THE

HISTORY OF SACRILEGE.

CHAPTER I.

SECTION I.

The definition of Sacrilege, with the several kinds thereof, manifested out of Scripture; together with the punishments following thereupon.

SACRILEGE is an invading, stealing, or purloining from God, any sacred thing, either belonging to the majesty of His person, or appropriate to the celebration of His divine service.

The etymology of the word implieth the description: for sacrum is a holy thing; and legium à legendo, is to steal, or pull away.

The definition divides itself apparently into two parts; namely, into Sacrilege committed immediately upon the Person of God, and Sacrilege done upon the things appropriate to His divine service.

B

:

That of the Person is, when the very Deity is invaded, profaned, or robbed of Its glory of this kind was that sacrilege of Lucifer, that would "place his throne in the north, and ascend above the clouds, and be like the most Highest;"1 similis ero Altissimo. Of this kind is all idolatry: and therefore when the Israelites worshipped Baal-peor, that is, the God of the Midianites upon the hill Pegor, or Phagor, it is said in Jerome's translation (Numb. xxv. 18) to be Sacrilegium Phagor, the sacrilege committed upon Mount Phagor. So when the style of God is bestowed upon stocks or stones, or living creatures; or when man, in pride of Lucifer, will be called God, as Alexander, Caius Caligula, Domitian, Nero, and others. (A) In this high sin are blasphemers, sorcerers, witches, and enchanters: and as it maketh the greatest irruption into the glorious majesty of Almighty God, so it maketh also the greatest divorce betwixt God and man.

In this sin, above all others, was Satan most desirous to plunge our first parents, Adam and Eve; that, as himself by it had fallen from all felicity, so he might draw them likewise into the same perdition: You shall be (saith he) like God, knowing good and evil. That divine faculty of knowing good and evil, tickled the itching humour of a weak woman; and to be like God fired her wholly with ambition, and carried her and Adam into the highest kind of sacrilege, committing thereby robbery upon

1 Isai. xiv. 14.

the Deity itself: for so it is censured, Philip. ii. 6, where it is declared, that to be equal with God was no robbery in the second Adam, implying by an antithesis, that it was a robbery (and so a sacrilege) in the first Adam; who is also guilty in the other kind of sacrilege, by taking the forbidden fruit reserved from him, as the priest's portion; for knowledge belongeth to the priest.

Thus the first man that was created fell into sacrilege several ways, and so did also the first man that was born of a woman. Cain bringeth an obla tion to God, but sacrilegiously, either withholding the best of his fruits, and offering the worst, as some conceived, rectè offert, sed non rectè dividit, or doing it hypocritically, as the later expoundeth it: whichsoever it was (and like enough to be both ways) he robbed God of His honour and divine faculty of knowing all things; he granted Him to be omnipotent, but not omniscient; he did not think Him to be καρδιογνώστης, to know the secret thoughts of a man's heart: upon which reason S. Ambrose chargeth him also with another sacrilege in answering God, that he could not tell what was become of his brother, when himself had murdered' him; with the crime of sacrilege, (saith Ambrose), in that he durst lie to God's own face: a pattern to the sacrilege of Ananias and Sapphira in the Acts of the Apostles.

2 Crimine Sacrilegii, quod Deo credidit mentiendum. S. AMBROS. de Paradiso, cap. xiv. tom. 1. 129 M.

To my understanding Cain is yet chargeable with another grievous sacrilege, even the murder of his brother; for in it he destroyed the temple of God, and in that temple the very sacred image of God: Do ye not know (saith S. Paul) that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? And again positively, Ye are the temple of the living God. This temple did Cain sacrilegiously destroy, and the Spirit of God which dwelled in it did he also sacrilegiously deface and expel; even that Holy Spirit [Which] was the very image of God, for in the image of God created He him."

Thus it appeareth that Sacrilege was the first sin, the master-sin, and the common sin at the beginning of the world, committed in earth by man in corruption, committed in paradise by man in perfection, committed in heaven itself by the angels in glory; against God the Father by arrogating His power, against God the Son by contemning His word, against God the Holy Ghost by profaning things sanctified, and against all of them in general by invading and violating the Deity. (B) Let us now see how God revenged Himself upon sinners in this kind, and by way of collation apply it to ourselves: for His wisdom, and power, and justice are the same perpetually.

3 1 Cor. vi 19.

4 2 Cor. vi. 16.

5 Gen. i. 27.

SECTION II.

The punishment of Sacrilege in Lucifer and the angels, upon Adam, Eve, and Cain, and upon the old world, by the flood, and upon them that built the tower of Babel, Nimrod, and others.

FIRST, He punished them by disinheriting and casting them out of their original possession. Lucifer is cast out of heaven, Adam and Eve out of paradise, Cain (whose name signifies a possession) out of his native possession, to be a runagate upon earth: all of them deprived of the favour of God, and all of them subject to a perpetual curse. Lucifer to perpetual darkness, Adam to perpetual labour, and Cain to perpetual fear and instability: by perpetual, I mean during their lives; for at their death they all meet in eternal damnation. The life of Satan is till the day of judgment; so, though he liveth so long, he reigneth in labour and travail to work wickedness: there is his end, and then is the time of his further and eternal punishment; then shall he and all his angels be cast into everlasting fire. There I leave both him and them hopeless of mercy, which notwithstanding is graciously extended to Adam and his posterity repenting, by the meritorious Passion of our Saviour, Who, to expiate the sacrilege committed by man, in aspiring to be like God, debased Himself, being God, to become a man: and as man would have left the earth, and have scaled the heaven, so 6 Matt. xxv. 41, 46.

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