Chapter 43

Of Mr. John Hunt’s Ignorant Passages laid open in Forty Instances sprinkled up and down his book; thirty of his Ignorances are in Divinity, and the other Ten and Natural Matters.

Besides the matters already dispatched, I may take some notice of his ignorant passages, in the following scheme and order. His theological ignorances, and his ignorances in natural matters. His ignorances in Theology, or Divine Matters, are of Persons and Things. Of persons both good and evil. His ignorances about good persons are, nine relating to Christ, one to the Spouse, one to Abraham, one to Moses, and one belonging to the Apostles. His ignorances about evil persons are, two belonging to the devil, one spoken of Judas, three of the wicked, and two of the world. His ignorances of things, both of good things and evil things do next take their turn. Of good things, two about the Scripture, one of the Lord’s Supper, and one about Heaven. His ignorances of evil things are, three of Unbelief, one of Affliction, and one about Uncleanness. They are thirty when put together. His ignorances in natural matters are, one about the Moon, one about the Lily, one about giving up of the Ghost, one concerning Dog’s Pity, one about the hoof of every Family, one about making so many several persons to be so many several Candlesticks, one of a Table decked, and another of a Lackey proclaiming, one about a Jewel of Prize, and the other concerning finishing at Last. That is ten in all. Now to these forty {of both ranks} I add two more, the one of a person in history, the other of a word in grammar. {“But they shall proceed no further; for their folly shall be manifest unto all men, as theirs also was.” II Tim.3:9.}

And all these Absurdities, not as we say Lapsus Linguae, {literally a slip or fault of the tongue,} but in print; and are sent abroad by himself, as his own offspring. Mk.1:45. They are not an account of the matters from another’s pen, as in the story of the Eunuch’s Children he very oddly carried away from Barrington. Rom.3:8. For in the way and manner he hath so slanderously reported up and down, as if it had been a gross thing of my own forging, it is utterly false, as the passages of the book between Clifton and Smith witness. And I’ll suppose that that book did mean, how the eunuch might have children of his body before he was a eunuch in the service of the Queen of Ethiopia, and afterwards so highly preferred, because a like circumstance of Eunuchism may be easily admitted among slaves of the Gentiles. The proofs of his ignorances are next to be laid open in the several instances, according to the foregoing scheme.

First, let me begin with the forenamed list of his Theological ignorances, or his ignorances in Divinity, relating to Christ, the Spouse, Abraham, Moses, the Apostles, the Scripture, &c., for the order I follow is synthetical, to bring what may be joined more aptly and unitedly under the same head together, after this model, persons and things, rather than analytical, to resolve the more material particular, as to a thing, before I have sometimes done with what perhaps is of less moment, as to a person.

The first instance of this sort of his ignorance, speaking of Christ, is this, “suppose him under a necessity to be the Seed of the Woman.” {Page 126} As if there had been in no respect any necessity for Christ to become the seed of the woman; when yet the Divine Constitution of the Glory-Man in the Council and Settlements of Jehovah, was in all the After-Fall Dispensations of Grace, Ways and Means to make him Redeemer of the elect; which elect number, together with the rest of the fallen, Rom.11:7, were all under sin. Rom.3:9. And though to be under Sin is directly opposite to a State of Justification, as to the particular way of the egress, or out-goings of God’s Love in Christ; yet by reason of the antecedent Settlements in Christ Jesus by Grace before the world began, II Tim.1:9, and so above the Fall, the elect’s being under Sin in the Adam-Relation of their fallen Nature-State, is consistent with their Everlasting Union-State of Interest in Grace and the Love of God in Christ Jesus, wherein they needed no Justification in their Comprehensive, Standing Head. Hence as they were after viewed in God’s Thoughts or Appointments of their Fall, Christ became of God their Redeemer, as Son of Man, constituted; he being the same Person, who was set up the Head of the Church in the Above-Fall way, as the Man of the Right Hand from Everlasting. Psal.80:17. Accordingly, the elect of God had this love of God turned into their Justification immediately, as they lay still hid and recovered in the Security of their Comprehending Head, Constituted Redeemer of further Grace in his Necessary and After-Fall Relations of Grace, or what he was made of God for the elect, or to their further benefit, and provided therein a Surety in their Law-Place and Room upon the Appointments of the Fall. Nevertheless, the elect had not this Justifying Love upon themselves, Jn.3:18, as the Holy Ghost speaks, Rom.3:22, and that is through Christ by the Spirit’s Application, Jn.5:24, till the time in which he works Faith, only too in order of nature it goes before the act of laying hold of Christ in the very dated time of Conversion.

Besides, we must by reason of the Fall behold Christ, or the Man of the Covenant-Unction in the great Mystery of Godliness, under a necessity of becoming the Seed of the Woman; for how steadfastly do the Scriptures lay it upon the Will of God and our Father, that he gave himself for our sins, Gal.1:4, that he might deliver us from this present, evil world! Yea, that oracle of his open Incarnation, Jn.1:14, “the Word was made flesh,” argues the Will and Operation of another in it; and the Apostle expressly tells us, what he said to his Father about this Condescension of his Own, to show it was necessary for him on the part of his Father’s Covenant, as well as voluntary on his own side, “a body hast thou prepared me.” Heb.10:5. To make but a supposal therefore of the necessity of his being the Seed of the Woman, “as if it had not been necessary,” cuts off the matter quite from all texts of Scripture relating to Christ’s being the Father’s Servant, Messenger, Christ or Anointed, &c., and proves Mr. Hunt’s great Ignorance of Christ in the Economy of Redemption-Grace. For, according to the Decrees of God and the Covenant-Settlements of Jehovah, there was a necessity for Christ to be the Seed of the Woman.

The second instance of his ignorance, “Christ chose to be born in a Stable, when he might have expected the most Royal Palace, and that the great ones of the Earth should have given their attendance at his Birth.” {Page 127} How could Christ expect it? How could he look for high treatment in the world when made in a Low Condition? For, all of his Condescension was firmly articled, limited and stated by the Covenant of the Glorious Three, and all Providences, to attend the circumstances of it, Isa.49:1, Isa.7:14, Isa.53:2, equally Fixed and Settled betwixt Jehovah and Christ. Secondly, it is plain by these circumstances that he was both appointed by Another, and resolved of Himself, to enter into the world in a Concealment of Himself at his first entrance; and an absolute declining to take all state upon him, or worldly grandeur, so long as he continued here below. Jn.6:15. If a mere man had intended privacy, in some notable expedition, how could he expect a public entrance, a magnificent or universal reception, according to his character of a great man? How can a Prince that leaves his court, and chooses to go, as we say, incognito, into any of his towns at a distance, expect to be met by the Mayor and Aldermen in their formalities and dutiful attendance, delivering up the Ensigns of their Magistratical Authority, at his entering the Corporation? How much less might Christ expect the most Royal Palace, who hath a perfect knowledge of things, and knew the world were not to know anything of the matter distinctly before his Birth? Thirdly, Christ knew what was in man, Jn.2:25, that all that was to be said for it from the Testimony of the Angel to Zacharias, about the birth of John the Baptist his Forerunner, and the other prophecies of Elizabeth and Mary, would not be received. How could this Perfect One in knowledge then expect it?

The third instance of Mr. Hunt’s ignorance, “thirdly {says he,} if we consider his {Christ’s} holy zeal, how may it even shame the best of Saints living?” {Page 120} Let me examine this. 1. Is this such a wonder that the holy zeal of Christ should shame the best of Saints living? 2. What is there else Christ did, but it may as much shame the best of Saints living, that they fall short of it? And the more especially, when they go about to join so much of their own with Christ, which our author teaches them? 3. If anything of the matter were considered right, it should shame even the best of Saints living, to write of Jesus Christ so very ignorantly, as this writer has done.

The fourth instance of his ignorance is this, speaking still of Christ, “he will no more carry a heavy cross upon his mangled shoulders.” {Page 77} Did he ever read that Christ’s shoulders were mangled? I never did, till I read it in his ignorant observation. Simon the Cyrenian was compelled to bear his cross after Jesus, Matt.27:32; that is, at one end of it, and so it was carried between them, Jesus at one end and Simon at the other, to the place of Execution. Now, if the bearing or carrying of the Cross did mangle Christ’s shoulders, Mk.15:21, it must be thought to mangle the country-man’s too, who bore it after him at the other hand, even from the Judgment-Hall, Jn.19:9, till they came to Golgotha. How could he ever hit upon it that Christ’s shoulders were mangled? And again, how {after his notable invention} can that be made out? In short, his hands and his feet were pierced, Psal.22:16, but his shoulders were not. For, if they had, it’s a more considerable point than we ought to believe would have been omitted by all Four Evangelists, when far less circumstances about the Sufferings of Christ are recorded by one or other of them. His assertion therefore carries it with a great piece of blindness, perceiving nothing aright of this matter.

The fifth instance take as follows, concerning the Government of Christ, in his very observation upon that text, Isaiah 9:6, “and the Government shall be upon his shoulders.” Then he both saucily and ignorantly adds, “and he had need have broad shoulders to bear it.” {Page 90} Raw and unstudied divine! What’s this? He had need to have! Wherein is Christ needy? A need to have is indigence, and at least a supposition thereupon, that he who undertakes the sustentation, Psal.75:3, of the said Government may be overmatched by the burden thereof. How doth Christ that hath all power in Heaven and in Earth, Matt.28:18, given Him of the Father need these broad shoulders? Is it possible any creature can have as much Power as Christ-Man, and is it possible Christ can have more who is God-Man? What can “the One Mediator between God and men” need? I Tim.2:5. It looks like an ignorant distrust of Christ’s Mediatorial Abilities. For, when I see, or hear of another man engaged in some extraordinary concerns that seem to be too many for him; I presently say, such a man had need to have broad shoulders to bear them. Now is this fit to say of Christ, and just then too, when the Father hath told me that “the Government shall be upon his shoulder?”

The sixth instance speaks of him as a Bridegroom in his text, even whilst he was proposing it as a doubt, whether it was the Bridegroom’s voice or not? “Now {says he} this Song is carried on between Christ, the Spouse, and the Daughters of Jerusalem; and though in some places it seems somewhat difficult to distinguish the Voice of Christ from the voice of the spouse; yet in my text it seems past all dispute that it is Christ that speaks; which will appear, if we consider the person here speaking speaks in his own commendation.” {Page 4}

It should have been in the substantive, the commendation of the speaker, and not determined so soon in the relative, neither in the masculine or feminine, his own, or her own commendation; because he was yet clearing the enquiry of a speech between Him and her. It is here to be noted, that whilst he is stating it, whether it be spoken of Him or her, Christ or the Church, Mr. Hunt determines it forthwith, that it is spoken of Him, and uses this as an argument why it is so, because it is so; even whilst he is laying the state. Thus, he begs the question, and then he proves it. Instead therefore of the words {his commendation} he should have said in self-condemnation, and so have concluded {if his argument be good at bottom} therefore spoken of Him, not of her. For, then the antecedent and consequent had been distinct. But now they are ill placed in the same form. The person speaks of himself, therefore he speaks of himself. This is his ingenious way of arguing, and the force of it. His reason he gives must be took to pieces. For, why ought not the saints to speak in their own commendation, when it is true that what they have from Christ is commendable? I am sure, as the spouse often doth it in the Canticles, so holy men have done it elsewhere. {David in Psal.108:1, &c., Moses of himself in Num.12:3. So Paul in I Cor.15:10, &c., and others.} This is therefore another of the man’s ignorances, and a full argument, that if he reads the Holy Scriptures, he does not duly attend them.

The seventh instance of his ignorance is this, “but Christ is a complete Master of all these divine arts.” {Page 108} The vulgar plainly see that this makes the notion of Christ cheap, to bring him, who is exalted far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world but also in that which is to come, Eph.1:21, down to a Master of Arts. Let him remember I live at Cambridge, and it sounds very odd in this place, so to compare Christ’s wisdom and teachings, now he is Exalted, that he falls below a Master of a College! Is this Christ the Most Excellent? Well, but he speaks it better than thus, and goes above what the vulgar ear takes; for he says, “Christ is a master of all these divine arts.” Aye? Do you call this better? I think not one jot, but rather worse, for, his next words to prove it are these, “he is the great Prophet of the Church, who is perfectly acquainted with all the deep things of God.” {Page 108} What is this an art? Abominable ignorance! Is it not Christ’s Office? Whether did this man’s thoughts run? Did he watch over his thoughts and pen in writing, because he dishonors Christ thus, in taking up the very things he intended for his honor? {“So will I make my holy name known in the midst of my people Israel; and I will not let them pollute my holy name any more; and the heathen shall know that I am the LORD, the Holy One in Israel.” Ezek.39:7.}

The eighth instance of his ignorance of Christ by the Gospel Sight of Faith and Discernment is this, “were we but to see that vast number that minister about him; we should say, he is honorable indeed upon that account.” {Page 96} As if we did not see it by Faith? This same {were we but to see} looks as if his meaning was were we but to see it now by sense, with our bodily eyes. The reason is {were we but to see} is more fitted to such a construction of his meaning, than seeing of it at last in Glory. II Cor.5:7. Because so we shall see, we who belong under him as the heirs of salvation to whom they are all ministering spirits. Heb.1:14. And then {as this writer is wont} he ignorantly builds Christ’s honour upon our senses. Aye, but Christ’s honorable indeed is not to be concluded from our sense, {if we could behold Christ’s retinue,} but from our Faith on God’s Word, the best evidence, Heb.11:27, that sees Christ’s own Person. He propounds an angel from Heaven, Gal.1:8, yea, all of them, to preach another Gospel to our senses, than what we have received by Faith.

The ninth instance of his ignorance of Christ take, as he hath left me to trace him in these words, “Christ may in a sense be had upon easier terms than the world.” {Page 148} How so? Christ is the Gift of God, and it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy. Rom.9:16. Whereas the world may be had for money, let it fly otherwise from the poor as fast as it does. But now can the Gift of God be purchased with money? Acts 8:20. Well, but in a sense Christ may be had upon easier terms than the world. In what nonsense? “Why the world often sees so fast they can’t be overtaken. While meantime Christ stands at the door and knocks.” {Page 148} What does this man make of Spiritual Believing? Does not the Holy Ghost work answerably in the soul to Christ’s knocking at the door, Rev.3:20 with Phil.2:13, wheresoever he is received by the Spiritual Faith of God’s elect? And can a hand of faith {of new creature-form} be put forth, to open the door to Christ, where there is nothing but nature’s dead stump, and no living hand formed? This man is for making his Market of Christ upon conditions and terms, Ezek.36:26, terms of capitulation, and thinks he comes off bravely too, because they are easy terms. But I do not understand how he can prove there be any terms at all in it, but a Free Gift, Rom.5:16, which the Scripture nowhere {that I can find} calls terms, neither in sense nor sound.

The tenth instance of his ignorance in Divinity is touching the spouse, in these words, “the spouse knows her Beloved from a stranger, for he is known of his.” {Page 16} What a reason is this to the purpose! The same by the same. What an ignorant plunge is here! The reason of a thing and that thing itself ought not to be laid down as one and the same thing. What an account of the matter is this, the wife knows her husband from another man, for he is known of her! So she knows him because she knows him; she knows her husband, because she knows her husband. Is not this ignorant?

The eleventh instance is touching the patriarch, “let us consider the Faith of Abraham, believing that God was able to raise him up another seed.” {Page 116} Another seed? Why, the Scripture tells us it was the same seed, Heb.11:19, “accounting that God was able to raise him up, even from the dead; from whence also he received him in a figure.” Raising from the dead here is raising of one and the same person which had been once alive. And the text expressly saith, “he received him,” for Abraham did not receive another. So the text saith, “accounting that God was able to raise him up.” His faith was not exercised about another seed, Gen.4:25, as Mr. Hunt’s ignorant passage lays it down, but his believing was fixed upon the restoration of one and the same seed which he was called of God to offer up in Sacrifice. Abraham accounting God was able to raise him up, as he received him in a figure. Him, that is to say, the same person, the same seed, the same son Isaac, from the dead. For, in that great trial of his Faith, he looked upon that one, as the Holy Ghost saith by the Apostle, to be as good as dead. Heb.11:12.

The twelfth instance of his ignorant talent in Divinity is about setting forth the humility of Moses. Says he, “Moses is the most eminent instance recorded in Scripture beside Christ, as almost every child can tell you, Moses was the meekest man, Num.12:3, yet not to be compared to Christ.” So he goes through some parts of Moses’ life very well, but by and by he brings us on to his death, and there he hath these further words to prove Moses’ humility, “nor did he die such a shameful death, for God himself {says he} buried him in an extraordinary manner, and no man knows of his sepulchre. Deut.34:6.” {Page 122} Does not this rarely prove the grace of humility {think ye} in Moses? Nor did he die such a shameful death as Christ died for our sins, therefore Moses in his Death was not such an instance of humility as Christ. Is not here brave reasoning? Besides, who sees not, that the shame of Christ’s Death, Heb.12:2, {which could not be found in Moses,} and the humility of Christ’s dying, Phil.2:7-8, are distinct things, though here they are very ignorantly confounded by this writer? The shame of Christ’s death was a passive thing, and was brought upon him by the Jews; whereas the humility of his dying was a voluntary act of his own; for, “he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” Phil.2:8. And so it is quite another thing. But then to mend it, he goes on and argues, “God himself buried him in an extraordinary manner, and no man knows of his sepulchre.” Does any man see a reason in this to prove the humility of Moses? Sure it is a very ignorant way of instancing, to bring in what was not an act of Moses at all, in order to set forth the humility of Moses. Had Moses indeed wished for this way of death and burial at God’s hand, it had set forth the contrary thing to his humility, and so might have been pertinent enough to his purpose to have shown from Moses’ own acts, how his humility fell short; but as he lays it down {from an act of God to Moses for the said end} it’s more like a man taken with a delirium in his Divinity, II Kings 4:19, than any proof he was Compos Mentis. The rest is of the same piece. No man knows of his sepulchre, therefore Moses was not so humble as Christ. This man’s logic and divinity seem to be much alike, when he sets them off together on the blind side. Yet this pulling and haling of the Word he counts nevertheless a dividing of the Word. But to his next.

The thirteenth instance of his ignorance in Divine Matters is touching what he says of the Apostles. His words are these, “but I am loath to rake any farther into this dust, since my design is not to degrade the Apostles, but to magnify Christ.” {Page 124} How this cautious writer {as now he may seem to some to insinuate himself} will scruple to do anything injuriously to men, and yet make bold to do a worst thing to the Lord that Spirit, I have already shown in my 36^th chapter concerning the Holy Ghost, where I have taken up Mr. Hunt for that erroneous expression of raking into the Apostle’s dust, because he had been telling us some of their faults, according to the Scriptures. Here I design to touch only upon another thing, viz., his ignorance in that latter phrase of speech, degrading the Apostles. “My design is not to degrade the Apostles.” This is an ignorant passage, for, when that striving of theirs which of them should be greatest, Lk.22:24, {as Mr. Hunt takes notice of,} commenced, the Apostles were all under-graduates. They had not till Christ’s Resurrection so much as taken their degree, and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus, I Tim.3:13, as is afterward said of Deacons. If Mr. Hunt will have it that they had, then ‘tis a very preposterous degree, much like divers of the matters in his book. A degree that exalted the disciples before the Master, and commenced their exaltation-state under his own humiliation-state. Then if they were under-graduates, how could laying open a fault they were guilty of before their degree, be said to degrade them, when as they had taken their degree afterwards, when the Spirit was poured from on high? Isa.32:15. Their degree was after their fault of which he speaks, and can they be degraded after their degree for what they had done before it? This was ignorance. If he had had wisdom it had not come forth.

The fourteenth instance of his ignorance, is, a departing from the account given us in the Scripture why the devil opposed Christ. “Christ did the devil’s interest {says he} no little harm by his Heavenly Doctrine, by his Holy Life, and by the Miracles he wrought; he had not a little vexed Satan in dispossessing him so often, and by taking so many prisoners from him; for which the devil owed him an old grudge.” {Page 102} How ignorantly is this old grudge dated! For were Christ’s Doctrine, Life and Miracles such ancient things before the time of his Sufferings that the devil’s agency in the Death of Christ must be hence founded upon an old grudge? His way of making this out is another ignorant mistake. I Pet.2:15. For Mr. Hunt, to prove this instance of the devil’s malice, in that part of Christ’s life which was before his doctrine, miracles, and dispossessing of Satan, hath laid the matter wrong. How does he make this out against the devil? Thus, accusing even the accuser of the brethren falsely. Rev.12:10. He owed Christ this old grudge. How does it appear? “He {Christ, says Mr. Hunt} is led into a wilderness, and there he tempts him to unbelief, and after that would not do, he sets him on a pinnacle of the temple, and there tempts him to worship him; but not content with these, he resolves to have his blood.” {Page 102} Here is his proof now of the devil’s old grudge, Jn.8:44; and pray see if this be not woeful ignorance, to make Christ’s dispossessing of the devil to be elder than the devil’s tempting Christ. How ignorantly does he date his old grudge! Forgetting it began with his malice as an old serpent that beguiled Eve, Gen.3:1-5, and there first struck at the Glory-Man, Christ, in our first parents, created after his similitude, in the Nature-Image of the Mediator, the Pattern-Image adopted by all the Trinity, after which the Glorious Three did make man. The old grudge was there; yea, the devil would not be subject before. Jude 6.

The fifteenth instance of his ignorant mismanagement carries profaneness in it, through these words, “so the devil first begins to play a small game.” {Page 102} See now what an ignorant jest he makes of Christ’s Temptations. Oh! This bringing of vulgar Proverbs into Divinity spoils all. That ‘tis in the case of Christ’s Temptations he is speaking thus of the devil, is undeniable; because the next words are “he is led into a wilderness, and there he tempts him to unbelief; after that would not do, he sets him on a pinnacle of the temple, and there tempts him to worship him.” All this now with a very profane ignorance Mr. Hunt calls the devil’s playing a small game! Oh! How can it be made a game of when any holy minister considers these were the temptations of his Master? These were stings of the serpent he endured in the days of his flesh in our room! Heb.5:7. What, and made a small game of them too! As if Christ’s temptations were but a piece of sport, and things of a very mean account! Ah! Dreadful ignorance! What servant of the same Master can look on, and look off again, and say nothing?

The sixteenth instance of his ignorance is his putting on of bowels towards Judas, “poor Judas, says he, was so wounded he went and hanged himself.” {Page 101} What warranty had he for such a doctrine of pity towards Judas? Do the Scriptures compassionate him that received the reward of his iniquity? Acts 1:18. Is this phrase suited to the imprecations of the Holy Ghost, Psalms 109:6-19, which came there to be so judicially fulfilled in the first of the Acts? Mr. Hunt in his tender phrase is as pitiful, as courteous, towards Judas, as towards a child of God. For what else has he said even of them that have grace? “Poor Peter,” says he, page 142, “poor blind Sampson,” page 101, “the poor believer,” page 143. So that he hath got the same style for good and bad alike, when he puts in poor Judas too. This is the odder if we consider his next ignorance of the wicked, touching their state in Hell.

The seventeenth instance of his theological ignorance is that saying, “the wicked will have no hopes when in Hell ever to enjoy Christ.” And from hence, says he, “we must conclude it will be a doleful parting sinners will have with Christ, because they will have no hopes to meet again.” {Page 192} This is his sheer ignorance. For, the wicked never had any hopes on earth to enjoy Christ. Their notion of Heaven they have got is no enjoying of Christ, but is quite another thing. Enjoyment of Christ is a spiritual, inward thing in the soul. It begins in this life. But the wicked, who are to be turned into Hell, Psal.9:17, never had any sense or experience of it. Neither are they capable of it, because of “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him.” Jn.14:17. This is the portion or condition of the wicked, even whilst they are here on earth. They think in the general that Heaven is a brave place, but they don’t know what it is. They do not take it in as an Enjoyment of Christ. Phil.1:23 with Psal.73:25. The aforesaid ignorance I have transcribed out of his book makes it look to the reader, as if in Hell the wicked desired Christ. Whereas the damned can have no such passions in them, as about their losing Christ, for this is a blind notion of the schools. So that neither hopes nor despair ought to be taken notice of, this way. The damned are filled with torment, Matt.13:42, and would be glad of ease; and without doubt after all, had rather be in this world again, which they can judge of, than be in Heaven to enjoy Christ; of which it is impossible they should ever make a judgment; especially in anguish of spirit, where the soul filled with terrors and vengeance can have no room to take in such sort of spiritual apprehensions. Anguish, Exod.6:9, even in this life, takes off all such regards; how much more will weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth do it in the life to come? Matt.13:50. The rich man in torments cried for ease, but took no notice of the loss of Christ. And it was as impossible for him to have Father Abraham come and ease him, as to have had Christ come and save him. Lk.16:24. Mr. Hunt shows notable ignorance in this argument before us, though I have neither time nor room to transcribe everything, and remark it. What astonishing ignorance is it to suppose that the damned will be concerned about parting with Christ whom they neither knew nor valued in this life! Ah! Besides, he will not appear to these in his Amiable Glory, but altogether in his Terrible Justice, when he comes to judgment. II Thes.1:7-8. Moreover, the sad condition which they will feel themselves in, will not be for parting with Christ, whom they never had, nor enjoyed in Ordinances, nor regarded all their days. On the other hand, it will be to their experience a sad condition to part with this world {which was their idol,} and then go into Hell-Torments, and outer darkness forever. Matt.8:12.

The eighteenth instance of his ignorance in Divinity, is about the ancient family {he says} that Christ stands related to. His words of the matter are these, “nor did ever any speak a word against it, but such whose tongues were no slander.” {Page 80} No? What though we have such a proverbial saying, bring it to Divinity, and ‘tis false. The Apostle makes wicked men’s tongues a slander, Rom.3:8, “as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say.” So in Psalms 50:20, ‘tis charged upon the Jews in their bearing false witness against Christ, born {according to the flesh} of the Jewish Church, the mother of Christ’s slanderer, “thou slanderest thine own mother’s son.” Whose tongues were worse than theirs who mocked, belied, and unrighteously accused Christ of blasphemy, &c., Matt.26:65, and yet the Holy Ghost hath left it upon record that their vile tongues were a slander. So, Prov.10:18, latter part, “he that uttereth a slander, is a fool.” Solomon’s fool was a wicked fool, not the weak fool, bereft of natural understanding; yet this wicked fool’s tongue is a slander; and ‘tis a slander too, though the object of it be a good man, against whom his tongue is walking {in the motion of it from one town to another, uttering slanders} throughout the earth. Psal.73:9. Much more is it so, if he set his mouth against the Heavens, and speak evil of the Persons, and Counsels and Purposes of Him that sitteth there? How ignorant therefore of Divinity is this writer? I have heard the slander of many, says David in Psal.31:13, he did not make so slight a matter of the words of base men, as Mr. Hunt hath done, in saying their tongues are no slander. The Scriptures {we see} in downright words over and over contradict him.

The nineteenth instance is this, speaking again of the wicked, “if the devil {says he} does but call, they run, and are his humble servants.” {Page 150} What an ignorant passage is this! For the wicked are like the devil, proud creatures. If the serpent that deceives goes upon his belly, grovels upon the ground, and dust be the serpent’s meat, Gen.3:14, as a New Jerusalem Promise, Isa.65:25, tells us, viz., when he shall cease climbing the tree of knowledge, and no more tempt men by their knowing good and evil, nor shall keep his lofty region in the air, as the Prince of the posse of devils, or the power thereof, Eph.2:2, but be bound in the bottomless pit, until towards the close of the Thousand Year’s Kingdom of Christ, Rev.20:2-7; yet all this groveling, stooping, and going low, do not make him a humble devil still; so neither doth all the service wicked men readily do to Satan, make them his humble servants by it. {Psal.119:21, the proud are cursed, they are not the devil’s humble servants.} No, as there is nothing of humility in the devil, their master, so there’s nothing of humility in wicked men’s stooping to be the devil’s servants. They are his proud servants, not his humble ones, in and after all that’s done.

The twentieth instance of his ignorance is about the world’s apprehensions of the Song of Solomon, “so may the world say, we see no more in this Song than in another.” {Page 2} The world see no more? I dare say of them, the world would not talk so simply, of seeing no more in that Song than in another, when indeed they do know they see more in another Song than in that. They see more in a Lampoon, more in a Ballad, more in a lewd Poem, especially more in an ingenious Song or Rhyme, fitted to the merry tunes, than they can see {through their corrupt blindness} in the Canticles! They have eyes to see vanity, but no eyes to see Spiritual Mysteries. And this Mr. Hunt owns in his next words, to a contradiction of himself, “and indeed {says he} ‘tis no wonder; for as a blind man sees no light when the sun shines in its Meridian splendor; so no wonder that those that never were spiritually illuminated, do remain ignorant of Spiritual Mysteries.” Now if the world have their eyes for vanity, Psal.119:37, but have no eyes for Spiritual Mysteries, how can they be said {except very ignorantly and inconsistently} to see no more in the Canticles, than they see in another song? When as they see much {according to the flesh} in another song, and so are herein implied to see as much of the meaning in the Canticles, only they don’t see more of it, than they see of the meaning of another song.

The one and twentieth instance of his ignorance is about the world’s knowledge of the saints. “The world {says he} in all probability not knowing the family you belong to, may judge you contemptible.” {Page 81} How ignorant is it to talk of that as probable which is most certain! How can the world know what family the children of God belong unto? I Cor.2:11. I don’t see how ‘tis possible the world should see a jot of this. His all probability here is without doubt another piece of his ignorance. Thus I have gone through his ignorances in Divinity about persons, now I come to things, more separately considered.

The two and twentieth instance of the theological sort of his ignorances is in that saying of his, “those many spiritual songs composed by Solomon.” {Page 1} This ignorant saying hath its tang of Popery. For, whereas the Scriptures saith in I Kings 4:32, that his songs were a thousand and five, the ignorant Papists use to quote these many songs {without any distinction} under the notion of inspired songs; or as Mr. Hunt symbolizes with their notion {those many spiritual songs} to imply that part of the Canon of Scripture is lost, {Gal.6:16, “as many as walk according to this Canon,” says the Greek,} and that our Bibles are incomplete. But let him look into Chamier¹ and others against the Papists, and they will tell him that Solomon pronounced his many songs; nevertheless they take notice, as the Scripture distinguisheth, he wrote them not. And so they were not by Inspiration, nor Spiritual; the Song of Songs which is Solomon’s being only so. He spake songs a thousand and five, and this he only did in humanity, as a wise man. He wrote only the Canticles, and no other song in Divinity, which was Spiritual. Many spiritual songs of Solomon is therefore one more carnal blunder of Mr. Hunt’s.

The three and twentieth instance of his ignorance, is his pretending to give a clear text in a dark prophecy, “I shall give you some clear texts, says he, viz., Daniel 7:13-14; Daniel 2:44, of these Scriptures as they are full to my purpose, so they are applicable to none but unto Christ. But lest some should question this, they being in a dark prophecy, I shall confirm this from the New Testament, speaking of the perpetual Government of Christ.” {Page 92} How these texts in Daniel are so clear without interpretation, or so well understood by all his readers, as to need none, {and I am sure he gives us none, only quotes the texts,} I must profess myself to be at a loss to reconcile. He professeth the prophecy to be dark, he also suspects other men’s belief of his own proofs, in plain words, by appealing to the New Testament, under a pre-apprehension of the esteemed darkness and insufficiency of those two texts he had brought out of Daniel. How doth he make this now so clear a text in a dark prophecy? How ignorant was it to patch those two sentences together? It had been better he had shut out the clear texts, and have been contented to say a dark prophecy; or on the other hand, have shut out the words “dark prophecy” and thought it enough to have said some clear texts, provided he had opened them as he should.

The four and twentieth instance of his ignorance, is of the true nature of the Lord’s Supper, in calling it a Sacrament. “I dare not omit praying, hearing, or receiving the Sacrament.” {Page 32} So again, “he {the Apostle} doth not exhort us to examine how oft we pray, read, hear, or receive the Sacrament.” {Page 131} Does that name “sacrament” suit with the Glory of Christ unveiled? Here I know he’ll shroud himself under his worthy divines. I Cor.11:1. It suits with this Doctor or that Doctor, and Mister such-a-ones writings; and what if we don’t find it in the writings of the Antinomians? No matter indeed; but does it suit with Christ the Most Excellent? Lord’s Supper doth indeed. Christ is a passive blessing, Jn.4:10, but sacrament is an active way of speaking. Christ is what God hath done for us, he is made of God to us Wisdom, Righteousness, Sanctification and Redemption, I Cor.1:30, which are all passives; but “sacrament” signifies what we ourselves engage, and as it were take the oath to be true to King Jesus. ‘Tis a word that signifies how we bind and tie ourselves to do for Christ. This is the native force of the word, and carries with it an application to the subjects of Christ, according to the original word, {Sacramentum,} from the military oath given to Caesar. Christ has said, {a} Supper, Lk.22:20, {b} Lord’s Supper, I Cor.11:20, {c} Lord’s Table, I Cor.10:21, {d} Feast, I Cor.5:8, {e} Fellowship in the Gospel, Phil.1:5, {f} Communion of the Body of Christ, I Cor.10:16, {g} Breaking of Bread, Acts 2:42, {h} and the New Testament in Christ’s Blood, I Cor.11:25; a great diversity, and choice of words enough, if we would render unto God the words, as well as the things that are God’s, Matt.22:21, and did not take delight to affront the Holy Ghost. And sure, if Christ be most Excellent, his mouth is most sweet. Song.5:16. Mr. Hunt hath quoted that text in his book, therefore let him take up to gracious words that proceeded out of his mouth, Lk.4:22, to overthrow this heathen-language.

Objection: Why, as long as there are significant and sacred signs instituted in God’s Word, and that the sign and thing signified do meet in figurative and symbolical rights, why may we not there fitly use the word sacrament? This is one of the Presbyterianism Objections.

Answer: What is any sign to a Sacrament? Because the Holy Ghost saith “sign of circumcision,” Rom.4:11, must we go and say sacrament, when we speak of the Supper? The Greek word for “figure” does not bear the least relation to the Lord’s Supper, but to Baptism. I Pet.3:21. The English words, “example,” Heb.8:5, and “pattern,” Heb.9:23, both which are one word in the Greek, are not spoken either of them in the least of baptism, or of our Lord’s Supper. ‘Tis most certain, if they had been so, it would have been from thence a strange sequel in the enthymeme; so according to this form of argument it may wrongly be inferred that since Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are patterns of things in the Heaven’s, examples of Heavenly Things, therefore Baptism and the Lord’s Supper are Sacraments.

Objection: When divines found no general word in Scripture to set forth Circumcision, Passover, Baptism and Lord’s Supper, then they gave them the general name of sacraments. In case we had had a general word from the pen of the Holy Ghost, it had sufficed us. But not finding such a general name in Scripture, we choose that general name sacrament that in one word which comprehends all four.

Answer: First, this plea {which I have found in Mr. Blake} is a plain belying the pen of the Holy Ghost. Ezek.43:10-11. For, he hath certainly fitted many general names that will take in Lord’s Supper as a part. 1. Ordinance is a general name, fitted to any sort of ordinance, and so to the Lord’s Supper. But the Holy Ghost hath given us the name ordinance, and this is a better generality, than to say the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. I Cor.11:2. 2. The word “commandment” is a general name given us by the Holy Ghost, for his commandment is exceeding broad, Psal.119:96; and therefore it is better to say the commandment of the Lord’s Supper, than the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. 3. The rule of the new creature in a general rule will take in our rule of the Lord’s Supper. Gal.6:16. 4. Fellowship is a general name; the Fellowship of the Gospel, Phil.1:5, for it is a Fellowship in the Grace of the Gospel, and in the Order of the Gospel; and so is a word apt enough to comprise that sort of Fellowship we have with Christ and with one another at the Lord’s Table. 5. The word blessing, “the blessing of the Gospel,” Rom.15:29, comprehends all the blessings, and so that of the Table as one. 6. The word benefit, “what shall I render unto the LORD for all his benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.” {Psal.116:12-13} There the Holy Ghost comprises a particular thing, the cup of salvation, in a general word, benefit. 7. The word duty, ‘tis our duty to do all that is commanded us. Lk.17:10. This is a general word fitted by the pen of the Holy Ghost to the purpose, that we may say either the benefit of the Supper on the Lord’s part conveying, sealing, &c., or the duty of the Supper, on our own part, doing this in remembrance of him, I Cor.11:24, and obedience to him. Secondly, now why should not men be contented with the Holy Ghost’s variety, and room he hath made for expression, Eph.1:8, rather than wind it all up in one scanty word sacrament? Thirdly, whether they are contented, or no, I am sure the Holy Ghost hath left them inexcusable, Rom.2:1, in their plea for a general word, having given them many.

Objection: Names have no intrinsic value, but a current signification according to men’s esteem. As in coin the value of the same money shall go for more or less, according as men raise, or under-rating the value thereof. So “Lord’s Supper” may go for Sacrament to them who prefer it, or “Sacrament” go for Lord’s Supper, if men like the word better. There is no absolute standard how to take words, nor any necessity that we all use the same phrase. This objection also Presbyterian brethren stand to.

Answer: 1. When men cannot justify the original of their word, then this slight and precursory apology comes in. 2. The words of the Gospel, or the names of its Mysteries and Ordinances, are not to depend upon common estimation, but the estimation of men ought much to be governed according to the Gospel-names of those things. {“Therefore I esteem all thy precepts concerning all things to be right; and I hate every false way.” Psal.119:128.} The reason is, because it is in matters of that vast transcendency as swallows up all the judgments and esteem of men, and commands a professed Subjection to the Gospel of Christ, II Cor.9:13, and the Government of our Lord, Isa.33:22; yea, even to that degree, as to esteem nothing in the Kingdom of Christ to be Indifferent. {“And Elijah came unto all the people, and said, How long halt ye between two opinions; if the LORD be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word.” I Kings 18:21.} No, not so much as the names of things which he hath imposed on them Himself, but in all things we ought to walk even as we have Christ for our Example. Phil.3:17. 3. If they talk of money, illustrating it by corruptible things, silver and gold, I Pet.1:18, then give me leave, reader, to improve it against them in the same consideration. Thus, in things pertaining to the Kingdom of God, Acts 1:3, words are so far like money, that they ought not to pass current, or be put upon the Mysteries and Ordinances of the Gospel, nor go among men, without the Image and Superscription of Christ upon this coin. Matt.22:20. Even as six-pence doth not go for six-pence, much less advance to double or triple the value {as the term “sacrament” is mounted up} by any private authority; but ‘tis made six-pence {or if it rises to a shilling, or eighteen-pence, it comes up to that value, only} by the supreme power of the Nation, as suppose of a King, or the Queen and Parliament. Accordingly it belongeth to the King of saints, Rev.15:3, the Head of the Church alone to stamp the name upon Divine Ordinances, and it becomes no men on earth. Therefore the aforesaid objection pleads for money, both of an ill metal and stamp. The vanity of the plea, is, it would put off copper for silver, and appoint the subjects coat in the place of the sovereign’s arms. What authority hath man ever received to coin that word sacrament? Doubtless, ‘tis a piece of high treason against the Government of Christ, Mal.1:14, in ordering any of the coin of His Kingdom; since the Lord Christ’s express Image and Superscription is Lord’s Supper, and the like. As ‘tis high treason against the Queen’s Majesty to coin money in the Tower of London, or elsewhere, and upon the coined piece instead of the Sovereign’s Name, to stamp the name of a foreign Power, or a Traitor; and yet this is the very case in the word sacrament.

Objection: What need contention about words, so long as we all agree in the thing? It’s needless to make a stir about words. And why should men love to raise a dispute upon that which is not at all necessary to Salvation? We reckon such to be but word-warriors, who contend either one way or other for the name. ‘Tis your quarrelsome men, and men that love to dodge at words, who make the stir, and admit of no fair propriety in the word sacrament. There will be little cause to contend how men shall call it, provided they once rightly believe and obey this holy mystery. Rom.6:17. In short, if other’s controversies and squabbles were but once in it about the thing, it would be no matter whether they called it Sacrament or Supper.

Answer: To all this I have various arguments to oppose. 1. The ear {of the experimental Godly} “trieth words, as the mouth tasteth meat.” Job 34:3. And therefore in Christ’s Matters where the very words do make manifest the savour of His knowledge, II Cor.2:14, it is the argument of a good man {for I’ll make the best of it} in a very carnal and unsavory spirit, to make it both alike, whether it be a name Christ by the Holy Ghost puts, or a name man puts that prevaileth. The Holy Ghost hath branded it for a spirit of indifference and culpable neutrality in Gallio, {“and Gallio cared for none of those things,” Acts 18:17,} which surely then is reprovable in Saints, that in the Matters of the Lord Christ, he made a slight of it {like this objection} and put it off trivially, if it be a question of words and names {so he took the things of Christ to be} “look ye to it, I will be judge of no such Matters.” Acts 18:15. {“Because they regard not the works of the LORD, nor the operation of his hands, he shall destroy them, and not build them up.” Psal.28:5.}

As we ought not to strive about some words, so we ought again to contend for others. We ought not indeed to be “but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railings, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, {galling one another with personal invectives} and destitute of the truth, {therefore not spoken against any of them who have truth on their side, nor against striving rightly to defend the Gospel, and word the ordinances of Christ} supposing that gain is godliness; from such withdraw thyself.” I Tim.6:4-5. The meaning is, contending about such pitiful subjects, that ‘tis no matter indeed what name they go by, the Holy Ghost never undertaking to guide men’s spirits in meddling with them, but leaving them in their own gall of bitterness, Acts 8:23, to lay open the corruption and rottenness that is in one another’s hearts, both of one side and another. So that there ought to be no strife about such words, as Paul there from the Holy Ghost intends; which words {that we may know what he meant} he explained, verse 3, to be a teaching otherwise than Christ teacheth. The one instance he there gives in the duty of servants to Masters will serve for all, and so for this instance of words about calling the Supper. Strifes of words forbidden are the consenting not to wholesome words. ‘Tis not contending for wholesome words, but not consenting unto wholesome words, which is there forbidden. What are the wholesome words he means? He tells you, “even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ.” So then, according to the Apostle, ‘tis not a strife about words he forbids, that contends for the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so a striving to beat down the word sacrament, and the way of speaking or phraseology that obtains among your good men {come to the sacrament, go to the sacrament, eat the sacrament, take the sacrament, partake of the sacrament, &c.,} because these are not wholesome words, nor consenting to wholesome words, even the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so it is the sin of strife to stand up for them, but not so {for it is the duty of strife} to contend earnestly, and stand up against them. Jude 3. {“And their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the language of each people.” Neh.13:24.}

So again, we ought not to strive about words, to no profit; and indeed in such strife it is merely human and sinful, and to the subverting of the hearers, as the same Apostle saith. II Tim.2:14. To conclude therefore for such an invented word of man’s {where the very reason of it is anti-scriptural} as sacrament, is to strive about a word to no profit; that no ways edifies, or raises up the heart of him that uses it towards Christ. {“Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers.” Eph.4:29.} This is apparent, in that when men have pleaded for sacrament, they unsay what they have said, pretend to draw back, and eat their own words, by coming off with this dull plea, {we need not make a stir about words;} as much as to say, we will not plead for sacrament. Whereas if light from the Holy Ghost had guided men in their pleas for sacrament, it had been Sin thus to excuse it, I mean a Sin against the Spirit, who has revealed the Doctrine of Christ. {“I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken unto my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him.” Deut.18:18-19.} On the other hand, if the Holy Spirit of Christ from the Father shall help a poor worm to speak against it, Exod.4:12, he need not be ashamed that he has stood it out against the word sacrament, and stood up for a pure language. {“For then will I turn to the people a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the LORD, to serve him with one consent.” Zeph.3:9.} Furthermore, to contend against them that contend against God in point of words, can’t be said to strive about words to no profit. II Tim.2:14. For, in the Cause of Christ, it being a matter of some choice concernment, {the ordinance of the Supper I mean,} we must not diminish a word, any word, if it be the Holy Ghost’s word. {“What thing soever I command you, observe to do it; thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.” Deut.12:32.} What is it God’s saith to Jeremiah? See, chapter 26:2, “thus saith the LORD; Stand in the court of the LORD’S house, and speak unto all the cities of Judah, which come to worship in the LORD’S house, all the words that I command thee to speak unto them; diminish not a word.” Aye, but to have put in a word of lesser signification in the room of a word of greater signification, had been to have diminished it. {“I cannot go beyond the word of the LORD my God, to do less or more.” Num.22:18.} Now here in the point of sacrament used for Lord’s Supper, there is a diminishing of our Lord Jesus Christ’s Word. Because the word sacrament, in the true signification, falls so much below the words, Supper, Feast, Communion, &c., as ‘tis a clipping of the King’s Coin. Now ‘tis profitable to the Commonwealth of Israel to apprehend and subdue the clippers and coiners. Yea, we are commanded to stand up for every part of the King’s Government, {for that King’s, whose Name is the Lord of Hosts, Zech.14:16,} and to hold fast the faithful word, Tit.1:9, which we are sure, the word sacrament, put for an Ordinance of Christ, is not, and to keep close upon the Word of the Gospel. Col.1:5.

Hence it follows that the contention is not about mere words, that is, words of an equal nature. If they had been words of mere man on one side, and other words of mere man on another side, then indeed the contention had been about words authoritatively of an equal nature, and so about mere words; and consequently, the contention should have seemed rather needless. But the contending in this matter is about words of an unequal nature, to wit, words of the Holy Ghost on one side, and a mere word of man’s bringing in on the other. Ezek.18:25. Again, it is better to be a Word-warrior for the language of the Holy Ghost, Hos.2:17, because it is Divine Inspiration, than to be a Heaven-warrior, Rev.12:7, and reject the constant use of that word which is provided against a profane one in the Holy Tongue, as if it was a pure word; or than to be simple and easy-minded {which the Septuagint on Proverbs 14:15, has foully mistaken, in rendering it in their translation, innocent} to believe every word, even this word sacrament among others, to be a fit name to call the Lord’s Supper. {The Septuagint from the Latin word septuaginta, meaning seventy; or the 72 Elders of the Jews; who 267 Years before Christ translated the Old Testament into the Greek Tongue at the Motion of Ptolemy II Philadelphus towards his furnishing of the magnificent Library of Five Hundred Thousand Volumes at Alexandria in Egypt. The High Priest Eleazar, to whom King Ptolemais sent for interpreters, might perhaps rely, as to the round number of Seventy, upon that Oracle of God in Numbers 11:16,24; hence the 72 are called, for the round number’s sake, but 70.}

If Divines, Scholars, Learned Men, &c., think it beneath them, to defend the language of the Holy Ghost {for I know there is much of the flesh mingled with our learning under a pretense of avoiding logomachies or the strife of words} ‘tis an argument they do not feel the Spirit of God breathe upon them in their learned writings, in the same measure, as he breathes upon them who are led by him, to refrain from calling ordinances of Christ, in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, I Cor.2:13, and who are taught by the bowing of the heart, to accept of words in their room, which the Holy Ghost teacheth. Let none think this is a vain boast, for the Spirit teacheth to be very humble in the acknowledgment of his teaching us the deep things of God, I Cor.2:10, and yet constrains the acknowledgment besides, to the praise of God’s Grace.

Once more, though words in this case are not at all necessary to man’s Salvation, yet they are highly necessary for Christ’s Honor; and his honor is concerned in his own words, where he hath plainly and sufficiently left his mind how to call his Ordinances, if men were not, {I fear,} grown more to be lovers of their own selves, than lovers of Christ, even in things pertaining to his Kingdom. II Tim.3:2. However men may profess, ‘tis not worth their while to contend about words, particularly, about this word sacrament; yet to say so, hath either seemed their words of course, or other contradiction; to unsay what they have said, which, as I hinted before, he that pleads for the Holy Ghost by his own teachings, Jn.6:45, shall not need {through shame of what he has said} to do; nor, as they who write the chapter upon the sacraments in general at last by one sentence come and dash out a whole treatise. {“Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the LORD, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies, and by their lightness; yet I sent them not, nor commanded them; therefore they shall not profit this people at all, saith the LORD.” Jer.23:32.} Thus, they go forwards and backwards, say and unsay, and at last know not what to say. Oh! That men were made to hearken unto what the Spirit saith unto the Churches, Rev.3:22, and there should be more consistence in obeying from the heart his form either of doctrine, Rom.6:17, or of words. {“Hold fast the form of sound words, which thou hast heard of me, in faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.” II Tim.1:13.} And lastly, where men are agreed about the thing from a work of the Spirit of God {and all other agreement is such a patched business as will soon be threadbare} ‘tis rather an argument why they ought to agree about the Word, than why they may be divided. {As was foretold of that patched business between Antiochus the Great, King of Asia and Syria, in the North of Judea, and Ptolemy of Egypt in the South, by contracting an Alliance, and giving him Cleopatra his daughter to wife. Dan.11:6, 17.} Because in Scripture, for God hath promised to give a harmony and agreement in things, there he hath undertaken to remove all diversity {not of His Spirit} in names. {“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people; and they shall not teach every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest.” Heb.8:10-11.}

Hosea 2:16-17, “and it shall be at that day, saith the LORD, that thou shalt call me Ishi,” my man, or my husband. Here was promised there should be an agreement among all Israel in one thing, namely, that God was their Husband, the nearest relation of union-tenderness and condescending love that a people could stand in need of their God, to stoop down unto them in, by the Man Christ Jesus. Here was promised withal an agreement in the name, i.e., all should call him, each one for himself, my Husband; they should not stand divided about the Name, because all were agreed about the thing. They should not say, some Baali, my Lord; no, not so much as my Lord in the language of Baal, Exod.23:13, or Lord, as was meant in the Baalitish idiom; and some Ishi, my Man, my Husband. God in Christ would not, though he was their Lord, be called their Lord, by such name of Lordship as they had used in calling of their idols; as false worshipers had many odd names {names of their own invention} to call their gods. “For {saith the LORD} I will take away the names of Baalim out of her mouth, and they shall no more be remembered by their name.” To conclude then, all that I have to consider in answer to this plea, religion pure and undefiled, Jam.1:27, ought to consist in pure apt-words, to be contended for, as well as things.

Objection: The word sacrament originally signifies a measured security or pledge of money which they of old time deposited to a sacred use, so we look upon it therefore to be a proper word to express that Ordinance wherein men solemnly dedicate themselves afresh, and engage to be the Lord’s.

Answer: Let me hear put the story together in English out of Varro’s Latin, as Marcus Terentius Varro opens it more distinctly thus, “two persons {it should seem plaintiff and defendant} between whom there arose a controversy, carried a sum of money, depositing it either in the hands of a pagan priest, or in a consecrated place; because if the money were forfeited, it was to be made use of in some religious pagan service. He then of the two {in suit} who was cast and lost the day, forfeited the earnest-money, and the pawn was thereupon esteemed sacred, which was to be applied only to Religion, and {and in their way among the old Latin’s or Romans} put to {what they called} a sacred use. For, {as to the name} the forfeited pledge being a dedicated thing, and becoming {as they thought} sacred, was called a Sacrament. Whereas the earnest-money of the other who prevailed in his suit was still reckoned profane, and so he had leave {according to the first agreement} to take up his Sacrament, that is, his pawn-money, and go off with it, and so might put it to any common use.” {See a heathen practice somewhat of kin to it in the idolatrous times of Israel set forth by the Spirit of God in Amos 2:8.}

Accordingly, it hath been allowed that this should be a ground of using the word in Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Because they reckon that men in these Ordinances, do as it were lay down themselves a self-evaluation, a pawn, a stake for Christ, dedicating themselves ever to be the Lord’s, and never to be their own. Some again, thinking to mend it, and loath to let this sorry word sacrament go off thus, are willing to consecrate it, and attempting to wash it over with etymology, derive it from hallowed things, and make it to sound brave in a dependence upon what is sacred and uncommon, because from thence it increases the tie and obligation upon the receiver. But here again they are divided. Some deriving it from the sacredness of the earnest-money, others fetching it from an influential consecration, or an influence and power in the Ordinances themselves to consecrate the partakers of them. Lastly, others looking upon the word to derive only from a grammatical analogy, and not a theological, or any resemblance in Divinity, are hugely puzzled.

Thus whilst I trace the name in human writings they puzzle and bewilder me. ‘Tis much like going to seek for the head of the Nile, which runs through Egypt. {Or that River of Egypt we read of in Exod.1:22, Pharaoh charged all his people, that as soon as the male children of the Church were born, every son of them should be cast into the River Nile. For which bloody fact of drowning the Israelites in the River, the Lord afterwards righteously drowned Pharaoh and his People in the Red Sea.} The spring head or source of Nile is confessedly obscure, and hath such a diversity of opinions for it, as divines usually give us for the original of the word sacrament. For some have derived Nile from Mount Atlas in the remoter and more southerly parts of Africa. Others have described its original from the mountains of the moon; because of the steep descent and prodigious fall of its cataracts and catadupa in some mountainous passages of the Nile, as that river passes in its rocky current. Others derive it from a plain, and how far is that from mountains! Some again will fetch it from two fountains I know not where? Others trace it from one, in the Lake of Zembre in the inner Ethiopia. Accordingly, when men know not how to give our Lord Jesus Christ the true honor of his Ordinances, they are puzzled to find a beginning of a corrupt invention in human authors. But to examine it.

Is not this strange in good men? Is it not an odd original they bring in? And plainly, is it not a foolish plead to urge on the behalf of putting names upon the Ordinances of Jesus Christ? Job was a good man, yet Elihu says, Job 34:35, “Job hath spoken without knowledge, and his words were without wisdom.” Moreover, the Holy Ghost speaking by Paul, I Cor.12:8, of a “word of wisdom” {when men utter things and express themselves, as they are taught of Him in their spiritual gifts} tells us, that the word of wisdom is given to Him that hath it; I, but this word sacrament is not a word given by the Holy Ghost, but unjustly taken up by man? ‘Tis so ridiculous and childish a word taken from the original, that there is that in it which may cause a rational divine to deride, and a spiritual divine to pity the ignorance of those introducers who first brought up sacrament among us from this plea.

Heathenish rites are far unfit to ground an original not only for the least thing in Christianity, but even for the name of any Christian solemnities. II Kings 21:2. And as to that groundless plea wherewith some learned men would veil the abuse, namely that the word is a Latin word, it is as much as to say, then no matter whether it be a Scripture-word; for, are not the Latin words {where translated rightly} the words of the Scripture too? Besides, as the thing is evidently a Bible-Constitution, it is a base and injurious usage to build the way of calling it upon a pagan custom, as this measure was.

Whereas men look upon this invention of the pawn to be a piece of wisdom, in translating over a pagan rite to serve any of the Ordinances of Christ, and particularly, the Ordinance of the Lord’s Supper, let them know their wisdom is foolishness with God. I Cor.3:19. {“Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them. For the customs of the people are vain.” Jer.10:2-3.} For, this is an Ordinance wherein Christ first saith, “take, eat,” and {as is easily proved} in the other words {“after the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped,” Lk.22:20, I Cor.11:25,} he likewise saith, first take, then drink the cup or wine in the cup. Observe here, it is a benefit at the Lord’s Table; it lies in Receiving, ‘tis not a Sacrament, as if it lay in bringing and laying down ought as a stake or pawn for Christ, as they must understand it who allude to the heathen’s sacrament, whilst at the same time they think they do fitly express the Lord’s Supper. {“Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of devils; ye cannot be partakers of the Lord’s table, and of the table of devils.” I Cor.10:21.} Therefore its name is most unfitly and foolishly derived from the earnest-money; because our Lord’s Ordinance is to us a Receiving Ordinance, nothing we can bring to it is able to give unto it any spiritual virtue. It cannot then, without the imputation of folly be named from the creature’s bringing and laying himself down to pledge, Amos 2:8, and so devoting himself to be the Lord’s, after the measure and plan of the pagan rite.

And then in this confessed original of theirs about the pledge, he who prevailed in his suit carried off his earnest-money, being, upon condition, no ways obliged to part with it from his own use. But now in the Ordinances of Christ, is any Church-member so in his own or other men’s hands as to be at his own, or any other men’s disposal? Phil.1:21. Can any man, after he hath obtained that at the Lord’s Table he looked for from God in Christ, go and act in the Church of God, or in his family, or in his conversation with men, as if he were now all his own, I Cor.7:23, as one of the two contenders {he that prevailed in his suit} might dispose of his pawn-money how he would, none else being able to meddle in it, but himself to use it as he saw meet? Hear what the Apostle saith, Rom.14:7-8, “for none of us liveth to himself, and no man dieth to himself. For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord; whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.” So that if the Ordinances of Christ had been to derive their name from engagement, this uncertain way of engagement at best, and dissolution from all engagement next, had been of all originals sought out from the conveniency, the most unfit beginning men could have thought on, to have fetched a sacred name. Nay, can that be apt for the Gospel that comes short of befitting the very light of nature? How so? Why thus, it was an un-meet thing even among the heathen, nor did they live up to the light of nature in it, Rom.2:14-15, to leave a man so much unto his own liberty, as to carry off his pledge, where he was most obliged to leave it evermore behind him, in token of thankfulness to that god {so far as he had a notion of him by the light of nature and education} who had prospered his cause {and he thought for being a righteous cause} and given him the day against his adversary. {“For all people will walk everyone in the name of his god, and we will walk in the name of the LORD our God for ever and ever.” Mic.4:5.} To carry off his pledge, his measure in this case, was against the light of nature. But now if men engage themselves, and lay themselves down to pledge at the Lord’s Table, do they not carry away themselves, their pledge, from the Table again? And then what becomes of their measure? {“When thou vowest a vow unto God, defer not to pay it; for he hath no pleasure in fools; pay that which thou hast vowed.” Eccles.5:4.} Don’t they go and serve the world presently? It may be the devil? Be sure themselves they serve. Why then, when ‘tis not in their power so to leave their pledge, their earnest with God, as the pagans left theirs with the priest {when it was money} why should they call the Ordinance from that measure, when as they never did come up to their own engagements and vows? {“Better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.” Eccles.5:5.} Why should they mock the Ordinance, in calling it from that which is not {since they carry away their measure, and ‘tis not left behind them} when they might, and ought, call it from that which is and remains, as a standing Ordinance and Benefit of the Gospel? Heb.12:27. Surely, to call an Ordinance of Christ from such a partial and dissolute practice of the heathen, in carrying away his pawn-money, when his cause was prospered, and according to the light of nature he should rather have left his pawn behind him, must be as unfit for a name to call the Lord’s Supper from thence, as can be well supposed, let it look as apt, as pretty and ingenious to some men, as otherwise it can. Prov.16:25. For derive the word sacrament from the sacredness of a man’s own self-pledge {as was there esteemed among the heathen} and then see how it suits, that when a man or woman come to the Lord’s Table, why, the better they speed and the more they thrive and prosper in their souls, the worst, the more ungratefully and disobediently, they might carry it towards God, by carrying away the Lord’s pledge, or what they had solemnly engaged to be the Lord’s. Isa.1:2. Who would think now that men who cry out so much against Antinomianism, as sacrament-speakers do, should secretly nourish so much practical Antinomianism, and fall into a gross Libertinism against the light of nature, as the heathen, who knew not God, did?

Lastly, if the Ordinance must derive from the laying down of a earnest, then let it be the greatest, the highest earnest possible, not a low stake. Let it not be {though it were} our lives even unto death, but Christ’s own life obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, laid to pledge. Phil.2:8. Now consider, Jesus Christ laid down his precious life, he gave his life a ransom for many. Matt.20:28. He did not appoint or leave us to go and lay down a little money, for we were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, I Pet.1:18, {and so with none of this, nor with our obedience, and sufferings, nor with our vows and promises, engagements and obligations to sincere obedience, we were redeemed with none of these, which are all corruptible; for man’s heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, who can know it, Jer.17:9,} but we were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. The pledge laid in God’s hand was Christ’s life; he laid down no less a stake than his matchless life to purchase God’s favor, and carry our cause. And as none could conquer for us, as none could prevail with God, but He; and none got the day for us of our Almighty Judge, but our Almighty Days-Man, Job 9:33; so none could take up the pledge of conquest, but He that had Power to lay down his life, and power to take it again. Jn.10:18. He could raise Himself from the dead as perfectly as he was able to condescend and go down into death for us. And accordingly, he did rise from the dead, and take up the mighty stake again. Acts 2:24. He appears a most glorious conqueror unto John. “I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death.” Rev.1:18. Thus, there is no such thing as our engaging, but we spiritually eat and drink, and are nourished in our souls at the Table, without money and without price. Isa.55:1. Well then, let the ordinance be named from pleading, fetching, staking, laying down a sum, I am contented, provided it be the real stake, the true precious life of Jesus unto Death. And surely, if the Ordinance be appointed to show forth the Lord’s Death until he come, I Cor.11:26, then it ought to be called only from this highest stake, pledge, or measurement that could be laid down. And as David his type said of the sword he had taken out of Goliath’s hand, “there is none like that, give it me,” I Sam.21:9; so do I of this pledge, this measure, this ransom he laid down even unto death, and then when he had prospered in his work took it up with Himself into Immortality, there is none like that pledge, like that engagement to the Father, “give it me.” Give it me as an original to name the Ordinance by, and so let it be called the Lord’s Supper and the Communion, or New Testament in Christ’s blood; but never let it be sacrament from our sacred readiness to draw our money, show our pledge, carry it off, aye, or leave it behind us either, as if in our duty, actions and behavior, Christ was more beholden to us, than we to him, who are fed, prospered and maintained by Him.

Objection: We see not but it may be called sacrament {say others} from our engagement to holy obedience. For, of old, sacrament was the sacred and engaging oath principally to bind and devote every soldier to his duty, who had listed himself in the Emperor’s service, as they tell us out of Cicero; and occasionally every citizen to his own Magistrates in the Corporation, which was esteemed both a necessary and sacred tie, devoting them solemnly by Consecration unto the determinate service of their own Caesars and Magistrates by name, in Opposition to the Service or Pay of any other Prince, or Potentate, or Dignity whatsoever. Thus, sacrament is aptly translated, or brought over into the Church to express and call the Ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, because these do lay a solemn tie and engagement upon the person to walk more in holiness, and so sacraments are ties that bind of both sides, to God and man too.

To examine this objection, if you carry it thus, you catch the multitude, for it is a very enticing word of man’s wisdom. The original wit who first brought it over under this covert, did not, as Paul, who sought, in reference to his Corinthians, that their faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God. I Cor.2:5. Accordingly, he tells us, verse 4, my speech and my preaching {there that Paul among other subjects had been preaching of the Lord’s Supper; and we know this, sacrament was a word in force among the heathen at that day, to express their military oath; would Paul, think ye, have changed his way, which was} not with enticing {or perusable words to ensnare the affections without the judgment, as the Greek will bear} “words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit, and of power.” As Paul made conscience of giving the honor to the Lord Jesus in the eleventh chapter, where he calls it Lord’s Supper, I Cor.11:20, while the word sacrament was in use for another thing in his day, so he made conscience to give due honor to the Spirit, in this matter of wording a thing, as we see here in the second chapter. He would not rob the Spirit, neither by exalting man’s reason, nor man’s custom into the very way of naming or speaking of the things of God. {“And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days reasoned with them out of the scriptures,” Acts 17:2, Paul would make use of no other system of logic, but the Scriptures in his Sermons about Christ.} The Holy Ghost in the Revelation of the phrase goes not by oath and engagements men live under, but goes purely upon other grounds, and keeps close to Christ. The name of this Ordinance doth plainly exalt Christ’s Person when ‘tis called the Lord’s Supper, Christ’s Death when ‘tis called the New Testament in his blood, yea, his cross, blood and the merit of it is exalted in the Scripture-Names; but it is not so otherwise. The wisdom of the Holy Ghost is the only fit wisdom to reveal the Mysteries and Ordinances of Christ, as he is the Wisdom of God and Christ. I Cor.1:24. If we would therefore have a wise name, let us hear wisdom’s voice, for in the city, Prov.1:21, she uttereth her words, as well as her sacred things.

Man’s reason they have exercised in fitting the word sacrament to call any of the ordinances of Christ is so far from true wisdom, that it is a mere foolishness. Sacrament built on engagements is a foolish name. To contradict themselves {for I am speaking of many of Mr. Hunt’s ‘worthy authors’ under whom he shrouds himself} is a piece of foolishness; but men in fixing upon the word sacrament from engagements contradict themselves; therefore ‘tis foolishness. {“For my people is foolish, they have not known me; they are sottish children, and they have none understanding; they are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.” Jer.4:22.} They who run into the inconveniency they fear and profess to avoid, contradict themselves, but men who call sacraments from engagements, run into the inconveniency they fear and profess to avoid, therefore they contradict themselves. Amos 5:19 – Isa.24:17-18. The inconveniency they fear and profess to avoid is a particular name, when they want a general name to comprehend the particulars; yet they run into this very inconveniency, calling them sacraments from the engagement of themselves to the Lord, which is more than a particular thing, nay an accident, and a circumstance besides, in any ordinance, or in those things which pertain to God. Rom.15:17. If they would have shown human wisdom to purpose in bringing in a name to have avoided the inconveniency they profess to shun, it should never have been by the word sacrament. I Cor.1:25. For this flows {as they tell you particularly, viz.,} from engagements to obedience in a Monarchical or Republican Constitution. They should have hit upon a word, if their wisdoms had not come short, Isa.5:21, that should have held out the nature, use, end, actions and relation of the Ordinances of Christ. Human wisdom {according to their own plan} tells them this had been something towards avoiding the inconveniency they had professed to shun; I, but instead of this, they have gotten up a word, which holds forth nothing of the ordinances themselves; so far is it from being wisely-fitted to become a general name for the use they put it to; nor does their name hold forth the least approach towards the spring and cause of our engagements to the Lord Jesus Christ. Matt.20:28 – Gal.1:4. Nor does it represent the grounds why we are engaged and tied unto the strictest love and obedience. And so is far from avoiding the general inconveniency they pretend to eschew. Neither can it any ways, by adhering to the word sacrament be helped. For it is impossible that that name should actually give what virtually it never had to bestow, to wit, a generality of signification. It can only give a particular name of particular signification, and that a most unapt one too. The instituted word Supper, also the phrases, Lord’s Supper and Lord’s Table, are vastly more general for that Ordinance than sacrament. Lord’s Supper, &c., do comprehend all that Ordinance; they comprehend not only such a portion, or such a part, as our engagement to be the Lord’s, but withal take in the spring, cause, and grounds thereof in the nature, use, end, actions, and relations of that and the other Ordinance of Christ, I Cor.11:26; but sacrament instead of being general enough to comprehend Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, is too strait a word to comprehend either of them apart. Ezek.43:11. ‘Tis so far from reaching significantly unto two ordinances, that it takes in nothing of that which is in one of them.

‘Tis irreligion, as much as foolishness, to derive the appellation of an Ordinance of Christ from a pagan name and custom. Religion ties men to follow the Lord fully, not to follow blind reason. Num.14:24. Now the Lord himself names his ordinances from a correspondency with the ordinances themselves. So the Lord named Circumcision, so he named the Passover, so he named Baptism, and so he hath named the Supper. In the like manner should saints do; if they did not countenance their folly by irreligion, and call the Ordinances of Christ by no other names than he most wisely hath called them.

To humble men further, there is a wide impertinency in fetching this name sacrament from the solemn engagement laid upon men in taking the military oath. How wide do men run, when they draw by this pattern, and derive from this original? What agreement is there, as the Apostle argues in another case, between an oath to Caesar, in taking, eating bread, and after the same manner, taking, drinking wine, doing this in remembrance of Christ? {“And what concord hath Christ with Belial; or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?” II Cor.6:15-16.} Does an oath of allegiance and supremacy in a human government befit the showing forth of the Lord’s death until he come? {“For as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death till he come.” I Cor.11:26.} Methinks, that which Christ has said about paying the Roman tribute, will better serve to confute the use of this word in Baptism and the Holy Supper, and so send it back to its own place in the Roman Empire, that anything alleged on its behalf, is fit or meet to excuse it, “render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s,” Matt.22:21; and therefore I may say, render unto Caesar the words too that are Caesar’s; but render unto God the things, yea, and the words too that are God’s.

Lastly, to set it forth by considerations of the aggravation, and therein to examine it more closely than hitherto.

Why must the name derive at all from the use of customs in the Roman Empire? Are not the customs of the people vain? Jer.10:3. Why must the name they give to a thing out of the Church, be the name put upon so high an Ordinance in the Church of God? What a debasing of the title is it, to gather up a name for it out of the Roman polity, Ezek.43:10, for the sacrament-speaker, so far as learned, knows it came from thence! Is it not better than it should be known only by a name suited to it in the Scripture-Polity, and appointed for it in the Church of Christ, the Spiritual Commonwealth of Israel? Eph.2:12. I may hear query, as Samson’s father and his mother did unto their son {when he had seen a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines, and had pressed upon them, to get her for him to wife} “is there never a woman among the daughters of thy brethren, or among all my people, that thou goest to take a wife of the uncircumcised Philistines?” Judges 14:2-3. So {I say} is there never a word among the phrases and expressions of the Bible, or among all the sister-churches we read of in the New Testament, that thou goest {sacrament-speaker} to take a word of the unbelieving Romans? Ezek.43:11. Why should not men professing Godliness be afraid of a heathenish and profane name, when the Holy Ghost hath left sacred names upon record, and words sanctified by the breathings of his Almighty Inspiration? Jer.2:19. What is the agreement of a word in the Mysteries of Christ with Pagans, to an agreement in the same Mysteries with the Sacred Penmen? {“But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God; and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.” I Cor.10:20} Who of sacrament-speakers in defending their word, dare say as James in that Council at Jerusalem, Acts 15:15, “and to this agree the words of the prophets; as it is written?” So, to this agree the words of the Apostle? Was James careful to retain the prophet’s words, why should not we be as much concerned to hold fast the Apostle’s form of sound words, II Tim.1:13, and not let go that which he had received of the Lord Jesus, I Cor.11:23; that is, not only the ordinance itself, but the expressions of it, the name of it, and all, even sound speech that cannot be condemned. Tit.2:8. To a Godly, tender-hearted believer, it should be enough that in an Ordinance of Christ, if we retain the word sacrament, men are beholden under the purest light of the Gospel to the very heathen who have sinned against the light of nature, as the Apostle hath shown, Rom.1:18, to the end of the chapter. {“But all the Israelites went down to the Philistines, to sharpen every man his share, and his coulter, and his axe, and his mattock.” I Sam.13:20.} The poor lost heathen, as I find in the writings of their own, namely, Marcus Tullius Cicero, Suetonius, Valerius Maximus, Titus Livius Patavinus, Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, and others of them, were the first men in the world who invented it, and brought in this name, which the Roman Church hath had hung up for her among her other ornaments. This is notoriously evident to the more learned part of mankind.

Now, are words found in the Roman and Classic authors the words that must serve the Gospel? Are these which are taken out of profane writers, fit for Christ’s Ordinances, and to be used for the words of his Holiness? {“Mine heart within me is broken because of the prophets; all my bones shake; I am like a drunken man, and like a man whom wine hath overcome, because of the LORD, and because of the words of his holiness.” Jer.23:9.} To speak of an ordinance of Christ as the pagan world {who stunk in the nostrils of God with all their eloquence} have taught men to express themselves, is this to have our speech alway with grace seasoned with salt, as it ought to be? Col.4:6. Oh! The blindness of the name sacrament, as derived from the military oath! This begat only a blind obedience and a superstitious reverence of man, under the apprehension of every soldier’s distance from the Emperor whom he served in the wars. This way of obligation of theirs to the laws of Caesar, was a bringing them into subjection by awe, to over-master all reluctance in their minds to serve, or inclinations to relinquish Caesar, and his service in the field. The oath was a solemn invention to beget a dread in their hearts towards their sovereign. Hence men, under the apprehensions of their distance, are wont thus to address their Prince, ‘Most Dread Sovereign.’ Well, but though Christ be Emperor, and the Captain of our Salvation, Heb.2:10, and the Lord is a Man of War, Exod.15:3, and believers serve and are made by Grace to fight as soldiers under him; yet Christ as a man of war did not appoint the Lord’s Supper, nor do we as soldiers partake thereof. {Isa.55:4. “Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people,” a Commander, which Emperor signifies.} For in this Ordinance where we commemorate the Lord’s body broken, and his blood shed, we approach to God, and sit with Christ under another consideration, than as he is a Man of War, Exod.15:3, or we enlisted soldiers; for being made nigh by the blood of Christ, we draw nigh and most nigh in that sacred Worship. Heb.10:22. We use great boldness under the experimental unction of the blood sprinkled. The Lord’s Supper is an Ordinance which carries so much of the love of God in it, that the most endearing and uniting relations of care and tenderness, love and affection are displayed and found therein. It is there he lays open, that the LORD is our Shepherd; we shall not want, as He maketh us to lie down in green pastures, and leadeth us beside the still waters. Psal.23:1-2. ‘Tis there he doth more abundantly discover it, that we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Psal.100:3. ‘Tis there that he lays open the relations of an Elder Brother to his brethren by giving us his flesh to eat, and his blood to drink. {“Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.” Jn.6:54-55.} Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same. Heb.2:14. And of a Husband to his spouse who familiarity sits down to eat and drink at one table. There is the nearness of his Presence, the boldness of faith, the sweetness of relation, the intimacy of fellowship with the Lord Himself. {“And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” I Jn.1:3.} For it is the Lord Jesus who was betrayed, and took bread, I Cor.11:23, that saith at this supper, “eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved.” Song.5:1. And must we have a name for it now that arises from love or dread? From distance? Or the near relation? Alas! Now is not man who thinks himself so wise in his word sacrament, a very fool in his impertinent using it? {“For he knoweth vain men; he seeth wickedness also; will he not then consider it? For vain man would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass’s colt.” Job 11:11-12.}

Why must it be profaneness instead of holiness? Why must Superstition and Idolatry be esteemed befitting ground of deriving a name for any of the ordinances of Christ? Is it in God’s esteem a defiling of ourselves with the abominations of the heathen, when we learn any of their solemn or religious ways, to use them especially in the Lord’s service? {“Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the heathen are dismayed at them.” Jer.10:2.} The Lord despised and abhorred a heathen sacrament; for therein they swore by false gods. {“And it shall come to pass, if they will diligently learn the ways of my people, to swear by my name, the LORD liveth; as they taught my people to swear by Baal; then shall they be built in the midst of my people. But if they will not obey, I will utterly pluck up and destroy that nation, saith the LORD.” Jer.12:16-17.} I read in Livy, {Titus Livius Patavinus,} a heathen writer, that they enriched the gods {as the pagans thought} in bestowing so much wealth upon them by means of a certain, ancient ceremony of a sacrament or oath. And ‘twas performed thus, when soldiers were pressed into the field of Battle, there was a Law made for having the best choice of men could be got throughout all Samnium, {a country in Italy whose people once had fought many battles with the Romans,} and it was enacted in that law, that whosoever came not together of the younger sort of men at the Emperor’s word, or that when convened, when aside without license, or as we say, deserted, should forfeit his life to Jupiter; that is, he was sworn by Jupiter, that if he relinquished Imperial Orders, he would be offered up, and made a sacrifice to that false god. Thus, ‘tis plain, that in the very act of taking their bloody sacrament, {or oath} as is confessedly known unto the learned, the heathen were guilty of gross idolatry, as well as cruelty and self-murder. {“Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god; their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.” Psal.16:4.}

Yea, those Sacraments of theirs were sometimes other horrid impieties. They converted them to the most filthy lusts and provocations, which the Romans had learned in worshipping of their gods by the pattern of other elder nations. {“Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as ye were led.” I Cor.12:2.} And so were sworn by this Sacrament to observe all the institutes of Venus. ‘Tis what they had learned I say of elder nations. Corporal adulteries went along with some of their idolatries. The Holy Ghost by Ezekiel tells us, that at the very door of the gate of the Lord’s House, which was towards the north, behold there sat women weeping for Tammuz. Ezek.8:14. This Tammuz was the unclean idol of the boy Adonis, as the Grecians shaped, called and worshiped him; in which name, the god of this world, Satan, had taught them to dishonor the true God, in the Mystery of his Son Jesus Christ, in borrowing his name Adonai, one of the glorious names of I AM, as he is One God in Three Persons. The Egyptians worshiped the same idol {Tammuz, or Adonis} under the name of Osiris, which in the Egyptian tongue signifies many-eyes, as I am told by Athanasius Kircher, that learned Jesuit, in his Oedipus Aegyptiacus; and likewise by Lilius Gregorius Giraldus in his treatise of the gods long before him; this last being an Italian of Ferrara, the great contemporary and familiar of John Picus, Earl of Mirandula, who died of the gout in 1552. The name of Osiris, it seems is many-eyes, and so plainly strikes {not only at the Perfection of the Divine Omniscience, which the devil told men to rob God of; and ascribe to their idol; but likewise strikes} at all the Glorious Persons of God, by the devil’s pagan trinity, Tammuz, Adonis, and Osiris, all which was but one unclean idol. Moreover, note, that as God had sworn by his holiness, so the devil taught the heathen, in an opposition, to swear a sacrament or oath; that is, to take their sacrament upon themselves {being devoted to the service of their own idols} by the contrary, uncleanness.

Oh! Now is not this enough, you sacrament-speakers and pseudo-reformers, and you Brother Hunt, amongst all the good men you follow, for God to be a Jealous God in? For sure, as nigh as he is in his Mercy to all that call upon him in Truth, Psal.145:18, and rightly draw nigh unto him, he is as warm in his Jealousy towards them that corrupt his worship, or what pertains thereunto. {“Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them; for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me.” Exod.20:5.} He entered a dispute with Pharaoh about a hoof, as well as the sacrifice, Exod.10:26, and will be sure much more to stand upon a name, as well as an Ordinance, with very great jealousy. Well then by consequence, a name so derived being most filthily and idolatrously profaned, cannot be converted into a sacred use without a horrid profanation. {“And the children of Israel, which were come again out of captivity, and all such as had separated themselves unto them from the filthiness of the heathen of the land, to seek the LORD God of Israel.” Ezra 6:21.}

Lastly, is it the good meaning of men and declared intentions of practice to overlook all regards of Paganism, which will serve the turn? For is it meet, that the ark when it comes home out of the Philistine’s country, should receive instructions from Dagon, though, in process of time, Dagon is forgotten and out of doors? Will it suffice for the honor of the ark in taking up a Dagonish Name, to say Dagon is not actually, or at all regarded by it? You go by your intentions, when you go by other men’s inventions, but what will you say when Jesus Christ withdraws from you, and will go on by his own Institutions? Who had ever Power or Holiness enough among men, Acts 3:12, beside the Man Christ Jesus to sanctify a man’s intentions, and make that to be {holy wherein he means well} which from the beginning was not so? As we may query, what warrant have Churches to give that which is holy unto dogs? Matt.7:6. So what warrant have they to give that which is profane to children? Nay, to impose that which from the beginning was profane, upon the children’s bread? {“It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs.” Matt.15:26.} Yea, to impose it, {if they themselves are children} upon their father, and the master of the house appointing other orders? Who can put, who dare put {and be guiltless, as David once otherwise put the case} the name sacrament upon the Lord’s holy things? If men’s lips were circumcised more, there would be less uncleanness in their language. If their lips were touched, as Isaiah’s were, with a coal from off the altar, Isa.6:6-7, they would speak otherwise than they are wont to do, while they remain to be men of unclean lips. Isa.6:5. Yea, if in Christ’s school, the best school of learning, they had been taught to understand his speech, Jn.8:43, they would not have taken up the name of a heathenish oath to bring before the Living God. {“But the LORD is the true God, he is the living God, and an everlasting king; at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation.” Jer.10:10.} If they had carried it as the Seed of the woman, Gen.3:15, they had not learnt this of the Dragon who was wroth with the woman, and what he had suggested in the Kingdom of the Beast, Rev.17:17, to translate it from pagan rites and ceremonies thus into an Ordinance of Christ, with the very poison of asps under their lips. Rom.3:13. This poison of serpents of the dust was, without doubt, the devilish and venereal Idolatries of the Dragon-worshipers and Serpentine Race, the old Pagan Romans; a poison of serpents foreseen and threatened in that of Deuteronomy, chapter 32 by the Spirit of God in Moses, to be venomously spit against the Jews, for their rejecting of the Gospel-blessing in the latter end of their Economy. {“For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!” Deut.32:28-29.} Now though the Dragon had been wroth with the woman, yet she and her children ought to have continued wiser than to have licked up the devil’s spittle, and should have kept the Commandments of Jesus Christ. {“And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Rev.12:17.} To speak at Zion, as they have been wont to speak in Sodom and in Egypt, Rev.11:8, is utterly unbecoming among any of the daughters of Judah. Psal.48:11. It is pity that pure Ordinances had not purer expressions attending them, than the purest names that pass among the speech of Ashdod. Neh.13:24. I am afraid as to many, for they are so given up to believe a lie, as to be altogether incurable. If Christ himself were to reason with such sacrament-speakers, he would certainly argue against the incurable, as with the Jews in another case, “why do ye not understand my speech; even because ye cannot hear my word.” Jn.8:43. But as to such whom he teaches to incline their ear, Isa.55:3, I conclude this instance of sacrament-speaking, and put them in remembrance, that the character which Christ gives of his spouse is not that her language is heathenish, but her speech is comely. Song.4:3.

I have been the larger upon this, because some make it to be no fault, as long as they have the custom of so many ‘good men’ on their side, to give reputation to that rank weed which Mr. Hunt’s book smells of, viz., “receiving the sacrament,” and to “receive the sacrament.”

The five and twentieth instance of his Ignorance is of the enjoyments of Heaven. For though all men on earth are very ignorant, as to the transcendent and surpassing Glory of Heaven, I Cor.13:12, yet to express it as Mr. Hunt hath done, argues too much ignorance that is tolerable in a divine, to speak of the souls meeting with Christ in Glory, after this manner, “O the hugging each other!” What an ignorant expression is this! Methinks a divine should be ashamed of it. How could Mr. Hunt express the joy of Heaven between Christ and the soul, by a phrase in which he hath also set forth the joy of the devil, prevailing over the Jews, to accomplish his hellish design against Christ, in taking him out of the way? “And now {says he} the devil begins to laugh, and to hug himself.” {Page 100} As if the same phrase which oddly sets forth an action in Hell, Lk.16:26, was proper to set forth an action in Glory! Oh! Blindness! So much for his ignorances of good things.

The six and twentieth instance shall enter upon his ignorance in Divinity touching evil things. And here in the matter of unbelief, he makes what is said of apostasy, Hebrews 6, to be meant in that text of Unbelief. Jn.8:24. Speaking of sinners he has these words, “but when they refuse to believe in him, and so crucify him, then they show what esteem they have for him.” {Page 170} So upon the same head, “though you may have crucified the Lord afresh,” for he tells us, “unbelief is interpretively no less than a crucifying of Christ, Heb.6:6, seeing they crucified to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to open shame.” Again, “what can you say who crucify the Lord afresh? You own him to be the Son of God, and yet crucify him.” So, “if I may but convince you that he is certainly the Lord of Glory, ye will not crucify him afresh, nor put him to open shame.” Thus he is often at it.

The Holy Ghost speaks of the apostate Jews who went back to the sacrifices of the Law, after they had tasted the good Word of God, and had professed the Sacrifice of Christ in the Gospel. Heb.6:5. Now they were these who crucified him afresh, because Christ had been often crucified typically, but in the “end of the world,” {that is, in the end of the world under the Old Testament Dispensation,} he once put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself, Heb.9:26, and so in his open flesh could be but once for all crucified completely. Heb.10:10. Now as the Jew’s Apostasy was to another Sacrifice, after they had professed the Sacrifice of Christ, so they crucified him afresh typically, as they went back to his typical crucifixions again. For, to crucify him as they had done in the Gospel-Sacrifice, putting Christ to Death, and then to go back from thence {after outward conversion} to crucify him in the typical sacrifices again {inasmuch as the types looked towards an Antitype to come} was a typical Crucifying of Christ afresh. Aye, but now, how ignorant is this, to go and apply it to the common Unbelief of our days, as he and some of his ‘good divines’ have done! Unbelief, though it shuts out Christ, yet it does not take another sacrifice for its object, that types out the Saviour of the body, as these Apostates in the Hebrews did, in going back to an object that once typed him out. Unbelief therefore, which is such a very great Sin in our days, Lk.24:25, is no crucifying of Christ afresh. Well then, for any man to interpret it so, when the Holy Ghost hath laid no Foundation for it, is a fanatic interpretation of the Word; ‘tis also a very ignorant and injurious stroke that defaces the true intent and meaning of that passage about the sacrifices of the Law, abolished in the One Sacrifice, Christ. Heb.10:5-14. To be sure, Unbelief is a very aggravated sin, and there is enough in Scripture to set forth the true nature of it. There is no necessity to insist upon what unbelief is not, in going about to describe and aggravate what it is. {“He came unto his own, and his own received him not.” Jn.1:11.} Howbeit as to that place in Hebrews 6:5, which speaketh of Apostates that have tasted the good Word of God, and yet fall away, verse 6, ‘tis meant of an intellectual, or a rational taste in natural men, when yet there has been no such thing as a Spiritual taste in those men, nor can be so long as they are not born from above.

The seven and twentieth instance of his Ignorance in Divine Matters, is still what pertains unto Unbelief, his making Unbelief and Obstinate Infidelity both one. “Many {says he} condemn the practice of the Jews, and yet are guilty of as bad a Sin themselves, yea, far worse.” {Page 169} Whatever it be, Unbelief is not Jewish, nor Pagan Infidelity. He allows no room to distinguish between them, though the things be quite of a different nature; consequently, the arguments to be set home against it are not the same arguments, much less are they stronger, as he insinuates by common unbelief now to be worse than their infidelity. As Gospel Faith is a Spiritual work of Persuasion, Rom.4:21, in Gospel Views and Evidence, Heb.11:1, so common faith is a natural work. {“These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.” Heb.11:13.} Spiritual Unbelief of the Gospel, or Unbelief of Christ from the want of a Supernatural Work of the Spirit, is nowhere urged in Scripture to be a Sin as bad, yea, far worse than the Jews Crucifying of Christ. He that doth not come to Christ in a Spiritual sense, from a Saving Work of the Holy Ghost, yet may and does in a natural, among all that own Christ. {Acts 8:13, with Gal.1:6, compared with Gal.4:19, whereas the Faith of Christ, Gal.2:16, Rom.3:22, Phil.3:9, that is, the Body of Doctrine Concerning Christ, and Faith in the Living Union in Christ, is quite another thing.} He may receive the Doctrine of his Person and Sufferings, and so every natural man that passes for a Christian among us, doth. Otherwise, not to do this would be indeed a refusing to believe on him, because it is not doing what a man outwardly can do. But proper Gospel Unbelief is a Sin of quite another nature. Also, to aggravate it at the ignorant rate Mr. Hunt uses, of its being a sin as bad, yea, far worse than Crucifying of Christ, is what the Holy Ghost will never bear him out to propose from any text.

The eight and twentieth is this, {of Unbelief still,} “to refuse to believe in Christ is Judas-like to betray the Son of Man with a kiss.” {Page 171} I am for rendering unto Unbelief all the several aggravations by which the Holy Scriptures do in any place {to my understanding} lay the matter open. {Matt.10:15, Num.14:11, Heb.3:15-16, Heb.12:1, Jn.5:43.} But I see no reason to bring in our errors, and tell men that Unbelief is what the Holy Ghost in the Word never told me it was. As if unbelief and a refusal to believe were the same thing. One is the sin of our nature, and the other the sin of our choice. And who sees not that these differ? The one is a Natural Sin, which a natural sinner may surmount and avoid; the other is a Spiritual Sin, which nothing but the Supernatural Grace of God in the spirit of any man alive, cures. Yet this ignorant proposition runs them each into one, and sees not how to distinguish.

The nine and twentieth instance of his ignorance is in speaking of Affliction in this odd phrase, “to leap into the furnace of affliction. Moses left the honor of Pharaoh’s court, to leap as it were into the furnace of affliction.” {Page 122} Moses indeed, “when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather {mind, he chose rather to suffer, not he leapt rather into the furnace} to suffer affliction with the people of God, than {in Pharaoh’s court} to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season.” Heb.11:24-25. Well then, if the Holy Ghost saith he chose this, why cannot a man be contented to choose this, as sufficient to express it? What need he say, Moses left one to leap into the other? The Holy Ghost’s expression of choosing is found, but Mr. Hunt’s phrase of leaping is very corrupt. For though the saint may choose the passive, to suffer affliction, Jn.12:25, and have it brought on him by another instrument, and so through Grace neither flinch or flee from his duty, if God brings sufferings about by some instrumental means, so as that he shall be thrown into the furnace of affliction, or be hereby laid in the furnace of affliction; yet what then? A saint may not choose the active instrumentality, Prov.22:3, as Mr. Hunt hath expressed it, to leap into it.

The thirtieth instance of his ignorance in Divinity, is his odd saying of uncleanness, {more unclean than uncleanness itself,} his words are “what a filthy wretch must that be that Christ cannot cleanse? He must be more unclean than uncleanness itself.” {Page 40} Not to meddle with the Cleansing Virtue of Christ here, nor with the limitations of it; both which things have been consistently argued elsewhere from the Covenant-Settlements, his Father’s Commandment, in his own Saving Relation to those for whom he died. I shall but gloss upon the ignorant hyperbole “more unclean than uncleanness itself.” The Scriptures saith of Free Grace in Christ’s blood, ‘tis a Fountain opened for Sin and for Uncleanness, Zech.13:1, but neither there nor elsewhere doth the Scripture suggest such a phrase, as Sin, and that which is more unclean than uncleanness itself. It may easily be seen that what he wants, even in natural wisdom, Dan.1:4, {short of Scriptural Wisdom} he labors to make up in Divinity with the fantastical part of his rhetoric. But to leave him here, I have now gone through the thirty passages of his ignorance in Divinity.

Now very few words concerning his other ten in Natural Matters.

The one and thirtieth instance of his ignorance, is in reference to the moon as a taper burning out. “Christ {says he} is never compared to the moon, to teach us, that as the moon is continually varying, &c., so while creatures fade, and at last as a taper burn out, Christ is always the same.” {Page 66} If the moon does not burn out as a taper, then his comparison of creatures to her is ill laid. And indeed, according to the laws of comparison, the same thing in comparison must be spoken of both the twain that are compared. Now that the moon should burn out, which with all her light hath no innate heat or fire in her, nor any other light but what is reflected, or cast back on her by the sun, is a piece of nobodies philosophy {I dare say} but his own. That it should burn out as a taper too, is certainly as odd a whimsy, as a journey to that lunar lamp, along with Gonsales², to see it. As if the moon without heat, and with borrowing all her nocturnal regency by so distant a reflection from the ruling sun, Gen.1:16, was matter kindled with an active flame of fire. It’s very odd too, that any other creatures {if his meaning only ran there, not understanding the laws of speech} which have no fire in them, neither actual fire, nor potential fire, nor any unctuous matter to feed it, should be said to burn out. ‘Tis a very odd thing to say of our meat, drink and clothes, which consume and fade away, that they burn out as a taper! I should be loth to have that burning meat in my bowels, or burning suit upon my back; nor do I see how it can be said of any drink; no not of Bordeaux wine, red hot.

The two and thirtieth instance of his ignorance, is of lilies upon the mountains. “No lilies {says he} are like those in the Valley; valleys being low places, lilies thrive there, when those upon the mountains are scorched, and wither away, and so the lily in the fat valley dost excel that which grows upon the parched and scorched mountains or hills.” {Page 95} Natural acquaintance with what is said of the lily, would have told him it is a soft and tender flower; that it will not endure the hard, stony and barren soil of the mountains, neither grows at all upon those parched and scorched places of the earth. The mountains of the world and its hills do want a fit earth and situation to drink in the rain that falls, and so are parched by the sun, when a stronger and fruitful soil holds it. Otherwise, mountains have a cooler air than the valleys, but being drier, by reason of their stoniness, and being more impervious to the rains that descend upon them, they are in hot weather scorched up, when lower places are not. But all this discovers that the mountains are no agreeable soul for the production {and this makes it far less than the thriving} of the lily. It was therefore an ignorant comparison to tell us, that those lilies of the fat valley excel what are not in being to be excelled. What, no medium between the waterish valleys, and the parched and scorched mountains, or hills, for other lilies in a mixed soil to grow? Lily of the valleys, also; lily among thorns we read of, but sure never mountain lilies, till we read it in our New Florist.

The third and thirtieth instance of his ignorance, is about a servant’s telling a mournful story when in his wounds almost ready to give up the ghost, “the servant {says he} lies groaning and bleeding, and almost ready to give up the ghost; at last the master returns, who finds his servant sorely wounded; who tells him a mournful story, &c.” {Page 143} I observe, that when in another part of his book he had been describing of Christ upon the Cross ready to give up the ghost, he tells us most odiously how he uttered nothing on it but dying sobs and groans; but here’s a poor, mere creature robbed, groans, bleeds of his wounds which he has received, and almost ready to give up the ghost, yet he can tell his master a story of the whole business at last. “At last the master returns,” when by Mr. Hunt’s apologue {or fable} you would rather have thought that the poor servant should have been fabled to have bled or languished to death, because ready to give up the ghost, and such a space of time too between his readiness to expire, and his master’s return. Lo! Then the relator hath notably put a tongue in almost a dead man’s mouth, for when his master returns, this servant has words at will, who presently represents the matter to him and all the doleful tragedy, as how “he cried for help, found none, did the utmost he could to secure his master’s house and himself, but being overpowered by the enemies, received these wounds.” Now I confess I should have wondered any mere man, almost ready to give up the ghost, should have had so much ghost left, so much spirit remaining, so much breath in his corpse, as to have uttered half these words, which Mr. Hunt {who felt none of the wounds} has so ignorantly, and be sure very unacquaintedly with the man’s condition, uttered for him!

The four and thirtieth instance of his ignorance, is about the pity of the rich man’s dogs, “what little notice {says he} did the rich man take of Lazarus? His dog showed more pity than he.” {Page 158} Say so? What pity could the rich man’s dogs have to show? Bowels of compassions, mercy, and the like {which all lie in that word pity} are the affections of the reasonable creature. But I never found in any writer till now, that they are the affections of the brute too. And albeit, I am not for sinking the brute so low, as with some of the modern philosophers, to make them machines, and as Descartes, mere automata, {René Descartes, “Passions of the Soul,” 1649,} the moving frames of insensate beings. Prov.12:10. Yet I am not for screwing the matter up to such a pitch, as to believe that the brutal soul partakes of any of the properties of the rational. For pity is founded in reason. Besides, he hath made the dog’s soul to be superior to the man’s, in the high flown comparison, of more pity than the rich man had himself. ‘Tis pity that this half-coddled scholar had had nothing in him of the academic, to have led him through a sea of natural wisdom, I Kings 4:33, though no higher in these things than Aristotle himself. For, that would have taught him better in the doctrine of brutes, which have all sensation and providential instinct {though it may be, this is above Aristotle’s philosophy} but they have no reason or pity. The dogs licked the sores of Lazarus from a Canine Appetite.

The fifth and thirtieth instance of his talent, is about that horrid piece of ignorance, the hoof of every family. ‘Tis done in these words, “one would think {says he, speaking of the plenteous preaching of the Gospel} that every family should come with their young and with their old, and not one hoof be left behind.” {Page 146} The Arminianism of it hath been shown afore, but now the nonsense. What, did he think of every family that there was the cloven foot among them? They are cattle that be cloven footed. Would he have these brought to Sermons? These are none of the family sure, but a stock and kind by themselves. As to that sound of the hoof in Exodus he seems to have built on, it was spoken of the Israelitish cattle, because of their sacrifices to be offered up unto the Lord in the Wilderness. “And Moses said, thou must give us also sacrifices and burnt offerings, that we may sacrifice unto the LORD our God. Our cattle also shall go with us; there shall not an hoof be left behind; for thereof must we take to serve the LORD our God; and we know not with what we must serve the LORD, until we come thither.” Exod.10:25-26. Here it was spoken properly, necessarily, significantly and altogether of their cattle. ‘Tis not spoken of men, women and children. So when Moses said, “we will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go; for we must hold a feast unto the LORD,” verse 9, he plainly distinguishes the people, young and old, from the cattle, also shows pertinently for what reason the cattle were to go with them. But now set aside Moses’ reason for the hoof’s departure out of Egypt with the Israelites, and then tell me what analogy there is in it with Mr. Hunt’s purpose. He was speaking of sinners touching their coming to Christ, or leastwise of their coming to Sermons. What hoof comes to him or comes to them? What in men and women? What hoof in every family? Oh! Blind zeal without either knowledge or discretion!

The six and thirtieth instance of his ignorance, is about making so many several men to be so many several candlesticks. The passage is this, “and if instead of being candlesticks ourselves to hold forth this light, &c.” {Page 185} Elsewhere he spoke the truth, “the candlesticks {says he} were those seven Churches. Rev.2:1.” {Page 93} I will only therefore upon this Church History remark, that sure if himself be one of these candlesticks, he wanted a better light in the socket, when he uttered so ill an application.

The seven and thirtieth instance of his improprieties is about a table, {under the head of Christ’s nourishing virtue,} “he keeps a table richly decked,” says he. {Page 61} What, had he no better a phrase out of the Gospel Feast? Anybody else {perhaps} would have thought it most proper to say, a table richly furnished, except this new master of the sentences; for decking is one thing, but furniture of a table is another. A table prepared, a table spread, a table furnished I have read of; and all properly and wisely, but I never read, till in this author, of a table decked. But I’ll proceed, for I design the utmost brevity.

The eight and thirtieth instance is of Haman made a lackey to proclaim Mordechai’s advancement. “To his unspeakable grief {says he} he is forced as a lackey to proclaim through the city, thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delighteth to honor.” {Page 179} Who besides would have thought of a lackey to proclaim the king’s pleasure? Proclamation uses {when done in the Prince’s name} to be made by some herald, or else a magistrate, or some other officer in the Government, but never by a {suppose a Gentleman’s, Nobleman’s, or Prince’s} lackey.

The nine and thirtieth instance is of a Pearl or Jewel, calling it one of prize. “The pearl of great prize.” And elsewhere, “as if a man having his house on fire, in which there was one jewel of great prize.” {Page 148} Had it not been written so twice over, I should rather have ascribed it to the printer’s mistake than his own. Especially, if his errata {given us at the end} had but told us so. As it is I must conclude it his own. Prize is spoken of the goal or end of a race. And thus himself observes in other places. “Is this the prize I have been running for?” {Page 217} And “was not this the prize thou at first did set out for?” {Page 215} Whereas, price is the word that’s always spoken of a Pearl or Jewel. It is a Pearl of price, not a Pearl of prize. A jewel of worth {which price signifies} not a jewel of a reward for running, as prize intends. And thus am I fain to teach a man in the Ministry to read and spell English. Doubtless, the Apostles of our Lord, and all the primitive pastors could read and spell their mother-tongue distinctly. Jesus taught them to do that at first setting out. For this cause, as notice was taken of Peter and John that they were ignorant and unlearned men, Acts 4:13, in all other learning except Preaching the Gospel, and abilities to write the same with true spelling it in their mother-tongue; so likewise, the same observers took notice of them “that they had been with Jesus.” Now it is expressly said of our Lord, that the Pharisees marveled, “how knoweth this man letters having never learnt?” Jn.7:15. Whereby it appears upon the compare and accurate writings of those men in Greek, and of Matthew in Hebrew, that as Jesus who never learnt at school, would yet keep to the propriety of a tongue in teaching the Gospel, even when hard words were made use of, so he taught the Apostles to do the same.

The fortieth instance is in that uncouth saying of his, “thus I have at last finished.” {Page 129} Why, whoever finished at first? Did he think it practicable to bring both ends of his discourse together? Whatever it be, I am sure his finishing is not very far off from his beginning. He had no need {for the cause of a few small pages length} to have penned it out so observably in a pleonasm, unless indeed there had been a redundancy in labor through divers copious arguments. But as the matter lies, ‘tis only the doctrinal part begun {at page 72} and slightly carried on for not full 60 additional pages, and then popped off at page 129, with a “thus have I at last finished.” However, if the matter had been aptly digested, I must have spoken in its praise, as a concise piece of work!

I had once thought to have presented an entire chapter of his slips; howbeit I have altered my thoughts in the matter, and will be shorter upon this head. His ignorant way of writing impassable for impassible is notorious; for in speaking of Christ, “it was necessary {says he} he should assume a body, the Divine Nature being impassable.” {Page 125} A barbarous word in that place especially! Impassable is {if it signifies anything} that which cannot be passed or gone through; and what is that to Christ’s taking our nature to suffer in, of which he was speaking? Impassible {on the other side} is that which cannot suffer. Now there lay his sense, which he ought to have expressed properly, and not in barbarism.

He hath likewise a barbarous way of writing Nicephorus by the sound, at page 64, “I remember {says he} a passage I have read, reported by Niceferus, that Abgarus, a great man that lived in the days of Christ’s flesh, who, hearing of his miracles, sent a Limner to draw his picture; but when he came, his countenance so dazzled his eyes, that he could not perform his work.” {Page 64} Instead of “pho” in the third syllable, Mr. Hunt represents it in a most deformed manner with “fe” and his errata accounts not for it. And that too whilst he undertook to inform his reader in a piece of very spurious or forged history, which he tells us out of some paltry dependence upon Nicephorus Callistus, the son of Xanthopoulos. This Nicephorus wrote not, till towards the beginning of the fourteenth century, or, as some, the latter end of the thirteenth, about the time of Andronicus Junior. He is reckoned a most superstitious and spurious writer in many things; and in this Monkish story of Agbarus {which some write Abgarus,} the Toparch or King of Edessa, or Rhoa, a city of Mesopotamia, this Nicephorus doth woefully murder and mistake a far more useful account given of that Prince, than the aforesaid superstition. I have seen the account in Eusebius, who wrote many hundred years before Nicephorus; and albeit the stories of Agbarus be severally written by both in the Greek tongue, yet the rehearsal is nothing alike in Nicephorus to what I more firmly rely on in Eusebius. Now what should our good brother Mr. Hunt say to all this? Why surely, he who plainly murders the name, destroying the native orthography of his name, can be no judge of the truth, or antiquity of the thing in Church History, for want of different authors to compare.

I had thought that I had formally driven him from his ignorant scraps of literature, in a Pedagogical letter, wherein I altogether handled him for the sake of such scraps, in the publishing of his first book, not as a divine, but a bad scholar. I treated him then only with a rod in hand, because I had to do with him in the present time. I aimed then to beat him off from the flourishes he never understood, nor has had any education to make the true judgment on. I must confess he has been very sparing in this last book, and we have seen but now and then a tug at the laborious lifts of Sisyphus; yet no sooner does he pretend to be lifting, but the weight tumbles on his head. {Sisyphus, condemned in Tartarus to an Eternity of rolling a boulder uphill then watching it roll back down again.} In short, it had been better if he had given us a full copy of the Errata of his English, then have blundered farther.

It is a lame account he comes off with {after his last page of the treatise} as the reason why he did it, essentially that “some few lesser mistakes in letters and mispointings the reader is desired to rectify with his pen.” As if all literal mistakes did not consist of mistakes in letters, and as if mispointings did not spoil sense. He should have corrected many of his barbarous words with his own pen in the Errata of the book, since he hath betaken himself to that common retreat. What need we have seen Sampson thrice over {with a p} in one page, page 101, and sinagogue at page 121; as if the first syllable had forfeited its Greek extraction by appearing in his book? {To go no further in the crowd that are too tedious to rehearse.} He will find it to be always written Samson, Synagogue, &c., in our common Bibles.

What a puzzle is that {which no Errata account for} in bits and chips of words, set forth in these horrid barbarisms. “To reveal Christ tothels of sou any of our hearers?” {Page 184} Why did he not likewise in his Errata block out the tautology ever, ever, which makes such bad English in that passage, “more gloriously attended than ever any of the kings, or mighty men of the earth ever were!” {Page 96} These things I shall now dismiss, and enter again upon that which is very material, having done with it ignorances aforesaid. For in all these things I have some hopes that the Lord may please to humble this good man, and prick the bladder, for he is carrying it so haughtily {a common fault in good men, and be sure none of their goodness} as I have both seen and heard of him by many even to this day.

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1^ Daniel Chamier {1564–1621} was a Huguenot minister in France, who studied at the University of Orange and at Geneva under Theodore Beza.

2^ The Man in the Moon, a book by Church of England Bishop Francis Godwin {1562–1633,} first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales, describing a “voyage of utopian discovery.”