NUMBER 27.

Of Fasting.

DR. BURNET tells us, in his letters of travels, that the priests of Italy have found out a secret to make men miserable, in spight of all the abundance and profusion wherewith nature hath blessed that happy climate. They measure their own happiness by the people's calamity; enjoy no pleasures in which they take any part; nor are satisfied with all the plunder and depredations which they make upon them, unless they can also heighten their own relish, by making the little which they leave to the laity, insipid and tasteless.

As one instance of this truth; he informs us, that the priests have made it a principle of religion in the people, to mingle water with their wine in the cask, which soon sours it; whereas they always keep their own pure and unmixed, because they say that it is to be used in the sacrement; and so he observes, that travellers can drink no good wine but what they buy from the convents.

For this and such like reasons they preach penances, mortification, fasting, and a contempt of worldly riches, and of all those earthly blessings, which indulgent heaven has given to wretched mortals, to alleviate their sorrows, sweeten their calamities, and make the nauseous draught of life go down; whereas, we cannot better shew our acknowledgments and gratitude to the author of them, than by making a proper use of the good things which he has given us, and by enjoying them in every degree, which will not destroy that enjoyment, and change it into a misfortune.

If we drink or eat more than our heads will carry, or our stomachs digest, distempers, indiscretions, and sometimes murders succeed; and if we spend faster than our incomes will supply, there is a sure foundation laid for future want and misery: but nothing can be more absurd or impious, than to make abstinence from food or pleasures meritorious, any farther than it conduces to health, or qualifies us for business. Almighty God reserved but one tree in all Paradise from our first parents; but the priests would keep them all from their posterity.

Besides, the luxury of the rich (when it does not exceed the bounds of virtue and prudence) is the wealth and support of the poor, and the best judged charity for, what we give in gross sums to, or for the use of those who appear to be in necessity, is often mistaken, and applied to maintain present idleness, or reward past extravagance; and sometimes too, I doubt, is pocketed by those who are trusted to distribute it whereas whatever is laid out upon the produce of labour, and for such manufactures as employ multitudes of people, can never be misapplied. It might easily be made to appear, that there is not a piece of wrought silk, linen, or woollen cloth, which has not contributed to the maintenance of more than an hundred thousand industrious people, who must all be kept alive one way or other.

As it is the highest crime to destroy our beings, so it is proportionably wicked to endeavour to make them miserable: the glory and hon

our of God are best consulted, in promoting the happiness of mankind. It is profane, and a kind of blasphemy, to attempt to persuade people that the good God takes pleasure in the vexing and tormenting his creatures. He is not pleased by human sacrifices, nor by human sufferings of any kind. A pale aspect, the griping of the guts, wry and distorted faces, and being ghosts before our time, will contribute to no ends of religion; and therefore, I confess, that I cannot see how fasting can serve God, or answer any purposes of devotion, or indeed can enhance any appetite, unless to a good dinner.

Nothing consequently can be more ridiculous, than for the Romanish clergy to tell us, that any part of religion consists in fasting days, and fasting weeks; which oblige the wretched people to insipid and unwholesome diet, whilst they indulge themselves, and riot in the richest wines, and the luxurious dishes of salmon and turbatt; with all the costly inhabitants of the liquid element. Besides, it is impolitick, as well as uncharitable; it discourages trade and industry, depopulates nations, and depreciates matrimony, by rendering the people unable to maintain and raise their families.

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Riches and labour are two words which signify the same thing. Nature spontaneously supplies but little to the use of man; all the rest is the produce of invention and industry and therefore whatever does contribute to make mankind idle and less useful to one another, conduces so far to their want and misery. One holy-day, strictly kept, robs the poor of more than a whole year's charity will supply. A little loose money picked up at the church doors, and afterwards divided between the parson, church-wardens, and a few favourite objects, will make but poor amends for the taxation of the nation, and of every person in it, with the loss of a day's labour, and profit of his trade; which loss probably cannot amount to less than two hundred thousand pounds, without having any regard to the extravagance and debaucheries committed upon those days; which often consume the acquisitions of a week, and render the common people listless, and unwilling to return to their labour again. I may therefore venture to affirm, that there is more charity in taking away one saint's day, than in building and endowing twenty colleges.

However, to do right to my countrymen and their genuine clergy, I must freely confess, that we suffer very little from the penitential observance or fasting part of our holy days; for the poor do not fast at all, unless they can get nothing to eat; and the rich, in imitation of their guides, hold out no longer than is necessary to digest their former excesses, and get better stomachs to a double dinner as old experienced sinners often live a day or two with sobriety and innocence, to enjoy a debauch the remaining part of the week. At the universities, as I am told, it is quite given up, and there is not more epicurism than on those days; and to their churches there are ancient vestries annexed, which are the consecrated repositories of pipes, sack and tobacco, where the reverends take regularly a whiff and a cup, to prepare them for the fatigues of the ensuing service.

But how little soever holy-days and stated fasts contribute either to the temporal or eternal happiness of the laity, yet the Romanish clergy have been able sufficiently to find their own account in them. When all other shops are shut, theirs are open; where they sell their spiritu

al cargo of grimaces, visions, beads, indulgencies, and masses, for silver and gold, lands and tenements; and to enhance the value of their merchandize, and persuade the people of the reasonableness of such an exchange, they make it their business, and exert all their endeavours, to depreciate worldly happiness, and cry down all the good things of this earth, that they may have them all to themselves. If they can extinguish the appetites which God has given us, and teach us the secret to live without our estates, or to make us think it dangerous to live on them, they hope to have them for their pains; for who can have a better title to our superfluities than our spiritual guides, who have inspir→ ed us with so much refined devotion, and have given to us lasting estates in paradise, in lieu of a few momentary pleasures, and frail and earthly tabernacles below?

By these arts, and many others, which I shall shew in the progress of this paper, the priests are become possessed of so much dominion and wealth.

T.

NUMBER 28.

Of Authority.

By faith is often, if not most commonly, meant, an inward persuasion er determined assent of the mind to a religious proposition affirmed, or denied ; and such consent can never be given but by the conveyance, and from full conviction, of the senses, or the manifest operation of the Holy Ghost; and therefore must depend wholly upon what appears to be infallible inspiration, or infallible information. In this sense of the word, I doubt there can be no such thing in the world; for as no man living ever saw the miracles of Christ and his apostles, or can prove his particular system from self-evident propositions, or can be sure that he is inspired by the Holy Ghost; so he cannot have faith in this sense, whatever he himself may imagine.

Therefore the only reasonable sense of the word is, an assent of the mind to the truth of a proposition, upon probable arguments, or upon the testimony of other persons; which can never produce certainty, but only opinion or belief; which must be stronger or weaker, according to the many degrees of probability. A probable evidence can only produce a suitable assent; and when any thing does not appear at all probable to us, we cannot avoid dissenting as to the truth of it. Almighty God does not require of us to give the lye to our understandings, and to put out and extinguish the only light he has given to men, by which they can discern truth from falsehood, and virtue from vice.

The apostles and evangelists, who were evidently endowed from above with extraordinary gifts and graces, were undeniable witnesses of the truth of the gospel, to those who saw their miracles: and their writings, and the testimony which they bequeathed to their followers, sealed, as it was, with their blood, have passed the examination of ma

ny ages, and constitute the highest degree of human probability, and consequently carry along with them an irresistible authority, and can admit of no disobedience or dispute: they are a real authority, in the most strict sense of the word; I mean, as it is applied to the propagation of religious opinions, and as producing a lively faith next to persua

sion.

But no decisions or resolutions of uninspired men are, or ought to be, of any weight with us, but so far as they will bear the examination of our senses and our reason. The only motive which any man can have to believe, or to put this confidence in another, is, that the person trusted is not deceived himself, and will not deceive him; neither of which he can have any tolerable assurance of: for no man is infallible; and the gravest and most solemn pretenders, are as easily cheated as the meer vulgar; and, what is more, will as often lye and cheat others; and therefore there can be no such thing as authority in this sense amongst men. For let a matter in itself be ever so certain, I am by no precept human or divine obliged to believe it true, till it is proved true; and it is the business of my reason alone to distinguish what is so from what is otherwise.

God's word, though to be believed without proof, yet ought first to be proved to be his; which proof, it is the province of my understanding to examine. The words and allegations of men, or of the church, ought, before they are believed, to be proved, either by divine authority, or by reason: If by reason; then reason must judge of reason, and every man who has it, is a judge: If by divine authority; even here our reason must be satisfied, whether it be divine authority or not. So the human authority is either nothing at all; or at most only an opportunity given, or an invitation made, to examine by private judgment, the truth of what it says.

All books therefore, except the Holy scriptures, and all names, ex-. cept those of our blessed Saviour and his inspired followers, ought to be of no authority with us, any farther than to convince our understandings by solid arguments, and self-evident truths; and a beggar or a cobler, when he can do this, is so far entitled to equal credit, or, if you will, to equal authority, with councils and fathers.

Every man, that reasons with you, appeals to your reason, and his arguments lie at your mercy, whether you will believe them or no ; and every man, who brings you only his assertions, ought also to bring you his proofs, or else you are at full liberty to reject or despise them: It adds nothing to his weight in. this matter, that perhaps he wears a cloven cap or a sable gown: There have been no greater deceivers of mankind, than such as have worn these emblems of gravity; and indeed gravity has ever been one essential characteristick of imposture.

There is no authority in sounding and sanctified names, whether they be those of archbishops, bishops, priests, or deacons. It is very certain, that these goodly words are so far from having any charm in them against deceit and roguery, that the completest of all villanies, and the most masterly and mischievous of all delusions, have been, and still are protected and propagated by them in popish and other priestridden nations. His holiness and most holy, are terms appropriated to St. Peter's chair, (and in our precious pope Laud's day they began

to be current at Lambeth) although most that filled that chair, have lived at defiance with God and man, and were the greatest deceivers and disturbers of the world.

Nor is there any certain authority in learning of any kind or degree, who are better scholars, or greater rogues, than the jesuits? Who was a more learned man, or a greater simpleton, than Mr. Dodwell? And, as to his genuine ancestors, Aquinas and Scotus, those celebrated founders of the schools; who have been long the infallible guides of the infallible church; they were the most voluminous and most unintelligible dunces that ever dabbled in sophestry, and darkened common

sense.

Pray what evidence of truth necessarily attends the knowledge of the oriental tongues? The jews understand Hebrew, and the turks Arabick; and yet both continue fierce and obstinate enemies to Christian

ity.

Nor are men the more to be trusted, merely because they are acquainted with ecclesiastical history and the fathers. As to the fathers, they are guilty of grievous errours against orthodoxy, and church power; insomuch that father Petavius, the jesuit, has pretended to prove that most of them were infected with heresy, especially in their notions about the undivided trinity. We all know, that St. Austin (the foreman of all the latin saints and fathers) was for admitting children to the Lord's supper, contrary to the doctrine and practice of our church of England as by law established. St. Jerom derives episcopal power from the instigation of the devil, which is also an impudent reflection upon our orthodox church. St. Basil (I think it was) very fairly challenged the emperour, his liege lord, to fight him; in defiance of the doctrine of passive obedience, which is the peculiar doctrine of our high churchmen; and which, unless a man believes and practises, he cannot be saved. St. Ambrose bullied Theodosius, the Lord's anointed; and refused to admit bis Imperial majesty to partake of the Lord's body, till he had made his humble submission. St. Gregory Nazianzen gives a miserable and vile character of synods and counsils; and his grace of Canterbury, when he was bishop of Lincoln, and before, did the same. Dr. Prideaux shews Tertullian to have been a credulous weak man, often mistaken and misled.

As to ecclesiastical history, which is nothing but many large volumes, containing some few of the squabbles of the bishops and inferiour clergy with one another, and all the world; I know not whether the use of it can much alter for the better any man's life and principles; since the most which he can learn by it is, that the reverend heroes of the story were eternally cuffing and contradicting one another. Nothing of humility, nor of charity, nor of uniformity, nor of certainty, is to be found amongst them, or learned from them. And I know not at this day any prevailing opinion of any sect of Christians, but what is both countenanced and condemned by one father, or another.

Lastly; even the most apparent piety, the most disinterested mind, and the most unblameable life though to me certain signs of a good man. yet in the eye of our best high church-men, are only shining sins, and

* Dr. William Wake.