a Devil, will be almost confined to the Gospel ; where the subject spoken of being men vexed with evil spirits, could admit no other sense or use; and yet St. Luke, the best languaged of the evangelists, knowing the word to be ambiguous, and therefore, as it were, to distinguish it once for all, doth the first time he useth it, do it with an explication, chap. iv. verse 33, "There was," saith he, "a man in the synagogue, * having the spirit of an unclean demon,"

Thus much of the word demon in Scripture; whereby, I hope, it appears that this place of my text is not the only place where the word is used according to the notion of Gentiles and their theologists.

But you will say, Did any of the Fathers or ancients expound it thus in this place? If they had done so the Mystery of Iniquity could never have taken such footing; which because it was to come according to Divine disposition, what wonder, then, if this were hidden from their eyes? Howsoever it may seem that God left not his Spirit without a witness; for, as I take it, Epiphanius, one of the most zealous of the Fathers of his time against saint worship then peeping, took the doctrines of demons, in my text, for a doctrine of worshipping dead men. You may read him in the seventy-eighth heresy towards the conclusion, where, upon occasion of some who made a Goddess of the blessed Virgin, and offered a cake unto her as the Queen of Heaven, he quotes this place of my text con* ἔχων πνεῦμα Δαιμονίου ἀκαθάρτου.

cerning them, saying,* "That also of the apostle is fulfilled in these; some shall apostatize from the sound doctrine, giving heed to fables and doctrines of demons; for, saith he, they shall be worshippers of dead men, as they were worshipped in Israel." Are not these last words an exposition of the doctrines of demons? But what, you will say, doth he mean by the dead worshipped in Israel? I suppose he means their Baalim, who, as is already shewn, were nothing else but demons or deified ghosts of men deceased. Yet he brings in two examples besides ; one of the Sichemites in his time, who had a Goddess or Demoness under the name of Jephtha's daughter; another of the Egyptians, who worshipped Thermutis, that daughter of Pharaoh, which brought up Moses. Some, as Beza, would have these words of Epiphanius to be a part of the text itself, in some copy which he used. But how is that likely, when no other Father once mentions any such reading? Nay it appears, moreover, that Epiphanius intended to explain the words as he quoted them, as he doth the faith, by "the sound doctrine," and

erroneous spirits, by § "fables," and so || “giving heed to doctrines of demons" by "worshipping dead men." Otherwise we must say he used

† πληροῦται γὰρ καὶ ἐπὶ τούτους τό, ̓Αποστήσονταί τινες τῆς ὑγιέος διδασκαλίας, προσέχοντες μύθοις καὶ διδασκαλίαις Δαιμονιών· ἔσονται γάρ, φησὶ, ΝΕΚΡΟΙΣ λατρεύοντες, ὥς καὶ ἐν τῷ Ισράηλ ἐσεβάσθησαν.

* πίστις. † ὑγίης διδασκάλια. * πνεύματα πλάνης. 5 μύθοι. || προσέχοντες διδασκαλίαις Δαιμονίων. [ λατρεύοντες τοῖς νέκροις.

:

either a very corrupt copy, or quoted very carelessly. But grant that Epiphanius read so: either this reading was true, and so I have enough because then the apostle with his "they shall be worshippers, &c.," should expound himself by Demons to mean the deifying of the dead or it was not the original reading, but added by some one or other for explication; and so it will follow, that those who did it made no question but that the words there contained some such thing as worshipping of the dead. Therefore take it which way you will, it will follow that some such matter as we speak of was in times past supposed to be in this text and prophecy.

CHAPTER VII.

Why those words in the description of the mystery of godliness, received into glory, are set last.—That praying to saints glorified, as mediators and agents for us with God, is Idolatry.-For the proof of this several grounds are laid down. To be prayed to "in heaven," to present our devotions to God, and to deal as an agent and mediator between us and him, is a prerogative appropriate to Christ, a flower of his glory, and exaltation to sit at God's right hand, a royalty incommunicable to any other.-That none but Christ, our High Priest, is to be an agent for us with God in the heavens, was figured under the law, in that the high priest alone had to do in the most holy place, and there was to be agent for the people.-That though Christ, in regard of his person, was capable of this god-like glory and royalty, yet it was the will of God that he should purchase it by suffering an unimitable death.—This proved from several testimonies of Scripture.-Saint worship is a denial of Christ's prerogative.-Bread worship in the Eucharist, to what kind of Idolatry it may be reduced.— How saint worship crept into the Church.

Now I come to the second point, to maintain and prove that praying to saints glorified, as mediators and agents for us with God, is justly charged with idolatry.

For this is the hinge whereupon not only the application of my text, but its interpretation, chiefly turneth. For I told you in the beginning, that my text depended upon the last words of the former chapter and verse, received into glory; which were, therefore, out of their due order, put in the last place, because my text was imme

diately to be inferred upon them. The like misplacing, and for the like reason, see in Heb. xii. 23, where in a catalogue or recension of the parts of the Church "Christ the head," and "the sprinkling of his blood" is mentioned in the last place, and after the "spirits of just men,' because the next verses are continued upon this sprinkling of Christ's blood: "ye are come to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, which speaketh better things than that of Abel;" whereas the right order would have been, first, "God the judge of all;" secondly, "Christ the mediator of the new covenant;" and thirdly, in the last place, "the spirits of just men made perfect." See also Rev. i. 5, where Christ is named after the seven spirits for the like reason. Agreeably, therefore, to this dependance of my text, I am to shew, that the invocation of saints glorified implies an apostasy from Christ, and a denial of his glory and majesty, whereunto he is installed by his assumption into heaven, to sit at the right hand of God. Which before I do, I must premise some general grounds, as followeth. First, that as God is One, and without all multiplicity, so must the honour and service which is given unto him have no communicability. Isaiah xlii. 8. I am the LORD, that is my name, and my glory will I not give unto another, nor my praise to graven images; for the one-most