The Continuance of the Church and Religion, in the Second Age of the World

From Noe's flood to Abraham's going forth of his country. The space of 368 years.

No man can well doubt nor will deny that the same Church continued all the second age which was in the first, considering that Noe lived above 50 years after¹ the birth of Abraham, and Sem 150 more, and that these three, and some others of that time, are renowned in holy Scripture for sincere professors of true Religion. But for more manifestation of their faith, and that the Church was then very conspicuous, we shall repeat certain principal points of Religion professed and practised all that time², by a continual known visible company united in one mystical body, though in the meanwhile the wicked sprang and grew in number and worldly force, much oppressing yet never suppressing the good.

First just Noe, coming forth of the ark with his family,³ professed his religious mind to One God Almighty,⁴ supreme Lord of all, by Offering external voluntary, speedy, pure, solemn, and bountiful Sacrifice of Holocausts, as a Priest upon an Altar. After which most grateful office,⁵ God making a covenant with him and his seed, never again to destroy the world by water, confirmed the same by the sign of the rainbow, which represented the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Son of God, Christ our Lord to be born the Son of man, and extended upon the Cross: in whom Noe⁶, believing, was instituted heir of the justice which is by faith in our Redeemer.

We have here again God's⁷ operative blessing, with the effect of ⁸increase and multiplication, the issue of Noe by his three sons, in short time making many Nations. By the way also we have an example of Fathers'⁹ solemn Blessing and Cursing their children, the effects whereof succeeded afterwards accordingly. Likewise in this age was given a particular precept¹⁰ Not to eat blood.¹¹ And Noe observed distinction of¹² Clean beasts, offering Sacrifice in them only¹³, as before the flood he was commanded to take more of them into the ark than of the Unclean.

In that so ample mention is made of sin and Wickedness¹⁴, there is no doubt but Noe, the preacher of justice,¹⁵ admonished and exhorted sinners to Repentance¹⁶. Yea he Punished Cham and Chanaan,¹⁷ by his curse in their posterity. And God himself Threatened to exact the blood¹⁸ of man unjustly shed. In the meantime he Inflicted also some punishment upon the builders¹⁹ of Babel, by confounding their tongues. And that by the Ministry of Angels.²⁰

Which punishment in part, and threats of more, import a General Resurrection, and Judgment,²¹ where all things shall be exactly discussed and Judged. And then will follow Eternal life to the good, and Everlasting pain to the damned.

All these points of Religion (and others mentioned in the former age, and no doubt taught by Noe and his sons)²² show clearly a Visible Church, consisting of good and bad. Noe remaining the same man as before the flood²³; Sem and Japheth are commended and blessed for well-doing; Cham blamed, and cursed in his posterity, yet neither he nor any of his sons or daughters fell into heresy or other infidelity, for anything that appears in Scripture or other authentical testimony. Heber also and his family are particularly commended by Moses, as the right followers and the spiritual children of Sem (who had innumerable other carnal children) as those that were innocent touching the presumptuous building of others, who for the same fault lost their old tongue, which the family of Heber kept,²⁴ as St. Chrysostom and St. Augustine do²⁵ prove. Again, divers of this family falling afterwards by little and little to other nations, the Family of Thare (says the same St. Augustine, De Civitate l. 16 c. 12), albeit not all, or not always, yet ever some of them, and Abraham continually, with Sem, Heber, Phaleg, and many others not mentioned by Moses in his brief description (as St. Gregory doubts not to suppose), were just, and kept the true faith and undefiled Religion.

But Nemrod, Cham's nephew,²⁶ and son of Chus, described for a valiant hunter, a violent giant, and tyrant, was an Arch-heretic, a deviser and teacher of²⁷ false doctrine against God and true faith. By subtlety and tyranny he induced many, of liking or of fear, to follow him; and so in schism he maintained heresy: That men were not beholden to God,²⁸ but to themselves, for temporal prosperity.

Whereof began a new and cruel confederacy against the City of God, and the second great Sect of Infidels. For Barbarism being the first,²⁹ begun by Cain and ended by the flood: the second mother of all Sects beginning after the flood (as St. Epiphanius writes) was Scythism, so called of the Scythians,³⁰ a most cruel people.³¹ Who, according to Nemrod's heresy (not thinking themselves beholden to God for temporal happiness, but to their own forces) tyrannized over the weaker; and many wicked banding together extremely oppressed the more peaceable, especially the Church and true servants of God. And this was one special cause of building Babylon, besides their ambitious desire of perpetual fame, and their bearing the simple in hand of a defence against a new flood, to make it in deed a strong hold for tyrants to offend others, and to defend themselves. Wherefore God (who before destroyed all Infidels by the flood) confounded these builders by dividing their tongues, and so forced them to break, and part into many countries.

Thus mankind being divided upon the earth, opinions also were multiplied concerning Religion. For shortly the persuasion of men's trusting in themselves³², and in other mortal men, appeared absurd; even the strongest feeling adversities, or failing sometimes of their purposes, saw there was need of supernal help, and that earthly things depended much upon divine will and power. But having forsaken God Almighty, the only maker and conserver of all, they began to imagine and serve false gods, both famous dead men, which had prospered in this world, and divers other things by which they received commodity or feared damage.

Hence therefore rose the third principal Sect called Grecism,³³ beginning also in this second age, as the same St. Epiphanius writes. For Ninus, the first king of the Assyrian great Monarchy, brought to pass that his father Belus Jupiter was esteemed and worshipped for the only great God³⁴ by the Assyrians. To him the Babylonians erected the first Temples, Altars and Statues. Nemrod also, by the name of Saturnus,³⁵ as the progenitor of Belus, and first great King or Tyrant of Babylon, was accounted a god, and the father of gods. About this time likewise began the Dynasties³⁶ among the Egyptians, and not sooner, as they vainly brag to have been before the flood, yea much longer than indeed the world has been. Moreover the Chaldeans worshipped the fire. Others the sun, the moon, and innumerable other feigned gods.

Against all which (and likewise against all heresies) are two special arguments. First, that they were not from the beginning, as the true God and all truths are known and received by continual Tradition, but brought in afterwards by men, and commonly³⁷ by ill men. Secondly, they are not accepted and esteemed for gods, or truths, in all places, but with great diversity and dissension, one sort allowing that others despise. As holy Athanasius notably writes in his oration against Idols, in these words: Quot sunt gentes totidem deorum genera confinguntur etc., "How many nations" (says he) "so many kinds of gods are feigned. Also the same country, the same city, dissents within itself in superstition of Idols. The Phoenicians certainly acknowledge not the Egyptians' gods, neither do the Egyptians adore the same Idols with the Phoenicians; nor the Scythians receive the gods of the Persians, nor the Persians of the Scythians; the Pelasgians refuse the Thracian gods, the Thracians know not the Thebans. The Indians are against the Arabians, the Arabians against the Ethiopians; and in like sort the Ethiopians differ in their religious affairs from the Arabians. The Syrians worship not the gods of the Cilicians, and the nations of Cappadocia besides all these have gods of other names. The Bithynians also feigned divers gods, the Armenians again divers from them. What need we many words? Those that are in the continent honor other gods from the Island-people. In brief, each city and each village, not knowing the gods of their neighbors, sets forth their own, and esteems them only in place of gods." Thus far St. Athanasius.

Name we like countries, provinces, cities, and towns in these parts of Europe, where Luther's scholars³⁸ have set their feet, consider the form of Religion and opinions which they hold, and we shall see as unorderly beginnings, and as horrible dissensions in heresies (which St. Jerome calls the Idols of the New Testament)³⁹, as the ancient fathers have descried in Paganism. For Lutherans or Protestants, having no lawful generation, but proceeding of bastards' race, upstarts of unknown progeny, are no less at discords among themselves, only all agreeing against Catholics, like syncretists against their common enemies, or Herod, Pilate, and the Jews against Christ.

And in England alone are divers Sects without⁴⁰ possible means to agree in one. For albeit the civil state endeavors prudently and seriously to bring all to uniformity, at least in public show, yet they are but like many faces under one hood, every sort keeping their own opinions, yea, almost every preacher and mean scholar (to say nothing of artificers and common ministers) arrogating to be his own Judge, contemns to stand to Luther or Calvin, to Geneva or Parliament, to Convocation or Synod of their own, but to his own only understanding, and interpretation of holy Scripture. Nor yet to that always:⁴¹ for when he is pressed with that he once said, he will forget it, or eat his own word, if he have not written it, or that you have ready witness against him, so hard it is to make a deceived Protestant or Puritan confess that he is convinced, except by very pregnant means you can first cast out of him, or bind fast, the spirit of presumption, dissension and contention. Whereas the simplest Catholic in the world has⁴² the self-same faith in all points with the whole Church, in which he remains, and upon whose judgment he depends.

To return therefore from whence we are not unnecessarily digressed, we conclude with St. Augustine (De Civitate l. 16 c. 10): When Moses had showed the beginning and progress⁴³ of Nemrod's earthly city, leaving it in Babylon (that is, confusion), as needless to prosecute it further, he returns to declare the perpetual succession of the City of God,⁴⁴ the Church, as before the flood from Adam to Noe by the line of Seth, so after the flood from the same Noe by the line of Sem, Arphaxad, Sale, Heber, Phaleg, Reu, Sarug, Nachor, Thare, and Abraham. The rest of Sem's children, and all the progenies of Japheth and Cham (as not pertaining to this purpose) being omitted, he connects those in order of generations by whom the succession is directly brought to Abraham, Prince of the elected people,⁴⁵ a most special Patriarch, to whom new and great promises are made of multiplication of his seed, and possession of the land of Chanaan, but especially of Christ our Redeemer, and the same many ways confirmed, as will appear in the next age.