IT is a principle, Contra negantem principia non est disputandum, Against him that de­nieth principles we must not dispute: But the sense and importment of it is not to be taken otherwise then by way of specifica­tion, That upon those principles which are denied we cannot make a convenient discourse. Argue with the Jews, who believe not in Christ, out of the Old Testa­ment, as our Saviour did, and S. Paul in the second verse of this chapter. The Cerdonians denie the Old Testa­ment; dispute with them out of the New: with ortho­dox Christians out of both: with Heathens out of nei­ther. Reason is the naturall and common ground of ar­gumentation: And those that either never read a verse in sacred page, or deride what they have read, unlesse they will in a peevish humour do that which for religion they will not do, namely denie themselves, must be ru­led by reason. Natures light is a subcelestiall starre in the orb of the microcosme, Gods voice, mans usher in the school of the world. As truths supernaturall are not contradicted by reason; so neither surely is that contra­dicted by Scripture what is dictated by right reason. The Doctour of the Gentiles therefore in his encounter [Page 2]with the Epicureans and Stoicks, as in the eighteenth verse of this chapter, leaving those principles of Scri­pture, the object whereof, Christ, was so strange unto them, yea and the point of Resurrection also, which na­turall knowledge hath some glimpse of, disputeth with them out of their own principles of rationall light: which being the fountain of naturall Divinitie, and this naturall Divinitie consisting partly in artificiall discourse, partly in inartificiall authority, the Apostle useth both; the first in the next verse, the second in this. Here he produceth a testimonie; in the next verse he maketh an inference out of it. Thus he confuteth the Heathens with an Heathen, the Philosophers with the Poet Aratus: ‘ [...].’

The words are little else then an indefinite Quotation and a rationall Aphorisme. An indefinite Quotation; As certain also of your own Poets have said. A rationall Apho­risme; We are also his offspring. In the quotation we may observe, 1. the Quoter, S. Paul; 2. the Quoted, certain of your own Poets; 3. the Form of quotation, as they have said. In the Quoted we have again, 1. the Manner of speech touching them, certain; 2. the Profession of them, Poets; 3. the Appropriation of them, your own Poets: As certain also of your own Poets. Certain; there is the manner of speech concerning the quoted: And in this we have subincluded three considerations. First it sound­eth plurality: certain; not one onely. Secondly, it im­porteth restriction: certain; not all: certain, not many. Thirdly, it representeth a kind of disrespectivenesse, an overly speaking, not so much as honouring them with their naming: certain of your own Poets. This is the di­vision of the first part of the text, the indefinite Quotati­on.

Concerning the second part, the rationall Aphorisme, we shall first propound an Exposition, and then raise three Propositions. An exposition first, of the HIS in the text, who this HE is whose offspring we are: se­condly, of the particles FOR and ALSO, which seem to be of no use, since the sense of the Aphorisme is entire without them. The propositions do issue out of the se­verall respects, wherein we may be said to be his off­spring; his, that is Gods, as we shall hereafter declare. The three respects make the three propositions: We are Gods offspring in respect of our bodies; We are Gods offspring in respect of our souls; We are Gods offspring in respect of both together.

First now of the first particular of the first part of the text, the Quoter, S. Paul. I have formerly spoken of him upon another text: but he deserveth second and third thoughts. Surely never can be said enough of so devout, so seraphicall, so industrious, so eloquent, so learned an Apostle. Learned, I say, and eloquent: these qualities are considerable in our present purpose. As Moses, the promulger of the Law unto the Jews, was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians; so S. Paul, the Preacher of the Gospel unto the Gentiles, was learn­ed in all the learning of the Heathens. Neither could he well otherwise confute them. As one saith somewhat quaintly of Logick, that we cannot prove it to be unne­cessary, but by it; semblably, neither could the Gentiles be refuted in their idolatry, but by the knowledge of them, and the use of their knowledge. It is very remark­able, what is said of Apollos in the next chapter and the 24 verse, that he was [...], and [...], an eloquent man, and potent in the Scriptures, as we reade it. [Page 4]And an effect and successe proportionable to this his abi­litie, we have in the last verse; he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publickly, shewing by the Scriptures that Je­sus was the Christ. How did he [...], mighti­ly confute them, but by his potencie in the Scriptures? how was he potent in the Scriptures, but in that he was [...], which in the notion of the term may import two things, skill in the words, that he could ex­pound well; and facultie of speech, that he could ex­presse well his exposition. Matter and Form do all in nature; matter and form do all in art: our Apostle was furnished with them both, and abundantly; so that he who was to teach the Gentiles Christ, might have taught them humane knowledge, might have taught them also Rhetorick. Scholarship we see is not out of date, nei­ther in the times of the Law; for Moses had it: nor in the times of the Gospel; for S. Paul expresseth it here. Though in respect of the glorious and fun-like light of the holy Scriptures it be but as straminea candela, as one saith, a rush-candle, a mean light, a small light, and soon out; yet some light it giveth. S. Paul useth the mention of the Poets. And thus briefly we passe from the Quo­ter to the Quoted.

And in the quoted we have first the manner of speech concerning them, certain: And in the manner we obser­ved three branches of discourse. First, as it soundeth plurality: certain, not one onely. [...]: Ber­nardus non videt omnia. Two are better then one, saith the Preacher. Multitude of witnesses maketh an evidence more probable. Alas, Master, what shall we do, saith Eli­sha's servant, when the host of the Syrians environed the city. Elisha soon resolveth the question; Fear not: for [Page 5]those that be with us are more then those that be with them, 2. Kings vi. 15, 16. Exemplatrahunt, Many draw much. It was a very strange speech of him that said, Malo errare cum Origene quàm cum aliis vera sentire: Extraordinary partiality, to hold with one against many, with one er­ring against many having truth on their side. Plato speaketh well, [...]. So truth is truth, say it you or say it you not, be we more or be we fewer that affirm it: And the reason is, Bëcause truth is fundamentally in the thing, not in the words. Never­thelesse an assertion confirmed by many voices sooner ta­keth off suspension of consent, sooner perswadeth the belief of it. Multiplication of testimonies doth not in­crease the truth, yet it increaseth assent. The Church of Rome understandeth the virtue of this plurality too well. It is none of the least of her flourishes, wherein she so bravingly vaunteth, that she hath ever had a world of au­thoritie for her religion, multitudes of Professours; and that little petty England thrust up into a corner of the world, enterteineth a religion which now hath not so great a number of followers, one century ago and a little more had scarce enough to conserve the species: Seculis omnino quindecim non oppidum, non villam, non domum ul­lam reperiunt suâ doctrinâ imbutam. But we shall have a restriction for Campian by and by. Before we leave this point of plurality, it is not unworthy of some disquisiti­on, why our Doctour intimating more suffragants then one, yet produceth the testimony onely of Aratus: There is none here that bringeth glory to God but this Aratus. I can scarce imagine, I dare not pronounce, but that our Apostle knew there were more of the Poets of the same mind. He could have produced a long list of [Page 6]those authours, all agreeing in the same position and sentence: as Homers, — [...]. and Hesiods authoritie,

Another also calleth God [...], the best Artist, either in generall, in respect of the frame of the world; or specially, of mans body. So Hymno, cui titulus, [...]. Orpheus,

as if he would make confession of his faith, ‘O glori­ous and immortall Jupiter, this testimony and expiatory supplication we present unto thee.’

O King, by thy wisdome were all things easily produced; the Earth the sacred mother, and the high-topped mountains; the sea, and whatsoever is comprehended under heaven. Callimachus,— [...]; ‘ [...].’ Who shall declare the works of Jupiter? But I will adde no more, lest I should seem to offend against S. Pauls example, who balked a number of authours whom he could have cited. Sanctius, an Expositour upon my text, is of opinion that he had collected a syllabus, a roll, a pandect as it were of all the sentences which the Hea­thens had spoke concerning the immensitie and power and works of God. Why therefore doth he use but one of their authorities? If we may make a conjectu­rall descant where we cannot find a certain demon­stration, happily, first he concealed the testimonies of the [Page 7]rest out of humble modesty. The Teacher of the Gentiles had learning enough to boast of, and reading to glory in, and eloquence to triumph in: and he confes­seth of himself, I have tongues more then ye all, 1. Corinth. xiv. 18. and yet he seemeth to keep the same posture of humility which our Saviour struck him into when he was in the heat and ruff of persecution. Many strains of Rhetorick he hath in his Epistles, and in the Acts, but all subordinate as it were unto the strain of mode­stie; I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, 2. Cor. xii. 2. When he was to speak of his rapture, how the Apostle denieth himself, and pronounceth it in a fashion upon another man, in tertia persona, as if so transcendent an elevation did not well become him who in his own esteem deserved rather to be thrown down below the earth! O excellent grace of Modesty, ever in season but when thy self art to be commended! Modestie with ignorance is due and proper: Pride with ignorance is haynous and insufferable: Learnednesse, worth, excellency with modestie, is [...] nothing so amiable, so comely, like the coupling of a Muse and a Grace;

As in the clothing of thy reall matter, thy body, so in the dressing of thy notionall matter, thy discourse, it is very ingenuous to be civill and modest, in a kind of negligent handsomenesse, or handsome negligence, lest to avoid na­kednesse in the one and in the other, thou runnest [...], into another shame, as an Ecclesiastick writer speaketh of flaunting apparell. A fastuous, af­fected, swelling exercise doth at once undo thy commen­dation, if it be cared for, and the end, which should be. [Page 8]S. Paul knew more, spake lesse, as was said of an Hea­then. He acted his own precept, Rom. xii. 13. [...], to be wise unto sobrietie.

But secondly, I conceive art in this sobriety, that by the meek concealment of the other authours sentences he might the more win upon his Auditours, taking off from himself the envie of much reading, and in a couch­ednesse granting that they themselves were very well read in such books, as questionlesse they were, and were not a little (I suppose) proud of it: the scope and end whereof might be, that in his modesty of himself, and respective commendation of them, though privately in­timated, he might make his person more gracious, and consequently his discourse more acceptable. For as God doth to man; so man to man. God first accepteth Abels person, then his offering: so man first accepteth mans person, then liketh his exhortation. Therefore when a bad man in Rome propounded a good law for the peo­ple, the Senate knowing that the naughtinesse of the per­son would countermand and be prejudiciall unto the vir­tue of the law, put it into an honest mans mouth to be promulged. Rhetorick is an artificiall goodnesse of the speaker; goodnesse in the speaker is inartificiall Rheto­rick. And the approbation, as it might appear unto the Philosophers, of their knowingnesse in this point, might especially work upon them. It is none of the least things which belong unto the facultie of eloquence, respective­ly to take notice of the auditours understandingnesse in the present matter of treatise. Our S. Paul, I think, one of the best Rhetoricians that ever spoke, was not sel­dome in this insinuation: Acts xxiv. 10, 11. unto Felix; and Acts xxvi. 27. unto Agrippa the King, For the King [Page 9]knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely. For I am perswaded that none of these things are hidden from him: for this thing was not done in a corner. King Agrippa, be­lievest thou the Prophets? I know that thou believest. as if he would perswade him into a perswasion concerning the Prophets. And the power of this manner of speaking the king himself expressed: for he saith to Paul in the next verse, Almost thou perswadest me to be a Christian.

Thirdly, as there was Modesty in the use of but one saying of the Heathens, and Art in that modesty, so was there also (I conceive) Discretion in that art. It was a mixt audience, as we may suppose in such a solemn place, and as we may gather by the last verse of this chapter, wherein there is mention made of Damaris and many others, besides Dionysius the Areopagite, who were con­verted by that dispute. Now a large enumeration of a beadroll of Poets and of their sentences had been out of question lost unto the meaner of the assembly, which like little fishes usually bite more then the greater. Rationall souls are all equall; (and the reason is, be­cause they are not ex traduce, but from God) as God saith himself, Ezek. xviii. 4. Behold all souls are mine: As the soul of the father, so also the soul of the sonne is mine. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. And as God here signifi­eth a generall care of souls, without any different re­spect; so that he will not punish the sonne for the fathers fault, but the soul that sinneth it shall die: so the Apostle would not have the meaner sort to be punished with hearing so much which they understood not, because the Philosophers were better read. The punishment of the ignorant, Plato saith, is to learn of the wise: but then it must not be the untowardnesse of the Teacher not to [Page 10]condescend unto the capacitie of the illiterate. Mixt as­semblies require at least mixt discourses; that the plainer form may win the plainer sort, the learneder the learn­eder.

But neither doth our Doctour say all the Poets, as he might unto the Philosophers, though he had produced the testimonie but of one. Here we have a restriction; certain, not all, not many. And this is the second consi­derable in [...]. With a fairer ingenuity doth our Dispu­tant proceed in his discourse then some Athenians in theirs, who having found the suffrage of one or two Fa­thers, or Schoolmen, or Expositours, or of any other order, take their writing and set down all: much like the fellow who having read an obscure Authour, and being asked his judgement of him, replied, [...], That which I understood is good; and so is that which I understood not, as I suppose: So, those which they have read say so; and so do the rest, they suppose. With very good confidence might S. Paul have spoke in a ca­tholick form, in a full universalitie, the thesis being at first imprinted in them, as men; and therefore the matter was necessary: yet he speaketh in a mortall number, in a pau­city; certain. Now certain are sufficient to make an evi­dence. [...], as Aristotle in the se­cond book of his Rhetoricks: even one good witnesse is considerable. At the mouth of two witnesses, or at the mouth of three witnesses shall the matter be established, Deut. xix. 15. May Rome then be a little more moderate in her brags of multitude of Professours, of swarms of her Catho­licks. The Species may be conserved in one Individuum: A few are enough to make a being of religion; though not a flourishing visibility, which is no way essentiall un­to [Page 11]to the truth of a Church. And very good authority may be brought for the proving that in every century since Christ we have had some or other, more or fewer, who have mainteined the greatest parts of the Protestants most important and fundamentall opinions, whatsoever Campian prattleth. And let them enjoy their multitude. Surely it is not like to be good friendship which is amongst very many: and the reason is very good, as he in his Ethicks, [...], For there are very few truly good: So the religion may be suspected whereof so ma­ny are studious, because there are so few truly religious. Moreover, Number belonging unto Quantitie, which is­sueth from the wombe of Matter, by sequele of a pro­portionable effect, must be as dull, as uneffectuall as its mother, and skilleth as little to any importance, being in it self indifferent, or rather of the two supposing weak­nesse. Multitude is of little use in nature, but where there is deficiency: and therefore some would have every an­gel to be a distinct species, because plurality of Individu­ums under a species is onely by reason of their mortality; which is not competible to angels. Certainly a strange canvase it would be, wherein truth should go by voices, and be judged by the poll as it were of free-holders. Non tam autoritatis in disputando, quàm rationis momenta quaerenda sunt, as Tully in his first De natura Deorum. Disputations are to have more reason in them then au­thority. But if Rome will yet glory in number, let her glory in the septenary number of her hills, spoken of in the description of Antichrist, Rev. xvii. 9. let her glorie in the criticall number of the Beast DCLXVI, which the numerall letters of [...] (that signifieth their nation) do amount unto; let her glory in the title of universall [Page 12]Bishop, which Gregory predecessour to Boniface (who first usurped the appellation) affirmed to be an antecedent signe of Antichrist: As for us, we are not ashamed of our paucitie in the times of their persecutions: The gleaning of Ephraim is better then the vintage of Abiezer. Veritie hath its exsistence, though there were never a man in the world to own it: and Falsity will be nothing, though all the men in the world maintein it. Humane testimonies are but probable arguments. Many are better for the multitude: fewer are sufficient for the wiser sort. So the Apostle, certain; not one onely: certain; not all, not many.

Thirdly, we have in this manner of speech a certain disrespectivenesse, without so much as naming the Quo­ted: [...], confusedly: neither Who nor What: neither welt nor gard; plain Certain. Not ‘— [...];’ Did he not so much as call them by their names? No surely our Apostle mentioned them rather for his own use then for their credit; to shame the Philosophers pra­ctice, rather then to honour the Poets sayings. There is not (as ye know) the name of a great learned Hea­then man in all the holy book of God, neither Poet, nor Philosopher, nor Historian, nor Oratour. Where is Ho­mer, either in Greek, for whom severall nations contend­ed to honour themselves with such a countreyman? or where is Homer in Latine (as he is called) Virgil, the stately Poet? Where is Alexanders Tutour, Aristotle, though the Patriarch of Philosophy, as one termeth him? Where is Seneca, the divine Moralist, whatever Salmeron feigneth of letters which he wrote to S. Paul, and S. Paul again to him, the matter whereof, he saith, is not much unlike that of S. John to the Elect Lady, and to [Page 13]Gaius, or that of S. Paul to Philemon? Where is Pla­to, whom Zanchy supposeth to have read the books of Moses? In Tullie's Hortensius S. Augustine could find nothing of Christ: In the Christians book there is none of Tully. We have mention of Philippi, but of no Phi­lippick; not the divine one, as Juvenal calleth it. [...]; where do we find the grave oratour of Greece, Demosthenes? yet would not the Doctour of the Gentiles, who said that he magnified his office, vouchsafe so farre as to name those Authours whose say­ings he is pleased to insert into sacred Scripture, and by his consecration of them to make them more divine then any of Plato's works; neither Aratus, nor Menander, nor Epimendies, nor any other, if there be any other, whose sentences he borroweth? Was it the wisdome and poli­cie of this Teacher of the Gentiles to leave their names out on purpose, that so he might ingage us to the reading over of the Greek Poets, as if we should find in them some great matter worthy of our pains? Or did he well remember the speeches, but forgat the Authours names? or had he not his books and parchments about him? or could he not in that ex-tempore dispute look in them? One would have thought he might have named Aratus, though none else, if it were but for his beginning, the pi­ety of his beginning, [...], Let us begin from God, as S. Paul expoundeth him; or for the conti­nuation of his devotion,

Let us never cease to extoll him. Every street, every assem­bly aboundeth with him.; or again, for the divinenesse of his subject, the heavens, more sublime and pure matter then [Page 14]useth to be in the wanton and obscene pages of some other Poets. We have indeed in the last verse of this chapter mention of Dionysius; and lest the honour should miscarry upon another of the same name, for di­stinction, the Areopagite, [...]. But first happily this Dionysius was no very great learned man. As for that saying which is received as his, at the passion of our Saviour, Either the God of na­ture suffereth, or the world will be dissolved, me thinketh it was no argument of any extraordinary knowledge, it be­ing easie for them to know that the eclipse then was su­pernaturall, it being not then conjunction-time of sunne and moon, and also in regard of the continuance of the eclipse, as Thomas Aquinas observeth. Upon this say­ing also is conjectured that he caused the consecration of an altar to the Unknown God, which S. Paul speak­eth of. But whether he was the authour of this is very doubtfull, if not improbable: For they had more anci­ently an altar inscribed UNTO THE UNKNOVVN GODS, which Pausanias maketh mention of in his fifth book, [...]. And concerning the books which the Pontificians father upon his name, De caelesti hierarchia, Deecclesiastica hierarchia, De Divinis no­minibus, it were not very difficult to determine them not to be his. For Hierome in his Catalogue of Ecclesia­stick writers maketh no mention of them. Valla and E­rasmus have proved by many arguments that they are none of his, as Chemnitius relateth. And in his Eccle­siastick Hierarchy he speaketh of Temples, of Altars, of Monks, whereof in Dionysius the Areopagites time, whom S. Paul converted, certainly there was no being. In his fifth chapter De ecclesiastica hierarchia we have [Page 15]them in a manner all in one line; [...], The Priest stand­ing before the Altar chanteth out some monasticall invocati­on. Where the Altar is and the Priest the Temple may be supposed. Now settled temples in Dionysius his time, almost certain it is, there were none: Questionlesse no Monks, the order whereof was instituted first by Paul the Hermite some two hundred and seven years after the conversion of Dionysius, as the Chronologer hath it. Dionysius then who is named in Scripture was no very learned scholar, for ought we know. But secondly, if so; surely he was a Christian before he had the honour to be mentioned in the book of God. God, I see, respecteth not excellencie of learning where there is no measure of grace: but he respecteth the least degree of grace in whatsoever person: Damaris is named with Denys; a woman with an Areopagite. O Christianitie, that either findest us or makest us honourable, yea oftener makest us then findest us so, yea ever makest us, yea never findest us of any reall worth, onely in a shew and [...]! Un­till we come to be Christians we are not worthy the na­ming. Silly were the Heathen, who knew not this reli­gion: impious they were for hating it; unjust, for hating they knew not what: as Tertullian in his Apologeticus, Vacante meriti notitiâ unde odii justitia defenditur? Though it was sometimes a stranger on earth, and none would own it, yet it had genus, spem, gratiam & dignitatem in cae­lis, as the same Father. Very respectively doth Scripture speak of religious Christians. The Bereans were more no­ble then those of Thessalonica, in the seventh verse of this chapter; more noble, [...], as it were of better descent, which is, as we may speak, the very bloud of Nobility. [Page 16]But how more noble? Non per civilem dignitatem sed spi­ritualem dignationem: It is subjoyned, in that they recei­ved the word with all readinesse of mind, and searched (not the records of their antiquity, but) the Scripture daily whether those things were so. And whereas in the next verse the Scripture mentioneth honourable women; happily they are said to be honourable in way of a Prolepsis, as being to be believers. Neverthelesse also, if I seem not somewhat too criticall, we may observe that those in the former verse have the better term in the notion of the originall: These are [...], women of good fashion; the other [...], more noble. Not as if the honour of every ones place were forfeited by the badnesse of the person in an humane society: but thus it is with God. Plato com­mendeth the Attick countrey, [...]. and Thucydides more plainly in the beginning, speaking of the same countrey, saith, [...], The same men ever inhabited it: not as if they were immortall, but the same of nation: it was the mother and nurse to them all in his opinion. By the way, that is false, as may be demonstrated out of the twenty sixth verse of this chapter, where God is said to have made of one bloud (that is, of one man, Adam) all men to dwell upon all the face of the earth. From one Adam were derived all man­kind, which after the confusion of Babel severally di­spersed themselves throughout the earth: so that those who first inhabited the Attick countrey were not born there, as Plato supposeth; nor did the same men ever in­habit it, as may be supposed, men of other languages very likely mingling themselves after that dispersion. Yet if so, as Plato and Thucydides would have it, it would be no commendation to that which followeth in [Page 17]Plato, as himself confesseth, [...], The first and greatest is, [...], either actively or passively, either loving of God, or beloved of God: They go both together. Meats commend us not to God, as S. Paul: so nei­ther nation, nor whatsoever other secular respect and qualitie. Nor doth he like what he is himself Authour of in a subject which is not such as it should be. Wit and Eloquence, and Erudition are Gods creatures; yet doth he not vouchsafe them a power to move his delight, un­lesse they be exercised to his glory. Melior est humilis ru­sticus qui Deo servit, quàm superbus Philosophus qui negle­cto seipso coeli motum contemplatur, as a devout Domini­cane. The Greeks expresse learning and goodnesse in one word: [...] is for both; as if they were not learned who are not good. So [...] is usually understood by S. Chrysostome for Action: and the Scripture calleth a wicked man generally a fool.

Now in this mean esteem of humane knowledge with­out divine goodnesse we are the more fit to passe over briefly the Poets without envying them. And this is the next particular according to our division, the Profession of the Quoted, Poets. What shall I call them? reall men of an imaginary world, or imaginative men of a reall world? who, as if nature were not fruitfull enough to bring forth reall entities, must multiply to the world a new brood of things which live onely in a phansie. Plutarch calleth Poetry [...], a part of the Muses, or a piece of learning; Simonides, [...], a speak­ing picture; Plato, [...], an imitation. Plato is said to have banished them out of his Common-wealth; Proclus upon Plato giveth us the reasons; [...], &c. Since Poetrie is an imi­tation, [Page 18]according to Plato, and the subjects whose lives and actions they imitate, being the gods, and the Heroes their sonnes, the Poets not knowing certainly what they did, but supposing they lived in pleasure, phansied unto them such pleasure as men then or themselves delighted in: just as Eusebius saith of Cerinthus, that he held that our Saviours kingdome after the resurrection should be voluptuary, because he himself delighted so much in car­nall pleasure. So that the Poets did not onely attribute unto them such things as were merely humane, as Eating, Sleeping, and the like, but such also as are against reason, as Intemperance, Adultery, and the like. Whence Cy­rill of Hierusalem mocketh the Heathens for calling Ju­piter an adulterer, a God; [...], If he be an adulterer, let him not be called a God. Plato now see­ing the ingagement unto vice by these examples (as the fellow in Terence, Ego verò feci & lubens; He braggeth what he had done in imitation of Jupiter) was provoked for this cause to remove them. Secondly, because it was not meet that such obscene borborologie and filthy speeches as they used should proceed out of the mouth of man. The words are good; [...], It is not to be thought fit that the tongue, the instrument of Gods praise, and of conference with good men, should be soiled and polluted with such speeches. Never­thelesse he doth not absolutely condemne them: For in the beginning of the eighth of his Laws he prescribeth what kind of poemes are to be used in a solemnity, & the qualification of the Poets; and himself now and then useth their sayings. Our Apostle S. Paul, Tit. i. 12. where he quoteth Epimenides his saying, calleth the [Page 19]Poets Prophets; [...]: whereby he seemeth to expresse the nature of the profession in a way of resemblance; and that may be two wayes, either ratione personae, or ratione officii. First, Ratione personae, in two respects, either as accounted by common esteem as Prophets, or by great ones honoured like them. As Jere­miah, xxxix. 11. was honoured by the king of Babylon, so were Poets respected by kings, and were familiar unto them, as Pausanias writeth; [...]: with Polycrates Anacreon, with Antigonus our Aratus. Secondly, there is a resemblance of Poets with Prophets ratione officii, and that three wayes: either 1. in regard of dictation of their poemes; so that as the Prophets were inspired by God for the penning of their prophecies, so the Poets were accounted to have been inspired in their poetries. Whence Plato saith of them in the third of his Laws, [...], The generation of the Poets is a divine and inspired generati­on. Or 2. in regard of their style. The Prophets of God spake in a high style and strain, hyperbolically, obscure­ly, as Ezekiel; (and therefore the Jews forbad Ezekiel to be read before the thirtieth yeare; whence that is called annus sacerdotalis, the Priests yeare, besides other reasons:) so also did the Poets, as might be shown. 3. In regard of their end. The Prophets, as they are taken largely were rebukers of sinne, and exhorters unto godlinesse: (al­though, ut sic, the proper denomination is from Predicti­on, foretelling:) This also was the peculiar office and scope of the Satyrists amongst the Poets: and the very worst of them now and then gave virtue a commendati­on, and vice a censure.

But now out of S. Pauls use and expression of [Page 20]them, what deduction, what inference, what corollary shall we raise? That they promiscuously are to be read? or if the choice ones, much? or if sparingly, at times, with immoderate delight? Nay, shall we at all reade them? Shall Plato banish them, Christians use them? I would Christians did not use some things which Hea­thens forbid. Aristotle in the fourth of his Ethicks the first chapter, and in one page, condemneth both [...] and [...], the usurer and the dicer; and yet some Chri­stians blush at neither. Plutarch passeth a determination upon Poetrie, [...]. And surely plus aloes quàm mellis habet: There is picking work enough. Yet as Virgil being asked what he meant when he read En­nius, replied that he did è coeno colligere margaritas; so if a Christian did reade Virgil, he might, being asked the same question, answer in the same manner. Or if from this hint of Poets we should rise to a generall discourse of humane authours, as the fellow that was asked whe­ther light was pleasant, said, It was a blind mans questi­on; so if it should be asked, Whether humane knowledge were usefull, it might be answered, It is an illiterate que­stion. Certainly there is some good to be gotten in the study of Greek authours, or else Julian the Apostate would never have interdicted to the Christian youth the use of them. Nicephorus in his tenth book of Ecclesia­sticall history bringeth in Julians reason why he forbad the use of Greek authours, Nè linguis eorum acumine per­politis facilè disputatoribus nostris resistere, & sacra quidem sua amplificare, religionem autem nostram refellere facilè que­ant. I might now tell you Nicephorus his arguments for the point, and that Basil hath wrote a book to this pur­pose; and I might tell you what S. Augustine saith con­cerning [Page 21]this in the end of his second De doctrina Christia­na, and what others, and how learned the Fathers were, and that S. Paul after conversion did not burn his books nor parchments: But it is an errour to bring this into question in an Universitie. In lieu of all arguments this may serve, that in this dispute of S. Paul, where he useth both Philosophy and Poets, a woman, Damaris, and many others, likely not of the learned nation, were converted.

From hence also the Teacher of the Gentiles instruct­eth us Christians not to disembrace goodnesse in any, nor truth in any. Plato's rule is good, [...]. Let us not consider so much who saith, as what is said; who doeth, as what is done. Let not the authority of the teacher tempt thee to erre; as Vincentius Lirinensis saith, the errours of the Fathers were temptations to the Church: nor let the badnesse or meannesse of the preacher spoil thy attention. Learn not badnesse of the best; but learn goodnesse of the worst.

Lastly, me thinketh from hence we may raise a me­ditation upon an embleme of the strangenesse of the hap­pinesse of the Gentiles being received into grace. As un­likely as Poets sayings were to be made canonicall, were Gentiles to be made divine: As unlikely as an Heathens saying to be put in the book of truth, was an Heathens name to be wrote in the book of life. The Heathen are come into thine inheritance, O God, may be sung now with joy, as it was sometimes by David with complaint. And so much of the Profession of the Quoted, Poets.

Nextly followeth the Appropriation of them; YOUR OVVN Poets: As certain also of YOUR OVVN Poets have said, [...], or [...]. S. Paul [Page 22]maketh use of their writings, but rejecteth them; he ap­proveth what they say, but he owneth not them: YOUR OVVN Poets. They bring their gift unto the altar, and then go their way. One or two reade it vestratium, in refe­rence unto their countrey. But that is very disputable in two respects; of the thing, and of the phrase. For the first, though we know not what countreymen they were whom S. Paul includeth in the CERTAIN, and therefore cannot judge whether they were conterraneous unto the Epicureans and Stoicks, yet we know what Aratus was, whom he useth in the place; even S. Pauls own countrey­man, as may be gathered out of Pausanias in the place forementioned: where speaking of those Poets which were familiar unto kings, he saith, [...], There lived with Anti­gonus king of the Macedonians, Antagoras of Rhodes, and A­ratus of Soli a city in Cilicia. S. Paul was of Tarsus a city of Cilicia, as himself witnesseth Acts xxi. 39. Now that those Epicureans and Stoicks were all Cilicians, is very improbable. Secondly, neither is that exposition likely in respect of the notion of the phrase; [...] be­ing very seldome, perhaps never read in that sense with­out some other connotation of locality. We may there­fore (salve meliori judicio) interpret [...] here as it is used Coloss. iii. 10. [...], according to, or in si­militude of, the image of him that created; or as it is used Acts xxvi. 3. [...], where it importeth a correspondence in discipline: so here [...], Poets concluded under the same sect of Heathenisme; and that is a generall habitude and likenesse of the Poets unto the Epicureans and Stoicks, as Heathens: or second­ly, YOUR OVVN Poets, [...], by a particular refe­rence [Page 23]and distinct agreement in your severall sects, as que­stioning Providence upon every seeming disorder and ataxie of secular events, that those that are virtuous are oppressed with wrong, those that are lewd are full of all prosperity, that offenders have not presently their con­digne punishment: Thus the Poets were Epicureans. And again, some of them held that all things did pro­ceed according to a necessary connexion of causes and ef­fects, which, being once set, the Gods themselves could not alter: so Homer and Horace amongst others, as might be shown: And these were in likenesse of opinion Stoicks. Heathens then however the Poets were; so theirs, the Philosophers. Poets; yet [...]. Prophets; yet yours. As being rationall, so S. Pauls: as learned, so S. Pauls: as Poets, so happily S. Pauls, in regard at least of his use of them: Aratus a Cilician, so S. Pauls. Ra­tionall, but no more; no faith: [...]: Learned, not good: [...]: Poets, Prophets, but Heathens: [...]: Aratus, his countreyman, but not from above; [...]. His saying is taken; he left. We have two lessons from hence.

1. Good speeches make us not good. Word and Work are two things. It is an easie matter for our saying to be betterthen our doing. Sermocination in the most exact complement and perfection of it, by Congruity, by Truth, by Ornament, which Bonaventure requireth unto a speech perfect in it self; or let there be added in regard of the end (as the same Bonaventure) good Expression, good Information, Moving; yet it neither perswadeth in the hearer of it self, nor proveth in the speaker a reall virtue. Understanding and affection are remote of them­selves: grace is in both. Some live ill, speak well; some [Page 26] [...] [Page 27] [...] [Page 20] [...] [Page 21] [...] [Page 22] [...] [Page 23] [...] [Page 24]do neither; some do both. We are in a mighty errour and in a deep ignorance, if we think (as the Gnosticks) to be saved for our knowing or speaking onely the truth. If we would be Christs disciples, we must do what he commandeth us. Aratus said well here: yet he is none of Christs disciples; S. Paul rejecteth him: YOUR OVVN Poets.

2. Learn we then secondly, to give every one his due, and not to believe vain words, empty words. The pro­fession of the truth onely maketh not a true and solid professour. S. Paul in the main casteth off these Poets, and sorteth them with their own, Poets with Epicureans, and Poets with Stoicks. Epicureans and Stoicks, they differed amongst themselves, they agreed in idolatrous Heathenisme. As there is a civill justice in giving every man his due in a temporall and secular estate, so is there also an ecclesiasticall justice in giving every man his due in a spirituall estate: and to a delinquency in this also God denounceth a wo Esay v. 20. Wo unto them that call evil good, and good evil. Take we heed that we make neither Censures whip nor Charities cloke too long: we may offend in both. Surely through want of charity in being, and through too much in thinking, God hath not his own. If the Teacher of the Gentiles had flattered those Athenians, and had accounted them a great deal better men then the Poets, had he reckoned them amongst true worshippers, had he made them of the Church and not strangers from God in respect of the right way of ser­ving him, Dionysius likely, who was one of them, out of a good opinion of himself had continued in his Pa­ganisme, and had not been converted unto Christianity. These Philosophers then and Poets are not acknowled­ged [Page 25]here to be of the Church visible: and whether they or any of them be members of the Church invisible, of the Church triumphant, now, God knoweth. I am not here ingaged to speak definitively of their eternall con­dition: But if I were, I should first in equity do that which yet they would not do in the primitive times to Christians, namely, heare what they could say for them­selves in the next part of my text, the Form of quoting, AS certain also of your own Poets have said, [...], AS they said.

The [...] implyeth a similitude of their saying unto Di­vine truth. And it is not amisse to see what the twi­light of humane reason can see of God, and towards God, and what analogy there is betwixt some of their speeches and some of Scripture. And by this dis­course, we finding in it no mention of the formall object of Christianity, may perceive how little knowledge they had of it: yet they have spoken very fairly. I know not how it cometh to passe, but too many Christians have too much of Heathen talk: And so also in a reciprocati­on, some Heathen have very much of that which seem­eth correspondent unto sacred Scripture. To omit many fictions of the Poets, which are little else then fabulous histories, allusions unto reall things before the floud, as if in a manner they would redeem the losse of the histo­ry of the old world; as also to omit how the names of their Heathen gods may seem to relate unto true men in those times: Were it Moses, or were it David (one saith Moses, another David) who said that the dayes of our age are threescore years and ten, Psal. xc. 10. Solon jumpeth upon the very same number, as Diogenes Laertius speak­eth of him in his Life, [...], [Page 26] Solon saith that the term of a mans life is seventy years. Plutarch saith in the Life of Numa, [...], God is not a lover of horses: Psal. cxlvii. 10. He delighteth not in the strength of an horse. ‘ [...],’ saith Hesiod in his [...]. Jacob to Pharaoh interpre­teth the verse (as we may speak) Few and evil have been the dayes of my pilgrimage. Matth. vii. 14. Narrow is the way which leadeth unto life, [...]: Hesiod saith the like of Virtue,

and a little before, to Vice it is [...], a little way to it; ‘— [...],’ It dwelleth hard by. Our Saviour, John xix. 27. to his be­loved disciple S. John, [...], Behold thy mother: [...], I give thee this woman for thy mo­ther, was the speech of the Samians, when to the richer of the citizens the mothers of those who died in the warres were given to be mainteined by them. And did not our Saviour die for S. John? 1. Tim. v. 6. S. Paul speaking of a widow which liveth in pleasure, saith, [...], She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth. Talis vita nunquid vita erat, Domine? but that is S. Au­gustines, speaking of a licentious life; Lord, what a life was that? But Terence in Hecyra cometh nearer;

Pamphilus speaketh it there of a woman too. S. Pauls Greek cannot well be rendred but by Terence's Latine, and Terences Latine cannot be put wel into other Greek, Aristotle, Rhet. ii. c. 23. [...], [Page 27] Th [...]se that looked not well to other mens horses, by Th [...]dectes his law were not to have their own given them: Like unto this may that of our Saviour seem, Luke xvi. 12. And if ye have not been faithfull in that which is another mans, who shall give you that which is your own? AEsop being asked by Chilo, one of the seven wisemen of Greece, what God was doing, an­swered, [...]: and Psalm cxlvii. 6. The Lord setteth up the meek, and bringeth the un­godly down to the ground, [...]: as if one place had been taken from the other. [...], saith Chilo to his brother, who took it ill that he was not chosen to be one of the Judges: [...], saith S. Paul, I know how to be abased. One of Chilo's precepts (as appeareth in the Life of Chilo by Diogenes Laertius) was, [...], To rule ones own house well: S. Paul 1. Tim. v. 4. hath the same precept in effect, [...]: but more patly chap. iii. vers. 12. where he speaketh of the qualification of Deacons, [...], ruling their children, and their own houses well. Mo­ses, Exod. iii. when he was to be sent to the children of Israel by God, desired to know Gods name, that he might tell them who sent him; and God expressed him­self by I AM: Thus thou shalt say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you, vers. 14. So Plato calleth God [...], that which is; and [...], that which is indeed; as if nothing had any reall existence but God. Plato in his dialogue Of Death calleth mans body [...], a taberna­cle; so doth S. Paul 2. Cor. v. 1. Plato in the eighth of his Laws, [...], The communion of the soul with the bodie is not better then the dissolution, as I would say if I were to speak [Page 28]in earnest: [...], saith S. Paul, Phil. i. 23. For I am in a strait betwixt two, [...], having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ: which is farre better. To be with Christ, farre better being, farre better saying. We heare no more of the Heathens when we speak of Christ. As the Oracles are said to have ceased at Christs nativi­ty, so the Heathens are silent concerning Christ. Yet there is a sort of writers behind which go thus farre, namely the Sibylls and Trismegist, and if there be any more such. Nothing spoken of Christ with more dilu­cidation then by the Sibylls. By one of them, [...], Jesus Christ, the Sonne of God, the Savi­our; the initiall and beginning letters of which prophesie being put in order together, make up the word [...], which signifieth a Fish: whence Tertullian calleth our Saviour Piscem. And one of these Sibylls Virgil in one of his Eclogues is supposed, with good probability, to have imitated, namely in the fourth eclogue,

meaning by Te Duce Christ, according to the Sibyll: And Christ is called Heb. ii. 10. [...], the Ca­ptain of our salvation. Many other passages also there are in the same eclogue to the same purpose. And as for Tris­megist, who is quoted so much by great Authours onely for rationall knowledge, as if he had no other light to di­rect him in his writings besides the light of nature; in the second page of his Poemander he speaketh of the Trinity as if he had been in heaven: & therefore for his opinion of the Trinity he was called [...], Thrice-great, or Great­est, as Suidas saith. In that second page of the Treatise we [Page 29]have his authority against the Arian heresie: And the very term which Arius would not subscribe unto we have there, namely [...]; he saith that he is COESSENTIALL with the Father. And concerning the creation he speaketh as if he had read Genesis; [...]: as if he should say, that God presently after the creation spoke to man, Encrease and multiply, and replenish the earth, as it is Gen.i. Our Saviour saith there is none good but God: Trismegist; [...], God is the onely Good: and how? as if he commented on Scri­pture before it was written, not good onely as by an hono­rary term, but the Good by essence. And in the thirteenth chapter of his Poemander, [...], The Authour of regeneration is the Sonne of God, a man by the will of God. But it is object­ed or may be, that these passages out of Trismegist and the Sibylls are not to our purpose, seeing (as the opinion is of some) these Treatises were made by Ecclesiastick writers, and then ascribed unto Gentiles, to make by an holy kind of deceit, the doctrine of the Gospel more passable amongst the Heathen. For answer; Cicero may refute this tenet, who in his De natura Deorum maketh mention of the Sibylls, and produceth somewhat of theirs. And as for Trismegist, he was an Egyptian Do­ctour, as Reuchlinus and Suidas, and lived before Pha­raoh, as Suidas saith, [...]. That then there were such Heathens, and they authours of these sayings which we spoke of, is more then probable. But whether their divine speeches proceeded merely out of the principles of nature, or whether they sprang from some other light, either of Divine revelation or Diabo­licall (as Augustine thinketh De Civit. Dei, viii. 13. [Page 30]concerning Trismegist) I know not how to determine; I leave it in medio. Concerning the other kind of Gentile writers which we named before, it may also be said that some of them had read the five books of Moses, as like­ly S. Paul had read some or many of them. But whether so or not; whether some of them had borrowed their expressions from Scripture, and whether again S. Paul borrowed some of his other expressions from some of them, without mentioning any way such Authours (as he maketh use of Menanders sentence, 1. Cor. xv. 33. without any notice from whence he had it, ‘ [...],’ Evil words corrupt good manners) I referre to better judgements. Onely this I may say, that Zanchy indeed thinketh that Pythagoras and Trismegist and Plato had read some part of Scripture, and peradventure had learn­ed some notions from the Jews: but he nameth none else in that place: And one of the passages we mentioned out of Plato beareth a similitude unto such another in the Epistle of S. Paul to the Philippians: Now that could not be taken from S. Paul. And as for Trismegist, he speaketh more clearly concerning the mystery of the Trinitie then any place of the Old Testament. But sup­pose we now that all these places quoted out of them were absolutely theirs, and not deduced from any higher doctrine, and not revealed by a supernaturall way; and suppose we a great many more of such divine passages in them: what then? Happily it is expected now that from this little survey of their knowledge some conclusi­on should arise towards the eternall state and condition of those Heathens; and a conclusion also very favourable and charitable: as if by the small posie we have gathered [Page 31]and made up of the best flowers in Natures gar­den, we might collect that their knowledge and good­nesse and virtues and education were means likely able to put them not onely into a saveable estate, but also into a hopefull condition. For this I answer, I am not engaged any way by the text to speak at all, much lesse definitively, touching the finall end of the Gentiles. But he that thinketh too well of them, un­derstandeth not sufficiently the priviledge of the Gos­pel: And God who is best able to judge, accounted the times of Paganisme before Christ, for all their know­ledge, even times of ignorance; and accordingly he re­spected them, as our Apostle in the second verse unto our text, And the times of this ignorance God winked at; [...], in the originall: which we may expound of a neglect; as if God looked over or beyond those times, and had respect onely unto the times of Christianity. And they have left Christians to do in the rights what they have said. And if we should take a note of what they have not said, we should rather pitie their blindnesse then admire their knowledge. God Creatour they might know per species Creaturarum (as they speak) either in way of Negation, or Causalitie, or Eminence: but God Redeemer is not so perceiveable by light of nature. For nature is not able to see the need of a Saviour, it being ignorant of the lapse of mankind, of which there ap­peareth not a word, not a syllable, in a direct expression, not in any of their massie volumes. And where find we any mention of Faith in a Christian notion? Insomuch that what we even now demurred of, from whence Tris­megists & the Sibylls speaking of Christ should flow, we may here resolve negatively, That they spake not so of [Page 32]Christ by the virtue onely of rationall knowledge. For first they could not by the light of humane reason see the use of any Saviour. Secondly, they could not more­over foresee a Saviour by light of nature, if we account them to have been Prophets. And if some of them were as Christians amongst Heathens, yet Hea­thens they are amongst Christians. We might use some­what of their science, they needed some of our Script­ure. For in a particle of the Poets saying there lyeth a grand errour of idolatry. There is a Jupiter in the HIS, in the ΤΟ: through whom yet S. Paul discerneth the true God; better understood then spoken. So we may passe here from the Form of quoting to the Sentence quoted; For we are also his generation.

But because of dependance with our former dis­course, we will consider the words in way of expositi­on, according to the order in the originall, [...]. In the little particle [...], we said, is couched a little God, one Jupiter: and yet Saint Paul interpreteth the Poet as speaking of the true God. That the Poet seem­ed to speak it of Jupiter, appeareth by his beginning, ‘ [...]—’ Let us beginne from Jupiter, or with Jupiter: And that Saint Paul interpreteth him of the true God, appeareth by the context. For having in the twenty fourth verse of this chapter described the onely true God by his ef­fects of Creation and Sovereignty of governance, in the twenty fifth verse by his All-sufficiency in himself, in the two next verses by the manner of creation of man and end of that creation, and in the former part of this verse (whereof our text is a part) epitomizing all by three expressions wherein we are referred unto God, [Page 33] In him we live, we move, we have our being, he superad­deth to refute their false tenets against the one true God, by the testimony of their Aratus, although the intention of the Poet at the first sight appeareth to be otherwise directed. So that what these Philosophers said to our Apostle preaching Jesus and the resurrection, He seemeth to be a setter-forth of strange Gods, [...], may very well be retorted on their Poet; He seemeth to be a setter-forth of a strange God, telling us of one Jupiter. What shall we say then? The Heathen speaketh of the Hea­then God: the Apostle understandeth him of the true. What? doth our Apostle mingle seeds? Is there any fellowship betwixt God and Belial? Can the Ark and Dagon stand together? Shall that sonne of Saturn, Ju­piter, be as the Sonne of God, Christ, God-man? God forbid. But as our Saviour answered the Jews thoughts oftentimes, not the outward tenour and drift of their words (whereby he manifested his Divinity) so S. Paul by a Divine Spirit searcheth the Poets intimate or ulti­mate intendment, and giveth not the sense according to the strict importance of the terms. The reason and ground of this exposition we are now briefly and [...] to discourse of.

The Scholiast upon the Poet saith it may be interpre­ted of the Aire; S. Paul otherwise. The ground and lawfulnesse of S. Pauls exposition dependeth upon the discussion of this question, Whether the Gentiles did ab­solutely and ultimately determine their adorations and worships in those false, those made Gods; or whether they did not through them aim at a true Deitie. Towards the determining of this Probleme I may premise a pro­position or two: first, That Jupiter & his brethren and his [Page 34]kindred were not Deities. This proposition is supposed, not to be proved. Secondly, That some of the more igno­rant sort of the Gentiles might take them to be Gods, not knowing their originall, and mistaking their Prophets when they spake of them; as also because their under­standings were not fitted by contēplation to extract out of the species of the creatures a conceit of the nature of a pure Divine essence. For neither is this so great a stu­pidity as that of the vulgar and baser sort of the Papists, who terminate their worship in the images themselves, by Parisiensis his own confession, cap. 23. De legibus, Sic­ut & multi simplices homines hodie sunt qui inter imagines sanctorū & ipsos sanctos in suis or ationibus non distinguunt, They have not the trick, when they pray before an image of a Saint, in every act of their worship to frame an ele­vation of their minds from the representation unto the Saint. Very likely then it is that the worst of the Gen­tiles might think those false Gods very Gods; and also might (as the Papists before) place their worship in the images of their Gods, because the devil now and then did speak his oracles through them. But third­ly, Though the fillier of the Heathen might think them to be the onely Gods, yet the more learned and intelli­gent of them did not firmly believe their absolute Di­vinities. Tertullian therefore in his Apologetick speak­eth plainly to the Heathen, and appealeth unto their con­sciences, Appellamus & provocamus à vobis ad conscientiam vestram: illa nos judicet, illa nos damnet, si poter it negare omnes illos Deos vestros homines fuisse. And this may ap­pear out of their practice to wards them; which was so grosse that the same Father telleth them, Nescio plúsne de vobis dii vestri quàm de Christianis querantur, I know not [Page 35]whether your Gods have more reason to complain of you or of Christians. Witnesse their fowl uncleannesses in their temples even by their Priests, witnesse their per­sonating their Gods by that tetrum genus pantomimorum, and their whipping of their Diana on the stage. And he telleth them also how coursely they used their domestick Gods; Domesticos Deos domesticâ potestate tractatis, oppi­gnerando, venditando, demutando aliquando in trullam de Minerva. And Varro, he saith, brought into publick view no lesse then thirty Jupiters without heads. Dioge­nes (as the same Father) but rather Diagoras, being in an inne, and having nothing to seeth his supper with, took Hercules his image and made a fire with it, with this in­sultation, Now, Hercules, to thy thirteenth labour: seeth me my pottage. And S. Augustine, De civit. Dei, ii. 12. be­sides many other places, taxeth them that they forbad the Poets to speak any ill of any citizen of Rome under a great penaltie; but let them speak what they would of the Gods; as if they had majorem curam Romae unius quàm totius coeli. I might also tell you what handling they had in Homer: Venus wounded, and comforted by a God­desse, by telling her it was their fortune: ‘ [...],’ We suffer in heaven many things from men on earth. Mars was imprisoned 13. moneths, Juno wounded by Hercules, Pluto hurt with a dart. Surely blind Homer jeered them. Socrates in contempt of their Deities sware by an Oke and a Goat, as Tertullian again: And one God would suf­fice him; for which he died as an Heathen martyr. Ex­cellent is that of Plato, [...]. Plato maketh a difference betwixt his serious epistles and not serious by this signe; His serious [Page 36]ones he beginneth with one God, the other with Gods. And Tertullian saith, Multi Dii habuerunt Caesare miratum: and we do not use to be angry with our superiours, as A­ristotle saith in his Rhetoricks. And that the better and learneder of the Heathens could not heartily believe that they were very Gods, may be collected out of the lives of the Gods, their conversation, such as did not become men, much lesse Gods. Nay, Tertullian speaking to them of the behaviour of their gods, asketh them, Quot tamen potiores viros? Although they were somewhat good, how many better men have ye left below? as Ari­stides, and Socrates. And Augustine saith merrily, Ne (que) enim erant suo Pontifice meliores, The Gods were no better then their Priests. And Cyrill of Hierusalem flouteth Ju­piter, [...], as before, If Jupiter be an adulterer, for shame let him not be called a God. What reve­rent esteem could those have of their God in the night, who worshipped the Sunne? and in the day, who wor­shipped the Moon? They were [...], Atheists in the night, which worshipped the Sunne; and Atheists in the day, which worshipped the Moon, as Cyrill witti­ly. But as the same Authour upon this subject breaketh out, [...], so I, We rake a dunghill in this discourse of dunghil-gods. We will therefore roll up this proposition in a better, which is the principall one for the exposition of the text; That the learneder sort of the Gentiles, some more clearly, some more indistinctly, according to the measure of common illumination from God, and light of their own reason, did ultimate­ly aim at a true Divinity, even amongst their false ones.

Here might I inlarge my self by treating of the co­gnoscibility of God by humane understanding without [Page 37]any supernaturall doctrine, which Lombard handleth in the third Distinction of his first book, and which the Schoolmen dispute of: and I might speak of the wayes how we may come to the knowledge of God: and I might tell you that a rationall facultie without an infi­nite second depravation, and some thicker mist of Satan, doth not, nay cannot frame to it self a conceit of an ab­solute Deitie of such a nature as is either inferiour to it self or not transcendently above it: here also might I again enter upon that large theme, How farre the Hea­thens have gone in their expressions of God: But to con­firm this conclusion, I will onely produce one or two testimonies out of the Fathers, and one out of sacred Scripture, and so passe this naturall Divinity. Arnobius in his first book adversùs Gentes bringeth in the Gentiles en­deavouring to clear themselves of a supposed imputati­on and slander, that they acknowledged not the true God; and they speak as if they were angry that Christi­ans should think so of them; Sed frustrà nos falso & calum­nioso incessitis crimine, tanquam eamus inficias esse De­um majorem, cùm à nobis Jupiter nominetur, & Opti­mus habeatur & Maximus. And the same Ecclesiastick writer telleth them that they mingled the true God with the false, Dissimilia copulare atque in unam speciem cogere inductâ confusione conamini. And to confirm this opinion of the Father we may make use of a place in Macrobius in the first book of his Saturnalia, where he undertaketh to reduce all the Heathen Gods unto the Sunne, which very likely was the first object of Idolatry? Now a­mongst the attributes of the Sunne he findeth in Or­pheus the name JAH put into a Greek termination, which otherwise is one of the names whereby God is expressed [Page 38]in Scripture; Psal. lxviii. 4. Praise him in his name, in the originall, [...] in his name JAH. And Hallelujah in Scripture is no other then Praise the Jah, or the Lord. Whereby it is manifest that they shuffled in the true God amongst the false ones. For certainly a full ignorance of a more superlative Deitie then the other false Gods were of, is scarce conceiveable amongst the wiser of the Gen­tiles. Arnobius therefore in the beginning of his second book bringeth in the Heathens again speaking for them­selves, or rather in behalf of their Gods, Sed non idcirco Dii vobis infesti sunt, &c. Our Gods are not therefore your enemies, O ye Christians, because ye worship an omnipotent God, but because ye maintein a man, born, and also cru­cified (which onely is for base persons) to be a God, and be­lieve him yet to be alive, and do also worship him in your dayly invocations. If we would analyse this place, we might make out of it a full demonstration to our pur­pose. Here is a confession of an omnipotent God: Here is an implicit assertion that this God is to be worshipped: Here is a denying of Divine worship to man; therefore (they say) Christ is not to be worshipped, because man. Could they then determine their adorations upon their Gods, whom some of them knew to be men? nay, some of the Heathen were ancienter then their Gods. Varro therefore propounded to himself this method in writing; First to write of things humane, then of things divine: A strange order one would think; but his reason is good and witty, Quia civitates Diis quos ipsae instituerant, ut pi­ctor tabellâ, priores sunt, Because as the painter is before the picture, so the cities are before the Gods whom the ci­ties created. Amongst the sorts of Gods also which they made, namely three, Poeticall, Civil, Philosophicall; [Page 39]the Philosophicall Gods (which one would imagine to be the best) were not accounted by the Philosophers to be true Gods: onely the common people might not know so much, as an Authour hath it. But come we now to an authority out of Scripture for the establishment of our point. No place so pregnant as where Saint Paul dis­cusseth the knowledge of the Gentiles, in the first chap­ter to the Romanes, from the eighteenth to the twenty fourth verse. Especially to our purpose he speaketh in the twenty first and twenty second verses. In the twenty first verse, Because that when they knew God; They, the Gentiles: they knew God two wayes: by the book of the Creature in the twentith verse; by naturall light, in the nineteenth verse, That which may be known of God is manifest in them. Or if you please, naturall knowledge was able to collect a Divinitie out of the book of the Creature: So God manifested what may be known of him to them, as in the nineteenth; God expressed him­self to them in the vast & ample volume of the world. To return unto our twenty first verse; Because that when they knew God, they glorified him not as God. Glorifie him then they did, but not in the right manner, not in the right [...], not immediately, not distinctly, not onely, not so well as they knew him, but, as in the three and twentieth verse, they changed the glory: that is, relatively, and quoad nos (for absolutely and in it self Gods glory cannot suffer any alteration) they changed the glory of the incorruptible God, [...], into the similitude, or by the similitude, of the image of corruptible man; that is, as Calvine expoundeth it, They made man to represent God: Whence it is evident then, that they did worship ultimately the true God through those true men, false [Page 40]Gods. As for the adoring of the Images of their Gods, that the learneder of them disclaimed, as the Reverend Primate of Ireland quoteth them speaking in the sixth of Arnobius, Deos per simulacra veneramur; and through or by those false Gods they aimed at the true. The know­ledge of a God was so evident, [...], and it was so firmly grounded, it was [...], in them, in re­spect of the principles they had of God, and in respect of an abilitie of understanding to inferre a Divinity out of the creation, that unlesse they would deny what they saw, they could not disacknowledge a God: and if so, then it would follow to them that he is to be worshipped. That there is a God, is principled in nature: and from hence resulteth naturally by a most strict and necessary connexion, That this God is to be served & honoured & worshipped. For the apprehension of a Divine nature can­not but conceive in it a right unto this homage by a dou­ble relation of it unto the creature, of sovereigne Power, and of Goodnesse. The former requireth a reverent fear, the other an affectionate love, which will exercise themselves in outward worship. And let us now suppose this for a principium secundo-primum (as they term it) namely, That God is to be worshipped: from hence also by consequent will ensue, That an Idole is not to be wor­shipped; for an Idole is not God. That rationall light that seeth a God, is able to see one God onely: that light that seeth one God onely, must reject an Idole. Now since in a Divine essence there is considered so much ma­jesty and glory that they might think it an impudent pre­sumption to make an immediate addresse unto this great God, therefore they might think they should do God service in shewing their honour of him by the doing ho­nour [Page 41]unto his glorious creatures, the Sunne, the Moon, and the like, and in making great men after death as me­diatours betwixt him and them (as the Papists upon the like plea make Angels and Saints their intercessours) which in processe of time by mens ignorance and the devils deceit came to be esteemed of the common sort as complete Gods: not so of the more intelligent of them, as we have shewed; these did not terminate their adora­tions in the Heathen Gods, but looked further at God the Ancient of dayes, whom Thales one of the Seven of Greece called [...], the most ancient of all things, as Laertius saith of him in his Life. So that the difference of the worship of these from the worship of true Christiaus, is this; True Christians worship God through Christ God-man; they worshipped God by men supposed Gods. So Aratus through Jupiter mean­eth GOD: So Saint Paul understandeth him. Never­thelesse this worshipping of God by mediation and i­mage, whether of man or beast, God accounteth a false worship: So he esteemed the Israelites worshipping him by a calf. Man doth indeed, but God doth not make such a distinction; therefore God saith, Exod. xxxii. 8. to Moses concerning the people of Israel, They have made them a molten calf, and have worshipped it: IT; God would not own that worship and service exhibited under the re­presentation of that calf. Deut. iv. 15. God biddeth the people of Israel take notice that when he spake unto them out of the midst of the fire they saw no similitude of him, Take ye therefore good heed unto your selves: for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire. No manner of similitude; as if he should have told them that he on pur­pose [Page 42]did not appear unto them under any visible form or similitude, lest they should represent him by that form, and under it worship him; which he so much warneth them of in that place. For that of Varro upon this point is very true; the worshipping of the Gods by images in­creased the errour, took away the fear of the Gods: Qui primi Deorum simulacra induxerunt, errorem auxerunt, metum demserunt, as Calvine citeth his words. Thus we have in some sort given you the reason and ground of our Apostles interpretation of the Poet.

Now by this, though hasty and short discourse of the Gentile worship occasioned by S. Pauls expression, we may in some manner calculate and decipher the diffe­rence betwixt the false worship of Rome Pagane and Rome Christian, of Gentiles and of Papists, which diffe­rence in a Pontifician eye is so wide and mighty. All the distinction must either be in the object worshipped, or the manner of worshipping. Christian Rome worship­peth God: So did Rome Pagane, as we have heard. Christian Rome by Images; so Rome Pagane. Pagane Rome worshipped by men, though not onely by men: Christian Rome by the form of an old man worship God the Father. And Christian Rome worshippeth God by men-saints (besides by Angels) and some of those Saints happily as bad for Christians as the other were for Heathens; nay such some of them were who had one­ly Christian names but Heathen lives. The sillier of the Heathen might worship the men for true Gods: the best of Rome Christian give a kind of Divine worship to Saints. The sillier of the Heathen might worship the I­mages of their feigned Gods: the sillier of the Papists distinguish not betwixt the Image of the Saint and the [Page 43]Saint, as Parisiensis confesseth. But the Heathens wor­shipped by other creatures: but Aquinas giveth [...], the proper Divine worship, to the Wood, to the Crosse, and to the Bread. But the Heathen worshipped by a multitude of Gods: but the Papists by more Saints and Angels. The Heathen had for every occasion a severall Tutelar Mediatour: the Papists likewise have a severall Saint, beside their particular Angel. But Tertullian saith, Multi Dii habuerunt Caesaremiratum: what is this to our purpose? and yet we can answer them; Multi Caesares habuerunt Papam iratum, and more then angry too; they have felt his anger and his furie, and his state, and his cruelty. But the Romane Senate (as Eusebius saith) made Gods of men; just as the Pontifician Senate ma­keth Gods of Saints. But the Papists sinne not yet in worshipping by Images. For sinne being a transgression of the Law, and where no law is there is no transgression, Rom. iv. 15. they have taken an order to take away the law by which they are forbidden to worship by Images, namely the second Commandment; for they leave out this in their Catechisme. Is this thy pietie, O Rome Christian? Is this the difference of thy Religion from Paganisme? Plutarch saith it is sacriledge to worship by Images, who was an Heathen; and thou blottest out the Law of God whereby it is forbidden, that thou mayest do it more freely. Thus to thy doing what God and Nature hath forbidden, thou addest a transcendent of­fense in proscribing in a manner what God hath written with his own hand. This unfaithfull and sacrilegious dealing with sacred Scripture hinteth me to the next par­ticle in our text, [...], which is a testimony of a faithfull quotation, [...]—

The Philosopher told his friends, when they came into his little and mean cottage, for their comfort, [...], The Gods are even here with me: So there is Divinity and a sacred use even in this little slender particle [...]. Deus magnus in minimis: and there is much importance in this little word. It may be taken (as other words) either formally or materially: formally, and so it is significative; materially, so not. It may be taken in this place significatively in reference unto the former words of the verse, In him we live, we move, and have our being. In him we live, and move, and have our being: FOR; because we are his offspring. This sense is good, as Hushai said to Absalom of Achitophels counsel; it is good, but not at this time. Severall senses in Scripture may be true in the thesis, but not proper in the hypothesis, in the particular [...] and connexion of the words; so neither this: Because 1. the former words, in him we live and move and have our being, do render the cause of the precedent verses, as [...] signifieth there, & therefore have more immediate and necessary respect unto them. 2. Be­cause our Apostle here intendeth to produce onely the authority of some Heathen to be symbolicall to what he had said before, out of which testimony he would deduce his inference against Idolatry, as he doth make use of this saying to that purpose in the next verse unto my text. 3. Because it is very likely that the particle [...] is to be taken in the same manner as [...] in the text: Now we cannot well conceive any use of the significativenesse of [...], therefore also [...], semblably, is not significative. It is significative and connexive in the Poet, not in the Apostle. To what end serveth it then, it may be demand­ed. Are there any redundances in Scripture? Is S. [Page 45]Paul to please the Philosophers become Homericall in his expletives? There is a painted heaven, and a printed heaven, an heaven painted with starres, an heaven print­ed, the sacred Scripture: And as God a most intellectu­all Agent (intellectuall above our understanding) wrought neither magnitude nor multitude without some end and reason; so neither such a number of starres in the heaven above was made without good purpose, so nei­ther such a number of words in the heaven below. The Jews (as it is said of them) numbred the verses, the words, the letters in the Old Testament: and is it not written in the New, Not an Iῶta shall perish, as not an Iῶta put in? (If so, Arius might have urged the place) Whatsoever is writ­ten is written for our instruction. The very unsignifica­tivenesse of the particle is significative: for it is testimo­nium fidelis citationis, as Sanctius a good Expositour ob­serveth upon the place. Our Apostle, happily, thought it to have the weight of a morall argument towards the perswading of the Heathens unto the truth of religion, to exhibite to them a signe of the truth of his quotation. He is so farre from concealing any thing which should make against him, that he taketh in the small words also of the hemistich, although they be of no use in the sen­tence. We have hence first an occasion of an observation; secondly, we have hence the use of a divine example.

First, we have an occasion of an observation, That our Apostle differeth in the quoting of the Heathens from his quoting of Scripture, the Old Testament. The Heathens he quoteth punctually without any alteration, ad ver­bum, [...]: He quoteth places of Scripture not so; but sometimes with amplification, sometimes with omission, sometimes with alteration: And so do the other Penmen [Page 46]of the New Testament. Now the reason why S. Paul and the rest did not cite strictly the words and terms of the Old, but rendred the sense of the places with some vari­ation, was, because they being appointed to be Teachers of the Gospel, were inspired with infallible knowledge, and enabled with full authority, not onely to quote and produce but also to expound, and not onely to expound but also to apply the Testimonies of the Old Instrument or Covenant for the manifestation and use of the New, according to their purpose, as is observed. 1. Cor. ii. 9. our Apostle quoteth a place in Isaiah, But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor eare heard, neither hath it entred into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him. The place is written Isaiah lxiv. 4. For since the beginning of the world men have not heard nor perceived by the eare, neither hath the eye seen, O God, besides thee, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. S. Paul in this one place omitteth somewhat which was written in the Prophet, and varieth somewhat; and addeth, neither hath it entred into the heart of man: and this addition is for great­er amplification and emphasis of the matter. Isaiah lii. 7. How beautifull upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings? S. Paul Rom. x. 15. maketh use of this Scripture, As it is written, How beautifull are the feet of them that preach the Gospel of peace? He leaveth out, upon the mountains, which Isaiah hath; and also the Prophet Nahum speaking of the same thing, chap. i. vers. 15. And S. Paul leaveth out that, because the Prophets (as is ob­served) were to preach onely unto the Jews, in a moun­tainous countrey; the Apostles were to go to preach the Gospel to all the world. Likewise S. Paul differeth from the text in alteration: as Eph. iv. 8. Wherefore he saith, When [Page 47]he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts to men: This is said Psal. lxviii. 18. Thou art gone up on high, thou hast led captivity captive, and received gifts for men. The Psalmist saith, Thou hast received, S. Paul saith, He gave. Now that he gave gifts to men explaineth the end of his receiving gifts: He received that he might give. With which if we compare that of S. John, in the first of his Gospel at the sixteenth verse, Of his fulnesse we have all received, and grace for grace, we may make an o­ther manner of exposition of it then those who interpret [...], grace upon grace, against the propriety of the Greek; or then those who can here find any Merit on our part, as if God gave us more grace for the merit of what we have; or then he who expoundeth by the for­mer grace the Old Testament, by the latter the New, as if Christs fulnesse of grace should not rather inferre our receiving of grace from him by the merit of his grace, then that we should receive the New Testament for the Old, since under ALL VVE have received are included al­so those faithfull that lived before Christ, who indeed had received grace, though not the Gospel, rem Evange­lii, though not Evangelium, not in exhibition actuall; they had received it in a promise, and in types, and by pro­phecie. Thus our Apostle in his quotations of Scripture addeth for illustration and amplification, omitteth for pertinence, altereth for explanation: but he doth not in the Poet here; he reciteth the very words in their order; he taketh the testimony whole, that the Philosophers should have nothing to except against the quotation.

Secondly therefore, we have from hence a divine rule and example, or a rule divine by example, concern­ing an honest and faithfull and ingenuous citing of an­thours. [Page 48]S. Paul produceth the very words, the very particles, which yet were of no moment towards his drift of inference. Whereby I believe our Apostle read the authour himself. And to this end, that I may cite an authour truly and certainly, let me reade the authour and the originall; let me reade them my self. The quota­tions of others which they make of authours may be false, and therefore will deceive. The connexion, the in­terpunction, the accent, the sense of the term in the wri­ters time, may turn the sense of the place; and so what I reade of an authour at the second hand may seem to be the authours, but peradventure it is the quoters: therefore let me reade the authour, or at least quote the quoter. Let me reade the originall: Translations may vary. They may be either false or slender, inexpressive, obscure, ob­scurer sometimes then the Text. As one answered, be­ing asked whether he should reade such a comment upon Aristotle, answered, Yes, said he, when Aristotle is under­stood then reade the comment: So interpretations may be as perplexed as the text.

And by S. Pauls particular usage of an authour here in the text, I might take a rise unto a generall treating, in way of reprehension, of the Abuse of authours, contra­ry to our Apostles practice: And then I might note who, and how, and wherein, and who most, and how farre they have proceeded in this most disingenuous injury unto writers deceased or living. But this would be a theme for some grave Aristarchus and learned Critick, not for a man of yesterday. Besides, I might be afraid of that of Solomon, He that reproveth the wicked getteth to himself a blot. Surely Solomon was herein a Prophets sonne in an extraordinary sense, in the Scripture-phrase, that is, a [Page 85]young Prophet; as if he had prophesied of a generation which make it as true as they are false, who, if one hath but chanced to rase in his writing the utmost skin, and to wipe but as it were the superficies of their doctrine or manners, though never so deservedly, have given him a blot in their Indices Expurgatorii, DELEATƲR, DE­LEATƲR. The Pontifician falsifications Chamier re­duceth unto two heads; a [...], and a [...], a false Interpretation of Authours, and a false Printing: The former they are not a little guilty in; as Bellarmine, and Grodecius, and others: but it falling not so directly under our censure from the example of our Apostle, I will omit it. Their falsification in [...], false Printing, is in three respects or wayes; by Addition, by Detraction or Taking-away, by Alteration. 1. by addition they abuse authours, commanding in their Indices, that whereas any Authour speaketh against them, in the next edition of those au­thours they should be branded with this marginall additi­on, Autor est damnatus; and sometimes, Autor est damnatus, sed jam permissus post expurgationem; and sometimes; Hîc cautè legatur .2. they abuse by detraction. No lesse then 800. writers are purged in one of their Indices, that of Spain, by the Archbishop of Toledo the generall In­quisitour. Deleatur here such a passage, here such a sen­tence; in this authour this, in that authour that; here an whole Epistle of Hulderick; there an Epistle in the first Tome of Athanasius, as ye may see in the 37 page of the forenamed Index. Here such a sentence of such a Father is to be left out in the next edition, as appeareth in the front of that Index. All kinds of authours are pur­ged thus by them; ours, theirs; sacred, prophane; all Humanity without any humanitie. Thirdly, they abuse [Page 86]by variation, by alteration: so in Vatablus his scholia upon the cvii. Psalme, the 7. verse they command in the next Editions to be read for Imagines, Idola. The margi­nall note there is, confusio iis qui adorant imagines: they say, Reade it IDOLA, in the lxxx. page of the Index. Be­sides they abuse authours in the Indices of the authours, commanding the references unto any place where they are touched any whit boldly, or in their grand articles and points, to be put out. But they will say, no Authour hath been actually falsified thus. Neverthelesse they have shewed their good will, or rather their ill will, their malice, their villany, in commanding that they should be corrupted: and God hath shewed his providence and ap­probation of the truth of the Protestant religion, in that he prevented the effect by discoverie of the Indices, whereby Protestant Divines were warned and admonish­ed to keep fast their old editions, of the Fathers especi­ally, which otherwise (as near as they could) they would have called in. And yet God hath in his wisdome per­mitted some to be indeed falsified, that we might have instances de facto for the confirmation of our belief that they had such treacherous minds unto the truth, and that they repented not of that transcendent designe, to silence all the world that had or should speak against them. For besides the Indices expurgatorii, whereof we have some with us, which are sufficient witnesses of their intention, Ferus, one of their own, yet in many points of our reli­gion ours, (as appeareth by their dealing towards him) in his comment upon the first epistle of S. John, in fifty leaves is falsified thrice fifty times, as is exactly obser­ved. In thrice fifty places doth the Romane Edition of him, which came out 1577. differ in the former wayes, [Page 87]either adding or taking away or altering from the Ant­werp-edition, which came out 1556. And not onely Fe­rus, but Fulbert also Bishop of Chartres, who lived in the eleventh centurie, is falsified by addition. He speak­ing upon the Eucharist hath these words, NISI MAN­DUCAVERITIS, inquit, CARNEM FILII HOMINIS, ET SANGUINEM BIBERITIS, NON HABEEITIS VI­TAM IN VOBIS. Facinus vel flagitium videtur jubere: figura ergò est praecipiens passioni Domini esse communican­dum tantùm, & suaviter atque utiliter recondendum in me­moria quòd pro nobis caro ejus crucifixa & vulnerata est. in the 168. leaf: Now in the yeare 1608. there was set out an Edition of him in Paris, where we have intersert­ed after Figura ergo est, DICET HAERETICUS, thus; Ʋnlesse (saith Christ) ye eat the flesh of the Sonne of man, and drink his bloud, ye shall not have life in you. He seemeth to command an impietie and great wickednesse: it is therefore a figure, WILL THE HERETIQUE SAY. These words will the heretique say, are put in by him that set out Ful­bert, to make what Fulbert spoke assertivè from Augu­stine, to speak recitativè of the heretique, as if the Here­tique should say, This is a figure, &c. For if Christs words be to be understood in a figure, by a trope, as Fulbert from Augustine, then the bread and the wine in the Eucharist are not transubstantiated. This testimony therefore being peremptory against them, they thought to take an order with, and to make to speak for them. The Pope maketh Bishop Fulbert recant five hun­dred and more years after his death. But by the bargain in their own opinion we have S. Augustine an heretique, and therefore he is ours, whom yet by all means they would have to be a very absolute Papist: For the words [Page 88]which Fulbert produceth there for the expounding of our Saviour (although he approveth them in the reci­ting) are indeed no other mans then Saint Augustines in his second book De doctrina Christiana, the sixteenth chapter. And the publisher of Fulbert being told hereof, that the words were Augustines which he had branded with heresie, he put afterwards his DICET HAERETI­CUS amongst his Errata, as ye may reade in the learned Primate of Irelands Answer unto the Jesuites Challenge, in the fiftenth page. O sea Apostolicall, how farre art thou from imitation of our Apostle S. Paul here, who dealeth truly with his Authour, and reciteth strictly the words! O thou sacred virgin Truth, how art thou de­floured by those who account it a sinne for them to mar­ry! Shall not now Adulteration of authours be one signe of the Whore? Shall not falsification of writers be a signe of the false Prophet? Is this the way to prove the truth of their Religion, and of their Church? It seemeth where Peters keyes cannot open the difficulty, his sword must cut the knot. This abuse of authours is one of the scandals they give the Jews, who live amongst them, which is so offensive to them amongst other things that they are never like to be converted to Christianity in Rome, as Sandys observeth. Tell me if ever the Christi­an world conceived such a monster of injury and inhu­manity (to say no worse) which reached not onely to the living but to the dead, to the dead Saints, and made those reverend Authours and Professours of divine truth speak so flatly against their consciences in their graves. We cannot leave these men better then abruptly, in an indignation: And so we may passe from a kind of Satans brood unto Gods offspring; For we are also his offspring.

Having now expounded the HIS in the text to be Gods, and the particles FOR and ALSO to be onely te­stimonies of an ingenuous quotation, and so not essentiall to the sense of the proposition, the strict and clear sub­stance of the words will be this, We are Gods offspring. The question now is concerning the supposition of the subject of the proposition, WE, how much it importeth.

If we consider the words without any reference unto Saint Pauls consequence out of them in the next verse, this WE may signifie in a double acception, reduplicati­vè, specificativé. First reduplicatively, most universally, comprehending all Entities, all creatures, whether of Being onely, or Life besides Being, or Sense besides both, or Reason besides all, or pure Reason without Sense, as Angels; all of him and from him, from the highest Angel in heaven to the lowest in hell. Bad ones, as of men, so of Angels: as ones, his, Gods; as bad, their own. It is a rationall creatures weaknesse to be able to sinne: It is Gods omnipotence to create; from the king to the begger, from Dan to Beersheba, from the greatest mountain to the slenderest atome, all of all; all proceed from him who proceedeth from none. But this all is too much for S. Pauls drift, and for the common expression WE. This sense is fit for the proposition, but too wide and redundant for the inference. Secondly then WE spe­cificativè, or indeed specially, We men. So the Apostle meaneth it in the next verse, Since then we are the offspring of God, we are not to think that the Godhead is like to gold or silver or stone graven by art or mans devise; as if man should be the image by which God should be worship­ped, if he would be worshipped by any. In man is the image of God though defaced by that originall sinne. [Page 60]And no better Embleme for representing the God of the whole or of all, as Ignatius in his Epistles, and Theo­doret in his Questions calleth him, then Man, who is the Epitome of the whole, of all, the Docquet of the book of the creature, [...], a whole world in a world, a little one in a great one, so that Democritus in his o­pinion of more worlds was out but in quantity, for there be many little worlds.

And we are Gods offspring in a threefold respect; in respect of our bodies, in respect of our souls, in respect of both together. These severall considerations for our more distinct proceeding may serve, if you please, in lieu of a division.

First of the first; we are Gods offspring in respect of our body. Now God is the Authour of our bodies (to speak in an universalitie) two wayes; immediately, or mediately: immediately, of our first Parents, though in some difference of manner; mediately, of the rest. The immediate production is also twofold; Ex parte Materiae, ex parte Efficientis. Immediate production in respect of matter maketh a simple creation, when somewhat is made out of no praeexistent subject at all: So Adam was not made in respect of his body, it being formed of the dust of the earth, Gen. ii. 7. And God formed man of the dust of the ground. The second immediate production is in respect of efficient: So Adam was created immediately by God, no other Agent coming betwixt and helping the Divine omnipotence in raising so glorious a fabrick out of so unlikely a subject. And therefore this is also called a Creation secundùm quid; no created virtue being able out of such an indisposed matter to make such a work. And as Adam was thus immediately produced [Page 91]by God in respect of his body, so was his wife Eve: They had a different matter, but the same efficient of their be­ing: God made the woman off the rib of man. Indeed Constantinus Manasses saith that Adam was to Eve [...].

But the Authour spake here as a Poet, as the Fathers sometimes like Rhetoricians. Adam concurred not in a­ny way of Agency towards the production of his Wife: he was not maried to his daughter. God took the rib from him when he was in a deep sleep, and off it framed the body of Eve. Matter in the beginning of time was taken from man to make a woman: and matter in the ful­nesse of time was taken from a woman to make a man, even the man Christ Jesus. So God was the Authour without any other of the bodies of Adam and Eve. God by this immediate production had a sonne and a daugh­ter, as we may speak. And this sonne and daughter im­mediate causes of our ordinary generation are the causes why to us God is not the immediate. God almighty who shewed what he could do in that extraordinary producti­on of our first parents, is now pleased to bring men into the world in way of a successive traduction by them. Parents we have: and God will have us account them so; for he giveth us a law to honour them, by reverence, by obedience, by gratitude, as it is expounded: Yet not so are they the authours of our being according to the flesh, not so fathers of our flesh, (as they are called, Hebr. xii. 9.) as if God were excluded from being our Father also according to a common manner of expression. God by a proper generation, a generation naturall, hath but [Page 92]one Sonne, the second person in the Trinitie: yet God in Scripture is commonly called a Father without any reference unto the second Person. God saith, Mal. 1. If I be a Father, where is my honour? And he is a Father as Creatour, expressely, Mal. ii. 10. Have we not all one Father? hath not one God created us? What more usuall in the Greek then to expresse Authour by [...]? there is scarce any other word for it. So Martiall for the Latine calleth his books his children. So God is said to be the Father of Spirits, Heb. xii. so the devil the father of a lie, in S. John. And thus we have expounded how God is said to be our Father, and how in the text we are called Gods offspring; not in strict proper speech, but according to the common use of expressing the producer of any thing by the Father or Parent of it. So Tertullian to our purpose in his book De Anima, Omne quod quoquo modo accipit esse, generatur. But more directly in the following words, Nam & factor ipse parens facti dici potest, sic & Pla­to utitur. Now that God is the Authour of our bodies by our Parents, that he hath a finger, nay a hand, nay hands in framing our bodies, we have the expresse testi­mony of the Prophet David, Psal. cxix. Thy hands have made me and fashioned me. And again, Psal. cxxxix. 12. For my reins are thine: thou hast covered me in my mothers wombe. I will give thanks unto thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made, [...], mirificatus sum mirabilibus operibus tuis, as Montanus rendreth it; I am fearfully and wonderfully made. I am moulded, I am made as it were and composed altogether in wonders, beyond all understanding and expression, so strangely, so subtilly, so beyond the power of man. The words import more then we can say. The Prophet may well go on; Mar­vellous [Page 57]are thy works, and that my soul knoweth right well. It knoweth onely that they are marvellous, and so above knowledge. My bones are not hid from thee, though I be made secretly, and fashioned beneath in the earth. Thine eyes did see my substance yet being imperfect, and in thy book were all my members written; which day by day were fashioned, while as yet there were none of them. To this place happily S. Augustine alludeth in his Confessions, speaking of his parents Patricius and Monica, per quorum carnem intro­duxisti me in hanc vitam; quemadmodum, nescio, how, I know not. The wombe is Gods doore, which he open­eth to give men induction into the world. Think we that a little petty matter of seed by the created virtue of a created faculty, [...] or [...], as they call it, could or should without a supernaturall direction and su­perefficiencie elaborate, and frame, and square, and po­lish in the obscure wombe, in no long time, such a stru­cture of flesh, so fashionable, so serviceable, so strong and trimme, so ordered and connexed, that an Heathen here­upon called God, [...], the best Artist; and another called mans body [...], a fair variega­ted piece of a wise builder? Job excellently in this matter, chap. x. 8. where speaking to God, he saith, Thy hands have made me and fashioned me together round about; yet thou dost destroy me. Remember I beseech thee, that thou hast made me like the clay; and wilt thou bring me into the dust again? Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and crudled me as cheese? Thou hast clothed me with skin and flesh, and hast fensed me with bones and sinews. Nature, that particular power which God hath put in every creature to do actions con­venient to its species, is it self Gods servant in the work­ing as his creature in the being: and although it could by [Page 58]the solitary virtue of its own form without a Divine con­currence work an effect, yet that effect also should be Gods, it self and the form of it being Gods: How much more shall God be the Authour of that which he work­eth by it? As of the grain committed to the ground S. Paul saith, God giveth it a body; so it may be said of this humane seed, God giveth it a body. The Father who knoweth the child better then the child the Father, and the Mother that knoweth the child better then the Fa­ther, (and therefore the Father loveth the child better then the child the Father, and the Mother loveth the child better then the Father, as he speaketh in his Ethicks) know not yet how the child is wrought and made in the wombe. They know the effect, they know not the man­ner of the effecting. Eccles xi. 5. the secresie of Gods way in making all things is expressed by the privatenesse and obscuritie how the bones do grow in the wombe of her that is with child. This is one of the wayes where­by he describeth there symbolically the abstrusenesse of Gods works: As thou knowest not what is the way of the spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the wombe of her that is with child; even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all. Certainly the matter of generation is not much unlike that matter out of which all things were created at first, which matter Moses Gen. i. calleth the heaven and the earth: not formally so; but because there was out of it to be produced, not by a physicall but omni­potent virtuality, the particulars of heaven and earth. And the same power that could, and goodnesse that would, and wisdome that knew how to fashion out of such a disguised matter so brave a world, doth and must (if ever it be done) raise out of the semblable subject the [Page 59]most exact and excellent structure of the body of the modell of the universe. The Egyptian Doctour Trismegist shall conclude the truth of this point, [...], Ʋnderstand, O Sonne, the framing of man in the wombe, search out accurately the art of the building: learn who made this fair and divine shape of man, as he goeth on. [...]; Who turned the eyes? who bored the nostrils and eares? who extended and tied the sinews? who derived the veins? who set and firmed the bones? who invest­ed the flesh with skin? who divided and branched the fingers? who hath inlarged our steps? who hath digged our pores? who hath stretched out the spleen? who hath made the heart like a pyramid? who hath drawn out the liver? [...]; who hath made the lungs like a pipe? who made the capacious belly? who made the honourable parts of the body so visible, [...]; who made all these? [...]; what mother? what father? who but the invisible God who made all things with his will? Thus we see that God is the Authour of us, and we are his offspring in re­spect of our bodie.

Now from this discourse of Gods being the Authour also, though mediately, of our bodies we may raise some inference to the good of our soul; but in a word or two. A little Philosophie from heaven for our practice, and we passe to the second point. Lord, didst thou make our bo­dies; and yet do we use them as if we had made them our selves, or sinne, or Satan? or as if they had been made by thee for them? How many organs hast thou framed for the multiplicity of our operations, and yet how few, how little do we use those few, if we use any for thy ser­vice! [Page 60]Let us not dishonour this temple of the holy Ghost by uncleannesse, by fornication, by adultery, or any such turpitude. Other sinnes, as S. Paul 1. Cor. vi. 18. are without the body, [...], objectivé; they passe no speciall actuall pollution upon the body: but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. It was for this that Democritus pulled out his eyes, lest he should lust upon sight, as Tertullian in his Apologetick, not that he might the better addict himself to contem­plate in Philosophy. And Pythagoras his precept, [...], was a precept against uncleannesse, [...] signifying somewhat else besides beans, wherein he him­self delighted, as Gellius saith by the testimony of Ari­stoxenus, in his fourth book and 11 chapter.

Again, the body is an accurate structure; admire the Artist, the Builder. And what wilt thou admire? what part? what member? wilt thou commend the breast? all thy Rhetorick is not enough for the belly. Wilt thou commend the belly? thou hast not praises enough for the Head. What, the Eare? O glorious Eye! I should ad­mire the Arteries that come from the Heart; but the Nerves draw me back which come from the Brain; I should praise the Nerves, but I am astonished at the Veins which flow from the Liver. What shall I say of the Legs the pillars of the house? or rather of the Hands, the agents? What not of the Mouth, the doore, into which mortall things enter, out of which immortull things proceed, as Philo the Jew? But the Teeth, that [...], as he calleth them, barracadoe the Tongue, lest it should wander too much and be too talkative. O admirable creature in that we see of thee, the Body, though more admirable in that we see not, the Soul! Keep this piece, [Page 61]this brave piece, handsome and clean: let it not be sordid, untrim. It is the temple of the holy Ghost: bestow on it a decent ornament, not gaudy. It is the servant to the soul; give it food sufficient, and so tune the instru­ment the organ. Make not thy body as it were a trough by drunkennesse; that thy soul should be as salt, as he said, to keep thy body from rotting. Make not thy belly thy God, nor thy head thy Idole: They are Gods creatures: God doth not use to make Gods. Pride not thy self in the ampleness [...] or majestie or proport of thy body; God could have made thy body a great deal bigger. God hath given thee the lesse body that thou shouldest be the lesse proud. So Theodoret in the exposition of that place in Genesis, There were then giants upon the earth, giveth the reason why God doth not make our bodies of that vast­nesse as he could, [...]; For if in those small bulks they swelled in pride, not onely against one another but also against God himself, what would they not have done if they had had more tall and migh­ty bodies? But because thy body is not so great, happily therefore more neat; and thou hast vires ingenuas, as the Poet expresseth it: and so thou wilt glory in the feature of it: Nay, rather give glory to God in expressing the humilitie and subjection of thy spirit unto God by bodily worship. The service of the body who will deny God, unlesse those who will deny God to be the authour of it? Nay, the Manichees, who denied God to be the authour of the body, did not: for they fasted on Sundayes, as it is storied of them; and in fasting they exercised an humi­liation of the body. This shall be left for Schwenckfeil­dians onely, who (as Zanchy of them) took away all [Page 62]externall service. As Christs Divinity was manifested in the flesh; so should our spiritualnesse be manifested by the body. Man consisteth of body and soul; the service of man therefore is the service of both: Both are to be glo­rified; both are to glorifie: Both are from God; both are for God. Some give God the soul, not the body; these are few: such Schwenckfeeldians: Some give God the body, not the soul; and many do so: such are hypocrits: Some give God neither; Atheists: Some give God both; men Christians. As Tertullian therefore of the old Christians, so we; Illuc suspicientes manibus expansis, quia innocuis, capite nudo, quia non erubescimus, oramus; Look­ing up thither, unto heaven, with our hands stretched out, because innocent, with our head bare, because we are not ashamed, we pray. And this service of the body is in­deed a small and easie matter to perform, as lying in the power of freedome of will: and yet this is very requi­site. And we may erre in the service of the outward man: yet hereby is not taken away the duenesse and right of a rectified outward worship. S. Paul discoursing of the Christians complete armature, Ephes. 6. biddeth us to have our feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace. We may tread this Gospel awry: and we may tread it too much outward: and the sect before mention­ed treadeth it too much inward. Remember that good counsel, [...]: or that of the Satyrist Persius, ‘—pone in pectore dextram.’ Passe we now to our second proposition, We are the off­spring of God in respect of our Souls.

That God is the Authour of our bodies mediately by our parents, and that he was the Authour of the bodies of Adam and Eve immediately in regard of the Efficient, [Page 63]we have determined: And is he the Authour of our ma­teriated bodies, not of our immateriall souls? The effi­ciency of these we are come now by order to discourse of; which deserveth indeed rather a volume then some circumscribed treatise and hasty disquisition. The know­ledge and science of it is very noble as Aristotle begin­neth in his book of it; and none more difficult, as it may seem by Dicearchus, who doubted whether there were such a thing in rerum natura, as Tully of him in his Tu­sculane Questions. Yet if he would have examined his doubting, he might have found by it an evidence of its being; He could not have doubted of it without it. But the beginning and originall of it hath ever been matter of dispute in a threefold respect. 1. of the Efficient, from whom it proceedeth: 2. of the Matter, out of which it should be made, whether out of nothing termi­nativè, or out of some preexistent subject: 3. of the Time, when produced; whether from eternall or in time: and if in time, whether before the body be composed, or whether in the very instant of the finishing of it. Learn­ed Zanchy, who stateth these heads of controversie con­cerning the soul, lib. 2. part. 13. cap. 5. doth there reduce all the varieties of opinions concerning the soul unto these eight.

I. The first opinion is of those who held that the soul is of God, but that it is made by God of the soul of the world, namely, the substance of the heavens; & that it is like the starres; therefore incorruptible, immortall & that there is a certain number of them, without increase or diminution and that their mansion is in heaven, from whence they descend into particular bodies as they are framed. This was the tenet of Pythagoras and Plato, [Page 64]and of the Academicks, as Zanchy saith: and also this was not much different from the opinion of the Egyptian Do­ctour. This opinion was the ground of their [...] or Transanimation: Which some of the Jews may be thought to have inclined unto, some of them saying that Christ was Elias, some that he was John Baptist, as if ei­ther of their souls had lived in Christs body: although others are of another mind, that they deemed that one of them were raised from the dead, as Barradius noteth. This was Herods phansie of Christ, Matth. xiv. 2. This is John the Baptist, he is risen from the dead: and therefore migh­ty works do shew forth themselves in him. II. Others with Origen held that the souls were made in time, of nothing; by God; but all at once: and they held those to be kept in thesaure Dei, to be sent afterwards into their particular bodies. III. Some held not onely that they were made at once, but also of the substance of God; So the Stoicks; after them the Manichees. In this opinion the souls are ex Deo and de Deo; in the two former, ex Deo, not de Deo. IV. Another sort would have the souls to be made by the Angels, ex igne & spiritu: neither de Deo nor ex Deo: So Seleucus, Hermeas, and the Carpocratians, who held that all the world was made by the Angels. These foure opinions the Authour saith are antiquated with those who professe assent unto sacred Scripture. V. The first of the other quaternion mainteined the first soul indeed to be created by God of nothing, and breathed into Adam, but the rest to be propagated suc­cessively with the propagation of the body, yet to be im­mortall. These also were divided in their conceipts: Some thought the soul to be corporeall, and corporeal­ly generated: Some thought it to be a Spirit, and spiritu­ally [Page 65]produced, somewhat like as one candle is lighted by another: Thus Apollinaris and others in the western Churches, as Zanchie faith. VI. Others denied the pro­duction of it per traducem, affirming that new souls are created simply by God, and each put into their proper bodies: This Jerome saith was the generall tenet and doctrine of the Church in his time. VII. Augustine neither condemned those who say that it cometh per traducem, nor those that say that souls are created de no­vo by God: yet he saith, he could not see how this opi­nion of the absolute creation of the soul could be confir­med by Scripture; therefore he desired Jerome to help him in this point with his advice. VIII. Lastly, some thought that the souls are dayly created by God: But some of these again imagined that the souls are created without the body, extra corpus, afterwards put in; others, that they are created in the infusion, and infused in the creation. But amidst and maugre all the rest, this is Zan­chie's and may be our determination, That rationall souls are created immediately by God of nothing after the organizing of the body, or, when the body is entire­ly organized, in the body. Not to meddle with the ana­sceuasticall or refutative part of the contrary assertions, (For rectum est index sui & obliqui) this thesis may seem more consonant to Scripture, to Ecclesiastick writers, to reason, to Heathen Authours: by all which we shall in order, but very briefly, try it. Onely we must premise here, That the time of the creation of the soul beareth an intimate respect unto the latter proposition, and that we need not make a distinct proving that it is created of no­thing, since thus we have Zanchie for our praecedent: and 2. because those who contend for a matter out of [Page 66]which the soul should be made by God, are more exotick authours; and 3. their matter is altogether inconvenient; and 4. Creation in a proper sense, which is an absolute and simple creation, excludeth whatsoever matter; and 5. because by this creation, abstracting the consideration ex quo from whence it is created, namely, out of no­thing, we shall conclude against the way of production per traducem, which is the principall opposite opinion. So that now to the second proposition, as at first we na­med it, That God is the Authour of our souls, we shall adde in our discourse a differencing of his efficiency of the body and the soul. Of our body he is the Authour by our Parents; of our soul absolutely, by himself, by creation.

This we endeavour to prove first by Scripture. And the first place in Scripture should be Exod. xxi. 22. wherein God giveth them a law concerning the striking of a woman with child: But then we must reade the Scripture in the Septuagints translation; and then two things are to be granted: first, that we have the right and true translation of the Septuagint; and second­ly, that this translation is true, which indeed great Ec­clesiastick writers have followed. The words in their version are these, [...], If two men strive together and strike a woman with child, and the child abortively cometh forth not shaped, he shall be mulcted: but, [...], if the child shall be fully shaped, then thou shalt pay life for life. Whereupon is inferred by this Greek version, that during the time of the embryo there is no soul in it, and therefore if it perish by the stroke, & the woman escape, the punishment must be [Page 67]but pecuniary; because no murther, because of no man, because the soul is not in it: but if the child proveth abor­tive, and cometh out fully shaped, both must die; because then the body is animated, and therefore it is murther. So that the soul is not propagated with the seed: for then the soul should successively grow to perfection with the body; and then there could be thus no abortive with­out murther. This reading the Greek Fathers, and o­thers who generally do follow the Septuagint, do fol­low. Yet since the originall (which our English transla­tion followeth) maketh not at all for our purpose, we will passe over this place without any urging of it, and without any observation how the Interpreters, and in how many respects, were here mistaken. Onely by the way we may take notice, that we have here the judge­ment of the Septuagint delivered in favour of our cause, and also the judgement of the Greek Fathers, and others who use their interpretation of Scripture, and also the de­termination of Canon law grounded (as one noteth) upon this place according to the Septuagint, That he is not a murtherer who maketh an abortive before the in­fusion of the soul. The second authority in Scripture may be Zach. xii. 1. The burthen of the word of the Lord for Israel, saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foundation of the earth and frameth the spirit of man within him, [...] in interiori ejus, as Montanus rendreth it; in medio, as Pagnine. This place seemeth not onely to conclude the peculiar production of the soul by God, but the time also, especially the manner, in the bo­dy, nay in the heart likely, which is (as they say) primum vivens, ultimum moriens. Isa. lvii. 16. For I will not con­tend for ever, neither will I be alwaies wroth: for the Spirit [Page 68]should fail before me, and the souls which I have made. In this sacred testimony I conceive two objections exclu­ded: That it may be understood of the souls of our first Parents; this may be the first: But then it is to be an­swered, Dicit pluraliter, he speaketh in generall, SOULS; and he speaketh as de futuro, I VVILL not contend FOR EVER, I VVILL not be ALVVAYES wroth. Secondly, It may be objected, That God may be said to be the Au­thour of our souls, and to make our souls, although our parents do conduce, as God is said to be the Authour of our bodies. It may be answereed, that God speaketh here of the making of the souls, signanter, in way of especiall appropriation, which I have made; I have made them. Eccles xii. 7. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God that gave it. This Scripture was very potent with Augustine, as he confes­seth in his tenth book De Genesi ad literam, and the ninth chapter: But after some doubting he inclineth to the ex­position of it touching the foul of Adam, although the preacher seemeth to speak it in commani. And if you say that God gave the Spirit by our parents; so he did the body: why then doth he speak particularly, and onely of the Spirit, that he gave that? The last authority which we will use out of Scripture is, Heb. xii. 9. Furthermore we have had Fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of Spirits, and live? Here is an [...], a con­tradistinction betwixt Fathers of our flesh and Father of our Spirits: Fathers of our flesh, subefficiently unto God; Father of our Spirits, absolutely, immediately. And Fa­ther of our Spirits must be understood in respect of pro­duction, not regeneration, that the opposition may be [Page 69]strictly ad idem. If, as before, ye say that he is Father of our Spirits by our Parents, so he is also of our flesh, as be­fore. Memorabilis locus ad quaestionem, as Paraeus breaketh out upon this place; This is a pertinent text for the deci­ding of the question betwixt Augustine and Hierome concerning the beginning and efficiencie of the soul. Hierome could not produce a more pregnant testimonie for the determining of Augustine unto his tenet. Now to these divine testimonies we might adde an argument or two drawn out of sacred writ. Zanchie argueth from the manner of the creation of Adams soul & of Christs, the like in all others.

But we will passe unto the second head of our confir­mation, That the creation of souls is more consonant unto Ecclesiastick writers, Fathers. The consent of these hath alwayes been accounted a moving argument. [...], as he in his Rhetoricks; It is not ingenuous to determine any thing contrary to the Gods, to a Father, to a Master. Doctours Fathers then must have in them some perswasive virtue towards assent unto their judgements. Zanchie therefore citeth Hierome, Gregorie Nyssen, Theodoret, Leo. And Hieromesaith, as before, that it was the generall opini­on of the Church in his time, that God is the Authour of souls by creation. Indeed we want herein the suffra­ges of Tertullian and Augustine. Tertullian saith plainly that the soul is corporeall: we have it in his book De re­surrectione carnis, IN TERMINIS TERMINANT IBUS; Nos autem animam corporalem & hîc profitemur, & in suo vo­lumine probamus: And he giveth us his reason, because of the souls suffering of torments; making account that the soul, unlesse it be corporeal, cannot suffer. Angustine in his [Page 70]tenth De genesi ad literam goeth about at first to excuse this expression of the Father, in saying that the reason of this speech was, because he could not otherwise concieve it to be then in a corporeall notion: neither could be o­therwise conceive of God, as Rhenanus in favour of him, Timuit nè Deus nihil esset, si non esset corpus, He was afraid lest God should not be, or should be nothing, if not a body. Yet Augustine soon after his excuse of the Father understandeth him otherwise in his term of CORPUS, even by his own words; because he saith, Omnecorporale est passibile, as if he meant by CORPORALE not onely a reall substance, but a substance materiall. Debuit ergò mutare sententiam, saith the Father, because hereby he maketh God passible. So that Augustine holdeth not with Tertullian, that the soul is corporeall; yet he doubt­eth whether it be created. And his reason is, Because, if it be created by God, he cannot see how originall sinne should be conveyed unto it, which he knew so well, and defended so stoutly against Pelagius. To conclude there­fore: If we could determine three conclusions in refe­rence unto these two Fathers, we might obtein their voi­ces also. First, in reference unto Tertullian, That the soul, although not corporeall, yet is passible and sensible of grief. So Christ saith of his own soul, my soul is heavy unto death. And that Christs soul was immateriall who can deny, especially since he was not born in the common way? Secondly, in reference unto S. Augustine, That although the soul be created, yet there is a way con­ceiveable for the intromission of originall sinne without any danger of making God any way the Authour of sinne. This Zanchie maketh good. Thirdly, in reference unto them both, That a probable truth is not to be dis­carded [Page 71]for some particular inconveniences, which in our apprehension may seem to arise out of the position of it. And de facto, that Saint Hierome wonne S. Augustine unto his side in this point, Paraeus and Zanchie are my Authours; nay Lombard and Biel do cite Augustine in the three and twentieth chapter of the Questions ex Ve­teri Testamento, for the creation of the soul, Inhonestum puto si animae dicantur cum corporibus generari, ut anima nascatur de anima. And Biel to this purpose citeth Augu­stine, De Ecclesiasticis dogmatibus, Non seminantur animae cum corporibus. But to deal ingenuously with my audi­ence; The former book of the Questions ex veteri Te­stamento is none of S. Augustines, as Bellarmine and E­rasmus and others do hold. And again, the Treatise De Ecclesiasticis dogmatibus, is supposed to have been made by Gennadius. That the former is not the Fathers own is more then likely (beside the judgement of those be­fore named) because in it he citeth Augustine, whosoe­ver is the authour of it. Neverthelesse, deducting the suf­frages of these two Fathers, the greater part (as Zanchie accounteth) are of opinion that the soul is created. Our Thesis then appeareth to be more consonant unto the Fathers, to more of them; and to the rest also happily it is more agreeable then the contrary assertion: and al­so those two Fathers do shew more dislike unto this tenet in respect of the consequents, then in respect of the simple consideration of it in it self.

The third triall of the truth of our Thesis is by the consonance unto reason. And the first Argument may be thus; Either the soul is created by God or propagated by our parents. Not propagated by our parents: For if so, then by some seed, or by nothing. If of nothing, [Page 72]then it is not of our parents, but it is created: If it be of some seed, then either [...] or [...], either corporall or spirituall. If corporall; the soul is materiall; so corru­ptible, so mortall: If the seed be spirituall, then either that seed is corruptible and mortall, or incorruptible and immortall. If corruptible and mortall; so is the soul, the effect bearing proportion and similitude unto the cause: If incorruptible and immortall; then either the soul is not generated, and therefore why seed? (and indeed how seed of the soul, whether corruptible or incorruptible? and therefore how generative?) Or if the soul be gene­rated, then what is in its nature incorruptible must be corruptible by generation; for generation importeth cor­ruption. This is in effect Zanchie's argument in the fore­cited place. Secondly, as we argue à priori, from the Immateriality of the soul unto the Immortality of it; so reciprocally we may argue à posteriori, from the Immor­talitie of the soul to the Immaterialitie of it. And we need not fear a circular demonstration in diverso genere demonstrationis. Now if we prove it immateriall, then it is not ex traduce, not by our parents; and if it be immor­tall, then it is not materiated. Now the immortality of the soul those Ecclesiasticall writers could not deny, who yet would not grant that it is created, but thought it might be produced cum semine. Aquinas, part. I. quaest. 118. art. 2. concludeth that it is hereticall to hold the tra­duction of the soul: Sure much more is it hereticall to hold the Mortality of it. And indeed he giveth his rea­son why it is hereticall to maintein the traduction of it, in regard of the consequent, because so it would be mor­tall: if mortall, where is our resurrection? if no resur­rection, where is our Christianity? The immortality [Page 73]then of the soul we may take as confessed and granted; which was assevered even by the learned Heathen, Trif­megist, Plato, Thales, Plutarch, Pindar, Virgil, as we might see by their severall testimonies; if it were necessa­ry to recite them, they being so well known. As for Aristotle in this point, it is commonly said of him, ‘— [...],’ as if he were a Vertumnus, determined neither pro not con: Yet were he well inquired into, we should find him to be on our side. But thirdly, Bonaventure's Argu­ment, as Biel citeth it, is worth the naming, though it be not fit for urging, as being drawn from convenience one­ly: Since the soul is the image of God, & nata immedia­tè fieri in Deum, made to be happified in him by a clear vision of him, and by a fruition in loving him with all our soul, by which love our soul is spiritually united un­to him, it becometh, it is fitting that the whole being of it should be immediately from God, with whom it is to be wholly united. And so much, or rather so little, in respect of what might be said for the third way of the triall of our Thesis.

The fourth and last is, the inartificiall argument of Ethnick authority. This assertion of the creation of the soul by God is not destitute of humane suffrages. Be­sides all their opinions who hold that the souls were crea­ted from eternall, we have other testimonies. I will give you one or two, which may be a signe of more. Learn­ed Zanchy quoteth Pythagoras, Epictetus, Trismegist, Simplicius, Zoroaster, Aristotle. First, Pythagoras; ‘ [...],’ Be of a valiant spirit, since Mans descent is Divine: which he supposeth Pythagoras understood in regard of the [Page 74]soul, as surely he did. As for his [...] or Transani­mation, if it concerned very much our purpose, it were not very difficult to vindicate him from it, and many other absurdities, which either ignorant or envious men attributed to him as Reuchline observeth in his second book. Epictetus; [...], We are akin to God, from him we came: Suffer us to go from whence we came. Simplicius; [...], The soub is said to proceed from God as a beam from the sunne. Zoroa­ster very clearly; [...] ‘ [...].’ Thou must make speed unto the light and the glories of thy fa­ther; from thence was thy soul sent down endued with much understanding. Trismegist; [...]. But the question now is, how we shall construe [...], what it signifieth with Trismegist. Salvo meliori judicio, I can­not see what sense or notion may be framed of his [...] to our purpose. He seemeth not to understand hereby the Mind or Soul: For he often distinguisheth [...] and [...]: and immediately after the place which Zanchie quoteth he speaketh thus, [...], This [...] in men is a Divinity: and therefore some men are Gods. Me thinketh he intendeth hereby some intelligent power separated from the soul. To passe him therefore; Aristotle may be next: who bringeth in as clear an authority for our behalf as any: Nay none so clear as that in his second book De generat. animal. c. 3. [...]. And the reason followeth; [...], It remaineth that the mind cometh from [Page 75]without, and is onely divine; because no corporeall operation is mixed with its: by which place and another in his De Anima we may inferre Aristotle's opinion concerning the immortalitie of the soul. He saith in his first book De Anima, [...], If there be any ope­ration proper and peculiar to the soul, it may be separa­ted: if separated, then immortall. Here he assumeth; The bodily operation is not mixed with the operation of the mind: therefore separable; therefore immortall. Pari­siensis in his treatise De Legibus saith, Omnes enim ani­mae creantur in corporibus suis, sicut declarat Aristoteles. He nameth not where Aristotle declareth himself thus; but surely there cannot be a clearer passage for that opi­nion then the forenamed in his second De generat. anim. If it be objected that Aristotle taketh [...] as Trismegist doth, it may be answered, 1. we may understand his meaning by the title of the book, according to the rule, Titulus libri saepe est legendus. 2. he discusseth in that chap­ter the production and the time of the production of souls. Tully is plain in the first of his Tusculane questi­ons, Animorum nulla in terris origo inveniri potest. Pindar also, as I find him quoted, speaking of the soul, which he calleth [...], saith, [...], This onely cometh from heaven. Seneca in his cxx. epistle, Maximum in­quam, mi Lucili, argumentum animi ab altiori venientis sede; A very great argument of the souls coming down from heaven it is, if it accounteth these things wherein it is here be­low conversant, base and low and too strait for it; if it fear not to go out: for knowing from whence it came, it knoweth whether it is going. To these testimonies more might be added, as Morney collecteth them in his fifteenth chapter, where he treateth de immortalitate anima. Zan­chie [Page 76]believeth that this was Aratus his meaning, not onely, That God was the first and universall cause of the soul, as he is of the body and all things else, but, That the substance of the soul is not made of the Elements or of any heavenly substance, but that it is a creature abso­lutely divine. Thus we have seen our Thesis agreeable to sacred Scripture, to Fathers, to reason, to Ethnick au­thority. We have touched a ticklish cause and a grave controversie. A young man, one Vincentius Victor (as Chemnitius relateth) when learned Augustine demur­red and would not determine this point concerning the originall of a rationall soul, censured boldly the Fathers unresolvednesse, and vaunted that he would undertake to prove by demonstration that souls are created de novo, by God: For which peremptory rashnesse the Father returned the young man a sober reprehension. But I therefore, lest I should be obnoxious to the like reproof, have not so much determined the point evident, as argu­ed it probable. However, it is res quaestionis, not res fidei. It standeth not upon our salvation to believe the one or the other; either that it is, or it is not created. As he then concludeth his Rhetoricks, so I this little discussion of this great controversie, [...].

The third respect wherein we are Gods offspring is the Union of body and soul together, which maketh our third proposition, as we formerly propounded it, We are Gods offspring in respect of body and soul toge­ther. I will not here runne into the nice dispute, whether A B be Ab; Whether the whole man really differeth from the parts taken together: and so whether God in the uniting of them be a cause of a new Entitie. God al­mighty, who made bodies and souls (though in a diffe­rent [Page 77]manner betwixt the first bodies; namely of our first Parents, and the rest, and in a different manner betwixt bodies and fouls) made one for the other, the body to receive the soul, the soul to enlive and inform the body. And here we are to consider the time of the creation of the soul, according as we apprehend it in probability to be created: And here we have the way how we are the offspring of God in respect of body and soul together, in that the form is framed in the matter prepared. As God made man when all things in the world were ready and dressed to shew him enterteinment, so likely he maketh the soul when the body, the house, is furnished with rooms for the abode and working of it. And that he ma­keth not the soul extra materiam, without the body, but in it, Biels argument may evince, beside whatsoever may be said out of the places in Scripture before named against the contrary. His argument is this, Quia tunc a­nima haberet aliquem actum volendi vel intelligendi prius­quam infunderetur: If the soul were created out from the body, then it would exercise some act of understanding and willing before it were infused: For such a divine creature cannot be idle and unactive. If it should exer­cise any act before the union, it should merit before the union, as he saith: We deny his merit, but we cannot well imagine how the soul should exercise any act of un­derstanding and will before it be in the body. And this S. Paul supposeth, as Biel noteth, Rom. ix. 11. For the children not being yet born, neither having done good or evil: Neither good nor evil is done before birth. Moreover, how that good act, if any, though not meritorious, yet should be rewarded to the soul peculiarly, besides the reward for those actions of it in the body, we cannot well con­ceive. [Page 78]For every man shall recieve according to what he hath done in the body. The Person shall receive according to the actions of the person; the Soul is not a Person. A question here may arise, Why God should unite this soul to this body: Why should this glorious soul dwell in this corruptible body? this royall tenant in so low a cot­tage? this vast spirit in a circumscribed skin? as if not onely Galba's wit but all our souls did malè habitare. For answer, 1. The highest cause is the best, Gods pleasure, Gods [...] (his reason, as we may say) and his [...], his will, the Egyptian Doctour taketh for the same. 2. Like­ly for the order of the Universe; that as there is a created rationall spirit without a body, namely the Angel, so there should be a created rationall Spirit (though not ra­tionall in that degree of perfection) in a body. 3. The Poet;

Lombard upon this question, in his first Distinction of the second book, giveth another, That by the conjuncti­on of the soul with the body, so farre its inferiour, man might learn and believe a possibility of the union of man with God in glory, notwithstanding the vast distance of nature and excellence, the infinitenesse of both in God, the finitenesse of both in man. But our soul in the mo­ment of union with the body is defiled with originall sinne: But our nature sinned in Adam; and the order of the Universe and the glory of Christs redemption are of greater moment, as Zanchie.

Now out of the conjunction of soul with body we might have the resultance of deductions and inferences many and important ones. We might have raised an ex­hortation [Page 79]peculiar unto the soul, That it is the bravest substance under heaven, and therefore that we should fit it with the purest accident: We should adorn it with the best habit, of Faith, of Love, of Hope: That when we think, we should think of our selves; when we think up­on our selves, we should think upon our soul; when we think upon our soul, we should think that it is from God absolutely, and that it is immortall, and that we should provide for it accordingly. Get this soul beautified with white and red, Christs Bloud, his Righteousnesse.

And when thou thinkest of thy self composed of body and soul (for who in the body, even while he thinketh of the soul, will forget his body) 1. consider what is due from hence to him that made thee a man, not a beast; what piety, what devotion, what obedience, what ratio­nall service, what rationall or reasonable sacrifice, as Tris­megist speaketh. 2. from hence also consider what an in­gagement there is of love and friendship and justice unto our neighbour, since he who made him made us: We are all of the same make, all of the same nature. Job is mo­ved hereby to do no wrong, no not to his very servant, Job xxxi. 15. Did not he that made me in the wombe, make him? and did not one fashion us in the wombe? 3. from Gods conjunction of both together we are bound to maintein the union. As in the conjunction of man and wife, so in the conjunction of body and soul, What God hath joyned together, let no man put asunder, no private man, no Magistrate unjustly; not our selves, for no cause. Let both grow together (as we may speak) untill the harvest, untill thou beest fairly cut down by that common sickle of Death, and laid in the granary of the grave. 4. We learn hence humility. Our best excellence is in our soul: [Page 80]Our soul is in an earthly tabernacle, easily resolved into its principles, undone with a flie, destroyed with a grape­stone, cracked with a shell. All our learning is soon refu­ted with one black o, which understanding us not, snap­peth us unrespectively without any distinction, and put­teth at once a period to our reading and to our being. Look we upon our black feet; nay below our feet unto the dust: reade we, and meditate, and learn meeknesse and humilitie in this originall. 5. It is our duty, since God is thus our Father in regard of body and soul, to rely upon his care and providence for a living in the world, and in­finitely more then upon the care of the fathers of our flesh. God is more principally our Father: They of the body, subordinately unto God; God of the soul, exclu­ding them: They men, not God; therefore not able to see what is best for us: They men, not God; therefore not able to foresee all dangers: They men, not God; therefore not able alwayes to help us: They men, not God; therefore changeable in their affection: They men, not God; therefore changeable in their being. What power the Father of our flesh hath, he hath from God; what goodnesse, from God: God susteineth his nature, concurreth with his action, blesseth the effect. 6. Last­ly, we have hence S. Pauls conclusion (in the next verse) which shall be mine, For as much then as we are the off­spring of God, we are not to think that the Godhead is like unto silver or gold or stone, graven by art and mans devise: Whereby is intimated, that the Heathens did make me­morials of God by creatures, which they represented in images of filver, of gold, of stone. This conclusion we have touched before: to prosecute it were to begin ano­ther text.