A supplement to the several discourses upon various divine subjects

Those that have set their feet upon the Churches breasts, or spilt her blood, have found their poison where they imagined they should find their safety. The Babylonish Empire, which was God's Rod for the correcting his People, saw her self in the chains of her Enemies that night she had been sacrilegiously carousing healths in the sacred Vessels of the Temple, Dan. 5.3, 30. And the Jews enjoyed a Deliverer, where the Babylonians felt the force of a Conqueror. Many such fatal Periods may be reckoned up both in sacred and humane story, either for not protecting, or persecuting that which is so dear to the Highest who hath established her.

Those that have set their feet upon the Churches breasts, or spilt her blood, have found their poison where they imagin'd they should find their safety. The Babylonish Empire, which was God's Rod for the correcting his People, saw her self in the chains of her Enemies that night she had been sacrilegiously carouzing healths in the sacred Vessels of the Temple, Dan. 5.3, 30. And the Jews enjoy'd a Deliverer, where the Babylonians felt the force of a Conquerour. Many such fatal Periods may be reckoned up both in sacred and humane story, either for not protecting, or persecuting that which is so dear to the Highest who hath establisht her.

2. No Society but the Church ever subsisted in the midst of a multitude of Enemies. Has she not been like a little Flock in the midst of many Wolves, which though they sucked the blood of some, yet could never reach the head or heart of the whole? The Devil hath a•tackt her, without vanquishing her; shaken her, without ruining her. The biting of the Serpent, according to the ancient promise, may bruise the heel, but not the head, and make an incurable wound in the Mystical Body. She hath been preserved in a hating world in spite of the enmity of it, by a Divine Wisdom that hath not regulated it self by the Methods of flesh and blood. His feeding the Israelites in the wilderness was a figure of what he would do to his Church, and he hath accomplished it to the Gospel-Church, as really as he did to the ancient Israel. While she hath been in a wilderness these 1200 years, and I hope somewhat upwards, she hath not wanted her Manna, nor her Rock; she hath been fed in her straits, and preserved in her combats; and as Christ reigns, so the Church lives, and hath her Table spread in the midst of her Enemies. What is 1100 years continuance of the Venetian Government, to so many thousand years preservation of the Church in the midst of Atheism, Paganism, Antichristianism, ever since it was first born and nursed in Adam's Family; and this hath been, when her friends have forsaken her; when her enemies have been confident of her ruin; when her self hath expected little else than destruction; when she hath thought sometimes in her straits, her God ignorant of her; when Hell hath poured out a flood, the carnal Earth hath sometimes found it their Interest to help her, though their enmity were irreconcilable against her,