if law-makers contemn rare occurrents, surely accusers do not. Once is too much of an evil. Mark, then: Do we absolve his soul after the departure? No: what hath the body to do with Purgatory? Yet, for the body: do we, by any absolution, seek to quit it from sin? Nothing less: reason itself gives us, that it is uncapable either of sin or pardon. To lie unburied, or to be buried unseemly, is so much a punishment, that the heathens objected it, though upon the havock and fury of war, to the Christians, as an argument of God's neglect. All, that authority can do to the dead rebel, is to put his carcase to shame, and deny him the honour of seemly sepulture: thus doth the Church to those, that will die in wilful contempt. Those Grecian Virgins, that feared not death, were yet restrained with the fear of shame after death. It was a real, not imaginary curse of Jezebel: The dogs shall eat Jezebel. Now the Absolution (as you call it, by an unproper, but malicious name) is nothing else, but a liberty given by the Church, upon repentance signified of the fault of the late offender, of all those external rites of decent funeral. Death itself is capable of inequality and unseemliness. Suppose a just Excommunication: what reason is it, that he, which, in his life and death, would be as a Pagan, should be as a Christian in his burial? What has any or all this to Purgatory?

Sep. "Your Christian Burial in holy ground, if the party will be at the charges: your ringing of hallowed bells for the soul: your singing the corpse to the grave, from the church style: your praying over or for the dead; especially in these words, That God would hasten his kingdom; that we, with this our brother,' though his life were never so wretched and death desperate, and all other departed in the true faith of thy Holy Name, may have our perfect consummation, both in body and soul.""

The next intimation of our Purgatory, is our Christian Burial; in the place, in the manner: the place, holy ground, the church, churchyard, &c: the manner, ringing, singing, praying over the corpse. Thus, therefore, you argue: We bury the body in the church or churchyard, &c: therefore we hold a Purgatory of the soul.

A proof, not less strange, than the opinion. We do neither scorn the carcases of our friends, as the old Troglodites; nor, with the old Egyptians, respect them more, than when they were informed with a living soul: but we keep a mean course

Aug. de Civ. 1. i.

f Athenienses decreverunt, ne si quis se interfecisset sepeliretur in agro Attico, &c.

1

betwixt both; using them as the remainders of dead men, yet
as dead Christians, and as those which we hope one day to see
glorious. We have learned to call no place holy in itself, since
the Temple; but some more holy in their use, than others.
The old konτnpia & of the Christians, wherein their bodies
slept in peace, were not less esteemed of them, than they are
scorned of you. Gallienus thought he did them a great favour,
and so they took it, when he gave them the liberty, not only
of their churches, but of their former burying places. In the
same book, Eusebius commends Astyrius, a noble senator, for
his care and cost of Marinus's buriali. Of all these rites of fu-
neral, and choice of place, we profess to hold, with Augustin,
that they are only the comforts of the living, not helps of the
dead: yet, as Origen also teacheth us', "We have learned to
honour a reasonable," much more a Christian, "soul; and to
commit the instrument or case of it honourably to the grave."
All this might have taught our Answerer, that we make ac-
count of a Heaven, of a Resurrection; not of a Purgatory.
But we ring hallowed bells for the soul:-

:-

Pardon me,

Do not those bells hang in hallowed steeples, too? and do we not ring them with hallowed ropes? What fancy is this? If Papists were so fond of old, their folly and their bells, for the most part, are both out of date. We call them soul-bells, for that they signify the departure of the soul, not for that they help the passage of the soul. This is mere boy's-play. But we pray over or for the dead: Do we not sing to him also? I must needs tell you, here is much spite, and little wit. To pray for the consummation of the glory of all God's elect, what is it, but Thy Kingdom come? How vainly do you seek a knot in a rush, while you cavil at so holy a petition! Go, and learn how much better it is, to call them our brothers, which are not, in a harmless over-weening and over-hoping of charity; than to call them no brothers, which are, in a proud and censorious uncharitableness.

You cannot be content to tell an untruth, but you must face it out. Let any reader judge, how far our practice, in this, hath dissented from our doctrine: would to God in nothing more!

"Sleeping-places." Cæmiteria.

Euseb. I. vi. c. 12. τῶν τόπων θρησκυοίμων καὶ κοιμητήρ.

* Splendidissima sepulturæ tradidit. Euseb. 1. vii. c. 15.

Curatio funeris, conditio sepulturæ, pompa exequiarum, magis sunt vivorum solatia quàm subsidia mortuorum. Aug. de Civit. 1. i. c. 12. Si enim paterna restis et annulus tanto char. est posteris, nullo modo ipsa spernenda sunt corpora. Aug. de Civ. 1. i. c. 13.

Orig. cont. Cels. 1. viii. Rationalem animam honorare didicimus, &c.

Yes, saith this good friend, in the most other things; our words profess, our deeds deny. At once, you make us hypocrites, and yourselves Pharisees. Let all the world know, that the English Church at Amsterdam, professeth nothing, which it practiseth not: we may not be so holy, or so happy.

Sep.-"Your general doctrines and your particular practices agree in this as in the most other things, like Harp and. Harrow. In word, you profess many truths; which, in deed, you deny.

These, and many more Popish devices (by others at large discovered to the world) both for pomp and profit, are not only not razed and buried in the dust, but are advanced, amongst you, above all that it is called God."

GENERALITY is a notable shelter of untruth. "Many more," you say "Popish devices;" yet name none. No, you cannot.

"Advanced above all that is called God?"-Surely, this is a paradox of slanders. You meant, at once, to shame us with falsehood, and to appose us with riddles. We say to the Highest, Whom have we in heaven, but thee? and, for earth, yourself have granted we give too much to princes, which are Earthen Gods; and may come under Paul's πâv σéßaoμa, Either name our deity, or crave mercy for your wrong. Certainly, though you have not remorse, yet you shall have shame.

SECT. 44.

The Churches still retained in England.

Sep.-"You are far from doing to the Romish idols, as was done to the Egyptian idols, Mithra, and Serapis; whose priests were expelled their ministry, and monuments exposed to utter scorn and desolation, their temples demolished and razed to the very foundation."

THE majesty of the Romish petty-gods, I truly told you, was, long ago, with Mithra and Serapis, exposed to the laughter of the vulgar.

You strain the comparison too far; yet we follow you.

Their priests were expelled: for, as your Doctor yieldeth, other actors came upon the same stage : others in religion, else it had been no change.

Their ministry and monuments exposed to utter scorn: their masses, their oblations, their adorations, their invocations, their anoilings, their exorcizings, their shrift, their absolutions, their images, rood-lofts, and whatsoever else of this kind.

But the temples of those old heathens were demolished and razed". Here is the quarrel: ours stand still in their proud majesty :

Can you see no difference betwixt our Churches and their Temples? The very name itself, if at least you have understood it, Kirk or Church, which is nothing but an abbreviation of Kuρíaкn "the Lord's House," might have taught you, that κυρίακη ours were dedicated to God, and theirs to the Devil, in their false gods.

Augustin answers you, as directly, as if he were in my room. "The Gentiles," saith he ", "to their gods erected temples; we, not temples unto our martyrs as unto gods, but memorials as unto dead men, whose spirits with God are still living." These, then, if they were abused by Popish idolatry, is there no way, but Down with them, down with them to the ground?

Well fare the Donatists yet, your old friends: they] but washed the walls, that were polluted by the orthodox. By the same token, that Optatus asks them P, why they did not wash the books which ours touched, and the heavens which they looked upon; what, are the very stones sinful? what can be done with them? The very earth where they should lie on heaps would be unclean.

But not their pollution angers you more than their proud majesty :

What house can be too good, for the Maker of All Things? As God is not affected with state, so is he not delighted in baseness. If the pomp of the Temple were ceremonial, yet it leaves this morality behind it, that God's House should be decent. And what if goodly? If we did put holiness in the stones, as you do uncleanness, it might be sin to be costly. Let me tell you, there may be as much pride in a clay wall, as in a carved. Proud majesty is better than proud baseness. The stone or clay will offend, in neither: we may, in both. If you love cottages, the Ancient Christians, with us, loved to have God's House stately; as appears by the example of that worthy Bishop of Alexandria, and that gracious Constantine, in whose days these sacred piles began to lift up their heads unto this

Socrat. Hist. Eccl. 1. v. 16, 17.-Bed. Hist. Eccl. 1. i. Cit. Gregor. Ep. Aug. suo c. 30. and Edilberto regi. c. 32. Contra sibi, &c. Sed et Hæreticorum pla vastata à Constantino. Euseb. 1. iii. c. 63.

August. de Civit. 1. viii. c. 27.

Hooker v. b. c. 13. Id. August. cont. Maximin. Arian. Nonne si temtemplum &c.

P Optat. Milevit. an. 1. vi. Lavistis, proculdubio, pallas: Judicate quid de codicibus fecistis. Aut utrumque lavate, aut &c. Si quod tangit aspectus lavandum est, ut parietes &c. Videmus rectum, videmus et cælum, &c. hæc à vobis lavari non possunt.

envied height. Take you your own choice: give us ours: let us neither repine nor scorn at each other.

SECT. 45.

The Founders and Furnitures of our Churches. Sep." But your temples, especially your Cathedral and Mother Churches, stand still in their proud majesty, possessed by Archbishops and Lord Bishops; like the Flamins and Arch-Flamins amongst the Gentiles, from whom they were derived and furnished with all manner of pompous and superstitious monuments: as carved and painted Images, Massing Copes and Surplices, Chaunting and Organ-Music, and many other glorious ornaments of the Romish Harlot, by which her majesty is commended to and admired by the vulgar: so far are you, in these respects, from being gone, or fled, yea, or crept either, out of Babylon."

ALL this while, I feared you had been in Popish idolatry: now, I find you in Heathenish.

These our churches are still possessed by their Flamins and Arch-Flamins:

I had thought none of our temples had been so ancient. Certainly, I find but one poor ruinous building, reported to have worne out this long tyranny of time. For the most, you might have read their age and their founders, in open records. But these were derived from those: surely the churches, as much as the men:—

It is true, the Flamins, and whatever other Heathen Priests, were put down; Christian Bishops were set up: are these, therefore, derived from those? Christianity came in the room of Judaism was it, therefore, derived from it? Before, you told us, that our Prelacy came from that Antichrist of Rome; now, from the Flamins of the Heathen: both no less, than either'. If you cannot be true, yet learn to be constant.

But what mean you to charge our churches with carved and painted images? It is well you write to those, that know them. Why did not you say we bow our knees to them, and offer incense? Perhaps, you have espied some old dusty statue in an obscure corner, covered over with cobwebs, with half a

Athanas. Apol.-Euseb. de Vitâ Const.-Otho Frising. I. iv. c. 3.

Lumb. 1. iv. dist. 24. Isod. 1. vii. Etymol. c. 12. Theophilus Episc. cùm cæteras statuas deorum confringeret, unam integram servari jussit, eámque in loco publico erexit, ut Gentiles, tempore progrediente, non inficiurentur se kujusmodi deos coluisse. Ammonius Grammaticus, húc de re valde discruciatus, dixit gravem plagam religioni Græcorum inflictam, quòd illa una statua non everteretur. Socrat. 1. v. c. 16.