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Chapter 8
That Idolatry is the main character of
the Church’s apostasy, proved by three arguments.
Having,
therefore, by so many arguments, made apparent, as I hope, what I endeavored to
prove; I desire we may observe, among so many corruptions both now and
heretofore overwhelming the Church of Christ, what that is wherein the Holy
Ghost placeth the essence, and accounteth as the very soul, of the greatest
apostasy under the man of sin, and would have us to make the pole-star of our
discovery thereof. Not every error, not every heresy, how foul soever, but Doctrines of Demons, idolatry and
spiritual fornication. As for other heresies, though accompanying this, yet are
they but accidental, and not of the essence of the Great Apostasy which was to
come. Even as harlots are seldom without other foul faults, which yet are no
parts of whoredom, so hath the spiritual harlot many other heresies, but her
whoredom is only idolatry and the Doctrine
of Demons.
Neither
is heresy of itself, no though damnable heresy, a character whereby the Great
Apostasy can be known from other sects and blasphemies. Foul heresies were in
the first ages of the Church; yet Antichrist and his time were
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neither of them yet come. When his time approached nearer,
the Arians, Macedonians, Nestorians, Eutychians, were abominable heretics; and
the Arians possessed for a time the face of the visible Church, yet was not
theirs the solemn Apostasy looked for.
But
Idolatry, or spiritual whoredom, which in that storm the Devil was a-working,
this is the only character and note whereby the * Apostasy under the man of sin
is discovered and distinguished from all other blasphemies, sects, and
heresies, of what age or time soever.
Which
that I may not seem to ground only upon the exposition of my text, which,
whatsoever the probability thereof be, may yet be thought alone too weak to
support the weight of so main a conclusion, I desire you to take these
arguments for a full confirmation thereof. Some of them have already been
intimated, but now all are mustered together.
1. That
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the nature? Or is there any one who will deny that this
2.
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restoring of the blind —yea, raising of the dead (as seemed) by
only the touch and air sometimes of shrines and relics of souls deceased? Was
it not still confirmed by strange apparitions, and other means wonderful to
hear, for discovery of bones and relics unknown and forgotten, —yea, of men
whose names they had never heard of before? —and, which, as I shall show better
hereafter, no such experience for three hundred years together observed in the
Church, until the fatal and fixed time began to enter. The worshipping of
images, (the second, in time, of the Church’s fornications,) was not this also
allured, and at length fully ratified by like signs and miracles showed
upon those who approached them in their devotions? Read the Legend, and see what store there is of strong delusions, and lying wonders. That which, for a time,
came in last, but deserves a place among the foremost, I mean the idolatry of
the mass, and adoration of the breaden God, search and see if it also be not
thus attended.
If all
this be true, then would I know what doctrine of theirs besides was installed
with these solemnities. There is but one only left for
an exception, and that is Purgatory; but what if all the delusions of
purgatory, with all the apparitions of purgatorian ghosts, were but an indirect
device of Satan, aiming partly to advance the mass into an idol, by the
miraculous efficacy, as the ghosts forsooth report, of the oblation thereof for
them; partly to install the son of
perdition, a demon I yet spake not of, and still a demon, to
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sit as God in
the temple and throne of Christ, with
the keys of hell and death, to
deliver them? What stronger presumption can there be of this than the event,
and that the error of purgatory had so long been working before the Devil
seemed to know how to make this use of it, which at length he spied out, and
plied lustily with signs and wonders? If all this be true, then it follows
still that it is spiritual fornication, which the Holy Ghost in Scripture
intended, and the event hath marked out, for the soul of Antichristian
abomination and impiety. But of the matter of miracles and lying wonders,
more in the second part of my text, which is the proper place thereof.
3. And,
lastly, the great apostasy is a thing proper to *the latter times; which I will show, when I come to it, to be the
last times of the fourth
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