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was in use when the Thirty-nine Articles were made, has it (hell). But the Bible that was in Queen Elizabeth's time, when the Articles were confirmed, reads it (grave), and so it continued till the new translation in King James's time, and then 'tis hell again. But by this we may gather the Church of England declined, as much as they could, the descent; otherwise they never would have altered the Bible.

2. He descended into hell. This may be the interpretation 10 of it. He may be dead and buried, then his soul ascended into heaven. Afterwards he descended again into hell, that is, into the grave, to fetch his body, and to rise again. The ground of this interpretation is taken from the Platonic

The text is changed in the Geneva Bible (1557) which reads 'grave' for hell. This version was in common private use, and was most favoured by the Puritan party, but it was not authorised or appointed to be read in church. It does not appear, therefore, that the Church of England at any time 'altered the Bible,' as Selden incorrectly says.

1. 13. the Platonic learning] That a metempsychosis was a Platonic doctrine is certain. It appears in the story of Er, the son of Arminius, in Rep. x. and in the Phaedrus 248, 249, where, in one passage, the soul which is to take a new body is said to fall to the earth. So among the later Platonists, Porphyry speaks of τὰς ψυχὰς εἰς γένεσιν KaTLOVσas (De Antro Nympharum, sec. 10), and again in his 'Apopμai πρòs тà voηтá, sec. 32. Conf. also Plotinus, Enneades, Enn. 4, lib. 8, Περὶ τῆς εἰς τὰ σώματα καθόδου τῆς ψυχῆς, passim : and especially in § 4. Εἴληπται οὖν (ἡ ψυχὴ) πεσοῦσα, καὶ πρὸς τῷ δεσμῷ οὖσα ... τεθάφθαι τε λέγεται καὶ ἐν σπηλαίῳ εἶναι.

But that these views affected the language of the early Christians, and that they understood the descent into hell in Selden's sense of the words, there is nothing to show, and there is abundant evidence to the contrary. On this subject the Greek and Latin fathers speak with one voice. They understand Christ's descent into hell as a fact distinct from his burial and resurrection. It is a literal visit to the lower regions where the souls of the dead were detained, and from which the souls of the old prophets and saints were liberated at Christ's coming. Pearson, in his long and learned discussion on the descent, puts the question, thus far, beyond all reasonable doubt. Archbishop Usher, writing on the descent, shows out of Plato and other philosophers and poets, that the word Hades is used to signify

learning, who held a metempsychosis, and when a soul did descend from heaven to take another body, they called it katáßaσiv eis adŋv, taking adŋs for the lower world, the state of mortality. Now the first Christians, many of them, were Platonic philosophers, and no question spoke such language as then was understood amongst them. To understand by hell, the grave, is no tautology, because the creed first tells what Christ suffered, He was crucified, dead, and buried; then it tells us what he did, He descended into hell, the third day he rose again, he ascended, &c.

LII.

HOLY-DAYS.

THEY say the Church imposes holy-days. There's no such thing, though the number of holy-days is set down in some of our Common-prayer books1. Yet that has relation to an act of parliament, which forbids the keeping of any other holy-days. The ground thereof was the multitude of holy-days in time of popery. But those that are

1 Books, H. 2] book, H.

a general invisible future state of the soul after it is separated from the body, and he interprets the descent accordingly. Conf. Parr's Life of Usher, Appendix 27. Selden's interpretation appears to be entirely his own. I can find no other authority for it.

1. 15. an act of parliament, which forbids &c.] This is the 5 and 6 of Edward VI, ch. 3, which enacts: 'that all the days hereafter mentioned shall be kept and commanded to be kept holy-days, and none other . . . and that none other day shall be kept and commanded to be kept holy-day, or to abstain from lawful bodily labour.' The list given corresponds with that now in the Book of Common Prayer. Selden's remark must have been made at some date before June 8, 1647, when an Ordinance was put out by Parliament that festivals called holy-days were no longer to be observed, any law, statute, custom or canon to the contrary notwithstanding. Rushworth, Collections, vol. vi. p. 548.

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kept, are kept by the custom of the country; and I hope you will not say the Church imposes that.

LIII.

HUMILITY.

I. HUMILITY is a virtue all preach, none practise, and yet every body is content to hear. The master thinks it good doctrine for his servant, the laity for the clergy, and the clergy for the laity.

2. There is humilitas quædam in vitio. If a man does not take notice of that excellency and perfection that is in 10 himself, how can he be thankful to God, who is the author of all excellency and perfection? Nay, if a man has too mean an opinion of himself, 'twill render him unserviceable both to God and man.

3. Pride may be allowed to this or that degree, else a man cannot keep up his dignity. In gluttony' there must be eating, in drunkenness there must be drinking; 'tis not the eating, nor 'tis not the drinking that is to be blamed, but the excess. So in pride.

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LIV.

IDOLATRY.

IDOLATRY is in a man's own thought, not in the opinion of another. Put case I bow to the altar, why am I guilty of

1 Gluttony, S.] gluttons, H. and H. 2.

1. 21. Put case I bow &c.] This practice had been attacked as idolatrous by Burton, in his Sermon for God and the King (p. 105), and had been described by Prynne, in his Histrio-mastix (p. 236), as 'our late crouching and ducking unto newly erected altars, a ceremony much in use with idolatrous Papists heretofore, and derived by them

idolatry? Because a stander-by thinks so? I am sure I do not believe the altar to be God, and the God I worship may be bowed to in all places, and at all times.

LV.

JEWS.

1. GOD at the first gave laws to all mankind, but afterwards he gave peculiar laws to the Jews, which they only were to observe. Just as we have the common law for all England, and yet you have some corporations that, besides that, have peculiar laws and privileges to themselves.

2. Talk what you will of the Jews, that they are cursed, 10 they thrive where'er they come; they are able to oblige the prince of their country by lending him money; none of them beg; they keep together; and for their being hated, my life for yours, the Christians hate one another as much.

LVI.

INVINCIBLE IGNORANCE.

'Tis all one to me, if I am told of Christ, or some mystery of Christianity, if I am not capable of understanding it, as if I am not told at all, my ignorance is as invincible; and therefore 'tis vain to call their ignorance only invincible, who never were told of Christ. The trick of it is to advance 20 the priest, whilst the Church of Rome says a man must be told of Christ by one thus and thus ordained.

from pagan practices.' Laud, in his speech at the censure of Burton, Bastwick and Prynne, justifies it at great length, and substantially for the same reasons as Selden. See Laud's Works, vol. vi. p. 55 ff. But he does not use Selden's phrase of bowing to the altar. What he defends is carefully guarded as bowing towards the altar.

LVII.

IMAGES.

I. THE papists taking away the second commandment, is not haply so horrid a thing, nor so unreasonable amongst Christians as we make it. For the Jews, they could make no figure of God but they must commit idolatry, because he had taken no shape; but since the assumption of our flesh, we know what shape to picture God in. Nor do I know why we may not make his image, provided we be sure what it is as we say St. Luke took the picture of the Virgin TO Mary, and St. Veronica of our Saviour. Otherwise it would be no honour to the king, to make a picture and call it the king's picture, when 'tis nothing like him.

2. Though the learned papists pray not to images, yet 'tis to be feared the ignorant do; as appears by that tale of St. Nicholas in Spain. A countryman used to offer daily to St. Nicholas's image; at length by a mischance the image was broken, and a new one made of his own plumtree; after that the man forbore. Being complained of to his Ordinary, he answered, 'tis true, he used to offer to the 20 old image, but to the new he could not find in his heart because he knew it was a piece of his own plum-tree. You see what opinion this man had of the image; and to this tended the bowing of their images, the twinkling of their eyes, the virgin's milk, &c. Had they only meant representations, a picture would have done it without these

1. 2. The papists taking away &c.] The papists do not do this in terms. They read the second Commandment continuously with the first, and as forming part of the first. The first Commandment they take as 'Thou shalt have none other Gods before me, i. e. in my presence,' and they interpret the second as enlarging upon and explaining this. See e. g. the Douay Version-'Thou shalt not have strange Gods before me' (Latin Vulgate, coram me)—explained in the notes to Haydocke's edition of the version as='in my presence. I shall not be content to be adored with idols.'

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