CHAP. I.

Animadv. &c. chap 2 p 30. 2d. Edition. N.1. BUT because the Subject I am about to engage in, is of that nature, that most of the Metaphysical and School-Terms hitherto made use of by Divines upon this occasion, will naturally and necessarily fall in with it, I think it will contribute not a little to our more perspicu­ous proceeding in this Dispute, to state the Import and Signification of these Terms, Essence, Substance, Exi­stence, Subsistence, Nature, and Personality, with such others as will of course come in our way, while we are treating of, and explaining these, &c.]

The Method is extremely judicious, and ought to be commended; but if we state the Import of these Terms falsly or imperfectly, we shall obscure and perplex our selves and our Readers, instead of assisting them to under­stand things more perspicuously.

The simple Faith of this Sacred Article to pious and do­cible minds needs not any of these Metaphysical or School-terms; accordingly the divinely-inspir'd Writers have used none of them: But the subtle Equivocations and Objecti­ons of the Arians on one hand, and the Sabellians on the other, together with the great Veneration paid to the Con­clusions of the Schoolmen in this Mystety, have made it necessary to enquire into the just signification of these and other School Terms and Distinctions.

N. 2. [And here first of all, according to the old Peripatetick Philosophy, which for ought I see (as to the main Body of it at least) has stood its ground hitherto against all assaults; I look upon the division of Ens, or Being, (a summary word for all things) into Substance and Ac­cident, as the Primary and most Comprehensive.]

[Page 9]I see no necessity from this Mystery to concern our selves with this Metaphysical Dispute, Whether Accidents are distinct Beings from Substance. The Ancient Fathers denied any Accidents in God, or in a Divine Person, be­cause God was immutable; whereas an Accident, potest adesse aut abesse sive subjecti interitu, is separable from its Subject, is changeable. So St. Augustin, lib. 5. de Trin. cap. 4. Nihil itaque accidens in Deo, quia nihil mutabile aut amissibile. But not one of them, so far as I can find, ever gave this Metaphysical Reason, that it would compound God, or a Divine Person of two Beings. All the new Philosophers, who are neither a small nor contemptible Body of Men, explode this Division of Ens; they do all deny, that Accidents are distinct Beings from Substance. Ens is not Ʋnivocum, but Analogum to Substance and Ac­cident, that is, an Accident is not properly a Being, but Analogous, or like to a Being; not properly Ens simpli­citer, but Ens entis, an affection of Being, Lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 9. S. 15. p. 391. rather than a Being. Accidens (saith the Learned Petavius) proprie non est [...], sed [...] affectio quaedam. Sola vero substantia esse dicitur, & [...] vocatur.

Transubstantiation (as I verily believe) first persuaded the Schoolmen to teach, That Accidents are distinct Beings from Substance, as being capable to exist separate from Sub­stance: Nay, this monstrous Doctrine cannot persuade the new Philosophers of the Romish Church to believe these real Accidents; they rather chuse to affirm, that God by a per­petual Miracle causes the appearances of Bread and Wine to all our Senses, than to acknowledge that Accidents are di­stinct Beings from the Substance they affect.

Aristotle himself appropriates [...], Essence, to Substance, if therefore [...] and [...], are Relatives; if that only be [...], or a Being which hath [...], an Essence, nothing but Substance, according to that Philosopher, can be such.

[Page 10] P. 31. N. 3. [As for Substance, I define that to be a Being not in­hering in another, &c.]

A Division rather than a Definition of Substance is ne­cessary in this Mystery. Aristotle divides Substance into first and second Substance. And it is no such contemptible Enquiry, as possibly the Animadverter may imagine, whe­ther the Ancient Fathers of the Church, when they so often say, that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are of one Substance, are not to be interpreted of a second Sub­stance.

P. 31. N. 4.["Accident, I define a Being inherent in another.]

This I have already spoken to, N. 2.

P. 31. N. 5. [But now, besides these two Terms of Substance and Accident, there is another assigned by Logicians, Meta­physicians, and School-men, called a Mode of Being, viz. such a thing as Being added to another, does not make any addition of another Being, or degree of Being to it, but only restrains and determines it, &c.]

All the new Philosophers deny real Modes, equally with real Accidents: Nor can I see any necessity to recur to such a nice Metaphysical Debate to explain this sacred My­stery. Neither Jews nor Socinians fly to this Metaphysi­cal Notion to explain the Suppositality of One Divine Per­son; nor need Christians so nice a Speculation to defend the Suppositalities of Three Divine Persons. If there are any real Modes in the Creatures, I approve of the Ani­madverter's description of them, that they are adjuncts, or added to the Being; that they restrain or determine the na­ture of the Being. But from this very description of a Mode, I am satisfied there can be no proper Modes in God, or a Divine Person; but of this afterwards. When the Animadverter adds in the same pag, That a Mode is not a meer Ens rationis; Ibid. p. 31. he seems to me to contradict him­self, that it is in some sense an Ens rationis, and conse­quently not real. So, when he tells us, That Modes [Page 11] were invented to prevent an infinite progress in Beings, Ibid. upon a supposition, that Accidents are distinct Beings from Substance; he gives us the right reason, the Union of Substance and Accident could not be an Accident, that is, a Third Being, for then that would want another Being to unite it to Substance, and so in infinitum. But there never was so strange an Explication of this reason as that given by the Animadverter. Ibid. p. 31. [For since every thing is capable of being defined or described, and yet nothing can be defined meerly by it (an identical pro­position, being no definition) it must needs be defined by somewhat or other distinct from it self; but if that be also a Being, then that likewise must be defined by another Being, and that by another, and so on in infini­tum; which would be most absurd. Whereas, if this definition or description of a thing be made by some Mo­dus of it, which is not strictly and properly a Being it self; the thing presently stops here, without any necessi­ty of proceeding to any more Beings.]

There are few mistakes, but they have some plausible colour or ground; but this is so extreamly extravagant, that I cannot conjecture in the least what the Animad­verter aim'd at. None ever put the Modus of any thing into a proper Definition. What Logician ever affirmed that Definitio constet ex genere, differentia & modo? A proper Definition contains only the Essence, the quiddity (as the Schools speak) of any Thing or Being; but a Mode, according to the Animadverter, is a thing added, or an adjunct, that is, quod alicui preter Essentiam adjungitur, what is besides the Essence, and consequently ought not to be put into the proper Definition of the Being.

[But perhaps it will be here said, Ibid. p. 32. N. 6. If these Modes are not so many meer nothings, or entia rationis, what order or rank shall they be placed in? since those ten Heads of Being, which we call predicaments, cannot seem the [Page 12] proper Receptacles of things, which we own not to be properly or formally Beings. I answer, That tho they are not Beings properly so called, and so not directly, and upon their own account placeable under any of the ten forementioned Heads of Being; yet, since they are ap­pendages of Being, as cleaving to it, and depending upon it; they are accounted under, and reduced to those re­spective Heads, or Genera of Being, to which the Beings modified by them do directly belong]

It is a common saying, That a Fool may ask more Que­stions, and raise more Difficulties in an hour, than a wise Man can answer, or satisfy in a day; but certainly he is not overwise, who without any necessity will be starting Difficulties which himself cannot unfold. The Faith of this sacred Article, as I said before, needs none of these Metaphysical Disputes; and if it did, the Reader would be strangely deceived, who should rely upon our Animadver­ter's skill in Metaphysicks.

First, He has confounded Predicamental and Physical Accidents. Even those Metaphysicians and Schoolmen, who asserted Accidents to be distinct Beings from Substance, ne­ver understood that assertion in large of all the Predicamen­tal Accidents, but only of quantity and quality. He himself is pleased to tell us, p. 241. that posture is a Mode of the Body; and I believe he has not confidence to deny, that posture properly belongs to the predicament of Situs. All predicamental Relations are by the said Schoolmen esteem­ed Modes, and not distinct Beings.

Secondly, To differ in predicament, is not a certain sign of differing so much as in Mode, much less to be two distinct Beings or Accidents, according to the Animadverter, who calls them ten Heads of Being. Action and Passion differ in predicament, yet are by Aristotle himself esteemed but one Motion, which as it proceeds from the Agent, is called Action; as it is terminated upon the Patient, is called Pas­sion.

[Page 13] Thirdly, Nor are all Modes to be reduced to those pre­dicaments, to which the Beings by them modified do di­rectly belong. Figure and proportion are Modes of quan­tity, and yet are reduced to the predicament of quality.

Fourthly, This reduction of Modes is what, I believe, the Animadverter did not in the least understand; but of this, when I come to speak of the composition of a Divine Person.

[Now the nature of these Modi being thus accounted for, P. 32. N. 7. we are in the next place to take notice of the dif­ference resulting from them, which we call Modal, and that is, between two or more such Modes differing from one another, as the Personalities belonging to several Persons differ amongst themselves; or when a thing or Being differs from the Mode affecting it; or lastly, when several things thus modified or affected, do by vertue of those Modes differ from one another: And thus the Per­sons in the Blessed Trinity may be said to differ amongst themselves.]

No Divine had ever more reason to have informed him­self aright of the nature of these Modi, and of modal dif­ference: For, I believe, no man before himself ever laid so great a stress upon both these Points. Hear his own words, p. 285. [If Modes of Being should not be allowed in God, then I affirm it to be impossible [mark those words, I affirm it to be impossible] for any distinction, and con­sequently for any persons to be in God.] What is this but to tell the world, that whoever does not understand the Metaphysicks of Modes, and yet believes the Trinity, believes what the Animadverter affirms to be impossible in Reason? Now this Assertion shall in due time be examined.

So p. 246. He affirms, that the Divine Persons which the whole Christian Church professes to differ by a real difference, I say, he affirms, that they differ by a modal, or lesser sort of real difference, of which Assertion also in [Page 14] due place. Now we are to examine, how well this great Dictator in Philosophy and Divinity understands a Modal difference. He names three kinds of Modal difference, two of which are false, and all three impertinent. First, two Modes, when they belong to one Being, differ indeed by a Modal difference; but when we speak of them indefi­nitely, as they belong to different Beings, they differ by the same difference by which the Beings themselves differ, that is, by a strictly real difference. The personalities of different persons always differ by the same difference by which the persons themselves differ, that is, by a strictly real difference. The second, of a Being, differing from its own Mode, is acknowledged to him. The third, viz. the difference of several things modified or affected, is pecu­liar to the Animadverter, never any Philosopher dreamed, that several things differ by a modal difference, they always differ by a strictly real difference. However the Animad­verter has here spoke a very great truth, That the Divine Persons differ as several things, but this utterly overthrows the Animadverter's Hypothesis: According to him, the Divine Persons differ not as several things; but as one and the same Being under one Mode differs from it self under another Mode, this is the only modal difference the Ani­madverter's Hypothesis requires, and this with great pro­foundness of judgment he here omits. The other three are nothing to the purpose, had they been all never so true in Philosophy.

P. 33. lin. 4. N. 8. [Essence may be truly and properly defined, That by which a thing is what it is, that is to say, by which it is constituted in such a kind or order of Being.]

By Essence in this place the Animadverter understands, what Metaphysicians call the Ratio Formalis of a thing, that is, he takes this term Essence in a transcendental sense; in so large a sense, that not only Substance, Accident, a mode of Being, but even an Ens Rationis may be said to [Page 15] have an Essence; for there is a ratio formalis of every one of these, by which each of them is constituted respectively a Substance, Accident, Mode, or Ens rationis. Now to talk of truly and properly defining a Transcendental, is the same blunder in Logicks, as he would be guilty of in Histo­ry, who should enquire for the Father or Grandfather of Adam. Every Novice in Logicks knows, that a true and proper definition consists of a Genus and Difference, and consequently that nothing but a Species is capable of a true and proper definition. The supremum Genus in each predi­camental scale, is not capable of a strict Logical definition, much less a transcendental Term, that is, transcendental to all the predicaments.

But this is the least part of the mistake; according to this description of Essence, there are at least Four Essences in the Trinity. The Divine Relations of Paternity, Fi­liation, Procession, have each their proper distinct ratio formalis, by which each of them is constituted a relation of such a kind; nay, these Essences of the Divine Relati­ons would differ Specifically, for so Paternity differs from Filiation; and all Divines acknowledge, That the Absolute Divine Nature is a true proper Essence.

Aristotle appropriates [...], Essence, to Substance, First or Second: So did the Fathers of the Church, so do all the Moderns, Translating [...] by consubstantial, of one Substance. Of which more hereafter.

[As for Existence it self, it may be defined, P. 33. lin. 27. N. 9. that Mode or Affection of Being, by which a thing stands actually produced out of the Power of its Causes; or at least not actually included in any cause, in which sense God him­self does exist.]

Some few Schoolmen, who have supposed that the Hu­man Nature of Christ wanted a Proper or Created Existence, have asserted, That Existence is a Mode in Created Beings; that is, something added to the Thing or [Page 16] Being, and consequently capable of being Substracted. But these are very few, and the Animadverter is of a con­trary Opinion, p. 35. The generality believe that Existence, is only the Actuality of the Thing or Being, and that all it adds to the Being is only a Negation, in the Animad­verter's words, that the Being is not actually included in any Cause.

But not one single Divine, I firmly believe, before his own dear self, ever affirmed that Existence was a proper Mode in God: His very next words confute this assertion, p. 34. that Existence is necessarily included in his very Essence, but a Mode, a thing added to the Essence, cannot be included in the Essence. Again, in the same page he ascribes one single undivided Existence to the Three Divine Persons; which, if Existence were a proper Mode, would be very difficult to be conceived, How Three distinct Per­sons can be modified or affected with one single undivided Mode.

P. 34. lin. 6. N. 10. [The next Term is Subsistence, which is a Mode of Being, by which a thing exists by it self, without existing in another, either as a part in the whole, or an Adjunct in the Subject. I say an Adjunct, not an Accident, for a Substance may be an Adjunct.]

Subsistence is strictly a Mode of Existence; that is, it modifies the Existence of a Substance, and distinguishes the Existence of a complete Substance, from the Existence of an incomplete Substance or Part. Two things are there­fore implied in this term, Subsistence. 1. That the Being which is said to subsist, is a Substance, and not an Acci­dent, not a Quality, &c. 2. That it is a whole and complete Substance, and not a part of some whole. This is plain and easy, and that which Subsistence adds to Existence, may be only a negation of Incompleatness.

The Animadverter is not satisfied with the common de­finition of Subsistence, but to shew us his profound skill in [Page 17] Philosophy and Divinity at one time, has added to the vul­gar description of Subsistence those remarkable words, or an Adjunct to the Subject; and lest we should not sufficient­ly take notice of it, he repeats it with an Emphasis, I say an Adjunct, not an Accident; for a Substance may be an Ad­junct. Now I must profess, that I have always a prejudice against new Definitions, both in Philosophy and Divinity; commonly they only proclaim the mistake of the Inventer of them.

First, He needed not have cautioned us against an Acci­dent, the former part of the Definition had secured suffi­ciently against such a mistake; a Thing existing by it self can never be an Accident, except our Animadverter be­lieves Transubstantiation.

Secondly, What a mighty Secret has he instructed the World in, viz. That a Substance may be an Adjunct! I would fain know one person that understood the meaning of the terms, who ever doubted of it. However I will endeavour to requite his kindness, and inform him, That a Suppositum may be an Adjunct; nay, which is more, every substantial Adjunct (unless Hypostatically united) is a Suppositum, or subsisting Being. If the Animadverter ever saw a Woman with Child, or a Nurse carrying a Child in her Arms, he might have been convinced of the truth of this Assertion, That a Suppositum may be an Adjunct.

Nay further, Had this Paradox in Philosophy been never so true, it is of no use in reference to the subsistence of the Three Divine Persons.

Well, but it would explain the mysterious Incarnation of the Second. [And, I think, if we would assign a way, Ibid. by which the Humane Nature of Christ exists in the per­son of the [...], we shall hardly find a fitter, than to say, that it exists in it, as an Adjunct in the Subject. For it is certain, that it does not exist in it, as a Part in the Whole; since by this means the Second Person in the [Page 18] Trinity must, till his Incarnation, have wanted one part of his person. But I shall not be positive in the applica­tion of this term here.]

This Sacred Article of the Incarnation of the Son of God deserves a particular Treatise by it self: However I could not in the Interim forbear to vindicate it from those Misrepresentations the Animadverter has unwittingly, I charitably presume, put upon it.

The Animadverter did not understand, or not consider the relation of an Adjunct to a Subject, or he would never have made this Application in reference to the Hypostatic Union of the Humane Nature of Christ to the Person of the WORD. Where a Substance is an Adjunct, the Ad­junct is predicated of the Subject, more Accidentis, after the nature of an Accident. This the predicament of Ha­bitus might have informed the Animadverter. We say not that a man is his Cloaths, but that a man is cloath'd; so that if the Humane Nature of Christ be barely an Ad­junct to the Person of the WORD, we could not say that the WORD was, or became Man, but only that he was externally cloathed with Humanity.

Secondly, The Animadverter confutes himself, when he tells us, That the Humane Nature of Christ exists in the Person of the [...]. A substantial Adjunct can never exist in its Subject, but only an accidental Adjunct, as a Quali­ty, &c. If the Humane Nature exists in the Person of the [...], it must in some sense be a part of the Person of the WORD.

Thirdly, Nor is there any Absurdity in acknowledging the Humane Nature to be a part of the [...]. Nay, very learned persons have not scrupled to call the Person of the WORD a Part of Christ, taking that term Part in a large sense, and abstracting from the imperfections which are included in the common acceptation of it. The Person of the WORD is not an imperfect Part, nor the [Page 19] Humane Nature a Part in such Sense, that the Person of the WORD wants such Part to complete it. In an Hypo­statical Composition, the Inferior Nature is in some Ana­logy a Co-part; in other respects, an Adjunct, and of ne­cessity imperfect; but to be the superior Nature in such Composition infers no Imperfection: But of this more hereafter.

[One and the same undivided Existence, P. 34. lin. 28. N. 11. as well as one and the same Essence or Nature, belongs to all the Three Persons equally; whereas yet every Person has his own distinct Subsistence by himself.]

There is not a more intricate Dispute amongst the Schoolmen, than this which the Animadverter argues from as a Principle.

To assert above one singular Existence in the Trinity, [thô the Sacred Scriptures expresly multiply this Attri­bute, I and the Father are One, these Three are One] was to give up the Hypothesis of the Schools of the singula­rity of the common Divine Nature. But the Schoolmen were at a loss, — Probabilius tamen ac ve­rius existimamus illam substan­tiam singularem, quae communis est tribus personis, ut sic sub­sistentem esse ex se & essentiali­ter, habereque unam subsisten­tiam absolutam & essentialem tribus personis communem: haec enim sententia communiter re­cepta est à Theologis utriusque Scholae, D. Thomae & Scoti, & ab aliis etiam. Suarez. Me­taph. Disp. 34. Sect. 1. N. 3. when they came to enquire into the Modus of this singular Ex­istence. There are but two Modes of a sub­stantial, singular Existence, incomplete which belongs to a substantial Part, complete which belongs to a Suppositum. Complete Existence is but another Phrase for Subsistence, and so there will be but One undivided Subsistence of the whole Three Persons, and this the whole Party of the Thomists and Scotists affirm, and call it an absolute essential Subsistence; so little did the Animadverter understand these Disputes. The acute Petavius could not here keep pace with the Schoolmen; all Antiquity knew nothing of this Essential Subsistence; he embraces the former, and attributes one singular incomplete Existence to the Divine Nature. Now, certainly this Learned Per­son [Page 20] strained very hard to ascribe something incomplete to the Divine Nature. I will give the Reader his own words. Petav. lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 12. Sect. 13. p. 421. Non enim de tali Existentia hîc agimus, quoe per­fecta, & completae substantioe propria sit, sed quoe formis & imperfectis Rebus, ex quibus quasi componitur quippiam, con­gruit.

P. 35. lin. 11. N 12. [Now, whatsoever Being or Nature this Mode of Subsistence does belong to, that is properly called a Sup­positum.— And the consequence of this is, That as Subsistence makes a Thing or Being a Suppositum, so Sup­positality makes it incommunicable.]

This is worse Heresy to the Schoolmen, than the phrase of three infinite Minds.

They acknowledge this in finite Beings or Natures, but affirm the quite contrary in the Divine Nature.

Not (the Absolute Essential) Subsistence renders the Divine Nature a Suppositum; but the Divine Relation, whe­ther it be Paternity, Filiation, or Procession, according to the Schoolmen, constitutes the Divine Nature a Person, or Persons. Secondly, Not the Subsistence with a relation, renders the Divine Nature incommunicable, but only the Divine Person incommunicable. Subsistence in finite Be­ings, renders that particular Nature as well as Person in­communicable; but in the Divine Nature, only the Person.

P. 35. lin. 30. N. 13. [So that as a Suppositum is substantia singularis comple­ta per se subsistens; so the Ratio intellectiva, being ad­ded to this, makes it a Person, which is a farther per­fection of Suppositality.

I only ask the Animadverter, Whether he acknowledges three Suppositums in the Trinity? And whether the Obje­ction of three Substances, is not as strong against that Confession from this Definition of a Suppositum, as himself brings against the phrase of three infinite Minds? 2dly, Ratio intellectiva is a farther perfection of a Suppositum, but not of Suppositality. A Beast as truly, as perfectly [Page 21] subsists by its self, as a Man. Rationality is a Perfection, a Mode (taking that term in a large sense) of Animality, but not a Perfection or Mode of Subsistence.

[If it be here asked, P. 36. lin. 3. N. 14. Whether Subsistence or Supposita­lity added to bare Nature, does not make a Composition? I answer, That in created finite Persons it does, but not in uncreated and infinite: And the reason is, because tho all Composition implies Union; yet all Union is not therefore Composition, but something higher and tran­scendental: So that in the Divine Persons of the Trini­ty, the Divine Nature and Personal Subsistence coalesce into one, by an incomprehensible, ineffable kind of Union and Conjunction. And if this does not satisfy (as it rationally may) I must needs profess, that my Thoughts and Words can neither rise higher, nor reach further.]

This difficulty is not peculiar to the Asserters of a Tri­nity of Divine Persons: They who acknowledge but one Divine Person in the Godhead, are equally concerned in this question, Whether the Subsistence (of one or more Di­vine Persons) added to the Divine Nature, infers a Com­position in a Divine Person?

The Animadverter confesses, That in all finite Persons, Subsistence and Nature infer a Composition; he means a modal Composition, a Composition of Substance and Mode: This manifestly increases the difficulty, how a Substance and Mode should not be a modal Composition in a Divine Person. He tells you, indeed it does not; if we please, we may take his word; if not, his thoughts and words can reach no higher. But by his leave, I shall consider this point more carefully.

All Composition is Distinctorum Ʋnio, so as to consti­tute some whole, that is, in Composition there must be an Union, and also the several things united, must in some sense be component parts, otherwise we could not distin­guish Composition from a bare local Union. Now, ac­cording [Page 22] to the Animadverter, the Divine Nature or Sub­stance is one thing, and the Mode another, (a Mode is to him a thing added) and a Divine Person a whole; so that it is manifest, according to him, that there must be a mo­dal Composition in a Divine Person, in God, in a pure sim­ple act which is void of all Composition.

Nay, further, those Schoolmen who assert these real Modes, reduce some of them to Substance, some of them to the accidental Predicaments. Those Modes which inti­mately adhere to Substance, as Existence, Subsistence, they reduce to the predicament of Substance; those Modes which complete Substance it self, cannot be any thing ac­cidental, of a different kind and nature from Substance; and yet they cannot be perfect Substances, for then they would want other Modes to perfect them; but they sup­pose each of these Modes a substantiale quid, a substantial thing, tho not so perfect as Substance. So again, those Modes which perfect an Accident, are each of them acci­dentale quid, something accidental, tho not a perfect Ac­cident. Now I freely profess, that I have no Notion of this substantiale quid, which is not a perfect Substance; nor of an accidentale quid, which yet is not a perfect Ac­cident. However, from this Explication of these Philoso­phers minds, it is manifest that a Substance and Mode in finite Persons, infer a Composition of a Substance, and a distinct substantiale quid.

To apply this to the Opinion of the Schoolmen, con­cerning the simplicity of a Divine Person.

The Subsistence, as I have already declared, they be­lieved to be one, absolute Essential; the Divine Relations (which they call Modes of Subsistence, because, accord­ing to them, they constitute the Divine Persons, and ren­der each Person incommunicable, which a Mode of Sub­sistence does in finite Persons) I say, the Divine Relations of Paternity, Filiation, and Procession, they first decla­red [Page 23] to be no predicamental Relations; for then they must have been esteemed proper Modes; Modus non po­test non esse quid imperfe­ctum, cum non attingat abso­lutam ratio­nem entis. Suarez. lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 4. N. 11. p. 410. and the Schoolmen were never so silly, as to believe there was any thing so imperfect, as a Mode in God; they never believed a sub­stantiale quid, which was not so perfect as a Substance in God. They call the Divine Relations, transcendental Relations; which in our imperfect way of Conception, are but as so many substantial Modes, perfecting the one absolute Subsistence of the Divine Essence; they believed each distinct Divine Relation to be not a bare substantiale quid, but a most perfect infinite Substance with a Relative Form, or as they often speak, a Relative Substance: (And here I must again acknowledge, that I am as little able to conceive a Relative Substance, as a substan­tiale quid before. J am substantia non erit sub­stantia, quia relativum erit. — Absurdum est autem, ut substantia relativè dicatur; om­nis res ad scipsam subsistit, quan­to magis Deus? St. Austin lib. 7. de Trin. cap. 5.) But will not this Notion of the Schoolmen infer an higher Composi­tion in a Divine Person, viz. of two Sub­stances, an Absolute Substance, the Divine Nature; and a Relative Substance, the Re­lation? They answer, That the Absolute and Relative Substance are not united, but identified one with another, this being an Axiom to the Schoolmen, Suarez lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 2. N. 3. p. 407. In Di­vinis omnia sunt Ʋnum, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio; but there cannot be pretended relationis oppositio betwixt an Absolute and Relative Substance; and by the same Axiom they endeavour to shew, how these three Relative Sub­stances may be one absolute Divine Nature, one God. But then comes the grand Difficulty of all; If each distinct Relative Substance be the same, or identified with the one singular absolute Divine Nature, are not the three Rela­tions from thence identified one with another? Is not this an infallible Axiom in reason, Quae sunt eadem uni tertio, sunt eadem inter se. This is the Gordian Knot, which al­most every Schoolman gives a different answer to; but at last they are generally obliged to cut it, and deny the truth [Page 24] of the Axiom in the Divine Nature. I thought it neces­sary to give this account of the Opinions of the School­men, to shew the Animadverter, how little reason he had to lay so great a stress upon the Metaphysicks of Modes. Nothing was farther from the thoughts of the Schoolmen (with whose Names he flourishes so often) than to believe that there were true Modes in God. The Divine Relations, according to them, were only Modes in Name, or in our imperfect Conception of them.

As for my own private Opinion, with all submission to better Information, I conceive, That Existence in a finite Person or Being, much more in a Divine Person, is only the actuality of a Person or Being. That Subsistence adds only a Negation of incompleteness to substantial Existence even in finite Persons, and consequently infers no sort of Composition in them; and therefore much less infers a Composition in a Divine Person.

Again, I do believe that all predicamental Relations amongst the Creatures, are no positive Modes, but only external Denominations; the same which the Schoolmen are obliged to affirm of the Relations of the Divine Persons to the Creatures: Nor can I see any Absurdity of extend­ing the same conclusion to the Internal Relations, as the Schoolmen call them. As for instance, The Relation of Paternity may justly (as I conceive) be stiled an extrinsi­cal Denomination; extrinsical (I say, not to the sacred Triad, but) to the Person of the Father, who is denomi­nated by it; and (in the same sense) Filiation extrinsical to the Person of the Son, and Procession extrinsical to the Person of the blessed Spirit. This naturally and easily de­fends the Simplicity of a Divine Person; this frees us of endless and inextricable Questions, which fill up every page of the Scholastical Writers. This forces us not to hide our selves in a Cloud of Words, which signify nothing. A Substance, and a Mode, says the Animadverter, infer [Page 25] not Composition in a Divine Person, because in him the Substance and Mode coalesce into one by an Ʋnion and Con­junction, that is, in other words, they infer not Composition, because they are compounded. Composition and Coales­cing into One by an Union and Conjunction, differ no more than Definitum and Definition: It is truly therefore incomprehensible and ineffable, that a coalescing into one by an Union and Conjunction should not be a Composi­tion.

[Mind, Wisdom, Power, Goodness, P. 39. lin. 6. N. 15. &c. are formal­ly distinct from one another, and so not affirmable of one another; and in speaking of things, the formal dif­ferences of them must still be attended to. Gods Justice, and his Mercy, are one pure simple Act in him. But he that says, His Justice is his Mercy, speaks absurdly for all that, &c.]

Whatever differs really, differs also formally; but here by formal difference, the Animadverter understands that difference which is only formal and not real: Now in this sense of the term, the express contrary Conclusion is true, That whatsoever things are (only) formally different, are therefore affirmable of one another. The Conclusion the Animadverter ought to have deduced from his Premises, is, That Mind, Wisdom, Goodness, ( viz. in God) are not formally affirmable of one another: But it is Fallacia à dicto secundum quid, ad dictum simpliciter, to put the first Con­clusion in place of the second, to say, That Mind, Wisdom, Goodness, are not (simply) affirmable of one another, because it will be acknowledged, that they are not formally affirmable of one another.

Secondly, Whereas the Animadverter tells us, That in speaking of Things, the formal Differences of them must still be attended to; We need no other Confutation of this Pro­position, than his own immediate following words, viz. That God's Justice, and his Mercy, are one pure simple Act [Page 26] in him. His Justice, and his Mercy, are formally (or in our way of Conception) two distinct, nay, two opposite Acts; it is only in the Reality, that we affirm them to be one pure simple Act in him.

Thirdly, If things only formally different, are not af­firmable of one another, there could be no Propositions but identical ones, or at most, where the Subject and Pre­dicate are synonimous Terms. No man could say without absurdity, That the Father is God, because these two terms, Father and God formally differ; and therefore ac­cording to this wise Rule of our Animadverter, are not af­firmable of one another.

Has the Animadverter never heard of the Distinction of Sensus Identicus, and Sensus Formalis? This Proposition, God's Justice is his Mercy, is true Sensu Identico, tho not Sensu Formali.

We are cautioned indeed by the Learned, that we avoid Conclusions which are only true Sensu Identico, when such way of speaking is against common Custom, or when the formal Sense carries a formal Opposition, as in the Divine Attributes of Justice and Mercy; and the reason they give, is, because in such instances the Propositions lead to a formal Sense, in which Sense they are false. But if we add Sensu Identico, that is, in what sense we under­stand these Propositions, then they are true, and conse­quently not absurd, unless a Truth can be absurd.

CHAP. II.

I Shall crave leave of the Reader, N. 1. to say thus much in general of the Animadverters Third and Fourth Chap­ter, wherein he endeavours to prove, That Self-conscious­ness is not the Formal Reason of Personality in the Divine Persons, nor Mutual-consciousness the Formal Reason of their Ʋnity of Nature. That all this is said, as I verily believe, without an Adversary. The Reverend Dean of St. Paul's does not once in his Vindication of the B. Trinity, expres­ly affirm either the one, or the other of these Propositi­ons. He asks no more of his Reader, if I misunderstand him not, save to acknowledge, That a distinct Self-Con­sciousness is a firm proof of the Distinction of Persons in this Sacred Mystery; and that a singular Mutual-Consci­ousness is an equal proof of the Singularity of the Divine Nature. I conceive, That the Reverend Dean never in­tended to deny, that the Distinction of Persons is in or­der of Nature before their distinct acts of Self-Consci­ousness, or that their Unity of Nature is in the same de­gree of Priority before their singular Mutual-Conscious­ness; but only intended that quoad nos, or in our way of Knowledge or Conception, their distinct Self Conscious­ness proved, or was known to us before their distinct Per­sonality, and their singular mutual Consciousness in order of our Knowledge, before the Knowledge of their Unity of Nature.

In the Animadverter's Third Chapter, N. 2. he endeavours to prepare the way, by denying that Self-Consciousness is the formal reason of personality in finite, created Persons. A Conclusion none affirms, who understands the meaning of the terms. It is impossible that a personal Act, an Effect, should any ways be the proper, formal cause of its efficient, a Person.

[Page 28] Animad. &c. P. 71. lin. 10.But when he tells us, That [Personality is the ground and principle of all Action, wheresoever it is] he is guilty of a great Paradox in Philosophy, and a greater in Divinity.

Personality is properly the Principle of no Action; a Person is the Principium quod, the Principle which acteth; Nature is the Principium quo, the Principle by which the Person acts. Personality is but a necessary condition of a Being to enable it to act, a causa sine qua non, which is equivocally called a Cause or Principle.

Secondly, Not the Personality of the WORD, but the Humane Nature of Christ exerts the acts of Self-Consci­ousness, Ibid. P. 72. lin. 12. and other Humane Personal Acts; the Humane Nature of Christ has all the Principles and Powers of Self-Reflection upon its own Acts, otherwise Christ would not be a perfect Man.

P. 72. lin. 21. N. 3. [That the Humane Nature of Christ is not a Person, is no less evident: Since it is taken into, and subsists in and by the Personality of the Second Person of the Tri­nity, and therefore can have no distinct Personality of its own.]

1. Never was so obscure an Argument brought to prove so acknowledged a Conclusion. Self-Consciousness is not the formal reason of Personality in finite Persons, because the Humane Nature of Christ in the Hypostatical Union is Self-Conscious, and yet not a Person; nay, this latter no less evident than the former.

2. 'Tis a received Article of the Church, That the Hu­man Nature of Christ is not a Person; but how to recon­cile this with the Subtilties of the Schools, is above my skill. The utmost their Hypothesis will allow them to pretend to, is, That the Humane Nature of Christ is not a distinct Person from the Person of the WORD. According to the Schoolmen, the Humane Nature of Christ subsists, and is a Principium quod of all its own Acti­ons, [Page 29] equally with the Humane Nature of any other Hu­mane Person; they seem to me to strive to disguise the He­resy of Nestorius, by saying, That the Humane Nature of Christ is not a distinct Person from the Person of the WORD, because it subsists by the Subsistence or Perso­nality of the WORD. To explain this a little.

The Schoolmen, who under pain of Heresy, assert but one singular absolute Substance in the Trinity, found a great and almost insuperable difficulty so to explain the Incarna­tion, that only the Person of the WORD, and not the whole Trinity, was incarnated, or became Man. This is an obvious enquiry, What it is which was immediately uni­ted to the Humane Nature of Christ, so as to denominate Christ both God and Man? To assert, that the singular com­mon Divine Nature was immediately united to the Hu­mane Nature, was to assert the Incarnation of the whole Trinity, since whatever belongs to the common Divine Nature immediately, belongs equally to the whole Tri­nity; it remains therefore, according to them, that only the Mode of Subsistence of the WORD was immediately united to the Humane Nature. This Answer has visibly many difficulties in it, which may be considered hereaf­ter: Now I am only to enquire, how it denies the Humane Nature of Christ to be a distinct Person from the Person of the WORD. The Humane and Divine Nature of Christ have, say they, but one singular Mode of Subsist­ence: Well, grant that possible; What follows? The School­men say, that then they are not two distinct Persons. I cannot for my life see the Consequence. That Maxim of the Law, Quando duo jura concurrunt in una persona, oequum est ac si concurrerent in duobus, may be, as I conceive, ap­plied here. If we suppose it possible for one Personality to constitute two distinct Natures, each a Person, it is a meer wrangle of a term, to deny these two Natures to be two distinct Persons; they have all the Properties of two di­stinct [Page 30] Persons, they are two distinct Principia quoe, equally with two other Persons.

The Animadverter does not barely alledge these (to me unintelligible) Subtilties of the Schools, as the only de­fence of the sacred Article of the Incarnation against Nesto­rianism; but in his third and next Argument, (to prove that Self-consciousness is not the formal Reason of Perso­nality in finite Persons) He (unwittingly, I charitably presume) has endeavoured to overthrow the defence which the most Learned and Orthodox Fathers of the Church have given us of this sacred and mysterious Ar­ticle.

P. 73. N. 4.The Soul of man is Self-conscious, and yet not a Per­son; therefore, &c.

P. 74. lin. 22.If the Soul be a Person, [then the Body must be joined to it, by being assumed into the personal subsistence of the Soul, as the Humane Nature of Christ is assumed in­to the personal subsistence of the [...]. Whereupon the composition and constitution of a man, will be an Hypo­statick Union between Soul and Body; which, I suppose, no Body will be either so bold or absurd as to affirm; all Divines accounting an Hypostatical Union so peculiar to Christ's Person, as not to be admitted in any other Person or Being whatsoever. [For an Hypostatick Union, and an Hypostatick Composition, viz. such an one as makes a compound Hypostasis, are quite different things: and this Author shall in due time be taught so much, if he has any thing to object against it.]

The Compiler of the Athanasian Creed has in this spoke the sense of the Catholick Church, [For as the reason­able Soul and Flesh is one man; so God and Man is one Christ, that is, One, not by Confusion of Substance, but by Unity of Person.]

I hope, no True Son of the Church of England, nor in­deed Candid Lover of the Article, but will pardon my [Page 31] digression, (if it deserve to be called such) to vindicate this Similitude, whereby the most Learned Fathers of the Church have endeavoured to illustrate and defend this Article against all its Heretical Opponents.

The Animadverter first objects, That then the Constitution of a Man will be an Hypostatick Ʋnion. Alas! Obj. 1. How ex­tremely afraid are some persons of having the Articles of their Faith found agreeable to the common Principles of Reason! If by an Hypostatick Union, he means that the Soul and Body of Man only subsist by the same singular Mode of Subsistence, and that nothing but the Mode of the Subsistence of the Soul is immediately united to the Body, I do assure the Animadverter that I believe not a Syllable of this; I do not believe that one Mode can mo­dify two Subjects, or that a corporeal Body can be termi­nated, perfected by a Mode of an incorporeal nature, such as the Soul is. Figure is a Mode of quantity, and yet to me it seems unconceivable, that a Giant should be termi­nated by the figure of a Dwarf, without any alteration of his quantity; or that a Dwarf should have the figure of a Giant, and yet not altered in quantity: Less am I able to conceive, that the Humane Nature of Christ should be terminated by a Mode of Subsistence which belongs to a Divine Nature.

Secondly, Obj. 2. If the Constitution of a Man be an Hyposta­tick Union, then an Hypostatick Union and an Hypostatick Composition, viz. such an One as makes a compound Hy­postasis, will not be quite different things; then the Hypo­statick Union in Christ will be also an Hypostatick Compo­sition, and then the Person of Christ will be a compound Hypostasis. Well, and what follows from all this? why nothing but a threatning of the Animadverter's, That in due time we shall be taught the Falshood of all this. But not to await his due time, I answer, that to say, that the Hy­postatick Union in Christ is also an Hypostatick Compo­sition; [Page 32] or which is the same, that Christ is a compound Hypostasis, is so far from being a Paradox, that it is the received Language, not only of the Greek Fathers, but of the Councils. Syn. 5 ^a. Constantin. Can. 4.— Sancti Pa­tres docuerunt, unitatem Dei verbi ad carnem animatam anima rationali & intellectuali secundum compositionem. Theodori autem & Nestorii sequaces, divisione gaudentes, affectualem unitatem introducunt. Sancta Dei verò Eccle­sia utriusque perfidioe impietatem ejiciens, unitionem Dei verbi ad carnem secundum compositionem confitetur. Vide Can. 7 ^um. hujus Concilii. Lib. 3. de Trin. cap. 3. sect. 12. p. 232. Hear Petavius's Confession, [Christi Domini Hypostasin, sive personam à plerisque Pa­tribus dici compositam ex naturis duabus, ut ab Cyrillo, Damasceno, Maximo & aliis.] To which add what the Learned Suarez hath observed, Suarez de In­carn. Q. 2. Disp. 6. sect. 4. p. 194. Ibid. p. 193. [Alii Patres licet non apertè utantur nomine compositionis, aliis tamen, quoe per­inde esse videntur, utuntur, ut adunationis, copulationis ex duobus, conjunctionis, &c.—Illa vero particula, ex, planè designat compositionem.

The phrase of the Hypostatick Union is most opposite to the Heresy of Eutyches, who believed that there was not an Union of Two Natures, but a Confusion of One of them: But the phrase of the Hypostatick Composition is most opposite to the Nestorian Heresy, who asserted a kind of Hypostatic Union, that is, an Union of Two Persons, and denied that Christ, God and Man, was One Person, compounded of Two Natures.

The Animadverter shews his skill in this Controversy to oppose these two phrases, and to condemn that phrase of an Hypostatick Composition which the Church has re­ceived. As great an Opiniator as the Animadverter is, I believe he will scarce have the confidence to say, that he can teach these great Fathers of the Church how to speak in this Mystery; I promise faithfully to attend him, when ever he begins.

[Page 33] The Soul being a Part, cannot possibly be a Person. P. 75. lin. 4. N. 5. Forasmuch as a Part is an incomplete Being, and there­fore in the very nature of it, being designed for the completion of something else, must subsist in and by the subsistence of the Whole. But a Person imports the most complete Degree and Mode of Being, as subsisting whol­ly by it self, and not in or by any other, either as a sub­ject of inherence or dependence; so that it is a direct Contradiction to the very definition and nature of the thing, for the same Being to be a Part and a Person too. And consequently that which makes the Soul a Part, does irrefragably prove it not to be a Person.]

I answer, That to be a Part, and a Person, in a simple Person, in a Person consisting of one Nature, I confess to be contradictious and impossible. 2dly, To be the infe­rior part in a compounded Person, to be in any Actions an Instrument, a Principium quo (as the Body in the mixt Actions of Sense is to the Soul) is contradictory to the Notion of a Person. A Person, as such, is the Principium quod of all the Actions which proceed from it; but to be the superior Part in such Composition is very compatible with the Personality of such superior Nature; For such su­perior Nature may very well retain its own proper Mode of Subsistence, (if we explain Personality with the Schools) such a superior Nature retains all the Perfections, all the natural Perfections of a whole and complete Being, is a Principium quod, not only of its own natural Actions, but of the mixt Actions of the whole compounded Hypostasis. Such a superior Nature may be a Person, and at the same time in a large acceptation of the term, a Part, that is, a Part as Aristotle defines that term, Arist 4. Met. cap. 25. [...] ▪ that into which any thing is divided, or of which that consists, which we call a Whole; in which sense of the term Part, the Learned Petavius is not afraid to call the Divine Nature of the WORD, a Part, laxius [Page 34] sumpto partis vocabulo. Petav. lib. 3. de Trin. cap. 3. sect. 12. p. 232.

[I must pass over the Animadverter's boldness in deter­mining, That a Part subsists by the subsistence of the Whole, which is very near asserting an Hypostatical Union of every substantial part: Others who embrace these Scho­lastical Subtleties, chuse rather to assert, That a Part sub­sists by a partial subsistence, and that the subsistence of the Whole is compounded of the subsistence of the Parts.]

[So when the Animadverter tells us, that a Person does not subsist in any other as a subject of dependence; I must crave his pardon; for I thought before, that every Creature had subsisted in God as a subject on whom we depended, that in him we live, and move, and have our Being.

P. 75. lin. 16. N. 6. [If the Soul in the composition of a man's Person, were an entire Person it self, and, as such, concurred with the Body towards the constitution of the Man, then a Man would be an imperfect, accidental, and not a per­fect natural compound. He would be that which Phi­losophy calls Ʋnum per Accidens, that is, a thing made up of two such Beings, as cannot perfectly coalesce into one.]

Mutatis mutandis, this is the Great Socinian Objection against the Incarnation of the Son of God, That Infinite and Finite cannot perfectly coalesce and unite into One; that God and Man, [...], is the name of the most un­natural compound and mixture.

The same Answer will satisfy both Objections.

To confound the two Natures of God and Man, or of Soul and Body, would confessedly make the most unnatu­ral compound and mixture: But we maintain an Union in both Cases, and not a Confusion.

The Divine Nature retains all the Perfections of a Divine Person in the Composition; and the Human Nature by the Composition loses none of the natural perfections of the [Page 35] Human Nature. It cannot indeed properly be called by the metaphysical name of a suppositum, as becoming an Instru­ment, a principium quo to the superior Divine Nature; but then thereby it becomes capable of being an Instrument in the noblest Acts of the Mediatorial Office, which subsisting by it self, it was uncapable of.

So the Soul in the Constitution of Man retains all the Perfections of a separate intellectual suppositum; nor did any Philosoper ever assert that an Human Body was more imperfect than a Stone, notwithstanding this latter is a sup­positum, and the former not. The Human Body by the Composition is an Instrument, a Principium quo to the Soul, an Instrument in the mixt Actions of Sense, which of it self, it was uncapable of. And if a Stone could speak, it would never complain, if God should miraculously change it into an Human Body, notwithstanding the compleatness of a suppositum, and the incompleatness of an Inferior Na­ture in an Hypostatick Composition.

Secondly, The Animadverter mistakes, that which Philo­sophers call Ʋnum per Accidens, for that is, when two Be­ings which differ toto Genere (as Substance and Accident) are united. Such an Union, say they, is accidental, and consequently the Compositum, not Ʋnum per se, but Ʋnum per Accidens: Or, when two Compleat Beings are united, as in all Artificial Works, where each part is a distinct sup­positum, which is more properly called Aggregatum per Ac­cidens.

But the Divine and Human Nature, the Soul and Body, differ not toto Genere; each are Substances, and so are capa­ble of a substantial Union, which suffices to denominate the Compositum, Ʋnum per se, and not Ʋnum per Accidens.

Again, The Divine Nature is, and remains compleat in the Composition; the Humane Nature subsists ad modum partis, in the nature of a part of an Instrument in the Com­position.

[Page 36]So is the Soul compleat, and the Human Body the In­strument, or incompleat in the constitution of Man; so that according to the strictest Rules of Philosophy, both the [...] and Man, are Ʋnum per se, not Ʋnum per Accidens.

Thirdly, As little can I allow the Animadverter, that every Ʋnum per Accidens must be an unnatural Compound. According to these Philosophers, a Learned Man, a Pious Man, is Ʋnum per Accidens; ought we therefore to avoid Piety and Learning, that we may not become an unnatu­ral Compound?

Fourthly, The Union of a Subject and its Adjunct is, according to all Philosophers, an accidental Union; the Adjunct, as I observed before, predicated of the Subject more Accidentis: This Objection therefore falls strongest upon his own Head, who denied the Human Nature of Christ to be a part of Christ; and affirmed, That it was an Adjunct to the Person of the WORD, [ Cap. 1. N. 10] which is in consequence to affirm, that the [...], is Ʋnum per Accidens.

P. 76. lin. 4. N. 7. If the Soul in a state of Separation from the Body, be a Person, then it is either the same Person, which the Man himself was, while he was living, and in the Body; or it is another Person: But to assert either of them is extreamly absurd, and therefore equally absurd, that the Soul in such a State should be a Person, &c.]

This also is a Socinian Objection: The Animadverter may be satisfied, That no wise Man will chuse the later part of the Disjunction, viz. that the Soul in a state of Separation is a different Person from the Man himself, or that the WORD before the Incarnation is a different Person from Christ, God and Man, or the WORD in­carnated. For the Objection is equal against both Articles, as by a small variation of the immediate following words will appear.

Now thanks be to God, this formidable Objection of the Socinians, and the Animadverter, is founded upon a mistake in Philosophy, viz. That those things which differ from one another, as Simple and Compound, differ as two things; whereof one implies a Contradiction and Negation of the other. There may be a thousand instances brought to confute this [Page 38] pretended Axiom. A Man learned, is the same Man with himself before he was learned, and yet in the Confession of all Philosophers, A Man, and a Man learned, differ as Simple and Compound. A Man learned, is an accidental Compositum, an Ʋnum per Accidens. So a Man cloathed is the same Man with himself naked; and yet a Man cloath­ed, and a Man naked, differ as Simple and Compound. A Soul in a state of Separation, is the same Soul with the Soul cloathed with an Human Body. I am ashamed to be obliged to prove so plain a Conclusion: In an Hypostatical Union, the inferior Nature is so far an Adjunct to the supe­rior Nature, that what the WORD was before the Incar­nation, or the Soul before its cloathing with a Body, the same each remains after the Union or Conjunction. It is in some sense a Part, otherwise the Union could not be substantial, but accidental. The WORD could with no more propriety be said to be a Man, than a Man may be denominated an evil Angel, because he is possessed of such.

Had the Divine and Human Nature of Christ been con­founded, or the Soul and Body of Man so mixt, as to have denominated the Compositum of a different Nature from the component Parts; then the WORD, and the [...] could not be one Person, nor the Soul and the Man the same Person. But we maintain an Hypostatical Union, and not a confusion of Substance or Nature.

That which has obscured the Analogy betwixt the Uni­on of the two Natures in the One Person of Christ, and of the Soul and Body in Man, is, for that in this latter in­stance, Custom has prevailed with us to say, That an Hu­man Person has but one, viz. an human Nature. Where­as an Human Person properly consists of two unconfound­ed Natures; (the Nature of the Soul and Body are not confounded in the Hypostatical Composition of Man.) The Learned Damascen, Vide Damasc. lib. 3 de Or­tho. fide cap. 3. (if I remember aright) gives the reason of this form of Speech, Because we see many distinct [Page 39] Persons possess the same common Nature; whence we say, That two or more Human Persons are of one and the same nature. As also, That if the Holy Spirit had been incarna­ted equally with the WORD, we might have said that the WORD incarnate is of the same nature with the Holy Ghost incarnate.

To conclude, All Philosophers assert, That a totum dif­fers only ratione from all its parts united; if therefore it be possible for the superior part in an Hypostatick Union to retain all the Natural Perfections of a suppositum in the com­position; and for an inferior part to be united to the superior, without confusion of its Nature, and yet not as a distinct sup­positum, but as an instrumentum or principium quo to the superi­or part: It will then evidently follow, That the whole compo­situm, is but one suppositum, but one Person, and the very same Person, which the superior part was before the composi­tion, and that a simple and compounded Person is in such instance not two Persons, but one and the same Person differing (not really, but) modally from himself, by such difference by which a Learned Man differs from himself be­fore he was Learned.

[And here I suppose some will object, P. 78. lin. 1. N. 8. That the Soul in a state of separation is not properly a Part, for as much as it exists not in any Compound, nor goes to the com­position of it. To which, I answer, That an actual in­existence in a Compound, is not the only Condition which makes the thing a part, but its essential relation to a Compound; which relation is founded partly upon its original designation, and partly upon its natural aptitude to be an ingredient in the constitution of a Compound.]

This Objection lies very obvious, That the Soul in a state of separation is a Person as subsisting by it self, neither be­ing a part in any Whole, nor an adjunct to any Subject, Animad, &c. p. 34. which is his own Definition of subsistence or personality. The Animadverter answers, That the Soul is then a part [Page 40] notwithstanding it exists in no whole. Now in Logicks, totum and pars, whole and part, are Relatives, and mutually infer one another. There can no more then be a Part without an actual Whole, than a Son without a Father. Adam was originally designed by God to be a Father, and had a natural aptitude to become such; What then? Will the Animadver­ter, or any one else affirm, That he was a Father before he had a Son, as the Animadverter here tells us, That the Soul in a state of separation is a part, tho there is no whole to which such part can belong?

However, Secondly, I confess that there is more of truth in this Answer than, I believe, the Animadverter was aware of, viz. That when to be a Part and a Person are opposed as Contradictions, We do not take this Term Part in a nice Logical sense of the Term, but in a Physical sense, for an incomplete Being, which naturally requires to be compleated, perfected by some other Co­part. And thus his own Answer will be strongly retorted against himself, viz. That an actual Inexistence in a Com­pound, is not that which absolutely denies any thing to be a Person, but its existing incompleatly in the Composition, its Existence ad modum adjuncti instrumenti, vel principii quo, to some superior nature. Now in this sense the WORD is not a Part, the WORD is not perfected, compleated by the Composition. The Soul of Man is in­deed compleated, perfected in its Operations by the Com­position, is capable of the actions of sense by the Compo­sition; but yet the Soul is not perfected in its (Metaphysi­cal) Suppositality; the Soul is not less a principium quod of its own actions in the Composition, than in a state of Separation.

N. 9. Thirdly, This Socinian Objection falls as heavy upon the Socinians and the Animadverter, in the instance of a Hu­man Person. Both will confess that the Soul is a Part, and Man a Whole: From whence in the Animadverter's words, I argue:

[Page 41] A Whole, compounded of Soul and Body, as Man is, and a Simple uncompounded Part, as the Soul is, can ne­ver be numerically one and the same Being; for that dif­fering from one another, as Simple and Compound, they differ as two Beings, whereof one implies a Contradicti­on and Negation of the other. A Compound Being, as such, including in it several Parts compounding it; and a Simple Being utterly excluding all Parts and Compositi­on. So that if a Man while alive be one Being, and his Soul after Death be a Being too, it is impossible for the Soul to be one and the same Being with the Man]. And from these Premises I can also add, P. 77. lin. 1. [That wheresoever there are two distinct Beings, we do and must by all the Rules of Grammar and Logick say, that one of them is not the other; and where one is not the other, we cannot in Truth or Justice say, that one ought to account for what was done or not done by the other, &c.]

Let the Animadverter answer this, and he answers him­self. A Simple and Compounded Person may as well be the same Person, as a Simple and Compounded Being be the same Being. These two differ modally, and not really.

And now to return from the Mystery of the Incarnati­on, N. 10. to that of the Sacred Trinity, and to the Question the Animadverter is considering as preparatory to it; viz. What is the Formal Reason of Personality in Finite Crea­ted Persons? This is, I confess, a very proper Enquiry; but there is another as proper, that is unfortunately omitted by most who treat of this Sacred Mystery; viz. Not what that is which strictly and formally denominates any Finite Being a Suppositum or Person; but, What that is, which de­nominates it this particular Person? These are two Questi­ons, What strictly and properly denominates Adam a Per­son? And what that is which denominates him the singu­lar Person of Adam? To be a Human Person is a common, [Page 42] indefinite, universal Attribute; but to be the Person of Adam, is proper to the first Man.

That which strictly and properly denominates Adam a Person, is a Mode of Subsistence, totale Attributum, the being a compleat Whole, as the Fathers often speak.

That which denominates Adam the particular Person of Adam, is unknown to us; that which the Schoolmen call Haecceity, cannot be defined. Ancients and Moderns sup­ply the place of the Individuating difference, by a Collecti­on of Accidents (says Porphyry); by the [...], the Personal Properties, say the Ancient Fathers. It is, says the Author of Expositio Fidei, the [...] of Adam to be immediately formed by the hands of God, to be the Husband of Eve, the First Man, the Father of Cain, Abel, Seth, &c.

Again; since the Formal Cause of any thing denominates that thing, —Res omnes communi­ter denominavi a suis formis, sicut album ab albedine, & ho­mo ab humanitate; quare om­ne illud, a quo aliquid denomi­natur, quantum ad hoc, habet habitudinem formae. Ut si di­cam, iste est indutus vestimen­to, iste ablativus construitur in habitudine causae formalis, quamvis non sit forma. Aquin. 1. Par. Q. 37. Art. 2. of which it is the Formal Cause; hence from what any thing is denominated, that thing is conceived by us in the similitude of a Formal Cause, nay, and often so stiled. In which sense Porphyr. Introd. ad A­rist. Organon. cap. 2. Porphyry says, [...]. That Singulars or Individuals are so called, for that each is constituted by (certain) Properties, the Collection of which is in no other Individual. Not that a Property, or Proprium, is a Form, or Differentia, but because it supplies the place of such, in the imperfect description of Individuals.

To apply this to the Divine Persons, 'tis a double En­quiry, What denominates the Father a Person; and what denominates him the Person of the Father. Subsistence, totale Attributum, denominates the Father a Person, which is a common Attribute to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. [Page 43] Paternity, to be unbegotten, to send his Son, &c. denomi­nates him the particular Person of the Father.

This last Question is what the Fathers were chiefly con­cerned in. The Noetianists, the Patri-Passianists, rarely di­sputed the Personality of Father, Son, and Holy-Ghost. None who understand the meaning of the Term, can deny, that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are each of them a pro­per Person, if he acknowledges that each of them is pro­perly God. None can imagine that that Being which is God, is either an Accident, a Part, or, to please the Ani­madverter, an Adjunct to any other Being. Those only deny the Personality, who esteem the Son and Holy Spirit, that is, each of them, not properly God, but something in God, the Personal Word or Wisdom of God the Father, or his Personal Power.

This was the great Controverted Debate, Whether the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that is, whether Each of them was a Distinct Person? and consequently whether they were Three Persons? Now Paternity, say the Anci­ent Fathers, in this sense constituted the Father a distinct Divine Person: The Schoolmen change the Question, and say, That it constituted him a Person: In the same sense, Filiation, according to the Ancients, constituted the Son a distinct Person; and Procession, Sanctification, constitu­ted the Holy Spirit a distinct Person from Father and Son.

This Observation will be of great use to any one who shall read the Ancients concerning the Personality of Fa­ther, Son, and Holy Ghost.

CHAP. III.

P. 93. N. 1. [ COnsideration 5. When the terms [Cause, formal Rea­son, constituent or productive Principle, and the like] are used about the Divine Nature and Persons, they are not to be understood, as applicable to them, in the strict and proper signification of the said Terms; but only by way of Analogy, as really meaning no more than a causal or necessary dependance of one Notion or Concep­tus Objectivus upon another; so that it is impossible for the Mind to conceive distinctly of the one, but as depen­ding upon, or proceeding from the other.] Compare this with his first Consideration. P. 92. [That the natural Order of Prius and Posterius, founded in the universal Reason of things (according to which, the Conception of one thing presupposes and depends upon the Conception of another) makes no Prius or Posterius, and yet is by no means to be contradicted or confounded in our discoursing of God.]

This the Animadverter lays down as a Rule to guide our Discourses concerning the Divine Persons. To which I answer.

First, That these Considerations contain a direct Heresy, the express Heresy of Sabellius.

Secondly, That the Animadverter himself notoriously breaks these Rules, even where he ought to have kept them.

First, It is the direct Heresy of Sabellius to assert, That there is no Prius and Posterius between the Divine Per­sons.

The Compiler of the Athanasian Creed denies a Prius or Posterius in the Trinity, in reference to Duration or Time; they are all three Co-eternal. But to deny a Prius and [Page 45] Posterius in Original, is to deny that there is a Father and Son in the Trinity.

Again, it is very pleasant for the Animadverter to tell us, That this Prius and Posterius is founded in the Ʋniversal Reason of things, and yet denies it in the Divine Nature. As if Universal Reason did not reach infinite as well as finite Nature. I suppose he means, That there is a natural Or­der of Prius and Posterius founded in the particular reason of finite Natures, which makes no Prius or Posterius in the infinite Divine Nature.

And it is as pleasant to hear him telling us, That this natural Order of Prius and Posterius must not be contra­dicted in our discoursing of God; when in the very imme­diate preceding words, himself had contradicted it, and affirmed, that there was no Prius and Posterius in the Di­vine Nature.

Secondly, Himself most shamefully confounds this Natu­ral Order of Prius and Posterius, when he asserts p. 98. That the Father is formally constituted a Person by his own personal Act of Generation. P. 249. That personal Proper­ties are properly Personalities. P. 250. That the Relation and Mode of Subsistence make but one single indivisible Mode of Being: Yet, says the Animadverter in the next imme­diate words, according to the Natural Order of conceiving things, we must conceive of the Subsistence as precedent to the Relation: For as much as Human Reason considers things sim­ply as subsisting, before it can consider them as related to one another.

The meaning of all this is, That these are Rules, when he hopes that he can confute the Dean of St. Paul's. Self-Consciousness cannot be Subsistence, because according to the natural Order of conceiving things, we must con­ceive of the Subsistence before the Self-Consciousness. Self-Consciousness cannot be the formal Reason of Personality; for as much as it is a Personal Act, one property of the [Page 46] Person already constituted. These are Demonstrations a­gainst the Dean of St. Paul's. What pity was it, that the Dean of St. Paul's never asserted this once in all his Book, for then it would have been allowed the Animadverter, that in one single Article, he had been too hard for the Dean. But why are not these Rules to himself? Is not Generation as much a personal Act, as Self-Consciousness? Is not the Attribute of being a Father, one property of a Person already constituted? Is not this Relation founded upon, and posterior to a personal Act of Generation? Can any thing, according to human Reason, be related before it is? I believe the Animadverter in this point must borrow his own words, and tell us, That his Thoughts and Words can reach no higher.

Lastly, The Animadverter denies a Prius and Posterius in the Divine Nature to purpose, when he tells us, That even Productive Principles, when used in reference to the Divine Persons, that is, Father and Son, are not applicable to them in the strict and proper Signification of the said term. With his leave, the Father is strictly and properly the productive Principle of his Son, or else he cannot be strictly and properly the Father of his Son, or else he did never strictly and properly beget his Son. The Arians de­ny a proper Generation, and assert, That the Father is an Adoptive, Creative, and not Generative Father of his Son. The Sabellians on the other hand adulterate both the Divine Generation and Mission, and expound them in a figurative improper Sense. Against both these Heresies, the Church has ever professed a true and proper Genera­tion amongst the Divine Persons.

P. 94. lin 25. N. 2. [Self-Consciousness is a personal Act, and therefore Self-Consciousness cannot be the formal reason of Perso­nality in the Person, whose Act it is, and to whom it personally belongs.]

[Page 47]The Consequence I allow the Animadverter; I only en­quire, Why it concludes not against Generation, which is as confessedly a Personal Act as Self-consciousness?

Secondly, To affirm, that Self-consciousness is a Personal Act, is the greatest Heresie to the Schoolmen. A Personal Act is an Act proper and peculiar to some one Divine Per­son, as Generation is a Personal Act proper and peculiar to the Person of the Father, and distinguishes the Father from the Son and Holy Spirit. Now Self-consciousness is an Ab­solute Attribute, and upon that account cannot be esteemed Personal by the Schoolmen. Self-consciousness is but one conception of Omniscience, and will the Animadverter say, That the Father has a distinct Personal Omniscience? If he does, he multiplies Omniscience with the Persons, that is, he multiplies the Divine Nature in such Person.

Self-consciousness, as well as Mutual Consciousness, to the Schoolmen is an Essential Act: Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, according to the Schoolmen, as they have but one singular Divine Nature, so they have but one singular Om­niscience, but one singular Self-consciousness, and one sin­gular Mutual Consciousness.

Every Act proceeds not only from some Agent, but by vertue of some power to produce that Act: Therefore a Personal Act must have a Personal Power, a Personal prin­cipium quo. The Personal Act of Generation by the Father supposes a Personal Power to generate peculiar to the Fa­ther: A Personal Act of Self-consciousness therefore will imply a Personal Power to exert such Act, that is, a Per­sonal Omniscience, or a Personal Divine Nature.

Not therefore the Phrase of Three Infinite Minds, but the asserting that Self-consciousness is a Personal Act, does, in the Judgment of the Schoolmen, unavoidably infer Three Gods.

The Personality of every One of the Divine Persons is purely and perfectly Relative; P. 98. lin. 12. N. 3. and therefore nothing Ab­solute [Page 48] [as Self-consciousness is] can be the Formal consti­tuent reason of their Personality]

The Conclusion and Consequence are granted to the Animadverter.

The Antecedent, viz. That the Personality of every one of the Divine Persons is purely and perfectly Relative, is also the General Assertion of the Schoolmen, as Petavius observes, Lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 10. sect. 6. Paucissimi quidem è Schola Theologi vel opinati sunt, vel probabile judicant, personales proprietatès absolutum non-nihil habere; à quibus meritò dissentiunt coeteri.

How universally soever this Conclusion is embraced by the Schoolmen, and from them by the Animadverter, I can scarce persuade my self that the Animadverter under­stood the meaning of the very Conclusion; this I am sure of, That his pretended Arguments to prove this Con­clusion, are the greatest Objections against the truth of it, and that he all along betrays the grossest Ignorance of the Schoolmens meaning. I will give the Reader his own words, and then examine them. And that the Persons in the Blessed Trinity are purely Relative to one another, and consequently that their Personalities are so many Re­lations, is no less evident from this, that two of them relate to one another, as Father and Son, and the third to both, as proceeding from both; and it is impossible for one thing to proceed from another, especially by a continual act of Procession, without importing a relati­on to that from which it so proceeds; so that the very Personal Subsistence implies and carries in it a formal Relation. For the Father subsists Personally as a Father, by that Eternal Communication of his Nature to his Son; which Act, as proceeding from him, is called Generation, and renders him formally a Father; and as terminated in the Son, is called Filiation, and constitutes him formally a Son; and in like manner the Holy Ghost subsists per­sonally by that Act of Procession, by which he proceeds [Page 49] from, and relates to both the Father and the Son. So that, that proper Mode of Subsistence (by which in con­junction with the Divine Essence always included in it, each of them is rendred a Person) is wholly Relative, and so belongs to one of them, that it also bears a ne­cessary reference to another. From all which it undeni­ably follows, that the Three Persons in the Blessed Tri­nity, are in the formal Constitution of them Relative to one another; and consequently, that the Three Per­sonalities, by which they become formally Three Per­sons, and are so denominated, are Three Eternal Rela­tions.]

The Ancient Fathers confess, That the Divine Relati­ons constitute each of them a distinct Person; that they enable us to conceive them distinct; this therefore is not the question. The question is, Whether the Relations constitute each of them a Person indefinitely? Spiration is a Relative Attribute in the Father, relates the Father to the Holy Spirit; but yet Spiration is not properly a Per­sonality, not properly the subsistential Form, but a subsisten­tial or personal Property. A little to examine the Ani­madverter's proofs.

First, The Persons in the Blessed Trinity are purely Rela­tive: This is too much, more than ever any asserted be­fore him. A Person in the Blessed Trinity is God, an infi­nite Mind; but to be God, to be an infinite Mind, are confessedly absolute Attributes. The Schoolmen say, That the Persons in the Blessed Trinity are purely Relative in their Personalities, that is, purely Relative, secundum quid, or in one Respect. The Animadverter turns the Proposi­tion into a simple Affirmation, that they are (in all Re­spects) purely Relative.

Secondly, The Divine Persons are purely Relative, be­cause two of them relate to one another, as Father and Son; and the third to both. The Animadverter knows [Page 50] not the difference betwixt a Relative Person, and a Person who sustains a Relation. Adam is related to God, to Eve, to Seth; yet none ever stiled Adam a Relative Person. The Personality of Adam is not a Relation, but a proper Mode of Subsistence, which can never be conceived otherwise than Absolute.

Thirdly, The Father subsists personally, as a Father. This is the question it self, and by the Rules of Logick ought to have been proved, and not supposed: The sole Enquiry is, Whether to be a Father, and to be a Person, or subsist personally, be formally the same?

Paternitas [sc. Divina] ra­tionem fundandi non postulat, ut in rerum natura sit; nam si aliquam talem fundandi ratio­nem haberet, maximè genera­tionem activam: Illam autem non respicit, ut rationem sui esse, sed potius est in suo genere ra­tio, cur ipsa sit. In quo etiam Paternitas illa aeterna antecellit omnem aliam Paternitatem, quae in coelo & in terra nominatur. Omnis enim alius Pater, ideo est Pater, quia generat: Pater autem aeternus ideo generat, quia per Paternitatem est con­stitutus in suo esse Personali. Suarez. lib. 5. de Trin. cap. 8. N. 8. p. 437. Fourthly, The Father subsists Personally by an Act of Generation. How can a Personal Act, which supposes the Person already con­stituted, be the formal Cause of Personality in the same Person? The Schoolmen were wiser in their Generation; they confess, that if the Father is denominated a Father from his Act of Generation, it is impossible that the Father's Paternity should be his Mode of Subsistence; since it is impossible not to suppose a Person subsisting, before we can conceive of him acting. The first Person of the Trinity, say the Schoolmen, is not therefore a Father, because he generates; but therefore generates, because he is a Fa­ther.

Fifthly, Filiation constitutes the Son formally a Son; that's not the question: But does Filiation constitute the Son a Person? that is the thing in debate, and which the Ani­madverter ought to have proved.

Sixthly, The very Personal Subsistence of these Persons implies and carries in it a formal Relation. This is not suf­ficient to imply a Relation, to carry in it a Relation, ex­cept the Animadverter means, that the Personal Subsi­stence is it self a Relation.

[Page 51]Again, Subsistence in relation to a productive Principle, (which is all the Relation the Animadverter here mentions) is a quite different thing from Personal Subsistence. Eve­ry Human Person subsists relatively in Relation to God, his Creator; but what is this to his Personality? This does not denominate an Human Person relative in his Personality. The Son and Holy Spirit relate to the Father as their pro­ductive Principle; but how does this prove them Relative Persons?

[It is certain, That to be a Father, P. 101. lin. 3. N. 4. is a Relative Sub­sistence.]

A Father (as understood in this Mystery, viz. as im­plying the property of being unbegotten) can have no Re­lation to a productive Principle. A Father has indeed a Relation to a Son; but the natural Order of conceiving things obliges us to conceive of a Person as subsisting, be­fore we can conceive him capable of the Act of Genera­tion, or of the Relation of a Father. The Schoolmen therefore call this not a thing certain and evident, but a Mystery; and confess, that unless the Father be so de­nominated antecedently to his Act of Generation, it is im­possible that the Father's being a Relative Subsistence or Person should be so much as true.

And having said thus much from the Animadverter con­cerning this Subtilty of the Schools, viz. the Relativeness of the Divine Persons in their Personalities; give me leave to consider it more generally.

And, first, it is no small prejudice with me against the Scholastick Subtilties, that in this material Article, all Antiquity for above a thousand Years have affirmed the quite contrary, viz. that to be a Person, is an absolute Attribute. Petrus Abelardus, Peter Lombard, Council of Trent exami­ned and dispro­ved, &c. p. 79. August. lib. 7. de Trin. cap. 6. Hugo de St. Victore, (who first shewed the way to School-Divini­ty, saith the Learned Bishop of Worcester) all agreed with St. Augustin, That Pater dicitur ad se persona, that the [Page 52] Father was absolutely, and not relatively, called a Per­son. Indeed St. Augustin has given us an unanswer­able Argument against this Assertion of the Relativeness of this Attribute of being a Person in this Sacred My­stery. August. lib. 7. de Trin. cap. 6.

If to be a Person, be a Relative Attribute, as to be a Friend is; then, according to the nature of all Relatives, the Father when denominated a Person, must be defined by his Correlate, and so of the other Persons; that is to say, that this Phrase, viz. The Person of the Father cannot signify the Father, but the Son: And this Phrase, viz. The Person of the Son, cannot signify the Son, but the Fa­ther; for so it is in all other Relatives. The Friend of James cannot be James, but must be Peter, or some other Person. This is a just Consequence of this Scho­lastick Subtilty; I need not note the Paradoxicalness of it.

To which I add as an Argument ad homines, to the Animadverter, and those who follow the Schools, That to be a Person is as common to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Animadv. p. 113. as to be God is common to the Three. If there­fore this be a sure Rule, that whatever Attribute is com­municable, is absolute; to be a Person will be an absolute Attribute, Si enim tres personae, com­mune est eis id quod persona est. St. Au­gust lib. 7 de Trin. cap. 4. as certainly communicable. And they strain very hard to maintain this Scholastick Subtilty, who de­ny that this Attribute of being a Person is common to Fa­ther, Son, and Holy Ghost, save only in Name or aequi­vocally; and yet this is a just consequence of asserting the Relativeness of this Attribute.

That which drove the Schoolmen to this novel and unin­telligible Subtilty, shall be considered hereafter.

P. 101. N. 5. [ Argument III. If Self-Consciousness be the formal reason of Personality in the Three Divine Persons, then there is no repugnancy in the Nature and Reason of the thing it self, but that there might be Three thousand [Page 53] Persons in the Deity, as well as Three, P. 102. lin. 1. &c.—Be­cause this repugnancy (if there be any) must be either from the nature of Self-Consciousness,—or from the Nature of the Godhead.—But it is from neither of them. For, first, there is nothing in the Nature of Self-Consciousness to hinder its Multiplication, &c.— Nor, in the next place, is there any repugnancy on the part of the Godhead, that Three thousand Self-Consci­ous Spirits should subsist in it any more, than that Three should: For the Godhead considered precisely and ab­stractedly in it self (and not as actually included in any Person) is as able to communicate it self to the greatest number, as to the smallest.]

This is an old Socinian Objection, and were it of any force, it would conclude universally against the Faith of Three Divine Persons, viz. that if we once acknowledg a plurality of Divine Persons, we can give no reason why we stop at the number Three; we might equally assert Three thousand, as well as Three.

For to suppose a Socinian retorting the Animadverter's own Argument against himself.

[If Three distinct Modalities or Modes be sufficient to constitute Three Divine Persons, then there is no re­pugnancy in the Nature and Reason of the thing, but that there might be Three thousand Persons in the Dei­ty, as well as Three. Because this repugnancy (if there be any) must be either from the Nature of a Mode, or from the Nature of the Godhead: But it is from neither of them; for, first, there is nothing in the Na­ture of a Mode to hinder its Multiplication into never so great a number of particulars; but that there may be Three thousand, or Three millions of Modes, as well as Three. Nor in the next place, is there any repug­nancy on the part of the Godhead, that Three thou­sand Modes subsist in it, or be sustained by it, any more [Page 54] than that Three should. For the Godhead considered pre­cisely, and abstractedly (and not as actually included in any Person) is as able to communicate it self to the greatest number of Modes, as to the smallest.]

Now there is not a surer sign, that an Author does not understand the Subject he writes upon, than his bringing an Objection, which is so plainly and easily retorted upon his own Hypothesis.

The Animadverter cannot answer this Objection in the mouth of a Socinian, but in the same words he will answer himself.

The Faith of a Trinity of Divine Persons is owing to Re­velation alone; and from thence ex posteriori, we learn, that a Trinity (that is, neither more nor fewer) of Divine Persons, is necessary.

Three Divine Persons are necessary, because no Person can be Divine, and not have necessary Existence. Again, we believe, that there are no more than Three, because God has revealed the existence but of Three, and commanded us to worship but Three, viz. Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

The Schoolmen pretend to prove the number of a Tri­nity of Divine Persons, not from the formal Reason of Per­sonality; for what Reason can we give, why a fourth Di­vine Person might not have proceeded from the three first, a fifth from the first four, and so in infinitum, but from these two Maxims:

First, That there can be but one unproduced Divine Person. This to me is a sacred Article by no means to be contra­dicted; and in this I agree with the Learned Henry de Gan­davo, That those Arguments which prove the Article of the Unity of God, demonstrate this Proposition.

Secondly, That there can be no more than two distinct Processions, viz. Generation, and Spiration.

[Page 55]If the Schoolmen understood this Proposition, That the Scriptures have revealed but these two Processions, I entire­ly agree with them: But they argue ex priori; A Spirit, say they, can substantially produce only by his Understand­ing or Will; the former, they tell us, is proper Genera­tion; the latter, Spiration. Animad. &c. p. 116. But I cannot keep pace with these Gentlemen, whom the Animadverter commends for venturing so little: It suffices to my Faith, that the quod sit of this Mystery is expresly revealed in Scripture, viz. That the Son is begotten, and that the Holy Ghost proceeds. But what either the One or the Other is, how they differ, or why God might not have had two Sons, or two Holy Spirits, or have produced a fourth Divine Person by a diffe­rent sort of Procession from either Generation or Spiration, are things above my thoughts and words.

I approve of that Ancient Anthem of the Church,

far beyond the Modern Subtilties of the Schools.

[For this is a received Maxim in the Schools, P. 113. lin. 10. N. 6. with refe­rence to the Divine Nature and Persons, Repugnat in Di­vinis dari absolutum incommunicabile. Greg. de Valen. Tom. 1. p. 874. And it is a sure Rule, whereby we may distin­guish in every one of the Divine Persons, what is Essential, from what is Personal. For every Attribute that is abso­lute, is communicable, and consequently essential; and every one that is purely relative, is incommunicable, and therefore purely Personal, and so è converso:]

I shall crave leave to put this Question more largely than the Animadverter has done; and enquire, What it is which determines the singular or plural predication of any Attri­bute concerning the Three Divine Persons?

[Page 56]The Schoolmen commonly give the same Answer with the Animadverter, viz. That a Personal Attribute may be plurally predicated; an Essential Attribute may be predi­cated singularly of the Three Divine Persons. Secondly, That a Relative Attribute is a Personal Attribute; and an Absolute Attribute an Essential one.

To whom I answer, That the first distinction concerning a Personal and Essential Attribute is true, but insufficient for the difficulty. Secondly, That the second distinction of an Absolute and Relative Attribute is not necessarily, uni­versally true. I say, the former part of this Rule I confess to be true, but answers not the difficulty. A Personal Attri­bute may be predicated plurally, if common to more than one Person. For all such Predications are reduced to this received one of the Church, That there are Three Divine Persons. All Essential Attributes may be predicated sin­gularly, being equipollent to this, that there is but one Essence of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But this will not give us satisfaction in our present Enquiry. As for in­stance.

It is the received Language of the Church, That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, may be truly stiled Ʋnus Deus, Ʋnus Dominus, Ʋnus Creator; as also the allowed Phrase of the Schools, that Father and Son are Ʋnus Spirator; and that it is Heresy to assert that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are Tres Dii, Tres Domini, Tres Creatores, or to say of Father and Son, that they are Duo Spiratores.

I know the Schoolmen assert, that Deus, Dominus, Crea­tor, are Essential Attributes, but they cannot pretend this of Spirator; to be the Spirator of the Holy Ghost is con­fessedly a Personal Attribute; Attributa Divina positiva adjectivè sumpta, rectè prae­dicantur in plurali de Divinis Personis. — Suarez, lib. 3. de Trin. cap. 11. n. 12. p. 401. how comes that under pain of Heresy to be predicated singu­larly of Two Divine Persons, viz. of Father and Son?

[Page 57] Secondly, — Sic enim Tres Personae rectè dicuntur Divinae & Do­minantes ac Creantes, & Pa­ter & Filius dicuntur Spiran­tes Spiritum Sanctum, licet sint unus Spirator. N. 12. p. 401. It is confest by the most rigid of the Schoolmen, that it is lawful to say, That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are Tres Deita­tem habentes, Tres Dominantes, Tres Creantes; That Father and Son are Duo Spirantes. How shall we extricate our selves out of this difficul­ty? Is Deus an Essential Attribute, and Deitatem habens a Personal One? What difference is there in sense betwixt Deus and Deitatem habens, Dominus and Dominans, Creator and Creans, Spirator and Spirans? Can the Concrete term Deus be better explained than by its abstract, Deitatem habens?

It's manifest from these Examples, that the distinction of an Essential and Personal Attribute will not solve this difficulty.

The Schoolmen confess this, and therefore give us a se­cond distinction of a Noun Substantive and Noun Adjective, viz. That an Essential Attribute, when exprest by a Noun Substantive, is always to be predicated singularly; but when the same Attribute is exprest by a Noun Adjective, then it may be plurally predicated of the Divine Persons.

But I enquire, How comes this Rule also to hold in the Personal Attribute of a Spirator? Can a Criticism of Gram­mar make a Personal Attribute to be predicated as an Essen­tial one, and an Essential Attribute to be predicated in the nature of a Personal Attribute?

Secondly, This is the very Question, Why two Phrases in Sense, and according to all the Rules of Logick equipol­lent, should be so differently interpreted merely from a Criticism of Grammar, that the one of them should be Or­thodox▪ and the other Heretical?

It's also manifest from these Instances, that the second Rule of an Absolute and Relative Predicate is false. Deus, Dominus, Creator, Spirator, are manifestly Relative Attri­butes: There can be no dispute of the three last; and the [Page 58] Scripture Expressions of my God, thy God, our God, your God, prove the Relativeness of this term God. Besides, that an absolute Attribute put into an Adjective Form, may, as I have shewed, be plurally predicated.

Nay, if it were unlawful to predicate plurally an abso­lute Essential Attribute, the Whole Church has hitherto erred, which has never scrupled the Phrase of Three Di­vine, Holy, Omnipotent, &c. Persons; or in the Phrase of the Athanasian Creed, (which all the Schoolmen esteemed to be genuine) Three Co-eternal Persons.

The Schoolmen indeed were infinitely perplexed how to reconcile the Author of that Creed to himself; that it was lawful to say, Three Co-eternal Persons, and yet at the same time forbidden to say, Three Eternals in the Mascu­line Gender. Here Thomas Aquinas, their Leader, help'd them at a dead lift; and when he could not bring the Rule [concerning the Distinction of Nouns Substantive and Nouns Adjective] to this Creed; he brought the Creed to the Rule: And as Petavius somewhere observes, contra­ry to all Rules of Grammar, he interpreted all those Ad­jective Phrases Substantively, that is, he taught that they ought to have been put into the Neuter Gender; it ought to have been non tria oeterna sed unum oeternum, &c. which Construction the Athanasian Creed will very well bear in our English Translation.

But I must here acknowledge to my Reader, that this Distinction of an absolute and relative Predicate, as the adaequate Reason of a Plural or Singular Predication in this Sacred Mystery, is much Ancienter than the Schoolmen, claims the Authority of the Latin Fathers, who all received it from St. Augustin.

Augustin lib. 5. de Trin. cap. 3.That Learned and Acute Father pinch'd with an Ari­an Objection [which himself calls calidissimum machina­mentum;] first, as I believe, invented this Distinction, and gave us this Maxim in relation to this Mystery. [Page 59] [Quicquid ad se dicitur Deus, Ibid. Cap. 8. & de singulis Personis & si­mul de tota Trinitate, singulariter, non pluraliter, dicitur.] His great Name gave this Axiom Authority with the succeeding Latin Fathers, from whom the Schoolmen borrowed it.

First, I ballance St. Augustin's Authority with his own words, August. Lib. 7. de Trin. cap. 6. ["Pater ad se dicitur persona] with his own argu­ment formerly mentioned [N. 4. of this Chapter] which demonstrates that this term Persona is an absolute Attribute; Ibid. the same he saith of Hypostasis [ Omnis res ad seipsam subsistit, quanto magis Deus?] And yet the undoubted Faith of the Church is, that this term Hypostasis, or Perso­na, may be plurally predicated, that we may say, That there are Three Divine Hypostases or Persons.

If the Reader shall enquire, Whether St. Augustin saw not this obvious Objection against his own Axiom?

I Answer, That he did see it, and that he chose rather to forsake the universal Faith and Language of the Church, than to part with an Axiom, he thought so serviceable against that Calidissimum Machinamentum, that subtle Ob­jection of the Arians. [Magna inopia Humanum laborat eloquium, dictum est tamen tres personoe, August. Lib. 5. de Trin. cap. 9. non ut illud dice­retur, sed ne taceretur omnino.] which words, if we strip them of that Rhetorick wherewith that Eloquent Father has cloathed and disguised them, carry this plain sense, That though the universal Language of the Church has called Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, Three Persons; yet, to speak the truth, the Phrase ought not to be used, the thing ought not to be said; we must say somewhat, there­fore we say Three Persons; Non ut illud diceretur, sed ne ta­ceretur omnino.

I speak not this to derogate from the Honour of that de­servedly Great and Learned Father, but to Vindicate the Truth of this Sacred Mystery. Amicus S. Augustinus, ma­gis Amica fides. When St. Augustin departs from the re­ceived [Page 60] Faith of the Church, it can be no fault to observe it, or to depart from him.

That Learned Father confesses, That he understood not the distinction of Hypostasis and Essence in this Sacred Mystery. Augustin. Lib. 5. de Trin. cap. 8. [Dicunt quidam, & illi [Groeci] Hypostasim, sed nescio quid volunt interesse inter Ʋsiam & Hypostasim.

That Learned Father confesses the unhappy reason of these mistakes; he wanted the assistance of the Greek Fa­thers, the most accurate Writers in this Mystery of the Trinity, as the Latin Fathers are judged the most accurate in the Pelagian Controversie. Augustin. Lib. 3. de Trin. praefa­tio. [Graecoe autem linguoe non sit nobis tantus habitus, ut talium rerum libris legendis & intelligendis ullo modo reperiamur idonei, quo genere litera­rum ex ijs, quoe nobis pauca interpretata sunt, non dubito cuncta quoe utiliter quoerere possumus, contineri.]

II. Letter of Advice, &c. S. V. P. 148. P. 149.The Learned Mr. Dodwell has laid the same Charge to the Schoolmen, viz. That they were Ignorant of the Greek Fathers, and necessitated to rely on Ignorant Tran­slations; that they were Unskilful in Critical Learning, that they were not ingenuously Rational in the proof of their Principles: P. 151. That most of Lombard's Principles were for the much greater part Transcribed from St. Augustin, that is, originally from the Authority of one private Per­son, from whom it was derived by the rest without any new Examination.

All I would observe from hence is, That there is no ne­cessity of concluding the Sacred Articles of the Trinity and Incarnation indefensible, because the Subtleties of the Schools (built for the much greater part upon the sole Au­thority of St. Augustin) seem so to most.

St. Augustin himself confesses this Axiom of [ quicquid ad se dicitur Deus, &c.] false in relation to this Term Person, or which is worse, That the Phrase of Three Persons ought not to be used.

[Page 61]A second Argument which I shall bring against this Axiom of St. Augustin's, (Quicquid ad se dicitur Deus, &c.) I shall take from the Attribute of Existence.

Existence is an absolute Predicate: We say, that God is, that the Father is, that the Son is, that the Holy Ghost is; yet we cannot say that Father, Son and Holy Ghost is, but are; I and the Father are one, these Three are One. Now every Novice in Logick can inform us, that Deus est, is the same with this Deus est existens; Pater est, the same with Pater est existens; and consequently Hi tres sunt, the same with Hi tres sunt existentes.

Here also again, I may plead St. Augustin's Authority against his own Axiom. He once ventured to change our Saviours words, and to say, [Qui gignit & quem gignit, unum est.]. But upon second thoughts, he put this passage into his Retractations, and in his Books of the Trinity, he affirmed it to be Sabellianism, Heresy, to change the Verb. [Pluraliter dictum est, ego & pater unum sumus. Augustin. lib. 5. de Trin. cap. 9. Non enim dixit unum est, quod Sabelliani dicunt, sed unum su­mus.]

Thirdly, Unity also is an absolute Attribute. We say, that God is One in the masculine gender, [...]. Gal. 3.20. We say also, that the Father is One, [...], That the Son is One, that the Holy Ghost is One, in the masculine gen­der: But we cannot say of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, that they are [...], unus, One in the masculine gender, but [...], unum, One in the neuter gender, [ [...].] that is, we cannot deny, that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are truly Three.

I esteem these two last Arguments the more, because they are grounded on the express words of Scripture; they are each singly, and much more conjointly, sufficient to overthrow the universality of that Axiom of St. Augustin, ["Quicquid ad se dicitur Deus, &c.]

[Page 62]But what will then become of the Arian Objection?

I answer, That I conceive that Objection a weak So­phism, and capable of an easy Solution.

Augustin. lib. 5. de Trin. cap. 3.I will give it in St. Augustin's own words, [Quicquid de Deo dicitur vel intelligitur, non secundum accidens, sed secundum substantiam dicitur Quapropter ingenitum Patri secundum substantiam est, & genitum esse Filio secundum substantiam est: diversum est autem ingenitum & genitum, diversa est ergo substantia Patris & Filii.] To this sense, All the Predicates concerning God or the Divine Persons, are either substantial or accidental Predications. Not the latter, because nothing is mutable in God; if the former, then to be unbegotten is a substantial Predicate of the Fa­ther, and to be begotten is a substantial Predicate of the Son: But to be unbegotten, and to be begotten, are con­trary one to the other; therefore the substance of the Fa­ther and Son are diverse or different.

St. Augustin seems not to acknowledge an accidental Predication concerning God; and it is confessed, that to be unbegotten, or to be begotten, are necessary, and not acci­dental Predications of the Father and Son.

St. Augustin answers to the Objection, That there was a middle Predication betwixt these two, substantial and ac­cidental, which was a relative Predication.

Now it is very true, that there is a middle Predication betwixt these two, an essential Predication, and an acciden­tal one. Secondly, it is as true, that in the Objection of the Arian, this middle Predication was a relative Predica­tion: But, with all submission, it was error non causoe pro causâ, to assign the relativeness of the Predication, as the reason of its being a middle Predication.

The Objection is a plain Sophism, equivocating in the phrase Substantia, which has a double sense in this Mystery; sometimes it signifies the same with Person or Hypostasis, [Page 63] sometimes the same with Essence: in the former sense, the Conclusion is sound and orthodox, that the Substance, that is, Hypostasis of the Father and Son is different.

And the Solution of this Objection is plain and easy; A personal Predication is a middle Predication, betwixt an essential and an accidental Predication, and that a personal Predication may be as necessary as an essential one amongst humane persons; the difference of Sex is a personal, yet ne­cessary Predication. Amongst the Divine Persons, to be unbegotten, to be begotten, to proceed, distinguish the Persons, but divide not the Essence. Paternity is neces­sary to the Person of the Father, but not essential to Him; for then Paternity would be common to the whole Tri­nity.

St. Augustin could not have failed of this true Answer, had he read the Greek Fathers, and from them learned the true Distinction of Hypostasis and Ʋsia.

Lastly, What Rule can I my self give concerning the plural or singular Predication of any Attribute concerning the Divine Persons?

I answer, First, That all plural Predications are either equipollent with, or reducible to this one allowed Proposi­tion, That there are Three Divine Persons. This is plain, and needs neither Illustration nor Proof.

Secondly, That all singular Predications are equipollent with, or reducible to this other allowed Proposition, viz. That there is but One God.

Is not this the same Distinction of an essential and per­sonal Predicate, which I have before declared insuffici­ent?

I answer, That so indeed the Schoolmen expound it. To them this fundamental Article of Natural Religion, there is but One God, is the same with this, that there is but One Divine Essence. But I conceive that these are distinct Articles.

[Page 64]The Unity of the Divine Essence, is but the Explicati­on of the Unity of the Trinity, and is not a question to any one to whom the Doctrine of the Trinity is not in some measure revealed: Whereas the Article of the Uni­ty of God is an Article of Natural Religion; no Myste­ry, but capable of being found out by Natural Reason alone.

One great occasion of this mistake, was the expressing the Article of the Unity of God, and of the Unity of the Trinity, by the same Phrase: The Unity of the Trinity is often expressed by this Phrase, that the Trinity, or Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are One God. But tho they are the same Words, they have a different import, when predi­cated of the whole Trinity conjointly, and when they are part of that fundamental Article of Natural Religion, that there is but One God.

A just Exposition of this prime Article of Natural Reli­gion will, as I conceive, give a Rational Account of these hitherto esteemed insuperable Difficulties; of which, by God's Grace, in my Second Part.

CHAP. IV.

IN reference to the sacred Articles of Religion, N. 1. we ought to have a double care, not only to think, but speak in­offensively; to take care, that our Words as well as our Opinions be Orthodox; and especially ought we to be thus cautious in the Mysterious Articles of the Trinity and Incarnation, where a word disordered, I had almost said a Comma misplaced, may render us, in the judgment of the warm contending Parties, guilty of no less than He­resy.

'Tis St. Augustin's Observation concerning the Mystery of the Trinity, that [Nec periculosius alicubi erratur, Lib. 1. de Trin. cap. 3. nec laboriosius aliquid quoeritur.] It is no where more dange­rous to Err, nor more difficult to apprehend than in this Mysterious Subject.

A Wise Person will have a great care therefore to keep the beaten Path, to speak in the received Language of the Church.

The Learned Calvin gives us his own Experience [Exper­tus pridem sum, & quidem soepius, Calvin's Instit. lib. 1. cap. 3. n. 5. quicunque de verbis per­tinacius litigant, fovere occultum virus.] That they who obstinately quarrel against the Phrases of the Church, are Hereticks in their Hearts. It were to be wished, that him­self had sufficiently considered this, when in the same Se­ction, he wishes, [ Ʋtinam sepulta essent hoec nomina, viz. Trinitas, Persona, Hypostasis, Essentia, Consubstantialis, &c.] That the Ecclesiastical phrases were all buried or laid aside, upon certain conditions he there mentions.

But there is one thing here especially to be noted, that several Expressions are rejected by the Fathers of the Church, not that they are absolutely uncapable of an Or­thodox sense, but because they are apt to lead to a false [Page 66] or Heritical sense; as for instance, [In Trinitate datur ali­us & alius sed non aliud & aliud.] The rigid'st of the School-men allow, aliud & aliud suppositum in Trinitate, the Axiom is understood of aliud in an Arian sense, of ali­ud naturâ.

Again, If ever it be lawful to use a new Phrase in this My­stery, it will then be lawful, when the antient allowed Phra­ses are rendred in a manner insignificant: when three Persons are Expounded by three somewhat's, or are declared to be Metaphorical.

This seems to me to be the case of the Reverend Dean of St. Pauls, by three Persons in this Mystery, says he, are to be understood three intelligent Beings, Vindicati­on of the Trin. p. 66. l. 24. three distinct Infinite Minds [to say, they are three Divine Persons, and not three Infinite Minds] is Heritical and absurd; that is, contains the Heresy of Sabellius, and contradicts the Scripture; which, as the Reverend Dean observes, repre­sents Father, ibid. Son, and Holy Ghost, as three Intelligent Beings, not as three Powers or Faculties of the same Be­ing, which is downright Sabellianism.

The Animadvertor laying hold on the Novelty of the Phrase of three Infinite Minds, took occasion to Write and Publish one of the most spiteful and malicious Books, that perhaps ever saw the Sun: For he is not content to note, That this is a Phrase difused by the Church; but he calls it, a silly Heretical Notion, Pref. p. 3. ibib. p. 2. solely of his own invention, a noti­on immediately and unavoidably inferring three Gods; and p. 376. [a Monstrous Assertion, by which he holds and affirms, the three Divine Persons to be three distinct Infi­nite Minds or Spirits; which I, [the Animadverter] shew unavoidably and irrefragably inferr'd them to be three Gods.]

Now that I may render these Papers more useful to my Reader, I shall enquire into the reason why the Church refused several Phrases in this Mystery, in what sense the [Page 67] same Phrase was allowed, and in what other it was disal­lowed; and more particularly have an Eye to the Animad­vertor's Objections against the Phrase of three Infinite Minds.

[It being certain, both from Phylosophy and Religion, P. 116. l. 5. n. 2. That there is but one only God or Godhead, in which Chri­stian Religion has taught us, that there are three Persons.]

It is ominous to stumble at the Threshold; these two Terms God and Godhead, are formally distinct, and there­fore ought not to be Confounded. Every thing which may be affirmed of one of these Terms, cannot with equal Truth and Propriety be always affirmed of the other. The Christian Religion has taught us, That there are Three Per­sons in the Godhead; or, in the words of the first Article of our Church, in the Unity of the Godhead: For the Unity of the Godhead, and the Unity of the Trinity are equipollent Articles, and there are certainly Three Per­sons in the Trinity, in the Unity of the Trinity.

But if we take this term God, as distinct from God­head, we can by no means say, That there are three Per­sons in God, or in one God: The Christian Religion com­pels us to acknowledge, that each distinct Person is God; which would be impossible, if there were three Persons in God. For how can that Person be God, which wants something which is in God; for each distinct Person has not three Persons in him. Hence the 11th Council of Toledo; [Nec rectè dici potest, ut in uno Deo sit Trinitas] with the Animadvertor's leave, the Heretick Sabellius, and not the Christian Religion taught this Article, that there are three Persons in one God.

[It had been to be wished, P. 116. l. 12. n. 3. (I confess) That Divines had rested in the bare Expressions delivered in Scripture concerning this Mystery, and ventured no farther by any particular and bold Explication of it: But since the Nature or rather Humor of Man, has still been too [Page 68] strong for his Duty; and his Curiosity (especially in things Sacred) been apt to carry him too far; those however, have been all along the most Pardonable, who have ventured least, and proceeded upon the surest grounds, both of Scripture it self and Reason, Discours­ing upon it.]

Does the Animadvertor consider the import of those Words, of resting in the bare expressions delivered in Scrip­ture? If I understand them, they forbid the shortest Pa­raphrase, they except not the most necessary Vindication of the Scripture Expressions from the false interpretations of Hereticks.

Again, Is this the best Defence the Animadvertor can give for the Fathers of the Church, who have not only exceed­ed the bare Expressions delivered in Scripture, but expres­sed their Faith of this Mysterious Article, by Sundry ex­trascriptural terms, such as Trinity, Person, Hypostasis, Sub­stance, Essence, Consubstantial, &c. Was this only a wan­ton Humour in them, an Humor too strong for their Duty, a Curiosity which carried them too far? Was this a fault and crime, tho a pardonable one? When it served the Ani­madvertor's design against the Reverend Dean, these extra­scriptural Terms were neither ambiguous, faulty nor impro­per, Animadv, &c. p. 147. l. 3. but much the contrary, though now he condemns the Inventors of them, as acting contrary to their Duty. All are in some measure faulty, even those who have ventured least: those who have proceeded upon the surest grounds, both of Scripture it self and of Reason, discoursing upon it; which, I am satisfied, is his own notion, and not an over­wise one; that we cannot escape a fault, even where we proceed upon the surest Grounds, not where we proceed upon the surest Grounds, both of Scripture and Reason.

The Arians of old, and the Socinians of late, and some favourers of them, or who otherwise, occultum virus fovent, in the words of Calvin, have embraced some False and He­retical [Page 69] Notion of this Mystery, are very angry with the extra scriptural Terms used by the Church in this Myste­ry. But the Apology which the Nicene Fathers made for themselves was, That the Arians and other Hereticks were the occasion of it; these Hereticks Equivocated in the sense and meaning of the bare Scripture Expressions, and the more ancient and simple Phrases of the Church; so that the Church was obliged to use new Expressions, to de­tect the Frauds of subtle and cunning Hereticks. The Church chose not these Terms to express a new Faith by, to say more than the Scripture had said, but to say that in short which the Scripture had scatteringly delivered in several places.

[And such I affirm the ancient Writers and Fathers of the Church, Ibid. and after them the School-men to have been, who with all their faults (or rather infelicities, cau­sed by the times and circumstances they lived in) are better Divines and soberer Reasoners, than any of those pert, confident, raw Men, who are much better at despising and carping at them, than at reading and understanding them; tho wise Men despise nothing, but they will know it first, and for that very cause very rationally de­spise them.]

First, I believe, that the Animadvertor is the very first Person, who commended the School-men for venturing little, or for proceeding upon the surest Grounds, both of Scripture and Reason.

The Boldness of the Schools is known to a Proverb; he that has but cast his Eye upon Aquinas his Sums, must from his own Experience confute the Animadvertor, this Cha­racter of the School-men, that they ventured little, puts me in mind of a certain Person I once knew, who com­mended Aristotle for Writing excellent Latin; I leave the Application to the Animadvertor himself.

[Page 70]The second part of their Character is almost as proper; they, and the Animadvertor proceed upon the surest Grounds of Scripture, much alike. This last in his Eighth Chapter, wherein he professedly endeavours to state the Doctrine of the Trinity, quotes only one single place, Heb. 1.3. and even that he has mistaken.

The School-men's Principles were for the most part St. Augustin's Authority, as to the first Schoolmen; for the latter generally Transcribed one from another.

A wise Man will no more praise than he will despise a­ny thing, till he first knows it, and for that cause ratio­nally praise it; and not as the Animadvertor has done, praise them for venturing little, and for proceeding upon Scripture Grounds, when it is notorious, that they were guilty of the contrary faults.

After all, Praising the School-men is Dispraising him­self and his own Hypothesis. The Modes of the School-men are only such in name; in our imperfect Concep­tion of things, the Animadvertor's Modes are such in re­ality, but of this hereafter.

P. 119. n. 4. [Argument I. Three distinct infinite Minds or Spi­rits, are three distinct Gods, &c.]

Here I shall enquire into the import of these two Phra­ses, Three infinite Spirits, and Three Gods: An Explication of these two Phrases is sufficient to solve this Objection, and indeed the whole difficulty.

The rigid'st of the School-men allow, That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are, Tres infinitam Spiritualem natu­ram habentes; nor can there be any dispute, either from Grammar or Logick, that infinitus Spiritus, and infinitam Spiritualem naturam habens, are in sense exactly Equipol­lent, and if these two are Equipollent in the singular number, I would fain know a reason, why the plural Number of these two Phrases should not be Equipollent, that is, why tres infi­niti Spiritus, should not signify the same with tres infinitam Spiritualem naturam habentes.

[Page 71]If any shall object the distinction of the Schools, con­cerning Nouns Substantive and Nouns Adjective, that Spi­ritus is a Noun Substantive, and therefore according to them implys a multiplication of the form, viz. the Spiri­tual Nature, whereas Spiritualem naturam habens is an Ad­jective, and only implys a multiplication of the Suppo­situm.

First, I Answer, That the distinction is groundless in it self, and needless, in respect of the difficulty it pretends to solve.

Secondly, Allowing it to be true, It only causes the Phrase to be less accurate, not as the Animadvertor pre­tends absolutely Heretical; the Phrases of the Athana­sian Creed non tres aeterni, &c. observe not this rule; yet the School-men charge not Athanasius with Heresy, with denying a plurality of Persons, but choose to say, that he understood those Phrases Substantively: the same fa­vourable Construction ought a School-man to make of this Phrase, viz. that Spiritus in this Phrase ought to be taken Personally, Adjectively for Spiritualem naturam habentes, and then it is Orthodox.

But if I will not allow this Criticism of the Schools, concerning Nouns Substantive and Nouns Adjective, how came no Man to venture upon it before the Dean of St. Paul's?

I Answer, First, That there is a very good reason why this Phrase is not to be found in Antiquity, the reason the Reverend Dean himself gives, viz That though there are three Holy Spirits, yet not three Holy Ghosts, in the Trinity, that is, [...] or Spiritus, was by the Ancient Fathers Ap­propriated to signify the Third Person of the Blessed Tri­nity, and consequently [...], or tres Spiritus would accordingly to them have implyed Three Holy Ghosts, strictly so called.

[Page 72]And for the same Reason the Phrase of one Spirit in re­ference to the whole Trinity, is not that I know of above once to be found in all Antiquity, and that in that bold Father St. Augustin, Lib. 5. de Trin. cap. 11. Hom. 5. in Jerem. who was not afraid to say of the Phrase of Three Persons, Non ut illud diceretur.

Secondly, I find Origen quoted for the very Phrase, [Tres Spiritus David in Psalmo confessionis postulat.]

Amongst the Moderns the learned Genebrard, a Man of great Note in his Time, and of great Skill in relation to this Mystery, Genebrard, Resp. ad Scheghium. p. 52. not barely justifies the Orthodoxness of the Proposition, but declares that it was [Propositio vera ac fide ab Ecclaesia Catholica omnibus temporibus recepta,] a true Article, nay, an Article of Faith, and received as such by the Catholick Church of all Ages: The Proposition is thus set down by Genebrard, Tres sunt Spiritus oeterni, quorum quilibet per se Deus; there are three Eternal Spirits, whereof every single Spirit is God, with much more to the same purpose in the same place.

The same Answer will serve in reference to the Animad­vertor's Objection, That three Infinite Spirits are three Gods.

Tres Dei, when it signifies the same with tres Deitatem habentes, with tres Divinae Personae, is Orthodox.

Genebrard, lib. 2. de Trin. p. 155Hear the learned Genebrard, [ Si mavis dicere tres Deos, id est, tres Divinas Personas, possis dicere atque interpretari. Nam vocabulum Deus aliquando sumitur Hypostaticè, ac ultrò citroque commeat, cum Divina Persona sive Hypostasi, ut cum in Niceno Symbolo legitur, Deum de Deo, &c.]

But this Objection of Polytheism against the Doctrine of the Trinity, I reserve to be handled at large in my Se­cond Part.

p. 119. lin. 29. n. 5. [My Reason for what I affirm, viz. That three di­stinct infinite Minds or Spirits are three distinct Gods, is this, that God and Infinite Mind or Spirit are terms equipollent and concertible.]

[Page 73]Every Page of the New Testament confutes this asser­tion. This term God is a thousand times in Scripture ap­propriated to signifie the Person of the Father, as in these and the like Phrases: The Son of God, the Spirit of God, God sent his Son, &c. But this term Infinite Mind or Spirit, is not capable of such Appropriation, any more than the Phrase of a Divine Person can be appropriated to that signification. Infinite Mind or Spirit is therefore more properly a term equipollent and convertible with a Divine Person, than with the term God.

[As it is true that one and the same God or Godhead is common to, p. 120. l. 6. n. 6. and subsists in all and every one of the three Persons; so it is true, that one and the same Infi­nite Mind or Spirit, is common to, and subsists in the said three Persons.]

This Fallacy is easily answered. One Godhead, and one Infinite Spiritual Nature in abstracto is common to the three Persons: The Animadvertor must prove that this Rule holds of one Infinite Spirit in concreto.

God the Father is not God the Son; God the Father and God the Son are not the same God in Person or Personality, in the words of the learned Petavius, Petav. lib. 3. de Trin. cap. 9. S. 3. p. 282. [Non est igitur Fi­lius idem ille unus Deus qui Pater.] Can the Animadvertor believe that Petavius would have scrupled to say, Non est igitur Filius idem ille unus Spiritus qui Pater? The same one Godhead by being common to three Persons becomes Deus trinus in Personis; in which Phrase Trinus agrees with Deus, and not with Personis, nor is it capable of that com­mon, but groundless Interpretation of Tri-une. God is three, and not tri-une, in Persons. Had Trinus ever sig­nified tri-une, which yet it never did to the Ancients, nor by any Rules of Grammar ought it to signifie so now.

[If it be here objected, p. 120. n. 7. that we allow of three distinct Persons in the Godhead, of which every one is Infinite, without admitting them to be three distinct Gods; and [Page 74] therefore why may we not as well allow of three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits in the same Godhead, without any necessity of inferring from thence, that they are three distinct Gods.]

This Objection is every way to the purpose; this is the Plea of the Reverend Dean, To say, they are three Divine Persons, and not three Infinite Minds, was, what the Reve­rend Dean could not understand.

Secondly, This is the great Objection of the Socinians, three Humane Persons are three Men, three Angelical Per­sons three Angels, therefore three Divine Persons three Gods. They esteem God and a Divine Person terms equi­pollent and convertible, they esteem the Consequence from three Divine Persons to three Gods necessary, immediate, and unavoidable. Not one Socinian who understands him­self, but will confess that he can as soon believe three In­finite Minds as three Divine Persons reconcileable with the Article of the Unity of God.

If the Animadvertor can give an Answer to this Socinian Objection from the Phrase of three Divine Persons, which is not equally applicable to his own Objection against the Phrase of three Infinite Spirits, I will yield him the Point he contends for.

[One thing I must note, which to me betrays the Ani­madvertor's fear, I mean his not representing the Objection fair. The Dean's Phrase is put down three distinct Infinite Minds, why did he not equally say, three distinct Infinite Persons? Why must this last be expressed by a Circumlo­cution, three Persons, of which every one is Infinite? How often has the Animadvertor used the Phrase of three Divine Persons, which is the same with three Infinite Persons? Is not this to make a distinction without a difference?]

p. 120. n. 8. [I Answer, that the case is very different, and the rea­son of the difference is this, because three Infinite Minds or Spirits are three absolute simple Beings or Essences, and [Page 75] so stand distinguished from one another by their whole Beings or Natures: But the Divine Persons are three Re­latives (or one simple Being or Essence under three di­stinct Relations) and consequently differ from one ano­ther, not wholly and by all that is in them, but only by some certain Mode or Respect peculiar to each, and up­on that account causing their distinction.]

This Answer puts me in mind of a certain Respondent, who being at a great loss, cryed, Nego id, not determi­ning, whether it was the Major, Minor, or Conclusion, which he denyed. And I believe most Readers will be equally at a loss, whether the Animadvertor applies this Answer to the Premises or Conclusion.

The Animadvertor's Argument against the Reverend Dean's Assertion of three Infinite Minds is this: One Infi­nite Mind is one God, therefore three Infinite Minds are three Gods. The Socinians Objection mutatis mutandis the same, One Divine Person is one God, therefore three Di­vine Persons are three Gods. The Consequence of each Argument the same, viz. That three Infinite Minds, three Divine Persons must be thrice what one Infinite Mind, or one Divine Person is.

The Consequence is a Mathematical Conclusion, that three of any kind must be thrice what one of the same kind is.

Will the Animadvertor deny the Antecedent, that one Divine Person is one God? Or will he deny that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are three Persons?

This Objection depends not immediately upon the Rela­tiveness or Absoluteness of a Divine Person: If one Mode, one Accident, one Relation be one God, how shall we a­void the Conclusion, that three Modes, three Accidents, or three Relations are three Gods?

The force of this Answer, if it has any, must lye in this, that there are not properly three Divine Persons: the Divine [Page 76] Persons are not three, as three Infinite Minds are three: to speak the truth, the ternary number belongs not to the Persons, but to the Personalities, to the Modes, to the Re­lations. We use the Phrase of three Relatives, but we mean only three relations of one simple Being; and with equal Justice, the Animadvertor might have said, that we use the Phrase of three Persons, but we mean only three Personalities of one absolute Person.

The Animadvertor entirely begs the Question, if he takes three Relatives and one simple Being under three Relations to be equipollent. Adam had three relations, of a Creature, an Husband, and a Father, yet he is but one Relative. A Relative is not the Relation, but that which has the Rela­tion, the Subject of the Relation. The Person of the Fa­ther is one simple Being, God, under two Relations (of Generation and Spiration) is therefore the Person of the Father two Relatives, two Persons?

Again, the Divine Persons are three Relatives. Why did not the Animadvertor speak out? Are they three Rela­tive Substances, three Relative Accidents, or three Rela­tive Modes?

Further Genebrard (and the same I believe of the Reverend Dean) would have told him, that three Infinite Minds or Spirits have but one singular, individual, Spiritual Nature or Essence, and therefore, according to Genebrard, three Infinite Minds differ no more than three Divine Persons.

Lastly, the difference of the Divine Persons is not the difference of one simple Being under three Relations: For one simple Being under one Relation cannot be simply de­nyed of it self under another Relation. Adam the Father is Adam the Husband, Adam the Creature: the Person of the Father is the Spirator of the Holy Ghost, though as he is one, he is not the other; this latter is a Modal, not simple Negation. But the Animadvertor himself tells us, That wheresoever there are Two distinct Persons, we do and [Page 77] must by all the Rules of Grammar and Logick, say, Animadv. &c. p. 74. l. 1. that one of them is (simply) not the other: Which single passage, overthrows our Animadvertor's Hypothesis, that the Divine Persons differ by a Modal difference. We have no way from Logicks of knowing when Two Beings differ wholly, but from such simple negation; a Negative Sign in Logicks distributes all which follows it in the same Proposition: but of this more hereafter.

[And therefore to argue from a Person to a Spirit here is manifestly sophistical, P. 121. N. 9. and that which is called Fallacia accidentis, or (since several fallacies may concur in the same proposition) it may be also a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. For so it is to conclude, that three Persons are three distinct Gods; since the difference of Persons is only from a diverse respect between them; but three Gods import three absolute distinct Natures or Substan­ces.]

Where are we now? this is a perfectly new Topick. To argue from a Person to a Spirit, is manifestly sophistical, it is fallacia Accidentis, and fallacia a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. Grant all this for once, how is this a consequence from the former? why is this ushered in with a therefore? The former Answer obscurely denies that there are Three Persons; this denies, that a Divine Person, or a person in this Mystery, is a Spirit or God; and asserts, that a Divine Person is only ex accidenti, or secundum quid, a Spirit or God. This will make strange Divinity, if we ap­ply it to the Father, Son or Holy Ghost. The Father is a Divine Person, or a Person in this Mystery: Will the Ani­madvertor himself have the Confidence to deduce the Con­clusion, that the Person of the Father is only ex accidenti, or secundum quid, a Spirit or God? If the Animadvertor does not already know it, let me inform him, that the Ca­tholick Faith is, That every single Divine Person is essen­tially (quidditative, as the Schools speak) a Spirit, or God: [Page 78] as fully as every single Angelical person is essentially a Spi­rit or an Angel. And therefore when the Animadver­tor tells us in the same page, [That a Person here im­ports only a Relation or Mode of Subsistence, in con­junction with the nature it belongs to] he is guilty of two absurdities.

First it is unintelligible cant, a singular nature or sub­stance in conjunction with the Mode, or a singular nature sustaining a Mode is usual: but to put the cart before the Horses, to put the Mode before the Nature, the Adjunct be­fore the Subject is new Philosophy peculiar to the Animad­vertor.

Secondly. A person in this Mystery is not in recto a re­lation, or Mode, but the subject of the Relation or Mode, a Divine Person has a Relation or Mode, the Father has a re­lation or Mode, but the Father is not a relation or Mode.

Animad. &c. p. 321.The Animadvertor himself tells us, that a Person as such is a Substance, and a compleat substance, therefore not a Mode.

Ib. p. 121.Every Spirit has a Mode, a proper Mode of subsistence be­longing to it, and yet in the same place, the Animadvertor tells us, that a Spirit is not a Mode of Being.

Ib. p. 121. N. 10. [The ternary number all the while not belonging to their infinity, but only to their personalities.]

Will the Animadvertor stand by this Conclusion, that the ternary Number belongs only to the Personalities? if he does, I am satisfied he gives up the Catholick Faith; for that asserts, that the ternary Number belongs to the Per­sons, as well as Personalities.

If the Animadvertor will confess to the Socinians, that there is but one Person in the Trinity, I believe they will scarce think it worth their while to dispute, whether there are Three Modes or not, or whether these Modes are to be called Personalities or not?

[Page 79] [One and the same Nature may sustain several distinct Relations or Modes of Subsistence. P. 121. N. 11.]

A Mode of Subsistence in the sense of the Animadver­tor, for a Subsistential form or Personality is improperly said to be sustained. Personality is the constituent form of the Person, and not an adjunct of the Person.

Again, Nature when distinguished from the Supposi­tum or Person, is not the Subject of the Relations or Modes: The Suppositum or Person is the proper Subject of the Relations or Modes sustained by that Person.

Further, The common Assertion of the Schools is not barely, that the Divine Nature sustains three distinct Rela­tions, or three distinct Modes; but that it sustains three Relations of the same kind, three distinct Personalities, which is the great difficulty. One and the same Person may be twice a Father, if he has Two Children, that is Natural: But can we conceive, that a Man can be twice a Father of one and the same Son. This is the question, how, according to the Schools, one and the same singular Nature, when it is become one Person in the Father, by one subsistential form, can receive a distinct subsistential form without losing the first, and also a third, without losing the first or second. I freely acknowledge, that this is to me an insupera­ble difficulty; and therefore, I bless God, that to me, the Faith of Three Divine Persons, needs not so nice a speculation.

[Argument II. Three distinct Minds or Spirits, P. 122. N. 12. are Three distinct Substances, &c.]

Tres Substantiae, signifies no more than Tres Substantia­lem naturam habentes, which is allowed by the strictest of the School-men.

Secondly, The Phrase of Three Substances has been more or less allowed in all Ages of the Church, to be predicated of the Three Divine Persons. Calvin 's Instit. lib. 1. cap. 13. n. 5.

St. Hillary calls them so, says the Learned Calvin, plus Centies, more than an hundred times.

[Page 80]The Greek Fathers understood the same by the term [...] in the Plural Number.

St. Augustin confesses this of the Greek Fathers, and that he knew no other signification of the term Hypostasis.

In Mono­logia. cap. Anselmus very plainly, Hoec nomina (sc. Persona & sub­stantia) aptius eliguntur ad designandam pluralitatem in sum­ma essentia, quia Persona non dicitur, nisi de individuâ rati­onali natura: & Substantia principaliter dicitur de individu­is, quoe maximè inpluralitate subsistunt.

Suarez. lib. 1. de Trin. cap. 2. n. 11. Suarez. Metaph. Disp. 34. s. 1. n. 6.The School-men acknowledge Tres substantias incom­municabiles.

Ita D. Thom. 1 Part, quoest 30. artic. 1. ad 1. dicit jux­ta consuetudinem. Eclesioe non esse absolutè dicendas, tres substantias propter nominis oequivocationem: addendo vero ali­quid, quod determinet significationem, dici posse, ut si dica­mus, tres substantioe incommunicabiles seu relativoe.

Lib. 3. de Trin. cap. 6.The Learned Suarez acknowledges the Divine Persons to be tres res, tria entia [but he thinks it better to add tria entia relativa] to be tria aliquid.

No Protestant Writer can deny them to be tres per se sub­sistentes, and in that sense tres substantias.

Indeed there never had been any scruple of this Phrase, had not this term Substantia been ambiguous, and some­times signified the same with [...], Essence. Whence the warm St. Jerom, Quis ore sacrilego tres substantias proedi­cabit? Whence himself says, that there was Poyson in the term Hypostasis; whereas there is neither Poyson in the one or the other term, if rightly Interpreted.

P. 123. l. 13. n. 13. [And Bellarmin, a Writer Orthodox enough in these Points, and of unquestionable Learning otherwise, in his second Tome, p. 348. about the end, says, that to as­sert, that the Father and Son differ in Substance, is Ari­anism. And yet, if they were two distinct Substances, for them not to differ in Substance would be impossible.]

[Page 81]Authority is very low with the Animadvertor, when he takes shelter in Orthodox Bellarmin, and lays hold on a dubious Expression in a plain case.

Every one knows that the Arians asserted that the Sub­stance of the Son was not barely different in number, but different in kind, specifically different from the Substance of the Father: and how impossible soever the Animadver­tor judges it for two Substances not to differ in Substance, the Fathers of the Council of Chalcedon did expresly assert, That Christ in his Humane Nature and we Men (who are confessedly two Substances in number) were consubstan­tial, [...]: And I am perswaded, that the unquestio­nably Learned and Orthodox Bellarmin, if he were now alive, nor the Animadvertor for him, will have the Bold­ness to say, that this term [...] signifies to differ in Sub­stance.

Again, the Orthodox Bellarmin justified Calvin, who ventured to Condemn that Expression of the Nicene Coun­cil, that the Son was God of God, and affirmed that the Son was [...], God of himself. Dr. Bull. def. fidei Nicaenae. S. 4. cap. 1. n. 7. p. 439. Bellarmin thought this only a Dispute of a Phrase, Verbi solum & locutionis. Such an Orthodox Person, who can thus easily part with the Nicene Faith, may easily find out a new sort of Arianism. For to believe Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, three co-equal, co-eternal Substances, Hypostases, was not the Aria­nism which the Nicene Fathers opposed.

[Since for one and the same Substance to be common to all three Persons, p. 124. lin. 4. n. 14 and withal to belong incommunica­bly to each of the three, and thereby to distinguish them from one another, is contradictious and impossible.]

This is the Faith of the Schools, that one and the same Substance, one and the same singular Nature is common to all three Persons, and withal belongs incommunicably to the Father, quatenus ingenita; incommunicably to the Son, quatenus genita; incommunicably to the Holy Spirit, [Page 82] quatenus spirita. See Ani­madv. &c. p. 160. This Faith the Animadvertor declares to be contradictious and impossible; which is, in his own words, not to be able to forbear Writing, and yet not know when one writes for, and when against an Opi­nion.

p. 124. lin. 8. n. 15. [On the other side, to assert two distinct Substances in each Person is altogether as absurd; and that, as upon many other Accounts, so particularly upon this, that it must infer such a composition in the Divine Persons, as is utterly incompatible with the Absolute Simplicity and Infinite Perfection of the Divine Nature.]

The Schoolmen, who assert an Absolute Substance, and a Relative Substance in each Divine Person, deny a com­position from hence; for that the Absolute and Relative Substance are not united but identified one with another.

The Ancient Fathers asserted, that the common Divine Nature and each single Hypostasis differed not really, but only ratione from each other; as Homo and Petrus, An­gelus and Michael; in which cases there is no composition: and therefore à majori there is no composition in a Divine Person.

p. 124. n. 16. [ Argument III. One Infinite Mind cannot be three In­finite Minds; Nor three Infinite Minds one Infinite Mind: Therefore the Divine Persons, who are one Infi­nite Mind (as they are one God) cannot be three In­finite Minds.] This is the sum, in short, of his Third Argument, which to swell up his Book and make a shew of, he repeats backwards and forwards.

This Argument is a meer Fallacy, equivocating in the term Mind or Spirit, which is to be interpreted in a con­crete, or in an abstract sense.

When the Schoolmen say, That the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God, they do not take this term God in a concrete sense, but in an abstract sense. Father, Son, [Page 83] and Holy Ghost are not habens Deitatem, which is the concrete sense of this term God, but either habentes Dei­tatem in the Plural Number, or Deitas, the Godhead it self in the Singular Number.

So the learned Genebrard, Lib. 2. de Trin. p. 154 Nota Dei nomen aliter accipi in his enuntiationibus, Pater est Deus, Filius est Deus, Spi­ritus Sanctus est Deus; aliter in hac, Pater & Filius & Spiritus Sanctus sunt unus Deus. Nam in primis, Deus idem quod habens Deitatem, quod quidem Personae congruit; in postrema non simpliciter habentem Deitatem sonat, sed ipsam potiùs Deitatem.

Now, the Animadvertor himself will not say, that tres habentes Deitatem, cannot be one Essence; nor that tres habentes infinitam spiritualem naturam, cannot be one Infinite Spiritual Nature; one Infinite Mind or Spirit in the abstract sense of the term, in which only the Divine Persons are said to be one Infinite Mind or Spirit. It is in a different sense of this term Infinite Mind or Spirit, viz. in the concrete sense, that we multiply it, and say, that three Divine Persons are three Infinite Minds.

And this Answers the Animadvertor's Fourth Argument drawn from the Athanasian Form, p. 128. n. 17. which is grounded up­on a false Supposition, viz. That this term Infinite Mind is necessarily a Predicate perfectly Essential; whereas, p. 130. lin. 17. when it is taken concretely, it must be understood as a Personal Attribute, viz. for habens infinitam spiritualem naturam, which, in the words of Genebrard, personoe congruit.

The Animadvertor's Overplus, p. 131. lin. 2. n. 18. That the Heathens be­lieved God to be one Infinite Mind, cuts deeper than he is aware of. For these same Heathens did as certainly believe that God was one single Person as well as one Infinite Mind: Nay, which is a far greater Objection, the Jews, God's own People, not only did, but to this day do most firmly believe, that God is one Divine Person, and plead those Sacred words of their Law, I am the Lord thy God, [Page 84] Thou shalt have no other Gods before me: That all their Doctors for the space of two thousand Years interpreted those words in their Natural sense, viz. as spoke of one Divine Person. What shall we say to this Objection? Did God suffer the wisest of the Heathen Philosophers, the most Pious Persons of the Jewish Religion to believe an Heresie of him for so many Ages? Did God speak of himself in the most Sacred part of the Law in such words which Na­turally lead to Heresie? For I and me Naturally lead to the belief of one Person speaking.

This is the great Objection with which the Socinians flourish: An Answer to which would be of more worth than a thousand such Books of Inadversions [as the Soci­nian Considerer calls these Animadversions. Considera­tions on the Expli­cations, &c p. 23.]

For my own part, I cannot be so fond of the Subtilties of the Schools, as for the sake of them to confess so harsh a Conclusion.

I do most firmly believe, that the Faith of a Trinity of Divine Persons and the Article of the Unity of God [as it was believed by the wisest of the Heathens and the Jew­ish Church] are by no means inconsistent.

The whole Truth was not revealed to the Jewish Church, or at least so very obscurely, that very few of them un­derstood it. But yet I verily believe, that what was re­vealed, was a most Sacred truth.

I believe, that the God, whom the Heathen Philoso­phers by the Light of Nature worshipped, was one Divine Person. I believe, that the same one Divine Person spake of Himself in those Sacred words of the Law, I am the Lord thy God, &c. I also believe, that this One Divine Person was the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Nor does this contradict that common Article of the Christian Faith, viz. That God is Three Persons, as the So­cinians vainly pretend, and some others unwarily grant them.

[Page 85]God is not three Persons, as he is Just, or Good, or Holy, as if three Persons were Essentially included in the Divine Nature: For then no one single Person could by himself be God; then there could not be a Son of God, or a Spirit of God.

When God is said to be three Persons, the term God is taken in a Logical sense, equivalent in Predication to a terminus communis, or a Species, and signifies that the Divine Nature subsists in three Persons, that this term God is truly predicable of three distinct Persons: But a further disquisition of this Difficulty belongs to my Se­cond Part.

[The Animadvertor accuses the Reverend Dean of giving a scurvy stroke at the Trinity, p. 135. lin. 7. n. 19. p. 89. where he [the Reverend Dean] affirms, that the Expression of the one true God, and the only true God, cannot properly be attributed to the Son nor Holy Ghost. Ibid. l. 19.—and con­sequently, if he asserts, that these terms cannot with equal Propriety be attributed to, and predicated of the Son and Holy Ghost, we have him both Arian and Ma­cedonian together in this Assertion.]

First, The Reverend Dean never asserted that the Son or Holy Ghost could not properly be called the one God, or only true God; only, that they could not so properly be stiled so, as the Father.

The Fathers of the Nicene Council, indeed of the whole Eastern Church, did expresly appropriate the Title of One God to the Father, and God of God to the Son; by which Opposition it appears that by One God in the first Article of the Creed, they meant a God of himself, which is a Personal Attribute, and peculiar to the Father.

Our Saviour appropriates this Title of Only true God to the Person of the Father; Hilary. lib. 3. de Trin. and St. Hilary (who was never hitherto esteemed either an Arian or Macedonian) expresly asserts this to be Debitum Honorem Patri.

[Page 86]St. Paul has patronized this Appropriation, Ephes. 4.6. To us there is one God and Father.

Now for my part I had rather be esteemed an Here­tick [ Arian and Macedonian] with my Saviour, St. Paul, St. Hilary, all the Oriental Fathers, than Orthodox with the Animadvertor and Bellarmin.

I do assure him, that I am neither afraid of him nor the Socinians, I crave no Favour at either of their Hands for this Profession of my Faith, That the Title of one God, only true God, is a Proper, Personal Prerogative of the Fa­ther alone.

p. 138. lin. 21. n. 20. [And as for the Father's being the Fountain of the Deity, I hope, he looks upon the Expression only as Me­taphorical, and such as ought not to be stretched to the utmost of its Native sense, for fear the Consequences of it may engage him too far, to be able to make an hand­some Retreat, which I assure him, if he does not take heed, they certainly will.]

Oratio con­tra grega­les Sabel­lii propè initium. Athanasius tells us, that we might rightly call the Fa­ther the only God, [ [...],] because he only is unbegotten, and he only is the Fountain of the Deity.

This learned Father has hitherto been esteemed the very Test of Orthodoxy in this Mystery. The Reverend Dean's Notion and Phrase is borrowed from him, who would not have thought himself safe under so Venerable a Name?

But alas, the World is strangely altered, Athanasius him­self must come to School to the Animadvertor to learn how to speak.

I hope, he [that poor Novice Athanasius] looks on the Expression as Metaphorical, and such as ought not to be stretched to the utmost of its Native sense.

I hope also, that I may be allowed to vindicate this Phrase of that great Light of the Church from the Excep­tions of a bold Animadvertor.

[Page 87]May I in the Name of Athanasius, enquire of this great Critick, which of these two words, Fountain or Deity, are to be interpreted Metaphorically.

That of Fountain is plainly Metaphorical. Athanasius was never so weak as to believe that the Deity was a River of Waters, and the Father the Fountain of it.

If the Animadvertor means that this term Deity is Me­taphorical, I must require his Proof, and not his Affirma­tion.

Again, neither Athanasius, nor any of the Ancient Fa­thers ever intended by this Phrase, that the Father is the Fountain of the Deity, that he was the positive Fountain of the Divinity in his own Person, any more than Philo­sophers and Divines mean, that God was the cause of Him­self, when they say, that God is of Himself. Athanasius added, to avoid the suspicion of such an absurd sense, that he was unbegotten as well as the Fountain of the Deity.

What then is the fault of this Phrase of Athanasius? Why alas, poor Athanasius was unacquainted with the subtilties of the Schools: He said plainly and bluntly, that the Fa­ther was the Fountain of the Deity; whereas he ought to have said, Animadv. &c. p. 191. lin. 10. That he was the Fountain of the two other Di­vine Persons.

To say, that the Divinity has a Fountain, is to say in other words, that the Divinity is begotten, which can neither be affirmed in truth or propriety of speech. p. 159. lin. 18.

The Divine Persons may properly be said to be begot­ten, but not the Divine Nature.

But with the leave of the Animadvertor, all Antiquity (before Peter Lombard, and the Oxthodox Lateran Coun­cil) not considering the Consequences of Expressions, did venture thus far, and used the Phrase of Begotten Wisdom, speaking of the Divine Nature of the Son. Nay▪ which may possibly sway more with the Animadvertor, he him­self has allowed it to be very true, p. 156. l. 10. that the Son is an Eter­nal [Page 88] begotten Mind and Wisdom; and I am sure then the Son must be an Eternal, Begotten, Divine Nature, and the Fa­ther the Fountain of the Deity to the Son.

For my part, I like the Subtilties of the Schools never a whit the better for charging those Expressions with Fal­shood or Impropriety; which so many great Lights of the Church thought both true and proper. I fear not his Consequences, nor his Threats; I do believe with Athana­sius, that the Father is truly the Fountain of the Deity to the Son and Holy Ghost, and that he has no Fountain of his own Divinity; and that his being thus the Fountain of the Divinity is the reason of appropriating the Title of one God to his Person alone: And that though the Son and Holy Spirit are each of them truly, Essentially God, yet they cannot with any more Propriety be called the One God, the only true God, than each of them may be stiled unbegotten, the Fountain of the Deity, or God of Himself.

The Socinians say, That the Person of the Father is the only true God; so say the Ancients, so says the Animad­vertor, so say I: But the Socinians say, that this Title of Only true God, is an Essential Attribute, distinguishing the Essence of the Father from the Son and Holy Spirit: I say, that it is only a Personal Attribute and Prerogative, distin­guishing the Person of the Father from the Son and Holy Ghost, but not dividing their Essence. The Animadvertor declares, That it is an Essential Attribute in common to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; which of these Interpreta­tions best Vindicate the Christian Faith, will be more fully discussed in my Second Part.

CHAP. V.

n. 1.THE last Chapter was chiefly spent in considering the import of several Plural Predications and Phra­ses concerning the three Divine Persons, and particularly of the Phrase of three Infinite Minds.

In this the Animadvertor enquires into the Historical truth of this Assertion, whether the Ancients believed the Divine Persons to be Intelligent Minds or Beings. This the Reverend Dean thought an uncontested Article to all who professed the Faith of a Trinity of Divine Persons. The Reverend Dean was of the learned Genebrard's Opinion be­fore quoted, viz. That this was Propositio vera ac fide ab Ecclesia Catholica omnibus temporibus recepta; and there­fore, as it is usual in uncontested Articles, was less curious in Collecting the Proofs of an undisputed Opinion; which yet I speak not, as if I thought the Proofs of this Assertion brought by the Reverend Dean insufficient.

One thing however I can by no means omit, that the Animadvertor has disjoynted the fairest Proof of the Fa­thers Opinion in this Debate, and treated of it in his next Chapter, viz. That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were esteemed so certainly to be three Infinite Minds by the Ancients, that they asserted Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to be one by a Specifick Unity.

Now, though I should grant to the Animadvertor, that the Fathers did not understand such Assertions in the strict­est sense of such Phrases, but only by way of Resemblance (of which afterwards) yet this must be allowed, that the Ancient Fathers could have had no shadow or pretence for such an Assertion, unless they had believed Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to be three Intelligent Beings, which is but another Phrase for three Intelligent Minds.

[Page 90]It never entred into the Mind of any one Man, who understood what a Specifick Unity means, that One simple Being under three distinct Relations (which is the Animad­vertor's Hypothesis of the Trinity) was one by a Specifick Ʋnity. Animadv. &c. p. 120. lin. 32. But of this more in its proper place.

p. 154. lin. 29. n. 2. [The Son is the Substantial WORD and Wisdom of the Father, and that this can be nothing else but to say, That he is an Intelligent Being or Infinite Mind.

And he is so, I [the Animadvertor] confess: But does this infer, that he is therefore a distinct Intelligent Mind or Being from the Father? This we deny▪ and it is the very thing which he ought to prove. And it is not come to that pass yet, that we should take his bare Affirmation for a Proof of what he affirms.]

It seems the Animadvertor is one of those who do not know a Proof, unless it be put into Mood and Figure for him.

There is a Personal Word and Wisdom of the Father, so there is of the Son and Holy Ghost; that is to say, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are each of them Personally Wise, and Personally Act. The Personal Wisdom of the Divine Persons is an Attribute, the Personal Word of every one of the Divine Persons is an Act, and not a Person. But the Person of the Son is the Substantial WORD and Wisdom of the Father; such a Wisdom which is an Infinite Mind, and not the Attribute of an Infinite Mind; such a WORD, who is a Person, and not a Personal Act. And it is absolutely impossible that both these Characters of be­ing an Infinite Mind, and also the Wisdom of the Father can belong to the Son, unless he be a distinct, a Personally distinct Intelligent Mind from the Father.

This little Particle of is the same in this Mystery with proceeding: Of the Father, is the same with proceeding from the Father. God of God the same with God proceed­ing from God. Light of Light the same with Light pro­ceeding [Page 91] from Light. The Son is the Substantial WORD and Wisdom proceeding from the Father. Now as the Procession of the Divine Persons from one another is the allowed Proof of their Plurality; so if there be a Substan­tial Wisdom proceeding from the Father, there must be the same distinction between this Substantial Wisdom and the Person of the Father.

But here comes the mighty Objection, Obj. p. 156. lin. 27. That if Wisdom of Wisdom proves two Wisdoms, or Light of Light im­ports two Lights, then by the same Reason God of God, very God of very God, will and must infer two distinct Gods, two distinct very Gods; which, says the Animadver­tor, is most monstrous blasphemous stuff.

I Answer, That the Phrase God of God, Sol. does necessa­rily imply a multiplication of this term God in some sense or other.

One and the same Numerical God (in concreto) can never be God of God, and also not God of God. To be God of God, and also not God of God, are contradictious, and therefore can never be verified of one and the same Subject, of one and the same God in concreto, of one and the same God in Person.

Nor is this any Blasphemous stuff, it only proves that one sense of the term God is equipollent with a Divine Per­son, in the words of Genebrard before quoted; Chap. 4. n. 4. Vocabulum Deus aliquando sumitur Hypostaticè, ac ultrò citróque com­meat cum Divina persona sive Hypostasi, ut cum in Niceno Symbolo legitur, Deum de Deo, &c.

It is the Faith and has been the Language of the Church before the Nicene Council, that Deus est Trinus in Personis, that God is Three in Persons.

And this is the just and easie Answer to that (dreadful) Objection of the Socinians, that three Divine Persons infer three Gods, as three Angelical Persons infer three Angels, viz. That if by three Gods the Socinians mean that there [Page 92] are three Divine Persons, that there are tres Deitatem ha­bentes, that Deus est trinus in personis, in these senses in the term God, we acknowledge and embrace the Conclu­sion as an Article of our Faith, and despise the weak So­phistry of their Objection, which only equivocates in the term God.

Ask a Socinian, what he means by God, in that Phrase of three Gods? He will readily Answer, that he means a Divine Person; and consequently this Formidable Objection amounts to no more than this, That three Divine Persons are three Divine Persons. Therefore, &c.

Just so does the Animadvertor deal with the Reverend Dean: He declares, that he takes God and Infinite Mind to be equipollent; and I will assure him, that none will deny that three Infinite Minds are three Infinite Minds. And so the Reverend Dean is eternally confuted, or rather the Animadvertor ought to be ashamed of so weak a Sophism.

If the Animadvertor, or any Socinian will deal like a Scholar, and not like a Sophister, let either of them pro­duce those Arguments which deny a Plurality of Gods, and shew that they are equally strong against the Faith of three Infinite Minds or three Divine Persons, and they shall not fail of an Answer by God's assistance, as soon as I can finish it; but this more properly belongs to my Second Part.

It is a meer begging of the Question to say, that this term God is not capable of Multiplication, when it signi­fies equipollently with a Divine Person, or any other equi­valent Phrase, as an Infinite Mind or the like.

p. 160. lin. 3. n. 3. [It is one and the same Wisdom, which is both ingenita and genita, though as it is one, it is not the other.]

The Animadvertor, [ p. 156. lin. 9.] had declared it to be very true, that the Son is a begotten Mind and Wisdom; and in the same place denies, That the Eternal Mind or Wisdom begetting, and the Eternal Mind or Wisdom [Page 93] begotten, are two distinct Minds, but only one and the same Mind, or Wisdom under these two distinct Modi­fications of Begetting, and being Begot.

In this place the Animadvertor advances one step higher, and tells us, that unbegotten Wisdom and begotten Wis­dom are not two Wisdoms, but only one Wisdom under two several Modifications; as also that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one Infinite Spirit under three distinct Modali­ties.

Now, say I, if this be a fair Solution of this difficulty, it is impossible for the wisest Person to be certain that he can count two.

For ought any one then can tell, the Reverend Dean and the Animadvertor may not be two Persons, but only one Person under two Modifications.

The highest Proof that can be brought in such Enquiry, is, that Contradictions may be verified concerning the Re­verend Dean and the Animadvertor, that what the one is, the other is not. Now there cannot be a plainer, fuller Contradiction than to be begotten, and to be unbegotten.

Again, this Answer undermines the Faith of the Catho­lick Chuch, the Faith of three Divine Persons. The Sa­bellianist asserts that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not three Persons, but one Person under three distinct Moda­lities; which Modifications diversifie and distinguish the Person they belong to, but not multiply him. The same Person is both the Father and the Son, but as he is one, he is not the other. Now the allowed Proof of a Plurality of Divine Persons is from the contradictory Predicates, which may be verified of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in the words of the Athanasian Creed; The Father is made of none, neither created nor begotten; the Son is of the Father alone, not made, not created, but begot­ten. The Holy Ghost is of the Father and Son, neither made, nor created, nor begotten, but proceeding.

[Page 94]If this be a good Argumument to prove a Plurality of Divine Persons, I desire to know, why an unbegotten and begotten Wisdom are not equally two Wisdoms?

The Moderns, who follow the Schoolmen, say indeed the same thing with the Animadvertor, that it is one and the same singular Wisdom which is both unbegotten and begotten; that is, one Wisdom under two distinct Modi­fications: But then they understand themselves better, than to say, That it is very true, that the Son is a begotten Wis­dom. They say, that Begotten Wisdom is to be understood in an improper sense, and consequently that the Contra­diction is only in words, and not in reality.

According to the Schoolmen, the Son is unbegotten Wisdom. The Wisdom of the Son is equally unbegotten with the Wisdom of the Father, and that Proposition, the Son is begotten Wisdom, is only true according to them, sensu reduplicativo, viz. That the Son who is begotten, is also Wisdom.

Now certainly unbegotten is a very improper sense of being begotten.

The Phrase of Begotten Wisdom was used without scru­ple by the Ancients, and though Lombard and the bold Lateran Council condemned this Phrase Hand over Head, yet the more Prudent Persons of the Romish Church thought it more elegible to allow the Phrase in complyance with Antiquity, and strive to evade it by a stretched Interpre­tation, by a sensus reduplicativus.

The Animadvertor has here borrowed the words of the Shoolmen, but without understanding their meaning.

Nay, it is very observable that the Animadvertor, who here in p. 156. tells us, That it is very true, that there is a begotten Mind or Wisdom, is of a quite different Opinion, p. 159. lin. 18. viz. That this cannot be said in Truth and Propriety of speech: For God cannot properly be said to be­get Wisdom, &c. I leave him at his leisure to reconcile these two places.

[Page 95] [His [the Reverend Dean's] Allegation is this, p. 166. lin. 4. n. 4. That it is usual with the Fathers to represent the three Persons in the Blessed Trinity as distinct as Peter, James, and John.]

The Animadvertor Answers, That [the term as distinct is ambiguous: For it may either signifie, 1. as Real; or, 2. as Great a distinction. As for the first, I grant, that the three Persons in the Blessed Trinity differ as really as Peter, James, and John — But Secondly, if by real distinction be meant as great a distinction, so we utterly deny, that the three Divine Persons differ as much as Peter, James, and John.]

I Answer, that this Phrase as really signifies in the same degree of real distinction; as this Phrase as Wisely imports the same degree of Wisdom.

Again, it is an idle Enquiry to dispute by what Name we must call the distinction of the Divine Persons. If they were three Infinite Minds, they can but be simply denyed one of the other; we could then only say, that the Father is not the Son, nor the Son the Father, nor the Holy Ghost either Father or Son; and this I shall hereaf­ter shew is not a Modal, but a strictly real distinction.

CHAP. VI.

n. 1.THERE ought to be a double care in treating of Mysterious Articles of Faith, on the one hand not to debase them to avoid the difficulties which attend the Article in its Native sense; and on the other hand not stu­diously to seek out for Mysteries (which possibly God never intended) nor to refuse such Illustrations of the Article from Natural Examples which readily offer them­selves, especially if they have the Suffrage of the most Pious and Learned Fathers of the Church.

The Sabellian Hereticks have adulterated the Divine Ge­neration, because they could not explain how God, an Immortal Spirit, can generate.

On the other Hand, the Schoolmen are not satisfied, that the Articles of the Trinity and Incarnation in the ge­neral contain great Mysteries in them, but they will have every Conclusion throughout both the Articles to be so.

These two Articles are delivered with so much plainness and simplicity in the Sacred Scriptures, and with so much subtilty in the Writings of the Schoolmen, that a stranger to the Christian Faith upon the comparing of them both together, could hardly be perswaded, that the latter were pretended to be an explication of the former.

The Sacred Writings contented themselves to teach us that the Father and Son are [...], one, that these three are one.

The Fathers of the Church justly explained this Unity, that they are [...], one in Nature, one in Godhead; the Unity of a Father and a begotten Son is an Unity of Nature.

The Shoolmen advance one step higher; it is not suffi­cient with them, for any one to acknowledge the Divine [Page 97] Persons to be one in Nature, Essence, Divinity, unless, he adds, in one singular Essence, in one singular Nature, in one singular Divinity, and that under pain of being guilty of the worst of Heresies, Tritheism it self.

The Animadvertor keeps pace with the warmest, not only contends against the admission of a Specifick Unity in the Trinity, but calls it a Traducing of the Fathers to assert that they held this Specifick Unity.

As to the Question it self, I wish from the bottom of my Heart, that we might learn to distinguish betwixt the Primary Conclusions of our Faith and disputed Articles; that they who contend for the singularity of the common Divine Nature with the Schools, would not overthrow the received Faith of three Divine Persons; and that the Ar­ticle of the Unity of God be esteemed infinitely more Sa­cred than any seeming Advantages that the Assertion of a Specifick Unity of the Trinity might afford us in the maintaining the Faith of three Divine Persons.

The Christian Faith professes an Unity in Trinity, and a Trinity in Unity: He therefore who asserts an Unity to destroy the Trinity, or a Trinity in derogation of the Unity, offends against the Christian Religion.

I shall much rather choose my self, and recommend to my Orthodox Reader the Belief, that the Divine Nature is above these terms of Art, above these distinctions of Lo­gick of Singular and Universal, that it is transcendental to those Rules, by which we judge of created inferiour Natures; than any ways weaken either of those Funda­mental Articles before mentioned, either of the Unity of God, or of the Trinity of Divine Persons.

The learned Petavius seems to me to incline to this O­pinion, where speaking of the Unity of the Divine Nature, Petav. lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 1583. he has these words; Speciei unitate constituta, etiam indi­vidua & singularis sequitur: And in that Famous Obje­ction of the Greeks against the Procession of the Holy [Page 98] Spirit from the Father and Son, viz. that then Father and Son are one Principle of the Holy Spirit either specie sola or numero. Lib. 7. de Trin. c. 16. n. 1. p. 156. To which Petavius Answers, That they are [Ʋnum reverà & numero & specie Principium, quatenus in Deum convenire ambo ista possunt.] Where he expresly as­serts that a Specifick Unity and an Unity of Singularity are consistent in the Divine Nature; nay, that the latter follows from the former; as also that the vis spiratrix [which to Petavius and the Schools has the same Unity with the common Divine Essence] is one both in specie and in number.

Suarez. Metaph. Disp. 5. S. 1. n. 6. Non desunt Theologi, qui dicant, Divinam essentiam nec singularem nec universalem esse. And in the Margin, Vide Durandum & alios in 1. D. 35.

To the same purpose I understand those Divines who assert that the common Divine Essence is neither a first nor second Substance; that is, neither strictly Singular nor Universal, but in some measure partaking of both, tran­scendental to both.

However it must not be dissembled, that, since every created Nature is either strictly Singular or Universal, we want a medium to prove that the Divine Nature can be transcendental to both these; and therefore how Modest and Peaceable, and otherwise Eligible such an Assertion seems to be, yet when we contend with an obstinate Ad­versary, with a subtile Socinian, it will be hazardous to found the Defence of so Sacred an Article upon what he will be apt to stile a Precarious Hypothesis.

The common Opinion of Philosophers is, that Singulare and Ʋniversale are contradictorily opposed in Finite Crea­tures, and consequently that there can be no medium be­twixt them; and it is not easie to give a Reason, why the same Rule should not hold in the Divine Nature, especially since we cannot in this Conclusion plead the Authority of [Page 99] express Revelation, as we can in that Mysterious Article of a Divine Generation and Procession.

There is no need of this Precaution in reference to the Animadvertor, my Debate with him is rather Historical and Problematical than Dogmatical

Historical, as whether the Ancient Fathers held this O­pinion of the Universality of the common Divine Es­sence?

Problematical, whether those Reasons which he has brought against the admission of a Specifick Unity of the Trinity, prove such Notion to be unphilosophical?

Nay, I do here disclaim all Dogmaticalness in this Con­clusion; I shall not in the least contend with any Ortho­dox Divine, who agreeing in the Fundamental Articles of this great Mystery, [ viz. That the Father is truly, Essen­tially God, that the Son is truly, Essentially God, that the Holy Ghost is truly, Essentially God; that one of these Persons is simply not either of the other two: And that there is nothing in this Faith which contradicts that Fun­damental Article of Natural Religion, That there is but One God; or more briefly in the received Language of the Church, that there is One God and Three Divine Persons] shall choose to explain the modus of the Unity of the com­mon Divine Nature by singularity with the Schools, or shall profess that this Unity wants a Name in our present Lo­gicks.

It is Truth not Victory, I contend for; he therefore who grants my Conclusion, why should I quarrel with him concerning the Premises by which he arrives at the Conclusion?

The Impudence and Blasphemy of our late Socinian Wri­ters extorted this Essay.

The Head and Mouth of the Party, the Unitarian Hi­storian, in one short Section has amassed together this [Page 100] Charge against the Faith of the Ever Blessed Trinity, viz. That the Faith of the Trinitarians is absurd, History of the Unita­rians, p. 9. n. 7. and con­trary to Reason and it self, false, impossible—an Error in numbring, most brutal, inexcusable, which not to dis­cern, is not to be a Man; nonsense, that it does impose false Gods on us, that it robs the one true God of the Honour due to him.

A Letter of Resolu­tion con­cerning the Trin. &c. p. 6. n. 1.Another of the same Party is pleased to stile the Son and Holy Ghost, Gods of our own devising.

Were such Blasphemies as these ever suffered before in a Christian State?

Crellius was a Zealous Socinian, and wrote one of the subtilest Books which was ever published against the Or­thodox Faith, his Book of One God the Father: These Gentlemen have translated and published this Piece in the English Language; I will send these Persons to learn better Manners from him. He in his Preface to that Book ex­presly expounds those words of St. Paul, Rom. 9.4. of Je­sus Christ, viz. that He is over all God Blessed for evermore. And in the first Chapter of that Book, speaking of those words of our Saviour, John 17.3. wherein he calls the Father the only true God, Crellius has these express words; [For neither do we hold, that Christ is by vertue of these words wholly excluded from true Godhead. Crellius of one God the Father p. 4.] I quote their own English Translation.

I am not for Persecution, no, not of the Socinians. I disallow not of a modest Representation of their Opinions, or of the Reasons why they embrace not the Catholick Faith of the Trinity and Incarnation: Heresies are often the occasion to clear the truth it self. But in so Sacred Articles it becomes all Persons to use modest Expressions, especially those who want not only present Authority, but are confessedly contrary to the Voice of the Catholick Church for more than Twelve Hundred Years, and most of all, since the Articles of the Trinity and Incarnation are [Page 101] in their Primary Conclusions the express words of Scrip­ture. Christ is called God, says Crellius, John 1.1. and Rom. 9.4. I doubt not that Crellius himself would have condemned with the greatest abhorrence the stiling of Christ a false God, a God of Mens devising.

There can need no Apology to vindicate the Mysteries of the Christian Religion, when they are thus barbarously attacked.

I have this to plead for my self and my own Hypothesis, that as the Socinians confess, so I verily believe, that it was the Eaith of the Nicene Fathers, and embraced by the most learned Fathers of the Greek Church from Athanasius to Damascene, and so far as I know, to this day. Nor do I know that there is one Expression in the Articles of our Church that is not fairly reconcileable with it.

I have the same Plea in reference to my Second Part, my Exposition of the Article of the Unity of God, that it is of the Ancient Fathers; they are both Venerable for their grey Hairs.

All I pretend to, is only my weak Endeavour to set these two Ancient Expositions of the Articles of the Unity of God and the Trinity in a fairer Light, to prove that they are very consistent one with another, and liable to no just Exception by a Socinian.

After all, I adjure my Reader that he will not judge of the truth of this Article by the strength of my Defence: My Hypothesis may be true, I only faulty in the explica­tion of it. Or if my Hypothesis of the Modus of this Unity be disallowed, the Article concerning the Unity it self stands firm upon the Expressions of Scripture.

On my self let all the shame of any mistakes fall: But let the Truth of God be unshaken, and the Gates of Hell never prevail against the Faith of the Church; the Faith I mean, of one God and three Divine Persons.

[Page 102] [He [the Reverend Dean] tells us, That Petavius and Dr. Cudworth have abundantly proved, That the Nicene Fathers did not understand the word [...] of a Numerical, but of a Specifical sameness of Nature, or the Agreement of things Numerically different from one another in the same common Nature.]

This is the First Part, whether the Ancient Fathers as­serted a Specifical Sameness, Unity, Identity of Nature, or a Numerical Unity, or rather a Singularity of the Di­vine Nature.

The Dean quotes two very learned Persons, Peta­vius and Dr. Cudworth, and tells us, that they have proved the Specifical Unity of Nature to be the Opinion of the Ni­cene Fathers; nay, that they have abundantly proved it.

Had two such able Judges of Antiquity barely said it, it would have weighed very much with considering Persons: But the Dean tells us, that they have not barely said it, but proved it, abundantly proved it, which cannot be otherwise understood, than that they have quo­ted several Sayings of the Nicene Fathers, which plainly and undeniably evince, abundantly prove this to have been their Judgment.

This was very full to the Dean's Design to prove that three Divine Persons are three Infinite Minds; that is, that the Nicene Fathers judged them so. For I dare say, p. 215. l. 10. that no Man besides himself will deny, That three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits are Specifically one, if not by an higher degree of Unity. No one who understands the meaning of the terms, can deny that this term Infinite Mind is predicated of three Infinite Minds, as a Species is predicated of its Individuals. No one surely will say, that three Infinite Minds differ Specie or in their definition. If three Finite Minds are Specifically one, are one in Specie, such an Unity (or an higher) cannot be denyed to three Infinite Minds. Again, according to his own Argument, a [Page 103] Specifick Unity implies a multiplication of the Nature. And since all acknowledge that each Divine Person is an Infinite Mind, if their Unity be only a Specifick Unity, according to the Animadvertor they are three Infinite Minds in the highest sense.

The Animadvertor charges the Phrase of three Infinite Minds with the grossest Tritheism (it immediately and unavoidably infers three Gods.) Preface, pag. II. The Reverend Dean pleads the Authority of the Nicene Fathers, that they had said as much, nay, more than he; they had asserted a Specifick Unity of the Trinity, which in the Animadvertor's Judg­ment implies a multiplication of the Divine Nature; that is, three Infinite Spiritual Natures; whereas three Infinite Spirits in the bare Phrase implies no more than that there are three possessing one Infinite Spiritual Nature.

Now I presume, if the Dean, or rather if Petavius and Dr. Cudworth were not mistaken, the Animadvertor will abate something of his Confidence, he will hardly have brow enough to say, That the Notion of the Trinity, which the Nicene Fathers advanced, was a silly, Heretical Notion, immediately and unavoidably inferring three Gods.

The same Request I make to all my Orthodox Readers, that they will be pleased to lay aside their Prejudice against the Admission of a Specifick Unity in the Trinity, till this Historical Truth be fairly determined.

The Nicene Fathers Judgment is not indeed the Rule of our Faith; but it deservedly demands a Veneration from all Modest and Pious Christians, and is infinitely to be preferred before the bare Authority of the Schoolmen or Moderns.

The Animadvertor Answers, n. 3. p. 174. lin. 16. [I must confess my self very unfit to take such great and truly learned Persons to task, and that upon comparing this Author [the Re­verend Dean] and Petavius together, I find much more [Page 104] Reason to believe that he mistook the meaning of Pe­tavius, than that Petavius could mistake the meaning of the Fathers.]

If the Animadvertor is unfit to take two such learned Persons to task, why does he contradict their Judgment? Why does he call it a traducing, misrepresenting the Fa­thers? Why does he so confidently aver, That the Fathers never [mark that word never] used the Example of three or more individual Men agreeing in the same Nature as a parallel instance of the same sort or degree of Unity [He should have added, p. 175. lin. 5. of Nature] with that which is in the three Divine Persons. The Fathers never believed indefi­nitely, universally the same Unity betwixt Humane Per­sons as betwixt the Divine Persons, nor is that the Question; but whether they believed the same Unity of Nature be­twixt the latter as is confessedly betwixt the former. A Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature (if we for once only suppose such an Unity) has quite different Consequences from what a Specifick Unity of a created Humane Nature implies, which yet alters not the Unity of each Nature.

Well, but the Animadvertor has compared the Dean and Petavius. May I ask him, why he did not also consult Dr. Cudworth? He gives him a Complement in the foregoing Lines, his Piece is not so rare but it might easily have been procured. He was a Protestant Divine, a Per­son of great and deserved Repute for Learning and Skill in Antiquity, and which is more, gives judgment against him­self: He himself embraces the Platonick Hypothesis, which infers a Generical, not Specifical Unity of the Trinity. He lays a very severe charge to this Notion of a Specifick U­nity, [It seems plain that this Trinity [of St. Cyril, and such who believe a Specifick Unity] is no other than a kind of Tritheism, and that of Gods independent and co-ordinate too.] The Platonick and Nicene Hypothesis of the Trinity both agreed in this, that the common Divine [Page 105] Essence was an Universal. They differed in this, that the Platonists held the Divinity to be a genus, and consequently capable of admitting degrees, [...] in the distinct Divine Persons. The Nicene Fathers held the Divinity to be a Species, capable of no degrees, of no essential degrees, but that Father, Son and Holy Ghost, are perfectly equal touch­ing the Godhead in the words of the Athanasian Creed, The Godhead of the Father Son and Holy Ghost is all one, the Glory equal, the Majesty co-eternal.

I say the Testimony of this learned Person is of the more weight, as being against his own Judgment: We naturally in such cases weigh the words of an Author with more ex­actness when his Authority makes against us, than when it agrees with us. Him therefore we have left us as an un­answered Witness.

What does the Animadvertor say to Petavius? Has the Reverend Dean misrepresented Petavius or not? Why does not the Animadvertor speak plain? Why does he keep a muttering between his Teeth, That he finds more reason to believe, that the Reverend Dean mistook the meaning of Petavius, than that Petavius could mistake the mean­ing of the Fathers? We want a categorical Answer, whe­ther Petavius did represent a specifick Unity of the Trinity to be the meaning of the Fathers; and if he did so, whe­ther in so doing, he mistook their meaning and sense? This question which was too hard for the Animadvertor, I will answer for him, but I cannot promise to his good liking. The Reverend Dean did not mistake the meaning of Peta­vius, as might be proved from innumerable places of Peta­vius. I shall content my self with two only. Petav. l. 4. de Trin. cap. 7. S. 2.

In hoc uno Graecorum proesertim omnium judicium opini­onesque concordant, [...], id est, essentiam sive substantiam sive naturam, quam [...] vocant, generale esse aliquid & com­mune ac minimè definitum; [...] verò, proprium, singulare, circumscriptum.

[Page 106] Ibid. c. 9. S. 1.Again, Antiquorum plerosque dicentes audivimus [...] sive naturam, commune quiddam esse multis, quod universale vo­cant; Hypostasim verò, idem atque individuum sive singulare.

These words are capable of no Evasion, Petavius in ex­press terms declares, that according to the Judgment of all the Greek Fathers, the common Divine Essence is Generale quippiam, as opposed to singulare, is commune quiddam multis quod Ʋniversale vocant.

Thus Petavius, as well as the Reverend Dean, takes (in the subject before us) Common Nature and Specifick Na­ture to be all one.

Had the Animadvertor consulted the seventh and ninth Chapters of this fourth Book of Petavius concerning the Trinity, he could neither have doubted of Petavius's Judg­ment, nor well of that of the Ancient Fathers.

Well, the Animadvertor has a Refuge for himself, if Pe­tavius has given his Judgment against him, in the imme­diate following words.

n. 4. [But however I shall lay down this as a Conclusion, which I take to be undoubtedly true, p. 174. ib. viz. That the An­cient Fathers, as well the Nicene as those after them, held only a Numerical Unity of the Divine Nature: That is, in other words, They held and acknowledged one Nu­merical God and no more. This Conclusion I hold, and have good reason to believe, that neither Petavius nor Dr. Cudworth shall be able to wrest it from me.]

I must put this into form, and then the weakness of it will evidently appear. The Argument of the Animad­vertor is to this purpose, If the Nicene Fathers held and acknowledged one Numerical God and no more, then they held only a Numerical Unity of the Divine Nature; and if they held only a Numerical Unity of the Divine Nature in the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, then they could not hold a Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature in the Persons of the Blessed Trinity.

[Page 107]But the Nicene Fathers, and those after them, held and acknowledged one Numerical God and no more, &c. that is, A Numerical Unity of God, infers a Numerical Unity of Nature in the Divine Persons; and a Numerical Unity of Nature in the Divine Persons, is inconsistent with a Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature in the Divine Persons.

Now grant this last to be true in the Animadvertor's Sense, what follows, That the Nicene Fathers who held the Antecedent, must also hold the Consequent: By no means. This indeed follows, that they ought to have held the Consequent, if they embraced the Antecedent; not that they actually did.

It is a very weak Argument, that such Persons embrace such a Conclusion, because they hold such Premises, from whence another believes, that such a Conclusion does ne­cessarily follow.

Secondly, I must examine his Antecedent: The Nicene Fathers held and acknowledged one Numerical God and no more. This is ambiguously expressed.

The Nicene Fathers, the whole Catholick Church, holds and acknowledges one God, and in what Sense God is one, it is impossible he should be more: For one and more than one are contradictorily opposed, and therefore impossible to be verified of the same Subject in the same Sense.

But neither the Nicene Fathers, nor the Catholick Church, do so hold God to be one, but they also hold God to be Three, that is, In a different Sense of the term God, viz. God is Three in Persons, that is, When this term God is taken as equipollent with a Divine Person, for undoubtedly the Catholick Faith is, that there are Three Divine Persons.

The Jews, Socinians, Mahometans, do indeed hold, that there is but one Numerical God, but one in Person; that there is but one Divine Person; but the Christian Faith is, that Deus est unus & Trinus.

[Page 108]Again, The Numerical Unity of God does not deter­mine the Modus of the Unity of the Trinity, does not de­termine that there is a Trinity of Divine Persons, and much less of what kind their Unity is.

Lastly, It is a mistake, though a common one, that a Numerical Unity of the common Divine Essence, and a Specifick Unity of the same Essence are inconsistent: A common Essence must of necessity be Numerically One, even in Three Humane Persons, the Common Humanity, the Species of Humanity is numerically One; there is as strictly one Species of Adam, Eve and Seth, as there is one Person of Adam. The Moderns indeed say, that there are three singular Humane Natures of Adam, Eve and Seth; but it is a Contradiction to say, that the singular Nature of Adam is common to Eve. It is the Objection of the Animadvertor, that a Specifick Unity in the Trinity, would imply three singular Divine Natures in the three Persons, of which afterwards: But be that so, still the common Divine Essence would be numerically One, that is, the Species of the Divinity would be but one; or which is the same, the common Divine Nature would be an Universal.

Petav. l. 4. de Trin. c. 13, 14.This Observation alone will answer the greatest part of two Chapters, wherein Petavius has endeavoured to im­pose upon his Reader, as if the Nicene Fathers had believed a Singularity of the common Divine Essence, whereas his proofs are only concerning a Numerical Unity of the com­mon Divine Essence: But there was a very good reason for the thing, he was a Jesuit, and those of his own Order, and of his own Church, would never have suffered his elaborate Work of the Trinity to have been published, if he had not made a seeming Defence for the Faith of the Schools, the Singularity of the common Divine Essence, and that was impossible upon his Principles, viz. The Authority of the Ancient Fathers; he therefore shamm'd this of the Numerical Unity in the room of it.

[Page 109]St. Ambrose, St. Augustin, St. Hilary, and others even of the Latin Fathers, in express terms reject the Singularity of the Divinity.

There is one single passage of Maxentius, which ascribes Singularity to the Divine Nature; and another I have seen quoted from Anselm tending to the same purpose, and these two are all I have ever met with, which would have made a poor shew, had they stood alone; whereas for the Numerical Unity of the common Divine Essence, Petavius might have transcribed half the Fathers; but this I shall have occasion to mention again.

The Animadvertor's next refuge is, n. 5. p. 175. lin. 5. only his own posi­tive ipse dixit, that the Fathers always [mark that word, always] alledged the Example of three or more individual Men agreeing in the same Nature, either by way of Allu­sion or Illustration, as it is the nearest resemblance of, and approach to this Divine Unity, of any that could be found in created Beings; or else à minore ad majus.

To which I reply, First, that these two ways are really but one way; what is only a near resemblance, must in this debate be à minore ad majus.

Secondly, The Animadvertor's Phrase is universal, they always alledged it thus, which supposes, that not one single Father, in any one single passage, ever alledged it otherways; and that the Animadvertor has examined every single passage, and upon his own Experience finds it so.

Thirdly, The Unity of three Humane Persons, of three di­stinct proper Beings, of three Substances, of three Natures, can never be the nearest resemblance of, and approach to, the Unity of one simple Substance or Being under three Relations. An Unity that is barely Notional, can never be the nearest resem­blance of an Unity that is properly Real. There are a thou­sand Instances in Nature, of one simple Being under these Relations, the single Person of Adam has three Relations.

[Page 110]The Animadvertor (p. 167.) calls it a jocular Argument, an Argument fit to be answered by Laughter only, to argue from three Humane Persons, from Peter, James and John, to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, to the three Divine Persons, yet here to serve a turn, he acknowledges it to be the nearest resemblance of, and approach to, the Di­vine Unity, that can be found in created Beings. I am sure upon the Animadvertor's Principles I may well bor­row the Poets words, Risum teneatis amici? since 'tis in Sense, as if he had said, that three Substances is the nearest resemblance of, and approach to, one Substance, that can be found in created Beings.

Fourthly, This is so far from being an Argument, à minore ad majus, upon the Animadvertor's Principles, that it is justly esteemed by all the Moderns who follow the Schools, one of the difficultest Objections against the Faith of the Trinity, viz. that if three Humane Persons have three singular Humane Natures, and consequently are so many Men; why three Divine Persons should not also infer three singular Divine Natures, and consequently be three Gods. And the Answer that the School men and Moderns give is, that the case is vastly different, that the Unity of three Humane Persons is only Notional; the Unity of the Divine Persons strictly real.

The Animadvertor himself (p. 300.) can tell you of a better Allusion and Similitude to the Union of the three Divine Persons, The Ʋnion of Ʋnderstanding, Memory and Will, as one and the same Soul: One simple Being, with three Faculties, is a nearer resemblance of one simple Being under three Relations, than three simple Beings.

n. 6.But let us hear the Animadvertor himself explain this Argument, p. 175. à minore ad majus. [If several individual Men could not properly be said to have more than one Nature, much less could this be said of the three Divine Persons.]

[Page 111]To which I answer, First, Does the Animadvertor re­ally believe that three Men cannot properly be said to have more than one Nature or not? If he believes it, What will become of his Objection, that a Specifick Unity implies a Multiplication of the said Nature in the several Individuals? What becomes of that famous Passage of his P. 270. that Substantiis Consubstantialibus will nei­ther be Truth nor Sense? I suppose he will not deny, that several individual Men are Substantioe, Substances in the plural Number; nor yet that Consubstantialibus sig­nifies of one Substance, of one Nature. I intreat him to answer this Question, Are several Men Consubstantial or not? Is Christ, according to his Humanity, Consubstantial with us Men, or not? Will he dare to say, that the whole Catholick Church has neither spoke Truth nor Sense? For the whole Church has ever professed a Belief of Christ's Con­substantiality with us Men.

If the Animadvertor shall plead, that it was the Sense of the Fathers, that three Men could not properly be said to have more than one Nature; even that is sufficient for my purpose, who am now enquiring only into the Judgment of the Fathers.

This is sufficient ad Hominem, to the Animadvertor; but for my Reader's fuller Satisfaction, I answer to the Point, that so far as this Allegation is true, 'tis Impertinent, and that so far as 'tis pertinent 'tis false.

'Tis an acknowledged Truth, that the strictest Union that can be betwixt Humane Persons, is but a resemblance, an Allusion to that inseparable, incomprehensible Union be­twixt the Divine Persons. But this is not the question, con­cerning the Union of the Divine Persons indefinitely, but concerning the Unity of their Nature: The Fathers main­tained, that the Unity of the common Divine Nature was of the same kind and degree with the Unity of the common Humane Nature.

[Page 112]There is certainly a greater Union betwixt two Humane Persons who are dear and intimate Friends, than betwixt two who are mortal Enemies: There is a greater Union betwixt two Saints in Heaven, than betwixt the best Friends on Earth: And yet two mortal Enemies have the same Unity of Nature with the Saints in Heaven.

The Union of the Saints in Heaven, is by our Saviour himself resembled to the Union of the Father and the Son, John 17.22. That they may be one, as we are one. But these words no more denote an illimited equality, than those other words of our Lord, Matt. 5.48. Be ye perfect, as your Father in Heaven is perfect, denote an equality in Perfection.

If we suppose three unbegotten, unproduced Divine Per­sons, three Fathers, I cannot see how we can deny such to be Consubstantial, since we acknowledge three Ange­lical Persons to be of one Nature and Substance; yet three unbegotten Divine Persons, three Fathers are to all the Ancient Fathers, three Gods. They did not therefore be­lieve, that a Specifick Unity was the only Unity of the Divine Persons, that they were one upon no other ac­count; but if we can know their meaning by their words, they did certainly believe a Specifick Unity: And this I perswade my self the Animadvertor's Heart misgave him.

n. 7.He therefore comes in with a third Salvo, p. 176. [That he does not in the least deny, but several Expressions may have dropped from the Fathers, which if we looked no further, might be drawn to a very inconvenient Sense.] That is, in plain English, several Expressions have dropped from them, which assert (if we look no fur­ther) a Specifick Unity. What from those Fathers who never alledged this Example as a parallel Instance, but always used it by way of Allusion, or à minore ad majus? It seems the Animadvertor's always and never will bear [Page 113] an exception. What Salvoe has he for this? He gives it us in the following words, [But then also it is as little to be deny'd, that the same Fathers professedly and designedly treating of the same Points here, declared themselves in such terms, as are very hardly, if at all reconcileable to those occasional and accidental Ex­pressions. And therefore, since their meaning cannot be taken from both, it ought much rather to be taken from what was asserted by them designedly, than what was asserted only occasionally.]

Now it is well contrived to take the conclusion for granted, he is to prove. It seems that the Animadver­tor would have things come to that pass, that we must take his bare affirmation of a thing for a proof of it. Petavius, Dr. Cudworth, the Reverend Dean of St. Paul's, have asserted the quite contrary, they have already equiva­lently denied it, and the Animadvertor gives us his own ipse dixit, that it is little to be denied.

Again, the Animadvertor pretends no more than a difficulty, or a doubt, whether these designed expressi­ons may not be reconciled to the occasional expressions. The Animadvertor makes an if of it, to him, these latter are hardly, if at all, reconcileable with the former; which is no great wonder, since he believes tribus sub­stantiis consubstantialibus to be neither truth nor sense, since he believes a numerical Unity absolutely inconsi­stent with a Specifick Unity.

Lastly, Why is the conclusion stronger than the pre­mises? Why does he make the conclusion positive? Their meaning cannot be taken from both, is the conclusion; whereas the premises mentioned only a difficulty, or a doubt. They are hardly, if at all, reconcileable.

The Animadvertor was, I believe, n. 8. in some measure sen­sible of the weakness of these answers; and therefore, [Page 114] He provides a fourth Salvoe, Ib. p. 176. viz. that the Orthodox Writers of the fourth and part of the fifth Century, were chiefly exercised with the Arian Controversie. And the Arians would not allow so much as a specifick Unity of Nature between the Father and the Son, but instead of an [...] or sameness, held only an [...] or like­ness of Nature between them, but therefore we have the less cause to wonder, if there be defects in some of their Arguments; if some of their reasonings about the Trinity, seem to look no further than a specifick Uni­ty of Nature in the Divine Persons.

This is as little to the advantage of the Animadver­tor's cause, as the former allegations.

The Arians would not allow so much as a specifick Unity between the Father and the Son, Nicepho. Callist. Ec­cles. His. lib. 18. cap. 47. I would fain know what Hereticks ever did allow it: Nicephorus Calli­stus charges indeed this Opinion upon Philoponus and his followers, who are commonly called the Tritheit Hereticks; but he is a later and fabulous Writer, wrote in the fourteenth Century, long after the prevailing of the School-Divinity: Philoponus and his followers the Tritheit Hereticks of the seventh Century inclined near­er to Sabellianism, than to a belief of a specifick Unity of the Trinity; that hard name of Tritheit Hereticks was given them by reason of some uncouth Phrases which they used, of which hereafter.

Secondly, what consequence will the Animadvertor draw from the Arians not allowing a specifick Unity between the Father and the Son? This is what he aims at, that it sufficed to maintain a specifick Unity, to confute the Arian Heresie. I desire to know why the same Plea might not have served the Reverend Dean in his learned Vindication of this Article against the Socinians, who no more allow a Specifick Unity of the Trinity than the [Page 115] Arians of old. The Socinians deny them to be three infinite minds; why will not that Apologize for the Re­verend Dean? Why is not this molified, and called on­ly a defect in the Reverend Dean, as the Animadvertor here Stiles it in the Antient Fathers.

Thirdly, the Arians objected Tritheism against the Orthodox Faith, as the Socinians do to this day: So that had the Ancient Fathers believed this Heresie a con­sequence of asserting a specifick Unity in the Trinity, they would as carefully have avoided the asserting of it, as the School-men and Moderns do on all occasions.

Fourthly, The answer of the Antients to this Ob­jection of Tritheism by the Arians, is the clearest de­monstration of their judgment; this is the Objection. Peter, James and John are three Men; therefore, Fa­ther, Son, and Holy Ghost, are three Gods. The ge­neral answer of the Ancients is by denying the truth of the Antecedent; that Peter, James and John are impro­perly, abusively called three Men, that it is contrary to the rules of Philosophy, to call them otherwise than one Man and three Human Persons, as we say in the Blessed Trinity, there are three Divine Persons and one God. Now not one School-man or Modern, as I believe, ever gave such an answer. Not one of them ever imagined, that the affirming Father, Son, and Holy Ghost to be one God, did in the least enforce them to affirm Peter James, and John to be one Man. The Animadvertor thinks this Objection only Jocular, only fit to be Laughed at, which the Antients thought so weighty, that to get rid of it, they endeavoured, says the learn­ed Dr. Cudworth reflectingly, with their Logick, to prove that three Human Persons ought not to be called three Men. I shall consider their Logicks afterwards, at pre­sent I declare, that is a manifest conviction to me, that [Page 116] they did conceive the Unity of Nature between Human and Divine Persons, parallel equal.

n. 9.Fifthly, those words are very remarkable in our Ani­madvertor, [but instead of an [...] held only an [...] or likeness of Nature between them,] which insinuates, as if the debate of the Catholicks and Arians in the Nicene Council were only about a Title, whether the Son be [...] or [...] to the Father, but this is to misrepresent the Fathers of that august Assembly.

The Arians liked neither the [...] nor the [...]. God and a Creature, are improperly said to be [...], but [...].

Again, the Catholicks approved of the [...], pro­vided it were understood without equivocation, if there was [...], or [...] added to it, that is perfectly alike in their Essence, is to the Catholicks the same with [...] or Consubstantial.

The Arians never consented to [...] but when their Party was too weak, and they were obliged to dissemble with some Catholicks, who were otherwise fa­vourable to their Persons, and cause.

It must be confessed, that [...], or [...] will not without great force suit with the Hypothesis of the Schools, of the Singularity of the common Divine Essence. A Singularity will not admit of a Comparison of likeness, so saith Ricardus de S. Victor. Lib. 6. de Trin. c. 20. Siquidem ubi est simplex Ʋnitas & summa sim­plicitas, quid ibi facit qualis & talis?

It is less wonder, therefore, if the School-men charge [...] with Arianism or Semi-arrianism; Vid. Petav. lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 6 per totum. whereas it is capable of an Orthodox Exposition.

I thought it necessary to follow the Animadvertor thus closely in the examining of this Historical Truth, viz. whether the Fathers of the Church believed the [Page 117] Modus of a Specifick Unity of the Trinity. Two ve­ry great and learned Persons have said it, have abun­dantly proved it, saith the Reverend Dean. Their As­sertion has never yet been confuted. They were not drawn into this Assertion by the heat of Disputation, or to favour their own Hypothesis, neither of them approve of a Specifick Unity of the Trinity. The Reverend Dean rightly judged, that those places they had already produced, abundantly proved their con­clusion, and yet Petavius gives them but as an Essay, and pronounces this Opinion to be the judgment of all the Greek Fathers especially. Shall I ask the Animad­vertor- a few Questions? Was not Petavius as capable of judging betwixt occasional and designed Expressions as himself, as capable of judging betwixt an Allusion or an Argument a minore ad majus as himself? Did not Petavius know that the Arians denyed a Specifick U­nity of the Trinity? Shall I ask the Animadvertor, whether he ever consulted St. Basil's 43d. Epistle, and if he did, whether he can have Brow enough to say, That that Epistle was not designedly wrote of the difference of [...] and [...], or whether St. Basil has not in the fullest manner, delivered his judgment in this point? I particularly mention this Epistle, because our Animadvertor quotes a passage out of it, [Pag. 149. of his Animadversions] under the name of Greg. Nyssen de differentia [...], to whom, in the Prin­ted Editions, it is also ascribed, and because this Epistle, being both in the Works of St. Basil and Gregory Nyssen, the Reader may more easily consult it, and there from his own Eyes be satisfied, that this was the judgment of that most learned Father St. Basil. This Epistle is the first Authority Petavius quotes in the aforementioned seventh Chapter of his fourth Book of the Trinity. [Page 118] I do not desire of the Animadvertor to traverse and examine all Petavius's Allegations, much less all the Greek Fathers. I am content to stand or fall, by this single Epistle, if this does not assert a Specifick Unity of the Trinity, I am content that it pass for a Traducing, mis-representing of the Fathers, to say, That any one of them ever held such a Notion.

And now, I hope, with the leave of the Reader, I may add, that Petavius, as well as Dr. Cudworth, stands as an unanswered witness, and that in the Mouth of these two Witnesses, till better Testimony appear, the Histo­rical Truth of this disquisition stands at present un­shaken.

n. 10.I in the second place descend to the Problematical part, whether the Reasons of the Animadvertor are so cogent, as to forbid the Admission of a Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature.

The Animadvertor gives us five Reasons [p. 181. &c.] the three first of which are dispatched in a word.

His first, That if a Numerical Unity, [the Animadver­tor means a Singularity,] in the same Divine Nature, be sufficent to make the three Persons one God, then a Specifick Unity of the same is not necessary. I an­swer, those who admit of a Specifick Unity in the Tri­nity, strictly so called, do it upon this account, That they are afraid that a Singularity, a Numerical Unity in the Animadvertors sense, will make Father, Son, and Holy Ghost one Person, as well as one God: They con­ceive, that three, truly three, distinct three, can have no other Unity of Nature, save a Specifick Unity; and those who admit of both, mean it only in our imper­fect conception of things; otherwise they believe that the Unity of the Divine Nature is above both these terms of Art, that in our imperfect conception, it par­takes [Page 119] of some properties of both these Unities, but strictly, and really, it is neither Singular nor Uni­versal.

The same answer solves the Animadvertor's second Reason, n. 11. that a greater and less degree of Unity are not to be admitted in the Divine Nature: They who admit of a Specifick Unity, deny a Singularity: They who in words admit of both, do not in reality believe two Unities in the Divine Nature, but only one Transcendental Unity, in our imperfect Concep­tion, partaking of the properties of both these Unities.

His third has been already answered, See cap. 3. n. 5. that a Speci­fick Unity may agree to ten thousand Individuals, as well as to three; so may one simple Being have ten thousand Relations or Modes, as well as three; this Article is wholly owing to Revelation.

His fourth is, that a Specifick Unity is principally, n. 12. p. 182. if not absolutely notional, and therefore cannot any ways properly belong to the Divine Persons, nor is by any means necessary to make the three Persons one God.

First, The Animadvertor brings in his Conclusion with an if, if not absolutely notional, and yet argues from that Conclusion, as if it were the most allowed Maxim.

Secondly, The Distinction of the Divine Attributes, of Justice and Mercy, is confessedly notional, and yet the Animadvertor formerly pronounces it to be Ab­surd, to contradict that Distinction.

Thirdly, The Unity of Nature betwixt Christ and his Mother, is certainly a Specifick Unity, according to the Animadvertor, a notional Unity; and yet it is Heresie to deny, That Christ and his Mother are of one Nature or Consubstantial.

[Page 120]Fourthly, The Relations of likeness, equality which are betwixt the Divine Persons, though founded on the express words of Scripture, [Christ thought it no robbery to be equal with God, the Image of the Invisible God, the express Image of his Fathers Apostasis] are by all the School-men confess'd to be relationes rationis, that is, No­tional; and yet I hope the Animadvertor will not hence deny, that they ought not properly to belong to the Divine Persons, nor necessary to make them one God.

Fifthly, The Unity of the Divine Nature, is also a Relation, [...], Consubstantial unius substantioe, of one Substance, implies a relation in Substance: We cannot say, That the Father, and the Spirator of the Holy Ghost, are Consubstantial, [...], unius substan­tioe. This term is as contrary to the Sabellian Heresie, as it is to the Arian; and therefore, according to the School-mens own Principles, this Relation of Unity of Substance must be relatio rationis, that is notional.

Sixthly, those Fathers who assert a Specifick Unity of the Trinity, do not believe, that the Divine Persons are said to be one, upon no other account, save a Spe­cifick Unity, or that they are deny'd to be three Gods from a Specifick Unity alone; this Unity they con­ceive necessary, but not of it self sufficient.

Seventhly, Even a Specifick Unity hath a sufficient fundamentum in re. A Specifick Unity is indeed a Lo­gical Notion, but the Foundation of it is something real, viz. a real agreement of the distinct Persons, or individuals in the same reason of Nature. The Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Ghost is God, as re­ally as Peter is a Man, and James is a Man, and John is a Man; Peter, James, and John, are not notionally each of them a Man, nor Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, notionally, each of them God. From this real agree­ment [Page 121] in Human Persons, we Form in Logicks the noti­on of a Specifick Unity: and the Ancient Fathers ap­plied the same notion to the agreement of the Divine Persons.

The Animadvertor's fifth and last Argument is, n. 13. That a Specifick Unity of Nature implies a Multiplication of the said Nature in every one of the particulars, to which it belongs; therefore, such an Unity cannot be admitted in the Divine Nature.

The Argument put into due Form, is to this pur­pose.

If a Specifick Unity of Nature in Created Persons or Beings, implies a Multiplication of the said Nature, then a Specifick Unity of Nature in the Divine Per­sons, implies a Multiplication of the Divine Nature. But a Specifick Unity of Nature in Created Persons or Beings, implies a Multiplication of the said Nature; therefore a Specifick Unity of Nature in the Divine Persons, implies a Multiplication of the Divine Nature. But the Conclusion is Absurd, the Divine Nature be­ing uncapable of Multiplication, therefore a Specifick Unity in the Divine Nature, is not to be allowed from whence such Conclusion follows.

Now in this Argument, as it stands betwixt the A­nimadvertor and my self; I deny the consequence of the Major, because I am satisfied the Animadvertor would do the same if I should retort the same Argu­ment, mutatis mutandis against his own Hypothesis, as for Instance, if I should thus urge.

If a Singularity of Nature in Created Persons or Be­ings forbids a Plurality of Persons, or denies a true Ge­neration, then a Singularity of the Divine Nature for­bids a Plurality of Divine Persons, and denies a true [Page 122] Divine Generation, &c. But a Singularity of Nature in Created Persons or Beings, certainly, confessedly forbids a Plurality of Persons, possessing the same Sin­gular Nature, is certainly inconsistent with a true Ge­neration, therefore a Singularity of the Divine Nature, forbids a Plurality of Divine Persons, denies a true Fa­ther and Son.

The Animadvertor would quickly tell me that this was a weak Sophism, to argue from a consequence in finite Nature, to the same in the Divine Nature: And I desire to be informed, why I may not make the same reply to his Objection from the consequence of a Spe­cifick Unity in finite Nature.

Again, I do not positively contend for a nice strict Specifick Unity of the Trinity, but for such a Transcen­dental Unity, which in our imperfect Conception of things, is either a Specifick Unity, or else wants a name in our present Metaphysicks.

I have the same Plea of the incomprehensibleness of the Divine Nature, of the Mysteriousness of this Sa­cred Article, which is given by the Moderns to the Socinian Objections, against the Singularity of the com­mon Divine Nature.

n. 14.This is sufficient to answer the Animadvertor, but because it will give occasion to Vindicate the ancient Fathers from the mis-representations of the Moderns; I shall also consider the Minor. Ib. p. 183. [As for the Minor Proposition, That a Specifick Unity of Nature con­sists with, and implies a Multiplication of the said Nature, in the several Individuals which it belongs to; I refer him to all the Logicians and Metaphy­sicians, who have wrote of Species and Specifick U­nity of Idem & Diversum, whether they do not give this account of it.]

[Page 123]Our Animadvertor is very confident of his Point, He refers to all the Logicians and Metaphysicians, who have wrote of Species and Specifick Unity, &c. But his confidence in quoting all, is only the more remark­able, since I do not know one single Logician, who ever determined for the Animadvertor; indeed this Question is not proper for a Logician; but this is not the first time, the Animadvertor has confounded the two Sciences of Logicks and Metaphysicks, and there­by given us a Proof, that He understands neither.

This is the common Definition of a Species in Lo­gicks▪ [Species est id, quod de pluribus differentibus nu­mero tantum hoc ipso quid est predicatur.] That which may be predicated of many, differing only in number, in answer to the Question, what each single Individual is? I never met with one single Logician, who ever changed this Definition of Porphyry, into pluribus na­tura differentibus, who ever affirmed that a Species may be predicated of many differing in Nature.

I shall ask the Animadvertor, whether Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, differ in number or not? Or how they can be said to be three, if they differ not in number?

He must contradict all Authority, both Ancient and Modern, if He shall deny, that this term God, is Es­sentially predicated of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; that is, in answer to the Question, what is the Father, or the Son, or Holy Ghost?

I desire the Animadvertor to consider this Point carefully, before He determins that this term God is not a Species [at least in our imperfect Concepti­on of things] since the Definition of a Species a­grees to it.

[Page 124] Lib. 1. Sen­ten. Dist. 19. I find since that, he learned this of his Ma­ster Petrus Abelardus. Genebr. Resp. ad Schegki­um. pag. 121. Damas. lib. 3. de orth. Fide c. 6. lib. 1. c. 9. Peter Lombard is, so far as I can find, the very first Person who ever scrupled the Phrase, that the Divine Persons differ in Number. The most Learned of the Greek Fathers, audacter & liberè illa vocula utuntur in distinctione Personarum, says the Learned Genebrard, and quotes St. Basil, Justin Martyr, Nazianzen, Epiphanius, Cyrillus, and Justinus Imperator; Damascen is quoted by Peter Lombard, His words are remarkable to my pur­pose, so I shall give them. [ [...].] For Hypostases, or Persons are said to differ in Number and not in Nature. So the same Damascen, speaking of Adam, Seth, and Eve, says, [...]. They differ not in their Nature, for they are all Men. Again, lib. 3. c. 8. [...]. As Peter and Paul are not Numbered in what they are Ʋnited, or one, For be­ing Ʋnited, or one, in the same Reason of Nature, they cannot be called two Natures; But differing in Hyposta­sis, lib. 3. c. 6. they may be called two Hypostases. More fully, [...]. For every Essence is com­mon to all the Hypostases contained under it, and there is not to be found any Particular or Singular Nature or Essence; otherwise it were necessary to call the same Hypostases Consubstantial, and yet of a different Essence; As also to call the Holy Trinity of the same, and of a different Essence, according to the Divine Nature: Where­fore [Page 125] the same Nature is beheld in every distinct Hypostasis. If Damascen were now alive, He could scarce deliver his Opinion more clearly. According to him, there is no such thing as a Particular or Singular Nature, [And no Philosopher ever dream'd that the Universal Spe­cifick Nature was Multiplied in the distinct Hyposta­ses.] This was his judgment, which is what we are chiefly inquiring into: The learned Damascen adds his Reason; For that, if we allow a Singular Nature in each distinct Hypostasis, the same Hypostasis must be both Consubstantial and not Consubstantial, which to him was an Absurdity in Philosophy: Secondly, if we allow a Singular Nature in each distinct Hypostasis, we must also allow it in the Sacred Trinity, the Di­vine Persons must be Consubstantial and not Consub­stantial, which latter is Arianism, Tritheism, the worst of Heresies: Wherefore the same Essence, says this learned Father, is in every single Hypostasis. The learn­ed Damascen knew no way to avoid the consequence in the Sacred Trinity, if he allowed it in a Trinity of Hu­man Persons, which is to me a Demonstration, that He esteemed the Unity of Nature in both instances Parallel: And whether Damascen was mistaken in his Philosophy or not, it manifestly appears; First, That we cannot ar­gue from his Assertion of the Numerical Unity of the Divine Nature, that He disbelieved a Specifick Unity of the same Nature, He believed not a Multiplicity of Human Nature in Human Hypostases, where there is con­fessedly a Specifick Unity, His denial therefore of a Multiplicity of the Divine Nature in the Divine Hy­postases, is no Argument, that He believed not a proper Specifick Unity of the common Divine Nature.

Ʋnitas Formalis is common with the Moderns, ei­ther to Ʋnitas Ʋniversalis, or Ʋnitas Individualis, as the [Page 126] Form may, according to them, be either Universal, that is, the Specifick Form, or else a Singular or Individual Form: And every Unity is an Arithmetical, Numeri­cal Unity; the bare Phrase of it self, therefore is not inconsistent with a Specifick Unity, even according to the Moderns; and much less with the Ancients, accord­ing to whose Philosophy, a Specifick Unity implied a strictly Numerical Unity of Nature, in all the several Individuals.

It is an easie thing to say, That the Ancients were mistaken in their Philosophy, but not so easie to over­throw the learned Damascen's Reason, viz. That then properly two Human Hypostases would not be Consub­stantial. Ʋrsin. Ex­pli. Cate. Quest. 33 n. 4. p. 196. This Conclusion the learned Ʋrsinus embraces, Duo homines sunt [...], qui tamen non sunt [...]. But this is contrary to the Language of all Philosophers, contrary to himself, who a little before Determins that Christ, Ib. Quest. 33. p. 183. secundum humanam naturam habet multos fratres ejusdem naturae, according to his Human Nature, had many Brothers of the same Nature, or Consubstan­tial.

Again, the Definition is justly supposed to contain the Essence of any thing, but a true and proper Definition contains only the Genus and Difference, that is, only the Species. If we ask what is James or Peter? We answer, by the Difinition or Species, that each of them is a Man or animal rationale; but if according to the proper Rules of Philosophy, the Essence of Peter and James is Singular; We ought to add Singulare to ani­mal rationale, that is, We must confound what is Personal in Peter and James with what is Essenti­al; the Notes of Singularity with the Genus and Dif­ference.

[Page 127]A Second Corollary I shall deduce from the Phi­losophy of the Ancients in this Point, is, n. 15. That their denying Peter, James, and John, to be properly cal­led three Men, is not so great a Paradox, as some of the Moderns represent, or rather mistake it. They never doubted, whether Peter, James, and John had three Souls and three Bodies, they never denied them to be three distinct Substantial Beings, three [...], that is, three Subjects in which the common Humanity did subsist, they believed them properly three Hypostases, which is all the vulgar mean by three Men: The Debate is solely about a Phrase, whether Peter, James, and John are more properly called three Hypostases in one Human Nature, or three Men. The Former Phrase, even the Moderns allow, as al­so they confess, that all Concrete terms, such as Man is, do Primarily signifie the Form; and Secondarily assignifie the Subject in which such form subsists; Thirdly, the School-men themselves give this Rule concerning Deus, Creator, Dominus, &c. that because the Form signified by those Concrete terms, cannot be Multiplied, [neither Deitas, vis creatrix, nor potentia Dominatrix are according to the School-men, capable of Multiplication,] therefore, neither are the Concrete terms Deus, Creator, Dominus, capable of a Plural Pre­dication. Now by the same Rule, this term Man ought not to be Plurally Predicated, since according to the Philosophy of the Ancients, Humanity, the Form, was not Multiplied in the several Human Hypostases. Nor see I, what a School-man can reply upon his own Principles, save his own ipse dixit, that the Ancients were mistaken, when they asserted that Humanity was not Multiplied in the several Human Individuals. For my own Part I esteem this one Reason, why [Page 128] thase terms, Deus, Creator, Dominus, &c. are not Multiplied, but neither the sole nor chief Reason of the Singularity of their Predication; nay further, That the chief Reason why the Fathers of the Church from before the Nicene Council, have Religiously obser­ved a singular Predication of those Attributes, is by no means applicable to the term Man in respect of several Human Hypostases; so that I can very well comply with common Custom which calls Peter, James, and John three Men, and yet believe, that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, ought not to be called three Gods, three Creators, three Lords; but this belongs to my Second Part of the true Notion of the Unity of God.

n. 16.A Second thing I shall crave leave to observe, is, that the School-men themselves, that is, the chief Leaders of them, Thomas and Scotus were not averse to this Philoso­phy of the Ancients in immaterial Beings, they deter­mining that the Angelical Nature was not capable of Multiplication in the several Angelical Persons, and con­sequently that the several Angels differed Specifically, and that there could not according to some, even by the Omnipotence of God, be created two Angels in the same Species. This, several of the School-men thought more Eligible than to Parallel the Unity of the Divine Persons with Angelical Persons: Common Cu­stom, Authorising the Phrase of different Angels, as well as of different Men.

The Foundation of this Assertion of the Schoolmen, concerning the impossibility of different Angels, within the same Species, arose from their belief, that Matter was the sole Principle of Individuation, which is now ge­nerally disapproved: However from Hence a fair Reason appears, why none of the School-men embraced this notion of the Ancients of the Specifick Unity of the [Page 129] Trinity; Si ergo An­geli non sint compositi ex Materia & forma, se­quitur quod impossibile sit esse duos Angelos u­nius Speci­ei. Aquin. sum. Quest. 50. they thought such Unity impossible between im­material Persons; and it was down-right Arianism, to as­sert a Specifick Essential difference betwixt Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and a worse Heresie to assert that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had Bodies.

A Third thing I shall crave leave to observe, is, That Phi­loponus the famous Ring-leader of the Tritheit Hereticks, was the first of the Ancients, who asserted that a Specifick Unity implied a Multiplication of the said Nature in the several In­dividuals of the same Species, n. 17. and that consequently▪ not on­ly three Human Persons had three distinct Human Natures, [which according to the Antients was an Error in Philoso­phy,] But also the three Divine Persons had three distinct Na­tures. For which uncouth Phrase, of three Natures in the Tri­nity, and not for holding a Specifick Unity of the Trinity, were Philoponus and his followers, Stiled Tritheit Hereticks.

Philoponus himself, as I believe, His followers more cer­tainly, if we may Credit Eulogius, were nearer Sabellius than the Faith of a Specifick Unity of the Trinity.

[...]. — [...].

Eulogius, Photii Bib­lioth. Cod. ccxxx. p. 879. to me has cleared this obscure Part of the Ec­clesiastical History. These Monophysitae Hereticks, these Tritheist Hereticks [for both these Heresies are charged up­on Philoponus] distinguished [...] and [...], betwixt Nature and Essence, and none but some of the Maddest asserted three Essences in the Trinity, but only three Natures; But the Othodox esteeming [...] and [...] as equivalent, gave the Name of Tritheit Hereticks to both; Otherwise those [Page 130] who distinguished betwixt [...] and [...], were so far from believing three Gods, that they did not as Eulogius there tells us, believe that either Father, Son, or Holy Ghost were, [...], properly God, and in the next words, gives us their positive Faith, that they esteemed the Personal properties to be the Persons themselves; There may be a [...] of a Personal property, of what we conceive in the Nature of an Accident, [...] is by Aristotle appropriated to Substance. Again, a Personal property, an Accident or Mode can ne­ver be properly God: So that these Hereticks as the Church then judged them, believed one Essence with three pro­perties, they believed these properties to subsist, or to be Hypostases. How near the Animadvertor comes to them, when he tells us, Animadv. &c. p. 121. Ibid. p. 275. that the ternary Number belongs only to the Personalities, that a Person here [or in this Mystery] im­ports a Mode or Relation, &c. that the Relations subsist, I leave to Himself upon cooler consideration. Pholii Bib­lio. Cod. ccxxx. p. 866. If he desires to see these Notions confuted; He may please to consult Eulo­gius in the same place, where He will find, that Eulogius thought them scarce in their Senses, that could imagine a Relation or Personal property could subsist or be a Person.

I was the more willing to explain this obscure Heresie, since this is the eternal Harangue of the Socinians, that the Faith of three proper Persons was condemned by the Anci­ents, in the Person of Philoponus, when yet at the same time they confess that the belief of a Specifick Unity of the Trini­ty, was the Faith of the Nicene Fathers, which two Opi­nions are inconsistent, that they should condemn that for Heresie, the worst of Heresies in Philoponus, which they esteemed Orthodox in themselves and their own Party.

n. 18.Fourthly and lastly, Though I see no necessity of Multi­plying the Divine Nature, if we assert a Specifick Unity of the Trinity, and less, if we assert it in the Sense I only con­tend for, that is for such a transcendental Unity which in our imperfect Conception of things, must either be called a Specifick Unity, or confessed to want a Name in our present [Page 131] Philosophy, yet ex abundanti, I am not afraid to declare to the Sociniuns, that I would sooner acknowledge three Sin­gular Divine Natures in the Trinity, than deny the Faith of three Divine Persons: A Singular Nature or Essence, if we admit such a Notion in Philosophy, is also a Personal Na­ture or Essence, and whatever is Personal in the Divinity it self, may be Multiplied; nor have the Ancients some­times scrupled the Phrase of [...] nor Petavius that of Trina Deitas, no more than Trinus Deus, and genita, and ingenita sapientia, &c. is of the same Import. All I will say at present of these and the like Phrases is, that they are fairly reconcileable with the true Notion of the Unity of God, and no ways contradictions to Reason that I know of: Both which I hope to evince in my Second Part, where I shall also endeavour to explain the sense, in which the An­cients used these different Expressions of [...] and [...].

[It is evident, that He [the Reverend Dean] makes Specifick sameness of Nature, p. 186. lin. 20. n. 19. and the Agreement of Things Numerically different in one and the same common Na­ture, to signifie convertibly the same thing.]

Well, and what follows? In this, says the Animadvertor, Ibid. He is guilty of a very great mistake, by making those things the same, which are not the same.

With the Animadvertor's leave, the mistake lies wholly at his own door. The Agreement of Modes Numerically dif­ferent in one and the same common Nature, and a Specifick sameness of Nature are vastly different: But the Reverend Dean's words are, the Agreement of Things Numerically dif­ferent, and it is the sense of all Philosophers, that Things Nu­merically differing, can only agree in one Specifick Nature.

The term [Deus] indeed is neither a Genus nor a Species. p. 186. lin. ult. n. 20. Nevertheless, all Divines and School-men allow it to be a terminus communis.

This great Dictator in Philosophy, I find, is yet to learn the first Rudiments in Logick. A terminus communis in Logick [Page 132] is the same with a terminus Ʋniversalis, with a terminus pre­dicabilis, and all Logicians I have had the Fortune to con­sult, speak but of five Predicables, Genus, Species, Differentia, Proprium, Accidens. It is too great an absurdity for the Ani­madvertor to be guilty of, to affirm that the term Deus is either Differentia, Proprium, or Accidens. Besides that, all the Arguments himself has brought against the Admission of a Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature, are equally level­led against the Admission of the Universality of the com­mon Divine Nature, that is, against this Assertion, that Deus is a terminus communis. Animadv. p. 154. Essentia ha­bet se per modum ter­mini com­munis, quia licet singu­laris sit ta­men vere est in pluribus suppositis, quare in praedicatio­nibus fun­gitur mune­re vocis Ʋ ­niversalis. Bellarmi­nus de Christo, l. 2. c. 18.

Well, but do not all Divines and School-men allow it to be a terminus communis? Shall I borrow his own words, and answer that by this expression, it would more than seem that He has read them all: But by the conclusion, that he has read none of them. For not one single School-man or Modern, who follow them, do, I verily believe, allow this term Deus to be a terminus communis. That famous Objection against the Faith of the Trinity which the Schoolmen and Moderns are so much concerned to answer, viz. That if the Father is God, and the Son is God, the Father must be the Son, ground­ed upon this Axiom, Quoe sunt eadem unitertio, sunt eadem in­ter se, shews the judgment of the Schoolmen and Moderns, that they take this term Deus to be a terminus singularis, for that Axiom holds not in a terminus communis.

This indeed the School men and Moderns do hold, that this term Deus is a terminus singularis communicabilis, communi­cable by Praedication, as a terminus communis, but in it self a terminus singularis.

p 217. lin. 2. n. 21. [In God, besides Essence or Substance, we assert, that there is that which we call Mode, Habitude or Relation.]

We cannot contemplate God as he is in himself, a pure sim­ple Act; but to assert the existence of Modes in God from our imperfect Conception of things, is peculiar to the Animad­vertor, but this falls in naturally in the next Chapter, where we are to enquire whether the Personalities are proper Modes.

[Page 137]One thing I cannot omit; the Animadverter tells us, Ibid. That by one or either of these in Conjunction with Es­sence or Substance, we give account of all the Acts, Attributes, and Personalities belonging to the Divine Nature.

What do we give account of the Divine Attributes by Essence and a Mode? is this, in his own Words, Ibid. The con­stant, unanimously received Doctrine of Divines, School-men, and Metaphysitians in their Discourses upon God?

Can a Reader unacquainted with these Debates, believe that by the constant, unanimously received Doctrine of Divines, School-men, and Metaphysitians; we are to un­derstand the single Aninmadverter alone, and yet that is the truth. So ( p. 51. l. 3.) he with the same confidence and something else, tells us, [That all Divines hitherto have looked upon, and professedly treated of the Divine Na­ture and Attributes as different and distinct from one another, still considering the first as the Subject, and the other as the Adjuncts of it.]

What must we say, when a Person shall set up for a Cri­tick in the most mysterious Article of our Religion, and himself understands not the first Elements of Divinity? Did any Divine before himself compound God of Subject and Adjunct? Did any Divine before himself assert that Holiness, Goodness, Truth, Knowledge, Eternity, &c. were Adjuncts in God? Does he know what an Adjunct is? Quod alicui preter essentiam adjungitur, something added, con­joyned to the Essence of a Being: Do not all Divines teach, That the Divine Attributes may be predicated in abstra­cto of God, God is his Wisdom, his Power, his Goodness, but a Subject cannot be so predicated of its Adjunct? But I am ashamed of confuting so weak a Notion, yet our A­nimadverter has the Face to say, That without this Noti­on, it is impossible to discourse intelligibly of the Divine Attributes. Ibid. p. 217.

[Page 138] P. 223 Qu. 3. n. 27. [What is the Substance or Nature of God? I answer, It is a Being existing of and by it self Incorporeal, In­finite, Eternal, Omniscient, Omnipotent, &c.]

The Animadverter triumphs over this and some other questions the Reverend Dean had made, as easie and tri­fling, for that is the natural Sense of calling them not so very formidable, &c. But I conceive, that he mistook the Reverend Dean's Mind in asking this question, which (probably) was, What Notion we can frame in our Minds of the Substance of God, of an infinite, immaterial Sub­stance? However, I shall wave that, and tell him, That he has extremely failed in the answer of this easie Que­stion.

First, When he tells us, that the Nature of God is a Being. God is properly called a Being, but his Nature ought to be stiled an Essence and not a Being, when we speak properly, and according to the formal Conception of things.

Secondly, To be a Being existing of it self, is not of the Nature or Essence of God, otherwise the Son and Holy Spi­rit are not each of them God, for certainly neither the Son nor Holy Spirit exist of themselves; to be a Being ex­isting of it self, is a personal property of the Father alone.

Thirdly, Existing by it self is but an explication of be­ing an Hypostasis or Suppositum, which indeed agrees to Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but yet by the Consent of sober Divines, is not esteemed an essential Predication, and consequently ought not to be put into the Definition of God.

Fourthly, Incorporeal, Infinite, &c. are Attributes, that is, according to the Animadverter, Adjuncts to the Essence or Nature of God, how come they therefore to make up part of the Definition of the Nature of God? But I am tired, and have reason to believe my Reader so with [Page 139] the observation of the Animadverter's Mistakes, and therefore I have omitted very many I did observe, and doubtless a more attentive Reader would find many which escaped my notice.

The Animadverter in this Book has concern'd himself chiefly with three Articles, Christ's Satisfaction, His In­carnation, and the Doctrine of the Trinity; and I do not find upon the strictest Search, that he understands any one of them. Concerning the last of these Articles, the Reader cannot have a clearer Proof than by Examination of the Animadverter's eighth Chapter, wherein he pro­fessedly endeavours to lay down the positive Faith of the Church concerning this Article.

CHAP. VII.

[I judge it neither improper nor unusefull to represent what the Church has hitherto held and taught concerning this important Article of the Trinity, p. 240. l. 2. n. 1. as I find it in Councils, Confessions, Fathers, School-men, and other Church-writers both ancient and modern.]

Make room for this mighty Man, keep silence and learn what Councils, Confessions, Fathers, School-men, and other Church-writers both ancient and modern have taught in this important Article. Goliath himself was not more compleatly armed Cap-a-pee, but Goliath wanted little David's Sling; he came not in the name of the Lord. And it seems this great Opiniator has forgot his Bible be­hind him, quite forgot Christ and his twelve Apostles in the Crowd of Fathers, and School-men, and other Church-writers both ancient and modern.

Shall I need to remind this great Critick, that if Coun­cils, Confessions, Fathers, School-men, and other Church-writers [Page 140] both ancient and modern have determined, I will not say against, but, without a sufficient Foundation of Scripture, their determination is no rule of a Protestant's Faith?

Article 8.Our Church receives the Creeds themselves, because they may be proved by most certain Warrants of Holy Scripture.

I acknowledge it a great Confirmation of my Faith, as to this Article, that Councils and Fathers have explained the Scriptures in the same Sense in which I believe them.

The Ecclesiastical Phrases and Forms of Speech are ve­ry usefull to detect aequivocating Hereticks, or as they speak in short what the Scriptures deliver in several places, or as they are Arguments ad homines, to those who ac­knowledge their Authority.

p. 240. l. 14. n. 2. [Now the commonly received Doctrine of the Church and Schools concerning the Blessed Trinity (so far as I can judge, but still with the humblest Submission to the Judgment of the Church of England in the Case) is this, That the Christian Religion having laid this sure Foundation, that there is but one God, and that there is nothing ( i. e. no positive real Being strictly and properly so called) in God, but what is God: and lastly, That there can be no Composition in the Deity with any such positive real Being distinct from the Dei­ty it self; and yet the Church finding in Scripture mention of three, to whom distinctly the God-head does belong, it has by warrant of the same Scripture, Heb. 1.3. expressed these three by the Name of Per­sons, and stated their Personalities upon three distinct Modes of Subsistence allotted to one and the same God-head, and these also distinguished from one another by three distinct Relations.]

First, The Complement is very high to the Church of England, that he will submit the Faith which he finds in [Page 141] Councils, Confessions, Fathers, School-men, and other Church-writers both ancient and modern to the Judgment of the Church of England; but whom does the Animad­verter mean by the Church of England? this is his Cha­racter of the Churchmen, the Clergy of the Church of England in 1690 [when the Reverend Dean published his Vindication of the Trinity.] And the second Edition of his Animadversions are printed in 1693, viz. That none then opposed the Reverend Dean's Notions, most over-looked them, and some countenancing and advancing the Author of them, and perhaps for them too; this truly is the Case; and by those some, he especially understood the then Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Animad p. 361. so that this is a meer Complement, if not, as a Friend hinted, put in, in hopes of more Preferment.

Secondly, This Article, that there is but one God, is an Article properly of Natural not the Christian Religion. The Christian Religion does repeat and acknowledge it. This Article is the Foundation of the Christian Religion, and not a Foundation laid by the Christian Religion; of which Distinction in my second part, when I come to ex­plain the Unity of God.

Thirdly, That Proposition, that there is nothing in God but what is God, is true without his exception of a Mode, which the Animadverter intends by his Parenthesis, but the whole relates to the Simplicity of a Divine Person, and not of the Trinity.

Fourthly, There is no Composition in the Trinity, not because there is no Plurality in the Trinity, for then there could be no Trinity; but because Father, Son and Holy Ghost are not parts nor any ways analogous to compo­nent parts of God, but each distinct Divine Person is as compleatly, perfectly God, as each distinct angelical Per­son is a compleat, perfect Angel.

[Page 142]Fifthly, the Christian Religion does declare not only, that there is but one God, but also that there are three, to whom distinctly [mark that word distinctly] the God­head does belong, which is in other Words, that God is one and three; neither of which Articles are to be con­tradicted.

Sixthly, Heb. 1.3. was not the Warrant why the Church stiled Father, Son and Holy Ghost by the Title of Persons; the term in that place is [...], Hyposta­sis, and not [...], Person; secondly, [...] is in the singular, not plural Number. The Enquiry is not whe­ther Father, Son and Holy Ghost be each an [...], but whether they be Hypostases in the Plural Number; third­ly, [...] was in that very place from before St. Je­rom's time in all the Authentick Translations of that Epistle, so far as I know, till Beza's Translation, constantly ren­derd by substantioe, Substance; fourthly, The place it self requires this Translation, [...] signifies there not the Person of the Father, but something which the Father in our Conception hath. See Petav. lib 6. de Trin. cap. 6. per totum. The Son is not the Image of his Father's Subsistence in the Sense of the Animadverter, that is, of his Paternity, but of his Father's Substance or Na­ture. Hypostasis answers to Glory, by which is certainly meant the Father's essential Glory; fifthly, The Fathers who in their private Comments expounded [...], by Person, as our Translation also renders it, did it to express a further Similitude between the Father and Son, viz. That the Son is a Person as well as the Father, which is a true Exposition, but perhaps not intended in this place; how­ever, it overthrows the subtleties of the Schools, that the Relations constitute each a Person, for then the Son could not be the Image of the Father in Personality, as he is not his Image in Relation, is not a Father but a Son.

Sixthly, And stated their Personalities upon three di­stinct Subsistences allotted to one and the same God-head.

[Page 143]First, This is a secondary and less principal Enquiry, about which there would be little or no difficulty if the great difficulty in this Controversie were first determin'd, viz. What the three Divine Persons are.

A Person in this sacred Mystery is that to which the ternary Number belongs. Three Persons, as a late Reve­rend Author expresses it, are three Somewhats, Anim. p. 120. three Rela­tives, says the Animadverter. Agree but what we must add to Somewhats, to Relatives, and there needs not a word to determine what the three Personalities are.

If we say with the Ancients three Hypostases, that is, three Substances, and neither St. Augustin, St. Hierom, nor St. Hilary knew any other Sense of the term Hypostases. Every compleat Substance is a Suppositum, and has a pro­per Mode of Subsistence, and then there is no more diffi­culty in conceiving three Hypostases to have three Modes of Subsistence, than for the Socinians or Jews to explain, how God, whom they believe one Person, one Hyposta­sis, has one Mode of Subsistence.

Secondly, To allot three Modes of Subsistence to one and the same singular God-head is quickly said, but it is such a Choke-pear, that the several Parties of the schola­stick Tribe have not known how to swallow.

1. The Foundation of it is a Mistake, viz. a false Tran­slation of that noted Phrase, [...]. For that Phrase signifies not, as the Schoolmen from their ill Tran­slations mistook it, modes of Subsistence in the Abstract, but the Modes or Properties of the subsistent Being or Per­son in the Concrete; this Phrase signifies not the personal Forms or Personalities, but the Properties of the Person al­ready constituted, which two differ as a Form and an Ad­junct, Personality is the Form, a personal Property is an Adjunct, and supposes the Person already constituted and formed.

[Page 144] Justin Martyr, or rather the Author under his Name, whom our Animadverter quotes, Anim p 252. after those remarkable words so often imitated by the succeeding Greek Fathers, [...] ▪ For the Terms unbegotten, be­gotten, proceeding are not Names of the Essence, but Properties of the subsistent Being or Person, and before that latter place, viz. that these Terms are [...], but [...], that is, not deno­ting the Essence, but signifying the Hypostases or Persons. [Hypostasis signifies the Person in concreto, and not the Subsistence in abstracto, as the Animadverter has falsely translated it.] I say, that Author has in the middle, be­tween these two places a Passage that undeniably evinces the Sense of the Phrase in Dispute. That Author illu­strates the former Phrase by the example of Adam, whose [...], whose personal Property was to be im­mediately formed by the Hands of God. [...]. The Formation (of Adam) gives us his personal Property, for it declares how he was produced. I believe the Ani­madverter himself will not have the Confidence to pre­tend, that the Formation of Adam by the hands of God was the Personality of Adam, that which properly consti­tuted Adam a Person, but only a Property of Adam consi­dered in our Conception, as already constituted. This Sense of the Phrase was undisputed in the learned Dama­scen's time. Damas. lib. 1. de ortho. fide cap. 9. [...]. Wherefore all things that the Father hath are also his, [that is, the Son's] except Innas­cibility, [Page 145] [or the property of being unbegotten,] which notifies not a difference of Essence or a [different essential] Dignity, but a personal Property, even as Adam being un­begotten, (for he was immediately formed by God) and Seth begotten, (for he was the Son of Adam) and Eve proceeding out of the side of Adam (for she was not be­gotten) differ not in Nature, for they are all Men [or human Persons] but in a [distinct] personal Property.

These words need no Comment, Seth's Birth and Eve's Procession of the Rib of Adam are not their Personalities, not their Modes of Subsistence, but their personal Proper­ties, not that which constituted them Persons, but that which distinguished them in our Conception one from another, that which constituted them distinct Persons one from another.

Besides the Phrase [...] is not of it self capable of any other Interpretation: to be unbegotten, a negation, See Ch. 2. n. 10. can never be the Father's Mode of Subsistence, his Perso­nality, [...], says the Animadverter, is a term not importing in it any positive Relation, but only a meer Nega­tion of all Producibility by any superior Principle. Anim. &c. p. 248. This term therefore cannot signifie causally, and consequently not [...], which [...] is here stiled contrary to the Animadverter's Observation.

I acknowledge to the Animadverter, that every Person, Ibid p. 250▪ 251. and consequently the Divine Persons are formally consti­tuted such by a Mode of Subsistence, or what we are obli­ged to conceive of as a Mode of Subsistence, that is, each distinct Person has a distinct Mode of Subsistence, and the three Divine Persons have in our Conception three distinct Modes of Subsistence. Nay, I will add further, that I believe that no Man, who understands the meaning of the term Hypostasis, and uses it without Aequivocation, will or can deny any part of this. The Reverend Dean expresly ac­knowledges this truth. A Beast is a Suppositum, Vind. of the Tri­nity. p. 262. — that is, a distinct living subsisting Being by it self. But I do [Page 146] here deny to the Animadverter, that the Ancient Fathers did ever assert, that the Divine Relations were in this proper, formal Sense, Modes of Subsistence, or that That Phrase, [...], when applied to the Divine Relations, and much more when applied to [...] was by them understood in the proper formal Sense, of which we are now enquiring.

Secondly, If the Animadverter could get over the first Difficulty, Anim. &c. p. 120. he would find a second behind, how one sim­ple Being (which is the Animadverter's Hypothesis of the Trinity) can have three Modes of Subsistence. The whole School of the Thomists and Scotists assert an absolute essential Subsistence, and consequently one Subsistence of the whole Trinity, they esteem the three Divine Persons to be unum subsistens; unum suppositum aut personam incom­pletam, says Cajetan, (one of the most famous Commen­tators upon Aquinas) to which Suarez only replies, Suarez de in­car. q 3. Act. 1. disp. 11. S. 5. p. 285. Caven­dus est hic loquendi modus, utpote alienus à modo loquendi conciliorum, Patrum & Theologorum: that is, have a care lest Hereticks hear us, and take advantage at such a novel Expression; otherwise, Suarez finds no fault with the Do­ctrine: and indeed to say, That Existence or Subsistence by it self is Relative, is a contradiction to the very Phrase, Subsistence by it self denies all relation to any other. So that according to the Thomists and Scotists, the three Per­sonalities are not three Modes of Subsistence, not three Subsistences, but one essential absolute Subsistence with three Relations, or three relative Modes, or three Modes of Incommunicability. But of this I have already spoke, Chap. 1. n. 11, 12, 13.

Thirdly, To allot three Subsistences to the God-head, is to contradict the Ancients, [...], these Properties are not Names of the Essence, of the God-head, but of the Persons. The God head does not properly subsist, but the Divine Per­sons [Page 147] subsist. Cajetan may inform the Animadverter, what is the consequence of ascribing Subsistence to the God-head, even the same with calling it a suppositum or incom­pleat Person; where the term incompleat is only added to avoid the grossness of the Phrase; otherwise they ascribe all the Divine Acts to this unum subsistens, unum suppositum, and call them essential Acts; whereas the Notion of Phi­losophers is that actiones non [...], sed [...] at­tribuuntur, that Actions ought not to be attributed to the Nature but to the Person endowed with such Nature. The Person is the principium quod, Nature only the princi­pium quo, the power by which the Person acteth.

The School-men retain in words the personal Acts of the Divine Persons, that Generation is the personal Act of the Father, Incarnation, the personal Act of the Son, Sanctification, the personal Act of the Holy Spirit. A­ctive Spiration, the personal Act of the Father and Son. But these are meer words. Generation, according to the School-men, is the reflex Act of the Divine Understanding, whereby it knows it self; and this singular individual Act they ascribe in common to Father Son and Holy Ghost. So every thing that is an Act in Incarnation, is according to them, the Act of the whole Trinity: they pretend in­deed, that the same singular reflex Act of the Divine Un­derstanding only generates, as it proceeds from the Person of the Father: and that the Incarnation is only terminated upon the Person of the Son. But what Pretence to invent for Sanctification, I do not find that they are yet agreed. The sacred Scriptures give Sanctification for the distinguishing Character of the third Person; he is so called in the very Form of Baptism: to deny this distinguishing Character was Sabellianism to the Ancients. Yet this the School-men have undeniably done in the Act of Sanctification. The Maxim of the Ancients was, that Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa: They have not only misconstrued [Page 148] indivisa for confusa, but in reality, left out the Exception ad extra and confounded the Actions ad intra as well as those ad extra. So Spiration to the School-men is that Act of the Divine Will, whereby it loves it self, and this singular individual Act they also ascribe to the Holy Spi­rit equally with the Father and the Son. Only say they, The Divine Will's loving it self is not Spiration in the Per­son of the Holy Ghost, but only in the Person of the Fa­ther and Son. How much better is it with the Ancient Fathers to confess these to be inscrutable Mysteries, than to expose the sacred Article by such bold and abstruse De­finitions, and yet these are the Gentlemen whom the Ani­madverter commends for venturing little, for preceding upon the surest grounds of Reason and Scripture.

Again, Sanctification, which the divinely inspired Wri­tings give us, as the peculiar [...] of the Holy Ghost, relating to the Creatures, to a temporal Act, can never be the Personality of the Holy Ghost, but only a personal Property of the third Person of the Blessed Tri­nity.

The School-men take shelter in the Term Spirit, [which of it self is common to the whole Trinity,] and call the Procession of the Holy Ghost by the Term, Spiration But the whole Greek Church believe the Holy Ghost the Spi­rit of the Son, and yet denies the Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son; and whatever may be said for the pious Credibility of this Article in the Sense of the Western Church, yet I find, that our greatest Divines, Laud, Stillingfleet, Chillingworth, &c. have deny'd that this is an Article of Faith, or that the Greek Church is guilty of Heresy in denying of it. Further, from St. Au­gustin we learn that this Sense of this Term, Spiration, was unknown to the Latin Church in his time. Lib 5. de Tr. cap 11. [Ille spiritus sanctus qui non Trinitas sed in Trinitate intelligi­tur, in eo quod propriè dicitur spiritus sanctus relativè di­citur, [Page 149] cum ad patrem & filium refertur, quia spiritus san­ctus & patris & filii spiritus est, sed ipsa relatio non appa­ret in hoc nomine.]

Nor has the Mission of the Divine Persons (which to the Ancients was a sacred proof of the Plurality of Persons in the Blessed Trinity) fared better in the Exposition of the Schoolmen than the internal personal Acts. Accor­ding to their Master, they affirm, that the Son was sent not only by the Father, and the Holy Spirit, Lib. 1. Sent. Dist. 15. [which last may be allowed in an improper Sense] but also by him­self. So true is that ancient Observation of Athanasius, Athan. graeco­lat. apud comel. Tom. 1. p. 516. [...]. They who assert the Trinity to be a Monad [with the Animadverter a simple Being] will find themselves obliged to adulterate the Divine Mission and Generation.

[The Personalities by which the Deity stands diver­sify'd into three distinct Persons, P. 241. l. ult. n. 3. are by the Generality of Divines both Ancient and Modern, called and ac­counted Modes, or at least, something Analogous to them, since no one thing can agree both to God and the Creatures by a perfect Univocation.]

I intreat the Animadverter to inform me, where he learnt that new Phrase of a Deity diversified. Many have scrupled the Phrase concerning the Divine Persons, are afraid of asserting that the Divine Persons differ or are diverse. Himself tells us, Anim. &c. p. 175. that they are distinguished from one another and no more. But to tell us of a singular Deity diversify'd (which is the Animadverter's Hypothesis) is to me new Divinity.

Secondly, The Personalities are called and accounted Modes, &c. Does the Animadverter know no difference betwixt these two in our treating of God or a Divine Per­son? The former I allow, the latter I as positively deny; and I find the Animadverter's heart failed him, Modes or [Page 150] at least something analogous to Modes. I desire the Reader to compare these words with what he lays down, p 285. l. 13. That it is equally absurd to deny Modes of Being to be­long to God: where equally absurd from the foregoing Line is the same with grosly absurd, and this explained, p. 284. To be a gross Absurdity and no small proof of Ignorance. Now this gross Absurdity, this no small proof of Ignorance was the Assertion of the Reverend Dean, That there are no Accidents or Modes in God. Himself allows no Accidents, nor do the Reverend Dean's Words in the least deny a Distinction of Modes and Accidents, but rather confirm it: As to the Animadverter's Distinction of them, I have al­ready spoken to it, Chap. 1. n. 2, 5, &c. and shall only repeat that all the new Philosophers despise it, and leave him to harangue by himself, P. 284. that none of them have any skill in Logicks or Metaphysicks, that they are grosly absurd Philo­sophers, and have given no small proof of their Ignorance by such their opinion.

The same Absurdity the Animadverter lays to the charge of this other Assertion, That there are no Modes in God: and this the Animadverter will prove both from the mani­fest Reason of the thing, P. 285. and from unquestionable Authority.

Ibid. n. 4. [First, for the reason of the thing. If Modes of Be­ing should not be allowed in God, then I affirm it to be impossible for any distinction, and consequently for any Person to be in God.]

This Argument, as he has framed it, is built upon a mistake in Divinity. If we take this term God, in a Con­crete Sense for habens Deitatem (in the singular number) there is no Distinction nor any Persons in habente Deitatem. See Chap. 4. n. 2.

The Argument ought therefore to run thus: If Modes of Being should not be allowed in the Trinity, then I af­firm it to be impossible for any Distinction, and conse­quently for any Persons to be in the Trinity; and even [Page 151] thus framed, I take it to be the boldest Assertion I ever met with in Divinity. Another Person would certainly have worded the Argument thus, Then I conceive it to be impossible, or it seems to be impossible, but this pleases not our positive Animadverter; he affirms the thing to be impossible. I deny the consequence [which the Ani­madverter proves thus: If there be any Distinction in God or the Deity, [or the Trinity] it must be either from some distinct Substance, or some Accident, or some Mode of Being. (For I desire Him or any Mortal breathing to assign a fourth thing beside these.) But it cannot be from any distinct Substance, for that would make a manifest Composition in the Divine Nature [or Trinity,] nor yet from any Accident, for that would make a worse Composition; and therefore it follows, That this Distinction must unavoidably proceed from one or more distinct Modes of Being.]

To which I answer briefly, That three distinct Sub­stances make no Composition in the Trinity: Three di­stinct Substances make no Composition in a Trinity of An­gels. Every Plurality is not a Composition, but when the Plurality is by way of component Parts. But the Father, a Divine Person, is not a part of God, [that is, the Heresy of Sabellius.] The Father, a Divine Person, is perfectly, compleatly God.

An Accident would make a Composition in God, be­cause it is impossible, that a Divine Person should solely consist of an Accident. A Divine Person is certainly a Substance, if therefore we add an Accident, we compound a Divine Person of Substance and Accident.

By the same Argument, a Mode of Being inferrs a Com­position. A Divine Person, the Father, can never be sole­ly a Mode, but must consist of Substance and Mode, See cap. 1. n. 14. and become a modal compositum, as Substance and Acci­dent inferr an accidental compositum.

[Page 152]Secondly, A Mode is in its own Nature imperfect, as Suarez quoted before, Chap. 1. n. 14. says, Modus non potest non esse quid imperfectum, cum non attingat absolutam rationem entis. But I will ask no other authority but his own to confute this singular Assertion of the Animadverter's, that there are Modes in God. This is his own Definition, p. 31. [A Mode of Being is such a thing, as being added to another, does not make any Addition of another Being or Degree of Being to it, but onely restrains and determines it.] I have already shewed that such an Addition would make a Composition; Chap. 1. n. 14. now I argue from the latter words, that a Mode restrains and determines the Being or Nature it be­longs to: And will the Animadverter say, That the Di­vine Nature can be restrained or determined? If he dares, I desire to know the difference betwixt a Nature restrained and determined, and a finite Nature; or whether the Ani­madverter will say, That the Divine Nature can be Fi­nite? Or whether our acute Animadverter (to borow his own words) will distinguish betwixt terminus and finis, and say that the Divine Nature may be determined, but cannot be Finite? p. 55. the Animadverter tells us, That the Divine Nature is that, of which there neither are nor can be any Bounds, Limits, or Determinations, and therefore, I hope, I may say, [from his own Definition of a Mode,] not any Modes. And this may suffice at present to answer his manifest Reason.

N. 5. Anim. &c. p. 286.His unquestionable Authority is no less than all Divines, Metaphysicians and Schoolmen, they do unanimously concurr in this thing, they universally affirm Modes of Being to be in God, and to belong to him. Nay, (and which is more) they do in these very Modes state the Ground and Reason of the Persona­lities, &c.

Now I do confess that the Phrase of three Modes of Sub­sistence in the Trinity is used by most Divines, by most who treat of the Trinity: so is the Term of Modes used [Page 153] by the new Philosophers, that is not the question: But whether all Metaphysicians, Schoolmen and Divines do assert Modes of Being in the Trinity, in the Sense in which the Animadverter has defined them. A Copernican Astro­nomer uses the Ancient Terms of Art of Epicycles inven­ted by the Ptolemaists, and uses the Phrases of the Sun's ri­sing and setting, &c. does he therefore embrace the Ptole­maick Hypotheses? All wise men understand Phrases ac­cording to the known principles of the Speaker. The Schoolmen believed that three finite persons had three pro­per real modes of Subsistence in the sense of the Animad­verter, they declare that the modes of Subsistence which constitute the Divine persons are in our imperfect concep­tion analogous to the former, but in the reality not Modes but perfect infinite relative Substances. Holiness, goodness in the creatures are proper adjuncts, nor can our imperfect minds conceive of them otherwise in God, and therefore we call them Attributes in God. But our judi­cium correctivum tells us, that this is only the weakness of our conception of things, and that the Divine simplicity will not admit of any proper Attributes in God.

The same mistake has the Animadverter made in those words of the Reverend Dean which he quotes p. 287. viz. That the same numerical Essence is whole and entire in each Di­vine Person but in a different manner. [By which words it appears, that he grants that of the Manner, which he had before denied of the Modus, it is a shrewd tempta­tion to me to think, that certainly this acute Author takes Modus for one thing and Manner for another.]

The oftner I read these words, the more I admire at the presumptuous confidence of him that wrote them; I am sure no man can give a more convincing argument of his utter unacquaintance with the principles of the new Philo­sophy than these words, nay indeed with the principles of all Philosophy and Divinity.

[Page 154]There is a mode, habitude or relation whereby God is related to and respects a created Being. God as a Creator is related in one manner, and God as a Governour or Judge, is related in another manner. What then are the Relati­ons of a Creator and Governour or Judge true and proper modes in God? The Animadverter will himself determine the contrary, p. 242. they derive, says he, only an exter­nal Habitude and Denomination consequent from it upon the Deity it self.

A Posture of the Body according to the Schoolmen is a real Mode, a distinct accidentale quid from the Body it self: according to the new Philosophers, a different po­sture is only a different circumstance, a different external habitude of the parts of the Body, or of the whole Body in respect of the different situation of the parts, yet not one of them would scruple the phrase, that the Body standing is in a different manner from the Body sitting. I am real­ly ashamed of spending the Readers time in confuting so weak objections. Modus is Latin for Manner, therefore he that uses the one or the other phrase must necessarily assert Modes of Being in the sense of the Reallists, [for I do more than conjecture, that the Nominalist Schoolmen did not believe these Real Modes, but my distance from Libraries will not give me leave to determine any thing positively concerning their opinion] Risum teneatis?

n. 6.Thirdly, if we should grant the Animadverter a tripli­city of proper Modes, if we confess the three Personalities to be three proper Modes, nay if we allow that the three relations of Paternity, Filiation, and Procession, and the three Personalities in the reality make but three Modes, notwithstanding the distinction that natural reason con­ceives betwixt proper modes of Subsistence and relations resulting from Beings constituted; I say, all this, if libe­rally granted to the Animadverter, would avail him very little. For first, it would only increase the difficulty, [Page 155] what we must do with the fourth Relation of Active Spi­ration: Four Modes in the Trinity would be new even to the Schoolmen themselves. But of this afterwards. Se­condly, this would leave us as much in the dark, what the three Persons are. A Person is not Personality, but the Subject of Personality. The Father is not Paternity, but the Subject of Paternity. Paternity is a personal Proper­ty; but will any one dare to say, that God the Father is a Personal Property. Paternity according to the Animad­verter is a Mode, not [so perfect, as] a Being: It is bold­ness to ascribe a Mode to God the Father, but to say that the Father is in recto a Mode, not a Being, is the height of folly and madness. This is the constant language of the Ancient Fathers, that the Divine Persons are distinguished [...] in subject. Lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 2. §. 9. p. 324. Hence Petavius speaking of the Divine Persons according to the opinion of the Ancient Fathers, says, Non unum & simplex habere [...], that the Phrases of the Ancient Fathers denied them to have one simple subject; Ʋt visum est Sabellio sed diversi­tatem illam & multiplicitatem in subjecto esse reverà. To assent to the ternary number to be only in the Modes or Properties is the Sabellian Heresy: the Catholick Faith is that there are three Persons as well as three Personalities, three Subjects of the Divine Relations.

It is no contradiction that the same [...], the same Subject should be Father and Son, the contradiction is that the same Subject should be Father and Son to it self. These Properties cannot have relation to the same Subject. Otherwise they are consistent in the same Subject, in the same Person, in the same finite Person: the same Man is both Father and Son.

The Divine Person of the Son, according to the Western Church, is produced himself, and doth produce the Holy Spirit, which are opposite Relations, as well as Paternity and Filiation. But the contradiction vanishes since those [Page 156] opposite relations respect distinct Subjects. He is produ­ced by the Father, he doth produce the Holy Spirit. This therefore is the principal enquiry in this sacred Article what is the Subject of Paternity, not what is Paternity? [that is but a secondary Article of less moment] what is the Subject of Filiation, not what Filiation is? What is the Subject of Procession, not what Procession is? in other words, what is the Father, what is the Son, what is the Holy Ghost? The Subject of Paternity is not the Sub­ject of Filiation, for then the Father would be the Son: Nor is the Subject of Procession the Subject either of Pa­ternity or Filiation, for then the Holy Ghost would either be Father or Son, or both.

To say that the Divine Nature is the Subject of Pater­nity, Filiation and Procession is not only contrary to the Ancients who assert these Properties, not to be the Names of the Essence; but renders the Sabellian Heresy impossible to be confuted, since an infinite Person is as capable of sustaining these three distinct relations as an infinite nature; and makes one and the same Subject Father and Son to it self; lastly contradicts our formal conception of these sacred Articles. The Divine Nature is according to our conception the es­sential Form of the Divine Persons, is predicated of the Divine Persons in obliquo, Father, Son and Holy Ghost have each of them the full, whole, and entire Divine Na­ture in them. We are enquiring what it is, which may be predicated in recto of them, and which may be multi­plied with them; what is the Subject to which the essen­tial form, in our imperfect conception of these things, is joyned, and which we conceive as the proper subject of the Divine Relations: And after the strictest enquiry I can make no better Answer than the Church has done before me, Father Son and Holy Ghost are three Hypostases, three Substances, [when that term is not understood as equipollent with Essence] three infinite Substances [so say [Page 157] the Schoolmen, only they add, Relative] three infinite spiritual Beings, which is all the Reverend Dean under­stood by three infinite Spirits: That is, that they are not three Faculties or Affections of one Being, but three pro­per Beings [Both Accidents and Modes are affections of Being.]

[And moreover, P. 242. l. 5. n. 7. as every Mode essentially includes in it the Thing or Being of which it is the Mode, so eve­ry Person of the Blessed Trinity, by vertue of its pro­per Mode of Subsistence, includes in it the God-head it self, and is properly [and formally, p. 293.] the God-head it self, as subsisting with and under such a certain Mode or Relation.]

This is a very fruitfull Period of Paradoxes. A Mode, according to the Animadverter, is an Abstract, not con­crete Term, to be understood as a simple Form, as the Affection of a Being [as Himself defines it, p. 31.] and not a Being affected. The Concrete of a Mode includes the Being as well as the Mode: Album includes the Thing that is white, as well as whiteness; but Album is not for­mally the Mode, not Whiteness, but that which has White­ness, the subject of Whiteness. Whiteness the Affection; the Mode is an Abstract, and by the Term abstracts from the Subject.

Secondly, The Father is Essentially God by his Nature, this all confess; but who ever said that the Father is Es­sentially God by his Personality, by his Paternity?

Thirdly, There can be no such Heresy as that of Sa­bellius, if every Mode of the Deity essentially includes the Deity: the Rankest Sabellianist never denied that Fa­ther, Son and Holy Ghost, signified three Modes of the Deity.

Fourthly, I cannot but ask this great Master of Lan­guage, why he uses those Terms its and it, speaking of a Divine Person? He was pleased to condemn this Language [Page 158] as improper and absurd when used of Human Persons; Anim. &c. p. 341. is there more respect due to Human Persons than to Di­vine Persons? Had it been any fault to have expressed it thus? So every Person of the Blessed Trinity, by vertue of his [not its] proper Mode of Subsistence, includes in Him (not it) the God-head it self. Far be it from me to pretend to be a Critick in Words or Phrases; I rather crave the Reader's, even the Animadverter's pardon, for much greater slips than this: However, 'tis some com­fort, that I find Homer Himself may nod sometimes.

P. 242. l. 17. n. 8. [And accordingly, as these Relations are three, and and but three, so the Persons of the God-head, to whom they belong, are so too, viz. Father, Son and Holy Ghost.]

Some Persons take a priviledge to speak and write what they please. The Animadverter might almost as well have said, that the Persons of the God-head are but two, as that the Relations are but three. Nothing is more notorious than that there are four Relations in the Trinity; if the Relation of the Father to the Son, and of the Son to the Father, inferr two Relations, there can be no shadow of pretence, why the Relation of the Father and Son to the Holy Spirit, and of the Holy Spirit to the Father and Son, should not make two more.

P. 243.There are, says the Animadverter, four internal Acts, Generation, Filiation, Spiration, Procession, [though by the By two of these are not Acts, but Passions, viz. Fili­ation and Procession,] upon which the Divine Relations are founded, and from which they flow. And in the same Page puts the Objection, That four Relations inferr four Persons, which he endeavours to solve in the following Words: That is one Difficulty, and unanswerable upon the Animadverter's Principles, that one singular Divine Na­ture is the Subject of these four Relations. The Second is, What this Relation of it self is, whether a Mode or not; [Page 159] an infinite relative Substance or not? The Schoolmen are obliged to confess this a Property of a Person already con­stituted, and not a Mode of Subsistence: Whereas, if with the Ancients we assert the Divine Persons to be three sub­stantial Beings, three Hypostases [in the proper and ge­nuine Sense of the Phrase] the Modes of Subsistence, the Divine Relations are capable of an easie and fair Solution, as I have formerly hinted, chap. 1. n. 14.

[Upon the whole Matter, in discoursing of the Tri­nity, P. 245. l. 19. n. 9. Two things are absolutely necessary to be held and insisted upon. One, that each and every Person of the Blessed Trinity, entirely contains and includes in himself the whole Divine Nature. The other, That each Person is incommunicably different and distinct from the other.]

This one Sentence is a truly Golden one, contains the fundamental Truth of this Article of the Trinity: But to speak the truth, it stands like a Parenthesis, or like a forged Passage in an Author; it has no connexion with what goes before it, and the latter part is confuted by what follows. These are the Animadverter's following Words.

[And here, if it should be asked, How they differ, P. 245. n. 10. and whether it be by any real distinction between the Persons?]

What need of this Question which the preceding Words had so positively and orthodoxly determined; each Person is incommunicably different and distinct from the other. What ever is incommunicably different, is certainly re­ally different by a true, real, and not modal Difference.

The Animadverter answers, P. 246. [That the Divine Persons really differ, and are distinguished from one another, viz. by a Modal, or lesser sort of Real difference; according to which the Divine Nature sub­sisting under, and being determined by such a certain [Page 160] Mode, personally differs from it self, as subsisting un­der, and determined by another.]

What is this but to tell us, that he did not understand those former Words, that each Person is incommunicably different from the other. Can any thing be incommuni­cably different from it self? He tells us that two Persons are the same self; how is it possible, that they can be more communicably the same? The Person of the Father is Modally different from the Person of the Spirator, but not incommunicably different. The Person of the Father is the Divine Nature, subsisting under the Mode of Pater­nity, which Modally differs from it self under the Mode of Spiration. But all this arises from a mistake of the Nature of Real and Modal Difference. In a real Diffe­rence we say simply, that the one is not the other, ac­cording to the Animadverter, p. 77. [That whereso­ever there are two distinct Persons, we do, and must by all the Rules of Logick and Grammar say, that the one is not the other.] And the Rule is as true è con­verso, that where we can say, one is (simply) not the other, there we must count two, we must acknowledge a strictly real Difference. Thus we say that the Father is not the Son; that is, the Subject of Paternity is not the Subject of Filiation.

In a Modal Difference, the Negation is Modal, secun­dum quid, in some Mode or Respect. The Person of the Father, as a Father, is not the Spirator.

But there needs no proof in so allowed a conclusion. Not one Schoolman, whom I have met with, but is a better Divine and soberer Reasoner; I will add, and a sounder Philosopher, than to affirm, that the Divine Persons differ Modally, or that a simple Negation can arise from a Modal Difference. The first Rudiments in Logicks teach us, That Negative Propositions are of a malignant Nature, and universally remove the Pre­dicate [Page 161] from the Subject, and not under a certain Mode only.

The exactly learned and solid Forbesius, as the Animad­verter stiles him, p. 251. in the same Chapter which he there quotes S. 19. declares that the Divine Persons differ really, as that is distinguished from the greatest Modal Distinction.

Inter — personas in Divinis est realis distinctio, Forbesii Instr. hist. Theol. lib. 1. cap 35. S. 19. non tamen essentialis aut absoluta; sed tantum Hypostatica, seu personalis & relativa, secundum oppositionem personarum in­ter se internam relativam realem.

To whom I will add the words of the learned Suarez; Lib. 3 de Trin. cap. 1. n. 3. p. 385. Ʋnaquae (que) divina Persona in se spectata, est vera res per se subsistens, & una non est alia. Ergo est distinctio realis inter ipsas, nam realiter distingui, nihil aliud est, quam esse veras res, quarum una non est alia.

Again, Distinctio modalis nunquam invenitur, Ibid. n. 4. nisi intra eandem rem, quae componitur vel aliquo modo coalescit ex il­lis rebus, quae ita distingui dicuntur. Ʋnde, quod ita ab a­liqua re semper est tanquam modus vel affectio ejus, ut indu­ctione facile constet & ideò in Deo non habet locum hic mo­dus distinctionis, quae vere & actualiter fit in re ipsa, quia in eo non habet locum compositio nec modificatio, vel affectio per aliquid a seipso actualiter in re distinctum à substantia Dei: ergo sola superest distinctio realis, quae inter divinas personas esse possit.

These words are very full, and deny not only a modal Distinction betwixt the Divine Persons, but any Modes in God, for that Modes would inferr a Composition in God.

[In the former abstracted Sense they are properly Personalities or personal Properties. P. 249. lin 9. n. 11.]

By the Animadverter's Favour, Personality and a per­sonal Property are distinct Things. Differentia and Pro­prium are different Species of predicables. Where the dif­ference [Page 162] is unknown to us, as in all Individuals in all sin­gular Persons, we use the Properties, or a Collection of Accidents in the Definition instead of the Difference; but this alters not the Nature of the Properties or Accidents: Thus the Ancient Fathers described the Divine Persons by their Personal Properties. These are the Animadverter's own words, Anim. p. 88. Self-consciousness is one property of a rational or intelligent Being; suppose of an Angel, then it will be a Property of a Person or Personal Property: Will the Animadverter grant, that therefore it is properly in an Angel a Personality? no, the Argument holds the other way, therefore it cannot be properly a Personality.

P. 249. lin. 20. n. 12. [For neither would the Latins at first admit of three Hypostases in God, as taking [...] and [...] for the same thing; for that they had no other Latin word to translate [...] by, but substantia; by which also they translated [...].]

First, The Animadverter falls into his old mistake, that the Faith of this Article is, That there are three Hypo­stases in God, there are three Hypostases in the Trinity, in the Unity of the Divine Nature, but not in God.

Secondly, St. Augustin scrupled, nay condemned the phrase of three Persons, as well as of three Hyposta­ses.

Thirdly, The Distinction of [...] and [...] requires us to distinguish betwixt first and second Substance. So says Thomas Aquinas in his own quotation: Anim. p. 272. Hoc nomen [Hypostasis] apud Graecos significat tantum substantiam par­ticularem, quoe est substantia prima; sed Latini utuntur no­mine substantioe tam pro primâ quam pro secundà.

P. 249. lin. 24. n. 13. [(The word Subsistentia being by them looked upon as barbarous and not in use.)

St. Augustin manifestly derived Substantia from Subsi­stere, St. August. lib. 7. de Tr. cap. 4. and in that Sense translated [...], and yet ar­gued against the Plurality of the Phrase. Nam si hoc est [Page 163] Deo esse, quod subsistere, ita non erant dicendoe tres substan­tioe, ut non dicuntur tres essentioe. — Si autem aliud est Deo esse, aliud subsistere, sicut aliud Deo esse, aliud Patrem esse vel Dominum esse — relativè ergo subsistet, sicut re­lativè gignet & relativè dominatur. Ita substantia non erit substantia, quia relativum erit. Sicut enim ab eo quod est esse appellatur essentia, ita ab eo quod est subsistere, substanti­am dicimus, absurdum est autem, ut substantia relativè dicatur omnis res ad seipsum subsistet, quanto magis Deus? Nothing is more evident, than that St. Augustin thought relativè subsistere to be a great Absurdity, which is his Objection against the Phrase of three Hypostases, and also three Per­sons, that they signified absolutely; Ibid. cap. 6. yet the Animadver­ter has the Confidence to quote St. Augustin (p. 267.) As stating the divine Personalities upon Relation, for founding Personality in and upon something relative.

[Nor on the other side, P. 249. lin. 29. n. 14. would the Greeks acquiesce in a [...], nor admit of the [...] for fear of falling thereby into the contrary Error of Sabellius.]

I doubt not that the Sabellian Heresy was the cause why the Greeks were not content with the [...], (for they did not refuse to admit of the Phrase, but thought it alone insufficient) but required afterwards either [...], or the Addition of [...] to [...], Vide Pet. lib. 4. de Trin. cap. 2. S. 9. N. 15. I. that is, [...].

There are three kinds of Sabellianism: The first is the most common, the confounding the Persons of the Blessed Trinity, which was otherwise called the Patri-passian He­resy, which asserts, That Father, Son and Holy Ghost are only three Names or three Offices of one Person, and consequently that the Father suffered; this is properly the Heresy of Noetus and not of Sabellius. Sabellius, Petav. lib. 1. de Trin. cap. 6. S. 5. says E­piphanius, expresly denied the Father to suffer. However, the Latin Fathers scarce knew any other Species of Sabelli­anism, which, with Submission, I conceive, to be one [Page 164] cause why they are less accurate in treating of this Myste­ry than the Greek Fathers.

II.A second Species of Sabellianism, is the Contraction of the Trinity to the single Person of the Father, acknow­ledging the Father to be a true proper Person, asserting the Word or Son to be not strictly and formally the Person of the Father, but an Attribute of the Father. His personal Wisdom, in the same Analogy as Wisdom is an habit of Man; in like manner asserting the Holy Spirit to be the personal Power of the Father. This Sabellius himself em­braced and explained the Trinity by the Similitude of the Body of the Sun, its Light or Ray and its Heat. The first, Epiphan. Hoer. 62. he resembled to the Father, the second to the Son, the third to the Holy Ghost, this the ancient Fathers called Judaism, that is, such a Trinity which a Jew would own, and by the same reason it may be stiled a Socinian Trinity. No Socinian in this Sense will scruple a Father, Vide Sti. Basi­lii Ep. 64. a Word, and an Holy Spirit.

A third Species of Sabellianism is the compounding the Divine Persons, which is contrary to a Confusion of them; this asserts a real distinction betwixt the Divine Persons, but then it makes Father, Son and Holy Ghost to be (as) three parts of some whole. Petav. Adden­da ad Tom. 2. de Trin. p. 866. So Petavius, varius & à se­ipso discrepans videtur Sabellius fuisse, ut interdum personas tres quasi partes alicujus totius esse diceret, ut ex Epiphanii loco colligitur. Petavius undoubtly alludes to that other Similitude of the Trinity mentioned by Epiphanius. Epiphan Haer. 62. That the Trinity was by Sabellius sometimes compared to the Body, Soul and Spirit in one Man. These three are but one Hypostasis. These three are Co-essential Parts of one Man, (which possibly moved Sabellius to invent this Hy­pothesis, to have an evasion to assert (in some Sense) an Homoousian Trinity. Vide Pet. lib. 1. de Tr. cap. 6. S. 3.) This kind of Sabellianism was by some of the Fathers called Atheism. This Hypothesis in reality ungodding Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Not the [Page 165] Body alone, or the Soul alone, or the Spirit alone, but all three conjoyntly are one Man, so not the Father alone, or Son alone, or Holy Ghost alone, but all three con­joyntly are God: whereas the Catholick Faith is, that each distinct Person is God. The Father is God the Father, the Son is God of God, the Holy Spirit is (in the Language of the Church) God the Holy Ghost. See both these kinds of Sabellianism condemned by Athanasius in his Oration contra gregales Sabellii.

Now the Phrase of three Hypostases is contrary to all the Forms of the Sabellian Heresy: Of the first there is no doubt; the second is as plain; to be an Hypostasis, and to be an Attribute are inconsistent and contradictory. So also to be an incompleat Part, a component Part and an Hypostasis are inconsistent: It is essential to an Hypostasis to have totale attributum, to be a compleat and perfect whole; so the Words of the first Article of the Augustan Confession (quoted by the Animadverter, p. 278.) Et utuntur nomine personae ea significatione, qua usi sunt scri­ptores Ecclesiastici, ut significet non partem aut qualita­tem sed quod propriè subsistet. That which properly subsists, can neither be as a Part of any Whole, nor as a Quality or Attribute of any Being.

The Scripture (says the Reverend Dean of St. Paul ▪s) Im sure represents Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Vindication of Trinity, p. 66. as three in­telligent Beings, not as three Powers or Faculties of the same Being, which is downright Sabellianism. The very Dreggs of Sabellianism, as I take it, worse than Sabellianism; for as the Reverend Dean adds, Faculties are not Persons, no nor one Person neither. A Million of Faculties and Attributes will not make one Person, A Million of Qualities will never make one Substance, and a Person is a Substance and a compleat Substance too. Again, a Mil­lion of Qualities, Attributes, Faculties, can never make one God; so that if Father, Son and Holy Ghost, signify three [Page 166] Faculties, three Attributes, three Modes, not only each single Person is ungodded, but the whole Trinity con­joyntly cannot be God. The Sabellians acknowledge the Divine Persons to be Deum unum; the Catholicks Deum unum & trinum; but this opinion neither unum nec trinum.

And hence we may see with what Prudence the Church chose the Phrase of three Hypostases, and what danger there would be to change it with a late Reverend Author for three Somewhats.

P. 247. lin. 2. n. 16. [Which three Persons superadd to this Divine Nature or Deity, three different Modes of Subsistence, found­ing so many different Relations.]

Three human Persons add to the common [universal] human Nature, three different Modes of Subsistence, ac­cording to the Schoolmen and the Animadverter. What then? would the Animadverter take this Answer for a So­lution of this question, what three human Persons are? The same reply may justly be made to himself. This is the difficulty, what in the Deity the ternary number can belong to, which a Divine Person, is? not, as the Ani­madverter has mistaken it, what in the Deity the ternary number can belong to, which a Divine Person, has. The Schoolmen answer, that the ternary number belongs to an infinite relative Substance. I agree with them, that a Di­vine Person is an infinite Substance, or (which I like bet­ter, as freer from Ambiguity) an infinite substantial Being, and that this may be multiplied as well as Divine Person with the Trinity.

N. 17.The design of the Animadverter in quoting so many places of the ancient Fathers, is very vain to prove a Con­clusion, which none denies, that the three Personalities are (in some Sense or other) three Modes of Subsistence.

However in respect of the Greek Fathers, I have for­merly observed, that [...], does not signi­fy a Mode of Subsistence, nor [...], Subsistence in the [Page 167] Abstract, but a subsistent Person or Being in concreto.

Ruffinus believed Trinitatem in rebus ac subsistentiis, N. 18. Anim. p. 268. and not with the Animadverter, Trinitatem in modis ac subsi­stentiis. Subsistentia to the Ancients signified concretely the same with [...].

Boetius of all the Latin Fathers of those times seems most acquainted with the Writings of the Greeks and there­fore most expresly determins for the Universality of the common Divine Essence; N. 19. he defines a Person in common to God, Angels and Men, to be rationabilis naturoe indivi­duam substantiam; he uses Subsistentia afterwards, which shews, he looked upon the terms as equivalent. Second­ly, He gives us these remarkable words of the Greek Fa­thers. [...] which Boetius thus tran­slates, [Id est, essentioe in solis universalibus quidem esse possunt, in solis verò individuis & particularibus substant, — Quo circa cum ipsoe substantioe in universalibus quidem sunt, in particularibus verò capiant substantiam jure sub­stantias particulariter subsistentes [...] [groeci] appel­laverunt.] These words are capable of no Evasion, that [...] was in Universals, [...] in Individuals and Parti­culars, that the Greeks, whose very words he quotes, un­derstood it in this Sense, and by [...] understood Sub­stantias particulariter subsistentes, and this jure, not impro­priè, not by a Fetch (as Thomas Aquinas) Anim. &c. p. 272. afterwards [Secundum quod Divina verbis humanis significari contin­git:] This Caution is necessary to reconcile the Sub­tleties of the Schools and the Faith of three Hypostases; But Boetius had no need of any such Caution, and there­fore he used it not, and it is the more remarkable, that these words I have quoted out of Boetius are in that ve­ry Book of two Natures in the one Person of Christ, which the Animadverter quotes; so that either the Animadverter never read Boetius, or read him at a very careless rate.

[Page 168] N. 20. Peter Lombard is express against the Relativeness of this Term, Lib. 1. Sent. Dist. 23. n. 1. Person. Est unum nomen, &c. Persona, quod secun­dum substantiam dicitur de singulis Personis & pluraliter, non singulariter in summa accipitur, &c. and Dist. 25. That this Term, Persona, is to be taken in one Sense, when we say that the Father is a Person, the Son is a Person, &c. and in a different Sense, when we say, that Father, Son and Holy Ghost are three Persons; in this last Phrase, it only signifies three Personalities, in the former a proper Person. Now this to me is a betraying of the Catholick Faith; a Confession, that we ought not to say, three Persons, if we speak properly, if we understand this Term Person in the same Sense, in which we say that the Father, &c. is a Person.

N. 21. P. 273.The Animadverter quotes these words of Thomas Aqui­nas, [Hoc nomen persona in divinis significat relationem per modum rei subsistentis, sic & hoc nomen Hypostasis.]

I wish our great Critick had translated these words, I take this to be the meaning of them, viz. That this Name, Per­son, in the Trinity signifies a relation conceived by us af­ter the Nature of a Substance, and not after the Nature of a Mode, which the Animadverter has all along with so much confidence pretended. I cannot define Substance better than by res subsistens.

N. 22. P. 275. lin. 9. [Only I think fit to remark this; That whereas I have alledged some of the Schoolmen, (and particularly Durandus, Thomas, and Suarez) expressing the Divine Per­sonalities by Relations, as well as by Hypostases or Sub­sistences, as they do in both these mean but one and the same thing, viz. a Relative Subsistence or a subsisting Relation, &c.]

If the Animadverter means that a Relative Subsistence and a subsisting Relation are, according to the Schoolmen, materially, identically the same thing, it is no News. The Schoolmen hold, that the Relation and the Divine Essence [Page 169] in each single Person are thus identically the same: each single Person being God, that is, a pure simple Act. But if he means, that they are formally the same, it is ma­nifest that he understands neither of the Phrases, nor what the Schoolmen meant by them.

Subsistence (which himself very justly calls ( p. 97.) Self-subsistence) is an absolute Attribute, and can no more be relative, than Self-Consciousness. By a relative Sub­sistence the Schoolmen mean, that the Relation in each single Person modifies the one, common, absolute, essen­tial Subsistence, and renders it incommunicable, which of it self, as being infinite, it was not. But a Divine Person being as Ruffinus observed, Hoc ipsum quod extat & sub­sistit, and consequently the Divine Persons being three Somewhats subsisting, three Hypostases in concreto, and not three Personalities with Peter Lombard; Thomas A­quinas and the other Schoolmen found out a relative Sub­stance, a relationem per modum rei subsistentis, a Relation subsisting, and affirm that the three Divine Persons are three Relations subsisting. But to this I answer: First, That this will assert four Subsistences in the Trinity, one absolute and essential, and three relative ones, by which the Relations subsist, which is contrary to all Antiquity. Secondly, This is but a subtler Disguise for what the Ma­ster of the Sentences spoke more plainly, viz. That there are not three Persons in the same Sense in which we say that the Father is a Person. For the Father is not Pater­nity, and therefore not Paternity subsisting: The Father is not a Relation subsisting, but formally properly God, an infinite Mind. Lastly, A Mode, a Relation subsisting is perfectly unconceivable and contrary to the known rules of Philosophy. And now it may be time to put an end to this First Part, and to my Animadversions upon the A­nimadverter, first taking a short review how far I have proceeded.

[Page 170]My first Chapter is chiefly spent in explaining the Meta­physical Terms used in this Mystery, such as Substance, Accident, Mode, the Nature of modal Difference, Essence, Existence, Subsistence, modal Composition, &c. How much reason there was to re-examine the Animadverter's Definitions and Distinctions of these things in Relation to the Subject of the Trinity, I must leave to the Reader to judge, when he has perused the Chapter.

My second Chapter is chiefly spent in defending that an­cient Illustration of the Incarnation, the Conjunction of the human Soul and Body in one Person, from the Obje­ctions of the Animadverter, one Question of which was briefly touched, Chap. 1. n. 10. In the close of this Chap­ter I give the Reader a very necessary and usefull Distin­ction concerning the formal reason of Personality, in re­ference not only to Finite Persons, but to the Divine Per­sons.

My third Chapter enquires how far a Prius and Posteri­us may be admitted in the Trinity; whether Self-Consci­ousness be a personal Act? explains at large that Subtlety of the Schools concerning the relative Personality of the Divine Persons, and shews the Animadverter's great mi­stakes therein; as also that Question of the number of the Divine Persons, why we believe a Trinity neither more nor fewer? As also that difficult Problem concerning the Singularity or Plurality of the Predication of any Attribute concerning the Divine Persons, where I first give the Pre­dications themselves, which are to be solv'd, and shew the Insufficiency of the Schoolmen's Solutions from the Distinction of essential and personal Attributes, from the Distinction of Nouns Substantive and Nouns Adjective, from an absolute and relative Predicate. Lastly, I lay down the true rule my self, which at persent I only vin­dicate from a Mis-interpretation of the Schoolmen by distinguishing betwixt the Articles of the Unity of God [Page 171] and the Unity of the Trinity, which the Schoolmen con­found.

My fourth Chapter treats of the import of these Phra­ses, viz. Three infinite Minds, three Gods, three Sub­stances, one infinite Mind, one God, and how far they are allowed or disallowed in speaking of the Trinity; of the Animadverter's Answer to the Objection of Poly­theism from the Phrase of three Divine Persons: and oc­casionally of the Notion of the Unity of God, and of the Appropriation of the title of Only True God to the Person of the Father, and of his being stiled the Fountain of the Divinity.

My fifth Chapter is chiefly Historical of the Opinion of the Ancients, whether they believed the Divine Persons to be three intelligent Beings? Of the import of that Phrase, that the Son is the substantial WORD and Wisdom of the Father, of the Particle OF in this Mystery, and occasi­onally I give an answer to the Socinian Objection from the Phrase of three Divine Persons, and enquire whether the same Wisdom can be both begotten and unbegotten?

My sixth Chapter treats of what is Fundamental in this Mystery, of the different Hypotheses of explaining the Unity of the Trinity, of the Blasphemy of the Modern So­cinians compared with their Predecessors; of the historical Truth of Petavius and Dr. Cudworth's Assertion, that the specifick Unity of the Trinity was embraced by the Ni­cene Fathers, which I largely vindicate against the Ani­madverter's Exceptions: the same discussed problemati­cally betwixt the Animadverter and my self; Whether a Specifick Unity of the Trinity and a Numerical Unity were in the judgment of the Ancients inconsistent? Why Philopo­nus and his Followers were called Tritheit Hereticks?

My last Chapter treats of Heb. 1.3. Whether that place was the Warrant of the Phrase of three Persons or three Hypostases? Of the Divine Personalities, according to [Page 172] the Schoolmen, of the Sense of [...] to the Ancients, of Cajetan's calling the Trinity one Suppositum; of essential and personal Acts according to the Schoolmen, Whether there are true Modes in God? Of the Insuffici­ency of three Modes to explain the Trinity, Whether the Divine Persons differ modally or really? Of three diffe­rent Species of Sabellianism; Of the Distinction of a Re­lative Subsistence and a subsisting Relation.

There are several other material Enquiries in the Ex­plication of these, and others which are less material, which I leave to the Reader's own Observation.

This, I hope, I may say of this present Essay, that there are very few of the material Disputes of the School­men concerning this Article of the Trinity, which the Reader will not find either explained in this Essay, or at least a sufficient Key given to him, who shall desire to con­sult the Schoolmen themselves.

The many and great mistakes of the Animadverter con­vinced me of the Usefulness of such an Explication; he often swallowed without chewing, what they strained ve­ry hard to believe, and at other times sheltered himself un­der their Name and Authority, when his opinion was contradictorily opposite to theirs, and which is more, for­got or omitted the principal and most material Enquiry in this Article of the Trinity, viz. What the three Divine Persons are, that is, What Suppositum, Persona, Hyposta­sis signifies, when these terms are predicated plurally of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The Animadverter de­fines Suppositum in the singular number, Anim. &c. p. 35. Substantia singula­ris completa per se subsistens, but this according to the A­nimadverter only increases the Difficulty, since he dare not deny a Multiplication of the Definitum, of Suppositum. He cannot deny, that there are tria supposita in the Trinity, yet with earnestness he contends that the Definition can­not be multiplied, that there are not tres substantioe singu­lares [Page 173] completoe per se subsistentes in the Trinity; but how unsatisfactory soever the Scholastick Subtleties in this Ar­ticle appear to me, I am satisfied, that I had contented my self with a private Proposal of my Hypothesis to some of my Friends, if the unmeasurable Blasphemy, and boasting of our Socinian Writers had not over-perswaded me.

I plainly saw that nine par [...]s in ten of the Objections of the Socinians are not levelled against the Fundamental Truth of this Article, the true Divinity of each single Person and their real Distinction, but against the particu­lar Hypothesis of the Schools, the Singularity of the com­mon Divine Essence; these Objections are of no force a­gainst the Nicene Hypothesis, and therefore we meet not with them in the Writings of the Ancients, of the most learned Defenders of the Orthodox Faith against the A­rians.

The Sophistry of those few Socinian Objections, which remain, appeared no less evident to me; and I doubted not by God's Grace to be able to make them appear so to any unprejudiced Reader, that is, I doubted not by God's Assistance satisfactorily to any unbyass'd Person to recon­cile the Nicene Hypothesis, and the Article of the Unity of God.

I was fully perswaded, that I could clearly answer all the Socinian Harangues of Nonsense and Contradiction, which they so confidently charge upon this Article of the Trinity, and thereby reduce the debate to this single Que­stion, Whether the Article be revealed or not?

The Article of the Trinity will still be a Mystery, that is, it will still be unfathomable to us, Why there were a Trinity of Divine Persons neither more nor fewer? How God an immaterial Spirit can generate or beget a Son? Why but one Son? Why the Holy Spirit is not also a Son? Wherein his Procession differs from Filiation?

[Page 174]The Oeconomy also of the Divine Persons will be a Mystery; How Father, Son and Holy Ghost concurred to the Creation of the World? In what manner they joint­ly acted in the natural Kingdom of Providence? How they will govern after the surrender of the mediatorial King­dom of the Son of God?

In these, and the like Questions did the Ancient Fathers place the Mystery of this sacred Article; in these the Nicene Hypothesis, that I mean, which I propose as the Nicene Hypothesis, still places an unsearchable Mystery.

The Schoolmen can decide you these with the greatest ease, if you believe them, with the greatest exactness; but then instead of these which they pretend to solve, they have given us many others ten times more difficult.

These Mysteries claim express Revelation for their Foundation, viz. That God has an only begotten Son and a Blessed Spirit proceeding from him; That God the Fa­ther made the Worlds, That the Son laid the Foundati­ons of the Earth, That the Spirit moved upon the Face of the Waters at the Creation. For these we have the Autho­rity of the Ancient Fathers, these are manifestly Difficul­ties only in the Modus, we cannot indeed tell how they can be, nor can the Socinians prove that they cannot be. And I hope, these great Adorers of Reason, the Socinians, will esteem God's Word a sufficient proof for an Article of Faith, against which they have no solid Objection; at least, I presume, they will pardon the Orthodox, if they take not the Mysteriousness of an Article, for an Objection against the truth of it; but this will be more proper, when I have finished my Second Part which relates to the Arti­cle of the Unity of God, which if God grant Life and Health and Ability shall be performed with all convenient speed. To God the Father Almighty, and his Eternal Son, and ever Blessed Spirit, be all Honour, Praise, Glory, Dominion and Power, now, henceforth▪ and for evermore. Amen.