every Living Creature And likewise of Man God made him of the dust of the earth and breathed in his face the breath of Life factus est Homo in animam viventem that is and Man was made a Living Creature And after Noah came out of the Arke God saith hee will no more smite omnem animam viventem that is every Living Creature And Deut. 12. 23. Eate not the Bloud for the Bloud is the Soule that is the Life From which places if by Soule were meant a Substance Incorporeall with an existence separated from the Body it might as well be inferred of any other living Creature as of Man But that the Souls of the Faithfull are not of theirown Nature but by Gods speciall Grace to remaine in their Bodies from the Resurrection to all Eternity I have already I think sufficiently proved out of the Scriptures in the 38. Chapter And for the places of the New Testament where it is said that any man shall be cast Body and Soul into Hell fire it is no more than Body and Life that is to say they shall be cast alive into the perpetuall fire of Gehenna This window it is that gives entrance to the Dark Doctrine first of Eternall Torments and afterwards of Purgatory and consequently of the walking abroad especially in places Consecrated Solitary or Dark of the Ghosts of men deceased and thereby to the pretences of Exorcisme and Conjuration of Phantasmes as also of Invocation of men dead and to the Doctrine of Indulgences that is to say of exemption for a time or for ever from the fire of Purgatory wherein these Incorporeall Substances are pretended by burning to be cleansed and made fit for Heaven For men being generally possessed before the time of our Saviour by contagion of the Daemonology of the Greeks of an opinion that the Souls of men were substances distinct from their Bodies and therefore that when the Body was dead the Soulâ—… of every man whether godly or wicked must subsist somewhere by vertue of its own nature without acknowledging therein any supernaturall gift of Gods the Doctors of the Church doubted a long time what was the place which they were to abide in till they should be re-united to their Bodies in the Resurrection supposing for a while they lay under the Altars but afterward the Church of Rome found it more profitable to build for them this place of Purgatory which by some other Churches in this later age has been demolished Let us now consider what texts of Scripture seem most to confirm these three generall Errors I have here touched As for those which Cardinall Bellarmine hath alledged for the present Kingdome of God administred by the Pope than which there are none that make a better shew of proof I have already answered them and made it evident that the Kingdome of God instituted by Moses ended in the election of Saul After which time the Priest of his own authority never deposed any King That which the High Priest did to Athaliah was not done in his owne right but in the right of the young King Joash her Son But Solomon in his own right deposed the High Priest Abiathar and set up another in his place The most difficult place to answer of all those that can be brought to prove the Kingdome of God by Christ is already in this world is alledged not by Bellarmine nor any other of the Church of Rome but by Beza that will have it to begin from the Resurrection of Christ. But whether hee intend thereby to entitle the Presbytery to the Supreme Power Ecclesiasticall in the Common-wealth of Geneva and consequently to every Presbytery in every other Common-wealth or to Princes and other Civill Soveraigns I doe not know For the Presbytery hath challenged the power to Excomunicate their owne Kings and to bee the Supreme Moderators in Religion in the places where they have that form of Church government no lesse then the Pope callengeth it universally The words are Marke 9. 1. Verily I say unto you that there be some of them that stand here which shall not tast of death till they have seene the Kingdome of God come with power Which words if taken grammatically make it certaine that either some of those men that stood by Christ at that time are yet alive or else that the Kingdome of God must be now in this present world And then there is another place more difficult For when the Apostles after our Saviours Resurrection and immediately before his Ascension asked our Saviour saying Acts 1. 6. Wilt thou at this time restore again the Kingdome to Israel he answered them It is not for you to know the times and the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power But ye shall receive power by the comming of the Holy Ghost upon you and yee shall be my Martyrs witnesses both in Ierusalem in all Iudaea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the Earth Which is as much as to say My Kingdome is not yet come nor shall you foreknow when it shall come for it shall come as a theefe in the night But I will send you the Holy Ghost and by him you shall have power to beare witnesse to all the world by your preaching of my Resurrection and the workes I have done and the doctrine I have taught that they may beleeve in me and expect eternall life at my comming againe How does this agree with the comming of Christs Kingdome at the Resurrection And that which St. Paul saies 1 Thessal 1. 9 10. That they turned from Idols to serve the living and true God and to waite for his Sonne from Heaven Where to waite for his Sonne from Heaven is to wait for his comming to be King in power which were not necessary if his Kingdome had beene then present Againe if the Kingdome of God began as Beza on that place Mark 9. 1. would have it at the Resurrection what reason is there for Christians ever since the Resurrection to say in their prayers Let thy Kingdome Come It is therefore manifest that the words of St. Mark are not so to be interpreted There be some of them that stand here saith our Saviour that shall not tast of death till they have seen the Kingdome of God come in power If then this Kingdome were to come at the Resurrection of Christ why is it said some of them rather than all For they all lived till after Christ was risen But they that require an exact interpretation of this text let them interpret first the like words of our Saviour to St. Peter concerning St. John chap. 21. 22. If I will that he tarry till I come what is that to thee upon which was grounded a report that hee should not dye Neverthelesse the truth of that report was neither confirmed as well grounded nor refuted as ill grounded on those words but left as a saying not understood
if it be cast down Though the root thereof wax old and the stock thereof die in the ground yet when it senteth the water it will bud and bring forth boughes like a Plant. But man dyeth and wasteth away yea man giveth up the Ghost and where is he and verse 12. man lyeth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more But when is it that the heavens shall be no more St. Peter tells us that it is at the generall Resurrection For in his 2. Epistle 3. Chapter and 7 verse he saith that the Heavens and the Earth that are now are reserved unto fire against the day of Iudgment and perdition of ungodly men and verse 12. looking for and hasting to the comming of God wherein the Heavens shall be on fire and shall be dissolved and the Elements shall melt with fervent heat Neverthelesse we according to the promise look for new Heavens and a new Earth wherein dwelleth righteousnesse Therefore where Job saith man riseth not till the Heavens be no more it is all one as if he had said the Immortall Life and Soule and Life in the Scripture do usually signifie the same thing beginneth not in man till the Resurrection and day of Judgement and hath for cause not his specificall nature and generation but the Promise For St. Peter saies not Wee look for new heavens and a new earth from Nature but from Promise Lastly seeing it hath been already proved out of divers evident places of Scripture in the 35. chapter of this book that the Kingdom of God is a Civil Common-wealth where God himself is Soveraign by vertue first of the Old and since of the New Covenant wherein he reigneth by his Vicar or Lieutenant the same places do therefore also prove that after the comming again of our Saviour in his Majesty and glory to reign actually and Eternally the Kingdom of God is to be on Earth But because this doctrine though proved out of places of Scripture not few nor obscure will appear to most men a novelty I doe but propound it maintaining nothing in this or any other paradox of Religion but attending the end of that dispute of the sword concerning the Authority not yet amongst my Countrey-men decided by which all sorts of doctrine are to bee approved or rejected and whose commands both in speech and writing whatsoever be the opinions of private men must by all men that mean to be protected by their Laws be obeyed For the points of doctrine concerning the Kingdome God have so great influence on the Kingdome of Man as not to be determined but by them that under God have the Soveraign Power As the Kingdome of God and Eternall Life so also Gods Enemies and their Torments after Judgment appear by the Scripture to have their place on Earth The name of the place where all men remain till the Resurrection that were either buryed or swallowed up of the Earth is usually called in Scripture by words that signifie under ground which the Latines read generally Infernus and Inferi and the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say a place where men cannot see and containeth as well the Grave as any other deeper place But for the place of the damned after the Resurrection it is not determined neither in the Old nor New Testament by any note of situation but onely by the company as that it shall bee where such wicked men were as God in former times in extraordinary and miraculous manner had destroyed from off the face of the Earth As for example that they are in Inferno in Tartarus or in the bottomelesse pit because Corah Dathan and Abirom were swallowed up alive into the earth Not that the Writers of the Scripture would have us beleeve there could be in the globe of the Earth which is not only finite but also compared to the height of the Stars of no considerable magnitude a pit without a bottome that is a hole of infinite depth such as the Greeks in their Daemonologie that is to say in their doctrine concerning Daemons and after them the Romans called Tartarus of which Virgill sayes Bis patet in praeceps tantum tenditque sub umbras Quantus ad â—…thereum coeli suspectus Olympum for that is a thing the proportion of Earth to Heaven cannot bear but that wee should beleeve them there indefinitely where those men are on whom God inflicted that Exemplary punnishment Again hecause those mighty men of the Earth that lived in the time of Noah before the floud which the Greeks called Heroes and the Scripture Giants and both say were begotten by copulation of the children of God with the children of men were for their wicked life destroyed by the generall deluge the place of the Damned is therefore also sometimes marked out by the company of those deceased Giants as Proverbs 21. 16. The man that wandreth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the Giants and Job 26. 5. Behold the Giants groan under water and they that dwell with them Here the place of the Damned is under the water And Isaiah 14. 9. Hell is troubled how to meet thee that is the King of Babylon and will displace the Giants for thee and here again the place of the Damned if the sense be literall is to be under water Thirdly because the Cities of Sodom and Gomorrah by the extraordinary wrath of God were consumed for their wickednesse with Fire and Brimstone and together with them the countrey about made a stinking bituminous Lake the place of the Damned is sometimes expressed by Fire and a Fiery Lake as in the Apocalypse ch 21. 8. But the timorous incredulous and abominable and Murderers and Whoremongers and Sorcerers and Idolaters and all Lyars shall have their part in the Lake that burnetb with Fire and Brimstone which is the second Death So that it is manifest that Hell Fire which is here expressed by Metaphor from the reall Fire of Sodome signifieth not any certain kind or place of Torment but is to be taken indefinitely for Destruction as it is in the 20. Chapter at the 14. verse where it is said that Death and Hell were cast into the Lake of Fire that is to say were abolished and destroyed as if after the day of Judgment there shall be no more Dying nor no more going into Hell that is no more going to Hades from which word perhaps our word Hell is derived which is the same with no more Dying Fourthly from the Plague of Darknesse inflicted on the Egyptians of which it is written Exod. 10. 23. They saw not one another neither rose any man from his place for three days but all the Children of Israel had light in their dwellings the place of the wicked after Judgment is called Vtter Darknesse or as it is in the originall Darknesse without And so it is expressed Mat. 22. 13. where the King commandeth his
dangerously to all purposes by sharing with another Indirect Power as with a Direct one But to come now to his Arguments The first is this The Civill Power is subject to the Spirituall Therefore he that hath the Supreme Power Spirituall hath right to command Temporall Princes and dispose of their Temporalls in order to the Spirituall As for the dictinction of Temporall and Spirituall let us consider in what sense it may be said intelligibly that the Temporall or Civill Power is subject to the Spirituall There be but two ways that those words can be made sense For when wee say one Power is subject to another Power the meaning either is that he which hath the one is subject to him that hath the other or that the one Power is to the other as the means to the end â—…r wee cannot understand that one Power hath Power over another Power or that one Power can have Right or Command over another For Subjection Command Right and Power are accidents not of Powers but of Persons One Power may be subordinate to another as the art of a Sadler to the art of a Rider If then it bee granted that the Civill Government be ordained as a means to bring us to a Spirituall felicity yet it does not follow that if a King have the Civill Power and the Pope the Spirituall that therefore the King is bound to obey the Pope more then every Sadler is bound to obey every Rider Therefore as from Subordination of an Art cannot be inferred the Subjection of the Professor so from the Subordination of a Government cannot be inferred the Subjection of the Governor When therefore he saith the Civill Power is Subject to the Spirituall his meaning is that the Civill Soveraign is Subject to the Spirituall Soveraign And the Argument stands thus The Civil Soveraign is subject to the Spirituall Therefore the Spirituall Prince may command Temporall Princes Where the Conclusion is the same with the Antecedent he should have proved But to prove it he alledgeth first this reason Kings and Popes Clergy and Laity make but one Common-wealth that is to say but one Church And in all Bodies the Members depend one upon another But things Spirituall depend not of things Temporall Therefore Temporall depend on Spirituall And therefore are Subject to them In which Argumentation there be two grosse errours one is that all Christian Kings Popes Clergy and all other Christian men make but one Common-wealth For it is evident that France is one Common-wealth Spain another and Venice a third c. And these consist of Christians and therefore also are severall Bodies of Christians that is to say severall Churches And their severall Soveraigns Represent them whereby they are capable of commanding and obeying of doing and suffering as a naturall man which no Generall or Universall Church is till it have a Representant which it hath not on Earth for if it had there is no doubt but that all Christendome were one Common-wealth whose Soveraign were that Representant both in things Spirituall and Temporall And the Pope to make himself this Representant wanteth three things that our Saviour hath not given him to Command and to Iudge and to Punish otherwise than by Excommunication to run from those that will not Learn of him For though the Pope were Christs onely Vicar yet he cannot exercise his government till our Saviours second coming And then also it is not the Pope but St. Peter himselfe with the other Apostles that are to be Judges of the world The other errour in this his first Argument is that he sayes the Members of every Common-wealth as of a naturall Body depend one of another It is true they cohaere together but they depend onely on the Soveraign which is the Soul of the Common-wealth which failing the Common-wealth is dissolved into a Civill war no one man so much as cohaering to another for want of a common Dependance on a known Soveraign Just as the Members of the naturall Body dissolve into Earth for want of a Soul to hold them together Therefore there is nothing in this similitude from whence to inferre a dependance of the Laity on the Clergy or of the Temporall Officers on the Spirituall but of both on the Civill Soveraign which ought indeed to direct his Civill commands to the Salvation of Souls but is not therefore subject to any but God himselfe And thus you see the laboured fallacy of the first Argument to deceive such men as distinguish not between the Subordination of Actions in the way to the End and the Subjection of Persons one to another in the administration of the Means For to every End the Means are determined by Nature or by God himselfe supernaturally but the Power to make men use the Means is in every nation resigned by the Law of Nature which forbiddeth men to violate their Faith given to the Civill Soveraign His second Argument is this Every Common-wealth because it is supposed to â—…e perfect and sufficient in it self may command any other Common-wealth not subject to it and force it to change the administration of the Government nay depose the Prince and set another in his room if it cannot otherwise defend it selfe against the injuries he goes about to doe them much more may a Spirituâ—…ll Common-wealth command a Temporall one to change the administration of their Government and may depose Princes and institute others when they cannot otherwise defend the Spirituall Good That a Common-wealth to defend it selfe against injuries may lawfully doe all that he hath here said is very true and hath already in that which hath gone before been sufficiently demonstrated And if it were also true that there is now in this world a Spirituall Common-wealth distinct from a Civill Common-wealth then might the Prince thereof upon injury done him or upon want of caution that injury be not done him in time to come repaire and secure himself by Warre which is in summe deposing killing or subduing or doing any act of Hostility But by the same reason it would be no lesse lawfull for a Civill Soveraign upon the like injuries done or feared to make warre upon the Spirituall Soveraign which I beleeve is more than Cardinall Bellarmine would have inferred from his own proposition But Spirituall Common-wealth there is none in this world for it is the same thing with the Kingdome of Christ which he himselfe saith is not of this world but shall be in the next world at the Resurrection when they that have lived justly and beleeved that he was the Christ shall though they died Naturall bodies rise Spirituall bodies and then it is that our Saviour shall judge the world and conquer his Adversaries and make a Spirituall Common-wealth In the mean time seeing there are no men on earth whose bodies are Spirituall there can be no Spirituall Common-wealth amongst men that are yet in the flesh unlesse wee call Preachers that have Commission to Teach and
of them if there had appeared in their Rods nothing like a Serpent and in the Water enchanted nothing like Bloud nor like any thing else but Water but that they had faced down the King that they were Serpents that looked like Rods and that it was Bloud that seemed Water That had been both Enchantment and Lying And yet in this daily act of the Priest they doe the very same by turning the holy words into the manner of a Charme which produceth nothing new to the Sense but they face us down that it hath turned the Bread into a Man nay more into a God and require men to worship it as if it were our Saviour himself present God and Man and thereby to commit most grosse Idolatry For if it bee enough to excuse it of Idolatry to say it is no more Bread but God why should not the same excuse serve the Egyptians in case they had the faces to say the Leeks and Onyons they worshipped were not very Leeks and Onyons but a Divinity under their species or likenesse The words This is my Body are aequivalent to these This signifies or represents my Body and it is an ordinary figure of Speech but to take it literally is an abuse nor though so taken can it extend any further than to the Bread which Christ himself with his own hands Consecrated For hee never said that of what Bread soever any Priest whatsoever should say This is my Body or This is Christs Body the same should presently be transubstantiated Nor did the Church of Rome ever establish this Transubstantiation till the time of Innocent the third which was not above 500. years agoe when the Power of Popes was at the Highest and the Darknesse of the time grown so great as men discerned not the Bread that was given them to eat especially when it was stamped with the figure of Christ upon the Crosse as if they would have men beleeve it were Transubstantiated not onely into the Body of Christ but also into the Wood of his Crosse and that they did eat both together in the Sacrament The like Incantation in stead of Consecration is used also in the Sacrament of Baptisme Where the abuse of Gods name in each severall Person and in the whole Trinity with the sign of the Crosse at each name maketh up the Charm As first when they make the Holy water the Priest saith I Conjure thee thou Creature of Water in the name of God the Father Almighty and in the name of Iesus Christ his onely Son our Lord and in vertue of the Holy Ghost that thou become Conjured water to drive away all the Powers of the Enemy and to eradicate and supplant the Enemy c. And the same in the Benediction of the Salt to be mingled with it That thou become Conjured Salt that all Phantasmes and Knavery of the Devills fraud may fly and depart from the place wherein thou art sprinkled and every unclean Spirit bee Conjured by Him that shall come to judg the quicke and the dead The same in the Benediction of the Oyle That all the Power of the Enemy all the Host of the Devill all Assaults and Phantasmes of Satan may be driven away by this Creature of Oyle And for the Infant that is to be Baptized he is subject to many Charms First at the Church dore the Priest blows thrice in the Childs face and sayes Goe out of him unclean Spirit and give place to the Holy Ghost the Comforter As if all Children till blown on by the Priest were Daemoniaques Again before his entrance into the Church he saith as before I Conjure thee c. to goe out and depart from this Servant of God And again the same Exorcisme is repeated once more before he be Baptized These and some other Incantations are those that are used in stead of Benedictions and Consecrations in administration of the Sacraments of Baptisme and the Lords Supper wherein every thing that serveth to those holy uses except the unhallowed Spittle of the Priest hath some set form of Exorcisme Nor are the other rites as of Marriage of Extreme Unction of Visitation of the Sick of Consecrating Churches and Church-yards and the like exempt from Charms in as much as there is in them the use of Enchanted Oyle and Water with the abuse of the Crosse and of the holy word of David Asperges me Domine Hyssopo as things of efficacy to drive away Phantasmes and Imaginary Spirits Another generall Error is from the Misinterpretation of the words Eternall Life Everlasting Death and the Second Death For though we read plainly in holy Scripture that God created Adam in an estate of Living for Ever which was conditionall that is to say if he disobeyed not his Commandement which was not essentiall to Humane Nature but consequent to the vertue of the Tree of Life whereof hee had liberty to eat as long as hee had not sinned and that hee was thrust out of Paradise after he had sinned lest hee should eate thereof and live for ever and that Christs Passion is a Discharge of sin to all that beleeve on him and by consequence a restitution of Eternall Life to all the Faithfull and to them onely yet the Doctrine is now and hath been a long time far otherwise namely that every man hath Eternity of Life by Nature in as much as his Soul is Immortall So that the flaming Sword at the entrance of Paradise though it hinder a man from coming to the Tree of Life hinders him not from the Immortality which God took from him for his Sin nor makes him to need the sacrificing of Christ for the recovering of the same and consequently not onely the faithfull and righteous but also the wicked and the Heathen shall enjoy Eternall Life without any Death at all much lesse a Second and Everlasting Death To salve this it is said that by Second and Everlasting Death is meant a Second and Everlasting Life but in Torments a Figure never used but in this very Case All which Doctrine is founded onely on some of the obscurer places of the New Testament which neverthelesse the whole scope of the Scripture considered are cleer enough in a different sense and unnecessary to the Christian Faith For supposing that when a man dies there remaineth nothing of him but his carkasse cannot God that raised inanimated dust and clay into a living creature by his Word as easily raise a dead carkasse to life again and continue him alive for Ever or make him die again by another Word The Soule in Scripture signifieth alwaies either the Life or the Living Creature and the Body and Soule jointly the Body alive In the fift day of the Creation God said Let the waters produce Reptile animae viventis the creeping thing that hath in it a Living Soule the English translate it that hath Life And again God created Whales omnem animam viventem which in the English is
The same difficulty is also in the place of St. Marke And if it be lawfull to conjecture at their meaning by that which immediately followes both here and in St. Luke where the same is againe repeated it is not unprobable to say they have relation to the Transfiguration which is described in the verses immediately following where it is said that After six dayes Iesus taketh with him Peter and Iames and Iohn not all but some of his Disciples and leadeth them up into an high mountaine apart by themselves and was transfigured before them And his rayment became shining exceeding white as snow so as no Fuller on earth can white them And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses and they were talking with Iesus c. So that they saw Christ in Glory and Majestie as he is to come insomuch as They were sore afraid And thus the promise of our Saviour was accomplished by way of Vision For it was a Vision as may probably bee inferred out of St. Luke that reciteth the same story ch 9. ve 28. and saith that Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep But most certainly out of Matth. 17. 9. where the same is again related for our Saviour charged theÌ„ saying Tell no man the Vision untill the Son of man be Risen from the dead Howsoever it be yet there can from thence be taken no argument to prove that the Kingdome of God taketh beginning till the day of Judgement As for some other texts to prove the Popes Power over civill Soveraignes besides those of Bellarmine as that the two Swords that Christ and his Apostles had amongst them were the Spirituall and the Temporall Sword which they say St. Peter had given him by Christ And that of the two Luminaries the greater signifies the Pope and the lesser the King One might as well inferre out of the first verse of the Bible that by Heaven is meant the Pope and by Earth the King Which is not arguing from Scripture but a wanton insulting over Princes that came in fashion after the time the Popes were growne so secure of their greatnesse as to contemne all Christian Kings and Treading on the necks of Emperours to mocke both them and the Scripture in the words of the 91. Psalm Thou shalt Tread upon the Lion and the Adder the young Lion and the Dragon thou shalt Trample under thy feet As for the rites of Consecration though they depend for the most part upon the discretion and judgement of the governors of the Church and not upon the Scriptures yet those governors are obliged to such direction as the nature of the action it selfe requireth as that the ceremonies words and gestures be both decent and significant or at least conformable to the action When Moses consecrated the Tabernacle the Altar and the Vessels belonging to them Exod. 40. he anointed them with the Oyle which God had commanded to bee made for that purpose and they were holy There was nothing Exorcized to drive away Phantasmes The same Moses the civill Soveraigne of Israel when he consecrated Aaron the High Priest and his Sons did wash them with Water not Exorcized water put their Garments upon them and anointed them with Oyle and they were sanctified to minister unto the Lord in the Priests office which was a simple and decent cleansing and adorning them before hee presented them to God to be his servants When King Solomon the civill Soveraigne of Israel consecrated the Temple hee had built 2 Kings 8. he stood before all the â—…ongregation of Israel and having blessed them he gave thankes to God for putting into the heart of his father to build it and for giving to himselfe the grace to accomplish the same and then prayed unto him first to accept that House though it were not sutable to his infinite Greatnesse and to hear the prayers of his Servants that should pray therein or if they were absent towards it and lastly he offered a sacrifice of Peace-offering and the House was dedicated Here was no Procession the King stood still in his first place no Exorcised Water no Asperges me nor other impertinent application of words spoken upon another occasion but a decent and rationall speech and such as in making to God a present of his new built House was most conformable to the occasion We read not that St. John did Exorcize the Water of Jordan nor Philip the Water of the river wherein he baptized the Eunuch nor that any Pastor in the time of the Apostles did take his spittle and put it to the nose of the person to be Baptized and say In odorem suavitatis that is for a sweet savour unto the Lord wherein neither the Ceremony of Spittle for the uncleannesse nor the application of that Scripture for the levity can by any authority of man be justified To prove that the Soule separated from the Body liveth eternally not onely the Soules of the Elect by especiall grace and restauration of the Eternall Life which Adam lost by Sinne and our Saviour restored by the Sacrifice of himself to the Faithfull but also the Soules of Reprobates as a property naturally consequent to the essence of mankind without other grace of God but that which is universally given to all mankind there are divers places which at the first sight seem sufficiently to serve the turn but such as when I compare them with that which I have before Chapter 38. alledged out of the 14 of Iob seem to mee much more subject to a divers interpretation than the words of Iob. And first there are the words of Solomon Ecclesiastes 12. 7. Then shall the Dust return to Dust as it was and the Spirit shall return to God that gave it Which may bear well enough if there be no other text directly against it this interpretation that God onely knows but Man not what becomes of a mans spirit when he expireth and the same Solomon in the same Book Chap. 3. ver 20 21. delivereth the same sentence in the sense I have given it His words are All goe man and beast to the same place all are of the dust and all turn to dust again who knoweth that the spirit of Man goeth upward and that the spirit of the Beast goeth downward to the earth That is none knows but God Nor is it an unusuall phrase to say of things we understand not God Knows what and God Knows where That of Gen. 5. 24. Enoch walked with God and he was not for God took him which is expounded Heb. 13. 5. He was translated that he should not die and was not found because God had translated him For before his Translation he had this testimony 〈◊〉 he pleased God making as much for the Immortality of the Body as of the Soule proveth that this his translation was peculiar to them that please God not common to them with the wicked and depending on Grace not on Nature But
on the contrary what interpretation shall we give besides the literall sense of the words of Solomon Eccles. 3. 19. That which befalleth the Sons of Men befalleth Beasts even one thing befalleth them as the one dyeth so doth the other yea they have all one breath one spirit so that a Man hath no praeeminence above a Beast for all is vanity By the literall sense here is no Naturall Immortality of the Soule nor yet any repugnancy with the Life Eternall which the Elect shall enjoy by Grace And chap. 4. ver 3. Better is he that hath not yet been than both they that is than they that live or have lived which if the Soule of all them that have lived were Immortall were a hard saying for then to have an Immortall Soule were worse than to have no Soule at all And againe Chapt. 9. 5. The living know they shall die but the dead know not any thing that is Naturally and before the resurrection of the body Another place which seems to make for a Naturall Immortality of the Soule is that where our Saviour saith that Abraham Isaac and Jacob are living but this is spoken of the promise of God and of their certitude to rise again not of a Life then actuall and in the same sense that God said to Adam that on the day hee should eate of the forbidden fruit he should certainly die from that time forward he was a dead man by sentence but not by execution till almost a thousand years after So Abraham Isaac and Jacob were alive by promise then when Christ spake but are not actually till the Resurrection And the History of Dives and Lazarus make nothing against this if wee take it as it is for a Parable But there be other places of the New Testament where an Immortality seemeth to be directly attributed to the wicked For it is evident that they shall all rise to Judgement And it is said besides in many places that they shall goe into Everlasting fire Everlasting torments Everlasting punishments and that the worm of conscience never dyeth and all this is comprehended in the word Everlasting Death which is ordinarily interpreted Everlasting Life in torments And yet I can find no where that any man shall live in torments Everlastingly Also it seemeth hard to say that God who is the Father of Mercies that doth in Heaven and Earth all that hee will that hath the hearts of all men in his disposing that worketh in men both to doe and to will and without whose free gift a man hath neither inclination to good nor repentance of evill should punish mens transgressions without any end of time and with all the extremity of torture that men can imagine and more We are therefore to consider what the meaning is of Everlasting Fire and other the like phrases of Scripture I have shewed already that the Kingdome of God by Christ beginneth at the day of Judgment That in that day the Faithfull shall rise again with glorious and spirituall Bodies and bee his Subjects in that his Kingdome which shall be Eternall That they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage nor eate and drink as they did in their naturall bodies but live for ever in their individuall persons without the specificall eternity of generation And that the Reprobates also shall rise again to receive punishments for their sins As also that those of the Elect which shall be alive in their earthly bodies at that day shall have their bodies suddenly changed and made spirituall and Immortall But that the bodies of the Reprobate who make the Kingdome of Satan shall also be glorious or spirituall bodies or that they shall bee as the Angels of God neither eating nor drinking nor engendring or that their life shall be Eternall in their individuall persons as the life of every faithfull man is or as the life of Adam had been if hee had not sinned there is no place of Scripture to prove it save onely these places concerning Eternall Torments which may otherwise be interpreted From whence may be inferred that as the Elect after the Resurrection shall be restored to the estate wherein Adam was before he had sinned so the Reprobate shall be in the estate that Adam and his posterity were in after the sin committed saving that God promised a Redeemer to Adam and such of his seed as should trust in him and repent but not to them that should die in their sins as do the Reprobate These things considered the texts that mention Eternall Fire Eternall Torments or the Worm that never dieth contradict not the Doctrine of a Second and Everlasting Death in the proper and naturall sense of the word Death The Fire or Torments prepared for the wicked in Gehenna Tophet or in what place soever may continue for ever and there may never want wicked men to be tormented in them though not every nor any one Eternally For the wicked being left in the estate they were in after Adams sin may at the Resurrection live as they did marry and give in marriage and have grosse and corruptible bodies as all mankind now have and consequently may engender perpetually after the Resurrection as they did before For there is no place of Scripture to the contrary For St. Paul speaking of the Resurrection 1 Cor. 15. understandeth it onely of the Resurrection to Life Eternall and not the Resurrection to Punishment And of the first he saith that the Body is Sown in Corruption raised in Incorruption sown in Dishonour raised in Honour sown in Weaknesse raised in Power sown a Naturall body raised a Spirituall body There is no such thing can be said of the bodies of them that rise to Punishment So also our Saviour when hee speaketh of the Nature of Man after the Resurrection meaneth the Resurrection to Life Eternall not to Punishment The text is Luke 20. verses 34. 35 36. a fertile text The Children of this world marry and are given in marriage but they that shall be counted worthy to obtaine that world and the Resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage Neither can they die any more for they are equall to the Angells and are the Children of God being the Children of the Resurrection The Children of this world that are in the estate which Adam left them in shall marry and be given in marriage that is corrupt and generate successively which is an Immortality of the Kind but not of the Persons of men They are not worthy to be counted amongst them that shall obtain the next world and an absolute Resurrection from the dead but onely a short time as inmates of that world and to the end onely to receive condign punishment for their contumacy The Elect are the onely children of the Resurrection that is to say the sole heirs of Eternall Life they only can die no more it is they that are equall to the Angels and that are the children of God
and not the Reprobate To the Reprobate there remaineth after the Resurrection a Second and Eternall Death between which Resurrection and their Second and Eternall death is but a time of Punishment and Torment and to last by succession of sinners thereunto as long as the kind of Man by propagation shall endure which is Eternally Upon this Doctrine of the Naturall Eternity of separated Soules is founded as I said the Doctrine of Purgatory For supposing Eternall Life by Grace onely there is no Life but the Life of the Body and no Immortality till the Resurrection The texts for Purgatory alledged by Bellarmine out of the Canonicall Scripture of the old Testament are first the Fasting of David for Saul and Ionathan mentioned 2 Kings 1. 12. and againe 2 Sam. 3. 35. for the death of Abner This Fasting of David he saith was for the obtaining of something for them at Gods hands after their death because after he had Fasted to procure the recovery of his owne child assoone as he knew it was dead he called for meate Seeing then the Soule hath an existence separate from the Body and nothing can be obtained by mens Fasting for the Soules that are already either in Heaven or Hell it followeth that there be some Soules of dead men that are neither in Heaven nor in Hell and therefore they must bee in some third place which must be Purgatory And thus with hard straining hee has wrested those places to the proofe of a Purgatory whereas it is manifest that the ceremonies of Mourning and Fasting when they are used for the death of men whose life was not profitable to the Mourners they are used for honours sake to their persons and when t is done for the death of them by whose life the Mourners had benefit it proceeds from their particular dammage And so David honoured Saul and Abner with his Fasting and in the death of his owne child recomforted himselfe by receiving his ordinary food In the other places which he alledgeth out of the old Testamēt there is not so much as any shew or colour of proofe He brings in every text wherein there is the word Anger or Fire or Burning or Purging or Clensing in case any of the Fathers have but in a Sermon rhetorically applied it to the Doctrine of Purgatory already beleeved The first verse of Psalme 37. O Lord rebuke me not in thy wrath nor chasten me in thy hot displeasure What were this to Purgatory if Augustine had not applied the Wrath to the fire of Hell and the Displeasure to that of Purgatory And what is it to Purgatory that of Psalme 66. 12. Wee went through fire and water and thou broughtest us to a moist place and other the like texts with which the Doctors of those times entended to adorne or extend their Sermons or Commentaries haled to their purposes by force of wit But he alledgeth other places of the New Testament that are not so easie to be answered And first that of Matth. 12. 32. Whosoever speaketh a word against the Sonne of man it shall be forgiven him but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost it shall not bee forgiven him neither in this world nor in the world to come Where he will have Purgatory to be the World to come wherein some sinnes may be forgiven which in this World were not forgiven notwithstanding that it is manifest there are but three Worlds one from the Creation to the Flood which was destroyed by Water and is called in Scripture the Old World another from the Flood to the day of Judgement which is the Present World and shall bee destroyed by Fire and the third which shall bee from the day of Judgement forward everlasting which is called the World to come and in which it is agreed by all there shall be no Purgatory And therefore the World to come and Purgatory are inconsistent But what then can bee the meaning of those our Saviours words I confesse they are very hardly to bee reconciled with all the Doctrines now unanimously received Nor is it any shame to confesse the profoundnesse of the Scripture to bee too great to be sounded by the shortnesse of humane understanding Neverthelesse I may propound such things to the consideration of more learned Divines as the text it selfe suggesteth And first seeing to speake against the Holy Ghost as being the third Person of the Trinity is to speake against the Church in which the Holy Ghost resideth it seemeth the comparison is made betweene the Easinesse of our Saviour in bearing with offences done to him while hee himselfe taught the world that is when he was on earth and the Severity of the Pastors after him against those which should deny their authority which was from the Holy Ghost As if he should say You that deny my Power nay you that shall crucifie me shall be pardoned by mee as often as you turne unto mee by Repentance But if you deny the Power of them that teach you hereafter by vertue of the Holy Ghost they shall be inexorable and shall not forgive you but persecute you in this World and leave you without absolution though you turn to me unlesse you turn also to them to the punishments as much as lies in them of the World to come And so the words may be taken as a Prophecy or Praediction concerning the times as they have along been in the Christian Church Or if this be not the meaning for I am not peremptory in such difficult places perhaps there may be place left after the Resurrection for the Repentance of some sinners And there is also another place that seemeth to agree therewith For considering the words of St. Paul 1 Cor. 15. 29. What shall they doe which are Baptized for the dead if the dead rise not at all why also are they Baptized for the dead a man may probably inferre as some have done that in St. Pauls time there was a custome by receiving Baptisme for the dead as men that now beleeve are Sureties and Undertakers for the Faith of Infants that are not capable of beleeving to undertake for the persons of their deceased friends that they should be ready to obey and receive our Saviour for their King at his his coming again and then the forgivenesse of sins in the world to come has no need of a Purgatory But in both these interpretations there is so much of paradox that I trust not to them but propound them to those that are throughly versed in the Scripture to inquire if there be no clearer place that contradicts them Onely of thus much I see evident Scripture to perswade me that there is neither the word nor the thing of Purgatory neither in this nor any other text nor any thing that can prove a necessity of a place for the Soule without the Body neither for the Soule of Lazarus during the four days he was dead nor for the Soules of them which the
Attribute expresseth best his Nature which is Incomprehensible but what best expresseth our desire to honour Him To know now upon what grounds they say there be Essences Abstract or Substantiall Formes wee are to consider what those words do properly signifie The use of Words is to register to our selves and make manifest to others the Thoughts and Conceptions of our Minds Of which Words some are the names of the Things conceived as the names of all sorts of Bodies that work upon the Senses and leave an Impression in the Imagination Others are the names of the Imaginations themselves that is to say of those Ideas or mentall Images we have of all things wee see or remember And others againe are names of Names or of different sorts of Speech As Vniversall Plurall Singular are the names of Names and Definition Affirmation Negation True False Syllogisme Interrogation Promise Covenant are the names of certain Forms of Speech Others serve to shew the Consequence or Repugnance of one name to another as when one saith A Man is a Body hee intendeth that the name of Body is necessarily consequent to the name of Man as being but severall names of the same thing Man which Consequence is signified by coupling them together with the word Is. And as wee use the Verbe Is so the Latines use their Verbe Est and the Greeks their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 through all its Declinations Whether all other Nations of the world have in their severall languages a word that answereth to it or not I cannot tell but I am sure they have not need of it For the placing of two names in order may serve to signifie their Consequence if it were the custome for Custome is it that give words their force as well as the words Is or Bee or Are and the like And if it were so that there were a Language without any Verb answerable to Est or Is or Bee yet the men that used it would bee not a jot the lesse capable of Inferring Concluding and of all kind of Reasoning than were the Greeks and Latines But what then would become of these Terms of Entity Essence Essentiall â—…ssentiality that are derived from it and of many more that depend on these applyed as most commonly they are They are therefore no Names of Things but Signes by which wee make known that wee conceive the Consequence of one name or Attribute to another as when we say a Man is a living Body wee mean not that the Man is one thing the Living Body another and the Is or Beeing a third but that the Man and the Living Body is the same thing because the Consequence If hee bee a Man hee is a living Body is a true Consequence signified by that word Is. Therefore to bee a Body to Walke to bee Speaking to Live to See and the like Infinitives also Corpâ—…reity Walking Speaking Life Sight and the like that signifie just the same are the names of Nothing as I have elsewhere more amply expressed But to what purpose may some man say is such subtilty in a work of this nature where I pretend to nothing but what is necessary to the doctrine of Government and Obedience It is â—…o this purpose that men may no longer suffer themselves to be abused by them that by this doctrine of Separated Essences built on the Vain Philosophy of Aristotle would fright them from Obeying the Laws of their Countrey with empty names as men fright Birds from the Corn with an empty doublet a hat and a crooked stick For it is upon this ground that when a Man is dead and buried they say his Soule that is his Life can walk separated from his Body and is seen by night amongst the graves Upon the same ground they say that the Figure and Colour and Tast of a peece of Bread has a being there where they say there is no Bread And upon the same ground they say that Faith and Wisdome and other Vertues are sometimes powred into a man sometimes blown into him from Heaven as if the Vertuous and their Vertues could be asunder and a great many other things that serve to lessen the dependance of Subjects on the Soveraign Power of their Countrey For who will endeavour to obey the Laws if he expect Obedience to be Powred or Blown into him Or who will not obey a Priest that can make God rather than his Soveraign nay than God himselfe Or who that is in fear of Ghosts will not bear great respect to those that can make the Holy Water that drives them from him And this shall suffice for an example of the Errors which are brought into the Church from the Entities and Essences of Aristotle which it may be he knew to be false Philosophy but writ it as a thing consonant to and corroborative of their Religion and fearing the fate of Socrates Being once fallen into this Error of Separated Essences they are thereby necessarily involved in many other absurdities that follow it For seeing they will have these Forms to be reall they are obliged to assign them some place But because they hold them Incorporeall without all dimension of Quantity and all men know that Place is Dimension and not to be filled but by that which is Corporeall they are driven to uphold their credit with a distinction that they are not indeed any where Circumscriptivè but Definitivè Which Terms being meer Words and in this occasion insignificant passe onely in Latine that the vanity of them may bee concealed For the Circumscription of a thing is nothing else but the Determination or Defining of its Place and so both the Terms of the Distinction are the same And in particular of the Essence of a Man which they say is his Soule they affirm it to be All of it in his little Finger and All of it in every other Part how small soever of his Body and yet no more Soule in the Whole Body than in any one of those Parts Can any man think that God is served with such absurdities And yet all this is necessary to beleeve to those that will beleeve the Existence of an Incorporeall Soule Separated from the Body And when they come to give account how an Incorporeall Substance can be capable of Pain and be tormented in the fire of Hell or Purgatory they have nothing at all to answer but that it cannot be known how fire can burn Soules Again whereas Motion is change of Place and Incorporeall Substances are not capable of Place they are troubled to make it seem possible how a Soule can goe hence without the Body to Heaven Hell or Purgatory and how the Ghosts of men and I may adde of their clothes which they appear in can walk by night in Churches Church-yards and other places of Sepulture To which I know not what they can answer unlesse they will say they walke definitivè not circumscriptivè or spiritually not temporally for such egregious distinctions are
l. 36. for were r. where p. 166. l. 18. for benefit r. benefits p. 200. l. 48. dele also l. 49. for delivered r. deliver p. 203. l. 35. for other r. higher p. 204. l. 15. for and left r. if left l. 39. for write r. writt p. 206. l. 19. for of the r. over the. p. 234. l. 1. for but of r. but by mediation of l. 15. dele and. l. 38. for putting r. pulling p. 262. l. 19. for tisme r. Baptisme p. 268. l. 48. for that the r. that p. 271. l. 1. for observe r. obey l. 4. for contrary the r. contrary to the. p. 272. l. 36. for our Saviours of life r. of our Saviours life p. 275. l. 18. for if shall r. if he shall l. 30. for haven r. heaven l. 45. for of Church r. of the Church p. 276. l. 38. dele inter l. 46. dele are p. 285. l. 11. for he had r. he hath p. 287. l. 10. dele of p. 298. l. 36. for to ay r. to Lay. p. 361. l. 36. for him r. them THE INTRODUCTION NATURE the Art whereby God hath made and governes the World is by the Art of man as in many other things so in this also imitated that it can make an Artificial Animal For seeing life is but a motion of Limbs the begining whereof is in some principall part within why may we not say that all Automata Engines that move themselves by springs and wheeles as doth a watch have an artificiall life For what is the Heart but a Spring and the Nerves but so many Strâ—…gs and the â—…oynts but so many Wheeles giving motion to the whole Body such as was intended by the Artificer Art goes yet further imitating that Rationall and most excellent worke of Nature Maâ—… For by Art is created that great LEVIATHAN called a COMMON-WEALTH or STATE in latine CIVITAS which is but an Artificiall Man though of greater stature and strength than the Naturall for whose protection and defence it was intended and in which the Soveraignty is an Artificiall Soul as giving life and motion to the whole body The Magistrates and other Officers of Judicature and Execution artificiall Joynts Reward and Punishment by which fastned to the seate of the Soveraignty every joynt and member is moved to performe his duty are the Nerves that do the same in the Body Naturall The Wealth and Riches of all the particular members are the Strength Salus Populi the peoples safety its Businesse Counsellors by whom all things needfull for it to know are suggested unto it are the Memory Equity and Lawes an artificiall Reason and Will Concord Health Sedition Sicknesse and Civill war Death Lastly the Paâ—…ts and Covenants by which the parts of this Body Politique were at first made set together and united resemble that Fiat or the Let us make man pronounced by God in the Creation To describe the Nature of this Artificiall man I will consider First the Matter thereof and the Artificer both which is Man Secondly How and by what Covenants it is made what are the Rights and just Power or Authority of a Soveraigne and what it is that preserveth and dissolveth it Thirdly what is a Christian Common-wealth Lastly what is the Kingdome of Darkness Concerning the first there is a saying much usurped of late That Wisedome is acquired not by reading of Books but of Men. Consequently whereunto those persons that for the most part can give no other proof of being wise take great delight to shew what they think they have read in men by uncharitable censures of one another behind their backs But there is another saying not of late understood by which they might learn truly to read one another if they would take the pains and that is Nosâ—…e teipsum Read thy self which was not meant as it is now used to countenance either the barbarous state of men in power towards their inferiors or to encourage men of low degree to a sawcie behaviour towards their betters But to teach us that for the similitude of the thoughts and Passions of one man to the thoughts and Passions of another whosoever looketh into himself and considereth what he doth when he does think opine reason hope feare c and upon what grounds he shall thereby read and know what are the thoughts and Passions of all other men upon the like occasions I say the similitude of Passions which are the same in all men desire feare hope not the similitude of the objects of the Passions which are the things desired feared hoped c for these the constitution individuall and particular education do so vary and they are so easie to be kept from our knowledge that the characters of mans heart blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling lying counterfeiting and erroneous doctrines are legible onely to 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 hearts And though by mens actions wee do discover their designe sometimes yet to do it without comparing them with our own and distinguishing all circumstances by which the case may come to be altered is to decypher without a key and be for the most paâ—… deceived by too much trust or by too much diffidence as he that reads is himself a good or evil man But let one man read another by his actions never so perfectly it serves him onely with his acquaintance which are but few He that is to govern a whole Nation must read in himself not this or that particular man but Man-kind which though it be hard to do harder than to learn any Language or Science yet when I shall have set down my own reading orderly and perspicuously the pains left anoâ—…her will be onely to consider if he also find not the same in himself For this kind of Doctrine admitteth no other Demonstration OF MAN CHAP. I. Of SENSE COncerning the Thoughts of man I will consider them first Singly and afterwards in Trayne or dependance upon one another Singly they are every one a Representation or Apparence of some quality or other Accident of a body without us which is commonly called an Object Which Object worketh on the Eyes Eares and other parts of mans body and by diversity of working produceth diversity of Apparences The Originall of them all is that which we call SENSE For there is no conception in a mans mind which hath not at first totally or by parts been begotten upon the organs of Sense The rest are derived from that originall To know the naturall cause of Sense is not very necessary to the business now in hand and I have else-where written of the same at large Nevertheless to fill each part of my present method I will briefly deliver the same in this place The cause of Sense is the Externall Body or Object which presseth the organ proper to each Sense either immediatly as in the Tast and Touch or mediately as in Seeing Hearing and Smelling which pressure by the mediation of Nerves and other strings and membranes of the body continued
of naturall reason cannot choose but draw to it in all times a very considerable part of the people And the Spirituall though it stand in the darknesse of Schoole distinctions and hard words yet because the fear of Darknesse and Ghosts is greater than other fears cannot want a party sufficient to Trouble and sometimes to Destroy a Common-wealth And this is a Disease which not unfitly may be compared to the Epilepsie or Falling-sicknesse which the Jewes took to be one kind of possession by Spirits in the Body Naturall For as in this Disease there is an unnaturall spirit or wind in the head that obstructeth the roots of the Nerves and moving them violently taketh away the motion which naturally they should have from the power of the Soule in the Brain and thereby causeth violent and irregular motions which men call Convulsions in the parts insomuch as he that is seized therewith falleth down sometimes into the water and sometimes into the fire as a man deprived of his senses so also in the Body Politique when the Spirituall power moveth the Members of a Common-wealth by the terrour of punishments and hope of rewards which are the Nerves of it otherwise than by the Civill Power which is the Soule of the Common-wealth they ought to be moved and by strange and hard words suffocates their understanding it must needs thereby Distract the people and either Overwhelm the Common-wealth with Oppression or cast it into the Fire of a Civill warre Sometimes also in the meerly Civill government there be more than one Soule As when the Power of levying mony which is the Nutritive faculty has depended on a generall Assembly the Power of conduct and command which is the Motive faculty on one man and the Power of making Lawes which is the Rationall faculty on the accidentall consent not onely of those two but also of a third This endangereth the Common-wealth somtimes for want of consent to good Lawes but most often for want of such Nourishment as is necessary to Life and Motion For although few perceive that such government is not government but division of the Common-wealth into three Factions and call it mixt Monarchy yet the truth is that it is not one independent Common-wealth but three independent Factions nor one Representative Person but three In the Kingdome of God there may be three Persons independent without breach of unity in God that Reigneth but where men Reigne that be subject to diversity of opinions it cannot be so And therefore if the King bear the person of the People and the generall Assembly bear also the person of the People and another Assembly bear the person of a Part of the people they are not one Person nor one Soveraign but three Persons and three Soveraigns To what Disease in the Naturall Body of man I may exactly compare this irregularity of a Common-wealth I know not But I have seen a man that had another man growing out of his side with an head armes breast and stomach of his own If he had had another man growing out of his other side the comparison might then have been exact Hitherto I have named such Diseases of a Common-wealth as are of the greatest and most present danger There be other not so great which neverthelesse are not unfit to be observed As first the difficulty of raising Mony for the necessary uses of the Common-wealth especially in the approach of warre This difficulty ariseth from the opinion that every Subject hath of a Propriety in his lands and goods exclusive of the Soveraigns Right to the use of the same From whence it commeth to passe that the Soveraign Power which foreseeth the necessities and dangers of the Common-wealth finding the passage of mony to the publique Treasure obstructed by the tenacity of the people whereas it ought to extend it selfe to encounter and prevent such dangers in their beginnings contracteth it selfe as long as it can and when it cannot longer struggles with the people by stratagems of Law to obtain little summes which not sufficing he is fain at last violently to open the way for present supply or Perish and being put often to these extremities at last reduceth the people to their due temper or else the Common-wealth must perish Insomuch as we may compare this Distemper very aptly to an Ague wherein the fleshy parts being congealed or by venomous matter obstructed the Veins which by their naturall course empty themselves into the Heart are not as they ought to be supplyed from the Arteries whereby there succeedeth at first a cold contraction and trembling of the limbes and afterwards a hot and strong endeavour of the Heart to force a passage for the Bloud and before it can do that contenteth it selfe with the small refreshments of such things as coole for a time till if Nature be strong enough it break at last the contumacy of the parts obstructed and dissipateth the venome into sweat or if Nature be too weak the Patient dyeth Again there is sometimes in a Common-wealth a Disease which resembleth the Pleurisie and that is when the Treasure of the Common-wealth flowing out of its due course is gathered together in too much abundance in one or a few private men by Monopolies or by Farmes of the Publique Revenues in the same manner as the Blood in a Pleurisie getting into the Membrane of the breast breedeth there an Inflammation accompanied with a Fever and painfull stitches Also the Popularity of a potent Subject unlesse the Common-wealth have very good caution of his fidelity is a dangerous Disease because the people which should receive their motion from the Authority of the Soveraign by the flattery and by the reputation of an ambitious man are drawn away from their obedience to the Lawes to follow a man of whose vertues and designes they have no knowledge And this is commonly of more danger in a Popular Government than in a Monarchy because an Army is of so great force and multitude as it may easily be made believe they are the People By this means it was that Julius Caesar who was set up by the People against the Senate having won to himselfe the affections of his Army made himselfe Master both of Senate and People And this proceeding of popular and ambitious men is plain Rebellion and may be resembled to the effects of Witchcraft Another infirmity of a Common-wealth is the immoderate greatnesse of a Town when it is able to furnish out of its own Circuit the number and expence of a great Army As also the great number of Corporations which are as it were many lesser Common-wealths in the bowels of a greater like wormes in the entrayles of a naturall man To which may be added the Liberty of Disputing against absolute Power by pretenders to Politicall Prudence which though bred for the most part in the Lees of the people yet animated by False Doctrines are perpetually medling with
the Fundamentall Lawes to the molestation of the Common-wealth like the little Wormes which Physicians call Ascarides We may further adde the insatiable appetite or Bulimia of enlarging Dominion with the incurable Wounds thereby many times received from the enemy And the Wens of ununited conquests which are many times a burthen and with lesse danger lost than kept As also the Lethargy of Ease and Consumption of Riot and Vain Expence Lastly when in a warre forraign or intestine the enemies get a finall Victory so as the forces of the Common-wealth keeping the field no longer there is no farther protection of Subjects in their loyaly then is the Common-wealth DISSOLVED and every man at liberty to protect himselfe by such courses as his own discretion shall suggest unto him For the Soveraign is the publique Soule giving Life and Motion to the Common-wealth which expiring the Members are governed by it no more than the Carcasse of a man by his departed though Immortall Soule For though the Right of a Soveraign Monarch cannot be extinguished by the act of another yet the Obligation of the members may For he that wants protection may seek it any where and when he hath it is obliged without fraudulent pretence of having submitted himselfe out of fear to protect his Protection as long as he is able But when the Power of an Assembly is once suppressed the Right of the same perisheth utterly because the Assembly it selfe is extinct and consequently there is no possibility for the Soveraignty to re-enter CHAP. XXX Of the OFFICE of the Soveraign Representative THe OFFICE of the Soveraign be it a Monarch or an Assembly consisteth in the end for which he was trusted with the Soveraign Power namely the procuration of the safety of the people to which he is obliged by the Law of Nature and to render an account thereof to God the Author of that Law and to none but him But by Safety here is not meant a bare Preservation but also all other Contentments of life which every man by lawfull Industry without danger or hurt to the Common-wealth shall acquire to himselfe And this is intended should be done not by care applyed to Individualls further than their protection from injuries when they shall complain but by a generall Providence contained in publique Instruction both of Doctrine and Example and in the making and executing of good Lawes to which individuall persons may apply their own cases And because if the essentiall Rights of Soveraignty specified before in the eighteenth Chapter be taken away the Common-wealth is thereby dissolved and every man returneth into the condition and calamity of a warre with every other man which is the greatest evill that can happen in this life it is the Office of the Soveraign to maintain those Rights entire and consequently against his duty First to transferre to another or to lay from himselfe any of them For he that deserteth the Means deserteth the Ends and he deserteth the Means that being the Soveraign acknowledgeth himselfe subject to the Civill Lawes and renounceth the Power of Supreme Judicature or of making Warre or Peace by his own Authority or of Judging of the Necessities of the Common-wealth or of levying Mony and Souldiers when and as much as in his own conscience he shall judge necessary or of making Officers and Ministers both of Warre and Peace or of appointing Teachers and examining what Doctrines are conformable or contrary to the Defence Peace and Good of the people Secondly it is against his Duty to let the people be ignorant or mis-informed of the grounds and reasons of those his essentiall Rights because thereby men are easie to be seduced and drawn to resist him when the Common-wealth shall require their use and exercise And the grounds of these Rights have the rather need to be diligently and truly taught because they cannot be maintained by any Civill Law or terrour of legall punishment For a Civill Law that shall forbid Rebellion and such is all resistance to the essentiall Rights of Soveraignty is not as a Civill Law any obligation but by vertue onely of the Law of Nature that forbiddeth the violation of Faith which naturall obligation if men know not they cannot know the Right of any Law the Soveraign maketh And for the Punishment they take it but for an act of Hostility which when they think they have strength enough they will endeavour by acts of Hostility to avoyd As I have heard some say that Justice is but a word without substance and that whatsoever a man can by force or art acquire to himselfe not onely in the condition of warre but also in a Common-wealth is his own which I have already shewed to be false So there be also that maintain that there are no grounds nor Principles of Reason to sustain those essentiall Rights which make Soveraignty absolute For if there were they would have been found out in some place or other whereas we see there has not hitherto been any Common-wealth where those Rights have been acknowledged or challenged Wherein they argue as ill as if the Savage people of America should deny there were any grounds or Principles of Reason so to build a house as to last as long as the materials because they never yet saw any so well built Time and Industry produce every day new knowledge And as the art of well building is derived from Principles of Reason observed by industrious men that had long studied the nature of materials and the divers effects of figure and proportion long after mankind began though poorly to build So long time after men have begun to constitute Common-wealths imperfect and apt to relapse into disorder there may Principles of Reason be found out by industrious meditation to make their constitution excepting by externall violence everlasting And such are those which I have in this discourse set forth Which whether they come not into the fight of those that have Power to make use of them or be neglected by them or not concerneth my particular interest at this day very little But supposing that these of mine are not such Principles of Reason yet I am sure they are Principles from Authority of Scripture as I shall make it appear when I shall come to speak of the Kingdome of God administred by Moses over the Jewes his peculiar people by Covenant But they say again that though the Principles be right yet Common people are not of capacity enough to be made to understand them I should be glad that the Rich and Potent Subjects of a Kingdome or those that are accounted the most Learned were no lesse incapable than they But all men know that the obstructions to this kind of doctrine proceed not so much from the difficulty of the matter as from the interest of them that are to learn Potent men digest hardly any thing that setteth up a Power to bridle their affections
Christ all shall bee made alive then all men shall be made to live on Earth for else the comparison were not proper Hereunto seemeth to agree that of the Psalmist Psal. 133. 3. Vpon Zion God commanded the blessing even Life for evermore for Zion is in Jerusalem upon Earth as also that of S. Joh. Rev. 2. 7. To him that overcommeth I will give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God This was the tree of Adams Eternall life but his life was to have been on Earth The same seemeth to be confirmed again by St. Joh. Rev. 21. 2. where he saith I Iohn saw the Holy City New Ierusalem coming down from God out of heaven prepared as a Bride adorned for her husband and again v. 10. to the same effect As if he should say the new Jerusalem the Paradise of God at the coming again of Christ should come down to Gods people from Heaven and not they goe up to it from Earth And this differs nothing from that which the two men in white clothing that is the two Angels said to the Apostles that were looking upon Christ ascending Acts 1. 11. This same Iesus who is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come as you have seen him go up into Heaven Which soundeth as if they had said he should come down to govern them under his Father Eternally here and not take them up to govern them in Heaven and is conformable to the Restauration of the Kingdom of God instituted under Moses which was a Political government of the Jews on Earth Again that saying of our Saviour Mat. 22. 30. that in the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are as the Angels of God in heaven is a description of an Eternall Life resembling that which we lost in Adam in the point of Marriage For seeing Adam and Eve if they had not sinned had lived on Earth Eternally in their individuall persons it is manifest they should not continually have procreated their kind For if Immortals should have generated as Mankind doth now the Earth in a small time would not have been able to afford them place to stand on The Jews that asked our Saviour the question whose wife the woman that had married many brothers should be in the resurrection knew not what were the consequences of Life Eternall and therefore our Saviour puts them in mind of this consequence of Immortality that there shal be no Generation and consequētly no marriage no more then there is marriage or generatiō among the Angels The comparison between that Eternall life which Adam lost and our Saviour by his Victory over death hath recovered holdeth also in this that as Adam lost Eternall Life by his sin and yet lived after it for a time so the faithful Christian hath recovered Eternal Life by Christs passion though he die a natural death and remaine dead for a time namely till the Resurrection For as Death is reckoned from the Condemnation of Adam not from the Execution so Life is reckoned from the Absolution not from the Resurrection of them that are elected in Christ. That the place wherein men are to live Eternally after the Resurrection is the Heavens meaning by Heaven those parts of the world which are the most remote from Earth as where the stars are or above the stars in another Higher Heaven called Coelum Empyreum whereof there is no mention in Scripture nor ground in Reason is not easily to be drawn from any text that I can find By the Kingdome of Heaven is meant the Kingdom of the King that dwelleth in Heaven and his Kingdome was the people of Israel whom he ruled by the Prophets his Lieutenants first Moses and after him Eleazar and the Soveraign Priests till in the days of Samuel they rebelled and would have a mortall man for their King after the manner of other Nations And when our Saviour Christ by the preaching of his Ministers shall have perswaded the Jews to return and called the Gentiles to his obedience then shall there be a new Kingdom of Heaven because our King shall then be God whose throne is Heaven without any necessity evident in the Scripture that man shall ascend to his happinesse any higher than Gods footstool the Earth On the contrary we find written Ioh. 3. 13. that no man hath ascended into Heaven but he that came down from Heaven even the Son of man that is in Heaven Where I observe by the way that these words are not as those which go immediately before the words of our Saviour but of St. John himself for Christ was then not in Heaven but upon the Earth The like is said of David Acts 2. 34. where St. Peter to prove the Ascension of Christ using the words of the Psalmist Psal. 16. 10. Thou wilt not leave my soule in Hell not suffer thine Holy one to see corruption saith they were spoken not of David but of Christ and to prove it addeth this Reason For David is not ascended into Heaven But to this a man may easily answer and say that though their bodies were not to ascend till the generall day of Judgment yet their souls were in Heaven as soon as they were departed from their bodies which also seemeth to be confirmed by the words of our Saviour Luke 20. 37 38. who proving the Resurrection out of the words of Moses saith thus That the dead are raised even Moses shewed at the bush when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Iacob For he is not a God of the Dead but of the Living for they all live to him But if these words be to be understood only of the Immortality of the Soul they prove not at all that which our Saviour intended to prove which was the Resurrection of the Body that is to say the Immortality of the Man Therefore our Saviour meaneth that those Patriarchs were Immortall not by a property consequent to the essence and nature of mankind but by the will of God that was pleased of his mere grace to bestow Eternall life upon the faithfull And though at that time the Patriarchs and many other faithfull men were dead yet as it is in the text they lived to God that is they were written in the Book of Life with them that were absolved of their sinnes and ordained to Life eternall at the Resurrection That the Soul of man is in its own nature Eternall and a living Creature inpedendent on the body or that any meer man is Immortall otherwise than by the Resurrection in the last day except Enos and Elias is a doctrine nor apparent in Scripture The whole 14. Chapter of Iob which is the speech not of his friends but of himselfe is a complaint of this Mortality of Nature and yet no contradiction of the Immortality at the Resurrection There is hope of a tree saith hee verse 7.
other Pastors are bidden to esteem those Christians that disobey the Church that is that disobey the Christian Soveraigne as Heathen men and as Publicans Seeing then men challenge to the Pope no authority over Heathen Princes they ought to challenge none over those that are to bee esteemed as Heathen But from the Power to Teach onely hee inferreth also a Coercive Power in the Pope over Kings The Pastor saith he must give his flock convenient food Therefore the Pope may and ought to compell Kings to doe their duty Out of which it followeth that the Pope as Pastor of Christian men is King of Kings which all Christian Kings ought indeed either to Confesse or else they ought to take upon themselves the Supreme Pastorall Charge every one in his own Dominion His sixth and last Argument is from Examples To which I answer first that Examples prove nothing Secondly that the Examples he alledgeth make not so much as a probability of Right The fact of Jehoiada in Killing Athaliah 2 Kings 11. was either by the Authority of King Joash or it was a horrible Crime in the High Priest which ever after the election of King Saul was a mere Subject The fact of St. Ambrose in Excommunicating Theodosius the Emperour if it were true hee did so was a Capitall Crime And for the Popes Gregory 1. Greg. 2. Zachary and Leo 3. their Judgments are void as given in their own Cause and the Acts done by them conformably to this Doctrine are the greatest Crimes especially that of Zachary that are incident to Humane Nature And thus much of Power Ecclesiasticall wherein I had been more briefe forbearing to examine these Arguments of Bellarmine if they had been his as a Private man and not as the Champion of the Papacy against all other Christian Princes and States CHAP. XLIII Of what is NECESSARY for a Mans Reception into the Kingdome of Heaven THe most frequent praetext of Sedition and Civill Warre in Christian Common-wealths hath a long time proceeded from a difficulty not yet sufficiently resolved of obeying at once both God and Man then when their Commandements are one contrary to the other It is manifest enough that when a man receiveth two contrary Commands and knows that one of them is Gods he ought to obey that and not the other though it be the command even of his lawfull Soveraign whether a Monarch or or a soveraign Assembly or the command of his Father The difficulty therefore consisteth in this that men when they are commanded in the name of God know not in divers Cases whether the command be from God or whether he that commandeth doe but abuse Gods name for some private ends of his own For as there were in the Church of the Jews many false Prophets that sought reputation with the people by feigned Dreams and Visions so there have been in all times in the Church of Christ false Teachers that seek reputation with the people by phantasticall and false Doctrines and by such reputation as is the nature of Ambition to govern them for their private benefit But this difficulty of obeying both God and the Civill Soveraign on earth to those that can distinguish between what is Necessary and what is not Necessary for their Reception into the Kingdome of God is of no moment For if the command of the Civill Soveraign bee such as that it may be obeyed without the forfeiture of life Eternall not to obey it is unjust and the precept of the Apostle takes place Servants obey your Masters in all things and Children obey your Parents in all things and the precept of our Saviour The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses Chaire All therefore they shall say that observe and doe But if the command be such as cannot be obeyed without being damned to Eternall Death then it were madnesse to obey it and the Counsell of our Saviour takes place Mat. 10. 28. Fear not those that kill the body but cannot kill the soule All men therefore that would avoid both the punishments that are to be in this world inflicted for disobedience to their earthly Soveraign and those that shall be inflicted in the world to come for disobedience to God have need be taught to distinguish well between what is and what is not Necessary to Eternall Salvation All that is NECESSARY to Salvatian is contained in two Vertues Faith in Christ and Obedience to Laws The latter of these if it were perfect were enough to us But because wee are all guilty of disobedience to Gods Law not onely originally in Adam but also actually by our own transgressions there is required at our hands now not onely Obedience for the rest of our time but also a Remission of sins for the time past which Remission is the reward of our Faith in Christ. That nothing else is Necessarily required to Salvation is manifest from this that the Kingdome of Heaven is shut to none but to Sinners that is to say to the disobedient or transgressors of the Law nor to them in case they Repent and Beleeve all the Articles of Christian Faith Necessary to Salvation The Obedience required at our hands by God that accepteth in all our actions the Will for the Deed is a serious Endeavour to Obey him and is called also by all such names as signifie that Endeavour And therefore Obedience is sometimes called by the names of Charity and Love because they imply a Will to Obey and our Saviour himself maketh our Love to God and to one another a Fulfilling of the whole Law and sometimes by the name of Righteousnesse for Righteousnesse is but the will to give to every one his owne that is to say the will to obey the Laws and sometimes by the name of Repentance because to Repent implyeth a turning away from finne which is the same with the return of the will to Obedience Whosoever therefore unfeignedly desireth to fulfill the Commandements of God or repenteth him truely of his transgressions or that loveth God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself hath all the Obedience Necessary to his Reception into the Kingdom of God For if God should require perfect Innocence there could no flesh be saved But what Commandements are those that God hath given us Are all those Laws which were given to the Jews by the hand of Moses the Commandements of God If they bee why are not Christians taught to Obey them If they be not what others are so besides the Law of Nature For our Saviour Christ hath not given us new Laws but Counsell to observe those wee are subject to that is to say the Laws of Nature and the Laws of our severall Soveraigns Nor did he make any new Law to the Jews in his Sermon on the Mouut but onely expounded the Laws of Moses to which they were subject before The Laws of God therefore are none but the Laws of Nature whereof the principall is that we
God worshippeth with Divine Worship They that seek the distinction of Divine and Civill Worship not in the intention of the Worshipper but in the Words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 deceive themselves For whereas there be two sorts of Servants that sort which is of those that are absolutely in the power of their Masters as Slaves taken in war and their Issue whose bodies are not in their own power their lives depending on the Will of their Masters in such manner as to forfeit them upon the least disobedience and that are bought and sold as Beasts were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is properly Slaves and their Service 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The other which is of those that serve for hire or in hope of benefit from their Masters voluntarily are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Domestique Servants to whose service the Masters have no further right than is contained in the Covenants made betwixt them These two kinds of Servants have thus much common to them both that their labour is appointed them by another And the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the generall name of both signifying him that worketh for another whether as a Slave or a voluntary Servant So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth generally all Service but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the service of Bondmen onely and the condition of Slavery And both are used in Scripture to signifie our Service of God promiscuously 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because we are Gods Slaves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because wee Serve him and in all kinds of Service is contained not onely Obedience but also Worship that is such actions gestures and words as signifie Honor. An IMAGE in the most strict signification of the word is the Resemblance of some thing visible In which sense the Phantasticall Formes Apparitions or Seemings of visible Bodies to the Sight are onely Images such as are the Shew of a man or other thing in the Water by Reflexion or Refraction or of the Sun or Stars by Direct Vision in the Air which are nothing reall in the things seen nor in the place where they seem to bee nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object but changeable by the variation of the organs of Sight or by glasses and are present oftentimes in our Imagination and in our Dreams when the object is absent or changed into other colours and shapes as things that depend onely upon the Fancy And these are the Images which are originally and most properly called Ideas and IDOLS and derived from the language of the Graecians with whom the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifieth to See They are also called PHANTASMES which is in the same language Apparitions And from these Images it is that one of the faculties of mans Nature is called the Imagination And from hence it is manifest that there neither is nor can bee any Image made of a thing Invisible It is also evident that there can be no Image of a thing Infinite for all the Images and Phantasmes that are made by the Impression of things visible are figured but Figure is a quantity every way determined And therefore there can bee no Image of God nor of the Soâ—…le of Man nor of Spirits but onely of Bodies Visible that is Bodies that have light in themselves or are by such â—…nligtened And whereas a man can fancy Shapes he never saw making up a Figure out of the parts of divers creatures as the Poets make their Centaures Chimaeras and other Monsters never seen So can he also give Matter to those Shapes and make them in Wood Clay or Metall And these are also called Images not for the resemblance of any corporeall thing but for the resemblance of some Phantasticall Inhabitants of the Brain of the Maker But in these Idols as they are originally in the Brain and as they are painted carved moulded or moulten in matter there is a similitude of the one to the other for which the Materiall Body made by Art may be said to be the Image of the Phantasticall Idoll made by Nature But in a larger use of the word Image is contained also any Representation of one thing by another So an earthly Soveraign may be called the Image of God And an inferiour Magistrate the Image of an earthly Soveraign And many times in the Idolatry of the Gentiles there was little regard to the similitude of their Materiall Idol to the Idol in their fancy and yet it was called the Image of it For a Stone unhewn has been set up for Neptune and divers other shapes far different from the shapes they conceived of their Gods And at this day we see many Images of the Virgin Mary and other Saints unlike one another and without correspondence to any one mans Fancy and yet serve well enough for the purpose they were erected for which was no more but by the Names onely to represent the Persons mentioned in the History to which every man applyeth a Mentall Image of his owne making or none at all And thus an Image in the largest sense is either the Resemblance or the Representation of some thing Visible or both together as it happeneth for the most part But the name of Idoll is extended yet further in Scripture to signifie also the Sunne or a Starre or any other Creature visible or invisible when they are worshipped for Gods Having shewn what is Worship and what an Image I will now put them together and examine what that IDOLATRY is which is forbidden in the Second Commandement and other places of the Scripture To worship an Image is voluntarily to doe those externall acts which are signes of honoring either the matter of the Image which is Wood Stone Metall or some other visible creature or the Phantasme of the brain for the resemblance or representation whereof the matter was formed and figured or both together as one â—…nimate Body composed of the Matter and the Phantasme as of a Body and Soule To be uncovered before a man of Power and Authority or before the Throne of a Prince or in such other places as hee ordaineth to that purpose in his absence is to Worship that man or Prince with Civill Worship as being a signe not of honoring the stoole or place but the Person and is not Idolatry But if hee that doth it should suppose the Soule of the Prince to be in the Stool or should present a Petition to the Stool it were Divine Worship and Idolatry To pray to a King for such things as hee is able to doe for us though we prostrate our selves before him is but Civill Worship because we acknowledge no other power in him but humane But voluntarily to pray unto him for fair weather or for any thing which God onely can doe for us is Divine Worship and Idolatry On the other side if a King compell a man to it by
equally applicable to any difficulty whatsoever For the meaning of Eternity they will not have it to be an Endlesse Succession of Time for then they should not be able to render a reason how Gods Will and Praeordaining of things to come should not be before his Praescience of the same as the Efficient Cause before the Effect or Agent before the Action nor of many other their bold opinions concerning the Incomprehensible Nature of God But they will teach us that Eternity is the Standing still of the Present Time a Nunc-stans as the Schools call it which neither they nor any else understand no more than they would a Hic-stans for an Infinite greatnesse of Place And whereas men divide a Body in their thought by numbring parts of it and in numbring those parts number also the parts of the Place it filled it cannot be but in making many parts wee make also many places of those parts whereby there cannot bee conceived in the mind of any man more or fewer parts than there are places for yet they will have us beleeve that by the Almighty power of God one body may be at one and the same time in many places and many bodies at one and the same time in one place as if it were an acknowledgment of the Divine Power to say that which is is not or that which has been has not been And these are but a small part of the Incongruities they are forced to from their disputing Philosophically in stead of admiring and adoring of the Divine and Incomprehensible Nature whose Attributes cannot signifie what he is but ought to signifie our desire to honour him with the best Appellations we can think on But they that venture to reason of his Nature from these Attributes of Honour losing their understanding in the very first attempt fall from one Inconvenience into another without end and without number in the same manner as when a man ignorant of the Ceremonies of Court comming into the presence of a greater Person than he is used to speak to and stumbling at his entrance to save himselfe from falling le ts slip his Cloake to recover his Cloake le ts fall his Hat and with one disorder after another discovers his astonishment and rusticity Then for Physiques that is the knowledge of the subordinate and secundary causes of naturall events they render none at all but empty words If you desire to know why some kind of bodies sink naturally downwards toward the Earth and others goe naturally from it The Schools will tell you out of Aristotle that the bodies that sink downwards are Heavy and that this Heavinesse is it that causes them to descend But if you ask what they mean by Heavinesse they will define it to bee an endeavour to goe to the center of the Earth so that the cause why things sink downward is an Endeavour to be below which is as much as to say that bodies descend or ascend because they doe Or they will tell you the center of the Earth is the place of Rest and Conservation for Heavy things and therefore they endeavour to be there As if Stones and Metalls had a desire or could discern the place they would bee at as Man does or loved Rest as Man does not or that a peece of Glasse were lesse safe in the Window than falling into the Street If we would know why the same Body seems greater without adding to it one time than another they say when it seems lesse it is Condensed when greater Rarefied What is that Condensed and Rarefied Condensed is when there is in the very same Matter lesse Quantity than before and Rarefied when more As if there could be Matter that had not some determined Quantity when Quantity is nothing else but the Determination of Matter that is to say of Body by which we say one Body is greater or lesser than another by thus or thus much Or as if a Body were made without any Quantity at all and that afterwards more or lesse were put into it according as it is intended the Body should be more or lesse Dense For the cause of the Soule of Man they say Creatur Infundendo and Creando Infunditur that is It is Created by Powring it in and Powred in by Creation For the Cause of Sense an ubiquity of Species that is of the Shews or Apparitions of objects which when they be Apparitions to the Eye is Sight when to the Eare Hearing to the Palate Tast to the Nostrill Smelling and to the rest of the Body Feeling For cause of the Will to doe any particular action which is called Volitio they assign the Faculty that is to say the Capacity in generall that men have to will sometimes one thing sometimes another which is called Voluntas making the Power the cause of the Act As if one should assign for cause of the good or evill Acts of men their Ability to doe them And in many occasions they put for cause of Naturall events their own Ignorance but disguised in other words As when they say Fortune is the cause of things contingent that is of things whereof they know no cause And as when they attribute many Effects to occult qualities that is qualities not known to them and therefore also as they thinke to no Man else And to Sympathy Antipathy Antiperistasis Specificall Qualities and other like Termes which signifie neither the Agent that produceth them nor the Operation by which they are produced If such Metaphysiques and Physiques as this be not Vain Philosophy there was never any nor needed St. Paul to give us warning to avoid it And for their Morall and Civill Philosophy it hath the same or greater absurdities If a man doe an action of Injustice that is to say an action contrary to the Law God they say is the prime cause of the Law and also the prime cause of that and all other Actions but no cause at all of the Injustice which is the Inconformity of the Action to the Law This is Vain Philosophy A man might as well say that one man maketh both a streight line and a crooked and another maketh their Incongruity And such is the Philosophy of all men that resolve of their Conclusions before they know their Premises pretending to comprehend that which is Incomprehensible and of Attributes of Honour to make Attributes of Nature as this distinction was made to maintain the Doctrine of Free-Will that is of a Will of man not subject to the Will of God Aristotle and other Heathen Philosophers define Good and Evill by the Appetite of men and well enough as long as we consider them governed every one by his own Law For in the condition of men that have no other Law but their own Appetites there can be no generall Rule of Good and Evill Actions But in a Common-wealth this measure is false Not the Appetite of Private men but
Redemption Church the Lords house Ecclesia properly what Acts 19. 39. In what sense the Church is one Person Church defined A Christian Common-wealth and a Church all one The Soveraign Rights of Abraham Abraham had the sole power of ordering the Religion of his own people No pretence of Private Spirit against the Religion of Abraham Abraham sole Judge and Interpreter of what God spake The authority of Moses whereon grounded John 5. 31. Moses was under God Soveraign of the Jews all his own time though Aaron had the Priesthood All spirits were subordinate to the spirit of Moses After Moses the Soveraignty was in the High Priest Of the Soveraign power between the time of Joshua and of Saul Of the Rights of the Kings of Israel The practice of Supremacy in Religion was not in the time of the Kings according to the Right thereof 2 Chro. 19. 2. After the Captivity the Iews â—…ad no setled Common-wealth Three parts of the Office of Christ. His Office as a Redeemer Christs Kingdome not of this woâ—…ld The End of Christs comming was to renew the Covenant of the Kingdome of God and to perswade the Elect to imbrace it which was the second part of his Office The preaching of Christ not contrary to the then law of the Iews nor of Caesar. The third part of his Office was to be King under his Father of the Elect. Christs authority in the Kingdome of God subordinate to that of his Father One and the same God is the Person represented by Moses and by Christ. Of the Holy Spirit that fel on the Apostles Of the Trinity The Power Ecclesiasticall is but the power to teach An argument thereof the Power of Christ himself From the name of Regeneration From the compariâ—…on of it with Fishing Leaven Seed Fâ—…om the nature of 〈◊〉 2 Cor. 1. 24. From the Authority Christ hath lâ—…st to Civill Princes What Christians may do to avoid persecution Of Martyrs Argument from the points of their Commission To Preach And Teach To Baptize And to Forgive and Retain Sinnes Mat. 18. 15 16 17. Of Excommunication The use of Excommunication without Civill Power Acts 9. 2. Of no effect upon an Apostate But upon the faithfull only For what fault lyeth Excommunication Ofpersons liaable to Excommunication 1 Sam. 8. Of the Interpreter of the Scriptures before Civil Soveraigns became Christians Of the Power to make Scripture Law Of the Ten Commandements Of the Iudiciall and Leviticall Law The Second Law * 1 Kings 14 26. The Old Testament when made Canonicall The New Testament began to be Canonicall under Christian Soveraigns Of the Power of Councells to make the Scriptures Law John 3. 36. John 3. 18. Of the Right of constituting Ecclesiasticall Officers in the time of the Apostles Matthias made Apostle by the Congregation Paul and Barnabas made Apostles by the Church of Antioch What Offices in the Church are Magisteriall Ordination of Teachers Ministers of the Church what And how chosen Of Ecclesiasticall Revenue under the Law of Moses In our Saviours time and after Mat. 10. 9 10. * Acts 4. 34. The Ministers of the Gospel lived on the Benevolence of their flocks 1 Cor. 9. 13. That the Civill Soveraign being a Christian hath the Right of appointing Pastors The Pastor all Authority of Soveraigns only is de Jure Divino that of other Pastors is Jure Civili Christian Kings have Power to execute all manner of Pastoral function * John 4. 2. * 1 Cor. 1. 14 16. * 1 Câ—…r 1. 17. The Civill Soveraigne if a Christian is head of the Church in his own Dominions Cardinal Bellarmines Books De Summo Pontifice considered The first book The second Book The third Book * Dan. 9. 27. The fourth Book Texts for the Infaâ—…ibility of the Popes Judgement in points of Faith Texts for the same in point of Manners The question of Superiority between the Pope and other Bishops Of the Popes â—…mporall Power The difficulty of obeying God and Man both at once Is none to them that distinguish between what is and what is not Necessary to Salvation All that is Necessary to Salvation is contained in Faith and Obedience What Obedience is Necessary And to what Laws In the Faith of a Christian who is the Person beleeved The causes of Christian Faith Faith comes by Hearing The onely Necessary Article of Christian Faith Proved from the Scope of the Evangelists From the Sermons of the Apostles From the Easinesse of the Doctrine From formall â—…ud cleer texts From that it is the Foundation of all other Articles 2 Pet. 3. v. 7 10 12. In what sense other Articles may be called Nâ—…cessary That Faith and Obedience are both of them Necessary to Salvation What each of them contributes thereunto Obedience to God and to the Civill Soveraign not inconsistent whether Christian Or Infidel The Kingdom of Darknesse what * Eph. 6. 12. * Mat. 12. 26. * Mat. 9. 34. * Eph. 2. 2. * Joh. 16. 11. The Church not yet fully â—…reed of Darknesse Four Causes of Spirituall Darknesse Errors from misinterpreting the Scriptures concerning the Kingdome of God As that the Kingdome of God is the present Church And that the Pope is his Vicar generall And that the Pastors are the Clergy Error from mistaking Consecration for Conjuration Incantation in the Ceremonies of Baptisme And in Marriage in Visitation of the Sick and in Consecration of Places Errors from mistaking Eternall Life and Everlasting Death As the Doctrine of Purgatory and Exorcismes and Invocation of Saints The Texts alledged for the Doctrines aforementioned have been answered before Answer to the text on which Beza inferreth that the Kingdome of Christ began at the Resurrection Explication of the Place in Mark 9. 1. Abuse of some other texts in defence of the Power of the Pope The manner of Consecrations in the Scripture was without Exorcisms The immortality of mans Soule not proved by Scripture to be of Nature but of Grace Eternall Torments what Answer of the Texts alledged for Purgatory Places of the New Testament for Purgatory answered Baptisme for the Dead how understood The Originall of Daemonclogy What were the Daemons of the Ancients How that Doctrine was spread How far received by the Jews John 8. 52. Why our Saviour controlled it not The Scriptures doe not teach that Spirits are Incorporeall The Power of Casting out Devills not the same it was in the Primitive Church Another relique of Gentilisme Worshipping of Images left in the Church not brought into it Answer to certain seeming texts for Images What is Worship Distinction between Divine and Civill Worship An Image what Phantasmes Fictions Materiall Images Idolatry what Scandalous worship of Images Answer 〈◊〉 the Argument from the Cherubins and Brazen Serpent * Exod. 32. 2. * Gen. 31. 30. Painting of Fancies no Idolatry but abusing them to Religious Worship is How Idolatry was left in the Church Canonizing of Saints The name of Pontifex Procession of Images Wax Candles and Torches lighted What Philosophy is Prudence no part of Philosophy No false Doctrine is part of Philosophy No more is Revelation supernaturall Nor learning taken upon credit of Authors Of the Beginnings and Progresse of Philosophy Of the Schools of Philosophy amongst the Athenians Of the Schools of the Jews The Schoole of the Graecians unprofitable The Schools of the Jews unprofitable University what it is Errors brought into Religion from Aristotles Metaphysiques Errors concerning Abstract Essences Nunc-stans One Body in many places and many Bodies in one place at once Absurdities in naturall Philosopy as Gravity the Cause of Heavinesse Quantity put into Body already made Powring in of Soules Ubiquity of Apparition Will the Cause of Willing Ignorance an occult Cause One makes the things incongruent another the Incongruity Private Appetite the rule of Publique good And that lawfull Marriage is Unchastity And that all Government but Popular is Tyranny That not Men but Law governs Laws over the Conscience Private Interpretation of Law Language of Schoole-Divines Errors from Tradition Suppression of Reason He that receiveth Benefit by a Fact is presumed to be the Author That the â—…hurch Militant is the Kingdome of God was first taught by the Church of Rome And maintained also by the Presbytery Infallibility Subjection of Bishops Exemptions of the Clergy The names of Saceâ—…dotes and Sacriâ—… The Sacramentation of Marriage The single life of Priests Auricular Confession Canonization of Saints and declaring of Martyrs Transubstantiation Pennance Absolution Purgatory Indulgences Externall works Daemonology and Exorcism School-Divinity The Authors of spirituall Darknesse who they be Comparison of the Papacy with the Kingdome of Fayries
Romane Church pretend to be tormented now in Purgatory For God that could give a life to a peece of clay hath the same power to give life again to a dead man and renew his inanimate and rotten Carkasse into a glorious spirituall and immortall Body Another place is that of 1 Cor. 3. where it is said that they which built Stubble Hay c. on the true Foundation their work shall perish but they themselves shall be saved but as through Fire This Fire he will have to be the Fire of Purgatory The words as I have said before are an allusion to those of Zach. 13. 9. where he saith I will bring the third part through the Fire and refine them as Silver is refined and will try them as Gold is tryed Which is spoken of the comming of the Messiah in Power and Glory that is at the day of Judgment and Conflagration of the present world wherein the Elect shall not be consumed but be refined that is depose their erroneous Doctrines and Traditions and have them as it were sindged of and shall afterwards call upon the name of the true God In like manner the Apostle saith of them that holding this Foundation Iesus is the Christ shall build thereon some other Doctrines that be erroneous that they shall not be consumed in that fire which reneweth the world but shall passe through it to Salvation but so as to see and relinquish their former Errours The Builders are the Pastors the Foundation that Iesus is the Christ the Stubble and Hay False Consequences drawn from it through Ignorance or Frailty the Gold Silver and pretious Stones are their True Doctrines and their Refining or Purging the Relinquishing of their Errors In all which there is no colour at all for the burning of Incorporeall that is to say Impatible Souls A third place is that of 1 Cor. 15. before mentioned concerning Baptisme for the Dead out of which he concludeth first that Prayers for the Dead are not unprofitable and out of that that there is a Fire of Purgatory But neither of them rightly For of many interpretations of the word Baptisme he approveth this in the first place that by Baptisme is meant metaphorically a Baptisme of Penance and that men are in this sense Baptized when they Fast and Pray and give Almes And so Baptisme for the Dead and Prayer for the Dead is the same thing But this is a Metaphor of which there is no example neither in the Scripture nor in any other use of language and which is also discordant to the harmony and scope of the Scripture The word Baptisme is used Mar. 10. 38. Luk. 12. 50. for being Dipped in ones own bloud as Christ was upon the Cross and as most of the Apostles were for giving testimony of him But it is hard to say that Prayer Fasting and Almes have any similitude with Dipping The same is used also Mat. 3. 11. which seemeth to make somewhat for Purgatory for a Purging with Fire But it is evident the Fire and Purging here mentioned is the same whereof the Prophet Zachary speaketh chap. 13. v. 9. I will bring the third part through the Fire and will Refine them c. And St. Peter after him 1 Epist. 1. 7. That the triall of your Faith which is much more precious than of Gold that perisheth though it be tryed with Fire might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the Appearing of Iesus Christ And St. Paul 1 Cor. 3. 13. The Fire shall trie every mans work of what sort it is But St. Peter and St. Paul speak of the Fire that shall be at the Second Appearing of Christ and the Prophet Zachary of the Day of Judgment And therefore this place of S. Mat. may be interpreted of the same and then there will be no necessity of the Fire of Purgatory Another interpretation of Baptisme for the Dead is that which I have before mentioned which he preferreth to the second place of probability And thence also he inferreth the utility of Prayer for the Dead For if after the Resurrection such as have not heard of Christ or not beleeved in him may be received into Christs Kingdome it is not in vain after their death that their friends should pray for them till they should be risen But granting that God at the prayers of the faithfull may convert unto him some of those that have not heard Christ preached and consequently cannot have rejected Christ and that the charity of men in that point cannot be blamed yet this concludeth nothing for Purgatory because to rise from Death to Life is one thing to rise from Purgatory to Life is another as being a rising from Life to Life from a Life in torments to a Life in joy A fourth place is that of Mat. 5. 25. Agree with thine Adversary quickly whilest thou art in the way with him left at any time the Adversary deliver thee to the Iudge and the Iudge deliver thee to the Officer and thou be cast into prison Verily I say unto thee thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing In which Allegory the Offender is the Sinner both the Adversary and the Judge is God the Way is this Life the Prison is the Grave the Officer Death from which the sinner shall not rise again to life eternall but to a second Death till he have paid the utmost farthing or Christ pay it for him by his Passion which is a full Ransome for all manner of sin as well lesser sins as greater crimes both being made by the passion of Christ equally veniall The fift place is that of Matth. 5. 22. Whosoever is angry with his Brother without a cause shall be guilty in Iudgment And whosoever shall say to his Brother RACHA shall be guilty in the Councel But whosoever shall say Thou Foole shall be guilty to hell fire From which words he inferreth three sorts of Sins and three sorts of Punishments and that none of those sins but the last shall be punished with hell fire and consequently that after this life there is punishment of lesser sins in Purgatory Of which inference there is no colour in any interpretation that hath yet been given of them Shall there be a distinction after this life of Courts of Justice as there was amongst the Jews in our Saviours time to hear and determine divers sorts of Crimes as the Judges and the Councell Shall not all Judicature appertain to Christ and his Apostles To undersand therefore this text we are not to consider it solitarily but jointly with the words precedent and subsequent Our Saviour in this Chapter interpreteth the Law of Moses which the Jews thought was then fulfilled when they had not transgressed the Grammaticall sense thereof howsoever they had transgressed against the sentence or meaning of the Legislator Therefore whereas they thought the Sixth Commandement was not broken but by Killing a man nor the