omission of this warning it is said that his Bloud shall be upon the Prophet And chap. 14. 19. even natural death where there is no effusion of bloud is so expressed Or if I send pestilence into the land and pour out my fury upon it in bloud to cut off from it man and beast Upon which Grotius rightly out of the Chaldee Paraphrast Omne mortis immaturae genus Sanguis Hebraeis Bloud therefore signifies Death and bloudy dead because as it is written In the bloud thereof is the life thereof And answerably to this * Onirocrit c. 103. Achmetes according to the sense of the Aegyptians and Persians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where the letting out his bloud must be his death and in Analogie the destroying the strength of any thing or that power or virtue whereby it is what it is is the death of that thing not considering whether it be animate or inimate 13. Bow and Arrows They naturally signifie the aiming at some thing and the hitting the mark the enjoying the scope of our enterprises But it may more peculiarly refer to Victory in war and the rather because they are warlike weapons Achmetes out of the Onirocriticks of the Aegyptians and Persians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Onirocrit 249. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If a man dream he holds in his hand Bow and Arrows he shall victoriously insult over his enemies Buildings Achmetes according to the sense of the Indian Interpreter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If one dream he is in an house of Marble or Stone it imports long life and riches where thieves cannot break through nor steal Burial For a dead body to be unburied it may have a two-fold signification either of a more infamous death or of hope of recovering into life According to the first is that of Ecclesiasâ—…es If a man beget an hundred Chap. 6. 3. children and live many years and his soul be not filled with good and also that he have no burial I say that an untimely birth is better then he Otherwise not to be buried may signifie onely that what the Vision portends will not be quite finished Burial being the consummation of all even of Death it self Whence Leonas Syrus dreaming that he was dead but not buried Artemidorus interprets it of that Event viz. that he was Artemidor lib. 4 c. 84. victorious but not crown'd But Menander of Smyrna dreaming also that he was buried was also crowned Victor at the Olympick Games Wherefore not to be buried in Visions that portend good is bad in those that portend bad is good And Achmetes expresly according to the sense of the Indian Interpreters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If there be any thing wanting whereby the Interrement is hindered it signifies hope of recovery to life CHAP. VI. 1. Candle 2. Character 3. Clouds of Heaven 4. Crown of precious Stones 5. Darkness Day Death 6. Desart 7. Dragon a figure of the Devil according to the ancient Cabbala and then of the chief Polities that oppose the Church 8. Drunkenness 9. Eagle Earth-quake 10. Eclipses 11. Eye an Hieroglyphick of Counsel and Prudence 12. Fishing Fish dead in the Sea 13. Fire the different significations thereof 14. Fire from Heaven its exact significancy of Excommunication 15 16. Flesh two notable significations thereof 17. Floud Fornication Frogs 18. Gemms and precious Stones God 1. CAndle Candle seems to signifie the prosperous state of things in this world Job 18. Yea the light of the wicked shall be put out and the spark of his fire shall not shine The light shall be dark in his Tabernacle and his candle shall be put out And chap. 29. O that I were as in months past as in the days when God preserved me when his candle shined upon my head and by his light I walked through darkness The like prosperous success the Psalmist also denotes by the same figure Psal. 18. For thou wilt light my candle the Lord my God will make my darkness to be light in his Song of thanksgiving for his deliverance out of the hand of Saul Astrampsychus and Nicephorus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And Artemidorus lib. 2. c. 9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A Candle seen burning bright in the house portends good the increase of riches and plenty Lastly Achmetes according to the meaning of the Aegyptians and Persians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And in the same Chapter again he saith That the lighting up of Lights signifies joy and chearfulness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the extinction of them against a mans will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 affliction and distress from a mans enemies proportionable to the darkness 2. Character That Servants and Souldiers received Marks upon their foreheads and hands whereby it might be known to whom they did belong is a piece of indisputable Antiquity there being sufficient testimony thereof in Authours See what is congested in Mr. Mede and Grotius upon Apocal. 13. But in the Prophetick style it does not imply that there is any visible mark in the hand or on the head of those that are said to be marked but onely that there is an open profession of belonging to them whose mark they are said to receive For they are onely Types of Propriety and are no more to be conceived to be really impressed upon them that are said to bear them then those whole Kingdoms of men that are called Beasts in the Prophetick style are to be imagined to be metamorphozed into Bears or Leopards For all these are Typical Attributes not Real 3. Clouds of Heaven In the Scripture-phrase they seem to signify Power and great Glory Achmetes Chap. 194. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to the mind of the Persians and Aegyptians And Chap. 162. according to the Aegyptians Persians and Indians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And again in the same Chapter 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The sense of all which is this That the riding upon the Clouds and ascending into Heaven signifies honourable prosperity and success against our enemies and enlargement of power and dignity 4. Crown of Gemms and precious Stones Achmetes out of the Onirocriticks of the Indians Chap. 247. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Where the force of the Interpretation bears most upon the Gemms or precious Stones they being the Emblems of Riches Height and Honour They have also a more Mystical meaning in this very Chapter and signify 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the brightness of Divine doctrine or Truth But Chap. 248. they are onely interpreted of worldly things according to the mind of the Aegyptians and Persians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 viz. Pearls and precious Stones 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that he has got abundance of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he shall find proportionable riches and honour 5. Darkness See Candle and Eye Day See Time Death Death is a dissolution of Body and Soul and therefore properly belongs onely to a natural Animal but by Analogie may be transferred to all Bodies Politick which the Prophetick
innumerable Institutes are there of the Pope's injoyning of which may be truly said what our Saviour told the Scribes and Pharisees 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 From the Mat. 19. 8. beginning it was not so And what is this therefore but to change Times and Laws and in many of them in a most perfect Opposition to the Laws of God and Christ as I have already noted in its place Whence we see plainly that this Antichristian Opposition against the Regal Office of Christ is very expresly foretold in this Vision of the little Horn which rose up with the Ten Horns in the Roman Empire and did fabricate Imperium in Imperio as some phrase it and became a Two-horned Beast in the Ten-horned Beast erecting an Ecclesiastick Antichristian Empire within the Civil in opposition to the true Empire or Kingdome of Christ and in defeatment of his Power and Laws in the Church nay in opposition to those Immutable Laws of the Eternal Logos that enlightens every man that comes into the world CHAP. XIV 1. The Vision of the Rider of the white Horse Apocal. 19. proposed 2. A general account of that Vision 3. What meant by the white Horse what by the flammeous eyes of his Rider 4. What by his Name known onely to himself 5. What by his garment dipp'd in bloud and that this as also the precedent Characters are applicable to Christ's Body the Church 6. The meaning of the Sword coming out of his mouth 7. And of the treading the Wine-press of God's wrath 8. The meaning of the Inscription upon his thigh in reference to himself 9. As also in respect of his Church to which it is applicable As also the treading of the Wine-press and the Sword coming out of his mouth 1. THE latter of which two Oppositions I mean that against the Eternal Logos seems to me to be very lively prefigured Apocal. 19. beginning at the eleventh verse Where we may see what has been held under in the reign of the Whore of Babylon which I have intimated to be the same with that little Horn in Daniel by the Description of his Triumph after her Fall For this Triumphal Pomp is upon her ruine as it appears from the precedent Chapter that describes it But the Pomp is described thus 11. And I saw Heaven open and behold a white horse and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True and in righteousness he doth judge and make warre 12. His eyes were as a flame of fire and on his head were many crowns and he had a Name written which no man knew but himself 13. And he was clothed with a vesture dipt in bloud and his Name was called THE WORD OF GOD. 14. And the Armies which were in Heaven followed him upon white horses clothed in fine linen white and clean 15. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp Sword that with it he should smite the Nations and he shall rule them with a rod of iron and he treadeth the Wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God 16. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a Name written KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS 2. In this Vision you see that the Eternal Word of God of which the holy Bible is in some sense and some part a Transcript is at last upon his triumph adorned with many Crowns and has got into possession of his just Title exposed visibly to the view of all the world in a writing upon the thigh of this great Heros KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS Which power the Lady of Babylon had usurped before and under the pretence of her Infallibility had silenced not onely the express Law of the written Word of God but most coursly and barbarously had troden down those Innate Principles of Morality and Reason that the Eternal Word had implanted in the Souls of men and by terrour and cruel forcibleness did what she could to smother stifle and extinguish them But here the Scene of things is changed and the pure Word of God has got the victory over the corrupt Superstitious Idolatrous and contradictious Opinions and fond Institutes of that Antichristian Body of men over whom the Pope has a special Headship and Sovereignty 3. There is no great difficulty in the understanding this Prophecy if we have recourse to my Prophetick Alphabet where I have set down what Horse and what the Colour of White signifie That the Eyes of this Heros are said to be as a flaming fire intimates his sharp-sightedness as it is said in the Hebrews That the Word of God is a discerner Heb. 4. 12. of the thoughts and intents of the heart and that there is no creature that is not manifest in his sight but that all things lie naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to doe Where the Written Word and the Eternal Word are jointly spoken of as here they seem to be in this Vision by an Henopoeia Again in that his Eyes are said to be a flaming fire we may note also how Fire is a Symbol of Intellectuality especially a flaming fire that implies light as is easily understood out of the Philosophick Cabbala of the first Day 's Creation Igneus est illis vigor coelestis origo Seminibus And we reade of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Magick Oracles and of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 attributed to the Soul as being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plethon speaks Wherefore the Logos here is rightly said to have Eyes like a flaming fire because he is not onely Intellectual but that Great and Eternal Intellect from whence all Intellectual Beings are as also all their Operations exercised by virtue of the more pure aethereal and igneous Spirits 4. That also of having a Name written that no man knew but himself seems to be agreeable to the Cabbalistical Doctrine who make Aaron a Symbol of the Eternal Word that fills the Universe as also of Christ who is this Word Incarnate The Allusion therefore may be to Aaron's having the Tetragrammaton written upon his Mitre that Name which is said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and could be read onely by the High Priest that had it written upon the golden Plate on his Mitre as Alcazar has observed But in brief it signifies the Incomprehensibleness and Imperscrutableness of the Divinity of our Saviour he alone who is it being able to comprise it 5. And in that his vesture is said to be dipt in bloud it is a Symbol of his Passion so that we may know that it is the Messias that is here meant of whom S. John in his Gospel has said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Word was made flesh And here he is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Word of God and yet in a bloudy garment that indicates his Humanity or Terrestrial body for this Body is but a Vestment of the Soul no part of the Man according to the Platonists which
with the names of the devouter and more liberal Clients The giving out also that this or that Saint has a special power for doing such or such miracles for healing such or such diseases for aiding in such or such streights or exigencies were endow'd with such or such a measure of Pardons or Indulgences how strongly would these surmises attract the devotions of the simple even to the making Vows to them in Danger and the going on Pilgrimages to their Temples or Chappell 's where being brought into the visible presence as it were of the Saint himself represented by his well-adorned Statue or Image either out of a conceit of some help done to them already or in expectation of some future succour they cannot for shame but offer at least proportionably to their ability not doubting but the more liberal Clients of so good and powerfull a Patron shall not fail one way or other to receive at least a full peny-worth for a peny But they do not consider in the mean time that the imitation of any peculiar Vertue in any of those Saints would oblige them more 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if they have any knowledge of humane affairs to doe all the good they can then if a man should lay down all the wealth he has at the feet of one of their Statues and that an hearty prayer directed to God through Christ would gain more favour from them then if it had been directed to themselves As any good Christian would sooner relieve a poor man whom by chance he found earnestly breathing out his wants to God in secret then if he had begged relief of himself 3. We see plainly therefore what a Gainfull trade may be driven in the maintaining of the Invocation of Saints and of Image-worship And if some such like prop did not uphold that Mysterious conceit of Transsubstantiation and the Idolatry thereon depending assuredly so huge an Extravagancy and so repugnant to Scripture and contrary to all Sense and Reason would not have the possibility of being any part of that Idea of Antichristianism which I am a-describing For it could never get into the Church of Christ upon its own score but as it served some other end or designe at least it could not be retained there when once seriously sifted unless it were found very advantageous to the maintainers thereof 4. What Self-ends therefore will you say can be served by the pretence of the power of doing so stupendious a miracle as the changing the Bread in the Eucharist into the very Body or Corporeal presence of Christ Why certainly very great ones and mightily advantageous to the Priest For he that is supposed to have the power by pronouncing four or five words to make Christ Jesus who is God blessed for ever personally and corporeally present cannot be well imagined to be streightned so in the effect of his intention but that Christ's personal presence being thus procured he will bring to pass those very designs the Priest intended in procuring it As very few doubt but that he that can raise a Spirit to be as it were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in an hard streight can procure of the Spirit to assist to that end for which he was raised Wherefore supposing the Priest has power to bring this real 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 down into Corporeal presence by such a divine charm as they would make it who can suspect but that Christ being bodily there he will assist favour and effect any allowable end for which the Priest by virtue of the words of Consecration brought him thither I say Christ being thus really and Corporeally there Body Soul and Divinity and being thus visibly and personally offered up by the hands of the Priest in the opinion of the people for the procurement of this or that favour of God they cannot at all doubt but that he having such a pledge in his hand will not fail of obtaining any thing that is not plainly sinfull at the hands of God For if he has thus palpably given him his own Son how can he with-hold any thing from him Certainly they that believe the Priest in the first cannot easily misbelieve him in the second 5. Wherefore the Priest might safely pretend that by virtue of this offering up Christ really and personally in the Masse and of his direction of the intent of his own action therein this Sacrifice will be available for both the living and the dead for the sick and for the sound for both man and beast that he can thereby deliver Souls out of Purgatory free men from the plague heal cattel drive away fevers or prevent the tooth-ach recover lost goods cure the soreness of the eyes give victory against a mans enemies procure a good husband or wife and what not Wherefore the Sacrificer being conceived to be invested with so mighty a power if he will but be so free and accessible as to be persuaded upon occasions to make use of it either for love or mony may he not certainly have his choice Whence it is plain that if the Priesthood would enrich themselves upon this account it is entirely in their power and that they would receive mony for such holy performances and so pious uses is not unimaginable And therefore it is no hard stroke in this Picture I draw of Antichristianism to suppose that the opinion of Transsubstantiation may be stoutly and tenaciously held up for the upholding and increasing the Wealth of an Antichristian Priesthood For if the opinion be false as most certainly it is it is the mother of Idolatry and therefore the Founders or Abettors thereof may be justly termed Antichristian especially it being supposed that it is maintained for the love of filthy lucre 6. But it may not be Wealth only that is the End and Design of this monstrous doctrine but the exaltation of their persons into a greater esteem and honour then can well be humane For to transform a piece of Bread into the real Person of Christ is little less then to create our Creatour And if the blessed Virgin for being the Mother of God does in their judgement deserve what they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of worship little inferiour to Divine honour such as we give to God himself what respect must they think themselves worthy of that phansy themselves the Creatours of that very God of which the Virgin Mary is said to be the Mother Certainly it would puzzle men to conceive a way of expression of sufficient honour and respect for such a wonder-working Priesthood who in this one miracle which yet is ordinarily and easily done by them though our Saviour was fain to groan for it when he raised Lazarus from the dead who I say in this one miracle of changing the dead element of Bread into the living Body and Person of Christ do out-doe all the Miracles that Christ ever wrought by this creating of him who was the worker of all those Miracles
and that even then when he does not cease to be and which is another great miracle without making the Bread seem to any of our Senses any thing altered from what it was before What honour or privilege may not they claim to themselves that assure the people that they are the ordinary workers of so stupendious so incomprehensible and so impossible a Prodigie 7. Verily they that have derived upon them so boundless and miraculous a power which exceeds nay is repugnant and contrary to the strongest Laws of Physicks Logick and Metaphysicks can it seem any more then a modest claim in them to challenge an exemption from all Politick Laws also unless of their own making For how holy how sacred a person must he seem to the world who so easily and so frequently can work so astonishing a miracle And therefore how uncomely a thing would it be that the Secular powers should pretend any Dominion over one that is endued with so divine a power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For it is as if they would take upon them to give laws to God himself as Aristotle speaks of his Polit. lib 3. Heroically vertuous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For it is fit that such an one should be as a God amongst men that is to say such an one that is so eminently and superlatively vertuous as he there describes What then must he be accounted that is thought to have a power which is a more sensible Object of the peoples admiration either equal or superiour to God himself who as ordinarily wise men conclude cannot doe any thing that implies a contradiction to be done Wherefore if the degenerated Christian Priesthood could persuade the people that they had the power of doing so huge and incomprehensible a miracle that tends so infinitely to the advancement of their esteem it could be no wonder that they were zealous maintainers of the Imposture it conciliating to them with such as believe it so mighty credit and respect and saving them the labour of that harder way of winning it to wit by unblemished Sanctity and Exemplarity of life and by a true and sound knowledge in the Mysteries of the Religion they profess 8. Wherefore though the Pretences and Excuses for the Invocation of Saints the worshipping of Images and the adoring of the Host be slight and triviall yet we see the Self-ends of these Idolatrous practices may be very substantial and palpable but both put together make up that Antichristian Fraud and assuredly it is an eminent one that is discoverable in this first and chief Limb of Antichristianism which is the Introduction of Idolatry into the Church of Christ. CHAP. XVI 1. That Idolatry is the highest and most peculiar injury that can be committed against God 2. That giving Religious honour to Saints or Angels is really a reproaching them and blaspheming them 3. The exceeding great Mischief done to the Soul of man by Idolatry 4. That Idolatry turns men into bloudy Wolves and Bears 5. And is the Mother and Nurse of the foulest impurities 6. That it is the source of all manner of wickedness and eternal death to the Idolater 7. The great Mischiefs it doth to the Church of Christ. 8. How the Church is lessened by Idolatry at home 9. And the spreading thereof hindred abroad 10. And consequently the whole World injured thereby 1. WE will now briefly consider the Mischief of this horrid enormity which reaches either to God as much as any mischief can reach him to the Saints to the Idolaters themselves to the Church or to the rest of the World The sin of Idolatry is the most properly injurious to God of any sin it so peculiarly touching the right of his Honour or Worship which Honour he will not give to any other nor suffer to be taken from him And indeed it is highly reasonable it should be reserved entire to himself no other Tribute being competible to him but this For God who is that Infinite Fulness of Perfection can want nothing but we having all received of his fulness and possessing nothing but therefrom it is according to the sense of that Eternal Law of Reason and ingenuous Gratitude as well as according to the express injunction of the sacred precepts of Scripture that there should be proper Homages of Divine honour peculiarly due to so Infinite a Benefactour which to alienate or prophane by applying to any creature ought to be reputed the most accursed and execrable Sacrilege that can be committed This robbing therefore of God of his honour of which he every where professes himself so jealous and so wrathfull a revenger is the highest affront or injury that can be committed against that glorious Majesty of Heaven Which point is so confessedly true that it is needless any further to pursue it 2. The next seems more Paradoxical That by the excess of honouring and worshipping of the Saints we should injure them and abuse them or by giving them over-much respect become guilty of disrespecting them And yet it is in very truth so if examined to the bottom For the zealous and carefull yielding of that honour which is done to them implies our belief or opinion of their acceptance but for them to accept of that honour or worship that is due to God as all Religious and Divine worship is is to be Rebells and Traitours to the Divine Majesty usurping or at least accepting of his Rights and Prerogatives and in stead of being Saints and faithfull Subjects of Christ and his Heavenly Kingdom to be transformed into Titans and Giants or Children of Lucifer that would ascend the throne of God and divide his Empire amongst themselves Wherefore whosoever pretend that the Saints accept of such Homages or services to them do in effect proclaim to all the world that they are proud and vain-glorious nay that they are Traitours and Rebells against God and thus instead of honouring them do really injure them reproach them and blaspheme them 3. The Mischief that is done to the Idolaters themselves is very great and obvious to observe Image-worship and Saint-worship debasing the Mind and making it superstitious and pusillanimous begetting in it a crass or gross conceit of things making the spirits course and carnal and leaning towards Corporeal matters so that the exteriority and palpability of the exercise of their affections in this sort toward Divine things inclines them with a greater proneness and readiness to be transposed upon other visible objects and to fall quickly from caressing and embracing cold Statues and Images and such like sensible and palpable entertainments of their Devotions to the courting of warm flesh and to the polluting themselves with such sins of uncleanness as the ancient Pagan Idolaters were signally guilty of For indeed all such Ludicrous and Superficial Religion must needs leave the body of sin entire and untouched and the inward Mind dead and starved so that the full raines will be given to every impetuosity of the Flesh
Vestments would vie in number with the Vestments of Aaron the High-priest and imitate also his in Analogie his Breast-plate his Ephod his Robe his broidered Coat his Mitre and Girdle and the Bishops not content with these should adde for the further adorning themselves as if they had a mind to out-doe the Ceremonial Habiliments of Aaron himself six more holy Ornaments nay I will suppose nine more besides the consecrating of these Priests with holy oyl on their shaven Crowns and in their hands which become thereby so sanctified that the more devout would eagerly and zealously kiss the hand of the Priest strait after his Ordination hoping thereby to partake more fully of his devotedness and sanctity What were this I say but to Judaize under Christianity and to illaqueate the minds of men with such Superstitions as our Saviour Christ came to set them free from Which intimation is sufficient to shew the Falsness and groundlesness of such an Oeconomy in the Church 5. But as for the pretence for such kind of Aaronical Ornaments I can imagine none unless it be the imitation of the Levitical Laws which is a very bad one those Laws being to be abolished by Christ. Besides that the Robes of Aaron were of a more * Appendix to the Defence of the Philosophick Cabbala Ch. 5. Sect. 2 3 4. profound and important signification then to be imitated upon any slight or superficial design as well they as other Mosaical figures being prescribed according to a certain Pattern exhibited by God in the Mount which being the shadows of things to come do naturally vanish in this Meridian and Vertical Sun-shine of the Gospel And therefore to bring in so many New shadows is to reenvelop the Church with darkness and divert us from the rightly understanding of the meaning of the Old which assuredly were all Types of that more full knowledge of Jesus Christ and of that inward and Spirituall Sanctity we have in him But that advantage which this erroneous Priesthood might seek to it self herein is this That by these Histrionical disguises and peculiar adornings they may become more honourable in the eyes of the People who are much struck with outward shews I mean the simpler sort of them and that their Persons may be accounted very holy whose Ordination is with such pompous Ceremonie and whose sacred Unction makes it in some sort to vie with the Coronation of Princes Could they be more through-paced in the imitation of that great high-Priest of the Jews and adorn themselves with what in analogie should answer to his * See the Preface General to the Collection of my Philosophicall Writings Sect. 3. Urim and Thummim that is Illumination of mind and Sincerity of heart that indeed would be an happy emulation and would absolve them from an over-rigorous pursuance of the rest 6. But so it is according to our Hypothesis that instead of so great a good there follow these Inconveniences That this Sacerdotal Pomp and Gayness to those Priests that understand the nature of Christianity is both a Scandal and a Burthen to those that do not rellish Christianity in the right sense of it it is to them an occasion of insufferable pride and conceitedness and of great security and neglect of those true and indispensable endowments of the Christian Priesthood of that Anointing 1 John 2. 27 which will teach them all things even that of the Holy Spirit of God which is not lodged in consecrated Garments but in those purer habits of the Mind in the Inward man wholy and throughly dedicated to God by perfect and real abrenunciation of himself and of the flesh the world and the Devil by entirely giving up ones self to the sincere Love of God and of his Neighbour to Purity and Sobriety of life and to unfeigned Humility and Self-denial Which real Accomplishments should be the Foundation of respect to the Christian Priesthood not those exteriour Ornaments that may be the covers of a Beast or Devil And lastly for the People themselves As some are liable to be miserably deceived by those external Pomps so others to be much offended I mean those who are more seriously set upon the real duties of Christianity and find their wholesome appetite mock'd not fed with those outward shews in the publick Service of God 7. Which we shall better understand if we make a more plenary representation of their Publick worship and adde to the Consecrated Garments of the Priest the dedicating of an unknown Tongue to their Publick Prayers and Offices to the great disedification of the People What spectacle could one behold more Antichristian To see a man in those Sacerdotal disguises all of them consecrated and dedicated to the purpose himself having had both Head and Hands anointed with holy oyl standing in an anointed Church and at anointed Altar with his anointed Chalice and other anointed Utensils whose Church-yard is holy by the consecration and benediction of sprinkled Holy-water for the frighting the Devils from hanting that consecrate ground and molesting the sleep of the bodies of the Dead nay whose very Bells of his Steeple are Christned and Chrismatized for the chasing away the foul fiends out of the Aire at the departure of a Soul by their tolling or ringing To see him in his holy postures now at the one end of the Altar now at another now turning his face toward the people now his back-side one while holding up his hands another while holding them down another while a-cross at his breast now making with his hand a single Cross now two or three Crosses together now sitting then standing and another while stooping and kissing the holy Altar now speaking aloud then muttering to himself in a lower tone but always in a tongue that is not at all understood by the People To see I say such a Sight as this and to compare it with that of our Saviour The hour cometh when the true worshippers John 4. shall worship the Father in Spirit and in truth for the Father seeketh such to worship him It would necessarily extort from the Spectatour this just Censure That these are either false-worshippers or our Saviour's prediction not true or else the completion thereof past in the simplicity of the Primitive times or rather that if he would find these true Christian worshippers he must seek them somewhere else for here is neither Spirit nor Truth nor intelligible language but all more dark and blind and dumb then in the very Midnight-shadows of the Mosaical Dispensation 8. And therefore as I was a-going to conclude as the more sottish people will be liable to be even brutishly amazed and amused by this unintelligible and unedifying pomp and spectacle and be made the more obnoxious to all the Frauds and Tyrannies of this Unchristian though over-much Anointed Priesthood so the more nasute will be tempted to look upon it but as a kind of circumforaneous Masking or Mumming nor easily be persuaded that
mind of another Classis of Superstitions which might be invented contrary to the Faithfulness and Simplicity of the School of Christ to the illaqueating of mens consciences and misplacing their dependences upon Creatures more then the Creator and to the extinguishing of that comfortable inward sense of his invisible but omnipotent Omnipresence by interposing these vain and visible Objects which have neither force nor allowance for those uses they pretend to I mean the Exorcizing or Enchanting if you will of certain Natural Elements without any warrant of holy Scripture to endue them with a Supernatural power As if for example the Priest should pretend by the Exorcizing of the Creature of Salt by the living true and Holy God to make it become an Holy and Exorcized Salt for the health of both Body and Soul to as many of the believers as receive it and for the chasing away of every evil Phantasm and unclean Spirit by the aspersion thereof and so by the Exorcizing of the Creature of Water in the name of the Holy Trinity to endue it with a virtue of chasing away the Devil and Diseases and every disquieting thing out of an house by the sprinkling thereof and should recommend the use thereof for the besprinkling their chambers ever and anon therewith as also their sick folks their fields and vineyards for health and increase The Exorcizing of Wax-candles into a virtue of putting to flight the Prince of darkness with all his Retinue and of making them run away with fear and trembling from what-ever place they are lighted in The Exorcizing of the Creature of Oil by God the Father Omnipotent the Creator of all things that whosoever uses it the Troups of the Devil may be put to flight and that he may never be bit by the old Serpent Also the Exorcizing of Herbs or the Boughs of Trees the Exorcizing of Bells and the Priestly Vestments Is it not apparent that all these and as many more else as can be intented of this nature are mere Juggles and Impostures 2. But the Imposture would be more grateful and complete if we had some fine thing consecrated that were more portable and yet of a more universal influence as also more durable and permanent then most of the former And therefore the shape of some holy Plant or Animal thus exorcized would be of sovereign use and content the Rose of Sharon or the Lily of the valleys the Dove or Lamb whose names are sacred to every Christian eare Wherefore a Golden Rose impregnated with joy and gladness from the Benediction of the holy High-priest of this Church and full of the fragrancy of remission of sins increase of faith though the effect be never found Divine protection and all prosperity were a Posie to wipe the Nose of a Prince withall And so the gentle Lamb made of some more flexible matter and elegantly limb'd suppose out of Wax but exorcized into powers and virtues little inferiour to that Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world as being made able by a certain sacred Exorcism or Benediction to preserve them that bear it about with them from all the assaults of the Flesh the World and the Devil from Pestilence Famine and sudden Death from all perils by Land and by Sea from Lightning from Tempests and from Abortion were a Present for an Emperor or Emperess Several such Instances as these might be excogitated all which I must pronounce to be against the faithful plainness and true power of the Gospel of Christ and to entrench upon the Reverence of the Name of God and to be a trespass of the Third Commandment Thou shalt not take the Name of the Lord thy God in vain 3. Against which Precept I make account those Forms of Conjuration do evidently offend that are found in Books of Magick as in Cornelius Agrippa and Petrus de Abano where those Divine appellations Jah El Adonai Elohim Elohe Zebaoth Elion Sadai and the like are made the Elements of their vain and reprobate Art Which is a manifest argument that the Priest's Exorcization in the Names of God and his holy Attributes does not excuse him from the guilt of Enchantment since the Magicians themselves use the Names of the true God therein And as for the more general Notion of Enchantment Agrippa defines it to be nothing but The conveiance of a certain mirificent power into the thing enchanted by virtue of the words and breath of the Enchanter Nor will the phrases or passages of Scripture excuse the Priest from this impiety since this is both prescribed and practised by these Magicians Their Pentacles which they hang about their necks when they conjure which they forsooth for greater grace call the Pentacles of Solomon are adorned and fortified with such transcriptions out of holy Scripture Whence it is plain if any one would take notice of all the special Characters of such an Apostate Church as I am a-describing he could not omit amongst other Titles to brand them with the name of Enchanters or Sorcerers 4. Which they might deserve upon other scores which we have already intimated as in that they teach people certain Prayers in an unknown Tongue which they direct them to say for such and such purposes For what are these but Charms And the making of Jesus of Nazareth who was above sixteen hundred years ago crucified at Jerusalem upon the uttering a few words personally to appear flesh and bloud and bones all mantled over with the thin cloathing of certain Panaceous Species or loosely-hanging Accidents is a piece of Magick above the Witch of Endor's and all the Historical records of Necromancy in the world All which pretensions being so Epidemical or general in this Church we do characterize who can miss of notifying them by the style of a Society of Magicians or Enchanters For in that they are mere Pretences and have no real effect will not excuse the desert of so goodly a Title the profession and endeavour giving the Practisers sufficient right thereto As he that has been casting his Angle a good part of the day into the River and brings home no Fish may yet be rightly saluted Mr. Fisherman or Mr. Angler at his return though not without some kind of Scommatism at the bottom And he that professes Physick and has it may be as yet cured none but such as would have recovered as well without him though killed many is notwithstanding by all men termed a Physician And generally what men affectedly pretend to though they cannot perform it may justly by way of Scommatical reproach be entered into the particulars of their character for the making up the whole tale of their shame and reproof 5. What grounds they might make shew of for such Incantations as these I must confess I cannot so easily find For the Bloud of the Paschal Lamb wherewith the Israelites sprinkled the lintel and two side-posts of their doors was not charmed first to convey a virtue
hands of our Lady instead of our Lord Jesus who is God every-where ready to save that precept from the Priest would be flatly against the express Commandment of God and it would prove a sad Catastrophe of his life to the dying man to spend his last breath in so foul a sin as Idolatry 9. But however as if all had been rightly performed the Body may be laid out in a decent manner and a Crucifix put in the hand of the deceased resting upon his breast or at least his hands be laid a-cross in stead of a Crucifix and Holy-water be duely sprinkled upon him which what-ever virtue it may have to chase the Devil from the Corps yet it will scarce wash his Soul clean from that last sin he committed nor guard the house from being haunted with Birds of several colours and feathers that ever smel out a comfortable refection from the fall of every such Carcass So great a pother and clatter may Superstition make as well at the Exit as Entrance of men into this mortal life 10. In the midst of such Formalities as these I must confess the Priest cannot but seem a man of marvellous might and power to the ignorant by-standers such as have been nuzzl'd up in the belief of these Superstitions he administring such present and conspicuous Remedies for the comfort of the sick as the Fiend-fraying Holy-water the Images of the Blessed Virgin and Tutelar Saint holy Wax-candles and the like guarding the very Corps by the power of the Cross and the sprinkling of that Exorcized Element from all the incursions of the Enemie and every evil Phantasm But the dying person what benefit he can take by the having his mind distracted and called out to these dead shows I must confess I understand not nor can conceive but that they are an hinderance to that more pure and collected passage of the Soul into bliss and are to the spectatours of these Solemnities the occasion of neglecting those better and more inward Amulets against the terrour of Death and fear of the Devil Such I mean as the Renovation of their Minds into the Living Image of Christ and the triumphing over the power of Sin through the taking up his Cross in the mortifying all our evil concupiscences in our life-time and the arriving thereby to the comfortable joyes and refreshments of the Spirit and to a permanent and habitual sense of the Mercy of God through a lively Faith in Christ Jesus wherein we cannot miss of the assurance of the remission of our sins which are the most saving and most holy Waters that we can solace our selves with or ease the grief and agonie of our minds withall the most precious Oyl or Balsam that can be poured upon an afflicted conscience The breathing after which excellent condition is naturally stopped and stifled by a vain belief in these external shows and by the relying on these multifarious Enchantments of a Superstitious and imposturous Priesthood who would bear men in hand that they can carry a Soul through safe to Heaven by exorcized Elements and Magical Artillery levied against the external assaults of the Devil not considering in the mean time that the radication and growth of sin and disobedience makes the Soul herself in a manner become a Devil and will necessitate her to undergoe the fate of that accursed crue CHAP. XIX 1. The burthen of Spiritual Cognation and excessive Numerosity of Holy-days 2. Perpetual abstinence from Flesh in some Religious Orders The Fraud and Mischief thereof 3. The burthen of vowed Coelibate 4. The more dangerous purposes thereof 5. The ordinary services done by the Monasticks to this Antichristian power we describe 6. That its establishment is much corroborated by the Interest of Monasteries 7. And enriched by being Heir to all professours of Coelibate 8. The great Mischiefs of Coelibate 9. Of Flagellation 10. The ineffectualness thereof Hypocrisie of the Penitent salvage Pride of his Church and the Mischiefs resulting therefrom 11. Of Pilgrimages and Jubilees 12. An enumeration of several other Antichristian Austerities 1. BUT we have leapt thus from one extreme of mans life to the other whenas there are several things yet to be considered which may make the middle space thereof tedious and entangled may be unnecessary hinderances to him in his affairs of the World may be sore afflictions and vexations to his Body or disturb his Mind with grievous and sad perplexities I will hint only some few Instances of each As for example if persons by being Witnesses at a Christening should contract thereby such a Cognation as though it be Spiritual yet according to the Canons of this Church we describe should hinder Marriage betwixt all the Kindred of the child that is Christened and their own what streightness must these conceits cause in the marrying of a son or daughter whole Neighbourhoods necessarily contracting such Spiritual Affinities by doing Christian offices one for another The plot whereof could be nothing else but to drain mens purses of mony for the procuring of dispensations from unnecessary Laws and restrictions The Number also of Holy-days may be so many and the observation of them so superstitiously and so strictly commanded that it may be an unspeakable burthen to the generality of the people who live by their labour and must starve when they cannot work But the design is the same as before For multitude and frequency of Transgressours brings in Mulcts and Fees to the Ecclesiastick Officers though the smallest penalties must be very cruel that are wrung from poor Labourers that have but from hand to mouth 2. Again suppose a considerable number of men were tied up to the Abstinence from flesh all the days of their lives by a religious or rather Superstitious Rule they are under in such sort that death were more eligible unto them then to tast of Flesh by reason of that hold their Vow had taken upon their consciences What an Iron yoke would this be upon so many Christian Souls How moped and frantick must such Monastick severities of diet of lodging and watching make several of them that are entangled in the slavish fetters of this Babylonish Captivity For which there is no pretence but that they are so good-natured that they are resolved to merit not only for themselves but for others and that many such Rivulets concurring together may fill up that Treasure of Merits which the Church must have the keeping of to sell at a good rate to those Virgins that want oyl to their Lamps This is the publick Fraud but the private is a certain Hypocrisie in these men whereby they often shake off the indispensable yoke of Christ and the Rule of his Word by over-valuing of or craftily hiding themselves under the self-chosen Sanctity of these Antichristian Rules And a further Mischief is that the conceit of meriting thus for themselves and others puffs them up with pride and insolence and makes them thereby more abominable then they who are
the whole Moles of Superstition hitherto described is made infinitely more weighty and burthensome 3. The Antichristian Doctrine of Christ his Satisfaction reaching only to the freeing us from the Guilt of sin not the Punishment 4. The multifarious drudgery and slavery this Doctrine and that Figment of Purgatory casts men into 5. A confutation of the said Doctrine and Figment 6. That it is impossible that the sincerely-minded in this life should find either Hell or Purgatory in the other 7. That there is no ground for this Antichristian Purgatory in either Scripture or Fathers 8. The gross Fraud and grand Mischief of this Fiction 9. The conclusion of the description of this second Limb of Antichristianism 1. AND now in the last place of all to make up the full weight of this Antichristian yoke and burthen suppose there were added the fear of a more then Pagan Purgatory as I said that is to say Suppose the Church should determine That no Souls unless such as are absolutely pure and perfect in this life of which rank there are either really none or if there were they would not be so immodest as easily to account themselves so should upon their departure out of this Body goe into any easefull or blessed condition but into a state little different from the torments of Hell saving that they are not perpetual but may be for many and many years unless some care be taken to relieve them and rescue them who are in this sad and dismal place which I suppose they would set out with all extremity of horrour to the rude people telling them of many sad and ghastly Apparitions who with wan countenances and mournfull tones have made known their extreme distress in this Infernal house of Correction and have implored their assistance in praying and paying for them as much as they could that they might find ease 2. Nor would they forbear the exaggerating this unsupportable calamity by all imaginable Mythologie as namely That the Souls of men were seen in a Vision by some holy man of God or other to be tortured in wonderfull manners some standing up to the knees others to the navell othersome to the arme-holes others to the very chin in a stream of fire and brimstone that others are run through with rods of Iron and roasted against the fire like Geese upon a spit the foul infernal Fiends in the mean time some blowing up the coals with their black mouths or to save their own breath with a large pair of brazen bellows others lading up the grease that fries out of these roasted Souls and pouring it upon them again scalding hot that others are scourged with whips of red-hot wires others fried in frying-pans others racked and turned round upon a wheel full of hot burning hooks that others had their bowells torn out with the fiery crooked stings of huge overgrown Toads and Serpents and lastly that others are put into vessels of hot scalding metalls These dismal chambers of Death re-echoing in the mean time from their hollow roof the mournfull howlings and hideous shriekings of these tormented Ghosts These or such like terrible fancies of things did they but imbue the minds of the people withall the belief of them certainly could not but screw the whole-rack of this burthensome Superstition which I have been all this time describing to the highest pitch that the wit of man can invent nor could the flames of this Purgatory fail to prove that very Fire in which these slaves and vassals of the Mystical Pharaoh and his hard Task-masters I mean that Apostate High-priest with the rest of his adulterate Hierarchy which I am delineating should droyl and sweat in for the finishing their imposed tales of brick to build these sons of pride their Pyramids and Palaces 3. Wherefore being stript and spoiled of all these comfortable succours that the true Faith in Christ Jesus does afford men and being made to believe that the Passion and Satisfaction of Christ takes away onely the Guilt of Mortal sins not the eternal Punishment but yet which is a great favour that by the power of the Keys this eternal Punishment is turned into temporary which every one is bound to undergoe and satisfie either in this life or that which is to come and that either in his own person or by some other that is He is bound to doe or suffer such things himself or others for him as the Church shall appoint or accept for satisfaction which also is to be understood of venial sins and lastly that the spots and filth of sin inhering in our Nature must wholy be purged out by Satisfactions and penalties which if it be not fully done in this life it must be perfected by the expiation of Fire in the other I say if the people should be deluded by such Antichristian Doctrine as this and have the sweet and easy yoke of Christ taken off from their neck which consists onely in sincerity to the best of our power to live according to the plain and indispensable Law of Christ and wherein we fail to be assured that both the Guilt and external Penalty is taken away through the intercession of him who is our Advocate with the Father and a perpetual propitiation for our sins but instead of this easy and ingenuous service should be fettered and held fast in that Aegyptian bondage we have described into what a world of slavery and drudgery would mistaken mortalls be haled 4. How would they be forced to bestir themselves by these hard Task-masters what trotting from Church to Church from Shrine to Shrine what howling and muttering before this Saint's Image and that Saint's Image what knocking of breasts and kissing of pavements what fastings and watchings not for correction but satisfaction what long stretching Pilgrimages from Country to Country and from one end of the Earth to the other what prayers and oblations to make the Image or at least the Priest to smile what kissing of unsavoury Reliques what Vows of Coelibate and Abstinence from meats what Flagellations and Excoriations of the Body what Nundinations of Pardons and Indulgences what awe and servility to the Priest what strict observation of Fasts and Festivalls what vexatious Scrupulosities about needless opinions what abject postures and rufull looks in forced Confessions what covering themselves with Religious habits what imprisoning and confining to Nunneries and Cloisters to Solitudes and Hermitages what creeping of dying men into Monks Cowls and rowling in beds of Ashes what besprinkling with Holy-water what Anointing and besmearing with enchanted Oyls what hastening to enroll themselves in this or that holy Fraternity to share in their merits what shaving and paring away of Childrens portions for hired Masses and Prayers to sing the dying mans Soul out of this imaginary Purgatory In fine what endless circuits of drudgery and labour of body and mind does this Aegyptian Tyrant put his slaves unto under the lash of this torturing conceit That the Death of Christ
is not for the Remission of Punishment but of Guilt and that he that would goe to Heaven must travel thither upon his own proper cost and charges must satisfie in his own person for his faults and corruptions in such ways as this adulterous Church has prescribed Which is no method of freeing Souls from the pains of Purgatory but of the inslaving them as I have said to a worse then Aegyptian bondage and condemning them to gather stubble and make bricks to work and drudge to hold up the wealth and magnificency of this imperious Pharaoh and his cruell Task-masters Which is a Servitude as abominable and Antichristian as can be invented or imagined For it does absolutely change the condition and nature of Christian Religion then which there is nothing more free and ingenuous and more professedly opposed to the yoke of the Mosaical Law into a poor pitifull ignorant and servile Pedagogie and makes it not only exceed the burthen of Moses but which I cannot too often inculcate the very bondage of Aegypt it self 5. But though this Figment of Purgatory would be a very profitable invention for the increasing of the wealth and power of this Pseudo-Clergie and bring vast revenues to their Church there being a like fear of it and desire to be rid of it in Princes and Peasants in Gentle and simple yet it cannot be denied by any but such as are past shame but that it is a mere Figment and has no grounds of truth at all in it nay is contrary to what is most certainly true For it is assuredly true and any good Christian may feel it to be so that Christ has satisfied as well in respect of Punishment as Guilt and it is perfect Non-sense that the sincerely-minded should be justified by the merits of Christ's Passion and the excellencie of his Person he being that innocent Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world that is to say in a Forensal sense be esteemed as Just and yet be handled or treated as Sinners For it is as if a man should be acquitted and yet punished for the same crime at the same Court then which nothing is more foolish or incongruous Wherefore it is manifest that there can no external punishment abide the Sincere soul after this life for I cannot pronounce any thing in the behalf of the unsincere but that Hell it self is their portion no fire no whips of Furies or Devils to afflict them no infernal Bailifs or horrid Pursivants of Purgatory to arrest them but they may pass free through all guards and scouts of the invisible Regions and not one dare to offer to molest them 6. And that he that was sincere-hearted in this life and did not onely believe in Christ but to the best of his power and skill followed his Precepts and had a real enmity against all the appearances of sin whensoever they assaulted him nor could be overtaken or overcome by the importunity of his Body without sorrow regret or indignation that this man should carry in himself any tormenting Hell or Purgatory in his freedom from the body is a thing impossible and unconceivable For he being freed from that with which he was so often forced to tugg and in the midst of his greatest conflicts his life being comfortable to him through the sense of his own sincerity and through the assurance of the Love of God in Christ Jesus what can Death be to such a man but Life from the dead He that in patience can possess his soul in a prison cannot fail to enjoy himself in the fresh aire and he that can walk upright in fetters may easily if he will dance for joy when he is out of them So little fear is there of any such Mormo's or Bug-bears to the sincere Christian when he has passed out of this mortal life 7. Some pretence indeed they may have for Purgatory from that passage in S. Paul If any mans work be burnt he shall suffer loss but himself 1 Cor. 3. 1â—… shall be saved but yet so as by fire which is the only place in Scripture which makes any show for them But yet if it were meant of a Purgatory-fire after this life it will not at all serve their purpose as neither those several passages of the Fathers do which seem to make this way which would be too prolix a business to enter into But the interpretation which Scaliger and Hugo Grotius give of the place is so genuine and natural and so little inferring any such Purgatory-fire that this ground will prove very lubricous to the builders upon it For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Scaliger and Grotius expound thus That he shall escape but so as out of the hot fire it being nothing but a proverbial expression signifying the great danger he will be in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 est preverbiale ad significationem summi periculi So that the sense is nothing but this He will hardly escape the dreadfull judgment of God As for Origen's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the like expressions of the Fathers they will never establish such a Purgatory as these Masters of mischief would erect in the Universe who make sure that no man may doe any thing meritorious in this condition nor make any progress in grace and holiness for all the very Fire is called Purgative For this would beat down the price of Pardons and Indulgences make men careless of hiring Masses for the dead and take away all that costly sollicitude from friends for their deceased kindred if they were conceived to be in a capacity by their own demeanour and carefull management of their affairs in the other world to wind themselves out of trouble 8. But how weak soever their Proofs were for Purgatory their Motives thereto would be very strong this Figment making all the rest of their Frauds take more certain effect with men they being hereby affrighted into a facil and foolish good humour of parting with any thing even to the impoverishing of themselves and their posterity so that those may be satisfied who pretend they have the Keys of this prison of Purgatory and may be persuaded either to excuse them from ever entering into it or if they must enter into it to deliver them out of it as timely and speedily as may be But the grand Mischief of this cheating Invention is a blasphemous affront to the Merits and Satisfaction of our dear Saviour and a Tyrannicall oppression of the consciences of the simple but so great a scandal to the more nasute that it were a strong temptation to them to misbelieve the whole summe of Religion or any state at all of the Soul after death but that she is mortal and perishes these false Apostles having abused the belief of the Doctrine of her survival after the death of the Body so grossely and rancidly merely to the advancing their own estates in this life and to the wallowing in
some part That it is not an Absolute Inconditionate Promise to the Whole is plain in that the parties of Christendom differ so much in matters of Belief as they do But if it be to some part where is the nomination of that part in these Promises whereby their Right of Interpreting may appear to the world There is no Particular Church specified there neither Greek nor Roman neither Muscovian nor Armenian nor that of Prester John nor any other Church else Whence it is plain that no Particular Church can have any claim or right to any such privilege 6. Again suppose some Particular Church had a Promise how does it appear that the Promise is Inconditionate to this Particular Church and that it is not upon supposal that they will seriously and sincerely apply their mind to find out the Truth and purifie their Souls from all those worldly and sensual impediments thereto For this spirit of Infallibility cannot lodge in a body that is subject unto sin For Purity of heart and life is the very Light and Crystalline Organ the very Eye of the Soul and to think of a privilege of Infallibility without Holiness is like the imagining of a promise to see without Light or Eyes Wherefore it is such an Hypocritical conceit that a man cannot well tell whether it be more to be lamented or laughed at for a Church to pretend that God has an irresistible design of making them Infallible to every Punctilio of Controversie and yet not of making them Holy and Good But it is a sign they contemn or abhor Goodness as being contrary to their corrupt natures but desire the privilege of Infallibility as being agreeable to their natural pride and the boast thereof an instrument to bring about all their deceitful devices And therefore we might adde to this That it is questionable whether the Promise be to any Church visible but to such as the Apostles were chosen sanctified and faithful Regenerate men for none but these are truly the Church of Christ and if he make his Promise good onely to such as are his true Church it is sufficient 7. Moreover be this Promise Conditionate or Inconditionate we cannot but be sure that this Infallibility is not Universal as to all Objects whatsoever And therefore to meddle with such things as are not necessary to Salvation nor really edifying were to go beyond their Warrant or Commission and thereby to forfeit or at least to have no benefit of the promised Assistence 8. But let us particularly examine the Texts of Scripture themselves The first whereof infers no more then this That the Church of Christ shall never cease to be that Death shall never be able to prevail against her neither to extirpate her in this world or hinder her of a glorious Immortality in the world to come For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies no more then 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Death or Abolition or The state of the dead But this may be true of the Church though it were not Infallible So weak is this first Allegation 9. As for the second it were well for the Alledgers if it were onely weak for it is strong against themselves and makes much for our Hypothesis who conceive this Infallibility to be Conditional For reade the whole Context entire and it runs thus If ye love me keep my Commandments and I will ask the Father c. which implies there is a Condition That they must love Christ and keep his Commandments if they expect that Spirit which will abide with them for ever that is as long as they lived for so the word ordinarily signifies in Scripture And it is further added that it is such a Spirit as the World cannot receive Which therefore does strongly imply that it resides not in those who are worldly and carnally-minded Which Conditionality of the Promise is also infinuated in the third place alledged When the Spirit of Truth is come he will Lead you or guide you into all Truth that is he will lead you as a Man not hale you or drag you as a Stone or a brute Beast which is not a free Agent So that we see plainly that this Infallibility is Conditional where-ever it is And though I doubt not but the Condition being performed the Promise will be made good to all men as far as it is necessary to their Salvation yet these places are not the best that may be produced to that purpose the Promise being not General here but directed to certain particular men in such circumstances as it is evident that it is meant to them in particular and does not infer any succession For the men that he speaks to there he decyphers to be such as he was present with and should be put in mind by the Paraclet what he had said to them when present such Joh. 14. 16 17. as were sorrowful upon the occasion of his departure with other like circumscribing circumstances that cannot belong to any succession of men but were proper to the Apostles to whom he then spake 10. As indeed Infallibility it self seems a Promise most proper to them they being to lay the Foundations of the Church and to build the House of God which they having done in terms plain enough as to all things necessary to Salvation the Promise of Infallibility needs reach no further the Church for ever hereafter being safe provided she keep but close to what is plainly delivered by the first Founders of her nothing else need be obtruded upon Believers by way of Infallible imposition 11. And as for that fourth citation where the Church seems to be called The Pillar and Ground of Truth If we admit of Cameron and Capellus 1 Tim. 3. 15. their ingenious conjecture upon the place viz. That The Pillar and Ground of Truth is to be disjoyned from the precedent words by a Colon at least and understand also what follows without controversie great is the mystery of Godliness to be onely a Parenthetical Elogium of the Mystery of the Gospel into which the Apostle was transported upon consideration of those weighty Points thereof which he was a-delivering God manifest in the Flesh c. so that The Pillar and Ground of Truth may be 1 Tim. 3. 16. the Preface to the grand Points of the Christian Truth which that Parenthesis being seposed do immediately follow according as it was usual with the Jews to prefix before such Fundamentalls of knowledge the Title of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fundamentum Columna Sapientia this passage will be wholly disâ—…bled from making any shew of proof for what it was alledged 12. But if you will adjoyn this Title to the Church it was the Ephesian Church where Timothy resided which has vanished long agoe And what other Church then unless every Particular Church can urge this place for Infallibility which experience of contradicting one another does openly confute Besides that the style it self of Ground and Pillar may not
of the spoil or rather to erect a Spiritual Polity to enslave all and bring the most insupportable Servitude of Body Soul and Estate such as Paganism could scarce ever shew the like certainly this must be very highly Antichristian For indeed what can be more salvagely oppressive in reference to the very Estates of men then to frame such a Religion upon the pretence of their Infallibility as is perfectly repugnant to the plain Word of God and immutable Rules of Reason depraving of things so for their own worldly advantage as I have already abundantly set out to bring in a more ample Revenue to feed the Pride and Luxury of this false Church And then when they have thus grossly perverted the Truth of God to declare that they who will not say Amen to their lies and forgeries have no more right to their own Estates then a Thief or Robber to what he has got by unlawful spoil and therefore accordingly not onely to hinder them from any employments of either profit or credit but disable them from making of Wills and their Heirs from inheriting their Estates and awing them from laying claim to their Patrimonies lest their Father's Heresie be intailed upon them whether they will or no. 7. To which Antichristian Barbarities you may adde also the scornful and cruel Penances they put upon them that do submit themselves to their Church making them go in procession in contemptible disguises or else enjoyning them to march in their shirts bare foot and bare leg and to whip their own bodies in the sight of the people as they go along How unlike nay how utterly contrary is this to that Meekness and Sweetness that is described in the Discipline and Government of the Kingdom of Christ But we need not insist upon these things we having treated sufficiently of them already 8. Now upon the second particular viz. that Humility and Lowliness which is also one fruit of Charity and by which the Person and Rule of our Saviour is described in the ancient Prophecies We have shewn the Antichristian Detestableness of the opposite to this Vertue already in the first Branch of the Divine Life and need adde nothing more thereto 9. The third character of Charity is her delighting in true and faithful dealing amongst men The opposites to which are easily discoverable To say nothing therefore of the manifold Frauds which we have already taken notice of all along in this our Description of Antichristianism this certainly must be very Antichristian and uncharitable namely To misrepresent mens Actions and Opinions in publick Speeches or Writings nay to invent notorious lies and fictions to the disparagement of mens Persons and Doctrines and suborn men to write them and divulge them to the world for truths Which is to doe so as was the custom of those who were under the Dragon that old Serpent and false accuser of the ancient primitive Christians whom they aspersed and calumniated as worshippers of the Sun because they put up their prayers with their faces towards the East as Man-sacrificers and as Eaters and Drinkers of humane flesh and bloud because of their calling the Eucharistick Bread and Wine the Body and Bloud of Christ they understanding it onely in a mystical or symbolical sense For professing with S. Paul There is neither Male nor Female in Christ but that both have equal admission into his eternal Kingdom That they had no regard of Sexes but were vile Sodomites and abusers of themselves with Mankind For meeting together to serve God in private in Grotts and Caves of the Earth for fear of persecution That they were Conspirators against the Roman State and Empire And lastly for their reverently receiving the Elements of Bread and Wine at their holy Communions That they were Worshippers of Ceres and Bacchus 10. In like manner we may imagine that this Pseudo-christian Church may raise such perverse Calumnies against the true members of Christ as namely traducing them for Atheists or at least Arrians because they will not acknowledge the Divinity of a consecrated piece of Bread reporting them as Manichees because they do not hold the power of the Church to be superiour to that of Emperours and Kings to make thereby but one Sovereignty in the Church but affirm the Secular Power independent thereon as if the holding these two distinct Powers were forsooth the holding the two Principles of the Manichees defaming them for Beesoneriders or Witches because they have by reason of hard persecution been driven to inhabit desert and mountainous places or upon their meeting more privately in houses by night to impute to them some such horrid and villainous practices as were reported of the primitive Christians that the Candle being put out they committed Incest and all manner of Uncleanness in the dark nay that they killed their own children in these concealed Assemblies of theirs To accuse them of reviling the Saints merely upon their professing it unlawful to invoke them or of blaspheming the Blessed Virgin because they hold it unfit to worship her To tax them of disobedience to the Magistrate onely because of their persisting in the sincere profession of that Faith that is consonant to the Doctrine of Christ and his Apostles And lastly to father upon them what abominable actions they please and speaking without a Metaphor to gag the mouths of the thus accused and slandered that they may not answer for themselves to clear themselves in the audience of the people Nay to rack men till their very bowels break out of their belly to force them to acknowledge themselves or their party guilty of such villainous crimes as it is incredible their very persecutors should in good earnest suspect them of merely to get a pretence from such an extorted Confession to verifie their wicked Slanders to the world and to make the harmless and innocent professors of the Truth of the Gospel to be odious and hateful in the eyes of all men Certainly if this be not diametrically opposite to that part of Charity that discovers it self in true and faithful dealing nothing can be excogitated that is so CHAP. XIV 1. The nick-naming of the true Christians by the odious Title of Hereticks with their barbarous injuries thereupon 2. That Heresie and Schism are sins against the truly-Catholick and Apostolick Church 3. What is meant by One Catholick and Apostolick Church 4. What is that hainous sin of Heresie 5. What Schism 6. That while men are sincere members of the Apostolick Body they can be neither Hereticks nor Schismaticks 7. The Hypocritical and Schismatical Niceness of this Antichristian Church in forbearing to joyn in any Religious Duty with any member of the truly-Apostolick Body 8. Their fraudulent purpose in fostering this Schismatical Niceness and Unsociableness 1. BUt we will also take notice of that which will be so usually cast upon the Dissenters from this false Church that it will be scarce accounted any reproach done to them but rather civility
of Venus may never want trading to fill the world with Monasticks and to set light by all kinds of debauchery so that the Laws of the Church be observed is the most effectual method imaginable to make Christendom a Cage of unclean birds and so quite to wither or lop off that Branch of the Divine Life which we call Purity And now lastly for Charity What can be more contrary thereto then to interweave into Law or Religion not onely what is naturally unjust but barbarously cruel not onely killing those who are innocent but torturing to death with the most salvage torments even those who are the most dear and faithful members of Christ and even for that very reason because they approve themselves to be so and that which will make the Barbarity of these Successours of the Devil still more odious they ensnaring men in the point of that Mystery which was the Pledge of the greatest Love of Christ that could be expressed and was intended for the most endearing and agglutinating Cement of all those that are called by his Name that they should upon this very score be united to one another with the sincerest love and affection that is possible Now therefore that this sacred Pledge of Love and Amity and Unity in the Church I mean the Sacramental Body and Bloud of Christ which is a lively Commemoration of that ineffable Love of his to his Church in laying down his Life for us should be made the main Engine and Artifice of entrapping and afterwards of cruelly torturing and butchering his most faithful Members what more horrid more execrable and more Antichristian Abuse can there be of our Lord Jesus or what Hostility against him more damnable or Diabolical Nay what conspiracy against Humane Nature can be more tragical or direful or what so palpable a plot to make Mankind mere slaves and vassals and to take away from them that Privilege by which alone they are distinguishable from brute Beasts 7. Suppose there were a numerous crew of odly-habited people inhabiting a certain vast Wood or Wilderness that would give themselves some phantastick Title to make the better show of Sanctity as suppose The Knights of the Holy Grove or The Priests of the Infallible Spirit or the like and should take up a resolution amongst themselves to be accounted Unerring in whatsoever they unanimously averred for true and should agree together and determine for the gainful vending of so marvellous a commodity that there is so great virtue in such a form of certain Magical words which they know how to use that if one of their Sacred Order speak them over any of those pure white round Pebbles which easily are found in Rills and Brooks straight-way this little Stone though it retain still the same colour magnitude figure and hardness that it had before yet so wonderful is the mystery is most assuredly turned into an Eagle whence this kind of stone also is called the Eagle-stone Upon which supposition let us further imagine that these Infallible Knights meeting as it is usual Travellers upon the way and declaring this wonder-working power of their Order and shewing them one of these stones and having said the charm over it protesting that it is really become an Eagle though it be not visibly changed at all from what it was before may sometimes light upon some honest plain-hearted passenger that may flatly deny the Exploit and contend that the inchanted Stone is no Eagle but a Stone still Whereupon we will suppose that these Knights of the Holy Grove blowing their Bugles will cause whole Swarms of that Sacred Order to come out of the Wood who shall avouch upon the Honour of their Infallible Knighthood that the Miracle is really performed and that which this incredulous Stranger contends to be still a Stone is in very truth that Royal Bird of Jupiter But that such should be the honest stoutness and plain-heartedness of the environed Stranger that notwithstanding all this he should persist in his former opinion alledging that he cannot believe that to be an Eagle wherein he can discern neither bill nor taions head nor foot wing nor tail bone nor flesh but is in every thing as much Stone as before and that therefore they shall never perswade him of this Magical Transmutation there being no proof thereof but their own Testimony and that point-blank against the manifest evidence of Sense and Reason Whereupon if these Knights of the Grove putting on a grim Vizard of enraged Zeal in behalf of their own Traffick and Reputation should fall upon this innocent man and slay him seizing upon what he has his Mony Cloaths and Gelding as lawful Booty would not these Knights or Priests of the Infallible Spirit be accounted in the judgment of all the world a pack of bloudy Impostours a crew of High-way-men coâ—…spiring to rob and spoil honest Passengers that goe that way 8. What then shall we think of those numerous Swarms of this pretended Infallible Church we have described that will be ready to quarrel with any Christian passenger in his pilgrimage through the Wilderness of this World if he deny the Transsubstantiation of a round white Wafer into a perfect Man when a Priest has said certain words over it though the Wafer upon the most exquisite examination of our Senses be not changed one jot from what it was before Yet upon the boast of the Infallibility of this Church a man must believe it against all Sense Scripture and Reason or else die the most cruel kind of death that Malefactors are ever put to Who cannot but look upon such a pack of men as these as not onely Antichristian but Anti-humane tanquam jur atos humani generis hostes an accursed company of bloudy Thieves and Robbers and sworn conspirators against the sons of Adam who with might and main endeavour to maul them and martyr them to subdue them and enslave them both Body and Soul and more cruelly to tyrannize over them then it is fit for any man to doe over brute Beasts Can any thing be imagined more Antichristian then this or more contrary to that noble and Divine Spirit of Charity and sweet Benignity that was so conspicuous in the Lord Jesus Christ who is so frequently in Scripture styled the Son of man as to whom appertains that expected Kingdom of Peace of holy Love and of Humanity 9. Wherefore from this short draught I think one may discern that I have given a very true and faithful Idea of that which is real and essential Antichristianism and truly I think to the highest pitch imaginable For to excuse the matter in saying that this Pseudo-christian Church does not openly deny Christ or his Gospel does not persecute every one that bears the name of a Christian and lastly does not set up Images to the Deities of the Pagans Mars Venus and the rest to these I briefly answer To the first That it were not their Interest to deny the whole
Figurations one individual Beast signifies a Multitude of men ordered together into the Body of a Kingdom 5. But as the great Horn of the He-goat is said to be the first King so the four Horns undoubtedly signified four succeeding Kings in this divided Kingdom in their several series so that four Successions of Individuals so far as they would last were represented under the show of four single Individuals namely those four Horns And truly when it is apparent that one Individual Beast represents the succession of a Multitude for many Ages together who are mortal as well as single men coagmentated into the body of one Kingdom it were a very nice and humorsome thing to stick at the succession of single Persons being represented under the show of one Head or Horn. 6. And that one and the same Beast stands for a Kingdom or Empire from its rise to its fall is plain both in Daniel and the Apocalyps For the Four Beasts are said to rise out of the great Sea Dan. 7. and the destruction of the Fourth is set down in the same Chapter who is supposed to tread down the Third as the Third is after declared to vanquish the Second in the following Chapters And in the Apocalyps the Rise of the Beasts there is set down as also their destruction in the Lake of fire and brimstone Whence it is evident that one Individual Beast represents not onely a Multitude of men under one Government but the Succession of this multitude for many Ages even till it cease to be such a Multitude and consequently the successive Sovereignty of this multitude must be thus far represented be it in one or many by the Head or Horns of such Beasts unless we can phansy a Polity without an Head which would not be a Polity but Anarchy 7. Nor are Irrational Creatures onely made Henopoetick Types of a Multitude collected into one Government but also Rational As it is evident in the Woman in the Wilderness which it were ridiculous to understand of some one single Woman and not of the Body of the Church whose true and living Head is Christ Jesus The Woman also in Esdras signifies Sion or the people of God and it may be the Man there coming out of the Sea has some such sense For why may not one Man signifie a People or Multitude as well as one Woman And it is plain that the people of Israel is called the Son of God Israel my son my first-born And therefore the * 2 Thess. 〈◊〉 Son of perdition and that Man of sin need not signifie one single man or a succession of single men but a Body Politick under one Head of mischievous contrivances By the like Henopoeia also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the false Prophet signifies not one single Person or the succession of such single persons but a Collection or Body of Deceivers combining together under one Government These things are so easie and so obvious that I am afraid I shall seem to have insisted over-long upon them 8. I will onely note a second kind of Henopoeia which is also of useful consideration and that is when things of different natures are comprised under one Type We have a very warrantable Instance of this way of interpreting Prophecie Apoc. 17. where the Angel does declare that not onely Seven Kings but Seven Hills are couched under the Symbol of the Seven Heads of the Beast According to this Analogie it may not be unsafe to interpret Babylon both of the City of Rome and of the Hierarchy the Two Witnesses of the Old and New Testament of them under the Legal and Evangelical dispensation and of Magistracy and Ministery the Horns of the two-horned Beast of the two Imperial Patriarchates of the two Horns of the Bishop's Mitre and of the two-fold power of Binding and Loosing Which second kind of Henopoeia need not seem new nor strange the ancient Pythagoreans and Cabbalists concealing and crowding together under the Symbol of one single Number many and multifarious Notions 9. Zoopoeia is the typifying out some inanimate thing by what has life be it Person or any other living Creature or part of that Creature In which sense the Seven Hills being signifi'd by the Seven Heads of the Beast is a Zoopoeia As also it would be if we understood * Rev. 11. the Two Witnesses of the Two Books of the Old and New Testament and the * Rev. 19. Word of God riding the white Horse of the whole Bible But I shall in its due place intimate that these are but collateral senses and reducible to one more primary one by an Henopoeia The making of * Rev. 6. 〈◊〉 Hell to lacquay by him that rides the pale Horse seems a more absolute Zoopoeia as also that Gen. 4. The voice of thy Brother's Bloud crieth unto me from the ground where the actions of life are given to the bloud of a dead man 10. But we will here take notice also of a second kind of Zoopoeia which may seem less harsh and most elegant and that is when free Actions are attributed to free Agents of which notwithstanding they may be no more the causes then if they were inanimate Beings or not in being at all According to this Figure is that of Virgil in the mouth of Aenea slaying Turnus Pallas te hoc vulnere Pallas Immolat poenas scelerato ex sanguine sumit Pallas being dead is said to slay Turnus though he did nothing here towards the slaying of him but what he suffered onely gave occasion to Aeneas to take revenge According to which Figure of speech a more large Allusion or Parable might be raised As if Aeneas instead of slaying one single man had sacked a City put man woman and child to the sword burnt their houses and left them as an heap of stones in revenge of the death of Pallas he might say of his friend now dead that it was he that inflamed the courage of the Souldiers to scale the Walls that it was he that gave out that just though severe Edict of slaying man woman and child that it was he that burnt down their houses and laid their City level with the ground and lastly that it was he whom they deservedly found a more mischievous enemy to them after his death then while he was living Certainly this Figure of speech would be very intelligible and withall bear along with it an extraordinary height of Rhetorick and Elegancy According to this Scheme is that example in Scripture of * Revel 6. 9. the Souls crying under the Altar O Lord how long c. Which is nothing but a Parable signifying that their death required Vengeance from the Justice of God Eae animae saith Grotius corpore solutae multò magis quà m sanguis mortem toleratam testantur For he had said before Sanguis Abelis vindictam poscit sic animae martyrum Wherefore there is acknowledged a Zoopoeia in both cases
But this is so easy an Iconism that it was needless to produce so many testimonies 10. Eclipses The Eclipses of the Luminaries what they mean will easily be understood if we consider what the Sun and Moon are in the Political Universe For certainly they are the highest Dignities in that Heaven Of which more under their proper Titles In the mean time it shall suffice briefly to note out of Achmetes that according to the Indian Persian and Aegyptian Onirocriticks If the Sun be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without brightness in such an hue I suppose as Virgil describes Cùm caput obscurâ nitidum ferrugine tinxit and without rays 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that inglorious obscurity and duskishness is referred to the person of the King and implies an imminution of his glory 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But if the Sun be eclipsed he will be afflicted and oppressed by war The same judgment they give of the Moon and of the Stars if they be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 See cap. 167 168. These things are too easie to insist upon and will be necessarily acknowledged it being once granted That the Universe is a Prophetick Emblem of a Kingdom or Polity as we shall clearly shew in its due place 11. Eye The light of the body saith our Saviour is the Eye And * Topic. l. 1. c. 14. Aristotle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the Eye of the Soul is the Understanding or Intellect So that it is plain that the Eye is an Iconism of Knowledge as Darkness and Blindness is of Ignorance an expression frequent in the Scripture But there is also a peculiar fitness of significancy of humane Policy and Prospection in the Eye that Organ of the Body being not onely in the Head but the chief guide of it and the whole Body as being able to reach further by far and to act more quick then any other Sense whatsoever Wherefore Prospicere in longitudinem that is to say wisely to consult afore-hand for the rightly managing affairs and to contrive Counsels so as makes most for the future safety of things and for the advancement of the Interest of a State the Eye is a fit Emblem of this skill Which the Aegyptians seem to have intimated in that known Hieroglyphick of theirs A Scepter with an Eye on the top of it where it is plain that the Eye signified that Political skill prospection and counsel which is necessary in managing and ordering affairs of State for the greatest security and promotion of them And that Eyes signifie the administration of Divine Providence also seems to be intimated Zach. 4. 10. on which we have not here time to insist 12. Fishing Artemidor lib. 2. c. 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To dream of catching fishes many and great is good and portends profit to all that dream so Achmetes c. 178. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. If any one dream that he catches fishes by angling in the Sea he shall find riches c. Fish dead in the Sea Artemidor lib. 2. c. 18. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To seem to see Fishes dead in the Sea is not good for it signifies disappointment of our hope and that what we expect will not come to pass 13. Fire Fire is a various Symbol and signifies as well good as ill but always in a way of Consumption or Destructiveness but when it destroys that which is bad it is good The Holy Ghost it self is assimilated to Fire as the Baptist witnesses of Christ He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire such a Fire as is to burn up the chaff but save the wheat as is intimated Matth. 3. 11. in the place So Malac. 3. Who shall abide the day of his coming For he is like a refiner's fire and like fuller's sope And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver and he shall purifie the sons of Levi and purge them as gold and silver that is consume away their dross Manifold instances there are of this sense of Fire but it is needless to produce them But for Fire in the other destructive sense it is still more obvious I shall name one place for many Esa. 66. 15. For behold the Lord will come with fire and with his chariots like a whirl-wind to render his anger with fury and his rebukes with flames of fire For by fire and by sword will the Lord plead with all flesh and the slain of the Lord shall be many The fitness of the Fire 's signifying Consumption or Destruction Artemidorus has taken notice of lib. 2. c. 8. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And in the same Chapter he says it signifies if there be a considerable quantity of it in the Heavens 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the incursion of Enemies and their coming from that part in what quarter of the Heaven it is seen And answerably to this Achmetes according to the sense of the Indians c. 159. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And of the Persians and Aegyptians c. 160. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And lastly he saith that if his Chariot appear to be set on fire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So destructive is the Symbol of Fire every-where and particularly denotes a destruction by war and hostility as is observable out of these citations 14. Fire from Heaven Fire from Heaven and Thunder may very well be the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Artemidorus speaks lib. 2. c. 8. But in allusion to Elias his bringing down fire from Heaven upon those Fifties that were sent to him from Ahaziah to apprehend him the fame of that eminent Miracle may make the bringing down Fire from Heaven pass into a Proverbial phrase for the doing exceeding great Miracles This may be good sense but we seek for an Icasmus Fire from Heaven therefore according to Artemidorus may signifie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the commination of those that are in Authority and that very fitly Heaven being the place of Dignity in the Political Universe But nothing so minacious as that Fire or Lightning that goes before Thunder What therefore can be more significative of Excommunication then this especially if conceived to be vibrated from no inferiour Officer but from an Oecumenical Bishop the Head of the Church Catholick who is placed in the higher Regions of the Political Heaven Which Analogie will be still more exact if we consider what Artemidorus observes of Thunder 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For Thunder and Lightning does not unite but disjoyns things that are united So does Excommunication that rives off a Member from the Church And there is still a further congruity that Excommunication should be called Thunder and Lightning or Fire from Heaven in that it is the commination of Hell-fire of which the destruction of Sodom was a Type which was burnt by fire from Heaven as Mr. Mede has judiciously observed And what is the last 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
the Fourth Monarchy 10. That the course of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and of the Reign of Antichrist is indigitated by those Numbers of Days in the last of Daniel 1. TO these Middle Synchronalls of the Book-Prophecy we will onely adde the Vision of the Sixth Trumpet the Prediction of S. Paul concerning the Apostasy of the Latter times and that Prophecy in Daniel from whence he seems to have drawn that Prediction and then we shall have done And truly the Vision of the Sixth Trumpet is very signal and notorious That it is meant concerning the Turks invading Christendom according as Mr. Mede has interpreted I have abundantly made good against Grotius in my * Book 5. Ch. 16. Sect. 5. Mystery of Godliness To which we adde briefly That it is plain that the Invasion of these Euphratean Horsemen is long after the Empire became Christian nay indeed Pagano-Christian forasmuch as it is the Sixth Trumpet the last of those that taken together in order Synchronize with the reign of the Pagano-Christian Power The Beast that was and is not and yet is And for the place as well as the time that it was the Empire to which this Vision belongs appears from that often-repeated Character whereby it uses to be denoted the proportion of a third part For the * Apocal. 9. 15. third part of men are here said to be killed But that the Roman Empire was look'd upon by S. John as the third part of the known World in his Age is evident in that Description of the red Dragon with seven Heads and ten Horns in that he is said to have struck down the third part of the Starrs with his tail to the ground Apocal. 12. 4. Moreover the posture of these Horsemen was such as Mr. Mede has also noted in respect of S. John in Patmos his seeing them coming as from Euphrates that they must needs march upon the Territories of the Roman Empire Which also the consideration of our third Rule of interpreting Prophecies does more fully assure us of For what had S. John to doe with any Visions but such as concerned the Church of Christ Wherefore there is no reason to doubt but that Mr. Mede's Interpretation of the Sixth Trumpet is very true 2. From whence it will evidently appear that there is a Prevision of that gross Idolatry which would be in both the Greek and Latine Church For after the description of that numerous Army of the Turks under the Type of the Euphratean Horsemen and the great Execution they did the third part of men being killed by the fire smoke and brimstone that issued out of their Horses mouths that roared like Lions against their Enemies to which you may adde the preceding Plague of the Saracens those tormenting Locusts it is said that The rest of the men which were not Apoc. 9. 20 21. killed by these Plagues repented not of the works of their hands that they should not worship Devils and Idols of Gold and Silver and Brass and Stone and of Wood which neither can see nor hear nor walk Neither repented they of their Murthers nor of their Sorceries nor of their Fornication nor of their Thefts Can there be a more express and plain Prophecy of the Idolatry of the Christian Empire then this For the sense plainly is this That though the Turks and Saracens had over-run the Eastern Churches and laid all wast with fire and sword yet the Western Part of the Empire did not lay it to heart nor indeed the Greek Church as they should do but that the Church of Rome did notwithstanding persist in their Idolatrous worship in the worshipping of their Daemonia or Daemons the Souls of men departed our English Translation reads it Devils and none certainly whenas they are not God would receive Divine honour after their deaths unless they were become Devils so great a * See Book 1. Ch. 12. Ver. 3. Sect. 4. Reproach is that pretended honour the Romanists give to the Saints in the worshipping of Idols of Gold and of Silver and of Brass c. which neither can hear nor see nor walk This is added as an Aggravation and more palpable detection of the madness or sottishness of this Sin And is it not the same in the Images of the Saints as in the Images of the Heathen Gods Can the Images of the Saints see more clearly hear more quickly or walk more nimbly then the Idols of the Heathen Wherefore we see such a ground of the reprehension of this sin of Idolatry is alledged as is common to that of the Pagans with this of those that call themselves Christians So that there is no hole for them to escape out at But there are other Crimes also which the Roman Church notwithstanding the severe judgment of God against the Greek Church has not repented of as namely of her Murthers in shedding of innocent bloud or cruelly and hatefully persecuting men under pretence of Heresy of Sorcery in such a sense as I have expounded it in my * Book 1. Chap. 18. Idea of Antichristianism of Fornication in the unnatural Constitution of their unclean Clergie and of Thefts in their frauds and impostures to emunge the simple people of their money But these things belong not to this present Head 3. In the mean time it is exceedingly worth our Observation of what infinite consequence it would be to the safety and prosperity of Christendom if they would reform from this gross sin of Idolatry the worshipping of Daemons and Images of Gold and Silver and other Materials For who knows or rather who knows not but that God who brought that exceeding great scourge of the Turk upon the Christian world for their gross Idolatries may make him flow back again into his own Chanell if we would once return to that ancient pure and Apostolick Christianity For the Cause of this great evil once removed the Evil it self will be removed also Whence it is plain that they are the truest Friends to Christendom even to Rome herself that do not sooth them up in their sins by mitigating and hiding their foul miscarriages but deal apertly and plainly with them for their own safety that neither admit nor invent subterfuges to countenance or palliate their Idolatrous and Superstitious practices but tell them plainly how much they are apostatized from the true worship of God and Christ into Paganism and Idolatry Better are the Rebukes of a faithfull Friend then the hired flatteries of a glozing Mercenary 4. Wherefore persisting in the same liberty of speech I shall adventure to pronounce that that Prediction of S. Paul 1 Tim. 4. respects the Apostasy of the Empire into Idolatrous worship by means of the seducing and seduced Clergie thereof who taught them to give religious worship to mere men departed this life and so turned the deceased Saints of God as much as in them lay into Pagan Daemons The words of the Prediction are these Now the
and upon the left side thereof And then ver 14. These are the two Anointed ones that stood by the Lord of the whole Earth Which Interpreters universally understand of Zerobabel and Jesua Ver. V. And if any one will hurt them fire proceedeth out of their mouth and devoureth their enemies and if any man will hurt them he must in this manner be killed It is an Allusion to the story of Moses and Elias their bringing down fire upon their Opposers But here it is to be understood more Mystically of the Fire of the Spirit or of the Law of God proceeding out of their mouths whereby they convince the world Jer. 23. Is not my word like as fire saith the Lord and like an hammer that breaks a rock in pieces Ver. 19 Like that of the man out of the Sea 2 Esdras 13. whose voice whensoever it went out of his mouth all they burnt that heard it And again in Ver. 4. the same Chapter And lo as he saw the violence of the multitude that Ver. 9 c. came he neither lift up his hand nor held sword nor any instrument of war But onely I saw that he sent out of his mouth as it had been a blast of fire and out of his lips a flaming breath and out of his tongue he cast out sparks and tempests And they were all mixt together the blast of fire the flaming breath and the great tempest and fell with violence on the great multitude which was prepared to fight and burnt them up every one so that of a sudden of an innumerable multitude nothing was to be perceived but onely dust and smell of smoke Which is afterwards interpreted ver 38. And he shall destroy them without labour by the Law which is like unto Fire By this we may know what is meant by If any man will hurt them he must in this manner be killed And it was the word of the Lord to Zerobabel who is alluded to in these Witnesses Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts So plain is it that the weapons Zechar. 4. 6. of the Two Witnesses in the time of their mournful Prophecy are onely Spiritual Which is a thing worthy the noting and seriously considering Ver. VI. These have power to shut Heaven that it rain not in the daies of their Prophecy and have power over waters to turn them into bloud and to smite the earth with all plagues as often as they please In the days of their Prophecy that is to say of their mournfull Prophecy or in the days of their prophesying in sackcloth as is plainly to be understood out of the third verse It is a manifest Allusion to Elias his hindering it from raining in Ahab's time for three years and six months which is exactly the time of the Prophecy of these Witnesses namely 1260 days But the meaning must needs be more mysticall these days signifying years Wherefore by Rain is meant the distilling of that pure refreshing Doctrine of the Gospel unadulterated by the false Glosses of men which Heavenly drops descend not during the mournfull Prophecy of the Witnesses But this shutting up Heaven thus is ascribed to them not that they positively hinder the descent of this celestial dew but by a Metalepsis such as I have already observed in the Rider of the red Horse to whom power is said to be given to take peace from the Earth and that Apocal. 6. 4. there was given unto him a great sword whenas yet there is no more understood by it then that in his time there would be much killing one another So that the Effect is put upon the Sign when such a thing should be as in that vulgar verse Pallida Luna pluit rubicunda flat alba serenat 2. This is one warrantable sense and yet there is still a better If this shutting up of Heaven be attributed unto these two mournfull Witnesses not by a bare Metalepsis onely but by a Zoopoeia of the second sort such as I have above described wherein though the party to whom the Effects be attributed does not use any activity to produce them yet in some sense he has a causal Influence upon them as the absent Sun may be said to be the cause of Night and of all the Villainies committed under her shelter So the suppression and putting out of place these Witnesses is the cause of the shutting up of Heaven and of the scarcity of the pure Word amongst the people but cannot be attributed to the Witnesses themselves but onely by a Metalepsis or rather a Zoopoeia 3. According to which the turning water into bloud and the smiting the Earth with all plagues as often as they please is attributed to them namely by a Zoopoeia though they have no positive activity therein no more then the Sun in all the Murthers and Adulteries that are committed by his absence in the covert and concealment of the shady Night And therefore whereas it is added as often as they will it is but the height and sublimity of this Scheme and signifies no more then as often as opportunities are offered for such effects upon which the mournfull condition of these Witnesses have a consequentiall Influence though not an active And Will is attributed to them with as much reason and elegancy as the Activity it self and indeed according to necessary Analogie those occasional Consequences answering exactly to the occasional exertions of the Acts of the Will in him that is said properly to act and not by a Zoopoeia The Allusion is to Moses his smiting the Land of Aegypt with those ten Plagues The inflicting of which in a Mystery is ascribed to these two Witnesses while they are in this debased and dejected plight The sense therefore in brief is this That the Roman Empire in which is this Spiritual Aegypt that holds the people of God in bondage whether the Waters thereof be turned into Bloud by intestine warrs and broils or whether it no somely abound with Frogs that is with slimy salacious and venereous persons or be full of lazy and Lousy beggars a sordid and squalid poverty over-running the generality of men by reason of either the Oppression or ill Discipline of them that are in Power or men be infested and disquieted with the importunate Incursions of swarms of Gnats and Flies that is to say with the Numerosity of Superstitious Scrupulosities and vexatious Controversies of Polemical Theologie that sting and bite and disturb the minds and consciences of men to no purpose but for affliction and inquietude or the Beasts which the Platonists call our Bodies be plagued with Murrain that is be charged with foulness and corruption and with the noisom poison of the deadly sins or that the Multitude be unquiet as if enraged with angry Boils and Ulcers or the barbarous Nations from the North invade the Empire like a violent storm of Hail-stones or the Turk and Saracen from
the South as a numerous army of Locusts or that palpable Darkness in Divine matters seize the minds of men or that the First-born in every Family be found dead that is saith Alcazar the Soul of every man obnoxious to eternal Death as if he would not have the Soul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 born later then the Body but to be the first born in man or rather because she has the right of Primogeniture the right of Ruling over the Body That all these Plagues of the Mystical Aegypt what-ever they be as certainly they cannot signify well are attributed to the two mournfull Witnesses by a Zoopoeia they being the necessary Consequence of the Witnesses Disgrace Affliction and Deprivation of Power and Office as Darkness Thefts Murthers and Adulteries are of the Absence of the Sun Ver. VII And when they shall have finished their Testimony the Beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them and shall overcome them and kill them The Greek has it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies no more then when they shall perform their Witnessings And out of the bottomless pit is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is either Out of a deep pit in the Earth or Out of the Sea and so may intimate either the Two-horned Beast or the Ten-horned The making war against them by a Diorismus signifies any manner of opposing them and endeavour to suppress them not excluding war and bloud-shed as it happens to them toward the latter end of their Prophecy among the Waldenses and Albigenses and others And as War signifies any Opposition so Death or Killing any changing their condition into worse so that they cease to be what they were before And that this is a Political Death or putting out of Power is plain in that their Resurrection is such See Death and Resurrection in my Prophetick Alphabet So that the sense is this That no sooner shall they begin to perform their office of witnessing to the Truth but they shall be assaulted suppressed and politically killed that is kept out of power Ver. VIII And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great City that Spiritually is called Sodom and Aegypt where also our Lord was crucified This verse I have expounded already onely you may here take notice how well this Appellation of Aegypt agrees with the mention of the Aegyptian Plagues before alluded to which abode upon the Land because they still kept the People of God in bondage and would not suffer them to serve God according to his own will and precept Ver. IX And they of the People and Kindreds and Tongues and Nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in the grave This not being buried has a double sense as you may see in the Prophetick Alphabet But I must confess I take the more favourable to be the truer and that their not being buried is a pledge of their Resurrection at last that is after three days and an half which I have in my Mystery of Book 5. Ch. 15. Sect. 4. Godliness shewn to be Three Times and an half or 1260 years the very same with the time of their mournfull Prophecy For they being onely Politically dead it is not at all inconsistent in the verity of the thing signified that they should prophesy in a mournfull condition nay indeed it is necessary to be so And the Spirit of God designing the setting out these two parts of their condition namely their Prophetical Witnessings and their Devestment of all Political Power which the Scripture calls the Death of a people and their Recovery again into a Polity their Resurrection he has partly because it were very incongruous to make them prophesy while they were dead and partly because so long a time as their Prophecy is said to last viz. 1260 years was not so sutable for a dead body to lie unburied in the streets and then to revive so contrived the Cortex of this Vision with such admirable artifice as that these harshnesses are avoided in that Homonymia of Three days and an half and all the parts of the Prophetick Figurations made to keep due proportion and symmetry as well as the inward signification of the things meant and yet without any prejudice to the finding out of the true meaning to him that is sagacious the Three days and an half so easily casting him upon Three times and an half which is the very same time with 1260 days But whether in a secondary Intention these Three days and an half may have some such meaning as Mr. Mede has given them Event will best define For my own part I see very little or no ground in the Text for any such meaning See my Mystery of Godliness and what I have above intimated in this Treatise Ver. X. And they that dwell upon the Earth shall rejoyce over them and make merry and shall send gifts one to another because these two Prophets tormented them that dwell on the Earth The dwellers upon Earth Ribera in another place out of Andreas interprets Habentes in terra perpetuam cordis habitationem whose minds dwel upon worldly things These must needs rejoyce when the Two Witnesses are slain their free Rebukes out of the Oracles of God being very disquieting and tormenting to these worldly and carnally-minded men See my Mystery of Godliness Book 5. Ch. 17. Sect. 8. Ver. XI And after three days and an half the Spirit of life from God entred into them and they stood upon their feet and great fear fell upon them that saw them That the Spirit of life from God enâ—…red into them is correspondent to what we have already cited out of Zacharie Not by might nor by power but by my Spirit saith the Lord of Hosts That this Resurrection of them has a Political meaning you may be farther satisfied in my Prophetick Alphabet from what I have there said upon that Term. Ver. 12. And they heard a voice from Heaven saying unto them Come up hither And they ascended up to Heaven in a cloud and their enemies beheld them I had rather render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For they heard c. this voice from Heaven raising them from the dead as the voice of Christ did Lazarus By which Heaven is here understood the higher places in the Political Universe unto which the slain Witnesses are called by a voice from thence saying Come up hither Whence it will not be unseasonable to note That those that are the true Witnesses will not come before they be called nor like the ancient Giants invade this Heaven against their wills that reside there but stay till they have a lawfull call to Political Offices and Dignities For it is not true of this Political Heaven but of the Spiritual The Kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it Matt. 11. 12. by force And that these Witnesses
Images kneel before them hold up their hands before them set up Candles burn Incense before them offer up gold and silver unto them hang up ships crutches chains men and women of wax before them attributing health and safeguard the gifts of God to them or the Saints whom they represent as they rather would have it who I say can doubt but that our Image-maintainers agreeing in all Idolatrous Opinions outward Rites and Ceremonies with the Gentile Idolaters agree also with them in committing most abominable Idolatry Truly for my part I must confess I do not at all doubt of it and therefore from such passages as these and several other of the like nature scattered up and down in this excellent Homily of our Church concerning Idolatry and Images do think it an easie Task to prove such a state of the Church as is here described to be the very Image of the Beast foretold in Apoc. 13. 14. the Apocalyps as any man may discern out of my foregoing Discourse But I will give my self the trouble of transcribing one or two more passages as that upon that famous Act of the good King Hezekias in breaking a-pieces the Brazen Serpent when once abused to Idolatry though set up by the special commandment of God and so mysterious a Figure of our Saviour himself How think you saith she would that godly Prince if he were now living handle our Idols set up against God's commandment directly and being Figures of nothing but folly and for Fools to gaze on till they become as wise as the blocks themselves they stare on and so fall down like dared Larks in that gaze and being themselves alive worship a dead stock and stone gold or silver and so become Idolaters abominable and cursed before the living God 6. And again Now concerning excessive decking of Images and Idols with painting gilding adorning with precious vestures pearl and stone what is it else but for the farther provocation and enticement to spiritual Fornication to deck spiritual Harlots most costly and wantonly Which the Idolatrous Church understands well enough For she being indeed not onely an Harlot as the Scripture calleth her but also a foul filthy and withered Harlot for she is indeed of ancient years and understanding her lack of nature and true beauty and great loathsomness which of her self she hath doth after the custome of such Harlots paint herself and deck and tire herself with gold pearl stone and all kinde of precious Jewels that she shining with the outward beauty and glory of them may please the foolish phantasy of fond Lovers and so entice them to spiritual Fornication with her Where it is most manifest that the Church of England doth and that with truth and judgement intimate that that apostatized Church of Rome is prefigured in the Type of the Whore of Babylon accordingly as I have above demonstrated in this present Treatise And answerable to this just Censure is that which we may reade in the following Page Surely the Prophet Daniel in the eleventh Chapter declareth such sumptuous decking of Images with gold silver and precious stones to be a token of Antichrist's Kingdome Wherein undoubtedly allusion is made to those words of the Prophet And a God whom his Fathers knew not shall he Dan. 11. 3â—… honour with gold and silver and with precious stones and pleasant things which is consonant to that sense we have * Ch. 10. above delivered of that Prophecy And as touching that ordinary pretence for Images that they are the Lay-mens Books she doth roundly rebuke the Sophistry of so fond a Plea But away for shame with those coloured Cloaks of Idolatry of the Books and Scriptures of Images and Pictures to teach Idiots nay to make Idiots and stark Fools and Beasts of Christians Do men I pray you when they have the same Books at home with them run on Pilgrimage to seek like Books at Rome Compostella or Jerusalem to be taught by them Do men light Candles at Noon-day to their Books Do they burn incense offer up gold and silver and other gifts to them And a little after Wherefore call them what they list it is most evident by their deeds that they make of them no other Books nor Scriptures then such as teach most filthy and horrible Idolatry as the Users of such Books daily prove by continually practising the same O Books and Scriptures in the which the devillish School-master Satan hath penned the leud Lessons of wicked Idolatry for his dastardly Disciples the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Apocalyps and Scholars to behold reade and learn to God's most high dishonour and their most horrible damnation And at last she winding up towards a Conclusion determines thus True Religion then and pleasing to God standeth not in making setting up painting gilding clothing and decking of dumb and dead Images which be but great Puppets and Babies for old fools in dotage and wicked Idolatry to dally and play with nor in kissing of them capping kneeling offering to them incensing of them setting up candles hanging up legs arms or whole bodies of wax before them or praying and asking of them or the Saints things belonging onely to God to give But all these things be vain and abominable and most damnable before God all such not onely bestowing their money and labour in vain but with their pains and cost purchasing to themselves God's wrath and utter indignation and everlasting damnation both of body and Soul And a little after Wherefore God's horrible wrath and our most dreadful danger cannot be avoided without the destruction and utter abolishing of Images and Idols out of the Church and Temple of God Which to accomplish God put in the minds of all Christian Princes Amen Thus freely zealously and judiciously does our Church of England condemn the Roman Religion of gross Idolatry in all those Points which I have nominated in my Idea nor has she left or appointed any Usage or Ceremony that bears any similitude or has any affinity with that hainous Crime So clear is she from this First part of Antichristianism which is the polluting of the Church of Christ with a Pagan-like Idolatry 7. And now concerning that Second part of Antichristianism opposite to the Second Privative end of the Gospel which was the Removal of that Yoke of Judaical Institutes and Ceremonies in lieu whereof Antichrist brings in an heap and lurry of Superstitious Opinions Rites and Ordinances which prove a load more intolerable not onely then the Law of Moses but the Tyranny of Aegypt itself I demand has not the Church of England by the appointment of the Royall Power of the Nation freed us from this miserable bondage Whose patience is now set on the Tenter-hooks by attending of dumb shows or â—…ish Masses as they are rightly called in our Book of Homilies wherein the Unintelligibleness of the Tongue administers no life nor devotion to the hearer Whose limbs are now tired out with
long Superstitious Pilgrimages exiled from Wife and Children to salute a dead Statue or Image at Rome Compastella or Jerusalem Whose Soul or Body injured by rash and foolish Vows of either Sacerdotal or Monastick Coelibate or whose Wives or Daughters abused by the Hypocritical Professours of the same Whose bosome broke open and rifled by extorted auricular Confessions to the sport of a Profane or Hypocritical Priest and to the clandestine prejudice of the Penitent Whose minde besotted or distracted by the secure belief or unavoidable dissettledness in incredible and even impossible Opinions Is any modest Matron now dismay'd with that Melancholick conceit that she is big with a Child and Devil at once and that that soul Fiend whose proper place is Hell as often as she is pregnant must kennel in her womb Is any man made such a Sot as to creep into a Monk's Coul to shelter himself from the wrathful presence of God or to kiss the Tail of an Ass to be reconciled to his triumphant Rider For in some place saies that Homily is the Tail of the Ass which our Lord Jesus Christ saâ—…e on to be kissed and offered unto for a Relique breaking out thereupon into this just and zealous Exclamation O wicked impudent and most shameless men the devisers of these things O silly foolish and dastardly Daws and more beastly then the Ass whose tail they kissed that believe such things Where I cannot but again note how fitly these Idolatries and Superstitions are resolved into a dastardliness and cowardliness of Minde and how correspondently to the description of those who are excluded the Holy City in the Apocalyps whose first character is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fearful not in regard of that fear which seizes the faint-hearted in warre but of those affrightments that befool men in Religion and is as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 men whose spirits are cow'd and intimidated by the power of Superstition But to proceed or rather to break off for it were both tedious and unnecessary to repeat all those Particulars I have insisted on in the Description of this limb of Antichristianism Their crouching to exorcized Crosses Their having the light of Reason extinct or drown'd in Holy-Water or enchanted Oils their eyes dimm'd or dazled with the Histrionical Pomp of the masking Vestments of their Priests and their Faith abused to the imagining a wonder-working virtue in them by their being enchanted or consecrated as also in several other exorcized Materials The unseasonable trouble of Extreme Unction and the nasty besmearing the tender Nose and Ears of the Infant in Baptism The vexatious colluctations betwixt the injured Body and illaqueated Conscience about abstaining from meats The Numerousness and Superstition of the Observations of Saints-days The stripping of the Souls of men of the most comfortable fruits of Christ's Suffering making them believe that his Satisfaction reaches not to the sheltering them from the Punishment of sin but from the Guilt onely and lastly The affrighting them out of their wits by that hideous Figment of an Hellish Purgatory and excoriating their Bodies by barbarous and Pagan-like Processionary Flagellations I demand concerning these and what-ever else looks any thing like either an Antichristian Imposition or Imposture belonging to this Second limme of Antichristianism whether the Care and Fidelity whether the unbiassed Judgement and Piety of our Royal and Reverend Reformers have not quite cast them out as the dirt and dung of Superstition 8. I but you will say we do still celebrate Saints-daies and do still keep Lent Surplices are still worn and the Cross in Baptism still in use But to these I easily and briefly answer For the charge is slight and trivial and cannot reach to the least touch of Antichristianism For as for the Saints-daies in our Church they are neither many whereby the Observation of them may become burthensome nor are they Idolatrously or Superstitiously observed there being no Religious worship done to the Saints no Temple nor Altar dedicated to them nor Prayers directed to them but onely an honourable mention made of their Vertues for our Christian Imitation In which thing our Church is very explicite joyning authority with S. Austin and declaring That neither Temples nor Churches ought to be builded or made for Martyrs or Saints but to God alone and that there ought no Priests to be appointed for Martyr or Saint but to God alone as you may see in the second part of the Homily against Peril of Idolatry And he that reads what order she gives for the keeping of these Festivals in her Constitutions and Canons Ecclesiastical will but betray his Impiety in gain-saying so Religious a Purpose For her Injunction is that these Daies be kept in hearing the Canon 13. Word of God read and taught in private and publick Prayer in acknowledging their offences to God and amendment of the same and in reconciling themselves charitably to their Neighbours where displeasures have been in oftentimes receiving the Communion of the Body and Bloud of Christ in visiting the poor and sick using all godly and sober Conversation And now concerning Lent that our Church puts a snare upon no mans Conscience in difference of Meats is plain out of what we meet with in that eminent Prelate Bishop Jewel in The Defence of his Apology a Part 2. Ch 14. divis 1. Book appointed for every Church by publick Authority where he cites that excellent saying out of Tertullian Deus ventre non colitur nec cibis quos Dominus dicit perire in secessu naturali lege purgari Nam qui per escas Dominum colit prope est ut Dominum habeat ventrem suum He whose Religion is so carnal is but a degree above them that make their Belly their God And in the same Page he speaks from himself and in plain English We weigh not the choice of Fish or Flesh but the burthen of the Minde and the snare of the Conscience The Church herself also doth declare in the Homily of Fasting That there is no Holiness at all in Meats and that it is in itself indifferent whether Lent be kept by eating of Fish or by abstaining from all manner of food till night and then to eat without any choice or difference of meats and that keeping of Lent by abstinence from Flesh is grounded merely upon Policy and thereupon appointed by the Magistrate for the increasing of Victuals Beeves and Sheep for the greater plenty and better provision for the Poor and furnishing out our Navies and for the enriching the Sea-coast-Towns by Fishing and making them more populous and better provided for to repulse the Enemy at any Invasion Which is a very honest and solid account for our celebrating Lent by abstinence from Flesh-meats and feedding on Fish and devoid of all Popery and Superstition And thirdly touching the Pompous Histrionical Vestments of Priests no man can condemn them more heartily or deride them more wittily then our Church
Various ways of the improving this gainful persuasion 6. The unspeakable honour that seems to accrue to the Priest from this stupendious miracle 7. That it seems to give him a just claim to exemption from Civil jurisdiction and saves him the labour of endeavouring after Truth and Sanctity 8. That their Pretences for Idolatry though they be weak yet their Self-ends therein are palpable 51 CHAP. XVI 1. That Idolatry is the highest and most peculiar injury that can be committed against God 2. That giving Religious honour to Saints or Angels is really a reproaching them and blaspheming them 3. The exceeding great Mischief done to the Soul of man by Idolatry 4. That Idolatry turns men into bloudy Wolves and Bears 5. And is the Mother and Nurse of the foulest impurities 6. That it is the source of all manner of wickedness and eternal death to the Idolater 7. The great Mischiefs it doth to the Church of Christ. 8. How the Church is lessened by Idolatry at home 9. And the spreading thereof hindred abroad 10. And consequently the whole World injured thereby 55 CHAP. XVII 1. That a multitude of slight Observances may amount to an intolerable burthen 2. That no Religious observance can be slight while it has an obligation upon the Conscience 3. Though this general estimate of the burthen of Superstition from obligation of Conscience and multitude of Observances might suffice yet he will adde a more particular Draught of this Limme of Antichristianism 4. Of Anointings and of the Multiplicity of Sacerdotal Ornaments 5. The pretence and Self-endedness in these Ornaments and Anointings 6. The Mischief arising from these kind of Ceremonies to Priest and People 7. A more full description of their publick Service 8. That respect to the Priest is better sought and more certainly found in the Power of Life and Doctrine then in any Histrionical Pomp 9. Which is so unsatisfactory to the serious that it may hazard their departure 10. The Opinion of a miraculous power in Religious Vestments 11. The Falseness and Fraud of this Opinion 12. The ill consequence thereof 59 CHAP. XVIII 1. Of the Enchanting or Exorcizing of Water Oil Salt Wax-candles c. with a general intimation of the Mischief thereof 2. Of the Exorcizing of a Golden Rose and Lamb of Wax 3. That the using of the Name of the true God in these Exorcisms does not hinder but that they may be properly termed Enchantments 4. Other Instances of their being Charmers and Magicians With an Anticipation of an Objection 5. The Falshood Fraud and Mischief of these Exorcisms 6. The derivation or distribution of these Exorcized Elements into several Superstitious uses 7. Of the supposal of the Infant 's being possess'd and of Baptismal Spittle 8. Of Extreme Unction and other Superstitious practices upon the dying man 9. As also upon his Corps laid out 10. The Fraud and Mischief of these practices .. 65 CHAP. XIX 1. The burthen of Spiritual Cognation and excessive Numerosity of Holy-days 2. Perpetual abstinence from Flesh in some Religious Orders The Fraud and Mischief thereof 3. The burthen of vowed Coelibate 4. The more dangerous purposes thereof 5. The ordinary services done by the Monasticks to this Antichristian power we describe 6. That its establishment is much corroborated by the Interest of Monasteries 7. And enriched by being Heir to all professours of Coelibate 8. The great Mischiefs of Coelibate 9. Of Flagellation 10. The ineffectualness thereof Hypocrisie of the Penitent salvage Pride of his Church and the Mischiefs resulting therefrom 11. Of Pilgrimages and Jubilees 12. An enumeration of several other Antichristian Austerities 70 CHAP. XX. 1. The Burthen of afflictive Opinions 2. The distracting puzzles of a Soul intangled with multifarious Superstitions and Conceits 3. The illaqueations of Religious Vows 4. Intanglements arising from a Superstitious trust in certain surmised virtues in the Mass. 5. Vexatious Scrupulosities concerning the Intention of the Priest in administring the Sacraments 75 CHAP. XXI 1. Of the necessity of Anniversary Confession 2. Of Sacerdotal Absolution 3. What is meant by Binding and Loosing and to what manner of persons Remission of sins is committed 4. Erasmus his gloss upon that Text of S. John 5. As also Hugo Grotius his whence Auricular Confession and Absolution prove groundless 6. A voluntary Confession and in general useful in the Church in some circumstances and in order to particular Absolution from the Priest 7. As also a more particular Confession if voluntary 8. The Self-ends of this Church in exacting so punctual a Confession from men 9 10. The slavery and Mischief of such kind of Confessions 11. The infinite vexation to the consciencious and ingenuous from the obtruding upon them incredible and impossible Opinions 78 CHAP. XXII 1. The dreadful Figment of Purgatory 2. That by this affrightful Fable the whole Moles of Superstition hitherto described is made infinitely more weighty and burthensome 3. The Antichristian Doctrine of Christ his Satisfaction reaching onely to the freeing us from the Guilt of sin not the Punishment 4. The multifarious drudgery and slavery this Doctrine and that Figment of Purgatory casts men into 5. A confutation of the said Doctrine and Figment 6. That it is impossible that the sincerely-minded in this life should find either Hell or Purgatory in the other 7. That there is no ground for this Antichristian Purgatory in either Scripture or Fathers 8 The gross Fraud and grand Mischief of this Fiction 9. The conclusion of the description of this second Limme of Antichristianism 82 BOOK II. CHAP. I. 1. The Positive Ends of the Gospel which the rest of the Limms of Antichristianism do oppose 2. That to lay claim to a Right of Infallible Interpretation of the Laws of Christ is a supplanting of his Kingly Office 3. An instance of that danger in the Glosses of the Pharisees 4. Several places of Scripture alledged to prove the Church Infallible 5. The first general Answer to these Allegations by demanding whether the Promise of Infallibility be to the Whole Church or to Part. 6. The second by demanding whether the Promise be Absolute or Conditional 7. A third That the Promise cannot be Universal touching all Objects that may be considered 8. A particular Answer to the first place of Scripture 9. An Answer to the second and third 10. Infallibility a Promise onely to the first Founders of the Christian Church 11. What the meaning of The pillar and ground of truth 12. A farther exposition of that passage of Paul to Timothy 13. That if understood of the Universal Church it may be meant onely of it in the Apostles times 14. And that the like may be said of the last Allegation 87 CHAP. II. 1. That the safe conveyance of the Apostolick Writings down to us by the Church does not infer her Infallibility 2. That the Plainness of Scripture in points necessary to Salvation takes away the want of an Infallible Judge 3. That the Scripture not pointing to
made him capable of suffering death This is all spoken of our Head and Captain and yet it may be not without some reflexion upon his Body the Church To whom also the riding upon white Horses belongs as appears in the fourteenth verse They have also flammeous and fiery eyes because of their Intellectual Graces and it is said that the Spiritual man discerneth all things 1 Cor. 2. They have also a name that no man knows besides themselves which is their New birth or the participation of the Divine Nature Their garments also are died in bloud in that so many have suffered Martyrdom for the testimony of the Gospel against the Idolatry and Tyranny of Antichrist and all have been martyr'd that is slain and mortifi'd as to the life of sin and besprinkled also with the bloud of the Lamb in the pardon of what-ever Transgressions are past And lastly they are to be crowned and reign as Kings upon earth for the Kingdom is given to the Saints of the most High Dan. 7. 6. But to return to the Description of this Heavenly Heros A sharp-edged Sword is said to go out of his mouth Which is analogical to that in the Hebrews The word of God is quick and powerful sharper then any two-edged Heb. 4. sword And in that he is said to rule the Nations with a rod of iron it is an allusion to the second Psalm which is a Prophecie of the Messias Thou shalt rule them with a rod of iron and break them in pieces like a potter's vessel Which is a Prophetick Symbol of that wonderful contrition of heart that the powerful Word of God makes when sincerely and seasonably evibrated against the enemies of his Kingdom as in the Epistle to the Hebrews it is said to divide asunder and cut betwixt soul and spirit and hew down into the very joints and marrow Such is the Militia of this Heavenly Host. He shall smite the Earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips will he slay the wicked Esa. 11. 4. 7. And in that he is said to tread the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of Almighty God it looks as if it referred to that of Esay 63. Who is this that comes from Edom with his died garments from Bozrah this that is glorious in his apparel travelling in the greatness of his strength I that speak in righteousness mighty to save Which answers to that in this present Vision Whose name is Faithful and True and in righteousness doth he judge and make war But it follows in Esay Wherefore art thou red in thy apparel and thy garments like him that treadeth in the wine-fat I have troden the wine-press alone and of the people there was none with me For I will tread them in my anger and trample them in my fury and their bloud shall be sprinkled upon my garments and I will stain all my raiment For the day of vengeance is in my heart and the day of my redeemed is come This answers to what is said of the Rider of the white Horse in this Vision that he was clothed in a vesture dipt in bloud Which in both these Prophecies referrs both to the Passion of Christ and his Spiritual Victories over his Enemies The Wine-presses also answer to one another in each Vision And being that the Harvest is as our Saviour says the end of the world the Vintage which is something later then it must be a later part of the end of the world So that this Vision of Edom and Bozrah will very well sute in that respect also to this of the Apocalyps And it is farther considerable that Bozrah signifies Vintage and Edom the carnal persecutive Church real enemies to the true Jerusalem as the Edomites were to Israel And I need not adde that Edom and Ismael are Types of one and the same thing So that the warfare seems plainly to be spiritual as it may be I shall take occasion to clear up more fully in another place 8. Lastly in that it is written upon his thigh KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS it shews the Royal Descent of Christ even according to the flesh as if he had laid claim to this Sovereignty by descent from David the King accordingly as it is said Chap. 22. I am the root and off-spring of David and the bright morning-star The root of David as to his Divinity and the off-spring of David as to his Humanity But the meaning of this part of the Vision is That the Word of God that is to say the Law of Christ inward and outward is at last in conspicuous Triumph though it had been kept under and plainly troden into the dirt for so long a time in the Reign of the Two-horned Beast or the Whore 9. But that the Church of Christ which is his Body has also a share in this part of the Vision is easily discoverable For in that this Title of King of Kings and Lord of Lords is written upon his thigh it signifies also the Dominion of his posterity the Church as Ribera and Alcazar have rightly noted and accordingly as it is said else-where in the Apocalyps He has made us Kings and Priests c. And for the treading of the Wine-press of the wrath of God or the subduing of Edom does not Christ doe it by the powerful and convictive zeal of his Saints and faithful Ministers of his Word who seriously and weightily laying the Law and the heavy wrath of God against Sinners to the hearts and consciences of these carnally-complexionated Edomites squeeze out if I may so speak their corrupt bloud that is the principle of that ungodly life in them for in the bloud thereof is the life thereof and so making them dead as to sin after revive them into righteousness unto everlasting Salvation And so for that sharp-edged sword which is here said to come out of the mouth of Christ it is in effect the very same that comes out of the mouths of his Saints who rule the world by convincing them of their wickedness and causing them to return to God This sharp piercing and vehement Reproof out of the mouths of the people of God against the Beast and the False Prophet is here said to be a Sword coming out of the mouth of Christ because their mouths are his mouth by right use and possession and he inspires by his Spirit and they are onely his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that transmit this fiery Law this blast of fire and flaming breath as it is called in Esdras whereby the wicked are consumed They are I say but as a seized Gate or Passage through which or in which this sharp-edged Sword wherewith the Nations are smitten is so powerfully brandished by our victorious Saviour For this Flame and this Sword I take to be clear Truth and sound and searching Reason inspired from the Eternal Word which whetted with an holy sincere and unaffected kind of Enthusiastick Zeal