stage but if thou strivest so as to get the victory in the way I have instructed thee I will translate thee to that Heavenly Kingdome most naturally and properly so called where thou shalt sit down and drink of the fruit of the Vine in the Kingdome of my Father As I after I had overcome ascended up to Heaven into those glorious mansions and there sate down at the right hand of God so him that overcometh the Temptations and Incumbrances the Pleasures and Enticements of this lower world will I cause to sit down with me in the Heavenly places at the last Day Which Monition is the more seasonable by how much more near the approach of that great Day is For I shall come visibly to Judgement in the very next Thunder to the Siege of Gog and Magog when I will transform your vile bodies into the similitude of my glorious body that ye may be fit companions for me in Heaven for ever Behold I shew you a mystery Ye shall not all sleep yet ye shall all be changed that mortality may be swallowed up of life This is a great and stupendious Promise but thou art to consider that it is spoken by him that is the Amen the true and faithfull witnesse and the beginning of the Creation of God and therefore both will and can carry on all his design to the very end Amen 13. He that hath an ear to hear let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the Churches From the Epiphonema coming here last as in all these four last Epistles one may haply raise this Objection as if this sense of the Promise immediately preceding it were not Politicall or Propheticall enough but merely Theologicall the Promise being to be performed in the other world and therefore not the proper object of Prophecy which concerns the affairs of the stage of this Earth And that this therefore is against our professed Rule But I answer that though the Promise of obtaining Heaven after this life upon the death of the body be merely a Theogicall Promise and of a thing more spiritual and invisible and not to be seen upon the face of this Earth yet this promise of obtaining Heaven at the Resurrection and general Day of Judgement it being the day of that great and visible Assizes wherein the Souls of the Saints shall appear in glorify'd bodies may well be ranged in the same order with the rest of the Promises immediately preceding the Epiphonemata of each Epistle and to be accomplished visibly in this life For the sense of the Promise in brief is this That as Christ after his Sufferings his Death and Passion ascended visibly into Heaven for Heaven is said to be the throne of God in the Scripture and so Heaven became also Christ's throne so those of Laodicea who upon the Mortification of their Lusts should attain to the state of life in the New birth should ascend visibly into Christ's throne that is into Heaven in the open view of them that should be left here on the Earth and in the inferiour Regions of the Air sentenced to that everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels This is a plain and obvious sense of this Promise and such as the placing of the Epiphonema requires and is in my judgement no mean Ratification of the true and Literal sense of that Article of our Faith touching the visible Resurrection and Glorification of our bodies and their ascension into the Heavenly Regions against such as would whiffle away all these Truths by resolving them into a mere moral Allegorie Thus consonant every way are the Interpretations of these Epistles both to themselves and to the Apostolick Truth CHAP. X. A Recapitulation of the main Evidences of the truth of this Mysticall or Propheticall Exposition of the Seven Epistles to the Seven Churches of Asia by way of Solution of Difficulties touching the said Epistles and their Circumstances otherwise hardly or not at all to be solved 1. AS in natural Hypotheses those are accounted truest that solve the Phaenomena of Nature the most naturally and easily and especially if such as are no otherwise solvible then upon the proposed Hypothesis so that meaning of Scripture I mean especially of any considerable portion thereof ought to be esteemed truest that can solve the most Difficulties that may be raised concerning the same or the Contexts precedent or subsequent thereto and if all still the more certain and if unsolvible otherwise there is still the more assurance of undeniable Demonstration Now how near this Mysticall or Propheticall Exposition of these Epistles approches to the clearnesse of this case I will leave to the Reader to judge after he has considered the Solutions of the Questions easily raised out of the Epistles themselves or the precedent Chapter and not easily answered nor at all satisfactorily at least most of them but upon the Hypothesis we have gone 2. As first If a man enquire why the Spirit of Prophecy after he has so expresly given notice that this Book of the Apocalypse is to shew unto his servants things that are to come and called it plainly a Book of Prophecies should start so unexpectedly from the Title and intended subject as to write no lesse then seven Epistles to certain Churches that have nothing considerable of Prophecy in them before he deliver any Prophecies properly so called but onely Promises and Comminations and that he should doe this with as great Pomp and as high a Preamble as he does when he begins so famous Prophecies as those of the seven Seals and the opened Book But according to our Hypothesis the Answer is easie viz. That though these seven Epistles to the seven Churches of Asia have a Literal sense yet they are also a Parable or Prophecy and of as high concern for both matter and extent of time they reaching from the beginning of the Church to the end of the world as the Prophecy of the Seals and opened Book and that they are ushered in with this great Pomp on purpose to give us notice thereof Secondly A man would be prone to enquire why the Spirit dictates Letters unto the Churches in Asia and not rather to the Churches in Europe Asia and Africk For certainly the Church had disspred it self into all these Quarters of the world by that time As if the Spirit of Truth were a respecter of persons For these are not the Letters of John but of the Holy Ghost But our Answer is ready at hand That for the significancy of the word Asia to comport also with the significancy of the names of the Seven Churches Asia alone was pitched upon But according to the Propheticall sense the true Catholick Church is writ unto under such distinct Conditions as she was to vary into unto the end of the world So that there is no Partiality nor Acception of Persons in this Thirdly If a man demand touching the order or precedency of these Seven
will not stick to kill his dearest Friend And finally This Idolatry is the more discernible and aggravable in the Invocation of Saints or Angels their Omnipercipiency being so extremely incredible if not impossible or ridiculous upon any ground as appears by the foregoing Conclusion 8. The sixteenth That the erecting of a symbolicall Presence with Incurvations thitherward the consecrating of Temples and Altars the making of Oblations the burning of Incense and the like were declared by the supreme God the God of Israel the manner of Worship due to him and therefore without his Concession this Mode of Worship is not to be given to any else as appears by Conclusion the ninth The seventeenth That the Pagans worshipping their Daemons though not as the supreme God by symbolicall Presences Temples Altars Sacrifices and the like become ipso facto Idolaters This is manifest from the ninth the fifteenth and the foregoing Conclusion The eighteenth Though it were admitted that there is communicated to Saints and Angels at least a terrestriall Omnipercipiency and that we had the knowledge of this Communication and so might speak to them in a civil way though unseen yet to invoke them in such Circumstances as at an Altar and in a Temple dedicated to them or at their symbolicall presence this were palpable Idolatry The truth is manifest agian from the ninth and sixteenth Conclusions 9. The nineteenth Incurvation in way of Religion towards any open or bare symbolicall Presence be it what-ever Figure or Image as to an Object is flat Idolatry in the Worship of Saints Angels and Daemons double Idolatry in the Worship of the true God single The reason hereof is resolved partly into the ninth and sixteenth Conclusions and partly into the nature of Application of Worship For externall Worship is not any otherwise to be conceived to be apply'd to a symbolicall Presence but by being directed towards it as towards an Object Wherefore if religious Incurvation be directed towards any Figure or Image as to an Object this Figure or Image necessarily receives this religious Incurvation and partakes with God if the Image be to him in it which is manifest Idolatry For the direction of our Intention here is but a Jesuiticall Juggle And therefore I will set down for Conclusion The twentieth That religious Incurvation toward a bare symbolicall Presence wittingly and conscienciously directed thither though with a mental reserve that they intend to use it merely as a Circumstance of Worship is notwithstanding real Idolatry The Reason is because an externall Action toward such a thing as is look'd upon as receptive of such an Action and has frequently received it if it be thus or thus directed will naturally conciliate the notions or respects of Action and Object betwixt these two whether we intend it or no. And it is as ridiculous to pretend that their motions or actions toward or about such a symbolicall Presence are not directed to it or conversant about it as an Object as it were for an Archer to contend that the Butt he shoots at is not the Scope or Object but a Circumstance of his Shooting and he that embraces his Friend that his Friend is not an Object but a Circumstance of his Embracing Which are Conceits quite out of the rode of all Logick See the last Conclusion of the foregoing Chapter 10. The twenty-first That the Adoration of any Object which we out of mistake conceive to be the true God made visible by hypostatical union therewith is manifest Idolatry The Reason is because Mistake does not excuse from Idolatry by Conclusion the fourth and the fifth And in this Supposition we misse of one part of the Object and the onely part that single is capable of Divine Honour For God to be disunited from this adored Object is in this case all one as to be absent For God is not considered nor intended in this act of Adoration but as united with this visible Object Which respect of Union if it fail that consideration or Intention also fails and the Worship falls upon a mere Creature In brief If out of mistake I salute some lively Statue or dead body for such or such a living man though this Man or his Soul were present and saw and heard the Salutation yet I play the fool and make my self ridiculous and am conceived not to have saluted him I would So if I doe Adoration to any Object suppose the Sun or some Magicall Statue for the true Deity visible whenas neither of them are so I play the Idolater and make my self impious and have missed of the due Object of my Adoration 11. The twenty-second That the Adoration of the Host upon the presumption that it is transubstantiated into the living Body of Christ is rank Idolatry This appears from the precedent Conclusion To which you may adde that the Romanists making Transubstantiation the true ground of their Adoration of the Host do themselves imply that without it were so their Adoration thereof would be Idolatry But that it is not so and that their Ground is false any body may be as well assured of as he can of any thing in the world and no lesse assured that they are Idolaters according to their own Supposition and Implication as Costerus indeed does most emphatically and expresly acknowledge it if they be mistaken in their Doctrine of Transubstantiation as we shall hear anon The twenty-third Conclusion That Adoration given to the Host by Protestants or any else that hold not Transubstantiation is manifest Idolatry The Reason is to be fetch'd from the nineteenth and twentieth Conclusions For it is religious Veneration towards a bare corporeall Symbol of the Divine Presence and to make the Action more aggravable towards a Symbol that has Imagery upon it and that of the person that is pretended to be worshipped thereby What can be Idolatry if this be not The twenty-fourth That the Invocation of Saints and Angels though attended with these considerations that both that Excellency we suppose in them and which makes them capable of that Honour is deemed finite and also be it as great as it will wholly derived to them from God yet it cannot for all this be excused from grosse Idolatry This is clear from the seventh eighth tenth and so on till the sixteenth Conclusion For though this Excellency be supposed finite yet if it be so great as that it is no-where to be found but in God it is his Right onely to have such Honours as suppose it And though it be deemed or conceived to be derived from God yet if it be not we give an uncommunicate Excellency to the Creature and rob God of his Right and Honour And lastly though this Excellency were communicated but yet the Communication of it unreveal'd to us it were a treasonable Presumption against the Majesty of God thus of our own head to divulge such things as may violate the peculiar Rights of his Godhead and for ought we know fill the
world with infinite bold examples of the grossest Idolatry and therefore all our practices upon this Principle must be Idolatrous and Treasonable against the Divine Majesty Consider well the fifteenth Conclusion 12. The last Conclusion That this pretended Consideration that where Christ is corporeally present Divine Worship is not done to his Humanity but to his Divinity and that therefore though the Bread should not prove transubstantiated the Divine Worship will still be done to the same Object as before viz. to the Divinity which is every-where and therefore in the Bread this will not excuse the Adoration of the Host from palpable Idolatry For first That part of the Pretense that supposes Divine Worship in no sense due or to be done to Christ's Humanity is false For it is no greater presumption to say that in some sense Divine Worship is communicable to the Humanity of Christ then that the Divinity is communicated thereto In such sense then as the Divinity is communicated to the Humanity which are one by hypostaticall Union may Divine Worship also be communicated to it namely as an acknowledgement that the Divinity with all its adorable Attributes is hypostatically vitally and transplendently residing in this Humanity of Christ. Which is a kinde of Divine Worship of Christ's Humanity and peculiar to him alone and due to him I mean to his Humanity though it be not God essentially but onely hypostatically united with him that is and does as naturally partake of Religious or Divine Worship in our Addresses to the Divinity as the body of an eminently-vertuous holy and wise man does of that great Reverence and civil Honour done to him for those Excellencies that are more immediately lodged in his Soul Which Honour indistinctly passes upon the whole man And as the very bodily Presence of this vertuous person receives the civil Honour so in an easie Analogy doth the Humanity of Christ receive the Divine but both as partial Objects of what they do receive and with signification of the state of the whole case viz. that they are united the one with the Divinity the other with so vertuous a Soul Hence they both become due Objects of that entire externall Worship done towards them to the one civil to the other Divine And therefore in the second place it is plain that there is not one and the same due Object capable of Religious Worship in either Supposition as well in that which supposes the Bread transubstantiated as in that which supposes it not transubstantiated For in the former it is the true and living corporeall Presence of Christ whose whole Suppositum is as has been declared capable of Divine Honour but in the latter there is onely at the most but his symbolicall Presence whose Adoration is Idolatry by the nineteenth twentieth and twenty-first Conclusions And lastly The pretending that though the Bread be not transubstantiated yet the Divinity of Christ is there and so we do not misse of the due Object of our Worship this is so laxe an Excuse that it will plead for the warrantableness of the Laplanders worshipping their Red cloth or the Americans the Devil let them but pretend they worship God in them For God is also in that Red cloth and in the Devil in that Notion that he is said to be every-where Nay there is not any Object in which the ancient Pagans were mistaken in taking the Divine Attributes to be lodged there whether Sun Heaven or any other Creature but by this Sophistry the worshipping thereof may be excused from Idolatry For the Divine Attributes as God himself are every-where To direct our Adoration toward a supernatural and unimitable Transplendency of the Divine Presence or to any visible corporeall nature that is hypostatically united with the Divinity most assuredly is not that sunk and sottish that dull and dotardly sin of Idolatry For as touching this latter to what-ever the Divinity is hypostatically united or to avoid all cavill about terms so specially and mysteriously communicated as it is to Christ the Right of Divine Worship is proportionably communicated therewith as I have already intimated And as for the former That through which the Divine Transplendency appears is no more the Object of our Adoration then the diaphanous Air is through which the visible Humanity of Christ appears when he is worshipped But the Eucharistick Bread being neither hypostatically united with the Divinity nor being the Medium through which any such supernatural Transplendency of the Divine Presence appears to us Adoration directed toward it cannot fail of being palpable Idolatry For the Eucharistick Bread will receive this Adoration as the Object thereof by Conclusion the nineteenth and twentieth But the Adoration or any Divine Worship of an Object in which the Divine Attributes do not personally reside in such a sense as is intimated in those words of S. John And the Word was made flesh but onely locally as I may so speak this according to sound reason and the sense of the Christian Church must be downright Idolatry CHAP. III. That the Romanists worship the Host with the highest kinde of Worship even that of Latria according to the Injunction of the Council of Trent and that it is most grosse Idolatry so to doe 1. AND having thus clearly and distinctly evinced and declared what is or ought to be held Idolatry amongst Christians let us at length take more full notice of some Particulars wherein according to these Determinations the Church of Rome will be manifestly found guilty of Idolatry and that according to the very Definitions of their own Council of Trent As first in the Point of the Adoration of the Host touching which the very words of the Council are Latriae cultum qui vero Deo debetur huic sanctissimo Sacramento in veneratione esse adhibendum and again Siquis dixerit in sancto Eucharistiae Sacramento Christum non esse cultu Latriae etiam externo adorandum soleâ—â—iter circumgestandum populâ—que proponendum publicè ut adoretur Anathema sit 2. This confident Injunction of grosse Idolatry as it is certainly such is built upon their confidence of the truth of their Doctrine of Transubstantiation For the Chapter of the Adoration of the Host succeeds that of Transubstantiation as a natural or rather necessary Inference therefrom Nullus itaque dubitandi locus relinquitur c. That is to say The Doctrine of Transubstantiation being established there is no Scruple left touching the Adoration of the Host or giving Divine Worship to the Sacrament or Christ as it is there called when it is carried about and exposed publickly in Prócessions to the view of the people But the Doctrine of Transubstantiation being false it must needs follow that the giving of Divine Worship to the Host is as grosse a piece of Idolatry as ever was committed by any of the Heathens For then their Divine Worship even their Cultus Latriae which is onely due to the onely-true God is exhibited to
a mere Creature and that a very sorry one too and therefore must be gross Idolatry by the twenty-first and twenty-second Conclusions of the second Chapter 3. But now that their Doctrine of Transubstantiation is false after we have proposed it in the very words of the Council we shall evince by undeniable Demonstration Per consecrationem Panis Vini conversionem fieri totius substantiae Panis in substantiam Corporis Christi totius substantiae Vini in substantiam Sanguinis ejus quae conversio convenienter propriè à Sancta Catholica Ecclesia Transubstantiatio est appellata And a little before cap. 3. Si quis negaverit in venerabili Sacramento Eucharistiae sub unaquaque specie sub singulis cujusque speciei partibus separatione factâ totum Christum contineri Anathema sit In which passages it is plainly affirmed that not onely the Bread is turned into the whole Body of Christ and the Wine into his Bloud but that each of them are turned into the whole Body of Christ and every part of each as often as division or separation is made is also turned into his whole Body Which is such a contradictious Figment that there is nothing so repugnant to the Faculties of the humane Soul 4. For thus the Body of Christ will be in God knows how many thousand places at once and how many thousand miles distant one from another Whenas Amphitruo rightly expostulates with his Servant Sosia and rates him for a Mad-man or Impostour that he would go about to make him believe that he was at home though but a little way off while yet he was with him at that distance from home Quo id malúm pacto potest fieri nunc utî tu hîc sis domi And a little before in the same Colloquie with his Servant Nemo unquam homo vidit saith he nec potest fieri tempore uno homo idem duobus locis ut simul sit Wherein Amphitruo speaks but according to the common sense and apprehension of all men even of the meanest Idiots 5. But now let us examine it according to the Principles of the learned and of all their Arts and Sciences Physicks Metaphysicks Mathematicks and Logick It is a Principle in Physicks That that internall space that a Body occupies at one time is equal to the Body that occupies it Now let us suppose one and the same body occupy two such internall places or spaces at once This Body is therefore equal to those two spaces which are double to one single space wherefore the body is double to that body in one single space and therefore one and the same body double to it self Which is an enormous Contradiction Again in Metaphysicks The Body of Christ is acknowledged one and that as much as any one body else in the world Now the Metaphysicall Notion of one is to be indivisum à se both quo ad partes and quo ad totum as well as divisum à quolibet alio But the Body of Christ being both in Heaven and without any continuance of that body here upon Earth also the whole body is divided from the whole body and therefore is entirely both unum and multa which is a perfect Contradiction 6. Thirdly in Mathematicks The Council saying that in the separation of the parts of the Species that which bears the outward show of Bread or Wine that from this Division there is a parting of the whole divided into so many entire Bodies of Christ the Body of Christ being always at the same time equal to it self it follows that a part of the Division is equal to the whole against that common Notion in Euclide That the Whole is bigger then the Part. And lastly in Logick it is a Maxime That the Parts agree indeed with the Whole but disagree one with another But in the abovesaid Division of the Host or Sacrament the Parts do so well agree that they are entirely the very same individuall thing And whereas any Division whether Logicall or Physicall is the Division of some one into many this is but the Division of one into one and itself like him that for brevity sake divided his Text into one Part. To all which you may adde that unlesse we will admit of two Sosia's and two Amphitruo's in that sense that the mirth is made with it in Plautus his Comedy neither the Bread nor the Wine can be transubstantiated into the intire Body of Christ. For this implies that the same thing is and is not at the same time For that individual thing that can be and is to be made of any thing is not Now the individual Body of Christ is to be made of the Wafer consecrated for it is turned into his individual Body But his individual Body was before this Consecration Wherefore it was and it was not at the same time Which is against that fundamental Principle in Logick and Metaphysicks That both parts of a Contradiction cannot be true or That the same thing cannot both be and not be at once Thus fully and intirely contradictious and repugnant to all Sense and Reason to all indubitable Principles of all Art and Science is this Figment of Transubstantiation and therefore most certainly false Reade the ten first Conclusions of the brief Discourse of the true Grounds of Faith added to the Divine Dialogues 7. And from Scripture it has not the least support All is Hoc est corpus meum when Christ held the Bread in his hand and after put part into his own mouth as well as distributed it to his Disciples in doing whereof he swallow'd his whole Body down his throat at once according to the Doctrine of this Council or at least might have done so if he would And so all the Body of Christ Flesh Bones Mouth Teeth Hair Head Heels Thighs Arms Shoulders Belly Back and all went through his Mouth into his Stomach and thus all were in his Stomach though all his Body intirely his Stomach excepted was still without it Which let any one judge whether it be more likely then that this saying of Christ This is my Body is to be understood figuratively the using the Verb substantive in this sense being not unusual in Scripture as in I am the Vine The seven lean Kine are the seven years of Famine and the like and more particularly since our Saviour speaking elsewhere of eating his flesh and drinking his bloud says plainly that the words he spake they were spirit and they were truth that is to say a spiritual or aenigmaticall truth not carnally and literally to be understood And for the trusting of the judgement of the Roman Church herein that makes it self so sacrosanct infallible the Pride Worldliness Policy multifarious Impostures of that Church so often and so shamelesly repeated and practised must needs make their Authority seem nothing in a Point that is so much for their own Interest especially set against the