more for the edification of the church, that the

prayers were in the vulgar tongue?" He says no more than St. Paul says; and he could not speak it plainer. And indeed no man of sense can deny it, unless he affirms, at the same time, that it is better to speak what we understand not, than what we do ; or that it were better to serve God without that noble faculty than with it; that is, that the way of a parrot and a jackdaw were better than the way of a man; and that, in the service of God, the priests and the people are to differ as a man and a bird.

But besides all this; was not Latin itself, when it was first used in divine service, the common tongue, and generally understood by many nations and very many colonies? And if it was then the use of the church to pray with the understanding, why shall it not be so now? However, that it was so then, and is not so now, demonstrates that the church of Rome hath in this material point greatly innovated: let but the Roman Pontifical be consulted, and there will be yet found a form of ordination of readers, in which it is said, 'that they must study to read distinctly and plainly, that the people may understand":' but now it seems that labour is saved. And when a notorious change was made in this affair, we can tell by calling to mind the following story. The Moravians did say mass in the Sclavonian tongue; for which Pope John the Eighth severely reproved them, and commanded them to do so no more; but being better informed, he wrote a letter to their Prince Sfentoputero, in which he affirms, that it is not contrary to faith and sound doctrine to say mass and other prayers in the Sclavonian tongue, and adds this reason; because he that made Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, hath made the others also for his glory; and this also he confirms with the authority of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, and some other scriptures; only he commanded, for the decorum of the business, the Gospel should first be said in Latin, and then in the Sclavonian tongue. But just two hundred years after this, the tables were turned, and though formerly these things were permitted, yet so were many things in the primitive church; but upon better examination they have been corrected. And

Studete verba Dei, viz. Lectiones sacras distinctè et apertè ad intelligentiam et ædificationem fidelium, absque omni mendacio falsitatis, proferre, &c,

therefore Pope Gregory the Seventh wrote to Vratislaus of Bohemia, that he could not permit the celebration of the divine offices in the Sclavonian tongue, and he commanded the prince to oppose the people herein with all his forces. Here the world was strangely altered, and yet St. Paul's Epistle was not condemned of heresy, and no council had decreed that all vulgar languages were profane; and no reason can yet be imagined why the change was made, unless it were to separate the priest from the people, by a wall of Latin, and to nurse stupendous ignorance in them, by not permitting to them learning enough to understand their public prayers, in which every man was greatly concerned. Neither may this be called a slight matter; for besides that Gregory the Seventh thought it so considerable, that it was a just cause of a war or persecution (for he commanded the Prince of Bohemia to oppose the people in it with all his forces); besides this, I say, to pray to God with the understanding, is much better, than praying with the tongue; that alone can be a good prayer, this alone can never; and then the loss of all those advantages which are in prayers truly understood, the excellency of devotion, the passion of desires, the ascent of the mind to God, the adherence to and acts of confidence in him, the intellectual conversation with God, most agreeable to a rational being, the melting affections, the pulses of the heart to and from God, to and from ourselves, the promoting and exercising of our hopes, all these and very many more (which can never be entire but in the prayers and devotions of the heart, and can never be in any degree but in the same, in which the prayers are acts of love and wisdom, of the will and the understanding) will be lost to the greatest part of the catholic church, if the mouth be set open, and the soul be gagged; so that it shall be the word of the mouth, but not the word of the mind.

All these things being added to what was said in this article by the Dissuasive, will more than make it clear, that in this article (the consequents of which are very great) the church of Rome hath causelessly troubled Christendom, and innovated against the primitive church, and against her own ancient doctrines and practices, and even against the Apostle: but they" care for none of these things." Some of their

own bigots profess the thing in the very worst of all these expressions; for so Reynolds and Gifford, in their Calvino Turcismu,' complain that such horrid and stupendous evils have followed the translation of Scriptures into vulgar languages, that they are of force enough" ad istas translationes penitus supprimendas, etiamsi divina vel apostolica auctoritate niterentur:" "although they did rely upon the authority apostolical or divine, yet they ought to be taken away." -So that it is to no purpose to urge Scripture, or any argument in the world, against the Roman church in this article ; for if God himself commanded it to be translated, yet it is not sufficient; and therefore these men must be left to their own way of understanding; for beyond the law of God, we have no argument. I will only remind them, that it is a curse which God threatens to his rebellious people, "I will speak to this people with men of another tongue, and by strange lips, and they shall not understand "." This is the curse which the church of Rome contends earnestly for, in behalf of their people.

SECTION VI.

Of the Worship of Images.

THAT Society of Christians will not easily be reformed, that think themselves obliged to dispute for the worship of images, the prohibition of which was so great a part of the Mosaic religion, and is so infinitely against the nature and spirituality of the Christian; a thing which every understanding can see condemned in the decalogue, and no man can excuse, but witty persons that can be bound by no words, which they can interpret to a sense contradictory to the design of the common: a thing for the hating of, and abstaining from which, the Jews were so remarked by all the world, and by which as by a distinct cognizance they were separated from all other nations, and which, with perfect resolution, they keep to this very day, and for the not observing of which they are intolerably scandalized at those societies of Christians, who, without any necessity in the thing, without any

Isa. xxviii. 11.

pretence of any law of God, for no good, and for no wise. end, and not without infinite danger, at least, of idolatry, retain a worship and veneration to some stocks and stones. Such men as these are too hard for all laws, and for all arguments; so certain it is, that faith is an obedience of the will in a conviction of the understanding; that if in the will and interests of men there be a perverseness and a non-compliance, and that it is not bent by prudent and wise flexures, and obedience to God, and the plain words of God in Scripture, nothing can ever prevail, neither David, nor his sling, nor all the worthies of his army.

In this question I have said enough in the Dissuasive, and also in the Ductor Dubitantium;' but to the arguments and fulness of the persuasion, they neither have nor can they say any thing that is material; but, according to their usual method, like flies they search up and down, and light upon any place which they suppose to be sore, or would make their proselytes believe so. I shall therefore first vindicate those few quotations which the epistles of his brethren except against (for there are many, and those most pregnant, which they take no notice of); as bearing in them too clear a conviction. 2. I shall answer such testimonies, which some of them steal out of Bellarmine, and which they esteem as absolutely their best. And, 3. I shall add something in confirmation of that truth of God, which I here have undertaken to defend.

First, for the questioned quotations against the worship of images; St. Cyril was named, in the Dissuasive, as denying that the Christians did give veneration and worship to the image even of the cross itself; but no words of St. Cyril were quoted; for the denial is not in express words, but in plain and direct argument; for being by Julian charged with worshipping the cross, St. Cyril, in behalf of the Christians, takes notice of their using the cross in a religious memory of all good things, to which, by the cross of Christ, we are ingaged; that is, he owns all that they did, and therefore taking no notice of any thing of worship, and making no answer to that part of the objection, it is certain that the Christians did not do it, or that he could not justify them in so doing. But because I quoted no words of St. Cyril, I shall now take notice of some words of his, which do most abundantly clear

this particular by a general rule: "Only the divine nature is capable of adoration, and the Scripture hath given adoration to no nature but to that of God alone;"-" that, and that alone, ought to be worshipped." But to give a little more light to this particular; it may be noted, that, before St. Cyril's time, this had been objected by the pagans, particularly by Cæcilius, to which Minutius answers by directly denying it and saying, that the pagans did rather worship crosses, that is, the wooden parts of their gods. The Christians indeed were by Tertullian called 'religiosi crucis,' because they had it in thankful use and memory, and used it frequently in a symbolical confession of their not being ashamed, but of their glorying in the real cross of Christ: but they never worshipped the material cross, or the figure of it, as appears by St. Cyril's owning all the objections, excepting this only, of which he neither confessed the fact, nor offered any justification of it, when it was objected,-but professed a doctrine, with which such practice was inconsistent. And the like is to be said of some other of the fathers, who speak with great affections and veneration of the cross, meaning to exalt the passion of Christ; and, in the sense of St. Paul, to glory in the cross of Christ, not meaning the material cross, much less the image of it, which we blame in the church of Rome and this very sense we have expressed in St. Ambrose: "Sapienter Helena egit, quæ crucem in capite regum levavit, ut Christi crux in regibus adoretur:" "The figure of the material cross was, by Helena, placed upon the heads of kings, that the cross of Christ in kings might be adored:" How so? He answers, "Non insolentia ista sed pietas est, cum defertur sacræ redemptioni :" " It is to the holy redemption, not to the cross materially taken; this were insolent, but the other is piety P."-In the same manner also St. Chrysostom is, by the Roman doctors, and particularly by Gretser and E. W., urged for the worshipping Christ's cross. But the book 'de Cruce et Latrone,' whence the words are cited; Gretser and Possevine suspect it to be a spurious issue of some unknown person: it wants a father; and sometimes it goes to St. Austin, and is crowded into his sermons de Tempore ':'

• Nemo antem ignorat nulli prorsus naturæ, præterquam Dei, adorationem à scripturis contribui. Thesaur. lib. 2. c. 1. et alibi. Una natura est deitatis quam solammodo adorare oportet.

P Orat. de Obita Theodos.

a E. W. p. 57.

⚫ Serm. 30.