Royal Prophet hath sufficiently taught us how far we should be troubled at the departure of our Friends and Kinred to wit so as rather to think of our Journey after them then of that which they are already come to the end of It is indeed an Expression of Piety to be cast down at the taking away hence of Just men but it is also an Holy thing to be raised up into Gladness upon the Hope and Faith of God's Promises and to say to him that it is in trouble Why art thou sad Be it so that Piety bewail for a time yet is it necessary that Faith should always be joyfull Upon this Ground was it that all those who for the space of six hundred years made it their Business to write the Lives of the Faithfull accompted them among the Blessed not admitting any adjournment of their Peace and Felicity after their death In so much as Gregory Arch-Bishop of Tours deceased the seventeenth of November 592. about which time Pope GREGORY first of that Name was designing the first-draught of Purgatory should not have spoken of those Virtuous Persons whose memory he celebrated in other Terms then those who had preceeded him saying of Gregory Bishop of Langres of Nicetius Bishop of Lyons of Porcianus Ursus and Caluppa Religious Men Migravit ad Dominum c. He is gone hence to the Lord of Gullus Bishop of Cler-mont of Nicetius Bishop of Trier and of Lupicinus Spiritum coelo intentum proemisit ad Dominum c. He sent before his Body to the Lord his Soul imployed in Thoughts of Heaven of Friard Christus animam suscepit in Coelo c. Christ hath received his soul into Heaven of Martius Ad Coronam commigravit c. He is gone hence to receive a Crown of Venantius Vitam percepturus aeternam emicuit saeculo c. He is hurried hence to receive eternal Life of Leobord Manifestum est eum ab Angelis susceptum c. It is manifest he hath been entertained by Angels In a word the great number of those who admire the Novelties that have crept into the Opinion of Purgatory hath been no hindrance but that the Authours of Lives who have written since the year 600. have spoken and believed of their Dead consonantly to what had been done by the most Antient. If therefore even in the Time of St. Ambrose the Opinion of the Millenaries was so lost to credit that St. Hierome who out of respect towards the Great Persons that had followed it forbore to express his Thoughts thereof and to number it among Heresies thought it a great Tenderness towards it to assign it a place among the dreaming Imaginations of mis-informed Spirits it is not to be conceived that after the year 500. descending still it should have regained any Partizans and that there should have been any man whose Prayers for his deceased Friends proceeded from that Motive so as that he thought himself obliged to wish them their part in the First Resurrection which no man then understood in the sense wherein Tertullian and those of his Time had conceived it But indeed many even till after the year 600. relying on that Hypothesis partly extracted out of the pretended Oracles of the Counterfeit Sibyl that All Souls should pass through the last Conflagration of the World demanded on the Behalf of their departed Friends two things One that they might pass through that great Conflagration as through a Purgative Fire not to be prejudiced thereby no more then the Gold melted in the Crucible Another that they might have their part with all the Saints in the Resurrection to Glory Upon this perswasion Kindasvind King of the West-Goths in Spain who reigned between the year 642. and 649. had caused these Verses to be written on the Tomb of his Wife Reciberga Ego te Conjux quia vincere fata nequivi Funere perfunctam Sanctis commendo tuendam Ut cùm Flamma vorax veniet comburere Terras Coetibus ipsorum meritò sociata resurgas Since death on my desires would not thee spare Of thee departed may the Saints take care That thou with them mayst rise again that day When of the Fire the Earth shall be the prey The First of these Demands hath lost much of that Consideration with those who have embraced the New Opinion of Purgatory which seemed to require the Example of the
most Antient and the Exercise of the same Prayers as they had made use of For though they make mention of the Last day's Fire and are absolutely silent concerning Purgatory yet do not those in the Western-Church who pray for the Dead hardly fasten their thought on any thing but their deliverance out of the pretended place of Pain and their disposal into rest and I am to learn whether there be any who think of the Resurrection to which alone relate even to this day both the Texts and Prayers usually read in the Office of the Dead Besides it be thought shamefull to pray as in the Times of St. Chrysostome Prudentius and St. Augustine for the Damned not out of any hope to attain their absolute deliverance but onely some alleviation of the Paiâ—s they suffer in Hell And the Legends of Faâ—tonilla and Trajan rescued out of eternal Damnation by the Prayers of St. Thecla and Gregory the Great are somewhat offensive to the Learned even of the Roman Communion who are not a little troubled to excuse John Damascene as to that particular To be short not one of the Doctours before the year 590. proposed to himself any such thing as either the confinement of the Dead in Purgatory or Prayer for their deliverance out of it CHAP. XLIII The Obscurity and Uncertainty of the Opinion of Purgatory GREGORY the Great the first of all those of whom we have remaining among us any Monuments to this purpose having in the year 593. begun to fasten together in his Dialogues and Sermons the Discourses he had heard and which he recommends to us with this notable Observation that they were Novelties not heard of before since he brings in Peter his Deacon putting this Question to him Quid hoc est quaeso te quod in his extremis temporibus tammulta de animabus clarescunt quae antè latuerunt c. What means it I beseech you that in these Last Times there are discovered concerning souls so many things which were hidden before The Leaven so spread it self since that in the Time of Beda viz. one hundred and twenty years after St. Gregory some numbred cold and temperate Purgatories as well as hot ones which was further heightned by Visions and Prodigious Relations as if the confidence of Feigning should as it grew Elder grow also stronger But though there were no other reason to quarrel at this Opinion then the Novelty of it as such as had not appeared in the West before the end of the sixth Age and could never obtain Naturalization in the East and South where it is yet unknown to the Vulgar and discarded by the Learned and the irresolution wherewith its Principal and first Promoter Pope Gregory spoke whether of the place of Hell or the activity of Infernal Fire upon the Spirits which according to his Imagination are tormented therein yet they clearly justifie that he Treated not the Question of the State of the dead but as it were by conjecture and upon the Imaginations of Persons so apt to be mis-informed as that there needed onely some common Report and the affirmation of a confident Dreamer to perswade them to any thing I know well enough that Cardinal Bellarmine to derive the Business somewhat higher cites St. Augustine who being in some difficulty about the Explication of those Words of Saint Paul He shall be saved yet so as by Fire had about the year 410. made use of these Words which manifestly discover how far he was unresolved in the Case Sive in hac vita tantùm ista homines patiuntur sive etiam post hanc vitam talia quaedam Judicia subsequuntur non abhorret quantum arbitror à ratione veritatis iste intellectus hujus Sententiae veruntamen etiamsi est alius qui mihi non occurrit eligendus non cogimur dicere injustis c. Salvi eritis c. Whether it be in this Life onely that men suffer such things that is to say dolefull Regrets for the things of this World which they have carnally loved or that after this Life some such Judgments follow this way of understanding the place of the Apostle is not in my Judgment repugnant to the reason of Truth yet if we must pitch upon another sense which is not obvious to me we are not forced to say to the unjust c. You shall be saved Continuing still in the same posture about the year 419. he writ to his Friend Laurence Tale aliquid c. That some such thing may happen even after this Life is not incredible and whether it be really so may be questioned and it may be either found true or remain concealed to wit whether some of the Faithfull according as they have more or less loved perishable Goods may be sooner or later saved through a Purgatory Fire And note that having not any thing more certain to answer he kept to the same Terms in resolving the first Question proposed to him by Dulcitius Nay in the year 424. which was the seventh before his death publishing his Books Of the City of God he harped on the same Doctrine saying Post istius sanè corporis mortem c. But as for the time between the bodily death and Last Judgment if any one say that the Spirits of the Dead are all that while tried in such a Fire as they do not any way feel who were not subject to the same Inclinations and Affections in this Life that their Wood Straw and Stubble might be consumed but that others who carry hence such Buildings do onely here or both here and there or here so as not there pass through the purging Fire of a Transitory Tribulation which burns the things of this World though Venial in respect of Damnation I reprove him not for that it is possible he is in the right But the Proceeding of the present Church of Rome who triumphs so much upon these Passages whereby she pretends to draw St. Augustine to her side is so much the more unjust towards him the more she presumes on the Testimony of a Witness who does not onely not say any thing as to what she would have him but absolutely destroys it in as much as he speaks of a Fire which some feel even in this Life and others after it Whence it follows that his Imagination reached no further then a Metaphorical and Intentional Fire which may be felt even during the Life of this Body whereas the Romane Church supposes a real and material one which burns not the living but torments the spirits of the Departed Secondly That he is not confident of his having found out the true sense of St. Paul's Words but ingenuously confesses that they may be understood in some other to him absolutely unknown Thirdly That treading as it were upon Thorns he is not over-ready to give us any thing for certain but entertains us with a simple Conjecture which might be brought to Question
Reliques as if they had been animated with the same Spirit as had made use of them to the glory of God during the course of his life and intended onely to signifie thus much that if they had been capable of Resentment they might have suffered through the nearness of his Body to them the shame and dissatisfaction which happen to generous Persons who being unequally matched desire and endeavour to free themselves out of the slavery of an importunate and dishonourable Society CHAP. XLVII The Sentiments of Saint Ambrose and Paulinus concerning the Burial of the Faithfull in Churches Examined BUt all the rest of the Prelates were not so scrupulous as Pope Damasius on the contrary Saint Ambrose carried away the rest by Custom as by the violence of an impetuous Torrent had not onely caused his Brother Satyrus deceased the seventeenth of September 383. to be buried near St. Victor Martyr but made his Tomb famous with this Epitaph Uranio Satyro Supremum frater honorem Martyris ad laevam detulit Ambrosius Haec meriti merces ut sacri sanguinis humor Finitimus penetrà ns adluat exuvias Here on the Martyr's left Ambrose bestows Here on the Martyr's left Ambrose bestows Last Honours on his Brother Satyrus That 's sacred Blood merit's reward it is May piercing drench the neighbouring Carkases In like manner commendation is given to his Sister Marcellina deceased the seventeenth of July about the year 398. or 99. for that she had chosen the place of her Burial near her Brethren in sacred Ground for her Epitaph runs thus Marcellina tuos cùm vita resolveret artus Sprevisti Patriis corpus sociare Sepulchris Cùm pia fraterni superas consortia somni Sanctorúmque cupis charâ requiescere terrâ c. Nor would'st thou be when death thy Limbs disjoyn'd To thy forefather's Sepulchres confin'd Out of a hope t' injoy thy Brother's rest And to remain'ith Region of the Blest Saint Paulinus then indeed onely a Priest but afterwards Bishop of Nola shewing that he had conceived an Imagination suitable to that of St. Ambrose writ concerning Celsus a young man deceased at Complutum or Alcada de Henarez in Spain about the year 393. Complutensi mandavimus urbe propinquis Conjunctum tumuli foedere Martyribus Ut de vicino Sanctorum sanguine ducat Quo nostras illo purget in igne animas c. In Complutum he 's dispos'd Among the Martyrs in a Tomb inclos'd That from th' adjacent blood o' th' Saints he may Derive what can our Souls purge in that day viz. that of the Conflagration of the Universe Of these Epitaphs the result is that as the Prophet Elizeus was heretofore so assisted by the Almighty power of the God of Glory that a dead Carkase cast by those that carried it into his Grave without any other Design then that to rid themselves of a trouble which might have retarded their Flight recovered Life as soon as it had touched his bones so according to the Opinion as well of St. Ambrose as Paulinus the Bodies of Martyrs were endued with a certain Virtue such as Sanctified and Purged the Things that were placed near them We cannot at this day affirm whether St. Ambrose did or did not change his Opinion but we are obliged to observe by the way what there is in it that is inconvenient nay indeed unmaintainable since that it presupposed that from the body of St. Victor beheaded at Milan the eighth of May 303. under Maximian and from that time shut up in a Tomb the Blood should eighty years after issue out in such quantity as to penetrate the Ground all about and moisten the body of Satyrus though enclosed also in his Grave and communicate its Virtue to him But if beheaded Bodies must necessarily be Bloodless and if that Blood be naturally fixed into a consistency as soon as it is issued out of the Veins what possibility was there in the Supposition which St. Ambrose made of that which Saint Victor had spilt eighty years before representing it onely liquid but streaming in such quantity as might penetrate the adjacent Ground And if it be pretended he grounded it on the Conception of some Miracle whence did he derive it unless from his own voluntary Devotion or Will-worship which inclined him to believe as actually existent what he thought possible to the power of God Besides this inconvenience whereto the Opinion of St. Paulinus writing the Epitaph of Celsus lies open and that the more expresly the more likely it is he conceived or pretended to conceive that from the Bodies of Justus and Pastor who had their Throats cut and consequently lost all their Blood at Complutum on the sixth of August 303. that is to say ninety years at least before the Death of Celsus the Body of that young man should derive Blood that purges souls as if of any other blood then that of the Lamb of God who of God hath been made unto us Sanctification and Redemption and hath himself purged our Sins it could be truly and in good sence said that it taketh away the Sin of the World and cleanseth us from Sin those Imaginations which taken rigorously would be found Diametrically opposite to the Doctrine of Faith do stand so much in need of a candid Reader who must do his Judgment some violence to draw them into a good sense that without the Byas which a forced Interpretation may give them it were impossible to deducc thence I will not say any thing good but any thing excusable About nine years after the same Paulinus writing the Epitaph of Clarus Disciple of St. Martin and a Priest of Tours deceased the eighth of November 401. in as much as his Body was to be Interred at the foot of the Altar takes a new Fancy and says Sancta sub aeternis Altaribus ossa quiescunt Ut dum nostra Pio referuntur munera Christo Divinae è sacris animae jungantur odores c. His sacred Bones now undisturbed lie Under Eternal Altars that when we To Christ our Presents offer his Soul may Be joyn'd to th'odours Sacred things convey He pretended as you see that the placing of the Body of the Faithfull Person departed near the Altar would be of such advantage to the Soul that some increase of Grace might accrue to her thereby and all this with much sincerity and good meaning which is wont to open a spacious Gap to those that consult it But upon what grounded What place of Holy Scripture can be produced to Authorise the Advice thereof Accordingly the same Paulinus to let us know that he found not himself any way satisfied with either of those two Presuppositions with much confidence and asseveration acknowledged that he was yet to be advised therein in the year 419. wherein two fresh Accidents to wit the Interrment of Flora's Son and that of Cynegius a young man who had at his Death required that his Body might be Buried in
extraordinary swiftness are present every where to insinuate that some as well as others are every where not in the same moment but in passing successively from one place to another and in different moments which yet according to the judgment of St. Augustine in his Book De cur â pro mortuis chap. 16th cannot be absolutely affirmed the Miracles attributed to the Saints it being granted they are true being haply done either by Angels or by the immediate operation of God's power so as that there is no necessity to suppose that the Spirits which God hath taken to himself actually leaving their heavenly mansions should walk up and down on earth 3. What St. Gregory of Rome said that the bones of Martyrs live taken litterally would imply a palpable contradiction which we should endeavour to take away saying that according to the sense of that great Pope the virtue which he thought produced its effects in the presence of the Saints bones and when they are touched by men though it be not in them but in God alone is to them instead of a kind of life 4. What he says that those who know God who knows all things do also know all things and that having his light within them they are not ignorant of any thing without does so much the more stand in need of moderation that without it it is absolutely false in the judgment even of the Doctours of the Church of Rome who make it their business to refute their conceipt who think the Essence of God a Mirrour wherein all things are seen It must therefore be that all expressions of this nature are to be born with upon the accompt of their intention who have used them rather then rigorously examined or taken as the natural signification of the Terms whereof they consist might seem to require and that we should be content to say of any such what St. Augustine conceived ought to be said of the expression of St. Ambrose affirming that Zacharias and Elizabeth either had been or might have been without sin either that was said according to some probable manner but such as had not passed examination or if the Authour meant it so he hath retracted his Sentiment by bringing it to a more rigorous tryal But however whether we are or are not inclined to this candor we shall be still obliged to confess how hard it is to warrant those imaginations and discourses which being destitute of the authority of God speaking in his word have no other ground then the probabilities which by the beauty of their outward appearance have dazled the greatest Wits of which number not any one but hath made it appear how slightly he was informed of the state of the Faithfull departed in the Lord since they have all of them expressed themselves with so much inconvenience both in their ratiocinations and words that to reconcile them to a sound sense they must be half-â—estroyed CHAP. LI. Of the Lessons of Scripture contained in the Missal and Breviary in what regards the Office of the Dead IF ever Antiquity had been either imbued with the belief of Purgatory which the Church of Rome accompts at this day among the Articles of her Faith or had found any track of it in the holy Scriptures there would have been some remark to insinuate as much First In the Publick Service especially in the Office of the second day of November devoted 650. years after to the commemoration of the dâ—…rted Secondly In the Mass of the Dead Thirdly In the Office of the Dead which is said by all that are in communion with the Church of Rome on the first day not being a Festival of every month the time of Easter onely excepted and on every Munday not appointed otherwise of the Advent and Lent except Munday in the Passion-week Let us then cast our eye on all the Lessons extracted out of the holy Scriptures and in the fear of his Name who is the Authour of them consider whether there be any thing therein that may in the least countenance so strange an Opinion Upon the second of November after the singing of the second and third Verses of the sixty fifth Psalm according to the Hebrews or sixty four according to the Greeks where there is not a word concerning either the Dead or their state or the custom of praying for them or the need it is pretended they stand in to get out of their pains there is read the twelfth Chapter of the second of Maccabees from the forty third verse to the end a title which the antient Church never considered and which amounts to nothing at all in order to the proof as well of the first Hypotheses upon which the Christians of the second Age grounded the custom of praying for the Dead as of Purgatory which came into credit four hundred years after Then is sung the fourth Verse of the twenty third Psalm where the Prophet relying on the paternal care of God his Shepheard rejoices in the assurance of his Protection and the second third and fourth Verses of the XLII Psalm where he makes protestation of his Zeal the desire he had to be highly sensible of the consolations of his God which no way induces either that the Dead do ever stand in need of the Prayers of the Living or that those Prayers are any way beneficial to them From thence they pass to the twenty fifth twenty sixth twenty seventh twenty eighth and twenty ninth Verses of the fifth Chapter of St. John at the head whereof some Body I know not who hath I know not how nor when thrust in of his own head these words Then Jesus said to his Disciples where it is to be noted that that place of the Gospel teaching onely that the Son of God hath been appointed Judge of men and that he will raise them all up again by his power does not any way prove that those who Die in any manner whatsoever are ever to hope for any benefit from the Prayers of the surviving sâ—â—ce it does not follow The dead shall be called out of their Graves by the voice of the Son of God to rise again and receive their Judgment Therefore They are in a place of Torments we must pray for them after their death and the Prayers made for them will contribute to their deliverance out of Pain In the Mass for the Dead there are recited in the first place the words of the second Book of Maccabees which make so much the less for their Design who read them by how much they contain a corrupt Interpretation of the Fact of Judas â—…accabaeus and suppose Hypotheses which they themselves grant not at this day Secondly There is read from the thirteenth Verse of the fourth Chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians to the end of the Chapter where the Apostle forbidding Lamentations for the Dead Treats as well of the Certainty as Order of their
and afford them our assistance to deliver them out of the pretended Purgatory And yet these are in a mâ—â—ner all the materials which have been shuffled into the composure of all that piece of Worship which goes under the name of The Office of the Dead though they have not any relation to their state and do no more induce a necessity of praying for them or believing a Purgatory that should purifie them as is pretended then they do that of making boast of our own praises a vanity even though we were tempted thereto Christian moderation would not suffer us to be guilty of Nor can it be said with any more reason that the words of the Psalms which are recited in the said Office are to be considered as Prosopopoeias whereby the Faithfull deceased are represented speaking of their condition after death I. In as much as the whole Contexture of every Psalm requires that the words of it be applyed to those who live in the flesh so as that it were a manifest abuse to wrest them to any other sence II. For that it was never allowed any one to cast into the divine Worship Fictions whereby men of quick Imaginations might presume to become the mouths of their Brethren departed not having to that end either order from them or calling from God And lastly for that though it were left to any man's discretion to make after his own fancy representations of those whom God hath called to himself yet should not any one take the liberty to do it e're he were well informed and satisfied whether they might pass for true and certain especially seeing that when they should be urged out of a design to infer thence the necessity of praying for them they would prove so much the more unmaintainable for as much as in the same Office where it is pretended they are employed to that end there are those Texts alledged which absolutely destroy the use thereof For instance that of the 14th Chapter of the Apocalyps Verse 13. where the holy Spirit declares Blessed are those that die in the Lord for what rational inducement is there either to desire bliss absolutely for those who are already possessed thereof or the cessation of torments for those who do not onely not suffer any but are not subject to suffer any in as much as from henceforth they are blessed and in rest That of the sixth Chapter of St. John and the thirty seventh Verse where the Son of God attests that he will in no wise cast out him that cometh to him and that of the eleventh Chapter and the five and twentieth and six and twentieth Verses where calling himself the Resurrection and the Life he promises life and exemption from eternal death to whosoever believes in him For if he does not cast out any of the Faithfull if on the contrary he saves them all from death and puts them into possession of life the surviving believers who to express their belief of his words insert them into their publick Form of Service do thereby confess that they are obliged to give him thanks for them and not to make Requests which presuppose that they enjoy not the effect of his promise Thus is there not any Lesson in the Service of the Church of Rome which effectually induces or hath so much as the appearance of inducing any thing of what those of her Communion at this day pretend to CHAP. LII Of the Prayers contained in the Missal and Breviary used by the Church of Rome and that Purgatory cannot be necessarily inferred from any one of them FOr as much as in the Book intituled Ordo Romanus there is not any mention made of the Dead that in the Canon of the Mass which is inserted into it the Memento is not to be found and that in the other Ritual Books of the Latines there is not any Lesson obliging to the belief of Purgatory screwed up since the year 1439. by the Councels of Florence and Trent into an Article of Faith the Church of Rome who hath at this day in favour of Prayer for the Dead but one onely Lesson to wit that of the second of Maccabees a Book held by her self to be Apocryphal till after the year 590. the Church of Rome I say is forced to confess that it must have been inserted so much the later into her Missals and Breviaries though upon no other accompt then this that the Greeks use it not in their Office even to this day and that from her whole service it necessarily results that she met not in the holy Scriptures with any foundation of the opinion either of Purgatory which she maintains or of the custom which she practises in praying for the Dead upon Motives unknown to Primitive Antiquity It remains therefore that we see what can be gathered of any consequence from the Prayers which we read in the publick Forms of Service of her prescription We have in the first place such as desire of God that the sins of the deceased Person may be pardoned as for instance this Fidelium Deus omnium conditor Redemptor animabus famulorum famularúmque tuarum remissionem cunctorum tribue peccatorum ut indulgentiam quam semper optaverunt piis supplicationibus consequantur c. O God Creatour and Redeemer of all the Faithfull grant unto the Souls of thy Servants of the one and the other Sex the remission of all their sins that by pious Supplications they may obtain the indulgence they have ever desired And this We beseech thee O Lord that this Supplication of ours may be beneficial to the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes intreating thee that thou wouldest cleanse them of all their sins and make them partakers of thy Redemption And this We beseech thee O Almighty God that the Soul of thy Servant purged by these Sacrifices may obtain admission to indulgence and eternal remedy And this Vouchsafe O Lord we beseech thee that the Soul of thy Servant and the Souls of thy Servants of both Sexes the Anniversarie-day of whose Interment we now commemorate being purged by these Sacrifices may be received as well into indulgence as eternal rest And this O God who hast commanded that we should honour our Father and Mother be pleased out of thy mercy to have compassion on the Souls of my Father and Mother and pardon their sins and make me to live with them in the joy of eternal light And this We beseech thee O Lord be mercifull unto the Soul of thy Servant and being freed from the contagion of Mortality restore her to the portion of eternal salvation And this We beseech thee O Lord that by these Sacrifices without which no man is guiltless the Soul of thy Servant may be cleansed from all sins that by these offices of pious placation she may obtain eternal mercy And this O God in whose mercy the Souls of the faithfull are at rest be graciously pleased to pardon the sins of thy Servants
according to them at such a point as immediately after their departure out of the Body to be at the self-same time exempted from the Pains of Restraint Obscurity or Grief through which it is affirmed they are to pass and deprived of the Rest which after the Pains they are to obtain so as that they are for the least space of time imaginable in a Neutral State which admits not the qualification of either Good or Bad of either Light or Darkness Rest or Torment and consequently of either Joy or Grief if not by accident And in Case that by the Place of Torment where it is feigned they fear being confined some may understand the Hell of the Damned is it possible they should ever be exposed thereto since it is presupposed they are of a middle Conditition and upon that very accompt as being chargeable onely with Venial Sins neither do nor can deserve Eternal damnation Be this therefore one unmaintainable and unimaginable Absurdity which must needs press hard upon our Forgers of Descriptions according to the Dictates of their own Fancies They make the deceased Priest further say Why O man dost thou trouble thy self thus unseasonably There is one onely hour and all passes away for in Hell there is no Repentance There is no Releasment in that place there is the Worm which never sleeps there is the darksom land and the obscure matter to which I am to be condemned c. Is this Discourse attributible to a Faithfull Person that had had here in this World the least taste of the Promise made by the Son of God assuring us that whoever believes in him is in such manner passed from death to life as that though he be dead yet shall he live through him that he shall not come into Condemnation and that there is not indeed any for those that are in him Are the Souls imagined to be in a middle Condition subject to the stingings of the Worm which never dies and liable to Damnation Which if it be supposed they neither are nor can why should they be feigned to say so and necessarily Lie in saying so This must then be a second Impertinence and a new Piece of Forgery committed by the Corrupters of the Ritual not onely against the Word of God but also against their Sentiment who in the same Ritual inserted this Confession which is both most true and Diametrically contrary to the Discourse before confuted Lament not all you who are departed in the Faith for as much as Christ hath suffered the Cross and was buried for us in the Flesh and hath made all those who call upon him children of Immortality For this once lay'd down does it signifie less then a total Eclipse of understanding and circumspection to make the children of Immortality for whom the Saviour of the World died and who consequently cannot perish say that they shall be Damned Nay the Prayers of the Living for their departed Brethren would be still chargeable with inconvenience even though they were taken literally For instance this O Lord as thou saidst unto Martha I am the Resurrection by the Effect accomplishing thy Word and calling Lazarus out of Hell so also mercifully raise this thy servant out of Hell For besides that it is a little too freely supposed that our Lord's Friend was confined in Hell from the moment of the Death of his Body to that of his Resurrection it is also false that our Saviour raises out of Hell whence the Ritual confesses that none is delivered any of his Servants Whoever once enters there never comes out again nor is there any raising up to be expected by him But these words may be maintained if they meet with a favourable Interpretation which might admit Hell to signifie not the place of the Damned in which sence it is ordinarily taken but the Grave whence our Saviour who called forth Lazarus will at the Last day raise up the Bodies of all his Servants With the help of the same favourable way of Interpreting it were possible to finde a sence conformable to the apprehension of Antiquity in those Prayers whereby the Greeks do at this day Beg the Remission of Sins for their Dead taking care to make them to relate to the Absolution which shall be solemnly pronounced by the Great Judg at the last day as may be deduced from this that most of them expresly mention it among others this Vouchsafe O Redeemer that when thou shalt come with ineffable glory in the Clouds after a dreadfull manner to Judge the whole World that thy Faithfull Servant whom thou hast taken from the Earth may joyfully meet thee which words are Grounded on 1 Thess Chap. iv Verse 17. In like manner this Vouchsafe O God to be mindfull of our Father who is now at rest and be pleased to deliver him from the corruption of sin at the day of Judgment through the good odour of thy goodness mercy and love towards men Again O Lord from whom the Spirits of those who serve thee do come and to whom they return we beseech thee to cause to rest in a place of light in the Region of the Just the Spirit of N. thy Servant now lying in his Grave and raise him up at thy second and dreadfull coming not to be condemned after the Resurrection but to be Absolved for no man living shall be justified in thy sight Again Let not thy Servant O Lord be confounded at thy coming When thou shalt discover all things that are hidden and shalt O Christ reprove our sins spare him whom thou hast taken hence being mindfull of his Preaching Again Forgive O Saviour the sins of him who hath been translated hence in Faith and vouchsafe to admit him to thy Kingdom there shall not any escape the dreadfull Tribunal of thy judgment Kings and Potentates and the Hireling all shall appear together and the dreadfull Voice of the Judge shall call the People that have sinned to the condemnation of Hell from which O Christ deliver thy servant Again Out of thy mercy O Christ exempt from the Fire of Hell and the dreadfull Sentence thy Servant whom thou hast now taken hence in Faith and let thy Domestick praise thee as God the mercifull Redeemer c. Brethren how dreadfull is the hour which sinners are to expect O what fear is there Then the Fire of Hell devours and the ravenous Serpent swallows wherefore mercifull Lord Christ deliver him from the day of dreadfull Gehenna O how great shall be the Joy of the Just which they shall be possessed of when the Judge comes for the Nuptial room is prepared and Paradise and the whole Kingdom of Christ into which O Christ receive thy Domesticks to rejoyce with thy Saints eternally Who O Christ shall bear the dreadfull threatning of thy coming Then shall Heaven be rolled up together as a Book after a dreadfull manner and the Stars will fall the whole