this Story neither names Israel but Saturn whose Soul after his death assumed for its heavenly body the Planet so called nor his but his wifes the Nymph Anobretha sacrificing of her only Son after the death of his Father 3. Thirdly he relates this fact of Saturn or his Wife as an imitation of the ancient Custom of that Nation to sacrifice the Princes most beloved Son in times of eminent danger to that Deity that takes vengeance of sin for the pacifying of his wrath Morem priscis cùm itaque Saturnus rex Eus. pr. evan 1. 7. So far is Porphyry out in his alledging Abraham or Israel as the Samplar out of which the Heathen World transcrib'd that bloody Copy as his own Author makes that very fact of Abraham which he alledgeth to have been done in observance of a Custom in ure long before Abraham was 4. Porphyry for the credit of Sanchoniathon affirmeth that he gather'd his Antiquities out of the Records of the several Cities the sacred Inscriptions in the Temples and of Jerom-Baal the Priest of the God Irvo or Jao If we admit this Jerom-baal to have been Gideon whom the Scripture calls Jerub-baal which is of the same sense in the Phoenician Language only after their custom changing one b into m as in Ambubaiae Sambucus c. it will not follow that this Author was contemporary with Gideon for he might use Gideon's Records after his death and in all likelihood came to the knowledg of him and them by means of that intercourse betwixt the Israelites and the Inhabitants of Berith where Sanchoniathon lived the worship of whose God Baal-Berith the Israelites fell to after Gideon's death But that he was not elder than Gideon doth necessarily follow from hence see Dr. Stillingfleet Orig. l. 1. cap. 2. sect 3. 4. and indeed 't is manifest he was much younger than Gideon from which Chronological Concession of those that are of opinion that the Heathens sacrificed Children in imitation of Abraham I argue against that opinion thus If the story of Abraham's Fact had not till that time arrived by Oral Tradition at their next door neighbours the Phaenicians but must be fetch'd out of Hebrew Records till then unknown to the greatest Antiquary the Heathen World affords how can it be imagin'd that the report thereof should reach all over Canaan so many hundreds of years before that wherein children were made oblations so long even before Moses as he speaks thereof as of ancient use among them Even their sons and their daughters have they burn'd in the fire to their Gods Deut. 12. 31. In which particular God himself is so far from suspecting the Gentiles would or did follow Israel as he gives Israel caution not to follow the Gentiles Thou shalt not enquire after their Gods saying How did these Nations serve their Gods even so will I do likewise vers 30. which would have been to small purpose had the Gentiles in those oblations followed Abraham for the Jew might then have replyed to the Prophets rebuking him for that practise that therein he followed the Nations in nothing but wherein they followed Abraham whom those very Prophets bid them look to who were sent to rebuke them for sacrificing their sons and daughters to Molech It would have been more seasonable in that case had the case been as our Opponents imagine to have warned them not to look to Abraham but to the intentions of God to try Abraham's Love and Faith in his tempting him to offer his only Son and his Son of Promise But the Psalmist Psal. 106. 35. hath determin'd it beyond all doubt that the Israelites in sacrificing their Sons and Daughters served the Idols of Canaan and learned their works that is those abominations which the Canaanites had practised as Moses saith before Israel came among them and for which Israel should have rooted them out Nay so far were the Canaanites from learning these works of Abraham which Abraham's Posterity learn'd of them as that before Abraham's tryal the old Inhabitants of Canaan by reason of these works began to look white towards Harvest though as yet their sins were not fully ripe Gen 15. 16. yea Moses having spoken of offering sons to Molech among other of their bestialities Levit. 18. 21. as the sins that God visited upon the Canaanites vers 25. tells the Israelites ver 27. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for all these same abominations have the men of this Land who were before you done and this Land hath been defiled upon which Text Philo Judaeus saith Barbaras quoque gentes per multas aetates litasse mactatis filiis cujus sceleris Moses eos accusat de Abrahamo pag. 243. It appears that the Gentiles for many Ages before Abraham did sacrifice children from Moses his saying The men of this Land Canaan who inhabited it before you did do all these abominations and the land was defiled 5. Had those circumjacent Nations taken up that practice from Abraham's Example what better Argument could they have used than that to induce the Jews to it and sure had the Jews upon that reason conform'd to that Gentile Rite we should have heard them plead that for their adhering to it rather than those sorry reasons they bring for their resolute contumacy and pertinacious resistance of the Prophet's motion to them to forsake it As for the word that thou hast spoken to us in the name of the Lord we will not hearken to thee we will do as we have done for then it was well with us we had plenty and peace c. how much more strenuous would this reply have been then we did well for we followed Abraham 6. If the Phoenicians had no knowledg of Abraham's fact till Sanchoniathon found it in the Jewish Records so long after Moses how could the knowledge of it reach in almost as short a time as far south as Affrica as far north as Scythia as far east as India for 't is not to be conceiv'd from whence but India or Tartary the Americans derive their Pedigree or the Inhabitants of the Caroline Islands the worship of Molech whose Images in that form wherein they are described by Diodorus Siculus in the twentieth Book of his Bibliotheca were found there by the first discoverers of that Island who also affirmed that they threw children as sacrifices into the glowing hands of that Idol who were there scalded to death by vertue of a fire within the hollow body of the Image of all which Vives received good intelligence just as he was commenting upon the 19. Chapter of the 7. Book of St. Austin de Civitate Dei which treats upon that subject As far west as Hercules Pillars that is through all the Nations of which ancient History gives us account For this custom of sacrificing men to appease the divine wrath will appear to have been in a manner universal almost if not altogether as early as that Age wherein the most critical Computers affirm Sanconiathon
the satisfying of his lusts but out of Reasons of State that he might by those Subagitations of their Wives bolt out the secrets of their Husbands with whose Heifers he ploughed that he might read their Riddles Augustus saith Dion made so much use of Woman-kind when he was fifty years old as the Senate thought to gratifie him with a License to have to do with whomsoever he pleased Dion lib. 44. I am apt to think Julius might grind in so many Mills upon the like Design as having Cato's concurrence who in open Senate charged Julius and his Allies with endeavours to insinuate themselves into places of greatest Trust and Command by the Panderage of Marriages Per nuptiarum lenocinia hujusmodi mulieres this was Cato's sence of Caesar's matching his Julia to Pompey and his marrying Calpurnia Plutarch C. Caesar. And his Collegue Bibulus preferr'd this Complaint against him That it was the Kingdom he courted in making love to the Queen of Bithinia Bithinicam Reginam fuisse cordi nunc Regnum Sueton Julius 49. Caesar was but a kind of a Lay-smock-simonist So that for all him we are yet to seek for one Instance in all History of a noted Wanton that has not been a notorious Fool. But to return from this Deviation to which the proving of the Medium I here urge It was a Lascivious ergò a Sottish Age hath drawn me John 12 or 13. for the Popish Writers are not agreed under what number to place him Joan the She-pope is the Davus here turbat omnia was a Pig of the same Litter if the learned Council of Lateran were not mistaken for the Fathers there assembled prefer to Otho the Great these Articles against him Luitprand lib. 2. cap. 7. That he ordained Deacons in a Stable That he made Boys but ten years old Bishops That in playing at Dice he invocated the Devil That he made a Brothel-house of the Lateran Palace lay with Stephana his Father's Concubine and drank the Devil's Health And when in answer to this Charge he sent out his Bulls to bellow Anathema's against them they made bold to return this Reply You write by the suggestion of empty-headed Councellors Childish Threats we despise your threatned Excommunication and throw it back upon your self Judas the Traitor when he would kill the Lord of Life whom did he bind but himself whom he strangled in an unhappy Rope Pope Lando this John's Predecessor was so inconsiderable a person and his Life so obscure saith Platina as many Historians make no reckoning of him at all but leave his Name and Story out of the Catalogue of Popes and does thus express the degeneracy of that time Not only were those famous Lights which in the days of yore render'd Italy illustrious extinct but the very Nurseries where so excellent roots shot forth were altogether laid waste and â—uin'd Pope Sergius 3. is complemented by the same Author in the Style of a rude and unlearned man and the Reader desired to observe how the Popes of this Age were degenerate from their forefathers For these throwing the service of God behind their backs like raging Tyrants exercised enmities upon one another and having none to bridle and keep them in greedily pursued their own lusts So devoid of Understanding were those Brutes as they needed Bit and Bridle and therefore the Council of Rhemes held in this Century did prudently in superseding their purpose of sending to the Pope for Advice in a difficult point when they heard it averr'd in open Court that scarce a man in Romo could read the Christ-cross-row Romae jam nullum ferè esse qui literas didicerit B. Hall hon 〈…〉 of mar lib. 1. Sect. 23. § 4. The 11. Century was invelop'd with so thick a Cloud as the very Light that was in it was gross Darkness teeming with sixteen Popes immediatly succeeding one another from Gerebert or Silvester 2. to Hildebrand or Gregory 7. inclusively who lighted their Candle at the Devil's flame exceeding Jannes and Jambres in Jugglery and rising by the black Art in the Smoke of the bottomless Pit to the Papal Throne if Cardinal Benno have not belyed them Nauclerus vol. 2. generat 31. extends the line of this sacred auri sacra fames Succession to that length as he joyns to these 28 Popes succeeding Silvester that were his Disciples in Necromancy and committed those Villanies as it would make a man's hair stand on end to hear Bellarmine himself Chronologia Cent. 11. confesseth that in this Century there was more Sanctity under the Robe than under the Gown that we are less beholding to the Popes of this Age for preserving a Succession of Religion than to Secular Princes which had gone wholly to wrack for all St. Peter ' s Successors if it had not been supported by the Piety of Christ's Vice-gerents the Emperour Henry and his Wife Chunagand Romanus Emperour of Constantinople Câ—ute King of Denmark and England Stephen King of Hungary and his Son St. Emeric St. Robert the French King Ferdinand the Great King of Castile and his Wife Sanatia For all those greater Lights that God made to rule the Day the Church had been benighted if it had not been for these lesser Lights these Secular Princes If the Earth had not helpt the woman and God given her the Eagles Wings of both Empires East and West and provided a place for her in the Courts of Secular Princes When Satan had set up his Throne in St. Peter's Palace the Dragon there Rampant had destroyed her he that then would look for the holy Church of Rome must have looked beyond the Court of Rome for there sate Hell's Plenipotentiary if Platina be to be trusted Silvester 2. anno 998. who contracted with the Devil for the Papacy at the price of Body and Soul whereof he was to give livery and seisure at his death Platina Silvest 2. Pontificatum postremò majore conatu adjuvante Diabolo consecutus est hac tamen lege ut post mortem totus illius esset cujus fraudibus tantam dignitatem adeptus est Oâ—â—phrius in Platinam seeks to evade the Dint of common Fame touching Silvester by this evasion That he was a great Mathematician and the ignorance of that Age so great too as the Vulgar reputed them Witches who had any thing in them above the pitch of common Learning but himself misdoubts the validity of this to elude the clear and concurrent Testimonies of so many grave and sober Authors Truly I could heartily wish for the sake of the Christian name that his Argument had been cogent in that branch of it wherein he would defend Sivester against the Charge of Sorceries for the very medium he useth will serve my present turn and demonstrates what a thick Mist of barbarous Ignorance covered the face of that Age which esteemed them black Swans who exceeded the common size of Geese And him a great Clerk who was but the Scholar of the Saracens the most stupid kind
or Man thou cryest out Satan and namest him whom we call the Angel of Malice the Crafts-master of all Errour the Defacer of the whole World by whom Man at first was circumvented to break the Law of God whereby he became obnoxious to Death and drew all his Posterity into the same Condemnation Thou knowest therefore thy Destroyer and though Christians only and those Sects that depend upon the Mouth of God have learn'd to know the whole Story of him yet thou also hast some inkling of him for else thou wouldst not hate him § 2. The Soul conscious of Eternal Judgment Articl 4. There is one Article of our Religion wherein we expect thy Determination so much the rather because it respects thine own state and concernment We affirm that thou continuest in Being after thou hast paid back the debt of Life That thou expectest the Day of Judgment and to be sentenc'd to Eternal Torment or Happiness according as thy works have been in the Body of which that thou maist be capable we affirm that thou expectest the restoring to thee of thy pristine Substance the same Body the same Memory This Faith we introduc'd not but found in the World for this Principle of the Soul's Existence after death the Gallick Druides that most uncult Tribe of Divines retain'd as Caesar witnesseth in his lib. 6. de bello Gallico and Strabo in his 4. Book of the Gauls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of the same Opinion the same Strabo witnesseth the Indian Brachmans to be lib. 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The sentiments of the Souls Immortality Barbarism it self could not raze out of the minds of some Thracians saith Pompon Mela lib. 2. de Thracibus Alii redituras putant animas obeuntium alii etsi non redeant non extingui tamen sed ad beatiora transire And as to that of the Bodies Resurrection Tacitus lib. 5. hist. 5. speaking of the Jews saith that in hope of the Resurrection they as also the Egyptians used not to burn but to interr their Corps Corpora condere quà m cremare è more Aegyptio eadémque cura de inferis persuasio These as well as we think it not equal to pass a Doom without the Exhibition of the whole Man which in thy fore-past Life was at work either to bring forth death by sowing to the Flesh or life by sowing to the Spirit This Christian Doctrine though much more becoming than that of Pithagoras for it does not translate thee into Beasts though more full and plain than that of Plato for it restores to thee the dowry of thy Body which point the Platonicks waver'd in Non novi quam utilitatem ex ipsa capiamus â—â—orum enim nulla est commemoratio neque sensus esse posset si simus prorsus quae gratia hujus immortalitatis est habenda Athengus dipnos. 11. 22. though more acceptable than that of Epicurus for it defends thee against annihilation yet merely for the name we give it undergoes the Censure of being vain stupid and temerarious But we are not ashamed of it if thou beest of the same Opinion with us As thou declarest thy self to be when making mention of a wicked man departed this Life thou call'st him poor wretched man not so much for that he has lost the benefit of a temporal Life as for that he is inroll'd for punishment for others when they are deceased thou call'st happy and secure therein professing both the incommodity of Life and benefit of Death Those deceased whom thou imprecatest thou wishest to them heavy earth and to their ashes torment in the other World to them to whom thou bearest good will when they are dead thou wishest rest to their bones and ashes If there remain nothing for thee to be expected after death no sense of pain or joy nay if thou thy self shalt not then remain Why dost thou lye against thine own head Why dost thou tell thy self that something attends thee beyond the Grave Yea why dost thou at all fear death if thou hast nothing to fear after death If thou answer'st Not because it menaceth any thing that 's evil but because it deprives me of the benefit of Life I reply yea thou wilt give answer to thy self That sometimes Death quits thee of the intolerable inconveniences of Life and sure in this case the loss of good things is not to be feared that being recompensed with a greater good to wit 〈…〉 st from inconveniences That certainly is not to be feared that delivers us from all that is to be feared Whence come such amazing fears dreadful apprehensions sinking thoughts to attend guilty Conscience but from the innate Notion of Judgment to come Whence proceeds it that se judice nemo nocens absolvitur a guilty Soul arraigns it self That self-consciousness to the closest Villany binds the Malefactor over to the general Assize that the guilt of innocent Blood though never so secretly shed looks so gastly in the face of the Murderer rings so loud speaks so articulately in the ears of Conscience as some have conceived the very Birds of the Air nay the callow Sparrows in the Nest to reveal the matter as it befel to Bessus should be such a load such a weight upon the Soul as to make it melt in its own grease with struggling under it Mentem sudoribus urget What makes them most stubborn and contumeliously set against entertaining the thought of Eternal Judgment tremble at the voice of Thunder as if in that rumbling noise they heard the sound of the Judges Charriot-wheels and in the Lightning saw a resemblance of that fire shall go before him and consume round about him Caligula out-braved God and Tiberius slighted him yet ad omnia fulgura pallent when they heard his voice they were afraid Excellent is the Note that Tacitus makes upon those Passages in Tiberius his Epistle to the Senate Quid scribam vobis Patres conscripti aut quomodò soribam aut quid omnino non scribam hoc tempore Dii me Deeque pejùs perdant quà m perire quotidiè sentio si scio If I can tell Fathers what I may write or how I may write or what I may not write at this time let the Gods who I perceive are destroying me daily destroy me worse Adeò facinora flagitia sua ipsi quoque in supplicium verterant Neque frustrà Plato affirmare solitus est si recludantur trannorum mentes posse aspici laniatus ictus quando ut corpora verberibus ità saevitia libidine malis consultis animus dilaceratur So do impious men comments Tacitus torment themselves with the guilt of their own villanies as Plato had reason to say that if the Minds of Tyrants were exposed to open view they would be seen smiting and tearing themselves for as mens Bodies are with scourges so are their souls torn with the guilt of cruelty lust and ill-advised actions That is as the same Plato de republ saith when they perceive
deaths approaches Nero hath this Character given him by Suetonius Religionum usquequaque aspernator he perfectly contemned all Religion yet his Mothers Ghost dogg'd him into an acknowledgement of Judgment to come for after his Matricide he was scar'd with dreams terrified with visions wherein sometimes he hears the Apparritors voice summoning him to appear before the divine Tribunal sometimes he thinks the Furies arrest him and hale him into close and dismal Dungeons those antipasts of approaching vengcance drive him quite off his Stoicism in his last Act put him beside the Lesson his Master Seneca had taught him he could handle his Weapon dexterously in the Artillery-garden but he cannot find his hands in the pitch'd Field 'T is one thing to bark at the Lions Skin in the Hall another thing to meet the Lion in the Wood. He cannot at his death with all his Charms of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Age excita teipsum how ill do these fears become the Scholar of Seneca Caesar where art thou go too stir up thy courage Nero conjure down the terrours of death nor keep them within the Circle of his own heart but they break out in those gastly stareings of his Eyes as strike the Spectators with horrour Extantibus rigentibusque oculis usque ad horrorem visentium Sueton. Nero. so true is that of St. Cyril Jerus Catech. 18. Thou maist deny it with thy lipps 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but thou carriest the Conscience of the Resurrection about with thee Epicurus made it his business to obliterate the Notions of the Souls Immortality and the Judgment attending us in the other World yet Cotta in Cicero de nat deor lib. 1. gives this Testimony of him Nec quenquam vidi qui magis timeret ea quae timenda esse negaret mortem dico Deos I never knew man that more fear'd what he said was not to be fear'd to wit Death and the Deity There is no Antidote strong enough to repel the thought of future Judgment from soaking into the spirits of those men that would most glad ly quit themselves of those thoughts The Atheist in heart cannot persevere to be an Atheist in Judgment he may cross the Book but the Debt is still legible he cannot make his Soul rasam tabulam not rase out of it the native Impresses of a righteous Deity he may think he has barrocado'd all the ways to his Soul and secured it from all Assaults of Fear that he has sufficiently immur'd his Judgment and made it impregnable but Judgment has a Party within will betray the Fort a self-accusing Conscience Conscia mens ut cuique sua est ità concipit intrà pectora pro facto spémque metúmque suo He may think he has extinguish'd the Fire but the Sparks of the Fiery Day are only raked up in the Embers and lie glowing on the bottom of the Hearth He may beat the thoughts of Eternal Vengeance from the Out-works and base Town the lower and bestial part of the Soul Fancy that 's only mur'd by Sense but they are so fortifyed in the Fort Royal in the white Tower of the rational Faculties as there they stand at defiance against all his Artillery as thence they make frequent Sallies and put all the Arguments wherewith they are beleaguered to the Rout thence they discharge whole Vollies of mortal Shot against the Atheist's Head if he once but dare to peep up above those Trenches under the Covert of which his Disbelief lurks To be sure the Dust that riseth under the Charriot Wheels of approaching Death blown into the most refractory A theist's Eyes will cure him of that his Purblindness of that Indisposition whereby he could not see afar off so far off as Judgment to come § 3. Articl 5. The Soul's Antipasts of the Resurrection to Eternal Life To whose Discipline we will leave him and attend to what the Soul speaks about that other part of glad Hope after Death whence comes that secret Applause she gives her self when she acts well that Exultancy of Spirit which ariseth from her reflecting upon her vertuous Actions Seneca speaks the Peasant's Sence as well as the Philosopher's when he saith Animum divina aeterna delectant nec ut alienis interest sed ut suis distrabe hoc inestimabile bonum non èst vita tanti ut sudem ut aestuem Upon the performance of Noble and Heroick Actions the Soul contemplates those Eternal Rewards that attend them in the World and delights and enjoys her self in those Rewards not as things she hath nothing to do with but as her own peculiar Portion without which Fore-tasts of Eternal Retribution which the Divine Justice will award to Pious Actions this present Life were not worth the while our sweating and toiling here were but lost Labour exactly to the Apostle's Sense 1 Cor. 15. 19. If in this Life only we had Hope we were miserable Men If the Soul did not think that the Body shall reign with her with what Equity does she put it upon suffering for her Would not the Flesh grumble to be rid by her through Brush and Brake if she did not rest in hope of sharing with the Soul in the Reward of well doing Would Scoevola's Hand if it had not laid fast hold of Eternal Life have been kept so steady in that Fire wherein he sacrificed it for his Countrey 's Service then which as my Author saith the immortal Gods never saw a more noble one laid upon their Altars nor more bespeaking the Attention of their Eyes Could Pompei have perswaded his Finger to have the Patience to be burnt to the stump in the Flame of a Candle to convince King Gentius that no Torture could rack him to confess the Senates Counsel if he had not pointed it to its future Reward With what else could Theodorus charm his Tongue to hold its Peace while he tired his Tormenters and wore out the Rack with his Patience Or Alexander's Page his Arm not to shrug while it was carbonadoing with that live Coal that fell into his Sleeve out of that Censer he held while his Master was sacrificing till the smell of his burnt Flesh exceeded that of the Incense and till Alexander had fulfill'd those Rites which he lengthen'd out on purpose to delight himself with the Prospect of that invincible Manhood in a Boy With what else do the Indian Gymnosophists obtain of their Bodies a Compliance with their Austere Discipline of going naked in Frost and Snow all their Life long of hardning them with the Frosty Rigour of Caucasus one while and another while throwing them into the Fire under all which Burdens the poor Beast never groans nor expresseth the least Disgust against its Rider But would a good Man be thus merciless to his Beast were he not perswaded with that Strippling Martyr in the Book of Maccabees 2. 7. these I had from Heaven and for his Laws I despise them and from him I hope to have them again These
our Bodies should rise glorious Bodies Hitherto appertains that place of Ruffin expl symbol Infideles reclamant dicunt quomodò potest caro quae putrefacta dissolvitur aut in pulverem vertitur aut in mari profundo solvitur fluctibùsque dispergitur recolligi rursùm reintegrari in unum corpus ex eâ hominis reparari Resp. quod in seminibus quae tu in terra jacis per annos singulos fieri vides hoc de tua carne quae Dei lege seminatur in terra futurum esse non credis Cur quaeso te nunc tam angustus invalidus divinae potentiae existmator es ut dispersum uniuscujusque carnis pulverem in suam rationem colligi reparari posse non censeas cùm videas quòd etiam mortale ingenium demersas in profundum terrae metallorum venas rimatur artificis oculus aurum videt in quo imperitus terram putet nec tantum quidem concedimus ei qui fecit hominem quantum homo qui ab ipso factus est consequi potest cum auri esse propriam venam argenti aliam aeris quoque longè disparem ferri quoque plumbi diversas in terra species latere terrae mortale deprehendat ingenium divina virtus invenire posse ac discernere non putabitur uniuscujusque carnis proprium sensum etiam si videatur esse dispersum Against this Doctrine of the Resurrection of the Body the Lufidels exclaim and say How can the Flesh after it is dissolv'd and turn'd into dust or mouldered away in the bottom of the Sea and scatter'd with the waves be again gather'd up and reunited into one and the body of a man be made up of it I answer That which thou seest every year done in the seed that thou casts into the ground dost thou not believe this may be done in thy flesh which by the Law of God is sown in the earth Why I pray thee now hast thou so low an esteem of the divine Power that thou caust not conceive how the scatter'd dust of every mans body can be collected and set in its own rank when thou seest that even humane Wit searcheth out of the depth of the earth divers Veins of Metals And that the Artificers eye discerns that to be Gold wherein the unskilful perceive nothing but earth And shall we not ascribe so much to God who made man as we see man can attain to who is but Gods Creature Or shall not the divine Power be thought able to find out and discern the proper rank to which every crum of dust of every mans appertains seeing the Ingenuity of Mortals extends it self to the discerning of the Veins of Gold Silver Brass Iron and Lead asunder But we shall meet with more upon this subject while we present the Animadversions of Pagans upon the next and last Article Article 12. And life everlasting If when you speak of eternal Life saith Celsus lib. 8. 18. you meant no more than that you hope your Soul shall live for ever I should cordially assent to you as rightly thinking that they shall be happy that have lived well and the unrighteous held in everlasting misery From this Opinion neither the Christian nor any body else can recede But to think that the Body shall be made immortal is a Conceit that cannot enter but into rustick impure and brutish Animals Why then did Plato think that Souls separate have a kind of Body wherein they appeared about Sepulchres Orig. cont Cels. 2. 41. why did he assign certain fortunate Islands for the habitation of fortunate Souls if he had not some gimmering of the Resurrection What need a place so large as in comparison of that this habitable Earth is but an Ant-hill if it be not intended for glorified Bodies as well as Souls lib. 7. cal 9. as St. Origen reasons Lastly why does this fleering Epicure deride the Church for believing the everlasting Life of the Body as a thing impossible Seeing the Philosophers are of Opinion that the whole world is an Animal a living Creature consisting of Soul and Body and yet an Animal most blest and sempiternal And that the Sun and the rest of the Planets have not only bodies as every man's Eye may inform him but Bodies animated and with these bodies of theirs sempiternal why cannot he who hath given so bright and everlasting a Body to the Sun cloath our Souls with Bodies that shall shine as the Sun for ever as St. Austin argues de civitat 10. 29. expostulating with the Philosopers for that they are forc'd to recede from their own Placits while they argue against the Articles of our Faith Quid ergò est quòd cùm vobis fides Christiana suadetur tunc obliviscemini aut ignorare vos fingitis quòd disputare aut docere soleatis quid causae est quod propter opiniones vestras quas ipsi oppugnatis Christiani esse nolitis What 's the matter that while we argue with you to imbrace the Christian Faith ye either forget or feign your selves ignorant of such things as you use to defend and teach what 's the matter that for the sake of those opinions of yours which your selves oppose you refuse to bocome Christans Can a fuller demonstration be required than this that Christian Religion was deliver'd at first in that very Form wherein it is now profes'd by the Church and delineated in the Gospel That the Rose of Sharon the Lilly of the Vallies which now sticks on the Churches bosome is that which was planted by the hand of the Apostles sixteen hundred years ago may be evidenc'd beyond all possibility of doubt by comparing it with that which grows among these Thorns with the cuts and prints of it in those Herbals that were drawn on purpose to decry the Virtue of it I put it here to the Scepticks Conscience whether he would not esteem him a sleepy or bribed Judge who would not give sentence of his Legitimacie would not pronounce him the Son of that Woman he calls Mother after he had heard the Adversaries and those that would have his Inheritance to be theirs in their pleadings against him describe the Child that was then born of that Woman in all points so like the defendant as the Pagan Adversaries of our Religion describe that Religion which Christ and his Apostles publish'd to be like that is now contain'd in our Scriptures Briefly to rally up the strength of this first Argument for the credibleness of that Testimony which commends the Gospel to us we have heard the Witnesses on both sides examin'd and those â—gainst our cause give as full evidence for us as to Matter of Fact as those of our own party we have heard the Plaintiff declare and his Declaration is a pleading of our Cause VVe alledge that Christ was born crucified rose again c. we can make proof of all this by thousands of Evidences in our custody but to spare the labour of
intervention could possibly rob the lower World of its Light may easily be made appear by an enumeration of such Particulars as have been observed for this 5000 years to hinder its illuminating at once the Hemisphere of the Earth and so much more easily as the impediments are fewer than to take up a long discourse being but these two 1. The Interposition of the Body of the Moon which in that juncture could not be the impediment for at the Passover when our Saviour suffer'd the Moon was at the Full and visibly arising that evening in the East when the Sun set in the West we may therefore with as much reason charge a Theft committed at London upon a person that was in India when that fact was done as charge the Moon with this Robbery of the Suns Light I shall run no hazard of my credit before equal Judges by becoming her Compurgator in this case 2. The Cloudiness of the Skie But the Air was at that time so serene as the Stars appeared and might be seen all over the Heavens as Phlegon a Gentile Chronologer hath left upon Record Dies horâ sextâ in tenebrosam noctem versus ut stellae in caelo visae sunt Chron. Euseb. and that record probably taken out of the Roman Rolls where it was extant in Tertullian's time If the Clouds were not so thick but that the Stars might be seen through them they could not hinder the shining of that greatest Light the Sun Besides this Darkness was universal Mark 15. 33. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Darkness was over the whole Earth Erasmus indeed limits this to the Land of Judaea but Melchior Canus lib. 11. cap. 2. Doth sufficiently confute that Opinion which needs not any other Confutation than this that it was observ'd at Heliopolis in Egypt and if that Testimony of Dionysius be scrupled that of the Graecian Historians who write of it cannot be excepted against Scaliger animadvers in Chron. Euseb. But Clouds do but screen and stand in the light of some particular and small Regions so that when the Sun hath nothing else to hinder its shining it will cast its beams on one City on one part of a City when the other part is clouded This Darkness therefore could not proceed from any Natural Cause but was simply and nakedly the Effect of the suspension of its most natural power of giving Light Ex retractione radiorum solarium Voss. harmon Evang. l. 2. cap. 10. the retraction of its Beams from the unthankful World at the Will of its Creator on purpose to convince men that that Jesus who was then a crucisying was both Lord and Christ or as the Centurion from that Argument concludes the Son of God the King of Israel according to the sign given by the Prophet Zachary chap. 14. 6. In that day the light shall not be clear nor dark it shall be one day a day by it self at evening time it shall be light the Sun shall be turn'd into darkness and the Moon into blood and Joel chap. 2. 31 c as St. Peter applyed those Texts Acts 2. this is that that was spoken of by the Prophet Joel c. § 7. I will conclude with that which is both the sum of the Christian Faith and the seal of it the Resurrection of the blessed Jesus The sum of it If thou shalt believe in thine heart that God raised up Christ from the dead thou shalt be saved Rom. 10. The Seal of it whereof he hath given assurance made demonstration to all men in that he hath raised him from the dead Act. 17. 31. Shall I need to shew the demonstrableness of this Argument so cogent as he must shut his eyes against the clearest and most undoubted Sentiments of common Reason that does not acknowledge the Finger the Hand the Arm of inconquerable Omnipotency to have been at work in breaking the Chains of Death and bringing Christ thence after the pains and anguish of the Cross had exhausted his Vital Spirts and made his sacred Body inhospitable to that his precious Soul which he breathed into the hands of his Father after they who were set to watch him were so well satisfied that he was dead as they thought it needless to break his Legs and yet to make all sure ran a Spear to his Heart whence issued as an indication that there was no need of that neither in order to his dispatch but only that the Prophecies of him might be fulfill'd Water and Blood And lastly after he was buried and a Guard of Soldiers set about the Sepulchre by the procurement of his most watchful Adversaries who feared he would rise again as he had said and thereby declare himself to be the Messias These Circumstances speak a total privation of Life the extinction of the vital Flame the breaking of the golden Cord and Marriage-ring which coupled together that lovely Pair the Humane Flesh and Reasonable Soul whereof the Man Christ consisted And I appeal to common Principles to give sentence and determine those Questions Whether the Flame of Lifes Taper can be blown in again but by the blast of that Breath which blew it in at first Whether that Cord can be knit again by any hand but that which drew it Whether the Bowels of the Earth our common Mother whither Bodies return that they may see corruption be a fit Matrix wherein the Corps may be ripen'd naturally into an aptitude for the reception of the Soul In our first moulding the Spermatick Matter Courts the humane Form and when by Second Natures hand the Hand maid of the first Nature its gradually purified into an immediate fittedness for the reception of its Bridegroom God knits first the Band. And after the Band is broke the Soul after a sort courts the Corps by its propensity to a reunion to that without which it cannot be perfect But the fullen Corps is deaf to all such motions resists all methods of cure all applications of Medicines which the now more illuminated and intelligent Soul can possibly make and doubtless if an herb grew any where that could restore these beloved Mates the Souls of Philosophers that could see so well through the Casement being now in the free Air and having their eyes clarified with the dust of Death would spy it out are fruitless this work must be let alone for ever as no man can redeem his own Soul so no Soul can restore its own Body As the matter in the Womb would never have had its desires of Union to a reasonable Soul gratified if God had not infused the Soul so the Soul in a state of separation will never have its longing after reunion gratified till God restore to it its Body He that brought the Man to the Woman at first must after the sleep of Death bring the Woman to the Man or they will never meet Nay the bringing of soul and body together again after their Divorce implies that seeming Contradiction as the Disciples by
six her eye more narrowly upon Emergencies there as things of highest State-concern in respect of that then famous Eastern Prophecy of one to arise at that time in Judea who should be King of the Universe § 4. At that time when the Erection of an Universal Monarchy was according to that Prophecy expected appeared Persons of a more Lordly Spirit amongst the Romans than any former Age had brought forth Caesar and Pompey ' s Ambition sprung from this Prophecy The then greatest Spirits courted the Jews favour and used means that they might be that oriundus in Judaea § 5. The arts which the Roman Candidates for the Universal Monarchy used to bring the World into an opinion that they were designed by Heaven to something extraordinary Julius his Dream his cloven-footed Horse his Mules his Triton his pressing to have the Title of King because the Sybils had prophesied one at that time would be King of all the World The Fathers quotations of Sybils vindicated § 6. Augustus had his Education amongst the Velitri who had a Tradition of the tendency with the Eastern Prophecy that one of that City should obtain the Kingdom of the whole World The Roman Prodigy before his Birth His Mother Atia conceives him by Apollo Her Snake-mole Nero ' s Bracelet Atias Dream of her Entrals Nigidius his Prognostication The Prediction of the Thracian Priests His Fathers Vision Cicero ' s Dream § 7. Tiberius his Omens Scribonius ' s Prediction Livias crested Chick The Altars of the conquering Legions His Dye cast into Apon ' s Well Galba ' s Mock-prophecy § 8. Titus and Vespasian ' s Motto Amor deliciae in English the desire of the Nations The Prodigy of Mars his Oak The Gypsies Prediction Dirt cast by Caligula into his Shirt The Dog bringing a Man's hand The Oracle of the God of Carmel His curing the blind and Lame c. CHAP. X. The more open Practices of soaring Spirits in grasping at the Judean Crown their hopes to obtain it and as to some of them their Conceit of possessing it § 1. Cleopatra ' s Boon begg'd of M. Antony denyed Herod ' s Eye Blood-shot with looking at the Eastern Prophecy § 2. Vespasian jealous of Titus The Eastern Monarchy the Prize contended for by both Parties in the Jewish Wars Mild Vespasian cruel to David ' s Line § 3. Domitian jealous of Davids Progeny Genealogies Metius Pomposianus his Genesis and Globe his Discourse with Christ's Kindred about Christ's Kingdom Clancular Jews brought to light Trajan puts to death Simeon Bishop of Jerusalem for being of the Royal Line § 4. Glosses upon the Eastern Prophecy under Adrian involve the Empire in Blood Jewry in Desolation Fronto taxeth benumm'd Nerva for conniving at the Jew CHAP. XI St. Paul's Apology before Nero was in Answer to some Interrogatories put to him through the Suggestion of his Adversaries touching the matter of the Eastern Prophecy Ex. Gr. Is not this Jesus whom thou preachest to be risen again from the Dead that Jesus of Nazareth whom ye call King of the Jews § 1. Tertullus his Charge against St. Paul a Ring-leader of Nazarites Lysias his Interrogatory art not thou that Alexandrian Egyptian Nero put in hopes of that Kingdom which St. Paul preach'd Christ to have obtained Poppaea Nero's Minion Disciples slink away § 2. Why St. Paul stiles Nero a Lion of the Kingdom of God The Lions Courage quails at St. Paul's Apology Nero after that trusts more to his Art than Gypsies Prophecies § 3. St. Pauls Appearance within Nero ' s Quinquennium Pallas Foelix his Brother and Advocate out of Favour in Nero ' s third Festus hastens St. Paul ' s Mission to Rome the Jews his Trial. § 4. Nero not yet a Lion in Cruelty but in opinion Judah ' s Lion St. Paul ' s Doctrine tryed to the bottom before Nero desponds An Apology for this Pilgrimage through the Holy Age its Use. CHAP. XII As no Age was less like to be Cheated than that wherein the Apostles flourish'd so no Generation of Men was less like to put a Cheat upon the World than the Apostolick and Primitive Church § 1. The Apostles and Primitive Churches Veracity evinc'd by their chusing Death rather than an Officious Lye to save their lives Pliny ' s testimony of them § 2 3. They hide not their imperfections nor the Truth to please Parties or to avoid the Worlds taking offence The offence which Heathens took at some Gospel-passages § 4. All false Religions make lyes their Refuge Pagan Forgeries § 5. Papal Innovation founded on lying Legends Sir Thomas Moor upon St. Austin Gregory Turonensis and Simeon Metaphrastes devout Lyars The Story of the Baptist ' s Head BOOK II. THE ARGUMENT As they could not nor would not delude others so they were not themselves deluded persons or Men of crazy Intellects but propounded to the World a Religion so every way fitted to the Dictates of Common Reason of the most Refin'd Philosophy and of pre-existent Religion as it was impossible for them to have fram'd had they not been of perfect Memory and sound Minds THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. The Gospel's Correspondency with Vulgar Sentiments § 1. The Testimony of the Humane Soul untaught to the Truth of the Christian Creed in the Articles touching the Unity of the Godhead his Goodness Justice Mercy The Existence of wicked Spirits § 2. The Resurrection and Future Judgment Death formidable for its Consequence to evil Men No Fence against this Fear proved by Examples § 3. In hope of future Good the Soul secretly applauds her self after virtuous Acts. This makes the Flesh suffer patiently CHAP. II. Reason nonplus'd help'd by Religion acquiesceth in her Resolutions § 1. Man's Supremacy over the Creatures the Reason of it not cognoscible by Natural Light § 2. Yet generally challenged even over Spirits whom men command to do what themselves disgust § 3. The way of Creation a Mystery Reason puzzel'd to find it out can but conjecture § 4. Divine Revelations touching both acquiesc'd in as soon as communicated Scripture-Philosophy excels the Mechanick Plato's Commendation § 5. Nothing but the God of Order's Grant can secure States from Anarchical Parity and Club-law § 6. Heathens assented to the Reasons of both assigned by Scripture CHAP. III. Natural Conscience Ecchoes to Christian Morals § 1. A Dispraise to dispraise Virtue or praise Vice The Comicks Liberty restrained § 2. How the worst of Men became to be reputed Gods § 3. Men were deified for their Virtues Vice ungodded Gods § 4. Stage-Gods hissed at The Infamy of Players The Original of Mythology CHAP. IV. Christian Religion concords with the highest Philosophical Notions § 1. Divine Knowledge coâ—â—unicated from the Church to travelling Philosophers Our Religion elder than Heathenism by Heathens confession § 2. Christian Articles implied in Pagan Philosophy's Positions Man's happiness through Communion with God and Conformity unto God § 3. This Conformity and Communion effected by God-man God manifest in
the Flesh born of a Virgin § 4. Plato falter'd under the burden of vulgar Error A man from God Whence Multiplicity of God-Saviours Pagan Independency Their mutual indulging one another § 5. Not many but one Mediator the result of the Heathen's second thoughts Plato's Sentences entenced by Platonicks Nothing can purge but a Principle St. John's Gospel in Platonick Books The Christian Premisses yielded their Conclusions denied by Gentiles Plato's Sentence under the Rose CHAP. V. None of their Local Saviours were able to save § 1. Their white Witches impeded in doing good by the black Lucan's Hag more mighty than any of their Almighties § 2. None of their Saviours Soul-purgers § 3. Porphiry's Vote for one universal Saviour not known in the Heathen World Altars to the unknown Gods whether God or Goddess § 4. The unknown God § 5. Great Pan the All-heal his death § 6. Of their many Lords none comparable to the Lord Christ to us but one Lord. CHAP. VI. God the Light Man's Reliever § 1. Plebean Light mistaken for the true All-healing Light Joves and Vaejoves Mythology an help at a dead lift § 2. Wisdom begotten of God Man's Helper the Fathers Darling § 3. Made Man Sibyls maintain'd as quoted by Fathers Come short of Scripture-Oracles § 4. Virgil out of Sibyl prophesied of Christ. The Sibyllines brought to the Test. Tully's weak Exceptions against the Sibyllines § 5. Sibyl's Songs of God Redeemer the Eternal Word the Creator Apollo commends Christ. Local Saviours exploded CHAP. VII Man healed by the Stripes and Oracles of God-man § 1. Jew hides face from Christ. Greatest Heroes greatest sufferers the expiatory painfulness of their Passions § 2. Humane Sacrifices universal § 3. Not in imitation of Abraham Porphyry's Miscollection from Sancuniathon Humane Sacrifices in use in Canaan before Abraham came there And in remotest Parts before his facts were known In Chaldea before Abraham's departure thence § 4. It was the corruption of the old Tradition of the Womans Seed's Heel bruised Their sacred Anchor in Extremities § 5. The Story of the Kings of Moab and Edom vulgarly mistaken different from Amos his Text. King of Moab offer'd his own Son the fruit of the Body for the sin of the Soul § 6. What they groped after exhibited in Christs Blood § 7. Mans Saviour is to save Man by delivering divine Oracles Heroes cultivated the world by Arts and Sciences § 8. Gospel-net takes in small and great The Apostles became all things to all men how CHAP. VIII The Gospel calculated to the Meridian of the Old Testament § 1 In its Types § 2. Its Ceremonials fall at Christs feet with their own weight The Nest of Ceremonies pull'd down That Law not practicable § 3. Moses his Morals improved by Christ by better Motives Moses faithful Christ no austere Master Laws for Children for Men for the Humane Court for Conscience Christ clears Moses from false Glosses § 4. It was fit that Christ should demand a greater Rent having improved the Farm St. Mat. 5. 17. explain'd Christian Virtue a Mirrour of God's admired by Angels St. Mat. 7. 26. urged The Sanction of the Royal Law § 5. St. Paul's Notion of Justification by Faith only explain'd it implies more and better work than Justification by the works of the Law Judaism hath lost its Salvifick Power Much given much required The Equity and Easiness of Christ's Yoak Discord in the Academy none in Christs School CHAP. IX Gospel-History agrees with Old Testament-prophecy § 1. Christ's Appeal to the Prophets § 2. The primary Old Testament-Prophecies not accomplishable in any but the blessed Jesus Jacob's Shilo Gentiles gathering Scepter departed at the demolishing of their King's Palace § 3. By consent of both Parties Not till the Gentiles gather'd Children to Abraham of Stones Gentiles flock to Christ's Standard § 4. Signs of Scepter 's departure Price of Souls paid to Capitol Not formerly paid to Caesar. Mat. 17. 25. explained § 5. Jews paid neither Tythes nor his Pole-money to any but their own Priests before Vespasian who made Judah a vassal to a strange God such as their Fathers knew not CHAP. X. More Signs of the Scepter 's departure § 1. Covenant-Obligation void They return to Aegypt c. § 2. Temple-Vessels Prophanation revenged of old not now regarded § 3. Titus and Vespasian rewarded for their service against the Temple § 4. Judah's God deaf to all their Cries § 5. They curse themselves in calling upon the God of Revenges § 6. Jewish and Gentile Historians relate the Watch-word Let us depart § 7. Jacob thus expounded not by Statists but the Apostles CHAP. XI The Prophecies of Daniel's Septimanes and Haggai's second House not applicable to any but the blessed Jesus § 1. Porphyry and Rabbies deny Daniel's Authority The Jews split their Messias § 2. The unreasonableness of both these Evasions § 3. Daniel's Prophecy not capable of any sence but what hath received its accomplishment in our Jesus § 4. Daniel's second Epocha § 5. Christ the desire of all Nations fill'd the Second Temple with Glory § 6. That Temple not now in Being § 7. The conclusion of this Book Book III. THE ARGUMENT 3 We have as good grounds of Assurance that the matters of Fact and Doctrine contain'd in the Scriptures of the Prophets and Apostles were done and delivered accordingly as they are therein related as we have or can have of the Truth of any other the most certain Relation in the World THE CONTENTS CHAP. I. The Universal Tradition of the Church a good Evidence of the Gospels Legitimacy § 1. The inconquerable force of Universal Tradition § 2. No danger of being over-credulous in our Case § 3. Reasons interest in Matters of Religion § 4. We have better assurance that the Evangelical Writings and History are those mens Off-spring whose Names they bear then any Man can have that he is his reputed Fathers Son § 5. The Sceptick cannot prove himself his Mothers Son by so good Arguments as the Gospel hath for its Legitimacy § 6. Bastard-slips grafted into Noble Families The Sceptick in Religion is a Leveller in Politicks CHAP. II. The Suffrage of Adversaries to the testimony of the Church § 1. Pagan Indictments shew what was found Christianity in Pagan Courts § 2. Christian Precepts and Examples Civilized the Courts of Heathen Emperours § 3. Pliny's information concerning Christians to Trajan § 4. What it was in Christians that Maximnus hated them for CHAP. III. The Substance of Christian Religion as it stands now in the Gospel is to be found in the Books of its Adversaries § 1. The Effigies of the Gospel is hung out where it is proscribed § 2. Hierocles attempting to outvie Jesus with Apollonius hath presented to the World the Sum of Evangelical History § 3. More Apes of Christ than Apollonius § 4. Christs Doctrine may be traced out by the footsteps of the Hunters who pursued it CHAP. IV. Every Article of the Apostles Creed to be found
uproar about St. Paul though in a prejudicate Passion he had examin'd him at first by scourging yet repenting of that way of process to find out what the matter was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Act. 22. 30. for which the Jews cried so against him as not justifiable by the Imperial Law the morrow after that he might know the certainty wherefore he was accused of the Jews he commanded his accusers the chief Priests and all their Council to appear and draw their accusation against him And brought St. Paul down and set him before them to make his defence By which way of hearing both he and Festus came to know the state of the Question controverted betwixt the Jew and Christian to have been about Jesus whom the Jews affirmed to be dead but St. Paul maintained to be risen from the dead and to be alive Act. 23. 29. 25 20. Thus Felix though he had a mind to do the Jews a pleasure and make St. Paul pay his old scores he had run himself into by his pillaging that Nation and cast him as a bolus into the mouth of that Cerberus which was open'd against him in complaints to the Court of Rome yet so well does St. Paul manage his Cause before him as he durst not deliver him up to their fury having by hearing St. Paul defend himself and his Religion in the presence of his Adversaries attain'd to a more perfect knowledge of the Christian way than he had before Act. 22. 24. Thus Agrippa though so passionate an affector of Judaism as he fell down in a dead swoon at the feet of Caligula while he was venting his Choler against it and when he came again to himself protested to his Physicians standing about him and officiating about his recovery that nothing made him content to live but some faint hopes that his life might be serviceable to that poor Nation and to make those words good as soon as his trembling hand could hold a Pen he writ an Apology for them unto Caesar. Philo Jud. de legatione ad Caium Yet this Agrippa bribed for the Plaintiff by so violent a zeal upon hearing Festus make report of the issue of the Trial before him and St. Paul's allegations in his own defence had like to have given Sentence for Christian Religion against the Jewish being almost perswaded to become a Christian and did give Sentence for St. Paul against his Adversaries This man hath done nothing worthy of bonds much less of death but might have been set at liberty if he had not appealed to Caesar. Act. 26. 28 32. The further we pursue this Instance the clearer footsteps we see it leave of this Truth that the Broils in Judea made the Gospel more conspicuons For if we trace St. Paul's Cause to the Gates of Rome and thence to Caesar's Tribunal the ratling of his Chain there makes the Gospel more famous Phil. 2 12 13. alarms the Court to make more dilgent enquiry into those contingencies in Judea concerning Christ for maintaining the Truth whereof St. Paul was accused of the Jews and had appealed unto Caesar before whom for St. Paul to have stood in defence of what he had taught had been an Act of most temerarious madness if it had been in the power of the most virulent and vigilant Adversaries by bringing his Doctrine to a scrutiny and that before Judges disaffected to it to have fastened upon it the least imputation or but suspicion of Forgery § 3. The Judean Commotions drew the Imperial Eagle to fix her pierceing Eye more narrowly upon Emergencies there as things of highest concern to the interest of the Roman State That famous Eastern Prophecy That some about that time should appear in Judea who with that Crown on his head should trample all others under his feet gave so lowd a Report as the sound of it awaken'd both East and West to an expectation of its accomplishment Though Josephus Tacitus Suetanius and that nameless Interpreter of the Sybilline Oracles in Tully's second Book de Divinatione mist it as well as Virgil in the Application of that Prophecy Tully's Interpreter applying it to Caesar to whom he advised the Senate to give the Title of King if they consulted the good of the Roman State and of themselves Cicer. Divin l. 2. pag. 250. 251. quorum interpres dicturus in Senatu putabatur eum quem revera regem habebamus appellandum quoque esse regem si salvi esse vellemus ut quidvis potiùs ex illis libris proferant quà m regem quem Romae posthac nec dii nec homines esse patientur Virgil to Asinius Pollio Suetonius to the Emperour of Rome indefinitely Sueton. Vespas 4. quantum eventu patuit id de Imperatore Romane praedictum Tacitus and Josephus to Vespasian and Titus Joseph Bell. Jud. 7. 12. Tacit. hist. 5. antiquis sacerdotum literis contineri eo ipso tempore quae ambages Vespasianum Titum praedixerunt Yet this Triumvirate of judicious Historians mentioning it as an ancient universal and and uninterrupted Tradition argues it to have been famously known at Rome Suâ—ton Vesp. 4. percrebuit vetus constans opinio toto Oriente esse in fatis where if the repute of it had not been as great as its sound they would not have ventur'd to fasten the accomplishment of it upon such eminent Persons Nor durst those Fortune-tellers in Suetonius have attempted to corroborate Nero's heart against those cold Qualms came over it through fear of his loss of Empire threatned by the Calculaters of his Nativity with the hope of obtaining Judeas Crown and with it the Sovereignty of the World Nor would Nero have been inclin'd to those hopes of advancement to the sole and absolute Supremacy not only over the Earth but Sea which he was wont to express in telling his most intimate friends that he expected to have that Homage paid him by the Finny Inhabitants of the Ocean as the Fish would bring to shore those precious treasures he had lost by shipwrack Sueton. Nero 40. Sposponderunt tamen ei destituto ordinationem Orientis nounulli nominatim Regnum Hierosolymorum cui spei pronior Weekly Intelligencers Monthly Prognosticators that write to the capacities of the easily-seduced Vulgar Plebeium in circo positum est atque aggere fatum may quote Merlin or Mother Shiptons Prophecies may for the incouragement of that Party they are bribed to induce into vain hopes urge the belief of that German Oracle with the stinging Tail Vulpes Leo Nullus May apply the Vulpes to a Prince of the most candid Open-heartedness that ever liv'd the Leo to the Meekest Lamb that ever was led to slaughter save that Lamb of God whose steps he followed and yet obtain that belief at the Rabbles hand as shall put them upon venturing Life and Limb Estate Body and Soul in being instrumental towards the fulfilling of them The Bull-ringle Astrologer if I may not be thought to tread heavy on Eunius his
built the two Books De miraculis Martyrum writ by Gregory Turonensis who shuts up his first Book thus It behoves us therefore to desire the Patronage of Martyrs c. and his second thus We therefore well considering those Miracles may learn that it is not possible to be saved but by the help of Martyrs and other Friends of God But Simeon Metaphrastes deserves the Whet-stone from all that ever professed this holy Art of Lying for the advantage of Truth who notwithstanding that in his Preface to the strange Romance of Marina he blames others for forging Stories of the Saints and polluting their true Memorials with most evident Doctrines of Devils and Demoniacal Narratives yet himself splits upon the same Rock and so Shipwracks his Credit with all Intelligent Persons as Baronius himself is ashamed of him in notis ad martyrologium Roman Jul. 13. I need not multiply Instances the World swarms with lying Legends Their avowed Doctrine of Mental Reservation of Equivocation to promote the Cause of Religion casts up as wide a Gulf betwixt Gospel-Tradition and theirs as is betwixt Heaven and Hell the God of Truth and the Father of Lyes Quomodo Deus Pater genuit filium veritatem sic Diabolus genuit quasi filium Mendacium August 42. tract in Johan 8. 44. these introduc'd by Persons that account it meritorious of Heaven to forge the grossest Fables so it be in service of the Church which the Apostle calls speaking Lyes in Hypocrisie 1 Tim. 4. 2. vide Meed in locum Those publish'd by Men who less fear'd dying than lying who chose rather to suffer the cruellest Death to lay themselves obnoxious to the Calumnies of captious Adversaries through their Parasie their Freedom of Speech then to tell the most innocent and officious Lye and therefore the unlikeliest Men in the World to abuse the World with Figments and devised Stories and Persons from whose Hand a Man might with more safety and security have taken a Cup suspected to have Poyson in it than a Cup of Wine from the Hand of the most Divine Philosoper as Apollodorus said of Socrates in comparison of Plato Athenaeus dyprosoph l. 11. c. 22. Christian Religions APPEAL To the BAR of Common Reason c. The Second Book The Apostles were not themselves deluded no Crack'd-brain Enthusiasticks but Persons of most composed Minds CHAP. I. The Gospel's Correspondency with Vulgar Sentiments § 1. The Testimony of the Humane Soul untaught to the Truth of the Christian Creed in the Articles touching the Unity of the Godhead his Goodness Justice Mercy The Existence of wicked Spirits § 2. The Resurrection and Future Judgment Death formidable for its Consequences to evil Men No Fence against this Fear proved by Examples § 3. In hope of future Good the Soul secretly applauds her self after virtuous Acts. This makes the Flesh suffer patiently § 1. WHat Exception can be made against so impartial a Relation of Men possessed with such a mortal Detestation of Forgery made to an Age so well accommodated against Delusion by all internal and external Fortifications imaginable cannot in my shallow Reason be conjectured except it be that of Celsus and his Modern Epicurean Disciples That the Apostles themselves were deluded or which is worse infatuated For who but raving and dementate Persons would have ventured to put off Adulterate Wares to so knowing an Age But then how could they have framed the Doctrine and History of Christ in such a Decorum in so exact a Symmetry of Parts not only among themselves but to the great World as Lactantius argues Abfuit ergò ab iis fingendi voluntas astutia quià rudes fuerunt quis possit indoctus apta inter se cobaerentia fingere cùm Philosophorum doctissimi ipsi sibi repugnantia dixerint haec enim est mendaciorum natura ut coherere non possint illorum autèm traditio quià vera est quadrat undique ac sibi tota consentit ideò persuadet quià constanti ratione suffulta est Lactant de justicia lib. 5. cap. 3. The Apostles had neither Will to feign nor any crafty Design upon the World because they were plain Men and what illiterate Man can have the Art to make Fictions square to one another and hang together seeing the most learned of the Philosophers have spoke things jarring amongst themselves for this is the Nature of Untruths that they cannot be of a Piece But the Tradition of the Apostles because it is true one part falls out even with another and it agrees perfectly with it self and therefore gains upon Mens Minds because it is underpropp'd with that stedfast reason and on every side Squares with Principles of Reason Origen useth this Argument Cont. Cels. l. 3. willing him to consider if it were not the Agreeableness of the Principles of Faith with common Notions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that prevailed most upon all candid and ingenuous Auditors of them For how can that be the Figment of deluded Fancies the issue of shatter'd Brains that 's so well shap'd as it bears a perfect Proportion to and Correspondency with whatsoever hath had the common Approbation of Mankind Being calculated 1. To the Meridian of common Sentiments to the Universal Religion of the whole World to the Testimony of every natural Soul to whose Evidence Christian Religion appeals by her Advocate Tertullian in his admirable Treatise De Testimonio Animae I call in saith he a new kind of Witness yet more known than any Writing more tost than all Learning more common than any Book that 's put forth greater than whole Man that is the All that is of Man Come into the Court Oh Soul whether thou beest Divine and Eternal as most Philosophers think and by so much the rather not capable of telling a Lye Or not Divine but Mortal as Epicurus thinks and so much the rather thou oughtest not to lye for Fear of distracting thy self at present with the Guilt of so Inhumane a Vice whether thou art received from Heaven or conceived of Earth whether thou art made up of Numbers or Atoms whether thou commences a being with the Body or art infused after the Body from whencesoever and howsoever thou makest Man a Rational Creature most capable of Sense and Science But I do not retain thee of Council for the Christian such as thou art when after thou hast been formed in the Schools and exercised in Libraries thou belchest forth that Wisdom thou hast obtained in Aristotle's Walks or the Attick Academies No I appeal to thee as thou art raw unpolish'd and void of acquired Knowledge such a one as they have that have only a bare Soul such altogether as thou comest from the Quarry from the High Way from the Looms I have need of thy Unskilfulness for when thou growest never so little crafty all men suspect thee I would have thee bring nothing with thee into this Court but what thou bringest with thy self into Man but
what thou hast learn'd to think of thy own teaching or thy Author's whoever he be While thou art such a one I am sure thou art not a Christian Soul for thou art not born but made and new born a Christian Soul And yet we Christians require thy Testimony the Testimony of a Stranger to us against those of thy own kin that our Adversaries may at least for thy sake blush for their hating and persecuting us for holding those Opinions which lead thy Judgment captive of which thou canst not rid thy self Articl 1. The Pagans are displeased with us Christians for preaching that there is one only Lord known and confessed by that only Name of God without the Addition of any of the Names of their Idols of whom and under whom are all things Do thou declare what thou knowest touching this Matter And lo we hear thee aloud and with that full Liberty that is denied us at home and abroad thus dictating thus pronouncing Sentence in the Case in such Proverbial Sayings as thou puttest into all Men's Mouths viz. God grant If God will By which Way of expressing thy own Sentiments thou signifyest that there is such a one and confessest that all Power belongs to that one God to whose Will thou lookest for all good and withwithal deemest all other Gods to be Gods whom thou callest by their own proper Names Saturn Jove Mars Minerva for him thou affirmest to be God alone whom thou namest God only so that if at any time thou callest them Gods thou dost but borrow the only God's Name to bestow on them Articl 2. Neither art thou ignorant of the Nature of that God whom we preach Deus bonus est Deus benefacit God is good and God does good are Words of thy own framing are Phrases of Speech thou usest in their proper Sense And on the other hand thou hast taught us to say an evil Man thereby taxing obliquely and figuratively such a Man to be therefore evil because he is departed from God that is good Again because it is among us the great Mystery of Mortification and Conversation to believe that the Blessing of Goodness and Bounty is at God's Disposal thou pronouncest this Prayer God bless thee as plainly as a Christian need do And when thou turnest that Blessing into a Curse thou thereby confessest with us that God's Power is wholly above us that whom he curseth are cursed whom he blesseth are blessed There are some that do not altogether deny the existence of God but they do not think that he either minds what Men do or will judg them according to their Works in which Point they exceedingly differ from us who betake our selves to the Discipline of Christ that we may escape Judgment to come but they think it a Dishonour to God not to be discharged from the Care of Inspection and the Trouble of Animadversion or to have Anger ascribed to him for if God say they can be angry he is corruptible and passible Yet when the same Men elsewhere confess the Soul to be Divine and conferr'd by God they become obnoxious to have the Testimony of the Soul retorted against their other Opinion For if the Soul either be Divine or Gods Gift without doubt she knows her Donor and if she knows him them she also fears him at least wise as her Author Doth she not fear him whom she would rather have Propitious than Angry Whence then proceeds this natural Fear of God in the Soul if God knows not how to be angry how can he be feared that cannot be offended What in God can be feared but his Anger how can he be angry at Mens doing amiss if he mind not what we do Why does he mind if he will not judg How can he judg if he want Power to execute and who hath Supreme Power but God alone Hence therefore it is that the Soul out of her own Conscience is ready within Doors and without without any bodie 's deriding or hindering her to cry out God seeth all things I appeal to God God will requite it God will judge betwixt us Whence hast thou learned these words seeing thou art not a Christian How comest thou to use such expressions oftentimes even while thou art impaled with Ceres her Hair-lace clad in Saturn's Scarlet Pall or Isis her Linnen Garment Who taught thee to implore the Judgment of God in the very Temples of Idols standing at Esculapius his Feet trimming Juno in the Air and putting a black Case upon Minerva's Helmet thou in vocatest none of the Gods there present In thy own Court thou appeal'st to a Forreign Judg in thy own Temples thou liftest up thy Eyes to Heaven and call'st upon the God of Heaven how great is the Evidence of that Truth which procureth Witnesses for its self and in behalf of Christians under the Noses of those Devil-Gods whom Pagans Worship The Christian Cicero Lactantius de falsa Religione l. 2. cap. 1. hath the same Observation Nam cum jurant cùm optant cùm gratias agunt non Jovem aut Deos multos sed unum Deum nominant ità veritas ipsa cogente natura etiam ab invitis pectoribus erumpit si qua necessitas gravis presserit tunc Deum recordantur si belli terror infremuerit si morborum pestifera vis incubuerit si alimenta frugibus longa siccitas denegaverit si saeva tempestas si graudo gruerit ad Deum confugiunt à Deo petitur auxilium Deus ut subveniat oratur c. When Men swear pray or give Thanks they name not Jove or many Gods but the one God So the Truth by the Impulse of Nature breaketh out of those Breasts which would imprison it If any sad Calamity oppress them then they remember God If the Terror of War roar upon them If Pestilential Sicknesses sit upon their Skirts if a long Drought withdraw Nourishment from the Fruits of the Earth If raging Tempests Hail or hot Thunder-bolts invade them then they fly to God then they beg Aid of God then is he beseech'd that he would deliver them hereby confessing that such Punishments are inflicted upon the World by that provoked Deity who takes notice of Mens Sins and therefore punisheth them of Mens Prayers and Repentance and is therefore made propitious by their humble Addresses Articl 3. We are question'd for affirming there are Devils as though we by casting them out of the Possession of Mens Bodies did not prove them to be indeed But besides that the Followers of Chrysippus make them a Laughing-stock thy Execrations Ob Soul give Answer that they both are and are to be abominated thou callest that Man Daemonium a Devil that 's stain'd with Filthiness Malice Insolency or any other grievous Sin which we impute to Devils or if fit to express him to be a Person deserving all Mens Hatred Lastly when thou hast a mind to express thy Aversation to thy Scorning or Detestation of any thing
this Sovereignty over the rest of the Creatures why is not the Ape or Baboon honour'd as next to us in this our Kingdom being next to us in proportion of Face and other Members Simia quà m similis turpissima bestia nobis Ennius How is natural invention baffled here and non-plus'd in seeking out the reason in assigning the ground of Mans Dominion over the meanest Creatures § 2. Men challenge a Royalty over Spirits And yet we will not let go our claim though we can show no evidences we persist in the Conclusion though we see not the Premisses from which it is infer'd Yea though we cannot tell how we became Lords of the visible we challenge a Royalty over the intellectual World Dii immortales ad usum hominum fabricati penè videntur Cicero de natur deor 1. p. 9. The immortal Gods saith Tully that is the Angels seem to have been created most-what for the use of men We will not allow Spirits to be exempt from our Jurisdiction but account them obnoxious to our Laws What else were Charms and Magick invented but to extort from Spirits that service which we think they owe us What mean we by summoning them as it were to our Courts but to let them know they owe us Fealty Why else do we amerce them for Non-appearance Would the Furies have been by us so imperiously commanded to whip others if we had not thought that Alecto her self stands in awe of the Conjurer's Whip Had not Mortals deemed the Inhabitants of the other World to have been at their devotion could they have expected an observance from them of such harsh Commands as the performance thereof was deemed more painful than the Infernal sufferings Witness the groans they are conceived to utter while they are pricked on to draw in so uneasie a Yoke as we put upon them Abire in atrum carceris liceat mei Cubile liceat si parùm videor miser Mutareripas alâ—eo medius tuo Phlegeton relinquar igneo cinctus freto Seneca Thyestes Cries the Ghost of Tantalus in the Magick Circle And Thyestes his Ghost groans almost as lowd when that is evocated to attend the pleasure of the black Artist Incertus utras oderim sedes magis Libet reverti nonne vel tristes lacus Incolere satius Sen. Agamemnon Unpleasant work and such as from the dolour that Spirits made when they were called to it the Art whereby they were constrained to it had its name Goetia as a great proficient in that Art Porphyry thinketh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from that lamentable din the Ghosts made about their Sepulchres when they were evocated and yet it was a Vulgar Opinion that the Spirits might be forc'd thus against the hair by the Negromancers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Goetia is an Art to constrain the dead by invocation Suidas referente Le Vives in August eivitat Dei 10. 9. It cannot now be imagin'd but that the Humane Soul should hunt every way to find out the grounds of this her claim of Superiority over the whole Creation methinks I hear her upon the quest thus mouthing it Oh that I could see the Charter by which we are estated in this privilege who will shew me those Letters Patents by vertue whereof we are invested with this power for nothing I have yet seen will stand good in Reasons Law as a justifiable Plea § 3. Reason non plus'd in its Conceptions about the way of the Creatures existing But why do I wonder at my blindness as to the ground of title to what I poffess when I am a perfect stranger to the way of my own Being and cannot tell how it came to pass that I am or how the rest of Creatures first received Being Reason taught Heathens that the World had a Beginning Questio quae multorum cogitationes de ambigenda mundi aeternitate solicitat c. Nam quis facilè mundum semper fuisse consentiat cùm ipsa historiarum fides multarum rerum cultum emendationémque vel inventionem ipsam recentem esse fateatur c. Macrobius in som. Scipio 2. 10. From the growing of Arts by degrees and the obscurity of former times the Epicurean himself concluded the World to have had a beginning Lucretius l. 5. si nulla fuit genitalis Origo Terrarum Coeli sempérque aeterna fuére Cur suprà bellum Trojanum funera Trojae Non alias alii quoque res cecinere Poetae Quà tot facia virùm toties cecidere nec usquam Aeternis famae monumentis insita florent Recénsque Natura est mundi neque pridem exordia cepit Quare etiam quaedam nunc artes expoliuntur Nunc etiam augescunt nunc addita navigiis sunt Multa c. Reason I say convinc'd Heathens that the World was not eternal but how it received its being they could not tell How is Aristottle puzzl'd to determine whence Animals had their first beginning whether they were ingender'd as Worms and Insects or hatch'd of Eggs for one of these ways saith he they must of necessity have beengenerated de Generation animantium lib. 3. cap. ult 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hear we the discourse of Cicero upon this Subject I am told there was one before me and I believe it but if we shall procede in drawing up our line in infinitum we shall at the long run unmake our selves and annihilate all Creatures that live by succession for if there was not in every kind one first there could be no second nor third and at last we our selves that now exist would not be at all Whence then had the first in each succession his beginning in what Forge was he framed and what pre-existent Metal Did the Elementary Bodies beget him of Mother Earth But who begat and brought forth them Rowze up thy self O Soul rub thine Eyes look round about thee stand upon thy Tiptoes lift up thy Head see if thou canst find an Answer to these Expostulations an Answer will satisfie thy self By whom were the Foundations of the Earth laid who laid the measures thereof who stretched the Line upon it whereupon were the Foundations thereof fastened or who laid the Corner-stone thereof Quae molitio quae ferramenta qui vectes quae machinae qui ministri tanti operis fuerunt What Grindle-stone had that Architect to sharpen his Tools upon what Tools had he to work with what Levers what Eugins what Journey-men what Apprentices In what Grove grew Timber enough for such a Fabrick In what Mould were the Heavens cast on what Looms were the Balancies of the Clouds wrought Who will teach us what to say to these things for we cannot order our speech by reason of Darkness These were the highest flights Reason could make it lay not in her power by Arguments or Discourse to come to any Certainty or so much as Probability in these matters So that after all her boasting Prologues uttered by such as Democritus who in the Preface to his
secure my Reader from stumbling at the Objection of Celsus and to shew him the validity of that Reply which the maintainers of the Christian Cause return'd to it hath forc'd me to this Digression from the pursuit of that Argument I was producing to prove the consonancy of our Faith with the approved Maxims of Philosophy drawn from each sides claiming the Primogeniture and pleading that theirs was the First-born It being therefore manifest by the confession of both parties that Christianity and Philosophy agree in their Maxims I shall take this as a Supersedeas from that toylsom labour of collecting the several parcels of Christian Verity out of the vast Ocean of Secular Authors on whose surface they lay scatter'd the gathering up whereof is compared by Clemens Alexand. Stromat 1. to the setting together again of Pentheus dismember'd limbs and requires more reading and a stronger memory than I dare pretend to being not only of a courser Clay but wanting the helps which those learned Fathers had whom Tertullian Testimon animae cap. 1. affirms to have evidenced to the World by an enumeration of Particulars that Christian Religion propounds nothing new or portentous but for which it hath the suffrage of Humane Learning and Pagan Writers A Province so well administred by St. Clemens of old and the incomparable Lord of Plessai of late as renders it a needless work for me I shall therefore only instance in two or three such heads of Christian Doctrine which I have not observed others to have spoken of as approach nearest to the Foundation and are vulgarly reputed opposite to the Dictates of Philosophy yet have been attested to by Philosophers § 2. 1. That man in order to his being happy must be restored to Communion with and Conformity unto God is the Assertion of the Platonicks as well as us Christians Plotinus that most refined mouth of Plato as one St. Austin lib. 3. Academ quest stiles him who had more insight into Philosophy than a thousand of our modern Blatterers In his first Book de dubiis animae writes thus Father Jove pittying labouring Souls made the bonds wherein they were held solvable and allowed them some interval breathings and intermissions wherein they might live from their Bodies and from that of themselves which they had contracted by converse with their Bodies and sometimes be there where the Soul of the World is always taking no thought of these inferiour things vide Jamblicum de mysteriis tit Via ad felicitatem The ground of this Sentiment he might have had from his master Plato who in his Timaeus distils from his pen these golden drops while the soul lives below God she meets with nothing but turbulency and uncertainty the perfect print of Solomon's seal of his vanity and vexation of spirit She must therefore fly to her native Countrey expressed to the life in St. Paul's having our conversation in Heaven But where shall we have a Passage-boat How shall I make my flight thither There is but one expedit and certain way to wit becoming conformable unto God A main point of Christian Philosophy which his foresaid Scholar thus comments upon Plotin de contemplat All beatitude flows from our contemplating that best and fairest Father whereby our souls bidding farewel to the body and freed from drudgery enjoys in that mean while that happiness which the soul of the Universe enjoys eternally and without intermission No man can attain to an happy life that does not in the purity of chast love adhere to that one best Good the inocmmutable God With the like Doctrine Plato in his Convivio feasts his guests ears A blessed man by the inspection of the Divine Pulcritude not only produceth but nourisheth in himself not only appearances and shadows but real and substantial Vertues such as lively express him whom we contemplate Was ever any thing said by Christian Theologues more resembling our Philosophy than these Platonick Dictates Compare those with the Evangelical Notions of being changed into the same Image by beholding the glory of God c. and then say if they make not as perfect an harmony as if these lessons had been set by the same Master Now whether God did ever hang out to the World a more lively Picture of himself than him whom the Apostle stiles the express Image of his Father's Person or did ever throw out a stronger cord of love to knit men's affections to himself than the Son of his love I dare refer to the determination of Philosophy it self after I have discussed some other Maxims common to that and Christianity § 3. 2. The Original Tradition of the all-comprehending Evangelical Promise The seed of the woman shall break the head of the Serpent that grain of Mustard-seed whence grew the tall Tree of the whole Gospel that Rose of Sharon in the bud which in process of time dilated its leaves to their full dimensions deliver'd to the World by Noah that Preacher of Righteousness was not wholly obliterated out of the memory of the Gentile-World That it still retain'd the Tradition of Man's Apostacy from God appears from Celsus In Orig. lib. 6. cal 20. his quoting Pherecides for bringing in the Serpent Ophioneus as heading a Party against Saturn the father of all the Gods and therefore cast down with his followers out of Heaven and bound in chains From Aelian's reporting Var. hist. 3. 1. that the Serpent which Apollo slew had usurped the place of the Divine Oracle a plain intimation of his presuming to wrest Gods Oracles and of his setting up his own in their room in his conference with Eve The same Author in his description of Tempe in the story of Python gives us a perfect prospect of Eden into which the Serpent had insinuated himself and where he received his deaths wound his fatal doom Erithraea quoted by Lactantius de orig erroris lib. 2. the greatest part of whose writings are repositories of the old Tradition turns this part of Moses his History into Verse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Man was form'd by God's hand but being seduc'd by the Serpents guile be became obnoxious to death and learn'd to know good and evil Hyginus in his Poetic astronom titul Serpens quotes Pherecides speaking of golden Apples of a Serpent set by Juno to watch her Orchard of a Serpent which the Giants in their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 set upon Minerva and thrown by her to among the Stars Manifest prints of the old Tradition Indeed the corrupt Matter issuing from the Wound was a dayly Monitor to humane kind that it had been struck with the Serpents poysonful sting and therefore it is hardly conceivable that they should wholly lose the Tradition of the Remedy the Memory of that soveraign Plant which would cleanse and heal them Though through the vanity of men's minds and the craft of those who made themselves Lords over their Faith on purpose that they might settle
themselves in a more absolute Dominion over their persons that Tradition was in time so corrupted as it requires a more than ordinary sagacity to scent out the foot-steps of it and I hope the candid Reader will take that for my Apology if in hunting after it I come not always within so full a view of the game or follow so hot a scent as to have the whole pack of Readers with one mouth cry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there there Howbeit I despair not but that by the help of the Fathers pricking out some of the prints before me and with the assistance of his Spirit whose cause I am pleading I shall trace out the remains of this Tradition in secular Authors so near its scent and first Original as to make it probable if no more that what the Apostles delivered in Thesi touching the blessed Jesus is suitable to what is taught in Hypothesi by the Philosophers especially those of them who to vamp and furbish the sullied and almost worn-out knowledg thereof travell'd into those parts where the Original of that Tradition was preserved I will begin with that of Plato in the Phaedra pointed out by the best versed in humane Learning of all the Fathers Clemens Alexandrinus Stromat 1. 98. who quotes that travelling Philosopher reporting this to have been the Opinion of those Barbarians of whom he learn'd his Philosophy as also of the Brachmans Odrysians Getes Aegyptians Arabians Chaldaeans and all that inhabit Palestine That certain blessed Souls or Daemons leaving their supercelestial place vouchsafe to descend into this earthly Dungeon and in assumed humane Bodies to undergo all the miseries that man is obnoxious to in this life and undertaking the care of Mankind to give Laws and teach Philosophy This Origen Contra Celsum l. 5. reminds Celsus of charging it upon his Epicurean blockishness and want of reading that he should need be told that it is the common sentence of all Philosophers who held the being of a God and his Providence over man that some Gods have been manifested in humane flesh assumed humane shape that they might deliver Oracles and bring releif to mankind Jamblicus writes after Plato's stile de myster iis tit quando alia numina c. making the Heroes or Semidei to unravel the Snarls which the Cacodemons make assigning to these last that they oppress and distemper the Body that they draw the Soul downward and hinder it in its motion toward Heaven to the first that they stir us up to good Actions that they enliven and enlighten us provoke us to great and generous Vertues that they watch over our Souls and loose them from corporeal and terrene Intanglements and in the same Treatise tit quae ratio sacrificiorum c. he lays down this as a Principle that we cannot attain to Communion with the incorporeal Deity but by the Mediation of the corporeal or incarnate A point which he transcribed out of his Master Plato who in his Convivium thus dictates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. God is not to be approached to by man but all the communion betwixt God and man is through the mediation of Demons that is good Demons or Gods made men a middle betwixt God and man the bond which uniteth and joyneth us and God as Plutarch observes in his Treatise de defectu oraculorum where he commends this opinion as that which salves many and difficult doubts 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Of this Ethnick Principle St. Austin takes notice de civitate lib. 8. cap. 18. titul homines ut commendentur diis bonis Daemonibus uti debent advocatis and lib. 9. cap. 9. tit an amicitia caelestium per intercessionem Daemonum possit homini provideri and lib. 9. cap. 17. tit non iali mediatore indigere hominem qualis est Daemon That as the Pagan Philosophers held that men must make use of good Demons to commend them to the Gods whether the friendship of the Caelestials can be procured to man by the intercession of Demons Man does not need such a Mediator as the Demon is And as to that branch of it which asserts the Virgin-birth St. Cyril gives his Catechumens this item Catech. 12. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If the Grecians question the possibility of Christ's Incarnation they may be confuted by their own Mythologists Upon which point Tertullian apolog cap. 21. after his common use hath this excellent Animad version Recipite hanc fabulam similis est vestris c. If the story of Christs Incarnation be a Fable ye ought to embrace it you have no reason to think it strange that the Son of God should be born of a Virgin for how many Stories have you like this and far less like to be true than this You feign your Jove to have had Sons begot of Mortals which even a good man would be ashamed to father begot in Incest of his Sister in Adultery of other mens Wives in Fornication of Virgins in the shape of Fish Fowl and horned Beasts c. Had not the World been prepossest with this Opinion That God-saviour was to be Incarnate and to assume the Womans Seed how could it have been so easily induc'd to believe that Persons of more than common Prowess Vertue and Activity especially in cultivating protecting rescuing or delivering humane Kind whose Original on the Fathers or Mothers fide was obscure had their extraction on the Fathers side from some Deity or other Whence Pausanias in his Corinthiacis though he bring different reports of the Original of Aâ—sculapius on the Mothers side so obscure was the Parentage of that great Succourer of all Mortals as he is stiled in that Oracle which his father gave to Apollophanes whom the Dog and She-goat of Arestanus found on the Mount Epidaur yet he fathers him by common Vote upon Apollo and introduceth Apollo thus resolving the Question of Apollophanes concerning his Mother That he was not the Son of Arsinoe nor a Messenian but an Epidaurian the Off-spring of himself and the fair Coronis And the same Author expounds Homer as stiling Mochnon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Man the Son of God Stesichorus in his Fragments collected by Henry Stephen stiles Clymene after she had brought forth Children to Sol his Virgin-wife 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 virginalem uxorem Nay if he were a person of extraordinary Beneficence to his Country though he had been born in Wedlock and during his Nonage reputed such a mans Son yet after the performance of his heroick and more than humane exploits some God or other claims him for his Son and makes his Father construe that Verse Hos ego filiolos genui tulit alter honorem Thus Hercules shakes off his Father Amphitruo for Jupiter Plato would have discarded his Father Ariston for Apollo and Alexander his for Jupiter Hammon And so ambitious were the Females of the honour of being esteem'd Mothers of God-saviours as they were contented to keep their Sons counsel
the one Lord Saturnal l. 1. c. 23. Upon which Johan Isaac hath this Note Significaverit itaque appellatio Dei unum at ipse Deus Solem The name of that God signisieth one the God himself signifieth the Sun To which will give light that of Herodotus l. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Of the Gods they worship only the Sun And that of Plutarch de Iside Osiride 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The one Zoroastres calls Oromazes the good God the other Arimanius the Vejove or the evil God betwixt them both they place Mithra the Sun whom therefore the Persians call Mediator This Entire Opinion of the Persians Manes the Patriarch of the Manichees espoused That of there Jove and Vejove in his two-fold Principle good and bad this of the Sun in that Opinion which St. Austin asscribes to the Manichees contrà Faustum l. 20. c. 1. Vestrae vanitati placuit in Sole ponere virtutem filii in Luna sapientiam Your vain mind pleaseth it selfwith placing the virtue of Christ in the Sun and his Wisdom in the Moon The excellent Vossius opposeth these two Testimonies of Herodotus and Plutarch and upon the authority of the latter rejects the assertion of the former That the Persians worshipp'd no God but the Sun But if we duly weigh them they are not contradictory but explicatory of one another For Herodotus speaks of God-mediatours whereof amongst those many which after-ages erected the Persians only worshipp'd the Sun adhering in that point to the elder Tradition And Plutarch's Oromazes is nothing else but that God-Creator whom the ancient Persians worshipp'd without an Image or Temple conceiving him infinite and incomprehensible whereas of God-saviour they made Representations which at first were the Images of those Heroes whom they mistook for the promised Seed and in process of time the Symbols of the Sun into whose Body they conceived the Souls of their Heroes to be assumed Now it is no wonder that not being able to salve the appearance of evil with the goodness of God they fancied a Vejove another Eternal Principle of Evil betwixt which two Principles they placed God-mediatour as they called their Mithra that he might on man's behalf repel the evil of the one and procure benefits from the other Chrisippus saith Macrobius derived his name Apollo from the privitive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 many 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because he is the alone God-saviour and hath no partakers That I do not strain courtesie with Chrysippus his sence in this Interpretation is manifest from that other Etymology of that Name which is there subjoyned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they think Apollo hath that name from his curing diseases to him therefore did the Milesians sacrifice under the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 salvifick in order to their obtaining health as saith Meandrius And Pherecydes reports that Theseus when he was carried into Crete to the Minotaur made a Vow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 To the health-conferring Apollo and Artemis that is the Moon And that we are here to take health in its largest sence as it comprehends all kind of Welfare and salvation from misery appears from the account that Macrobius gives of the Institution of the Ludi Apollinares among the Romans which were first instituted in the Punick War by the motion of Cornelius Rufus the Decemvir upon his finding in the Sibyls Books this Oracle HOSTEM ROMANI SI EX AGRO EXPELLERE VULTIS VOMICAM QUE QUAE GENTIUM VENIT LONGE APOLLINI CENSEO VOVENDOS HOC SI RECTE FACIETIS GAUDEBITIS SEMPER FIET QUE RESPUBLICA MELIOR NAM IS DIVOS EXTINGUET PERDUELLES VESTROS QUI VESTROS CAMPOS PASCUNT PLACIDE If you would O Romans expel the enemy out of your coast and the vomit cast from a Country so far distant I advise you to vow sacred Games to Apollo after the Grecian mode c. This if you perform regularly you shall always rejoice and your Republick shall grow better for that God will extinguish your enemies which so sweetly forrage your fields One point of the Grecian Rite which they observed in celebrating these Games was their offering to Apollo an Oxe to Latona an Heifer with gilt Horns the first to the Male the second to the Female-light By all which Testimonies it is as clear as the Sun that the Gentiles thought Light to be that God to whom they were to apply themselves for the removal of all sorts of maladies not only bodily but ghostly à quo vis salubris subvenit animis corporibúsque mortalium Maerob Saturn l. 1. cap. 20. as to him from whom a saving power was administred for the succour of Soul and Body as to him by whom Saturn the father of Jove the healing Father the sacer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the blessed Mind or sator 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the creating Mind whose quatripartite issue were the four Elements Jupiter the Fire Juno the Air Neptune the water and Pluto the Earth was to be appeased as Fulgentius Mytholog l. 1. titulo De Saturno observes out of Apollophanes Heraclitus Theopompus and Hellanicus As also Vives de civitate l. 7. c. 19. out of Dionysius Plutarch Varro Festus Agellius Macrobius Propertius Lactantius and Ovid where he quotes Manetho the Aegyptian Historian relating how Amasis instituted the Consecrations of Wax-tapers to Saturn which they lighted and set upon his Altars to attone him saith Macrobius Saturnal l. 1. c. 7. This was to denote the expiatory sufferings of this heavenly Light in an earthly Body Upon which which reason they that took the Sun to be that Light did not only conceive him to fall every night into the Ocean but to run his course through the Zodiack beset with Monsters the conquering of which put him to such pain as gave ground to the Proverb Herculean Labours while he is supposed to encounter with the pushing Ram the goring Bull the stinging Scorpion c. And to have been wounded and hard put to it in his contending with Python But I shall have occasion hereafter to express the sence of the most industrious Heathen touching the Passion of the Common Saviour I will therefore conclude this Section with one critical Note more out of Macrobius and one upon him both tending to the illustration of this Point That which I note of him is that the Sun's Name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is derived 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from healing which the Grecians abbreviated into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in that form of Invocation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. Medere Paean Heal us Paean when they begg'd health for themselves but when they invok'd his aid against an enemy by way of imprecation they used this Form 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Let thy arrows fly Paean this Form Latona used when she spurr'd the Sun on to repulse the assaults of Python this Form the Delphick Oracle taught the Athenians what time they begg'd Apollo's help
mirum cùm Daemones c. Mar. 1. 24. Some of their Philosophers as Porphyry writes enquired of their Gods what they could say concerning Christ and that they were forc'd in their Oracles to commend Christ which is not at all to be thought strange seing we read St. Marc. 1. 24. That the Devils confest him to be the Son of God But let us hear Apollo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This King God in the Apostle's phrase the only Potentate and Creator of all things the Earth the Heaven and Sea revere before whom hellish darkness and Demons tremble And therefore Sibyl chides the Grecians for their extreme vanity Lactant. de falsa Relig. lib. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Greece why dost thou put thy trust in provincial Presidents who are but men Why dost thâ—â— bring vain oblations to dead men Why dost thou sacrifice to Idols Who injected this folly into thy mind that thou should do these things and neglect the person of the great God This was that Grecian folly which as I said at my entrance upon my discourse upon Plato's reporting his own and those Barbarians Opinion from whom he learn'd his Philosophy Grecizing Moses intermixt the true Tradition with making it speak the Language of his own Country wherein he was not only forsaken by his own School but exploded by the adherents to the Sibylline Books out of which these last-quoted Verses give so express a Reproof of that and so full Proof of the contrary Doctrine that men are to expect salvation and in order to the obtaining of it to put their trust not in many but one Saviour who is the Person of the great God as I shall burden my Reader with no more Allegations nor any further discourse upon that point but proceed to another Hypothesis of the Ethnick Theologues concurring with the Fundamentals of the Gospel and exprest in that forecited passage in Plato viz. CHAP. VII Man healed by the Stripes and Oracles of God-man § 1. Jew hides face from Christ. Greatest Heroes greatest sufferers the expiatory painfulness of their Passions § 2. Humane Sacrifices universal § 3. Not in imitation of Abraham Porphyry ' s Miscollection from Sancuniathon Humane Sacrifices in use in Canaan before Abraham came there And in remotest Parts before his facts were known In Chaldea before Abraham ' s departure thence § 4. It was the corruption of the old Tradition of the Womans Seed's Heel bruised Their sacred Anchor in Extremities § 5. The Story of Kings of Moab and Edom vulgarly mistaken different from Amos his Text. King of Moab offer'd his own Son the fruit of the Body for the sin of the Soul § 6. What they groped after exhibited in Christ's Blood § 7. Man's Saviour is to save Man by delivering divine Oracles Heroes cultivated the World by Arts and Sciences § 8. Gospel-net takes in small and great The Apostles became all things to all men how § 1. A Relique of the old Tradition delivered in Paradise and wrapp'd up in those clauses The Serpent shall bruise the heel of the Womans Seed and he shall break the Serpents head the first implying Christ's Passion and the latter his undeceiving the World by delivering true Oracles to the World which had been cheated by the Devil 's false ones Of the first Member of this Tradition we find reserves in the Sibylline Books quoted by Lactantius de vera Rel. lib. 4. cap. 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He shall become miserable contemptible without form that he may give hope afford help to miserable men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He shall fall into the hands of sinners and infidels who shall with impure hands box him about the ears and spitefully spit upon him and he shall give his most innocent back to scourges 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 When they smite him upon the cheek he shall hold his peace so as Men shall not take him for the Word oe understand why he came to wit to make the dead hear his voice and he shall wear a Crown of thorns 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They shall give him Gall to eat and Vinegar to drink these are the Commons which that inhospitable Generation will allow him By which misusages his face shall be so marred as his own shall hide their faces from him as seeing nothing in him that was desirable that could speak him to be The desire of the Nations for thus sings another Sibyl of the Land of Judea 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Fool that thou art thou canst not know thy own God through the vizour of that contempt thou casts upon him These Responds eccho so distinctly to the Voices of the Prophets and so exactly sute the History of the Gospel as had they all proceeded from one mouth they could not have made a more perfect Harmony That the Writings of the Philosophers are Repositories of the same Doctrine hath been already evidenc'd out of Plato who affirms that it is the Opinion of those Barbarians of whom he learn'd his Philosophy as also of the Brachmans Odrysenans Getes Egyptians Arabians Chaldeans and all that inhabit Palestine That those blessed Souls who leave their supercelestial place and vouchsafe for the relief of Mankind to assume humane Bodies do in order to that undergo all the miseries of this Life To which Isocrates gives his Vote in the name of the greatest part of the World telling us in his Euagoras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That most of those that were reputed Semidei half-God half-man and those the most famous were reported to have undergone the greatest calamities and that in pursuit of achievements which were more full of danger to themselves than of Immediate profit to others Isocrat Hel. laudatio 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of which he giveth instance Orat. ad Philippum in Hercules whom notwithstanding with the same breath he affirms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to have had more Wisdom than Fortitude Now how it could stand with his Wisdom to imploy his Fortitude in those dangerous and painful labours which brought so much hardship upon himself and no profit to others can hardly be resolv'd except he undertook those labours otherwise in vain as Expiations and spent his sweat and blood as Libations as Propitiations to appease the incensed Deity not for his own but his Countries sins for The God-begotten saith Isocrates Busirid laudat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are free from sin and have all Vertues in their perfection By this oblation of himself for others Hercules his labours were beneficial to the whole World 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and he procured to himself the Surname of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clemens Alexandr Protrept The driver away of evil
Taurican Chersonesus who sacrificed all the Strangers they could lay hands on to Diana quoting for this Enripedes That pair-royal of Friends Pylades and Orestes had died no other death if they had slain their Keepers and stolen away the Goddess Lucian Toxaris The next whom Clemens instanceth in are the Thessalians among whom the Inhabitants of Pella sacrifice an Achaean to Releus and Chiron for which he quotes Maninius in his Collection of Wonders The Cretensians among whom the Lycians sacrifice men to Jupiter for this he quotes Anticlides in reditibus The Lesbians who as Dosidas saith pacified Bacchus with humane Hostes. The Phocensians whom Pythocles in his third Book de Concordia affirms to have sacrificed Men to Diana Taurica The Athenians among whom as Demaratus writes in his first Book of Tragical Things Ericthonius for the pacifying of Proserphone sacrificed his own Daughter And the Romans among whom as Dorotheus relates in his fourth Book of the Affairs of Italy Marius sacrificed his Daughter Diis Averruncanis To the Gods that expel mischief Lactantius de falsa Relig. lib. 1. cap. 21. proves this to have been an ancient Custom in Italy to precipitate Men from the Milvian Bridge for the appeasing Saturn's wrath out of Ovid's in Fastis quotannis Tristia Leucadio sacra peracta Deo And to sacrifice to the same God their own Children After whose Dialect Micah 6. 7. the Prophet introduceth apostate Judah querying Shall I give my first born for my trangression the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul to which the Spirit returns this pat answer He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what the Lord requires of thee viz. to do justly and love mercy neither of which can be done in this barbarous inhumanity to thy own Bowels and to humble thy self to walk with thy God not to outrun God in thy hastening to bring forth a Saviour before the fulness of Time c. In the same place the same Lactantius relates out of Poscennius Festus this Story That the Carthaginians being overcome by Agathocles King of Sicily and conceiving that to be the effect of God's displeasure against them for the rendring of Heaven propitious sacrificed two hundred Noblemens Sons Of the same bran saith he are the Rites of the Mother of the Gods whose Priests attone her with the Blood of their Genitals and of Bellona wherein her Priests lance and slash their own shoulders with Swords which they carry in both their hands as they run like frantick men about her Altars the very same Oratory which the Priests of Baal used who in their contest with Elijah when he lent a deaf ear to the sound of their Prayers lifted up to him the voice of their blood as that they doubted not but would obtain for them a favourable audience Herodotus in his Euterpe pag. 128. relates how at Busiris in the Festivals of Isis after the Sacrifice the whole Company being many thousands lash themselves till blood come and that in Papremis the Company that assemble to worship the Deity of that place fall together by the ears and wound yea kill one another Dion Roman histor lib. 43. reports that Julius Caesar to propitiate Mars caused to be sacrificed to him two of those Mutineers who raised a commomotion in the Camp because of Caesar's Prodigality in his exhibiting showes and Plays to the Senate and People grudging that so much water should run beside their Mill for which he saith he had neither Sibylline nor any other express Oracle but only Custom Pliny lib. 36. writes that the Moors sacrificed Men to Hercules others say to Saturn as Plato by name in his Minoe and Dionysius Halicarnassus as also Theodoritus Cyrenaeus Tacitus de moribus Germanorum saith That the Germans do on certain stated days appease Mercury with humane Sacrifices That the Semnones the most ancient Stock of the Suevians on certain anniversary holy Days meet together in a sacred Grove and begin the solemnity of the day with sacrificing a man for the Common Good for so I translate his caeso publicè homine That the Reudigni Aviones Angli Varini Eudoses Snardones Nucthones in the service they perform'd to the Mother of Gods whom they call Hertham that is Earth the very English of the Grecian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 drowned those that had officiated in the Procession The same Historian Tacitus an 14. fol. 207. tells us that Suetonius Paulinus at the taking of the Ifle of Man found Groves devoted there to bloody Superstition for they used to sacrifice Captives at their Altars and to look into their inwards by way of Auguration Dictys Cretensis who was comrade to Idomenoeus in the Trojan War wrote a Journal of that War which Paxis presented to Nero and Septimius Romanus translated into Latin in which Treatise de Bell. Troj lib. 1. we are told that for the appeasing of Dianas displeasure against Agamemnon for slaying the Hart that was feeding in her Grove his Daughter Iphigenia was required in sacrifice Upon this ground Euryphylus in Virgil perswades the Grecians when they were returning from Troy to appease the angry Deity with humane Blood with the blood of Polixena Aeneid lib. 2. Sanguine placastis ventos virgine caesa Cùm primùm Iliacas Danai venistis ad auras Herodotus Melpomene relates how the Getes the most morallized of all the Scythians send every year to their God Zamolxis a Man whom they had first sacrificed And how the Messagetes immolate in their old Age all Persons of note counting none happy but them that die that kind of death Herod Clio. And lastly how the whole Scythian Nation do sacrifice to Mars whom they esteem the chief God one of every hundred Captives whose Blood they gather into a Basin and with it besmear a Fauchion which with them is the Idol or Representation of Mars Herodot Melpomene This Custom reached to the farthest Western Nations as Plutarch de superstitione observes who if they had Children of their own sacrificed them to Saturn if not bought other mens Children to that purpose as men buy Lambs or Chickens While they were sacrificing their Mothers were to stand by and look on who if they shewed any sign of sorrow they were ever after accounted opprobrious persons Yea as far as the then reputed World's end Hercules Pillars as Timaeus the Historian affirms in his rebus Deliacis for the Inhabitants near to those Pillars saith he use to sacrifice their Kinsfolks if they reach the seventieth year Strabo lib. 11. reports that in Albania a Country near the Caspia◠Sea they used to sacrifice to the Moon their supreme Deity those of their initiated servants that had most of that Goddess in them after they had been sumptuously feasted a whole year before These two last I report upon the Credit of Natalis Comes Mytholog l. cap. 17. de victimis not out of penury for to the best of my knowledge there is not an old Historian extant that gives
obtulit The King of Moab did undoubtedly offer the King of Edom's son for a burnt-offering Is chiefly grounded upon their jumbling two Stories into one just as the Poetical Fables grew up from confounding the true Histories of several Joves and applying them to one of the youngest and worst of them this related in the book of Kings and that which Amos mentions chap. 2. vers 16. for three transgressions of Moab because he burnt the King of Edom ' s bones into lime By this means metamorphizing the King of Moab's son into the King of Edom's and then the King of Edom's son into the King of Edom himself and lastly the sacrificing of a living youth upon the wall into the haling of dry bones out of the Sepulchre and burning them to Chalk things no more like one another than Chalk is to Cheese and all this as themselves confess contrary to those reasons and the authority of good Authors upon which they had some time been of another Opinion and so far as my small reading reacheth to the current of Expositors who thus express their judgments touching this Text of Amos quando id factum non constat So Emmanuel Saa quando hoc factum sit nusquam legitur So our learned Gualter Saa indeed saith the Hebrews make this in Amos an Appendix to that in the Book of Kings and that the Chaldee Paraphrasts have a conceipt that they besmear'd their houses with the ashes of those bones instead of Chalk and Gualter propounds it as probable that the Moabites after the end of that war mention'd in the Kings did in the revenge of the Edomites confederating against them with the two Palestine Kings dig up the bones of the King of Edom formerly dead and burn them in contempt But that it was the King of Edom's son that was sacrificed in the seige or that he that was sacrificed the same man whose bones were burnt to Chalk according to the tenour of Amos's discourse neither they nor any considerate man ever thought before Junius and Tremelius And now from the clear Text in the book of Kings and the Paraphrase of Josephus upon it in order to the clearing of the point for the proof whereof I alledge this Text I observe 1. That the King of Moab offered his son as an holocaust as a propitiatory sacrifice to appease the wrath of God Scilicet deo suo ut sic placaret Em. Saa in locum to wit to his God that he might appease him 2. That he betook himself to this way of supplication when all other means of safety fail'd him when he was at the utmost point of extremity and despair quod ubi praeter spem non successit rem extremae necessitatis desperationis aggreditur Joseph antiq Jud. lib. 9. cap. 1. ad finem when his sallying out had not that success he hoped he betook himself to that shift which is never used but in extream necessity and when men despair to find relief any other way 3. That for the safety of himself and Crown he sacrifices the most precious oblation that was in his power as he thought to give his son that was to reign after him an argument that the Heathen imputed the prevalency of their oblations to the worth of them and their preciousness in the esteem of those that offer'd them The Superstitious saith Plutarch De Superstitione they that over-do it in their Religious Services do account humane Sacrifices most precious and acceptable to the Deity At this rate the Idolatrous Jew discourseth in the Prophet Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or ten thousands of rivers of oyl shall I give my first-born the fruit of my body c. Of the same mind were the learned Jews Midrash Tilli◠in Psal. 94. 12. Beatus vir quem tu castigas domine tria sunt à deo gratiosè data 1. Lex 2. Terra Israel 3. Saeculum futurum media obtinendi haec sunt afflictiones de lege quem tu erudieris ex lege de terra Sicut pater castigat filium Deut. 8. de saeculo fuit Sicut sacrificia pacificant sic afflictiones sunt via vitae Pro. 6. Sacrificia sunt ex divitiis sed afflictiones sunt in corpus ideóque anteferendae sunt c. Vicars There are three things bestowed on us by God which speak him gracious to us 1. The Law 2. The holy Land 3. the Age to come afflictions are the means to obtain these of the Law it is said Blessed is he whom thou chastisest and instructest out of thy Law of the Land it is said as a father chastiseth his son c. of the Age to come it is said as sacrifices pacifie wrath so afflictions are the way of life Sacrifices are of our goods but afflictions are upon our own bodies and therefore to be preferr'd before sacrifices that is our own blood is more available for the procuring of God's favour than the blood of Rams These being grown ignorant of God's righteousness having lost the sight of Gods scope in the Levitical Law and not looking to Christ the end of that Law went about to establish their own righteousness set themselves another mark viz. the procuring acceptance of God and justification from sins guilt by the price and valew of the Oblations themselves Thence when they reflected upon the inconsiderableness of Hinns they propounded Rivers and ten thousand Rivers of Oyl and at last seeing the infinite disproportion between those attonements and the sin attoned for they capitulate with God upon these terms that he would accept the fruit of their Body for the sin of their Soul The gentile proceeded in the same way of paralogizing to the oblation of humane blood to the sacrificing of his own Children It was the custom saith Sanchoniathon in the place forecited in such like extremities to sacrifice the Princes best beloved son his dearest Child to pacifie the wrath of the provoked and revengeful Demon and with the child sometimes the life of the Mother by ripping the Sacrifice out of her Womb. of which Lucan Vulnere si ventris non qua natura vocabat Extrabitur partus calidis ponendus in aris That by expending two lives at once they might inhance the price of their bloody Oblations and make sure it was innocent blood they offerr'd § 6. To think that God would eat the flesh of Bulls and drink the blood of Goats to allay his thirst of Revenge was a most brutish Fancy But it was most inhumane and barbarous to conceit such horrid Parricides as the immolation of Innocents to make atonement for sin a fact exceeding in Immanity the savageness of Brutes who cherish their Off-spring and pawn their own lives for the safety of their young ones so as it were better to live after the manner of Beasts than to worship such impious tetrical and sanguinary Gods saith Lactantius de fulsa Relig. 1. 21. yea to deny the Being of God rather than
frightning men to obedience by menacies of Hell-fire c. But all will not be won by Love the fear of approaching death was of more avail to perswade Celsus his Master Epicurus that there is a God than all the sweet morsels he cramb'd his belly with Let the Antinomian here acknowledge his first Father Besides saith he lib. 6. 19 Do not the Christians charge God with want of Power or Foresight in his permitting the Serpent so far to deface his Image in Man as that in order to the restoring of it he is forc'd to send his only Son to become Man's Advocate God knew how to use his Power and VVisdom better than in prevention of that evil viz. by bringing a greater good out of it Conceived by the Holy Ghost Touching the Christian's belief that Christ was conceived by the Holy Ghost he hath this Animadversion lib. 6. cal 35. What need was there that the Holy Ghost should over-shaddow the Virgin and frame Christ a Body in her womb could not God have shaped him a Body he could not have a Body of the Seed of the Woman without the Seed of the Woman without immersing his own Spirit into so great contamination Celsus might have learn'd better Language of Proclus the Pagan Philosopher Secundum nihil omnino providentiam ex gubernatis accipere nec eorum natura repleri nec eis alicubi commisceri non enim ex eo quòd omnia disponit admiscetur proptereà gubernatis Proclus de anima daemone tit providentia per singula percurrit interim nullis addit pag. 191. If he had been conceiv'd by the Holy Ghost his Body would have excelled all othets in Stature in Form in Strength in Voice nec vox hominem sonat in Majesty and in Elocution for it is incredible that he who had so much Divinity who was formed by so divine an hand should not surpass all men but Christ as the Christians confess was but like to if not inferiour to other men His face according to Prophecy was to be mar'd more than any man's low mean humble yea deformed Why should the holy Spirit be sent to one in a corner of the World in Judea and not be inspired into all men man must let the work of Redemption alone for ever if God have a purpose to save all men As to the last clause of this Article he brings in a Jew lib. 1. cal 20. thus scoffing at Christ for chusing to be born of so mean a Woman at so mean a Town he was to be born in the form of a servant and Bethlehem-Judah was the least of the Cities of Judea as Bethlehem c. did her beauty her inward Beauty being full of Grace invited God to chuse her for the Mother of the Son of God before others invite God into her embraces how could she conceive and bring forth a Son without the knowledg of man c. which Origen retorts thus how do the Vultures breed as your own Pagan Writers report without companying with the Male why could not God make the second Adam without a Father as well as the first without either Father or Mother and lastly that we Christians are not the only men who embrace such admirable stories is manifest from your believing that Plato was conceived by Apollo and born of his Mother Amphictione yet a Virgin before her Husband Aristo had knowledg of her being prohibited by a Vision to touch her At the same point the Seeker whom Volusianus mentions strains August ep 2. Who is there among you saith he so well versed and established in the Christian Religion as can resolve me where I stick I wonder how the Lord of the Universe could take up his lodging in the body of a spotless Virgin how she could go out her ten Months and then bring forth a Child and after that continue a Virgin how could he lurk in the little body of a Vagient Infant whom the Heavens are not able to contain how could the Ancient of days endure to undergo so many years of Infancy of Childhood of Youth of Man-hood or the everlasting God that faints not neither is weary submit to sleep to hunger and thirst to cold and wearisomness and the rest of humane weaknesses cease this wondring man Christ did all this to make it manifest that he was the Son of Man as well as of God Jam illud quòd in somnos solvitur c. hominem persuadet hominibus quem non consumpsit utique sed assumppsit August epist. 2. Volusiano and as to her continuing a Virgin St. Austin answers Ipsa virtus per inviolatae Mariae virginea viscera membra infantis eduxit quae posteà per clausa ostia membra juvenis introduxit that power which brought Christ through the shut door did bring him out of the shut womb It is St. Austin's Observation that the Philosophers in questioning the truth of the Church touching the Incarnatlon overthrew their own Principles It is their Assertion saith he de civit 10. 29. that the intellectual Soul may by purging become consubstantial paternae menti with the Father's Mind which they confess to be the Son of God what absurdity then can there be in the Christian Belief that one individual soul being the purest that ever was created for the salvation of many was assumed into Union with the Son of God Now that the Body must adhere to the Soul that he may be a perfect man we learn by the Testimony of Nature it self which Union of Body and Soul if it were not usual would be less credible than the union of an Humane Soul to the Mind Word or Son of God For 't is casier to be believed that an incorporeal should be united to an incorporeal than that a corporeal and incorporeal Being should conflate into one And Tertullian observes Apol. priùs citato that nothing was more common in the Heathen World than Virgin-births of divine Conceptions and yet they had been more common if some like Olympias had not been jealous of Juno's Jealousie after whose Copy she return'd this answer to her son Alexander's Letter thus superscribed King Alexander the Son of Jupiter Hammon to his Mother Olympias all health I pray thee Son do not traduce me and accuse me to Juno as one that had been naught with her Husband for I shall never be able to bear the burden of that her spightful jealousie which she will conceive against me upon thy writing thy self the Son of Jove and thy insinuating me to be his Whore Agellius Noct. Attic. lib. 13. cap. 4. This Text of St. Austin Ep. 2. beside that that I quoted it for points to a great many Circumstances in the History of the blessed Jesus mention'd in the Gospel all which are from this allegation of the Adversaries acknowledged to have been the Doctrine of the Apostolical as well as Modern Church § 4. Article 4. Suffered under Pontius Pilat was crucified dead and buried and descended into Hell
Proaem Empedocle Plinius sic nobile illud apud Graecos volumen Heraclidis septem diebus feminae exanimis ad vitam revocatae The like does Plutarch report of Aristaeus in his Romulus and of Thespesius de sera numinis vind We have here supererrogated having produc'd Pagan Testimony not only for the proving of matter of Fact to wit that this Article which we now profess was delivered by the Apostles to the Primitive Church but also their Confessions of the possibility of the thing believed § 6. Article 6. He ascended into Heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God The Argument of Christ's Divinity drawn from his assumption into heaven they darken with so great a volly of Examples of their own Hero's as it would tire me to take up those Arrows one by one But that he ascended with that body that was crucified Celsus one while attributed to to delusion it being impossible as he argues that a body can be made immortal that being the Creature of inferiour Nature not of God as the soul is and all other immortal beings This Principle he borrows of the Manichees out of the dispute betwixt Jason and Papiscus concerning Christ lib. 4. cal 22. 23. Another while granting it true he denys it to be a sufficient proof of Christ's Deity because Cleomenes had by what Art God knows obtain'd that agility of body as he could fly up as fast and as far as a dart could even out of sight and that was as far as the Disciples could see Christ ascend But the gift which Christ shed forth after his Ascension spake him to have ascended far above the highest Heavens And as to the truth of this assertion That this was an Article of the Apostolical faith that Christ did ascend into heaven This Epicures carping at it is proof sufficient and his not daring to stand to his first Cavil that it was impossible but flying to another Salvo But it was no more than others before him bad done who yet thereby obtained not the repute of their deserving divine Honours is a tacit Concession to the Truth of the thing it self which is more than I here need to prove I will therefore hasten to the next Article which because of its relation to this I shall annex to the same Section Article 7. From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead The Epicurean Beast runs full mouth upon this Article and raiseth this crie It is the common guise of all Fanatick Prophets to profess themselves God or the Son of God or the divine Spirit and to give out such pretences as your Jesus made I am come into the world to save it from those impending judgements that are ready to fall upon it for its sins happy they that believe in me I will appear for their salvation when I come again in glory and great power with the heavenly host at which my coming I will adjudge all that reject me to everlasting Fire and they that now despise my menacies shall then when its too late to repent mourn and lament No Christian Catechist can better express the mind of this Article than this Philosopher here doth lib. 7. cal 3. A man of greater Reading than Celsus will be hard put to it to find one man before Christ's coming who did so much as pretend to his being appointed of God to be the Judge of all men And for those Mock-christ's who afterwards would have rob'd the blessed Jesus of this Prerogative and challeng'd it to themselves not one of them could shew their Commission under Gods hand as he did § 7. Article 8. I believe in the holy Ghost 1. As this implies the Equality and Consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father and the Son and his being therefore together with them to be worshipped as the Nicen Fathers expound it Porphyrie who for all Celsus his brags that he himself understood the bottom top and middle of our Religion was the best acquainted with our Scriptures both old and new of any Heathen Philosopher parallels it with his Master Plato's Opinion in St. Austin de Civitate 10. 23. quoted by R. vives and thus exprest by Porphyrie as St. Cyril contrà Julianum relates it Plato as well as the Christians held three Subsistences in the divine Essence to wit the All-Good and All-Great God the Father then the Creator God the Son and the third the Soul of the World the holy Ghost Tres Substantias in Essentia divina statuit Deum Opt. Max. deinde Creatorem tertiam Animam Mundi to wit that which moved upon the Waters the Lord and giver of Life as the abovesaid Fathers describe him What Beetle-brow'd Novices in Christianity are the Socinians who will not acknowledge the Revelation of the ineffable sacred Trinity to be communicated in these Evangelical VVritings wherein the Athenian Owls the Pagan Philosophers saw it so plainly exhibited as they not only take notice of it as an Article of our Religion in their Polemical Animadversions but offer to make proof that this point of Doctrine was embraced by their Wisemen even before it was attested by those wonders which God set as his seal for the confirmation of the Gospel So little did they deem it to be against Reason as by the conduct even of Reason they stumbled upon that Divine Notion which the Socinians will not submit their vain Reason to the belief of upon the strongest of all Reasons Divine Revelation proved to be so by the clearest of all evidences the demonstration of power exerted at the first manifest revelation of this Mystery at the Baptism of Christ when the heavens were opened and the Spirit descended upon the Son and a voyce was heard from the Father 2. As it implies still to go along with the same Father the Churches confession of her belief that the holy Ghost spake by the Prophets It is thus assronted by Celsus lib. 8. cal 16. what you boast of the Spirit speaking by your Old and New Testament-prophets we can out-vie if we had a mind to repeat those many Oracles of our Prophets and Prophetesses who sung future things with a Prophetick voice which they suck'd in from the Recesses of the Gods those many which were delivered from the Entrails of Sacrifices and premonstrated from other Prodigies or reveiled by the vive-voyce of the Gods themselves appearing in visible forms How many Cities have been founded by the advice of Oracles and been freed from Famine and Pestilence by following their direction or brought to utter ruine hy forgetting or despising their Counsels How many Colonies have been sent forth upon their Order thriving exceedingly while they followed their counsel To how many Princes and private men has it been fortunate or fatal to observe or sleight them How many barren Women have become fruitful How many maimed persons have recovered the use of their Limbs How many distracted persons the use of their Reason by following the advice of Oracles
concurrence of other Jews as himself writeth Many of the Jews were perswaded that those judgements befel them in punishment and revenge of the death of John Baptist as he was commonly called for Herod had slain him being a just man This John commanded the Jews to embrace Virtue to execute justice one towards another to serve God in Piety reconciling men by Baptism to Unity for upon this account Baptism seemed unto him a thing acceptable to God if it were used not for the remission of sins only but for the purifying of the body the soul being first cleansed from unrighteousness he excited men to the studie of Virtue but chiefly of Piety and Justice as also to the Laver of Baptism which he then said was grateful to God when they did not give over this or that but all sins and to minds first purified by righteousness added the purity of the body lib. 18. c. ap 7. And when as divers flocked after him for they were greatly delighted in hearing him Herod fearing that so forceable a power of perswading as he was endowed with might possibly lead the people into Rebelligon sent him to Machaerous Castle How perfectly does this square with our Evangelists as to his Doctrine of Repentance of Righteousness c. As to the Opinion the Jews had of him as a just Person As to the occasion of his confinement and death in pretence and partly Herods fear that he might draw the people into Rebellion and therefore Christ hearing of John's Imprisonment and the Pharisees muttering that Jesus Baptised more Disciples than John fearing that upon the same score he might be restrain'd steps aside into Galilee out of Judea where he saw the people flocking after him was looked upon with an evil eye John 4. 1 2. as Scaliger well observes de emendat temp lib. 6. But really and chiefly John's telling him of his Brothers Wife and Herod's gratifying of Herodias for if they did not rtpute her hand to be in John's murder why should they deem her exile as well as Herod's to be the effect of Divine Vengeance for the death of the Baptist. As to the multitude of his Followers the End of his Baptism to be a Badge of Unity a sign of the reconciliation of the hearts of Fathers to Children of Children to Fathers and of the unwise to the wisdom of the just It s ineffectualness to save by the outward Sign without the inward Grace fignified c. Non ovum ovo similius never was one more like himself in all proportions than that Baptist is which the Evangelists to him whom Josephus describes § 3. No less a Similitude is there betwixt that Jesus whom the Evangelists describe at large in Iliads and him whose story Josephus contracts into this Nut-shell Antiq. l. 18. c. 4. About this time there was one Jesus a wise man if it be lawful to account him a Man and no more for he was a worker of Miracles a Teacher of them who gladly embraced the Truth of whom he drew many after him both Jews and Gentiles this was Christ Insomuch as though Pilate by the advice and instigation of our Elders delivered him to be crucified yet they who had loved him from the beginning did not forsake him for the third day he appeared alive to them as the holy Prophets had foretold not only these but innumerable more marvelous things of Him And to this day the Christian people which of him are so named cease not to encrease Before I proceed to the Application of this Testimony to our present Case I must remove some Objections whereby some of the over-wise Sect have attempted to alleviate this Authority There are who suspect a Pious Fraud here that some Christians have been tampering with this Text of Josephus and turned what was originally writ in dispraise of our Jesus into this commendation by foysting two Clauses into it 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if we may call him a man And 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this is Christ. But why might not Josephus make honourable mention of Jesus as well as of his fore-runner John the Baptist or his Disciple James the Just both which he commends for holy men and so far in Gods favour as in revenge of their Murders Vengeance fell upon Herod and utter desolation upon Jerusalem Josephus they say was a Pharisee and upon that account would not befriend Christ with so large an Encomium 1. If Interest will not lye he was more an Essene than a Pharisee for in several places he condemns this but every where extols that Sect even such as himself affirms Bannus his Preceptor to have been viz. an Essene and a great admirer of John Baptist whom if he followed in other things is it like he would desert him in his good opinion of Christ wherein he might come short of a Christian and be no other than Theodoret and Origen present him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one that did not embrace the Christian Religion nor our Lord Jesus Christ And yet come so far towards one as to believe Jesus of Nazareth to have been the Messiah according to the Notion of the Ebionites and Nazarens and some other Jews both in the time of Christ and Josephus who observ'd the Mosaical Rites and differ'd not from other Jews save in opining Jesus to have been born of a Virgin to have risen again to have been a great Prophet c. whom Trypho the Jew in Justin Martyr if he do not praise does not disallow It is true he that would look for a Jew of this temper now had need light up a Candle at noon-day to seek him out for the Sun affords not light enough But we must not from our Modern ignorant and malicious Jew take a measure of those who lived a while after Christ and who might by the Miracles which the Apostles and their Successors daily wrought understand how great a Person he must be in whose Name those things were done and yet not become Christs Disciples any more than those Egyptian Christians whom the Emperour Adrian in his Epistle to Servianus mention'd by Vopiscus in his Saturninus thus describes Illi qui Serapin colunt Christiani sunt devoti sunt Serapi qui se Christi Episcopos dicunt nemo illic Archisynagogus Judaeorum nemo Samarites nemo Christianorum Presbyter non mathematicus non aruspex non aliptes Ipse ille Patriarchacùm Egyptum venerit ab aliis Serapidem adorare ab aliis cogitur Christum That is Christian Samaritans the followers of Simon Magus as Vopiscus himself stiles them in his description of the Egyptians Suntenim Aegiptii ventosi furibundi aruspices medici nam Christiani Samaritae For the Egyptians are windy rageful South-sayers Quacks and there are also amongst them Christian Samaritans for so should Vopiscus be read and not Christiani Samaritae These Simonians I say though after their master they believed that Christ in whose Name such mighty works were done was
resembles the gnawing of VVorms Vermina dicuntur dolor corporis cùm quodam minuto motu quasi à vermibus scindatur Festus Hence because the pain that attends the Dropsie resembles that of the VVorms and hath this name sometimes alotted to it grew that dangerous mistake of Eusebius that Herod the great dyed of the dropsie who yet if I mistake not affirms that Herod Agrippa dyed of the same Malady in that opposing Josephus in this both him and St. Luke And verminatio 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 St. Luke's word in the Text is used to signifie in general any gripings in the inwards like to the gnawing of VVorms which it particularly signifies Vossii Etymologicon Can this common notion of both Greeks and Latines hint to us any thing less then this that the tormina in the Bowels are commonly vermina the grief of the VVorms and properly a Symptom thereof except it appear by other Symptoms joyn'd with it that it is not that Distemper and I am perswaded were the Symptoms of Herod's Disease propounded to a skilful Physician and the question put what distemper the patient was afflicted with he would without any long pause resolve that he who is held as Josephus represents Herod must as St. Luke reports him be afflicted with Worms § 6. If it might not be thought a digression and which I more fear a culpable singularity I would shew mine opinion of St. Paul's Thorn in the slesh 2 Cor. 12. 7. And lest I should be exalted above measure through the hyperbole of the Revelations there was given me a thorn in the flesh the messenger of Satan to buffet me It s proximity to Herod's Case will alleviate the first and the plausibleness of the Reasons inducing me to it together with my propounding it as a matter of Opinion not Faith the second crime with candid Readers in which presumptions I shall hint these brief Observations There was given me a thorn in the flesh 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1. They that make this Thorn to be Concupicense should do well to consider how they can free God from being the Author of Sin while they make it his gift to St. Paul for mine own part I shall not need to put into my Letany from such gifts of God good Lord deliver me for I am well assured that that God whom I serve cannot by reason of his Holiness open such a Pandora's Box can no more tempt than he can be tempted to evil and if he were such an one as bestows such Gifts as Concupiscence upon his friends I would bless my self from him and chuse to be listed among his enemies As also how such an immission can be a gift for any man's good to him that receives it as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implies this was for St. Paul's advantage Besides how Concupiscence which is the Fleshes right Eye and right Side can be a Thorn to it to grieve and prick it how that can be a Thron in its eye a Goad in its side which is the very Life and Soul of it is so hard to conceive or else I am so dull of apprehension as I cannot with a Pitch-fork thrust that Fancy into my head any more than Musculus could into his who thus staves us off from embracing the Antinomian Gloss. Non simpliciter dicit esse sibi stimlum sed esse sibi datum stimulum utique non allunde quam à Deo ipso loco videlicet antidoti quae à medico contrà periculum pestis datur Musc. in locum He does not say simply that he had a thorn but that a thorn was given him It proceeded therefore from none but God by whom it was bestowed as an antidote against the danger of that plague which St. Paul might possibly have caught after his Rapture Disertè dicit datus est mihi stimulus ut significet illum reputari à se pro 〈…〉 sâ—ngulari Dei dono Of which he therefore saith expresly there was given me a thorn that he might give us to understand that he reckon'd it for a singular benefit of God 2. It must therefore imply the infliction of the evil of pain not of sin some sad and sharp affliction some pricking anguish immitted by some instruments of Satan Irenaeus lib. 4. cap. ult Theodoret and Theophilact on the place think some of the Gnosticks the Followers of Simon Magus that great Sorcerer to have been the instrument of buffeting St. Paul Vide Dr. Hamond in locum whose Teachers in the stile of this Apostle were Minsters of Satan 2 Cor. 11. 15. as vying with the Apostles in their lying Wonders wrought by a Satanical power 2 Thes. 2. 9. Chrysostom names Alexander the Copper smith Himenaeus and Philetus as those among whom we may likeâ—iest find this Messenger of Satan And judicious Musculus singles out Alexander as that Minister of Satan that was given to St. Paul for a Thorn as it were sticking in his flesh and every where pricking and afflicting him But I am not solicitous to determine the numerical Instrument it will give more light to the Text if we can resolve what this pungent affliction was wherewith St. Paul was kept humble since it could not be Concupiscence for that had been to cast out Satan by Satan to expel one Devil by bringing in seven nay the whole legion of unclean Spirits the Body of Sin to subdue one Member St. Chrysostom thinks Epist. 15. to 7. pag. 101. this Thorn was the Calumnies the Persecutions raised against the Apostle But these were 1. So usual and daily and so universally inflicted by all the enemies of the Cross of Christ as will hardly comport with this Thorn in the Text which as it was signally given upon this special occasion so it was inflicted by some particular emiment Tool of Satan 2. It will not be easie to conceive how this kind of Physick could be proper for this distemper but should rather imp the Apostles Wings for an higher flight of self exultation and occasion him to think that those Consolations in Christ in the Anticipations of Paradise were set to counterballance his afflictions for Christ if not God's rewarding his sufferings They guess most probably in mine Opinion that conceive this Thorn to have been some corporeal Disease whether the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or some Iliac Passion is not much material the buffeting that is beating about the ears or head favouring the first and the Thorn in the flesh the second That as Job was delivered for his Trial to Satan to inflict what Diseases he would upon his Body provided they were not mortal and as the Apostle in mercy to men's Souls and in order to their recovery from some fowl Lapses gave some over to Satan for the destruction of the Flesh that their Spirits might be saved that they reflecting upon the sad Effects of the Apostolical Rod might study to reconcile themselves to the Church 1 Cor. 5. 5. so the Lord in favour to St. Paul
Argument of the extremity wherewith Mithridates was opprest that he spared not so much as the Plowing Oxen but slew them to make Thongs of their Hides and strings for his warlike Engines of their entrails Appian Alex. de bellis Mithridat p. 229. But more plainly in Justin's Compendium of Trogus Pomp. l. 36. cap. in risum Minimus inter fratres Joseph fuit cujus excellens ingenium veriti fratres clam interceptum mercatoribus peregrinis vendiderunt à quibus deportatus in Aegyptum cùm Magicas artes ibi solerti ingenio percepisset brevi ipsi Regi percharus fuit Nam prodigiorum sagacissimus erat somniorum primus intelligentiam condidit nihilque divini juris humanique ei incognitum videbatur Adeò ut etiam sterilitatem agrorum ante multos annos providerit periissetque omnis Aegyptus fame nisi monitus ejus edicto Rex servari multos per annos fruges jussisset Tantaque experimenta ejus fuerunt ut non ab homine sed a Deo responsa dari viderentur Joseph was the youngest Brother whose excellent wit his brethren being jealous of intercepted him privily and sold him to forreign Merchants who carried him into Aegypt where having through his industrious wit learn'd the Magick Art in a short time he grew greatly in favour with the King for he was quick in finding out the meaning of Prodigies and the first that taught the interpretation of Dreams and seem'd to understand whatsoever appertain'd to the Divine or Humane Law So as he foresaw a Famine many years before it fell out and all Egypt had perish'd through Famine if the King admonish'd by Joseph had not commanded provision to be laid up for many years Yea such experiments did he give of his Wisdom as his Responds seemed to proceed not from man but God For this it was that he obtain'd while he lived the honour of being proclaimed by the Kings Command Abrech that is tender Father or as St. Jerom in his Hebraick Questions and the Vulgar Latine Translate it The Saviour of the World Gen. 41. 43. preferring that before that of Aquila which Aben Ezra favours and our English follows bow the knee And after his Death was worship'd by the Israelites in the Wilderness under the form of the Golden Calf they putting more confidence in him for relieving their wants in that barren Land than in their Fathers God who so often had spread a Table for them in the Wilderness Him also did Jeroboam worship at Dan and Bethel as the God of Plenty and for the honour of his Tribe Jeroboam being of the Tribe of Ephraim the Son of Joseph Of which beside the suffrage of some Rabbies mention'd by Vossius de origin idololat these Observations may be a Confirmation 1. The Image of the Aegyptian Ox sacred to Osiris had a bushel set upon its head saith Ruffinus Eccles. Hist. l. 2. cap. 23. to denote Josephs measuring out of Corn this reason is alledged by Suidas in Serapis why some conceiv'd that Idol to represent Joseph 2. Moses in his blessing that Tribe Deut. 33. 17. saith The firstling of a Bullock is the Beauty of his countenance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 manifestly expressing the Embleme which the Egyptians erected in his memory not that he approved their abusing of it by Religious Worship but only commends Joseph whom God had blest with that Wisdom as procured him that Testimony of civil respect for it was no more at first than a piece of Heraldry This Coat of Arms Moses calls the Firstling of a Bullock because of the greenness of Joseph's years when he was set over the Land of Aegypt being then but 30 years old exceeding young for the Gravity of his Counsel and deportment and therefore his Emblem was a Calf or Firstling 3. Though the bewilder'd Israelites erected but one Image yet their acclamation before it was These are thy Gods oh Israel which have brought thee out of the Land of Egypt Exod. 32. 8. VVhy Gods but to denote that Idol to have been of the Epicene Gender and to have represented both Apis and Osiris the Ox of Memphis and Heliopolis which saith Plutarch de Iside Osyride the Aegyptian Priests affirmed to be all one and that Isis was the Soul of Osyris And why Thy Gods which brought thee up out of the land of Aegypt but to exclude the Inderites Egyptian Gods whose Interest it was to keep them in Aegyptian Bondage and to imply it was some deified Israelite towit Joseph who at his Death had prophesied their Return and whose Reliques they brought with them out of Egypt to whom they imputed their deliverance and conduct § 6. The History of Moses is more plainly comprehended in the Fables of a third Osiris or Liber whom the Poets describe in the Indian or Arabick expedition of Bacchus for that this Osiris and Liber and Dionysius are all one Nonnus testifieth in his Dionysiacωn lib. 4. and that the ancient Greeks accounted all the Tract beyond the Mediterranean India is manifest from that of Ovid De arte amandi lib. 1. Andromedam Perseus nigris portarat ab Indis Perseus brought away Andromeda from the black Indians now Andromeda was brought away from Joppa a City of Phoenicia saith Pliny l. 5. cap. 13 31. and chap. 9. cap. 5. Belluae cui dicebatur exposita fuisse Andromeda ossa Romae apportata ex oppido Judaeae Joppe ostendit inter reliqua miracula in Aedilitate sua M. Scaurus M. Scaurus when he was Edile did amongst other rarities make show of the bones of that Sea-monster to which Andromeda was reported to have been expos'd having caused them to be brought from Joppa a City of Judaea Having premis'd these Tropological Notes let us compare the Stories The sacred History saith that Moses was exposed in an Ark upon the Water watched by his Sister and found by Pharaoh's Daughter The Prophane tells us of Liber's Mother and Nurses being with him at the Bank of Nile Orpheus in hymmis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 With thy Goddess-mother the venerable Isis wearing black with thy Maidennurses at the Egyptian River At Brasiae in Laconia they had an old Tradition that Bacchus as soon as he was born was put into an Ark and committed to the Water which after-ages to give repute to that City corrupted with the addition that the Ark was driven by Tides to their coast and Bacchus educated with them whence their City called formerly Oreatae took the name of Brasiae 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from a Verb signifying to be cast up with the tide Pausanias Laconici In certain Verses of Orpheus the Caldean Liber is stiled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Water-born and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which misseth Moses his Name but one Vowel It is true indeed he is elsewhere stiled unutterable Queen but that proceeded from the Grecians mistake expess'd by Alexander Polyhistor that the Jews receiv'd their Laws from a Woman named Mosω they
excluded themselves from the Protection of the best of Kings and cooped up themselves to be a prey to the worst of Tyrants for as ours then so the Jewish Matrons now spared neither their tender Limbs nor fine Cloaths nor richest Jewels but as they expended their Treasures in hiring Labourers so they themselves did not disdain to serve the Workmen by carrying Baskets of Rubbish till both Masons and Servitours were forc'd from their work by Balls of Fire issuing from the trembling and gaping Earth by which they that were not kill'd had their Garments or Bodies inured with the Sign of the Cross by which Marks of God's displeasure many of them were so far convinc'd that no other Religion was acceptable to God but the Christian as they with one voyce invocate the help of Christ and were by Baptism initiated in the Christian Faith The substance of this Story I have elsewhere alledged out of Ammianus Marcellinus one of Julian's Captains And Nazianzen affirms that when he wrote this Oration these Prints and Marks upon their Cloaths were still to be seen Is 't then I say imaginable in reason that ever since the disannulling of the Mosaical Service of Legal Sacrifices God has been no where worship'd in a way of his own institution Or is it possible to point out any People upon Earth save the Christian Church that worship him in that way which God himself foretold he would erect at the vacateing of the old § 4. The fourth and last instance I shall give of Prophecies touching meer Contingencies that have been so palpably fulfill'd as the Effect of the accomplishment is now existing is of those which foretold That after Israel had cast off their Messiah and their God cast off them and taken the Gentiles to be his People Those Gentiles as they came into Christ should cast a way all their former Idol-Gods so as never again to return to them Of which Tenour are those Texts Isa. 2. 18. 20 21. The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day and the Idols shall he utterly abolish and they shall go into the holes of the Rocks and into the Caves of the Earth for fear of the Lord and for the Glory of his Majesty when he ariseth terribly to shake the earth In that day shall a man cast his Idols of Silver and Gold which they made each one for himself to worship to the moles and to the batts This day is that when all Nations shall flow unto the Mountain of the Lords House c. ver 1. The same Prophecy is repeated Is. 31. 7. and the Effect of it dated when the Lord the Shepherd of Israel shall rise up against the multitude of Shepherds called forth against him the whole Crew of Idols erected by the Gentile world to affront the Majesty of Heaven and make no more of them than a Lyon doth of unarmed Shepherds who would scare him away with their voyce when he comes to take their Flock from them and when those Flocks shall be turned unto that God from whom the Children of Israel have deeply revolted In that day shall every man cast away his Idols c. And Isa. 45. and 46. Chapters When all the ends of the Earth shall look unto God when to him every Knee shall bow every Tongue shall swear c. Then Bel boweth down Nebo stoopeth their Idols were upon the Beasts your carriages were heavy laden they are a burden to the weary Beasts they stoop they bow down together they could not deliver the burden but themselves are gone into Captivity That is the Heathen Great Pontiffs and Philosophers shall not be able to maintain the Cause of those false Gods whom by office and inducement of State they are bound to support but shall fall down under the weight of that Vanity and Impiety the Gospel shall charge them with and throw off their load and themselves become Christs Captives so mighty were the Weapons of the Apostles Warfare to cast down those vain Imaginations that had exalted themselves against the knowledge of the true God and to bring into obedience to Christ the strongest holds that Satan by his Deputies held in the Heathen World And Zech. 13. 2. In that day when a Fountain should be open'd to those Inhabitants of Jerusalem to that House of David that should mourn every Family apart over him whom they had pierced which cannot be meant of the Jews after the Flesh for it was the Gentiles that pierced Christ it was the Roman Soldiers that platted the Crown of Thorns and set it upon Christs Head that Nailed his Hands and Feet to the Cross that peirced his Side with a Spear to which external peircing of Christs Body and not to that Sword which the unthankful Jew ran through his Soul the Evangelist applies this Text John 19. 37. The Spirit of Grace and Supplication is not promised to the breakers of his Heart but Bones the Gentiles Heart that broke his Bones shall be broken when the spirit convinceth them of that sin but the Jews generally lost under Judicial blindness in that day I say that the spiritual Judah shall repent and be baptized St. Jerom expounds this Fountain to be Christian Baptism that Laver of Regeneration It shall come to pass saith the Lord of Hosts that I will cut off the names of the Idols out of the Land c. and cause the unclean spirits to pass out of the Land Was ever any thing foretold with more plainness and perspicuity most of those Oracles and a great many more which for brevity sake I omit are as transparent as if they had been writ with a Sun-beam in this copious variety of expressions there is not one ambiguous Word not one dark Syllable a Child may run and read these Visions Would then such eminent Persons as their Prophets were in their several Generations have run the hazard of having their Memories traduc'd in after-ages by such plain speaking having no imaginable Secular Temptation to it but against it had they not been beyond all possibility of mistake assured of the Infallibility of that Spirit by which they were moved Now the same Degree of Assurance which they had à priori from the Cause we may have à posteriori from the Effect they could not by that more then Scientifical Vision of those things in the Divine Mind that essential Cognition that simple Contact and Feeling of God's Will Tactus quidam divinitatis notitiâ melior essentialis cognitio divinorum contactus quidam essentialis simplex Jamblicus de cognit divinorum be more certain that this would be than we may that it is come to pass by observing the Event For never were any Predictions more manifestly fulfill'd than these not one title of them is faln to the Earth There is not now nor has not been in any part of the World since Christian Religion was planted in it the least Relique of those numberless Pagan Gods it swarmed with before that
could any of those miraculous castigations be inflicted upon impious persons by those Gods who as they never gave any precepts of virtue or prohibitions of vice Vide Aug. de Civitat 2. 4. tit Quòd cultores Deorum nulla unquam a Diis suis praecepta probitatis acceperint in sacris eorum turpia quaeque celebraverint cap. 6. tit Deos Paganorum nunquam benè vivendi sanxisse doctrinam nec nobis nescio quos susurros paucissimorum auribus anhelatos jactent quibus vitae probitas castitásque discatur sed demonstrantur loca talibus aliquando conventiculis consecrata non ubi fugalia celebrarentur effusa omni licentiâ turpitudinum verè fugalia sed pudoris sed úbi populi audirent quid dii praeciperent de cohibendâ avaritiâ ambitione frangendâ luxuriâ refrenandâ ubi non discerent miseri quod dediscendum Persius increpat Satyra tertia dicatur in quibus locis haec docentium deorum solebant praecepta recitari sicut nos ostendimus ad hoc ecclesias institutas quaquà versum religio Christiana diffunditur That the Worshippers of false Gods did never receive any Precepts of virtue from their Gods who in their Sacred Rites had all manner of turpitude represented That the Gods of the Pagans never enacted the Doctrine of living well are the Themes of two whole Chapters Do not let them boast that something was whispered into the ears of some few teaching honesty and chastity but let them shew the places dedicated to such meetings not where the fugalia full of all licentious filthiness fugalia indeed for thence was all modesty exil'd but where people might hear what the Gods commanded touching the prohibiting of avarice violence ambition or where they did not learn what must be unlearn'd as the Satyrist checks them let them say in what places the Precepts of their Gods teaching them virtue were wont to be publish'd as we can shew Churches erected for this purpose wheresoever the Christian Religion is scattered As these Gods I say never either commanded Virtue or prohibited Vice and therefore could not in common equity punish mens transgressions before they gave out a law to the contrary so by their own Example men were more instigated to all manner of lewdness than in all reason they could expect they could have been deterr'd from by the severest menacies of humane Lawes qua fronte notatur actor si adoratur exactor How could they for shame punish those things in others which they so far delighted to have charged upon themselves as they compel'd the Romans to erect those Scenical Playes in the honour of the Gods wherein they are introduced as contaminated with the greatest and most barbarous Immanities imaginable threatning that the Pestilence that they were then afflicted with should not cease till those Playes were erected Diis exhiberi potentibus nisi fieret irascentibus eorum admonitione dedicerant Aug. de civ 2. 11. 8. and endeavouring by their own example to give divine authority to wickedness moliuntur suo exemplo velut divinam authoritatem praebere sceleribus de civit 2. 24. And taking more delight to see their own Rapes Incests Murders Sacrileges c. represented than to be honoured with Sacrifices as Labeo a person well seen in the Laws and Antiquities of the Romans attesteth Malos propitiari caedibus tristibus supplicationibus bonos autem obsequiis laetis atque jucundis qualia sunt ludi convivia lectisternia Dr. Hammond on Rom. 8. 20. not willingly but by him that had subjected them that is the Devil who being worshipt by the Heathens did by that means infuse into their worships all the villany in the world made all unnatural sin part of their devotions and so what they did they did not willingly of their own inclination but in obedience to this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Devil who had gotten such authority among them and kept them in this slavery of corruption doing it at his command In which kind of Celebrations of the honour of those Gods they esteemed select and best there was not one of them but was painted out in those colours as would put the most impudent man to the blush except Janus whom therefore saith St. Austin they painted sometimes with two sometimes with four faces either that they might conform him in the Monstrocity of his Body to the rest who were such Monsters in Soul or that seeing the rest had lost their fore-head and were grown past shame by doing things and glorying to have things imputed to them which they ought to have been ashamed of they might hereby signifie as by how much he was more innocent than they he might so much more boldly hold up his face amongst them and without shame reflect round upon himself Erubescenda perpetrando amiserant frontem quanto iste innocentior esset tanto frontesior appareret Aug. de civit 7. 4. Can we think then that such beastly Deities would be angry with men for imitating them or impute those Revelations of wrath from Heaven against notorious impiety and unrighteousness to them who as often as they were permitted did countenance and abet and encourage the World unto all Villany by whose Oracles Sacrifices and Presages as well as Examples such as were the Bane of Mankind were forwarded to the Ruine of their Countries the mixing of sacred and prophane and the committing more audacious outrages than otherwise their own most barbarous dispositions would have prompted them to Euseb. lib. 4. cap. tells us that of Carpocrates that it was his avowed Doctrine that there was no other way of escaping or appeasing the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 worldly Princes but by paying them their dues by all their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unnatural filthiness The Romans may thank the prosperous Omens their Gods gave Sylla for all his Cruelties to whom when he sacrificed they gave such encouragements by the Entrails as Posthumius the Aruspex pawn'd his Head as Livy reports that whatsoever he had in his mind the Gods would assist him to bring to effect when such were his intendments as had they regarded Virtue or the common good of Mankind they ought rather to have forsaken their Altars before which so impious a Wretch consulted or at least have rebuked him for entertaining such inhumane Councels St. Austin de civ 2. 24. Would such Deities punish vice as could not appear in giving Testimony against the Adultery of Paris the Perjury of Laomedon in their destroying of Troy but they must condemn themselves Aug. de civit 3. 3. tit non potuisse deos Paridis adulterio offendi quod inter ipsos traditur frequentatum Or if they had had a mind to express their displeasure against the greatest Debaucheries they might have found greater provocations to it among the Romans their darlings than in all the World beside whose Founders were Bastards Aeneas by Sacrilegious Incest of Venus and Romulus of Mars whose Judges in passing Sentence whose Juries in
hasts to the City to buy an Altar orders his men to dig a place where he might erect it they digging twenty foot deep find there an old Altar with this Inscription To Dis and Proserpina The Father returning from the City sacrificeth upon that Altar to those Infernal Deities and three nights together answering the number of his late sick but now recovered Children makes Funeral Banquets to the Gods with Songs and Dances With what strange obscenities those Games were celebrated is more obvious than that it needs be related It is sufficient to evince the Diabolicalness of those seeming Miracles and therefore only seeming that they manifestly tended towards the erecting of the Worship of infernal Fiends to the robbing the one Supreme God of that honour that 's his peculiar due and to the introducing of most barbarous Immoralities into the VVorld And therefore being Seals set to a Law directly thwarting that Law of God writ on the hearts of all men if they had more exactly counterfeited the Scal of Heaven than they did may easily be deprehended to be nothing else but feigned Miracles § 3. This should have at least awaken'd the VVorld to a more scrupulous inspection and prying into them and to have weighed them with those Selâ—s which were set to the contrary Doctrine In comparison with which they would have been found if not lighter than vanity yet at least wanting many grains weight of real Miracles that is productions by the God of Nature above the power of Nature and beside its ordinary Course I insert this last clause into the description of a Miracle to distinguish it from the Effects of ordinary Providence which though they proceed from infinite Power yet are not Miracles but issue from the natural order of Conversion Mutation and Mutability of Bodies The water saith St. Austin de Trinit lib. 3. is poured ordinarily upon the earth but when at the Prayer of Elias after so long a serenity when there was no appearance of a cloud it was made to fall this was the immediate effusion of Divine Power God ordinarily makes the voyce of his Thunder to be heard and sends out the Lightning from the bright Cloud but when on Mount Sinai after an unusual manner those thundering voyces were sent forth which did not make a confused din but articulately sounded forth the VVill of God this was miraculous who draws moisture by the root of the Vine to the Clusters and by degrees ripens the Grapes but God who giveth the increase while Man Plants and VVaters But when at our Lord's beck VVater was turn'd into VVine by an unusual celerity he must be a fool with a witness who denies that to be a witness of a divine Power in him who commanded and it was done Earth is the common Matter for the bringing forth and nourishing of all Plants and of all Bodies of Animals and who produceth these things from the Earth but he that said to the earth bring forth But when of a suddain he turn'd the same Matter out of Moses his Rod into a Serpent and back again out of that Serpent into a Rod immediately and in an instant he wrought a Miracle the things indeed were changable but this change of them was unusual Who but God cloaths the Shrubbs with Leaves and Blossoms But when the Rod of Aaron blossom'd the divinity did after a sort discourse with doubting Humanity Who is he that giveth life to every living thing that 's born but he that gave life to that Serpent of Aaron for an hour Who restored to Bodies when they were dead their Souls but he that animates flesh in the Mothers Womb which is born to die of the same common Matter which subsists in the Elements God produceth in time or ex tempore a Ram or a Dove who are of the same fleshy vigour at their coming in and going out of the World whether they were made in an instant or by degrees they are not of different constitutions only that which was produced ex tempore appeared after an unusual manner but when those Creatures are brought forth by a kind of continued Flux of sliding and remaining things passing out of secret into open light and out of light into obscurity in the usual road they are called natural which same Creatures when they are thrust in upon us for our admonition by an unusual mutability are called Wonders 2. And yet it is not every unusual Conflux of those primordial seminal Causes towards the production of a thing into being that makes a Miracle for as St. Austin observes upon the story of the Aegyptian Magicians Ex. 7. de Trin. 3. cap. 8. there are certain seminal Causes hid in corporeal things through all the Elements of the World which Daemons may pick out more easily than the cunningest Gold-finer can single parings of Gold out of heaps of Sand into one Mass and make up into strange Effects and of them produce new Species of things in a trice Omnis spiritus ales est momento ubique sunt volocitas divinitus creditus quia substantia ignoratur Terapol 22. But it is farther requisite as I have exprest in the first Clause of the Description that it be a production beside the Order of whole created Nature such as cannot be educ'd out of the active Powers implanted in the Elements nor their natural passive Powers whereby they are made receptible of any form by natural Motion Aquinas sum 1. quest 115. 2. Praeter virtutes activas naturales potentias passivas quae ordinantur ad hujusmodi virtutes activas But out of a bare obediential Possibility or Non-resistency of the Creature whereby it throws it self at Gods feet and becomes pliable in the hand of Omnipotencie to embrace any shape he is pleas'd to mould it into by an act of Power equivalent to that of creating and educing forms out of the first Abyss of inform Matter Alensis sum 2. quest 42. art 5. memb 5. ad opera miraculosa possibilitas tantùm secundùm obedientiam creaturae de quo Deus potest facere quod vult est possibilitas passiva Briefly and plainly proper Miracles exceed Nature in a threefold degree 1. As to the Substance of the Fact such are the Glorification of the Body the Retrogradation of the Sun c. 2. As to the Subject wherein it is wrought such are the restoring Life to the Dead giving Sight to the blind c. Nature can cause Life but not in a dead Body can give Sight but not to one that 's blind for there cannot be a natural recess from a total Privation to an Habit. 3. As to the Manner and Order of working such is the restoring of Lame the healing of Sick the multiplying of Bread Oyl c in an unusual course on a suddain without applying natural Causes c. To the first of these Degrees the Pagan VVorld never so much as pretended To the second none ever attain'd who pretended to act in