can never be quiet. 'Tis proper to man alone, _uni superbia, avaritia, superstitio_, saith Plin. _lib. 7. cap. 1._ _atque etiam post saevit de futuro_, which wrings his soul for the present, and to come: the greatest misery belongs to mankind, a perpetual servitude, a slavery, [6346]_Ex timore timor_, a heavy yoke, the seal of damnation, an intolerable burden. They that are superstitious are still fearing, suspecting, vexing themselves with auguries, prodigies, false tales, dreams, idle, vain works, unprofitable labours, as [6347]Boterus observes, _cura mentis ancipite versantur_: enemies to God and to themselves. In a word, as Seneca concludes, _Religio Deum colit, superstitio destruit_, superstition destroys, but true religion honours God. True religion, _ubi verus Deus vere colitur_, where the true God is truly worshipped, is the way to heaven, the mother of virtues, love, fear, devotion, obedience, knowledge, &c. It rears the dejected soul of man, and amidst so many cares, miseries, persecutions, which this world affords, it is a sole ease, an unspeakable comfort, a sweet reposal, _Jugum suave, et leve_, a light yoke, an anchor, and a haven. It adds courage, boldness, and begets generous spirits: although tyrants rage, persecute, and that bloody Lictor or sergeant be ready to martyr them, _aut lita, aut morere_, (as in those persecutions of the primitive Church, it was put in practice, as you may read in Eusebius and others) though enemies be now ready to invade, and all in an uproar, [6348]_Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidos ferient ruinae_, though heaven should fall on his head, he would not be dismayed. But as a good Christian prince once made answer to a menacing Turk, _facile scelerata hominum arma contemnit, qui del praesidio tutus est_: or as [6349] Phalaris writ to Alexander in a wrong cause, he nor any other enemy could terrify him, for that he trusted in God. _Si Deus nobiscum, quis contra nos_? In all calamities, persecutions whatsoever, as David did, 2 Sam. ii. 22, he will sing with him, "the Lord is my rock, my fortress, my strength, my refuge, the tower and horn of my salvation," &c. In all troubles and adversities, Psal. xlvi. 1. "God is my hope and help, still ready to be found, I will not therefore fear," &c., 'tis a fear expelling fear; he hath peace of conscience, and is full of hope, which is (saith [6350]Austin) _vita vitae mortalis_, the life of this our mortal life, hope of immortality, the sole comfort of our misery: otherwise, as Paul saith, we of all others were most wretched, but this makes us happy, counterpoising our hearts in all miseries; superstition torments, and is from the devil, the author of lies; but this is from God himself, as Lucian, that Antiochian priest, made his divine confession in [6351]Eusebius, _Auctor nobis de Deo Deus est_, God is the author of our religion himself, his word is our rule, a lantern to us, dictated by the Holy Ghost, he plays upon our hearts as many harpstrings, and we are his temples, he dwelleth in us, and we in him. The part affected of superstition, is the brain, heart, will, understanding, soul itself, and all the faculties of it, _totum compositum_, all is mad and dotes: now for the extent, as I say, the world itself is the subject of it, (to omit that grand sin of atheism,) all times have been misaffected, past, present, "there is not one that doth good, no not one, from the prophet to the priest," &c. A lamentable thing it is to consider, how many myriads of men this idolatry and superstition (for that comprehends all) hath infatuated in all ages, besotted by this blind zeal, which is religion's ape, religion's bastard, religion's shadow, false glass. For where God hath a temple, the devil will have a chapel: where God hath sacrifices, the devil will have his oblations: where God hath ceremonies, the devil will have his traditions: where there is any religion, the devil will plant superstition; and 'tis a pitiful sight to behold and read, what tortures, miseries, it hath procured, what slaughter of souls it hath made, how it rageth amongst those old Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Tuscans, Gauls, Germans, Britons, &c. _Britannia jam hodie celebrat tam attonite_, saith [6352]Pliny, _tantis ceremoniis_ (speaking of superstition) _ut dedisse Persis videri possit._ The Britons are so stupendly superstitious in their ceremonies, that they go beyond those Persians. He that shall but read in Pausanias alone, those gods, temples, altars, idols, statues, so curiously made with such infinite cost and charge, amongst those old Greeks, such multitudes of them and frequent varieties, as [6353]Gerbelius truly observes, may stand amazed, and never enough wonder at it; and thank God withal, that by the light of the Gospel, we are so happily freed from that slavish idolatry in these our days. But heretofore, almost in all countries, in all places, superstition hath blinded the hearts of men; in all ages what a small portion hath the true church ever been! _Divisum imperium cum Jove Daemon habet._ [6354]The patriarchs and their families, the Israelites a handful in respect, Christ and his apostles, and not all of them, neither. Into what straits hath it been compinged, a little flock! how hath superstition on the other side dilated herself, error, ignorance, barbarism, folly, madness, deceived, triumphed, and insulted over the most wise discreet, and understanding man, philosophers, dynasts, monarchs, all were involved and overshadowed in this mist, in more than Cimmerian darkness. [6355]_Adeo ignara superstitio mentes hominum depravat, et nonnunquam sapientum animos transversos agit._ At this present, _quota pars!_ How small a part is truly religious! How little in respect! Divide the world into six parts, and one, or not so much, as Christians; idolaters and Mahometans possess almost Asia, Africa, America, Magellanica. The kings of China, great Cham, Siam, and Borneo, Pegu, Deccan, Narsinga, Japan, &c., are gentiles, idolaters, and many other petty princes in Asia, Monomotopa, Congo, and I know not how many Negro princes in Africa, all Terra Australis incognita most of America pagans, differing all in their several superstitions; and yet all idolaters. The Mahometans extend themselves over the great Turk's dominions in Europe, Africa, Asia, to the Xeriffes in Barbary, and its territories in Fez, Sus, Morocco, &c. The Tartar, the great Mogor, the Sophy of Persia, with most of their dominions and subjects, are at this day Mahometans. See how the devil rageth: those at odds, or differing among themselves, some for [6356]Ali, some Enbocar, for Acmor, and Ozimen, those four doctors, Mahomet's successors, and are subdivided into seventy-two inferior sects, as [6357]Leo Afer reports. The Jews, as a company of vagabonds, are scattered over all parts; whose story, present estate, progress from time to time, is fully set down by [6358]Mr. Thomas Jackson, Doctor of Divinity, in his comment on the creed. A fifth part of the world, and hardly that, now professeth CHRIST, but so inlarded and interlaced with several superstitions, that there is scarce a sound part to be found, or any agreement amongst them. Presbyter John, in Africa, lord of those Abyssinians, or Ethiopians, is by his profession a Christian, but so different from us, with such new absurdities and ceremonies, such liberty, such a mixture of idolatry and paganism, [6359]that they keep little more than a bare title of Christianity. They suffer polygamy, circumcision, stupend fastings, divorce as they will themselves, &c., and as the papists call on the Virgin Mary, so do they on Thomas Didymus before Christ. [6360]The Greek or Eastern Church is rent from this of the West, and as they have four chief patriarchs, so have they four subdivisions, besides those Nestorians, Jacobins, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, &c., scattered over Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, &c., Greece, Walachia, Circassia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, Illyricum, Sclavonia, Croatia, Thrace, Servia, Rascia, and a sprinkling amongst the Tartars, the Russians, Muscovites, and most of that great duke's (czar's) subjects, are part of the Greek Church, and still Christians: but as [6361]one saith, _temporis successu multas illi addiderunt superstitiones._ In process of time they have added so many superstitions, they be rather semi-Christians than otherwise. That which remains is the Western Church with us in Europe, but so eclipsed with several schisms, heresies and superstitions, that one knows not where to find it. The papists have Italy, Spain, Savoy, part of Germany, France, Poland, and a sprinkling in the rest of Europe. In America, they hold all that which Spaniards inhabit, Hispania Nova, Castella Aurea, Peru, &c. In the East Indies, the Philippines, some small holds about Goa, Malacca, Zelan, Ormus, &c., which the Portuguese got not long since, and those land-leaping Jesuits have essayed in China, Japan, as appears by their yearly letters; in Africa they have Melinda, Quiloa, Mombaze, &c., and some few towns, they drive out one superstition with another. Poland is a receptacle of all religions, where Samosetans, Socinians, Photinians (now protected in Transylvania and Poland), Arians, Anabaptists are to be found, as well as in some German cities. Scandia is Christian, but [6362]Damianus A-Goes, the Portugal knight, complains, so mixed with magic, pagan rites and ceremonies, they may be as well counted idolaters: what Tacitus formerly said of a like nation, is verified in them, [6363]"A people subject to superstition, contrary to religion." And some of them as about Lapland and the Pilapians, the devil's possession to this day, _Misera haec gens_ (saith mine [6364]author) _Satanae hactenus possessio,--et quod maxime mirandum et dolendum_, and which is to be admired and pitied; if any of them be baptised, which the kings of Sweden much labour, they die within seven or nine days after, and for that cause they will hardly be brought to Christianity, but worship still the devil, who daily appears to them. In their idolatrous courses, _Gandentibus diis patriis, quos religiose colunt_, &c. Yet are they very superstitious, like our wild Irish: though they of the better note, the kings of Denmark and Sweden themselves, that govern them, be Lutherans; the remnant are Calvinists, Lutherans, in Germany equally mixed. And yet the emperor himself, dukes of Lorraine, Bavaria, and the princes, electors, are most part professed papists. And though some part of France and Ireland, Great Britain, half the cantons in Switzerland, and the Low Countries, be Calvinists, more defecate than the rest, yet at odds amongst themselves, not free from superstition. And which [6365]Brochard, the monk, in his description of the Holy Land, after he had censured the Greek church, and showed their errors, concluded at last, _Faxit Deus ne Latinis multa irrepserint stultifies_, I say God grant there be no fopperies in our church. As a dam of water stopped in one place breaks out into another, so doth superstition. I say nothing of Anabaptists, Socinians, Brownists, Familists, &c. There is superstition in our prayers, often in our hearing of sermons, bitter contentions, invectives, persecutions, strange conceits, besides diversity of opinions, schisms, factions, &c. But as the Lord (Job xlii. cap. 7. v.) said to Eliphaz, the Temanite, and his two friends, "his wrath was kindled against them, for they had not spoken of him things that were right:" we may justly of these schismatics and heretics, how wise soever in their own conceits, _non recte loquuntur de Deo_, they speak not, they think not, they write not well of God, and as they ought. And therefore, _Quid quaeso mi Dorpi_, as Erasmus concludes to Dorpius, _hisce Theologis faciamus, aut quid preceris, nisi forte fidelem medicum, qui cerebro medeatur_? What shall we wish them, but _sanam mentem_, and a good physician? But more of their differences, paradoxes, opinions, mad pranks, in the symptoms: I now hasten to the causes. SUBSECT. II.--_Causes of Religious melancholy. From the Devil by miracles, apparitions, oracles. His instruments or factors, politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics, blind guides. In them simplicity, fear, blind zeal, ignorance, solitariness, curiosity, pride, vainglory, presumption, &c. his engines, fasting, solitariness, hope, fear, &c._ We are taught in Holy Scripture, that the "Devil rangeth abroad like a roaring lion, still seeking whom he may devour:" and as in several shapes, so by several engines and devices he goeth about to seduce us; sometimes he transforms himself into an angel of light; and is so cunning that he is able, if it were possible, to deceive the very elect. He will be worshipped as [6366]God himself, and is so adored by the heathen, and esteemed. And in imitation of that divine power, as [6367]Eusebius observes, [6368]to abuse or emulate God's glory, as Dandinus adds, he will have all homage, sacrifices, oblations, and whatsoever else belongs to the worship of God, to be done likewise unto him, _similis erit altissimo_, and by this means infatuates the world, deludes, entraps, and destroys many a thousand souls. Sometimes by dreams, visions (as God to Moses by familiar conference), the devil in several shapes talks with them: in the [6369]Indies it is common, and in China nothing so familiar as apparitions, inspirations, oracles, by terrifying them with false prodigies, counterfeit miracles, sending storms, tempests, diseases, plagues (as of old in Athens there was Apollo, Alexicacus, Apollo [Greek: loimios], _pestifer et malorum depulsor_), raising wars, seditions by spectrums, troubling their consciences, driving them to despair, terrors of mind, intolerable pains; by promises, rewards, benefits, and fair means, he raiseth such an opinion of his deity and greatness, that they dare not do otherwise than adore him, do as he will have them, they dare not offend him. And to compel them more to stand in awe of him, [6370]"he sends and cures diseases, disquiets their spirits" (as Cyprian saith), "torments and terrifies their souls, to make them adore him: and all his study, all his endeavour is to divert them from true religion to superstition: and because he is damned himself, and in an error, he would have all the world participate of his errors, and be damned with him." The _primum mobile_, therefore, and first mover of all superstition, is the devil, that great enemy of mankind, the principal agent, who in a thousand several, shapes, after diverse fashions, with several engines, illusions, and by several names hath deceived the inhabitants of the earth, in several places and countries, still rejoicing at their falls. "All the world over before Christ's time, he freely domineered, and held the souls of men in most slavish subjection" (saith [6371]Eusebius) "in diverse forms, ceremonies, and sacrifices, till Christ's coming," as if those devils of the air had shared the earth amongst them, which the Platonists held for gods ([6372]_Ludus deorum sumus_), and were our governors and keepers. In several places, they had several rites, orders, names, of which read Wierus _de praestigiis daemonum, lib. 1. cap. 5._ [6373]Strozzius Cicogna, and others; Adonided amongst the Syrians; Adramalech amongst the Capernaites, Asiniae amongst the Emathites; Astartes with the Sidonians; Astaroth with the Palestines; Dagon with the Philistines; Tartary with the Hanaei; Melchonis amongst the Ammonites: Beli the Babylonians; Beelzebub and Baal with the Samaritans and Moabites; Apis, Isis, and Osiris amongst the Egyptians; Apollo Pythius at Delphos, Colophon, Ancyra, Cuma, Erythra; Jupiter in Crete, Venus at Cyprus, Juno at Carthage, Aesculapius at Epidaurus, Diana at Ephesus, Pallas at Athens, &c. And even in these our days, both in the East and West Indies, in Tartary, China, Japan, &c., what strange idols, in what prodigious forms, with what absurd ceremonies are they adored? What strange sacraments, like ours of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, what goodly temples, priests, sacrifices they had in America, when the Spaniards first landed there, let Acosta the Jesuit relate, _lib. 5. cap. 1, 2, 3, 4_, &c., and how the devil imitated the Ark and the children of Israel's coming out of Egypt; with many such. For as Lipsius well discourseth out of the doctrine of the Stoics, _maxime cupiunt adorationem hominum_, now and of old, they still and most especially desire to be adored by men. See but what Vertomannus, _l. 5. c. 2._ Marcus Polus, Lerius, Benzo, P. Martyr in his _Ocean Decades_, Acosta, and Mat. Riccius _expedit. Christ. in Sinus, lib. 1._ relate. [6374]Eusebius wonders how that wise city of Athens, and flourishing kingdoms of Greece, should be so besotted; and we in our times, how. those witty Chinese, so perspicacious in all other things should be so gulled, so tortured with superstition, so blind as to worship stocks and stones. But it is no marvel, when we see all out as great effects amongst Christians themselves; how are those Anabaptists, Arians, and Papists above the rest, miserably infatuated! Mars, Jupiter, Apollo, and Aesculapius, have resigned their interest, names, and offices to Saint George. "([6375](Maxime bellorum rector, quem nostra juventus Pro Mavorte colit.)"------ St. Christopher, and a company of fictitious saints, Venus to the Lady of Loretto. And as those old Romans had several distinct gods, for divers offices, persons, places, so have they saints, as [6376]Lavater well observes out of Lactantius, _mutato nomine tantum_, 'tis the same spirit or devil that deludes them still. The manner how, as I say, is by rewards, promises, terrors, affrights, punishments. In a word, fair and foul means, hope and fear. How often hath Jupiter, Apollo, Bacchus, and the rest, sent plagues in [6377]Greece and Italy, because their sacrifices were neglected? [6378] "Dii multa neglecti dederunt Hesperiae mala luctuosae," to terrify them, to arouse them up, and the like: see but Livy, Dionysius Halicarnassaeus, Thucydides, Pausanius, Philostratus, [6379]Polybius, before the battle of Cannae, _prodigiis signis, ostentis, templa cuncta, privates etiam aedes scatebant._ Oeneus reigned in Aetolia, and because he did not sacrifice to Diana with his other gods (see more in Labanius his Diana), she sent a wild boar, _insolitae magnitudinis, qui terras et homines misere depascebatur_, to spoil both men and country, which was afterwards killed by Meleager. So Plutarch in the Life of Lucullus relates, how Mithridates, king of Pontus, at the siege of Cizicum, with all his navy, was overthrown by Proserpina, for neglecting of her holy day. She appeared in a vision to Aristagoras in the night, _Cras inquit tybicinem Lybicum cum tybicine pontico committam_ ("tomorrow I will cause a contest between a Libyan and a Pontic minstrel"), and the day following this enigma was understood; for with a great south wind which came from Libya, she quite overwhelmed Mithridates' army. What prodigies and miracles, dreams, visions, predictions, apparitions, oracles, have been of old at Delphos, Dodona, Trophonius' den, at Thebes, and Lebaudia, of Jupiter Ammon in Egypt, Amphiaraus in Attica, &c.; what strange cures performed by Apollo and Aesculapius? Juno's image and that of [6380]Fortune spake, [6381]Castor and Pollux fought in person for the Romans against Hannibal's army, as Pallas, Mars, Juno, Venus, for Greeks and Trojans, &c. Amongst our pseudo-Catholics nothing so familiar as such miracles; how many cures done by our lady of Loretto, at Sichem! of old at our St. Thomas's shrine, &c. [6382]St. Sabine was seen to fight for Arnulphus, duke of Spoleto. [6383]St. George fought in person for John the Bastard of Portugal, against the Castilians; St. James for the Spaniards in America. In the battle of Bannockburn, where Edward the Second, our English king, was foiled by the Scots, St. Philanus' arm was seen to fight (if [6384]Hector Boethius doth not impose), that was before shut up in a silver cap-case; another time, in the same author, St. Magnus fought for them. Now for visions, revelations, miracles, not only out of the legend, out of purgatory, but everyday comes news from the Indies, and at home read the Jesuits' Letters, Ribadineira, Thurselinus, Acosta, Lippomanus, Xaverius, Ignatius' Lives, &c., and tell me what difference? His ordinary instruments or factors which he useth, as God himself, did good kings, lawful magistrates, patriarchs, prophets, to the establishing of his church, [6385]are politicians, statesmen, priests, heretics, blind guides, impostors, pseudoprophets, to propagate his superstition. And first to begin of politicians, it hath ever been a principal axiom with them to maintain religion or superstition, which they determine of, alter and vary upon all occasions, as to them seems best, they make religion mere policy, a cloak, a human invention, _nihil aeque valet ad regendos vulgi animos ac superstitio_, as [6386]Tacitus and [6387]Tully hold. Austin, _l. 4. de civitat. Dei. c. 9._ censures Scaevola saying and acknowledging _expedire civitates religione falli_, that it was a fit thing cities should be deceived by religion, according to the diverb, _Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur_, if the world will be gulled, let it be gulled, 'tis good howsoever to keep it in subjection. 'Tis that [6388]Aristotle and [6389]Plato inculcate in their politics, "Religion neglected, brings plague to the city, opens a gap to all naughtiness." 'Tis that which all our late politicians ingeminate. Cromerus, _l. 2. pol. hist._ Boterus, _l. 3. de incrementis urbium._ Clapmarius, _l. 2. c. 9. de Arcanis rerump. cap. 4. lib. 2. polit._ Captain Machiavel will have a prince by all means to counterfeit religion, to be superstitious in show at least, to seem to be devout, frequent holy exercises, honour divines, love the church, affect priests, as Numa, Lycurgus, and such lawmakers were and did, _non ut his fidem habeant, sed ut subditos religionis metu facilius in officio contineant_, to keep people in obedience. [6390]_Nam naturaliter_ (as Cardan writes) _lex Christiana lex est pietatis, justitiae, fidei, simplicitatis_, &c. But this error of his, Innocentius Jentilettus, a French lawyer, _theorem. 9. comment. 1. de Relig_, and Thomas Bozius in his book _de ruinis gentium et Regnorum_ have copiously confuted. Many politicians, I dare not deny, maintain religion as a true means, and sincerely speak of it without hypocrisy, are truly zealous and religious themselves. Justice and religion are the two chief props and supporters of a well-governed commonwealth: but most of them are but Machiavellians, counterfeits only for political ends; for _solus rex_ (which Campanella, _cap. 18. atheismi triumphali_ observes), as amongst our modern Turks, _reipub. Finis_, as knowing [6391]_magnus ejus in animos imperium_; and that, as [6392]Sabellicus delivers, "A man without religion, is like a horse without a bridle." No way better to curb than superstition, to terrify men's consciences, and to keep them in awe: they make new laws, statutes, invent new religions, ceremonies, as so many stalking horses, to their ends. [6393]_Haec enim (religio) si falsa sit, dummodo vera credatur, animorum ferociam domat, libidines coercet, subditos principi obsequentes efficit._ [6394]Therefore (saith [6395]Polybius of Lycurgus), "did he maintain ceremonies, not that he was superstitious himself, but that he had perceived mortal men more apt to embrace paradoxes than aught else, and durst attempt no evil things for fear of the gods." This was Zamolcus's stratagem amongst the Thracians, Numa's plot, when he said he had conference with the nymph Aegeria, and that of Sertorius with a hart; to get more credit to their decrees, by deriving them from the gods; or else they did all by divine instinct, which Nicholas Damascen well observes of Lycurgus, Solon, and Minos, they had their laws dictated, _monte sacro_, by Jupiter himself. So Mahomet referred his new laws to the [6396]angel Gabriel, by whose direction he gave out they were made. Caligula in Dion feigned himself to be familiar with Castor and Pollux, and many such, which kept those Romans under (who, as Machiavel proves, _lib. 1. disput. cap. 11. et 12._ were _Religione maxime moti_, most superstitious): and did curb the people more by this means, than by force of arms, or severity of human laws. _Sola plebecula eam agnoscebat_ (saith Vaninus, _dial. 1. lib. 4. de admirandis naturae arcanis_) speaking of religion, _que facile decipitur, magnates vero et philosophi nequaquam_, your grandees and philosophers had no such conceit, _sed ad imperii conformationem et amplificationem quam sine praetextu religionis tueri non poterant_; and many thousands in all ages have ever held as much, Philosophers especially, _animadvertebant hi semper haec esse fabellas, attamen ob metum publicae potestatis silere cogebantur_ they were still silent for fear of laws, &c. To this end that Syrian Phyresides, Pythagoras his master, broached in the East amongst the heathens, first the immortality of the soul, as Trismegistus did in Egypt, with a many of feigned gods. Those French and Briton Druids in the West first taught, saith [6397]Caesar, _non interire animas_ (that souls did not die), "but after death to go from one to another, that so they might encourage them to virtue." 'Twas for a politic end, and to this purpose the old [6398]poets feigned those elysian fields, their Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, their infernal judges, and those Stygian lakes, fiery Phlegethons, Pluto's kingdom, and variety of torments after death. Those that had done well, went to the elysian fields, but evil doers to Cocytus, and to that burning lake of [6399]hell with fire, and brimstone for ever to be tormented. 'Tis this which [6400]Plato labours for in his Phaedon, _et 9. de rep._ The Turks in their Alcoran, when they set down rewards, and several punishments for every particular virtue and vice, [6401]when they persuade men, that they that die in battle shall go directly to heaven, but wicked livers to eternal torment, and all of all sorts (much like our papistical purgatory), for a set time shall be tortured in their graves, as appears by that tract which John Baptista Alfaqui, that Mauritanian priest, now turned Christian, hath written in his confutation of the Alcoran. After a man's death two black angels, Nunquir and Nequir (so they call them) come to him to his grave and punish him for his precedent sins; if he lived well, they torture him the less; if ill, _per indesinentes cruciatus ad diem fudicii_, they incessantly punish him to the day of judgment, _Nemo viventium qui ad horum mentionem non totus horret et contremiscit_, the thought of this crucifies them all their lives long, and makes them spend their days in fasting and prayer, _ne mala haec contingant_, &c. A Tartar prince, saith Marcus Polus, _lib. 1. cap. 23._ called Senex de Montibus, the better to establish his government amongst his subjects, and to keep them in awe, found a convenient place in a pleasant valley, environed with hills, in [6402]"which he made a delicious park full of odoriferous flowers and fruits, and a palace of all worldly contents," that could possibly be devised, music, pictures, variety of meats, &c., and chose out a certain young man, whom with a [6403]soporiferous potion he so benumbed, that he perceived nothing: "and so fast asleep as he was, caused him to be conveyed into this fair garden:" where after he had lived awhile in all such pleasures a sensual man could desire, [6404]"He cast him into a sleep again, and brought him forth, that when he awaked he might tell others he had been in Paradise." The like he did for hell, and by this means brought his people to subjection. Because heaven and hell are mentioned in the scriptures, and to be believed necessary by Christians: so cunningly can the devil and his ministers, in imitation of true religion, counterfeit and forge the like, to circumvent and delude his superstitious followers. Many such tricks and impostures are acted by politicians, in China especially, but with what effect I will discourse in the symptoms. Next to politicians, if I may distinguish them, are some of our priests (who make religion policy), if not far beyond them, for they domineer over princes and statesmen themselves. _Carnificinam exercent_, one saith they tyrannise over men's consciences more than any other tormentors whatsoever, partly for their commodity and gain; _Religionem enim omnium abusus_ (as [6405]Postellus holds), _quaestus scilicet sacrificum in causa est_: for sovereignty, credit, to maintain their state and reputation, out of ambition and avarice, which are their chief supporters: what have they not made the common people believe? Impossibilities in nature, incredible things; what devices, traditions, ceremonies, have they not invented in all ages to keep men in obedience, to enrich themselves? _Quibus quaestui sunt capti superstitione animi_, as [6406]Livy saith. Those Egyptian priests of old got all the sovereignty into their hands, and knowing, as [6407]Curtius insinuates, _nulla res efficacius multitudinem regit quam superstitio; melius vatibus quam ducibus parent, vana religione capti, etiam impotentes faeminae_; the common people will sooner obey priests than captains, and nothing so forcible as superstition, or better than blind zeal to rule a multitude; have so terrified and gulled them, that it is incredible to relate. All nations almost have been besotted in this kind; amongst our Britons and old Gauls the Druids; magi in Persia; philosophers in Greece; Chaldeans amongst the Oriental; Brachmanni in India; Gymnosophists in Ethiopia; the Turditanes in Spain; Augurs in Rome, have insulted; Apollo's priests in Greece, Phaebades and Pythonissae, by their oracles and phantasms; Amphiaraus and his companions; now Mahometan and pagan priests, what can they not effect? How do they not infatuate the world? _Adeo ubique_ (as [6408]Scaliger writes of the Mahometan priests), _tum gentium tum locorum, gens ista sacrorum ministra, vulgi secat spes, ad ea quae ipsi fingunt somnia_, "so cunningly can they gull the commons in all places and countries." But above all others, that high priest of Rome, the dam of that monstrous and superstitious brood, the bull-bellowing pope, which now rageth in the West, that three-headed Cerberus hath played his part. [6409] "Whose religion at this day is mere policy, a state wholly composed of superstition and wit, and needs nothing but wit and superstition to maintain it, that useth colleges and religious houses to as good purpose as forts and castles, and doth more at this day" by a company of scribbling parasites, fiery-spirited friars, zealous anchorites, hypocritical confessors, and those praetorian soldiers, his Janissary Jesuits, and that dissociable society, as [6410]Languis terms it, _postremus diaboli conatus et saeculi excrementum_, that now stand in the fore front of the battle, will have a monopoly of, and engross all other learning, but domineer in divinity, [6411]_Excipiunt soli totius vulnera belli_, and fight alone almost (for the rest are but his dromedaries and asses), than ever he could have done by garrisons and armies. What power of prince, or penal law, be it never so strict, could enforce men to do that which for conscience' sake they will voluntarily undergo? And as to fast from all flesh, abstain from marriage, rise to their prayers at midnight, whip themselves, with stupendous fasting and penance, abandon the world, wilful poverty, perform canonical and blind obedience, to prostrate their goods, fortunes, bodies, lives, and offer up themselves at their superior's feet, at his command? What so powerful an engine as superstition? which they right well perceiving, are of no religion at all themselves: _Primum enim_ (as Calvin rightly suspects, the tenor and practice of their life proves), _arcanae illius theologiae, quod apud eos regnat, caput est, nullum esse deum_, they hold there is no God, as Leo X. did, Hildebrand the magician, Alexander VI., Julius II., mere atheists, and which the common proverb amongst them approves, [6412]"The worst Christians of Italy are the Romans, of the Romans the priests are wildest, the lewdest priests are preferred to be cardinals, and the baddest men amongst the cardinals is chosen to be pope," that is an epicure, as most part the popes are, infidels and Lucianists, for so they think and believe; and what is said of Christ to be fables and impostures, of heaven and hell, day of judgment, paradise, immortality of the soul, are all, [6413] "Rumores vacui, verbaque inania, Et par sollicito fabula somnio." "Dreams, toys, and old wives' tales." Yet as so many [6414]whetstones to make other tools cut, but cut not themselves, though they be of no religion at all, they will make others most devout and superstitious, by promises and threats, compel, enforce from, and lead them by the nose like so many bears in a line; when as their end is not to propagate the church, advance God's kingdom, seek His glory or common good, but to enrich themselves, to enlarge their territories, to domineer and compel them to stand in awe, to live in subjection to the See of Rome. For what otherwise care they? _Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur_, "since the world wishes to be gulled, let it be gulled," 'tis fit it should be so. And for which [6415]Austin cites Varro to maintain his Roman religion, we may better apply to them: _multa vera, quae vulgus scire non est utile; pleraque falsa, quae tamen uliter existimare populum expedit_; some things are true, some false, which for their own ends they will not have the gullish commonalty take notice of. As well may witness their intolerable covetousness, strange forgeries, fopperies, fooleries, unrighteous subtleties, impostures, illusions, new doctrines, paradoxes, traditions, false miracles, which they have still forged, to enthral, circumvent and subjugate them, to maintain their own estates. [6416]One while by bulls, pardons, indulgencies, and their doctrines of good works, that they be meritorious, hope of heaven, by that means they have so fleeced the commonalty, and spurred on this free superstitious horse, that he runs himself blind, and is an ass to carry burdens. They have so amplified Peter's patrimony, that from a poor bishop, he is become _Rex Regum, Dominus dominantium_, a demigod, as his canonists make him (Felinus and the rest), above God himself. And for his wealth and [6417] temporalities, is not inferior to many kings: [6418]his cardinals, princes' companions; and in every kingdom almost, abbots, priors, monks, friars, &c., and his clergy, have engrossed a [6419]third part, half, in some places all, into their hands. Three princes, electors in Germany, bishops; besides Magdeburg, Spire, Saltsburg, Breme, Bamberg, &c. In France, as Bodine _lib. de repub._ gives us to understand, their revenues are 12,300,000 livres; and of twelve parts of the revenues in France, the church possesseth seven. The Jesuits, a new sect, begun in this age, have, as [6420]Middendorpius and [6421]Pelargus reckon up, three or four hundred colleges in Europe, and more revenues than many princes. In France, as Arnoldus proves, in thirty years they have got _bis centum librarum millia annua_, 200,000_l_. I say nothing of the rest of their orders. We have had in England, as Armachanus demonstrates, above 30,000 friars at once, and as [6422]Speed collects out of Leland and others, almost 600 religious houses, and near 200,000_l._ in revenues of the old rent belonging to them, besides images of gold, silver, plate, furniture, goods and ornaments, as [6423]Weever calculates, and esteems them at the dissolution of abbeys, worth a million of gold. How many towns in every kingdom hath superstition enriched? What a deal of money by musty relics, images, idolatry, have their mass-priests engrossed, and what sums have they scraped by their other tricks! Loretto in Italy, Walsingham in England, in those days. _Ubi omnia auro nitent_, "where everything shines with gold," saith Erasmus, St. Thomas's shrine, &c., may witness. [6424]Delphos so renowned of old in Greece for Apollo's oracle, _Delos commune conciliabulum et emporium sola religions manitum_; Dodona, whose fame and wealth were sustained by religion, were not so rich, so famous. If they can get but a relic of some saint, the Virgin Mary's picture, idols or the like, that city is for ever made, it needs no other maintenance. Now if any of these their impostures or juggling tricks be controverted, or called in question: if a magnanimous or zealous Luther, an heroical Luther, as [6425]Dithmarus Calls him, dare touch the monks' bellies, all is in a combustion, all is in an uproar: Demetrius and his associates are ready to pull him in pieces, to keep up their trades, [6426] "Great is Diana of the Ephesians:" with a mighty shout of two hours long they will roar and not be pacified. Now for their authority, what by auricular confession, satisfaction, penance, Peter's keys, thunderings, excommunications, &c., roaring bulls, this high priest of Rome, shaking his Gorgon's head, hath so terrified the soul of many a silly man, insulted over majesty itself, and swaggered generally over all Europe for many ages, and still doth to some, holding them as yet in slavish subjection, as never tyrannising Spaniards did by their poor Negroes, or Turks by their galley-slaves. [6427]"The bishop of Rome" (saith Stapleton, a parasite of his, _de mag. Eccles. lib. 2. cap. 1._) "hath done that without arms, which those Roman emperors could never achieve with forty legions of soldiers," deposed kings, and crowned them again with his foot, made friends, and corrected at his pleasure, &c. [6428] "'Tis a wonder," saith Machiavel, _Florentinae, his. lib. 1._ "what slavery King Henry II. endured for the death of Thomas a Beckett, what things he was enjoined by the Pope, and how he submitted himself to do that which in our times a private man would not endure," and all through superstition. [6429]Henry IV. disposed of his empire, stood barefooted with his wife at the gates of Canossus. [6430]Frederic the Emperor was trodden on by Alexander III., another held Adrian's stirrup, King John kissed the knees of Pandulphos the Pope's legate, See. What made so many thousand Christians travel from France, Britain, &c., into the Holy Land, spend such huge sums of money, go a pilgrimage so familiarly to Jerusalem, to creep and crouch, but slavish superstition? What makes them so freely venture their lives, to leave their native countries, to go seek martyrdom in the Indies, but superstition? to be assassins, to meet death, murder kings, but a false persuasion of merit, of canonical or blind obedience which they instil into them, and animate them by strange illusions, hope of being martyrs and saints: such pretty feats can the devil work by priests, and so well for their own advantage can they play their parts. And if it were not yet enough, by priests and politicians to delude mankind, and crucify the souls of men, he hath more actors in his tragedy, more irons in the fire, another scene of heretics, factious, ambitious wits, insolent spirits, schismatics, impostors, false prophets, blind guides, that out of pride, singularity, vainglory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in an uproar by their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new divisions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, one kingdom to another, commit prince and subjects, brother against brother, father against son, to the ruin and destruction of a commonwealth, to the disturbance of peace, and to make a general confusion of all estates. How did those Arians rage of old? how many did they circumvent? Those Pelagians, Manichees, &c., their names alone would make a just volume. How many silly souls have impostors still deluded, drawn away, and quite alienated from Christ! Lucian's Alexander Simon Magus, whose statue was to be seen and adored in Rome, saith Justin Martyr, _Simoni deo sancto_, &c., after his decease. [6431]Apollonius Tianeus, Cynops, Eumo, who by counterfeiting some new ceremonies and juggling tricks of that Dea Syria, by spitting fire, and the like, got an army together of 40,000 men, and did much harm: with _Eudo de stellis_, of whom Nubrigensis speaks, _lib. 1. cap. 19._ that in King Stephen's days imitated most of Christ's miracles, fed I know not how many people in the wilderness, and built castles in the air, &c., to the seducing of multitudes of poor souls. In Franconia, 1476, a base illiterate fellow took upon him to be a prophet, and preach, John Beheim by name, a neatherd at Nicholhausen, he seduced 30,000 persons, and was taken by the commonalty to be a most holy man, come from heaven. [6432] "Tradesmen left their shops, women their distaffs, servants ran from their masters, children from their parents, scholars left their tutors, all to hear him, some for novelty, some for zeal. He was burnt at last by the Bishop of Wartzburg, and so he and his heresy vanished together." How many such impostors, false prophets, have lived in every king's reign? what chronicles will not afford such examples? that as so many _ignes fatui_, have led men out of the way, terrified some, deluded others, that are apt to be carried about by the blast of every wind, a rude inconstant multitude, a silly company of poor souls, that follow all, and are cluttered together like so many pebbles in a tide. What prodigious follies, madness, vexations, persecutions, absurdities, impossibilities, these impostors, heretics, &c., have thrust upon the world, what strange effects shall be shown in the symptoms. Now the means by which, or advantages the devil and his infernal ministers take, so to delude and disquiet the world with such idle ceremonies, false doctrines, superstitious fopperies, are from themselves, innate fear, ignorance, simplicity, hope and fear, those two battering cannons and principal engines, with their objects, reward and punishment, purgatory, _Limbus Patrum_, &c. which now more than ever tyrannise; [6433]"for what province is free from atheism, superstition, idolatry, schism, heresy, impiety, their factors and followers?" thence they proceed, and from that same decayed image of God, which is yet remaining in us. [6434] "Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri Jussit."------ Our own conscience doth dictate so much unto us, we know there is a God and nature doth inform us; _Nulla gens tam barbara_ (saith Tully) _cui non insideat haec persuasio Deum esse; sed nec Scytha, nec Groecus, nec Persa, nec Hyperboreus dissentiet_ (as Maximus Tyrius the Platonist _ser. 1._ farther adds) _nec continentis nec insularum habitator_, let him dwell where he will, in what coast soever, there is no nation so barbarous that is not persuaded there is a God. It is a wonder to read of that infinite superstition amongst the Indians in this kind, of their tenets in America, _pro suo quisque libitu varias res venerabantur superstitiose, plantas, animalia, montes, &c. omne quod amabant aut horrebant_ (some few places excepted as he grants, that had no God at all). So "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament declares his handy work," Psalm xix. "Every creature will evince it;" _Praesentemque refert quaelibet herba deum. Nolentes sciunt, fatentur inviti_, as the said Tyrius proceeds, will or nill, they must acknowledge it. The philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Pythagoras, Trismegistus, Seneca, Epictetus, those Magi, Druids, &c. went as far as they could by the light of nature; [6435]_multa praeclara, de natura Dei seripta reliquerunt_, "writ many things well of the nature of God, but they had but a confused light, a glimpse," [6436] "Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna Est iter in sylvis,"------ "as he that walks by moonshine in a wood," they groped in the dark; they had a gross knowledge, as he in Euripides, _O Deus quicquid es, sive coelum, sive terra, sive aliud quid_, and that of Aristotle, _Ens entium miserere mei._ And so of the immortality of the soul, and future happiness. _Immortalitatem animae_ (saith Hierom) _Pythagoras somniavit, Democritus non credidit in consolalionem damnationis suae Socrates in carcere disputavit; Indus, Persa, Cothus, &c. Philosophantur._ So some said this, some that, as they conceived themselves, which the devil perceiving, led them farther out (as [6437]Lemnius observes) and made them worship him as their God with stocks and stones, and torture themselves to their own destruction, as he thought fit himself, inspired his priests and ministers with lies and fictions to prosecute the same, which they for their own ends were as willing to undergo, taking advantage of their simplicity, fear and ignorance. For the common people are as a flock of sheep, a rude, illiterate rout, void many times of common sense, a mere beast, _bellua multorum capitum_, will go whithersoever they are led: as you lead a ram over a gap by the horns, all the rest will follow, [6438]_Non qua eundum, sed qua itur_, they will do as they see others do, and as their prince will have them, let him be of what religion he will, they are for him. Now for those idolaters, Maxentius and Licinius, then for Constantine a Christian. [6439]_Qui Christum negant male pereant, acclamatum est Decies_, for two hours' space; _qui Christum non colunt, Augusti inimici sunt, acclamatum est ter decies_; and by and by idolaters again under that Apostate Julianus; all Arians under Constantius, good Catholics again under Jovinianus, "And little difference there is between the discretion of men and children in this case, especially of old folks and women," as [6440] Cardan discourseth, "when, as they are tossed with fear and superstition, and with other men's folly and dishonesty." So that I may say their ignorance is a cause of their superstition, a symptom, and madness itself: _Supplicii causa est, sappliciumque sui._ Their own fear, folly, stupidity, to be deplored lethargy, is that which gives occasion to the other, and pulls these miseries on their own heads. For in all these religions and superstitions, amongst our idolaters, you shall find that the parties first affected, are silly, rude, ignorant people, old folks, that are naturally prone to superstition, weak women, or some poor, rude, illiterate persons, that are apt to be wrought upon, and gulled in this kind, prone without either examination or due consideration (for they take up religion a trust, as at mercers' they do their wares) to believe anything. And the best means they have to broach first, or to maintain it when they have done, is to keep them still in ignorance: for "ignorance is the mother of devotion," as all the world knows, and these times can amply witness. This hath been the devil's practice, and his infernal ministers in all ages; not as our Saviour by a few silly fishermen, to confound the wisdom of the world, to save publicans and sinners, but to make advantage of their ignorance, to convert them and their associates; and that they may better effect what they intend, they begin, as I say, with poor, [6441]stupid, illiterate persons. So Mahomet did when he published his Alcoran, which is a piece of work (saith [6442]Bredenbachius) "full of nonsense, barbarism, confusion, without rhyme, reason, or any good composition, first published to a company of rude rustics, hog-rubbers, that had no discretion, judgment, art, or understanding, and is so still maintained." For it is a part of their policy to let no man comment, dare to dispute or call in question to this day any part of it, be it never so absurd, incredible, ridiculous, fabulous as it is, must be believed _implicite_, upon pain of death no man must dare to contradict it, "God and the emperor," &c. What else do our papists, but by keeping the people in ignorance vent and broach all their new ceremonies and traditions, when they conceal the scripture, read it in Latin, and to some few alone, feeding the slavish people in the meantime with tales out of legends, and such like fabulous narrations? Whom do they begin with but collapsed ladies, some few tradesmen, superstitious old folks, illiterate persons, weak women, discontent, rude, silly companions, or sooner circumvent? So do all our schismatics and heretics. Marcus and Valentinian heretics, in [6443]Irenaeus, seduced first I know not how many women, and made them believe they were prophets. [6444]Friar Cornelius of Dort seduced a company of silly women. What are all our Anabaptists, Brownists, Barrowists, familists, but a company of rude, illiterate, capricious, base fellows? What are most of our papists, but stupid, ignorant and blind bayards? how should they otherwise be, when as they are brought up and kept still in darkness? [6445]"If their pastors" (saith Lavater) "have done their duties, and instructed their flocks as they ought, in the principles of Christian religion, or had not forbidden them the reading of scriptures, they had not been as they are." But being so misled all their lives in superstition, and carried hoodwinked like hawks, how can they prove otherwise than blind idiots, and superstitious asses? what else shall we expect at their hands? Neither is it sufficient to keep them blind, and in Cimmerian darkness, but withal, as a schoolmaster doth by his boys, to make them follow their books, sometimes by good hope, promises and encouragements, but most of all by fear, strict discipline, severity, threats and punishment, do they collogue and soothe up their silly auditors, and so bring them into a fools' paradise. _Rex eris aiunt, si recte facies_, do well, thou shalt be crowned; but for the most part by threats, terrors, and affrights, they tyrannise and terrify their distressed souls: knowing that fear alone is the sole and only means to keep men in obedience, according to that hemistichium of Petronius, _primus in orbe deos fecit timor_, the fear of some divine and supreme powers, keeps men in obedience, makes the people do their duties: they play upon their consciences; [6446]which was practised of old in Egypt by their priests; when there was an eclipse, they made the people believe God was angry, great miseries were to come; they take all opportunities of natural causes, to delude the people's senses, and with fearful tales out of purgatory, feigned apparitions, earthquakes in Japonia or China, tragical examples of devils, possessions, obsessions, false miracles, counterfeit visions, &c. They do so insult over and restrain them, never hoby so dared a lark, that they will not [6447]offend the least tradition, tread, or scarce look awry: _Deus bone_ ([6448]Lavater exclaims) _quot hoc commentum de purgatorio misere afflixit!_ good God, how many men have been miserably afflicted by this fiction of purgatory! To these advantages of hope and fear, ignorance and simplicity, he hath several engines, traps, devices, to batter and enthral, omitting no opportunities, according to men's several inclinations, abilities, to circumvent and humour them, to maintain his superstitions, sometimes to stupefy, besot them: sometimes again by oppositions, factions, to set all at odds and in an uproar; sometimes he infects one man, and makes him a principal agent; sometimes whole cities, countries. If of meaner sort, by stupidity, canonical obedience, blind zeal, &c. If of better note, by pride, ambition, popularity, vainglory. If of the clergy and more eminent, of better parts than the rest, more learned, eloquent, he puffs them up with a vain conceit of their own worth, _scientia inflati_, they begin to swell, and scorn all the world in respect of themselves, and thereupon turn heretics, schismatics, broach new doctrines, frame new crotchets and the like; or else out of too much learning become mad, or out of curiosity they will search into God's secrets, and eat of the forbidden fruit; or out of presumption of their holiness and good gifts, inspirations, become prophets, enthusiasts, and what not? Or else if they be displeased, discontent, and have not (as they suppose) preferment to their worth, have some disgrace, repulse, neglected, or not esteemed as they fondly value themselves, or out of emulation, they begin presently to rage and rave, _coelum terrae, miscent_, they become so impatient in an instant, that a whole kingdom cannot contain them, they will set all in a combustion, all at variance, to be revenged of their adversaries. [6449]Donatus, when he saw Cecilianus preferred before him in the bishopric of Carthage, turned heretic, and so did Arian, because Alexander was advanced: we have examples at home, and too many experiments of such persons. If they be laymen of better note, the same engines of pride, ambition, emulation and jealousy, take place, they will be gods themselves: [6450]Alexander in India, after his victories, became so insolent, he would be adored for a god: and those Roman emperors came to that height of madness, they must have temples built to them, sacrifices to their deities, Divus Augustus, D. Claudius, D. Adrianus: [6451]Heliogabalus, "put out that vestal fire at Rome, expelled the virgins, and banished all other religions all over the world, and would be the sole God himself." Our Turks, China kings, great Chams, and Mogors do little less, assuming divine and bombast titles to themselves; the meaner sort are too credulous, and led with blind zeal, blind obedience, to prosecute and maintain whatsoever their sottish leaders shall propose, what they in pride and singularity, revenge, vainglory, ambition, spleen, for gain, shall rashly maintain and broach, their disciples make a matter of conscience, of hell and damnation, if they do it not, and will rather forsake wives, children, house and home, lands, goods, fortunes, life itself, than omit or abjure the least tittle of it, and to advance the common cause, undergo any miseries, turn traitors, assassins, pseudomartyrs, with full assurance and hope of reward in that other world, that they shall certainly merit by it, win heaven, be canonised for saints. Now when they are truly possessed with blind zeal, and misled with superstition, he hath many other baits to inveigle and infatuate them farther yet, to make them quite mortified and mad, and that under colour of perfection, to merit by penance, going woolward, whipping, alms, fastings, &c. An. 1320. there was a sect of [6452]whippers in Germany, that, to the astonishment of the beholders, lashed, and cruelly tortured themselves. I could give many other instances of each particular. But these works so done are meritorious, _ex opere operato, ex condigno_, for themselves and others, to make them macerate and consume their bodies, _specie virtutis et umbra_, those evangelical counsels are propounded, as our pseudo-Catholics call them, canonical obedience, wilful poverty, [6453]vows of chastity, monkery, and a solitary life, which extend almost to all religions and superstitions, to Turks, Chinese, Gentican never be quiet. 'Tis proper to man alone, _uni superbia, avaritia, superstitio_, saith Plin. _lib. 7. cap. 1._ _atque etiam post saevit ...all »can never be quiet. 'Tis proper to man alone, _uni superbia, avaritia, superstitio_, saith Plin. _lib. 7. cap. 1._ _atque etiam post saevit de futuro_, which wrings his soul for the present, and to come: the greatest misery belongs to mankind, a perpetual servitude, a slavery, [6346]_Ex timore timor_, a heavy yoke, the seal of damnation, an intolerable burden. They that are superstitious are still fearing, suspecting, vexing themselves with auguries, prodigies, false tales, dreams, idle, vain works, unprofitable labours, as [6347]Boterus observes, _cura mentis ancipite versantur_: enemies to God and to themselves. In a word, as Seneca concludes, _Religio Deum colit, superstitio destruit_, superstition destroys, but true religion honours God. True religion, _ubi verus Deus vere colitur_, where the true God is truly worshipped, is the way to heaven, the mother of virtues, love, fear, devotion, obedience, knowledge, &c. It rears the dejected soul of man, and amidst so many cares, miseries, persecutions, which this world affords, it is a sole ease, an unspeakable comfort, a sweet reposal, _Jugum suave, et leve_, a light yoke, an anchor, and a haven. It adds courage, boldness, and begets generous spirits: although tyrants rage, persecute, and that bloody Lictor or sergeant be ready to martyr them, _aut lita, aut morere_, (as in those persecutions of the primitive Church, it was put in practice, as you may read in Eusebius and others) though enemies be now ready to invade, and all in an uproar, [6348]_Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidos ferient ruinae_, though heaven should fall on his head, he would not be dismayed. But as a good Christian prince once made answer to a menacing Turk, _facile scelerata hominum arma contemnit, qui del praesidio tutus est_: or as [6349] Phalaris writ to Alexander in a wrong cause, he nor any other enemy could terrify him, for that he trusted in God. _Si Deus nobiscum, quis contra nos_? In all calamities, persecutions whatsoever, as David did, 2 Sam. ii. 22, he will sing with him, "the Lord is my rock, my fortress, my strength, my refuge, the tower and horn of my salvation," &c. In all troubles and adversities, Psal. xlvi. 1. "God is my hope and help, still ready to be found, I will not therefore fear," &c., 'tis a fear expelling fear; he hath peace of conscience, and is full of hope, which is (saith [6350]Austin) _vita vitae mortalis_, the life of this our mortal life, hope of immortality, the sole comfort of our misery: otherwise, as Paul saith, we of all others were most wretched, but this makes us happy, counterpoising our hearts in all miseries; superstition torments, and is from the devil, the author of lies; but this is from God himself, as Lucian, that Antiochian priest, made his divine confession in [6351]Eusebius, _Auctor nobis de Deo Deus est_, God is the author of our religion himself, his word is our rule, a lantern to us, dictated by the Holy Ghost, he plays upon our hearts as many harpstrings, and we are his temples, he dwelleth in us, and we in him. The part affected of superstition, is the brain, heart, will, understanding, soul itself, and all the faculties of it, _totum compositum_, all is mad and dotes: now for the extent, as I say, the world itself is the subject of it, (to omit that grand sin of atheism,) all times have been misaffected, past, present, "there is not one that doth good, no not one, from the prophet to the priest," &c. A lamentable thing it is to consider, how many myriads of men this idolatry and superstition (for that comprehends all) hath infatuated in all ages, besotted by this blind zeal, which is religion's ape, religion's bastard, religion's shadow, false glass. For where God hath a temple, the devil will have a chapel: where God hath sacrifices, the devil will have his oblations: where God hath ceremonies, the devil will have his traditions: where there is any religion, the devil will plant superstition; and 'tis a pitiful sight to behold and read, what tortures, miseries, it hath procured, what slaughter of souls it hath made, how it rageth amongst those old Persians, Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Tuscans, Gauls, Germans, Britons, &c. _Britannia jam hodie celebrat tam attonite_, saith [6352]Pliny, _tantis ceremoniis_ (speaking of superstition) _ut dedisse Persis videri possit._ The Britons are so stupendly superstitious in their ceremonies, that they go beyond those Persians. He that shall but read in Pausanias alone, those gods, temples, altars, idols, statues, so curiously made with such infinite cost and charge, amongst those old Greeks, such multitudes of them and frequent varieties, as [6353]Gerbelius truly observes, may stand amazed, and never enough wonder at it; and thank God withal, that by the light of the Gospel, we are so happily freed from that slavish idolatry in these our days. But heretofore, almost in all countries, in all places, superstition hath blinded the hearts of men; in all ages what a small portion hath the true church ever been! _Divisum imperium cum Jove Daemon habet._ [6354]The patriarchs and their families, the Israelites a handful in respect, Christ and his apostles, and not all of them, neither. Into what straits hath it been compinged, a little flock! how hath superstition on the other side dilated herself, error, ignorance, barbarism, folly, madness, deceived, triumphed, and insulted over the most wise discreet, and understanding man, philosophers, dynasts, monarchs, all were involved and overshadowed in this mist, in more than Cimmerian darkness. [6355]_Adeo ignara superstitio mentes hominum depravat, et nonnunquam sapientum animos transversos agit._ At this present, _quota pars!_ How small a part is truly religious! How little in respect! Divide the world into six parts, and one, or not so much, as Christians; idolaters and Mahometans possess almost Asia, Africa, America, Magellanica. The kings of China, great Cham, Siam, and Borneo, Pegu, Deccan, Narsinga, Japan, &c., are gentiles, idolaters, and many other petty princes in Asia, Monomotopa, Congo, and I know not how many Negro princes in Africa, all Terra Australis incognita most of America pagans, differing all in their several superstitions; and yet all idolaters. The Mahometans extend themselves over the great Turk's dominions in Europe, Africa, Asia, to the Xeriffes in Barbary, and its territories in Fez, Sus, Morocco, &c. The Tartar, the great Mogor, the Sophy of Persia, with most of their dominions and subjects, are at this day Mahometans. See how the devil rageth: those at odds, or differing among themselves, some for [6356]Ali, some Enbocar, for Acmor, and Ozimen, those four doctors, Mahomet's successors, and are subdivided into seventy-two inferior sects, as [6357]Leo Afer reports. The Jews, as a company of vagabonds, are scattered over all parts; whose story, present estate, progress from time to time, is fully set down by [6358]Mr. Thomas Jackson, Doctor of Divinity, in his comment on the creed. A fifth part of the world, and hardly that, now professeth CHRIST, but so inlarded and interlaced with several superstitions, that there is scarce a sound part to be found, or any agreement amongst them. Presbyter John, in Africa, lord of those Abyssinians, or Ethiopians, is by his profession a Christian, but so different from us, with such new absurdities and ceremonies, such liberty, such a mixture of idolatry and paganism, [6359]that they keep little more than a bare title of Christianity. They suffer polygamy, circumcision, stupend fastings, divorce as they will themselves, &c., and as the papists call on the Virgin Mary, so do they on Thomas Didymus before Christ. [6360]The Greek or Eastern Church is rent from this of the West, and as they have four chief patriarchs, so have they four subdivisions, besides those Nestorians, Jacobins, Syrians, Armenians, Georgians, &c., scattered over Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, &c., Greece, Walachia, Circassia, Bulgaria, Bosnia, Albania, Illyricum, Sclavonia, Croatia, Thrace, Servia, Rascia, and a sprinkling amongst the Tartars, the Russians, Muscovites, and most of that great duke's (czar's) subjects, are part of the Greek Church, and still Christians: but as [6361]one saith, _temporis successu multas illi addiderunt superstitiones._ In process of time they have added so many superstitions, they be rather semi-Christians than otherwise. That which remains is the Western Church with us in Europe, but so eclipsed with several schisms, heresies and superstitions, that one knows not where to find it. The papists have Italy, Spain, Savoy, part of Germany, France, Poland, and a sprinkling in the rest of Europe. In America, they hold all that which Spaniards inhabit, Hispania Nova, Castella Aurea, Peru, &c. In the East Indies, the Philippines, some small holds about Goa, Malacca, Zelan, Ormus, &c., which the Portuguese got not long since, and those land-leaping Jesuits have essayed in China, Japan, as appears by their yearly letters; in Africa they have Melinda, Quiloa, Mombaze, &c., and some few towns, they drive out one superstition with another. Poland is a receptacle of all religions, where Samosetans, Socinians, Photinians (now protected in Transylvania and Poland), Arians, Anabaptists are to be found, as well as in some German cities. Scandia is Christian, but [6362]Damianus A-Goes, the Portugal knight, complains, so mixed with magic, pagan rites and ceremonies, they may be as well counted idolaters: what Tacitus formerly said of a like nation, is verified in them, [6363]"A people subject to superstition, contrary to religion." And some of them as about Lapland and the Pilapians, the devil's possession to this day, _Misera haec gens_ (saith mine [6364]author) _Satanae hactenus possessio,--et quod maxime mirandum et dolendum_, and which is to be admired and pitied; if any of them be baptised, which the kings of Sweden much labour, they die within seven or nine days after, and for that cause they will hardly be brought to Christianity, but worship still the devil, who daily appears to them. In their idolatrous courses, _Gandentibus diis patriis, quos religiose colunt_, &c. Yet are they very superstitious, like our wild Irish: though they of the better note, the kings of Denmark and Sweden themselves, that govern them, be Lutherans; the remnant are Calvinists, Lutherans, in Germany equally mixed. And yet the emperor himself, dukes of Lorraine, Bavaria, and the princes, electors, are most part professed papists. And though some part of France and Ireland, Great Britain, half the cantons in Switzerland, and the Low Countries, be Calvinists, more defecate than the rest, yet at odds amongst themselves, not free from superstition. And which [6365]Brochard, the monk, in his description of the Holy Land, after he had censured the Greek church, and showed their errors, concluded at last, _Faxit Deus ne Latinis multa irrepserint stultifies_, I say God grant there be no fopperies in our church. As a dam of water stopped in one place breaks out into another, so doth superstition. I say nothing of Anabaptists, Socinians, Brownists, Familists, &c. There is superstition in our prayers, often in our hearing of sermons, bitter contentions, invectives, persecutions, strange conceits, besides diversity of opinions, schisms, factions, &c. But as the Lord (Job xlii. cap. 7. v.) said to Eliphaz, the Temanite, and his two friends, "his wrath was kindled against them, for they had not spoken of him things that were right:" we may justly of these schismatics and heretics, how wise soever in their own conceits, _non recte loquuntur de Deo_, they speak not, they think not, they write not well of God, and as they ought. And therefore, _Quid quaeso mi Dorpi_, as Erasmus concludes to Dorpius, _hisce Theologis faciamus, aut quid preceris, nisi forte fidelem medicum, qui cerebro medeatur_? What shall we wish them, but _sanam mentem_, and a good physician? But more of their differences, paradoxes, opinions, mad pranks, in the symptoms: I now hasten to the causes. SUBSECT. II.--_Causes of Religious melancholy. From the Devil by miracles, apparitions, oracles. His instruments or factors, politicians, Priests, Impostors, Heretics, blind guides. In them simplicity, fear, blind zeal, ignorance, solitariness, curiosity, pride, vainglory, presumption, &c. his engines, fasting, solitariness, hope, fear, &c._ We are taught in Holy Scripture, that the "Devil rangeth abroad like a roaring lion, still seeking whom he may devour:" and as in several shapes, so by several engines and devices he goeth about to seduce us; sometimes he transforms himself into an angel of light; and is so cunning that he is able, if it were possible, to deceive the very elect. He will be worshipped as [6366]God himself, and is so adored by the heathen, and esteemed. And in imitation of that divine power, as [6367]Eusebius observes, [6368]to abuse or emulate God's glory, as Dandinus adds, he will have all homage, sacrifices, oblations, and whatsoever else belongs to the worship of God, to be done likewise unto him, _similis erit altissimo_, and by this means infatuates the world, deludes, entraps, and destroys many a thousand souls. Sometimes by dreams, visions (as God to Moses by familiar conference), the devil in several shapes talks with them: in the [6369]Indies it is common, and in China nothing so familiar as apparitions, inspirations, oracles, by terrifying them with false prodigies, counterfeit miracles, sending storms, tempests, diseases, plagues (as of old in Athens there was Apollo, Alexicacus, Apollo [Greek: loimios], _pestifer et malorum depulsor_), raising wars, seditions by spectrums, troubling their consciences, driving them to despair, terrors of mind, intolerable pains; by promises, rewards, benefits, and fair means, he raiseth such an opinion of his deity and greatness, that they dare not do otherwise than adore him, do as he will have them, they dare not offend him. And to compel them more to stand in awe of him, [6370]"he sends and cures diseases, disquiets their spirits" (as Cyprian saith), "torments and terrifies their souls, to make them adore him: and all his study, all his endeavour is to divert them from true religion to superstition: and because he is damned himself, and in an error, he would have all the world participate of his errors, and be damned with him." The _primum mobile_, therefore, and first mover of all superstition, is the devil, that great enemy of mankind, the principal agent, who in a thousand several, shapes, after diverse fashions, with several engines, illusions, and by several names hath deceived the inhabitants of the earth, in several places and countries, still rejoicing at their falls. "All the world over before Christ's time, he freely domineered, and held the souls of men in most slavish subjection" (saith [6371]Eusebius) "in diverse forms, ceremonies, and sacrifices, till Christ's coming," as if those devils of the air had shared the earth amongst them, which the Platonists held for gods ([6372]_Ludus deorum sumus_), and were our governors and keepers. In several places, they had several rites, orders, names, of which read Wierus _de praestigiis daemonum, lib. 1. cap. 5._ [6373]Strozzius Cicogna, and others; Adonided amongst the Syrians; Adramalech amongst the Capernaites, Asiniae amongst the Emathites; Astartes with the Sidonians; Astaroth with the Palestines; Dagon with the Philistines; Tartary with the Hanaei; Melchonis amongst the Ammonites: Beli the Babylonians; Beelzebub and Baal with the Samaritans and Moabites; Apis, Isis, and Osiris amongst the Egyptians; Apollo Pythius at Delphos, Colophon, Ancyra, Cuma, Erythra; Jupiter in Crete, Venus at Cyprus, Juno at Carthage, Aesculapius at Epidaurus, Diana at Ephesus, Pallas at Athens, &c. And even in these our days, both in the East and West Indies, in Tartary, China, Japan, &c., what strange idols, in what prodigious forms, with what absurd ceremonies are they adored? What strange sacraments, like ours of Baptism and the Lord's Supper, what goodly temples, priests, sacrifices they had in America, when the Spaniards first landed there, let Acosta the Jesuit relate, _lib. 5. cap. 1, 2, 3, 4_, &c., and how the devil imitated the Ark and the children of Israel's coming out of Egypt; with many such. For as Lipsius well discourseth out of the doctrine of the Stoics, _maxime cupiunt adorationem hominum_, now and of old, they still and most especially desire to be adored by men. See but what Vertomannus, _l. 5. c. 2._ Marcus Polus, Lerius, Benzo, P. Martyr in his _Ocean Decades_, Acosta, and Mat. Riccius _expedit. Christ. in Sinus, lib. 1._ relate. [6374]Eusebius wonders how that wise city of Athens, and flourishing kingdoms of Greece, should be so besotted; and we in our times, how. those witty Chinese, so perspicacious in all other things should be so gulled, so tortured with superstition, so blind as to worship stocks and stones. But it is no marvel, when we see all out as great effects amongst Christians themselves; how are those Anabaptists, Arians, and Papists above the rest, miserably infatuated! Mars, Jupiter, Apollo, and Aesculapius, have resigned their interest, names, and offices to Saint George. "([6375](Maxime bellorum rector, quem nostra juventus Pro Mavorte colit.)"------ St. Christopher, and a company of fictitious saints, Venus to the Lady of Loretto. And as those old Romans had several distinct gods, for divers offices, persons, places, so have they saints, as [6376]Lavater well observes out of Lactantius, _mutato nomine tantum_, 'tis the same spirit or devil that deludes them still. The manner how, as I say, is by rewards, promises, terrors, affrights, punishments. In a word, fair and foul means, hope and fear. How often hath Jupiter, Apollo, Bacchus, and the rest, sent plagues in [6377]Greece and Italy, because their sacrifices were neglected? [6378] "Dii multa neglecti dederunt Hesperiae mala luctuosae," to terrify them, to arouse them up, and the like: see but Livy, Dionysius Halicarnassaeus, Thucydides, Pausanius, Philostratus, [6379]Polybius, before the battle of Cannae, _prodigiis signis, ostentis, templa cuncta, privates etiam aedes scatebant._ Oeneus reigned in Aetolia, and because he did not sacrifice to Diana with his other gods (see more in Labanius his Diana), she sent a wild boar, _insolitae magnitudinis, qui terras et homines misere depascebatur_, to spoil both men and country, which was afterwards killed by Meleager. So Plutarch in the Life of Lucullus relates, how Mithridates, king of Pontus, at the siege of Cizicum, with all his navy, was overthrown by Proserpina, for neglecting of her holy day. She appeared in a vision to Aristagoras in the night, _Cras inquit tybicinem Lybicum cum tybicine pontico committam_ ("tomorrow I will cause a contest between a Libyan and a Pontic minstrel"), and the day following this enigma was understood; for with a great south wind which came from Libya, she quite overwhelmed Mithridates' army. What prodigies and miracles, dreams, visions, predictions, apparitions, oracles, have been of old at Delphos, Dodona, Trophonius' den, at Thebes, and Lebaudia, of Jupiter Ammon in Egypt, Amphiaraus in Attica, &c.; what strange cures performed by Apollo and Aesculapius? Juno's image and that of [6380]Fortune spake, [6381]Castor and Pollux fought in person for the Romans against Hannibal's army, as Pallas, Mars, Juno, Venus, for Greeks and Trojans, &c. Amongst our pseudo-Catholics nothing so familiar as such miracles; how many cures done by our lady of Loretto, at Sichem! of old at our St. Thomas's shrine, &c. [6382]St. Sabine was seen to fight for Arnulphus, duke of Spoleto. [6383]St. George fought in person for John the Bastard of Portugal, against the Castilians; St. James for the Spaniards in America. In the battle of Bannockburn, where Edward the Second, our English king, was foiled by the Scots, St. Philanus' arm was seen to fight (if [6384]Hector Boethius doth not impose), that was before shut up in a silver cap-case; another time, in the same author, St. Magnus fought for them. Now for visions, revelations, miracles, not only out of the legend, out of purgatory, but everyday comes news from the Indies, and at home read the Jesuits' Letters, Ribadineira, Thurselinus, Acosta, Lippomanus, Xaverius, Ignatius' Lives, &c., and tell me what difference? His ordinary instruments or factors which he useth, as God himself, did good kings, lawful magistrates, patriarchs, prophets, to the establishing of his church, [6385]are politicians, statesmen, priests, heretics, blind guides, impostors, pseudoprophets, to propagate his superstition. And first to begin of politicians, it hath ever been a principal axiom with them to maintain religion or superstition, which they determine of, alter and vary upon all occasions, as to them seems best, they make religion mere policy, a cloak, a human invention, _nihil aeque valet ad regendos vulgi animos ac superstitio_, as [6386]Tacitus and [6387]Tully hold. Austin, _l. 4. de civitat. Dei. c. 9._ censures Scaevola saying and acknowledging _expedire civitates religione falli_, that it was a fit thing cities should be deceived by religion, according to the diverb, _Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur_, if the world will be gulled, let it be gulled, 'tis good howsoever to keep it in subjection. 'Tis that [6388]Aristotle and [6389]Plato inculcate in their politics, "Religion neglected, brings plague to the city, opens a gap to all naughtiness." 'Tis that which all our late politicians ingeminate. Cromerus, _l. 2. pol. hist._ Boterus, _l. 3. de incrementis urbium._ Clapmarius, _l. 2. c. 9. de Arcanis rerump. cap. 4. lib. 2. polit._ Captain Machiavel will have a prince by all means to counterfeit religion, to be superstitious in show at least, to seem to be devout, frequent holy exercises, honour divines, love the church, affect priests, as Numa, Lycurgus, and such lawmakers were and did, _non ut his fidem habeant, sed ut subditos religionis metu facilius in officio contineant_, to keep people in obedience. [6390]_Nam naturaliter_ (as Cardan writes) _lex Christiana lex est pietatis, justitiae, fidei, simplicitatis_, &c. But this error of his, Innocentius Jentilettus, a French lawyer, _theorem. 9. comment. 1. de Relig_, and Thomas Bozius in his book _de ruinis gentium et Regnorum_ have copiously confuted. Many politicians, I dare not deny, maintain religion as a true means, and sincerely speak of it without hypocrisy, are truly zealous and religious themselves. Justice and religion are the two chief props and supporters of a well-governed commonwealth: but most of them are but Machiavellians, counterfeits only for political ends; for _solus rex_ (which Campanella, _cap. 18. atheismi triumphali_ observes), as amongst our modern Turks, _reipub. Finis_, as knowing [6391]_magnus ejus in animos imperium_; and that, as [6392]Sabellicus delivers, "A man without religion, is like a horse without a bridle." No way better to curb than superstition, to terrify men's consciences, and to keep them in awe: they make new laws, statutes, invent new religions, ceremonies, as so many stalking horses, to their ends. [6393]_Haec enim (religio) si falsa sit, dummodo vera credatur, animorum ferociam domat, libidines coercet, subditos principi obsequentes efficit._ [6394]Therefore (saith [6395]Polybius of Lycurgus), "did he maintain ceremonies, not that he was superstitious himself, but that he had perceived mortal men more apt to embrace paradoxes than aught else, and durst attempt no evil things for fear of the gods." This was Zamolcus's stratagem amongst the Thracians, Numa's plot, when he said he had conference with the nymph Aegeria, and that of Sertorius with a hart; to get more credit to their decrees, by deriving them from the gods; or else they did all by divine instinct, which Nicholas Damascen well observes of Lycurgus, Solon, and Minos, they had their laws dictated, _monte sacro_, by Jupiter himself. So Mahomet referred his new laws to the [6396]angel Gabriel, by whose direction he gave out they were made. Caligula in Dion feigned himself to be familiar with Castor and Pollux, and many such, which kept those Romans under (who, as Machiavel proves, _lib. 1. disput. cap. 11. et 12._ were _Religione maxime moti_, most superstitious): and did curb the people more by this means, than by force of arms, or severity of human laws. _Sola plebecula eam agnoscebat_ (saith Vaninus, _dial. 1. lib. 4. de admirandis naturae arcanis_) speaking of religion, _que facile decipitur, magnates vero et philosophi nequaquam_, your grandees and philosophers had no such conceit, _sed ad imperii conformationem et amplificationem quam sine praetextu religionis tueri non poterant_; and many thousands in all ages have ever held as much, Philosophers especially, _animadvertebant hi semper haec esse fabellas, attamen ob metum publicae potestatis silere cogebantur_ they were still silent for fear of laws, &c. To this end that Syrian Phyresides, Pythagoras his master, broached in the East amongst the heathens, first the immortality of the soul, as Trismegistus did in Egypt, with a many of feigned gods. Those French and Briton Druids in the West first taught, saith [6397]Caesar, _non interire animas_ (that souls did not die), "but after death to go from one to another, that so they might encourage them to virtue." 'Twas for a politic end, and to this purpose the old [6398]poets feigned those elysian fields, their Aeacus, Minos, and Rhadamanthus, their infernal judges, and those Stygian lakes, fiery Phlegethons, Pluto's kingdom, and variety of torments after death. Those that had done well, went to the elysian fields, but evil doers to Cocytus, and to that burning lake of [6399]hell with fire, and brimstone for ever to be tormented. 'Tis this which [6400]Plato labours for in his Phaedon, _et 9. de rep._ The Turks in their Alcoran, when they set down rewards, and several punishments for every particular virtue and vice, [6401]when they persuade men, that they that die in battle shall go directly to heaven, but wicked livers to eternal torment, and all of all sorts (much like our papistical purgatory), for a set time shall be tortured in their graves, as appears by that tract which John Baptista Alfaqui, that Mauritanian priest, now turned Christian, hath written in his confutation of the Alcoran. After a man's death two black angels, Nunquir and Nequir (so they call them) come to him to his grave and punish him for his precedent sins; if he lived well, they torture him the less; if ill, _per indesinentes cruciatus ad diem fudicii_, they incessantly punish him to the day of judgment, _Nemo viventium qui ad horum mentionem non totus horret et contremiscit_, the thought of this crucifies them all their lives long, and makes them spend their days in fasting and prayer, _ne mala haec contingant_, &c. A Tartar prince, saith Marcus Polus, _lib. 1. cap. 23._ called Senex de Montibus, the better to establish his government amongst his subjects, and to keep them in awe, found a convenient place in a pleasant valley, environed with hills, in [6402]"which he made a delicious park full of odoriferous flowers and fruits, and a palace of all worldly contents," that could possibly be devised, music, pictures, variety of meats, &c., and chose out a certain young man, whom with a [6403]soporiferous potion he so benumbed, that he perceived nothing: "and so fast asleep as he was, caused him to be conveyed into this fair garden:" where after he had lived awhile in all such pleasures a sensual man could desire, [6404]"He cast him into a sleep again, and brought him forth, that when he awaked he might tell others he had been in Paradise." The like he did for hell, and by this means brought his people to subjection. Because heaven and hell are mentioned in the scriptures, and to be believed necessary by Christians: so cunningly can the devil and his ministers, in imitation of true religion, counterfeit and forge the like, to circumvent and delude his superstitious followers. Many such tricks and impostures are acted by politicians, in China especially, but with what effect I will discourse in the symptoms. Next to politicians, if I may distinguish them, are some of our priests (who make religion policy), if not far beyond them, for they domineer over princes and statesmen themselves. _Carnificinam exercent_, one saith they tyrannise over men's consciences more than any other tormentors whatsoever, partly for their commodity and gain; _Religionem enim omnium abusus_ (as [6405]Postellus holds), _quaestus scilicet sacrificum in causa est_: for sovereignty, credit, to maintain their state and reputation, out of ambition and avarice, which are their chief supporters: what have they not made the common people believe? Impossibilities in nature, incredible things; what devices, traditions, ceremonies, have they not invented in all ages to keep men in obedience, to enrich themselves? _Quibus quaestui sunt capti superstitione animi_, as [6406]Livy saith. Those Egyptian priests of old got all the sovereignty into their hands, and knowing, as [6407]Curtius insinuates, _nulla res efficacius multitudinem regit quam superstitio; melius vatibus quam ducibus parent, vana religione capti, etiam impotentes faeminae_; the common people will sooner obey priests than captains, and nothing so forcible as superstition, or better than blind zeal to rule a multitude; have so terrified and gulled them, that it is incredible to relate. All nations almost have been besotted in this kind; amongst our Britons and old Gauls the Druids; magi in Persia; philosophers in Greece; Chaldeans amongst the Oriental; Brachmanni in India; Gymnosophists in Ethiopia; the Turditanes in Spain; Augurs in Rome, have insulted; Apollo's priests in Greece, Phaebades and Pythonissae, by their oracles and phantasms; Amphiaraus and his companions; now Mahometan and pagan priests, what can they not effect? How do they not infatuate the world? _Adeo ubique_ (as [6408]Scaliger writes of the Mahometan priests), _tum gentium tum locorum, gens ista sacrorum ministra, vulgi secat spes, ad ea quae ipsi fingunt somnia_, "so cunningly can they gull the commons in all places and countries." But above all others, that high priest of Rome, the dam of that monstrous and superstitious brood, the bull-bellowing pope, which now rageth in the West, that three-headed Cerberus hath played his part. [6409] "Whose religion at this day is mere policy, a state wholly composed of superstition and wit, and needs nothing but wit and superstition to maintain it, that useth colleges and religious houses to as good purpose as forts and castles, and doth more at this day" by a company of scribbling parasites, fiery-spirited friars, zealous anchorites, hypocritical confessors, and those praetorian soldiers, his Janissary Jesuits, and that dissociable society, as [6410]Languis terms it, _postremus diaboli conatus et saeculi excrementum_, that now stand in the fore front of the battle, will have a monopoly of, and engross all other learning, but domineer in divinity, [6411]_Excipiunt soli totius vulnera belli_, and fight alone almost (for the rest are but his dromedaries and asses), than ever he could have done by garrisons and armies. What power of prince, or penal law, be it never so strict, could enforce men to do that which for conscience' sake they will voluntarily undergo? And as to fast from all flesh, abstain from marriage, rise to their prayers at midnight, whip themselves, with stupendous fasting and penance, abandon the world, wilful poverty, perform canonical and blind obedience, to prostrate their goods, fortunes, bodies, lives, and offer up themselves at their superior's feet, at his command? What so powerful an engine as superstition? which they right well perceiving, are of no religion at all themselves: _Primum enim_ (as Calvin rightly suspects, the tenor and practice of their life proves), _arcanae illius theologiae, quod apud eos regnat, caput est, nullum esse deum_, they hold there is no God, as Leo X. did, Hildebrand the magician, Alexander VI., Julius II., mere atheists, and which the common proverb amongst them approves, [6412]"The worst Christians of Italy are the Romans, of the Romans the priests are wildest, the lewdest priests are preferred to be cardinals, and the baddest men amongst the cardinals is chosen to be pope," that is an epicure, as most part the popes are, infidels and Lucianists, for so they think and believe; and what is said of Christ to be fables and impostures, of heaven and hell, day of judgment, paradise, immortality of the soul, are all, [6413] "Rumores vacui, verbaque inania, Et par sollicito fabula somnio." "Dreams, toys, and old wives' tales." Yet as so many [6414]whetstones to make other tools cut, but cut not themselves, though they be of no religion at all, they will make others most devout and superstitious, by promises and threats, compel, enforce from, and lead them by the nose like so many bears in a line; when as their end is not to propagate the church, advance God's kingdom, seek His glory or common good, but to enrich themselves, to enlarge their territories, to domineer and compel them to stand in awe, to live in subjection to the See of Rome. For what otherwise care they? _Si mundus vult decipi, decipiatur_, "since the world wishes to be gulled, let it be gulled," 'tis fit it should be so. And for which [6415]Austin cites Varro to maintain his Roman religion, we may better apply to them: _multa vera, quae vulgus scire non est utile; pleraque falsa, quae tamen uliter existimare populum expedit_; some things are true, some false, which for their own ends they will not have the gullish commonalty take notice of. As well may witness their intolerable covetousness, strange forgeries, fopperies, fooleries, unrighteous subtleties, impostures, illusions, new doctrines, paradoxes, traditions, false miracles, which they have still forged, to enthral, circumvent and subjugate them, to maintain their own estates. [6416]One while by bulls, pardons, indulgencies, and their doctrines of good works, that they be meritorious, hope of heaven, by that means they have so fleeced the commonalty, and spurred on this free superstitious horse, that he runs himself blind, and is an ass to carry burdens. They have so amplified Peter's patrimony, that from a poor bishop, he is become _Rex Regum, Dominus dominantium_, a demigod, as his canonists make him (Felinus and the rest), above God himself. And for his wealth and [6417] temporalities, is not inferior to many kings: [6418]his cardinals, princes' companions; and in every kingdom almost, abbots, priors, monks, friars, &c., and his clergy, have engrossed a [6419]third part, half, in some places all, into their hands. Three princes, electors in Germany, bishops; besides Magdeburg, Spire, Saltsburg, Breme, Bamberg, &c. In France, as Bodine _lib. de repub._ gives us to understand, their revenues are 12,300,000 livres; and of twelve parts of the revenues in France, the church possesseth seven. The Jesuits, a new sect, begun in this age, have, as [6420]Middendorpius and [6421]Pelargus reckon up, three or four hundred colleges in Europe, and more revenues than many princes. In France, as Arnoldus proves, in thirty years they have got _bis centum librarum millia annua_, 200,000_l_. I say nothing of the rest of their orders. We have had in England, as Armachanus demonstrates, above 30,000 friars at once, and as [6422]Speed collects out of Leland and others, almost 600 religious houses, and near 200,000_l._ in revenues of the old rent belonging to them, besides images of gold, silver, plate, furniture, goods and ornaments, as [6423]Weever calculates, and esteems them at the dissolution of abbeys, worth a million of gold. How many towns in every kingdom hath superstition enriched? What a deal of money by musty relics, images, idolatry, have their mass-priests engrossed, and what sums have they scraped by their other tricks! Loretto in Italy, Walsingham in England, in those days. _Ubi omnia auro nitent_, "where everything shines with gold," saith Erasmus, St. Thomas's shrine, &c., may witness. [6424]Delphos so renowned of old in Greece for Apollo's oracle, _Delos commune conciliabulum et emporium sola religions manitum_; Dodona, whose fame and wealth were sustained by religion, were not so rich, so famous. If they can get but a relic of some saint, the Virgin Mary's picture, idols or the like, that city is for ever made, it needs no other maintenance. Now if any of these their impostures or juggling tricks be controverted, or called in question: if a magnanimous or zealous Luther, an heroical Luther, as [6425]Dithmarus Calls him, dare touch the monks' bellies, all is in a combustion, all is in an uproar: Demetrius and his associates are ready to pull him in pieces, to keep up their trades, [6426] "Great is Diana of the Ephesians:" with a mighty shout of two hours long they will roar and not be pacified. Now for their authority, what by auricular confession, satisfaction, penance, Peter's keys, thunderings, excommunications, &c., roaring bulls, this high priest of Rome, shaking his Gorgon's head, hath so terrified the soul of many a silly man, insulted over majesty itself, and swaggered generally over all Europe for many ages, and still doth to some, holding them as yet in slavish subjection, as never tyrannising Spaniards did by their poor Negroes, or Turks by their galley-slaves. [6427]"The bishop of Rome" (saith Stapleton, a parasite of his, _de mag. Eccles. lib. 2. cap. 1._) "hath done that without arms, which those Roman emperors could never achieve with forty legions of soldiers," deposed kings, and crowned them again with his foot, made friends, and corrected at his pleasure, &c. [6428] "'Tis a wonder," saith Machiavel, _Florentinae, his. lib. 1._ "what slavery King Henry II. endured for the death of Thomas a Beckett, what things he was enjoined by the Pope, and how he submitted himself to do that which in our times a private man would not endure," and all through superstition. [6429]Henry IV. disposed of his empire, stood barefooted with his wife at the gates of Canossus. [6430]Frederic the Emperor was trodden on by Alexander III., another held Adrian's stirrup, King John kissed the knees of Pandulphos the Pope's legate, See. What made so many thousand Christians travel from France, Britain, &c., into the Holy Land, spend such huge sums of money, go a pilgrimage so familiarly to Jerusalem, to creep and crouch, but slavish superstition? What makes them so freely venture their lives, to leave their native countries, to go seek martyrdom in the Indies, but superstition? to be assassins, to meet death, murder kings, but a false persuasion of merit, of canonical or blind obedience which they instil into them, and animate them by strange illusions, hope of being martyrs and saints: such pretty feats can the devil work by priests, and so well for their own advantage can they play their parts. And if it were not yet enough, by priests and politicians to delude mankind, and crucify the souls of men, he hath more actors in his tragedy, more irons in the fire, another scene of heretics, factious, ambitious wits, insolent spirits, schismatics, impostors, false prophets, blind guides, that out of pride, singularity, vainglory, blind zeal, cause much more madness yet, set all in an uproar by their new doctrines, paradoxes, figments, crotchets, make new divisions, subdivisions, new sects, oppose one superstition to another, one kingdom to another, commit prince and subjects, brother against brother, father against son, to the ruin and destruction of a commonwealth, to the disturbance of peace, and to make a general confusion of all estates. How did those Arians rage of old? how many did they circumvent? Those Pelagians, Manichees, &c., their names alone would make a just volume. How many silly souls have impostors still deluded, drawn away, and quite alienated from Christ! Lucian's Alexander Simon Magus, whose statue was to be seen and adored in Rome, saith Justin Martyr, _Simoni deo sancto_, &c., after his decease. [6431]Apollonius Tianeus, Cynops, Eumo, who by counterfeiting some new ceremonies and juggling tricks of that Dea Syria, by spitting fire, and the like, got an army together of 40,000 men, and did much harm: with _Eudo de stellis_, of whom Nubrigensis speaks, _lib. 1. cap. 19._ that in King Stephen's days imitated most of Christ's miracles, fed I know not how many people in the wilderness, and built castles in the air, &c., to the seducing of multitudes of poor souls. In Franconia, 1476, a base illiterate fellow took upon him to be a prophet, and preach, John Beheim by name, a neatherd at Nicholhausen, he seduced 30,000 persons, and was taken by the commonalty to be a most holy man, come from heaven. [6432] "Tradesmen left their shops, women their distaffs, servants ran from their masters, children from their parents, scholars left their tutors, all to hear him, some for novelty, some for zeal. He was burnt at last by the Bishop of Wartzburg, and so he and his heresy vanished together." How many such impostors, false prophets, have lived in every king's reign? what chronicles will not afford such examples? that as so many _ignes fatui_, have led men out of the way, terrified some, deluded others, that are apt to be carried about by the blast of every wind, a rude inconstant multitude, a silly company of poor souls, that follow all, and are cluttered together like so many pebbles in a tide. What prodigious follies, madness, vexations, persecutions, absurdities, impossibilities, these impostors, heretics, &c., have thrust upon the world, what strange effects shall be shown in the symptoms. Now the means by which, or advantages the devil and his infernal ministers take, so to delude and disquiet the world with such idle ceremonies, false doctrines, superstitious fopperies, are from themselves, innate fear, ignorance, simplicity, hope and fear, those two battering cannons and principal engines, with their objects, reward and punishment, purgatory, _Limbus Patrum_, &c. which now more than ever tyrannise; [6433]"for what province is free from atheism, superstition, idolatry, schism, heresy, impiety, their factors and followers?" thence they proceed, and from that same decayed image of God, which is yet remaining in us. [6434] "Os homini sublime dedit, coelumque tueri Jussit."------ Our own conscience doth dictate so much unto us, we know there is a God and nature doth inform us; _Nulla gens tam barbara_ (saith Tully) _cui non insideat haec persuasio Deum esse; sed nec Scytha, nec Groecus, nec Persa, nec Hyperboreus dissentiet_ (as Maximus Tyrius the Platonist _ser. 1._ farther adds) _nec continentis nec insularum habitator_, let him dwell where he will, in what coast soever, there is no nation so barbarous that is not persuaded there is a God. It is a wonder to read of that infinite superstition amongst the Indians in this kind, of their tenets in America, _pro suo quisque libitu varias res venerabantur superstitiose, plantas, animalia, montes, &c. omne quod amabant aut horrebant_ (some few places excepted as he grants, that had no God at all). So "the heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament declares his handy work," Psalm xix. "Every creature will evince it;" _Praesentemque refert quaelibet herba deum. Nolentes sciunt, fatentur inviti_, as the said Tyrius proceeds, will or nill, they must acknowledge it. The philosophers, Socrates, Plato, Plotinus, Pythagoras, Trismegistus, Seneca, Epictetus, those Magi, Druids, &c. went as far as they could by the light of nature; [6435]_multa praeclara, de natura Dei seripta reliquerunt_, "writ many things well of the nature of God, but they had but a confused light, a glimpse," [6436] "Quale per incertam lunam sub luce maligna Est iter in sylvis,"------ "as he that walks by moonshine in a wood," they groped in the dark; they had a gross knowledge, as he in Euripides, _O Deus quicquid es, sive coelum, sive terra, sive aliud quid_, and that of Aristotle, _Ens entium miserere mei._ And so of the immortality of the soul, and future happiness. _Immortalitatem animae_ (saith Hierom) _Pythagoras somniavit, Democritus non credidit in consolalionem damnationis suae Socrates in carcere disputavit; Indus, Persa, Cothus, &c. Philosophantur._ So some said this, some that, as they conceived themselves, which the devil perceiving, led them farther out (as [6437]Lemnius observes) and made them worship him as their God with stocks and stones, and torture themselves to their own destruction, as he thought fit himself, inspired his priests and ministers with lies and fictions to prosecute the same, which they for their own ends were as willing to undergo, taking advantage of their simplicity, fear and ignorance. For the common people are as a flock of sheep, a rude, illiterate rout, void many times of common sense, a mere beast, _bellua multorum capitum_, will go whithersoever they are led: as you lead a ram over a gap by the horns, all the rest will follow, [6438]_Non qua eundum, sed qua itur_, they will do as they see others do, and as their prince will have them, let him be of what religion he will, they are for him. Now for those idolaters, Maxentius and Licinius, then for Constantine a Christian. [6439]_Qui Christum negant male pereant, acclamatum est Decies_, for two hours' space; _qui Christum non colunt, Augusti inimici sunt, acclamatum est ter decies_; and by and by idolaters again under that Apostate Julianus; all Arians under Constantius, good Catholics again under Jovinianus, "And little difference there is between the discretion of men and children in this case, especially of old folks and women," as [6440] Cardan discourseth, "when, as they are tossed with fear and superstition, and with other men's folly and dishonesty." So that I may say their ignorance is a cause of their superstition, a symptom, and madness itself: _Supplicii causa est, sappliciumque sui._ Their own fear, folly, stupidity, to be deplored lethargy, is that which gives occasion to the other, and pulls these miseries on their own heads. For in all these religions and superstitions, amongst our idolaters, you shall find that the parties first affected, are silly, rude, ignorant people, old folks, that are naturally prone to superstition, weak women, or some poor, rude, illiterate persons, that are apt to be wrought upon, and gulled in this kind, prone without either examination or due consideration (for they take up religion a trust, as at mercers' they do their wares) to believe anything. And the best means they have to broach first, or to maintain it when they have done, is to keep them still in ignorance: for "ignorance is the mother of devotion," as all the world knows, and these times can amply witness. This hath been the devil's practice, and his infernal ministers in all ages; not as our Saviour by a few silly fishermen, to confound the wisdom of the world, to save publicans and sinners, but to make advantage of their ignorance, to convert them and their associates; and that they may better effect what they intend, they begin, as I say, with poor, [6441]stupid, illiterate persons. So Mahomet did when he published his Alcoran, which is a piece of work (saith [6442]Bredenbachius) "full of nonsense, barbarism, confusion, without rhyme, reason, or any good composition, first published to a company of rude rustics, hog-rubbers, that had no discretion, judgment, art, or understanding, and is so still maintained." For it is a part of their policy to let no man comment, dare to dispute or call in question to this day any part of it, be it never so absurd, incredible, ridiculous, fabulous as it is, must be believed _implicite_, upon pain of death no man must dare to contradict it, "God and the emperor," &c. What else do our papists, but by keeping the people in ignorance vent and broach all their new ceremonies and traditions, when they conceal the scripture, read it in Latin, and to some few alone, feeding the slavish people in the meantime with tales out of legends, and such like fabulous narrations? Whom do they begin with but collapsed ladies, some few tradesmen, superstitious old folks, illiterate persons, weak women, discontent, rude, silly companions, or sooner circumvent? So do all our schismatics and heretics. Marcus and Valentinian heretics, in [6443]Irenaeus, seduced first I know not how many women, and made them believe they were prophets. [6444]Friar Cornelius of Dort seduced a company of silly women. What are all our Anabaptists, Brownists, Barrowists, familists, but a company of rude, illiterate, capricious, base fellows? What are most of our papists, but stupid, ignorant and blind bayards? how should they otherwise be, when as they are brought up and kept still in darkness? [6445]"If their pastors" (saith Lavater) "have done their duties, and instructed their flocks as they ought, in the principles of Christian religion, or had not forbidden them the reading of scriptures, they had not been as they are." But being so misled all their lives in superstition, and carried hoodwinked like hawks, how can they prove otherwise than blind idiots, and superstitious asses? what else shall we expect at their hands? Neither is it sufficient to keep them blind, and in Cimmerian darkness, but withal, as a schoolmaster doth by his boys, to make them follow their books, sometimes by good hope, promises and encouragements, but most of all by fear, strict discipline, severity, threats and punishment, do they collogue and soothe up their silly auditors, and so bring them into a fools' paradise. _Rex eris aiunt, si recte facies_, do well, thou shalt be crowned; but for the most part by threats, terrors, and affrights, they tyrannise and terrify their distressed souls: knowing that fear alone is the sole and only means to keep men in obedience, according to that hemistichium of Petronius, _primus in orbe deos fecit timor_, the fear of some divine and supreme powers, keeps men in obedience, makes the people do their duties: they play upon their consciences; [6446]which was practised of old in Egypt by their priests; when there was an eclipse, they made the people believe God was angry, great miseries were to come; they take all opportunities of natural causes, to delude the people's senses, and with fearful tales out of purgatory, feigned apparitions, earthquakes in Japonia or China, tragical examples of devils, possessions, obsessions, false miracles, counterfeit visions, &c. They do so insult over and restrain them, never hoby so dared a lark, that they will not [6447]offend the least tradition, tread, or scarce look awry: _Deus bone_ ([6448]Lavater exclaims) _quot hoc commentum de purgatorio misere afflixit!_ good God, how many men have been miserably afflicted by this fiction of purgatory! To these advantages of hope and fear, ignorance and simplicity, he hath several engines, traps, devices, to batter and enthral, omitting no opportunities, according to men's several inclinations, abilities, to circumvent and humour them, to maintain his superstitions, sometimes to stupefy, besot them: sometimes again by oppositions, factions, to set all at odds and in an uproar; sometimes he infects one man, and makes him a principal agent; sometimes whole cities, countries. If of meaner sort, by stupidity, canonical obedience, blind zeal, &c. If of better note, by pride, ambition, popularity, vainglory. If of the clergy and more eminent, of better parts than the rest, more learned, eloquent, he puffs them up with a vain conceit of their own worth, _scientia inflati_, they begin to swell, and scorn all the world in respect of themselves, and thereupon turn heretics, schismatics, broach new doctrines, frame new crotchets and the like; or else out of too much learning become mad, or out of curiosity they will search into God's secrets, and eat of the forbidden fruit; or out of presumption of their holiness and good gifts, inspirations, become prophets, enthusiasts, and what not? Or else if they be displeased, discontent, and have not (as they suppose) preferment to their worth, have some disgrace, repulse, neglected, or not esteemed as they fondly value themselves, or out of emulation, they begin presently to rage and rave, _coelum terrae, miscent_, they become so impatient in an instant, that a whole kingdom cannot contain them, they will set all in a combustion, all at variance, to be revenged of their adversaries. [6449]Donatus, when he saw Cecilianus preferred before him in the bishopric of Carthage, turned heretic, and so did Arian, because Alexander was advanced: we have examples at home, and too many experiments of such persons. If they be laymen of better note, the same engines of pride, ambition, emulation and jealousy, take place, they will be gods themselves: [6450]Alexander in India, after his victories, became so insolent, he would be adored for a god: and those Roman emperors came to that height of madness, they must have temples built to them, sacrifices to their deities, Divus Augustus, D. Claudius, D. Adrianus: [6451]Heliogabalus, "put out that vestal fire at Rome, expelled the virgins, and banished all other religions all over the world, and would be the sole God himself." Our Turks, China kings, great Chams, and Mogors do little less, assuming divine and bombast titles to themselves; the meaner sort are too credulous, and led with blind zeal, blind obedience, to prosecute and maintain whatsoever their sottish leaders shall propose, what they in pride and singularity, revenge, vainglory, ambition, spleen, for gain, shall rashly maintain and broach, their disciples make a matter of conscience, of hell and damnation, if they do it not, and will rather forsake wives, children, house and home, lands, goods, fortunes, life itself, than omit or abjure the least tittle of it, and to advance the common cause, undergo any miseries, turn traitors, assassins, pseudomartyrs, with full assurance and hope of reward in that other world, that they shall certainly merit by it, win heaven, be canonised for saints. Now when they are truly possessed with blind zeal, and misled with superstition, he hath many other baits to inveigle and infatuate them farther yet, to make them quite mortified and mad, and that under colour of perfection, to merit by penance, going woolward, whipping, alms, fastings, &c. An. 1320. there was a sect of [6452]whippers in Germany, that, to the astonishment of the beholders, lashed, and cruelly tortured themselves. I could give many other instances of each particular. But these works so done are meritorious, _ex opere operato, ex condigno_, for themselves and others, to make them macerate and consume their bodies, _specie virtutis et umbra_, those evangelical counsels are propounded, as our pseudo-Catholics call them, canonical obedience, wilful poverty, [6453]vows of chastity, monkery, and a solitary life, which extend almost to all religions and superstitions, to Turks, Chinese, Genti«
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