Lame Giles Halting, Discourse
CHRISTIAN Reader, I here present thee with a short historicall or Chronologicall Discourse, of the true originall and progresse of Bowing at the name of Iesus; 1 Ceremony, (and as some write) a Duty, much pressed, practised and abetted now of late by some, who though they stile themselves Christians, not Iesuites; will yet withaSee Salmeron, Stengelius, the Sorbonists, Rhemists and others hereafter cited Iesuites, and other Papists, monopolize all worship, all bowing to the name Iesus onelyonly, and give none to Christ, from which their very ti…le of Christians is derived What these mens present violent enforcing, propugning of this upstarr Popish Ceremony by preaching, by printing: or what the suspension, silencing or censuring of such as speake, as preach against it, meanes, or whence it springs, I cannot well determine. If it be only a misguided superstitious zeale, arising from meere ignorance of the true originall Popish rise and progresse of this Ceremony; I hope the ensuing pages will both instruct them whence it sprung, & whither it tends; and so reforme them. But if it be a wilfull obstinate symbolizing with the Church of Rome, (whose Images, Altars, Cringes, Crosses, b…hey say they bow to the Communion table, because it is the place of Christs speciall presence: Yet Acts 7. 48. & 17 24 certifie u…; that …od dwelleth not in …emples made with hands; & Acts …. 11, c 2, 33, 34 c. 3, 21, &c. 7, 56, instruct us, That our Saviour is now as…cended into the heavens; that hee sits now at his Fathers right hand, & that the heaven must containe him untill the times of restitution of all things.Bowings to, and turning of Communion-tables Altar-wise, like a Kitching Dresser, not a Table cPsal. 128, 3. 1 Kings 13, 20 Math. 26, 20. Mar. 14, 18. Lu 22, 14. 27, 30. Iohn 13. 12… 28.at which men usually sit round; bo…h againstdSee here p. 35, 36, 37, 38. & my Appendix the two last pages. our Statutes, Homilies, Articles, & Canons, creepe in apace among us without any publike censure or controll:) I hope this Treatise, (which shewes them whose and what they strive for, even for the very spawne, the Reliques of the whore and Popes of Rome, from whom bowing at the name of Iesus had its birth, its breeding as I shall here demonstrate:) will, if not reclaime them, yet at leastwise shame them, shew whose they are and what they aime at. Wherefore I here submit it to thy pious censure, requesting only thus much from thee; that as I have written it faithfully with an upright heart, void of all schisme of faction to beat down superstition, Popery, and declare the truth; so thou wouldest embrace & read it with a love of truth. And if thou canst not contradict it, let*Contra Gentiles lib. Athan…sius his Maxime be now thy resolution in this case. Quod pessimo initio nititur, in nullo unquam censeri poterit bonum. And so I rest.
Thine, and the Truthes, WILLIAM PRYNNE.