PART I.

§ 1. TWO Things I have to urge against my Lord Bishop of Sarum, in his Discourse on the Divinity and Death of Christ: One is, that he very defectively (to say no worse) states our Faith and Doctrine in the Articles of the Trinity and Incarnation, tho' *P. 25. he professes it a Matter of the greatest Importance for us to have our No­tions concerning these, right and duly sta­ted; and tho' he exposes the Fathers under the same and worse Imputations, which [Page 2]is the second thing that offends. For he does not uncover any real failures in any particular Ancients, but censures their very Catholick and Established Principles.

§ 2. This then is to be the first part of my Charge, That he foully states the Faith of the Divinity and Incarnation of Christ, and therein of the Holy Trinity. Of which he tell us, †P. 30, 31. there have been three Opinions, to wit, the Socinian, the Arian; and then, Third­ly, that which I would have called the Catholick and Christian Faith. Now his Lordship means, there have been these three Opinions either within, or without the Church Catholick; if within, then in­deed here is an insinuation laid for the Communion with Socinians and Arians, which is a blessed Comprehension; but if his Lordship means not within the Ca­tholick Church only, then he had been nearer the number, if he had said there have been thirty Opinions in this Matter. But tho' this be inartificial enough, (if no more) yet that which is more grievously suspicious is, that he calls the Catholick Faith, but a meer Opinion, and Perswasion of a Party. *P. 31. The third Opinion (saith his Lordship) is, that the Godhead by the Eternal Word, the [Page 3]Second in the blessed Three, dwelt in, and was so inwardly united to the Humane Na­ture of Jesus Christ, that by Virtue of it God and Man were truly one Person, as our Soul and Body make one Man. And that the Eternal Word was truly God, and as such is worshipped and adored as the pro­per Object of Divine Adoration. By those of this Perswasion the Term Person became applied to the Three, which the Scripture only calls by the Name of Father, Son or Word, and Holy Ghost, on design to disco­ver those, who thought that these Three were only different Names of the same Thing. But by Person is not meant such a Being as we commonly understand by that Word, a complete intelligent Being, but only that every one of that Blessed Three has a pecu­liar distinction in himself, by which he is truly different from the other two. So a­gain, †P. 32, 33. This in general is the Sump of the received Doctrine, That as there is but One God, so in that undivided Essence, there are Three, that are really different from one another, and are more than three Names, or three out­ward Oeconomies, *P. 42. [or Modes] and that the Second of these was in a most intimate and unconceivable manner united to a perfect Man; so that [Page 4]from the Humane and Divine Nature thus united, there did result the Person of Christ.

§. 3. And now perhaps some may won­der what Exceptions lie against this; but there are indeed several, and those of great Importance. First, That he calls it an Opinion only like that of the Socinian and Arian, while yet he intimates it to be the Doctrine of the Church. The truth is, as his Lordship has stated it, it has many meer Opinions in it; but they are such as are not in the Faith, and so ought not to have been represented as the Doctrine of the Church. But if his Lordship had ta­ken it for the Christian Faith, either as it is, or ought to have been stated by him, he ought not to have set it out as a meer Opinion or Perswasion of a third Party. For a meer partial Opinion cannot be a Divine or Catholick Faith, whether we take Opinion for the Act or Object of Opinion. For the Act is meer Humane Conjecture without certain grounds; and objectively Opinions are Propositions that have no certain, but only probable appearance, which therefore no Man is bound in Con­science to assert, or stand by for want of certain Evidence and Authority. But Catholick Faith objectively taken consists of [Page 5]certain Principles made certainly evident by Divine Revelation to the Holy Catho­lick Church, and thereupon to be relied on, and asserted against all temptations in hopes of Life Eternal. Now these Princi­ples thus received were the Faith of the Universal Church (not the Opinion of any Party) in the beginning; and therefore the contrary Parties and Opinions arising since (of what Cut or Size soever) pertain not to this Holy Body, in which the Faith of the Trinity truly stated is as essential as the Faith of the Unity, and as funda­mental in the Christian Professions. Now would it not be very Theological to say, That all the Patriarchs, Prophets, and A­postles, the whole Synagogue of the Jews, and Church of Christ were ever of this Opinion, That there is one God only the Creator and Governour of all things? That the Apostles and all Christians are of Opi­nion that Jesus is the Christ? That it is our Opinion, That he came down and dwelt among us; died, rose again, and ascended into Heaven, and shall come to Judgment at the general Resurrection? Just so absurd it is to call the Catholick Faith of God's Church the Opinion or Perswasion of a Party. 'Tis true indeed, his Lordship sometimes calls it Doctrine, but this term [Page 6]is equivocal, and agrees as usually to the Opinions of the Philosophers. But what I require is, that the Catholick Doctrine be asserted as a Rule of Faith, which the Church is bound to adhere to on the cer­tain Authority of Divine Revelation; this Revelation appearing real not only to par­ticular Men's private Opinions, but origi­nally committed to the Charge and Custo­dy of the whole Church by the Apostles, and so preserved by their Successors throughout the whole diffusive Body. Whereas his Lordship only lays down this Notion, or form of Faith, †P. 26. See Discour. 3. That we believe points of Doctrine, because we are perswaded, that they are revealed to us in Scripture; which is so languid and unsafe a Rule, that it will resolve Faith into every Man's pri­vate fancies and contradictory Opinions; since each Man's Faith is his Perswasion, that what he believes for a Doctrine is re­vealed in Scripture. Whereas the Act of a Christian Faith believes such Doctrine to be true and fundamental in Christiani­ty from the certain Evidence thereof in the Scriptures, acknowledged by all Churches not led by casual Perswasions, but by a primitive, perpetual, universal, and unanimous Conviction and Tradition. [Page 7]The deviation from which Rule and No­tion to private Opinions and Perswasions is the cause of all Heresies, and by its con­sequent Divisions naturally tends to the ruine of the true Christian and Catholick Faith. I will not however at present de­scend into that thicket of Controversie, What Rules private Persons are bound to in the learning and professing the Christian Faith; but whosoever will arrive to a ma­turity of Judgment and Knowledge here­in, must betake him †P. 63. to the ex­ploded Rule of Vincentius Eiri­ne [...], and take that for fundamental Do­ctrine, which hath been received for such in all Ages, Places, and Churches. A Rule very practicable and easie, since there are sufficient Memorials of the Primitive An­tiquity, delivering unto us their Creeds and Summaries of the then Catholick Faith, which from them has uniformly descended to all Churches of the later A­ges. 'Tis true indeed, every single Man can believe no otherwise than he is pri­vately perswaded; but he that is not to be perswaded to receive the common and e­stablished Systems of the Faith of the Church Catholick, upon the Authority on which it hath ever stood, and yet stands, or shall wantonly coin out other Articles [Page 8]for fundamental upon his own private Opinion, belongs not to the Communion of the Church of Christ; though he fan­sies his conceptions revealed in the Scri­ptures.

§. 4. Secondly, His Lordship is not clear in the point of Incarnation; for he tells us, that this third Opinion is, that by the Ʋnion of the Eternal Word with Christ's Humanity, God and Man truly be­came one Person. Now here first we are not taught, whether there were three, or any one Person in the God-head before the Incarnation: For this account will admit the Personality of Christ to be founded first †P. 32. in the Humane Na­ture according to some of his Lordship's Criticks, (which he dares not contradict) who place the foundation of the Sonship in the lower Nature. Yea, this Description will admit the Patripassian Heresie of but one Person in the Deity: For if the Eternal Word were no Person di­stinct from the Father, the Union thereof with the Humanity constitutes the Father an incarnate Person; or otherwise by this State of his Lordships Doctrine, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost may be conceived as one incarnate Person. Whereas his Lord­ship well knows our Faith to be clear, That [Page 9]the Eternal Word is personally distinct, or a distinct Person from the Father, and a­lone assumed the Humanity into a Perso­nal Union with himself, and so alone was the Person of Christ exceptively of the Fa­ther and the Holy Ghost from this Perso­nality and Character.

§. 5. Now if a Man would enquire into the Motives of this affected obscurity in his Lordship, that leaves open a gap to so ma­ny Heresies, his Lordship's Words would lead one to a conclusion, or at least a fair jealousie, that his Lordship does not be­lieve any Distinction really Personal be­tween the Father, Word, and Holy Spirit, but that the true and real Personality of Christ is proper to the Humane Nature. For he teacheth us, that those whom the Church calleth Persons, the Scripture only calls by the Names of Father, Son or Word, and Holy Ghost. Where that artificial Word only derogates from the propriety and fitness of the term Person, as if the Scripture terms did not come up to it, nor justifie it. And if his Lordship will stand by the †P. 45. plain inten­tion of his Words elsewhere, he places Christ's Personality only in his Manhood in these words; That Divine Person in whom dwelt the Eternal Word. [Page 10]So that the Word must be different from the Person in whom it dwelt, which must be the Heresie of Sabellius, Ma [...] or Nestorius. In short, while he [...] the Canonical term of Person to contain some notion in it not imported in the Scripture terms, he seems for that cause to censure it, for that the Scripture does not come up so far as to teach three Persons, but only Father, Son or Word; and Holy Ghost. But when he says this third Opinion is, than by the Incarnation God and Man truly became one Person. I would fain know, whether the term Person be proper for the [...], or no? If not, the Doctrine is to be blamed, that teaches him to be truly one Person, since the truth of a Character is the greatest propriety; and if it be not true, the Doctrine that teaches it is to be cashiered: But if, to avoid this, it be true, then I would fain be instructed, whether the Church does not use the term Person in the same formal intention con­cerning the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, when She calls them three Persons, as She does when She calls Christ, or the Son of God incarnate a Person? For if She uses the term in the same formal intention, then if the Christ be a proper Person, so are the Father, and Holy Spirit two other Persons [Page 11]properly and truly distinct in the sense of the Church; but if the Church has one intention in the Term, when applied to Christ [...] God-man, and another when ap­plied to the Eternal Trinity, let this be made out by just Authority, and I have done.

§. 6. But the Order of his Lordship's Discourse obliges me to break off a little from this Disquisition till the next Section, where we must resume it. For he tells us, (if we will believe him) that the term Person by those of our Perswasion came to be applied to the three, to discover those who thought that these three were different names of the same thing, which were for the most part, and were generally called Patripassians, and were expelled as Here­ticks from the Church. Now wherein lay their Heresie? Why in this, That the Fa­ther, Son, and Holy Ghost were not three co-essential Persons really distinct, which was the Catholick Faith; instead of which they coined this pretence, That those Names had not three distinct subjects of which they were predicates or denomina­tions, but only were three titles of God the Father, who became incarnate and suf­fered for us. Now hence it appears, that their Heresie consisted in the denial of what [Page 12]was ever before received in the Church, That the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were three Persons. And if so, then is his Lord­ship's insinuation false and injurious, that the term Person had its rise and occasion from Patripassianism, and consequently is of a later Date, that by this fraudulent Hy­pochronism the term, and the sense of it may be taken for not Primitive and Tra­ditional, but a mere later and artificial in­vention. Now to prove what I say to be true, I am to produce authentick Testi­monies. Now in the Latin World the first I ever have read of that taught Patripassia­nism was Praxeas, against whose Heresie herein Tertullian wrote, and charged in for denying the Eternal Word to be a * Tert. ad Praxeam. Non vis enim eum substanti [...]um habere in re, per substantiae proprietatem, ut res & persona quaedam videri possit. substantial and real Person, which Tertullian (though then a Montanist) then asser­ted with the Church, though his † Tert. ibid. Itaque Sophiam quo (que) exau­di ut secundam Perso­nam conditam.—Sic & Filius in suâ personâ profitetur Patrem in nomine Sophiae. No­vatian de Trinit.— secundam Personam efficiens. terms and senses were sometimes ve­ry singularly odd concer­ning the production of the second Person. In the Eastern Church several lapsed into the like Error, the most famous of which [Page 13]was Sabellius, from whom the Heresie was entitled Sabellianism, which denied what that Church also had ever asserted, That the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were three Persons; instead whereof they as­serted them to be but one Person. For the truth hereof I shall recite the Words †Athan. con. Sabell. Greg. [...]. of St. Athanasius, as be­yond all Exception valid. From whence it appears, that the Sabellians asser­ted but one Person against that Plurality of Persons fore-acknowledged in the Church. And now I leave it to his Lordship to explain how the denial of three Persons could be Apostasie, as this Father calls it, had not the Faith of them been before ex­presly avowed and re­ceived. For Heresie is an opposition of true re­ceived Faith, and Apo­stasie must be from an antecedent Profession. So that the Doctrine of a Personal Trinity was not later than Patripassianism, but the Original Faith. [Page 14]Nor does his Lordship seem candid in con­cealing this, which was the substance of that Heresie, while he mentions only their teaching three Names of one thing or Person, which was a Con [...]ectary, or at least a Colour added to their Heresie a­gainst the Trinity of real Persons. 'Tis true a Man may innocently say, That the term Person was used against Patripassians, while he contends for the proper truth of their Personality, as the Defender of Dr. Sherlock's Notion of a Trinity in Uni­ty †P. 25. Ubi. citatur Facund. pro defensi­one tri [...] capit. c. 1. p. 19. cites Facundus's Say­ing, that these Words, Person and Subsistence were used by the Fathers in opposition to the Sabellian Heresie; but to throw out such Expressions with a Design to deny the Primitive Antiquity of this Faith of Three proper Persons or Per­sonalities, is extremely perfidious, of which this is a certain Sign, when Men avoid the use of these Terms as a stock of Offence, as his Lordship appears industriously to do in his State of the Doctrine. I have not Facundus by me, and so cannot so well judge of the convenience of his Words: But as to the Term Hypostasis or Subsi­stence, tho' it was in use long before Sa­bellianism, and used of the Person of the [Page 15]Father, * [...]. Heb. 1.2. yet was that use pro­miscuous for Essence and Subsistence long after Sa­bellianism; and the de­terminate use thereof for the distinct Per­sons, was later than the Sardican, Coun­cil, and was indeed at last so fixed to de­note their substantial Personality, or per­sonal Subsistence against the Sabellians, who asserted the Word and Holy Spirit [...] non-subsistent, that is, not di­stinctly subsistent from the Person of the Father in the Unity of Essence; but the Term Person, both in the Eastern and We­stern Churches, was ever received from the beginning without any variety or ambiguity.

§ 7. Now that my Surmises against his Lordship's Integrity herein are well groun­ded, will appear from his Lordship's ex­planation of this Term; which tho' it be received in the third Party, yet he dares not make his own, nor allow for proper. By Person saith he, is only meant that every one of that Blessed Three has a peculiar distin­ction in himself, by which he is truly different from the other Two. Here it is plain that by using the Term Three so often, without adding Person, he shuns the Word as much as he dares at present to do, and assigns a distinction which is not any way personal. [Page 16]For it being only such a diversity that one is not the other, it will as well agree to two or three Tobaco pipes; for these are truly different from each other. I would therefore ask his Lordship, Does the Name of Father, as distinct from the Son, im­port no more than that one is not the other, or does it import a Personality really Pa­ternal? If he will grant only the former part of the disjunction, (as he grants no more in his Discourse) then there really was no God the Father from Eternity till the Creation of Christ, which was the first Article of Arianism; nor was he, who is by all called God the Father, even a true Person, which yet however all have ever acknowledged. But if he ever was a true Person and Father, then first as to him the Term is elder than Patripassianism; and I demand a good reason, why the Eternal Word is not as much and as true a Person also, especially if he be the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father? For otherwise the Father and the Son will be of Dignities specifically different, if one be of a perso­nal, and the other of impersonal Character; tho' how a real Son can be a thing really impersonal I cannot conceive; and then be that allows no more distinction but only this, that one is not the other, tacitly [Page 17]denying the relative distinction between Father and the Son, doth really deny both the Father and the Son. When these Words were orally delivered at Warmister, I obser­ved them to my self, but looked on it as a slip only of an extemporary speaking; but when I see it also after the last conco­ction delivered from the Press, I suspect somewhat more than should be; I am sure the Dictate is rotten, and tacitly imports a renunciation of our Christianity.

§ 8. And yet after all, so great is the force of Truth, that it will maintain its Evidence, even in the Tongues and Pens of its Adversaries. For though some part of his Lordship's Doctrines denies the Per­sonality, yet others unwittingly concede it. For first of all, when he calls the Tri­nity the Blessed Three, not daring to say Persons, the Character of Blessed doth im­port a Peal Personality. For whether it be taken for [...] in the sense of God's essential Happiness, or in the sense of [...], as the objects of our religious Praises; yet if the Three are either, or both ways Blessed, they must be Persons. For among created Beings, none are inter­nally or effectually blessed, but what are Personal; but if any Man will cavil, and say, that God in the Creation blessed [Page 18]things Impersonal, and promised such Bles­sings also in the Mosaical Covenants; it is enough to reply, That these Blessed Three are uncapable of those lower forms of Be­nediction, and must have a Divine Blessed­ness, if they are of a Divine Nature. Now his Lordship will not say, that these are Three Distinct Blessed Essences, and he says they are more than three Names, Oeco­nomies, or Modes; so that he cannot with consistence call them three Blessed Names, Oeconomies, or Modes; and then what can he or any one else conceive by Three Blessed, but Three Blessed Persons? For though it may be truly said, that the highest Blessedness is that of Essence, yet none but a Person, or Persons can be essen­tially Blessed. So that his Lordship asser­ting a Blessed Three, must against his will yield them to be three Persons really di­stinct, though not divide, And so, when he says, that every one of that Blessed Three has a peculiar distinction in himself, this Pronoun [himself] is expresly Perso­nal; and so either the Personality is Real, or his Lordship very unaccurate in attribu­ting a Personal Pronoun to every one of the Three, and so is at his choice either unaccurate, or self-contradictory, or here­tical, or, for the sake of a blessed Comprehen­sion, all together.

§. 9. Let us now consider his Lordship's proper Tradition of this third Opinion, or perhaps his own under the Colour of that, for 'tis not easie to find him. This, saith he, is in general the Sum of the Received Doctrine, that in God's undivided Essence there are Three really different from each other, that are more than three Names, Oeconomies, or Modes. But here is not one word of Persons, though asserted by the whole Catholick Church, by our own Ar­ticles and Liturgies, which his Lordship has sworn his unfeigned Assent and Con­sent to, and is by his Station bound to de­fend, and for which he has the great exam­ple of his late Metropolitan. What latent Ulcer is the Cause of this tergiversation I cannot exactly tell, but something there must be at the bottom. But since this be­ing matter of Faith, must be taught every Proselyte before Baptism; let us see what efficacy his Lordship's formula will have when put into a Catechism. Catechumen. My Lord, I am an Heathen Philosopher, and willing to be instructed in the Princi­ples of the Christian Faith; I pray what are they? Bish. First our received Doctrine is, That in the single Essence of God there are Three. Catech. Three what, my Lord? Bish. Three really distinct from one ano­ther, [Page 20]more than three Names, Modes, or Oeconomies. Catech. My Lord, you tell me what they are not, but I would fain know, or have some notion what they are: And when you tell me there are Three, the Rules of Logick, Grammar, and Ca­techism require a Substantive to determine the Sense; I pray, my Lord, has your Ca­tholick Church, or your Church of Eng­land given them no Characteristick Name? Bish. Yes, after Patripassianism arose, she called them Persons as a Test to discover them. Catech. But why then had you not thus stated the sum of your received Do­ctrine, that in God's Unity of Essence there are Three Persons? for if this were received before or since Patripassianism, 'tis received into your Christian Confessions. Perhaps the Catholick Church may not really mean that they really are what she calls them, that is, Persons; and hence your Lordship thought fit to omit it; I pray, my Lord, deal openly with me, is it so, or how is it? Bish. Truly, Sir, the Church only means that one is not the other; that is, all that is intended in the Term Person. Catech. This looks very Catachrestical and Inarti­ficial; but do not your Scriptures teach them to be Persons? Bish. No, they only call them by the Names of Father, Son or [Page 21]Word, and Holy Ghost. Catech. But do not your Scriptures and your Churches teach, that the first of these is really a Fa­ther, and the second really his Son? Bish. This is one of the three Opinions that the Scriptures do so teach. Catech. And is this the Opinion your Lordship will ex­plain to me? Bish. Yes, Sir. Catech. Are Father and Son then Personal Titles? Bish. Yes, Sir, among Men. Catech. But are they not so in the Deity? Bish. Sir, they are not called Persons in Scripture, but on­ly Father, Son or Word, and Holy Ghost; but we mean no more by Persons, but that one is not the other; there are three, Sir, that you may depend on; but I pray, Sir, do not press me against liberty of Con­science to call them Persons, for I cannot tell what they are, nor what to call them. Catech. But, I pray, my Lord, why did your Apostle blame the Athenian Inscri­ption to the unknown God, and promised to declare him unto them, if he taught no more notions of him than that there are Three I know-not-whats in the God-head? I am in hope I shall find better information from your Fathers; I pray, my Lord, what is your Opinion of them herein? Bish. Perhaps, Sir, they have gone beyond due bounds, contradicted each other and them­selves, [Page 22]they use many impertinent Simile's, run out into much length and confusion, while they talk of things to others which they un­derstand not themselves. Catech. My Lord, if you can teach me nothing of your Faith in God, if you will reject the terms of your Church, to which you have sworn your unfeigned assent, if you dissolve the Sense of your Scripture Terms into nothing, and renounce the Wisdom of your Primitive Fa­thers, you force me to retreat from my hopes, and to devote my Soul to the Socie­ty of the Philosophers. This must be the Issue of such a dry, sensless, insipid State of the Faith, if offered to the Wise of the Heathen. Whereas the true Theory of the Faith is a most noble and seraphick Theo­logy accounting for Creation and Provi­dence, and all other Mysteries of Nature and Grace in so clear and heavenly a Light, that all the Idolatrous Notions and Fables of the Heathens, and all the celebrated Wis­dom of the Philosophers, like Dagon, fell before it.

§. 10. Come we next to his Lordship's account of the Incarnation. †P. 32, 33. The second of this Blessed Three was united to a perfect Man, so that from the Humane and Divine Nature thus united, there did result the Person of the [Page 23]Messias, who was both God and Man. Now here it is to be noted, that this Exposition of our Faith is his Lordship's own, after his Censure of the Primitive Doctrines herein, so that we must take this as most correct and exact. He then that hitherto omitted in his own accounts the Term Person in his Doctrine of the Trinity, admits it here concerning the Messias, and consequently leaves us to conclude, that he judges it im­proper to be applied to the Trinity, but proper to the Messias or God Incarnate. And secondly, it is notorious that he denies the Personality of Christ to be Eternal, since he asserts it to result from the Union of two Natures. 'Tis true, indeed, the Royal or Sacred Character of Christ is Personal, that is, it must suppose Personality in the Sub­ject so entitled; and it is certain also, that it was the Title of an Office of a Person to be incarnate, but this does not inferr, that the Personality of the Messias commenced or resulted from his Incarnation. For an Eternal Person assumed our Nature so to be­come our threefold Messias: So that though the Character and Offices of Christ resulted from the Incarnation, yet not the Person, or Personality; for to this the Humane Na­ture was assumed or pre-existent, but added or contributed nothing thereunto. Where­fore [Page 24]upon this news of a resulting Persona­lity, I ask whether the Son of God was a Person antecedently to his Incarnation, or no? If not, this is down-right Sabellianism, if he was, then that antecedent Personality did not result from the Incarnation; but if you add another from the assumption of the Humanity, then this is Nestorianism; if you confound them into a compound, it is (I think) Eutychianism, since the two Personalities cannot be confounded without confusion of Natures and Substances. But if in the Conjunction of Natures one Per­sonality excludes or destroys the other, no­thing can result from that which is destroy­ed, but that Personality simply remains (as it was before) that destroyed the other. And further the Personality that destroys must be superior to the destroyed; and if so, it's ten to one but the Divine and Eter­nal Personality of the Word is superior to that of the Humane Nature, and so destroys it in the Union, and consequently there re­sults no Personality from the Humane Na­ture, but the Eternal Personality of the Word only remains simply as it ever was; and thus at last truth will come upon us whether we will or no; for I do not suppose his Lordship will be so hardy as to teach, that a created Personality will destroy an [Page 25]uncreated by the conjunction of a created Nature with the Divine. Yet after all I believe his Lordship fixes the Personality, not in the whole Theanthrôpus, but only in the Humanity, if one could see his inside; since he * 45. That Divine Person, in whom dwelt the Eternal Word, &c. makes the Man­hood it self a Person di­stinct from the Eternal Word that dwelt therein, and instead of confuting †P. 32. helps those Criticks that place their first Conceptions of the Son­ship in the Humanity, and as to the Union he is so ambiguous, that he tells us not whether the Father and the Holy Spirit came into this resulting Personality, or no, only saying without any peculiar restriction that God and Man became one Person, thus leaving a latitude for various Heresies in this Mystery.

§. 11. So much then for the Personality; Advance we next to the Deity of the Mes­sias. *P. 40. We believe, saith he, that Christ was God by vertue of the Indwelling of the Eternal Word in him. The Jews could make no Objection to this, who knew that their Fathers had worshipped the Cloud of Glory, because of God's resting upon it. And this he lays as a foundation, on which he may properly Deifie Christ's Hu­mane [Page 26]Nature. But this Jewish Doctrine is absolutely false, and is but either an heed­less or willfull Depravation of the Learned Dr. Whithy's chast and ac­curate *Tractat. de ver. Jes. Christ. Deitat. p. Theories herein. To make which appear in its proper visage, let us consider what Wor­ship is in the sense of his Lordship, with whom it imports † Lord of Sarum, P. 38. not only Incurvation of Body, which may be paid to Creatures, but Acts of Faith and Trust, Prayers and Praises, &c. Now will his Lordship stare me, or any Man in the face, and say, that the Jews did thus Worship the Cloud of Glory? This I think will be routed by one Syllogism; whatsoever the Jews worshipped according to the Law was God; The Cloud of Glory was not God; Ergo the Jews did not Worship the Gloud of Glory. I take it for granted, that this Syllogism is impenetrable, and let his Lordship try his skill upon it, if he please. It is indeed agrecable to truth, and learned Men teach, that Isreal worshipped God in the Cloud, over the Ark, in the Temple, as in all the Symbols and Places of his espe­cial Presence; but the Symbols or Places themselves were not the Objects of the Jewish Adoration, though Papists bend this [Page 27]to the Adoration of the Host. And as simple as the Fathers are, they can inform his Lordship, † Just. Mart. Dial. cum Tryph. ad ista Psalm 24. Quis est Rex Gloriae, Dominus Exercitumm, &c. [...] that every Man whatsoever will own that in Psalm 24. neither Solomon, nor the Taber­nacle, or Ark of the Testi­mony was the King of Glo­ry, which they adored. Yet that his Lordship's Con­celts may have fair usage, I am content to lay toge­ther all that he has said to this purpose, to try whe­ther they are in truth sound or adulterated, or whether they can bear a fair Tryal. He therefore teaches, †P. 36. that 'tis evident from several forms of expressing that Cloud of Glory; that a constant and immediate visi­ble Indwelling of the Jehovah was according to Scripture Phrase said to be Jehova, which was applied to nothing else. This the Greek render [...], which Term the Apo­stles universally applying to our Saviour, could mean no other but that he was the true Jehovah, by a more perfect dwelling of the Deity in him, &c. Now here are two great Absurdities; first, that the visible Indwel­ling of the Jehovah is in Scripture phrase [Page 28]called Jehova; and secondly, that this Name was applied to nothing else. For first, 'tis he that dwelt between the Cheru­bims in a symbol of Glory over the Ark, first in the Tabernacle, after in the Temple, is called Jehovah, not his very Habitation. 'Tis the Title of the Resident, not the Re­sidence; and so his Lordship himself applies it also in contradiction either to himself, or the Scripture, if he expounds it rightly. That which perhaps led his Lordship into this fancy is, that Shechinah Grammatical­ly signifies Habitation, and is thence taken by the Rabbins in a sense peculiarly sacred for the Majestick Presence of God between the Cherubims, &c. and that he takes to be called Jehova. But his Lordship was not at leisure to apprehend that the Rah­binick use has turned the Grammatical nota­tion of Habitation, that is but an accident, and made it to import that substantial Light and Glory, the Symbol of the Di­vine Presence, the Scripture word Glory and the Rabbinick Term Shechinah being equivalent. For the Rabbins by Shechinah mean not mere presence, but that Lucid Glory by which God presentiated himself. But if his Lordship will excuse this unacou­racy, and say, That This Glory is called Je­hova in the Scripture; yet this is also false, [Page 29]and will not serve his turn. For this She­chinah is called * [...] the Glo­ry of Jehovah, and God is called †Psal. 24. the King and *Act. 7.2. God of Glory with rela­tion to the Shechinah; yet no Man will change the terms Glory of Jehovah thus, The Jehovah of Jehovah, or the God or King of Glory, into this form, The God or King of Jehovah, which yet might be done, if Jehova were the name of that Glory. When Moses asked Jehovah to see a greater and more Majestatick Glory of the Divine Presence, and that Jehovah made his Glo­ry to pass by, Exod. 33.18, 21, 22. The Glory is plainly distinguished from the Je­hovah. For Moses would not pray thus, O Jehovah shew me thy Jehovah, nor would the Jehovah say, my Jehovah shall pass by. Jehovah therefore was not the mere Shechinah, either God's Habitation, or the Cloud of Glory, but he that pre­sentlated himself therein. And hence the ritual Worship of Israel, though performed toward that Cloud, was yet performed not to it, but to him whose Majesty so appea­red in or by it. Nor does this Symbol ad­equately come up to the Mystery of the personal Union; for God's inhabiting in a Cloud of Glory did not make a personal [Page 30]Union between God and the Cloud, as the in habitation of God in Christ; Humane Nature being of an higher and more inti­mate and unitive Connexion, did; which yet however doth not really turn our Na­ture in Christ into Deity, except we will go over to Eutychianism, and a confusion of Substance; nor do we adore his Huma­nity as so Deified, but we Worship the Eter­nal Son of God united to, and mediating for us in our Nature.

§. 12. But whereas his Lordship has out­pitched all Mortals in saying, That in Scri­pture Phrase Jehova never imports any thing else but a constant and visible imme­diate Inhabitation, which has been suffi­ciently baffled in the precedent Section, I will adventure to advance and say, that in the Scripture, the word Jehovah is used for God, without any imaginable respect to such a Shechinah. In the Book of Job it is very often found, yet there being no She­chinah in his Land of Ʋz, the Author or Translator could not use the term Jehovah concerning God appearing in the Shechi­nah of the Children of Israel, for Job was an Alien, and of the Line of Esau. In those infinite Places where the Creation, and all other Divine Works without the Land of Canaan are attributed to Jehovah, [Page 31]there the name has no respect to the She­chinah. Wheresoever he is mentioned by this name in Affairs among the Ten Tribes, after their separation by Jeroboam from the Worship at Jerusalem, there is no respect to the Shechinah, for he had no such among the Ten Tribes. When Ezekiel in Capti­vity before the destruction of the Temple mentions the Oracles of Jehovah, or God, by this name in the Land of the Chaldeans, he has no respect to a Shechinah. When the Temple was destroyed, there was ne­ver any Shechinah restored to that Temple any more; yet the inspired Pen-men after this call him by the name Jehovah, for which I referr his Lordship to the Bible or the Concordances. And to conclude, the Eternal Wisdom of the Father speaking by Solomon, calls him Jehovah, with respect to such a time, as was before all possibility of a Shechinah. Prov. 8.22. Jehovah pos­sessed me in the beginning of his way before his works of old. And truly if Jehovah were the name of God only as in the She­chinah, then as it did not belong to him be­fore the Shechinah, so it ceases to appertain to him since the extinction thereof in the dissolution of the first Temple, except his Lordship will have it revive again by the [...] or Habitation of God in Christ's [Page 32]Humane Nature. But then as often as it was used by the High Priest (if not others) under the second Temple, and after the cessation of other Prophets, till Christ came, by his Lordship's Criticism it must be improper, and the Prophets that called God Jehovah after the Destruction of the Temple, did misname him. But after all, to keep up an old custom, his Lordship adds another contradiction; for he says *P. 38. Jehovah is a federal name of God: Now if so, then was it pro­perly used of God all the while the Jews were in the Old Covenant with God, which was till the Death of Christ surely; and consequently all that tract of time in which there was no Shechinah from the ruin of the first Temple, was this name most pro­per.

§. 13. From the Jewish Shechinah come we to Christ, of whom his Lordship thus teaches, *P. 40. that Christ was God by vertue of the Indwelling of the Eternal Word in him; †P. 35. that the Jehovah dwelt so immediately and bodily in Christ Jesus, that by that Indwel­ling he was truly Jehovah, *P. 37. that he was the true Jehovah by a more perfect Indwelling of the Deity in him than that had been which was in the Cloud. Now [Page 33]this must be grounded upon a Principle or Maxim, That whatsoever the Delty imme­diately inhabits (as it did the Cloud and the Humanity of Christ) that thing be­comes God and the true Johovah by virtue of that Inhabitation; and therefore the Cloud and the Humanity of Christ were the true Jehovah by this Residence; and if so, the Cloud and Christ are substantially the same thing, though yet the Cloud hath ceased to be for many Ages. And by the same Doctrine the inner Sanctuary of the Tabernacle and the Temple, and much more the Temples of our Bodies and Souls, in which Christ as God dwells immediate­ly by his Holy Spirit, are the true Jehovah also by virtue of this Inhabitation. And besides all these absurdities, his Lordship's terms exclusively diversifie the whole Christ who is inhabited, from the Eternal Word which does inhabit in him, and so accor­ding to his Lordship he becomes, if not a Socinian, yet a sactitious God one way or other.

§. 14. Ay, But does not the Apostle ju­stifie his Lordship's form of speaking, when he saith, * Col. 2.9. that in Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, which his Lordship †P. 40. cites for his Authority? These are indeed the [Page 34]Apostle's Words, and his Lordship cunning­ly referrs to them, though never intended to his Lordship's Consequences and Imag­nations. For the Apostle seems to oppose the Gnostick Pleromata, excluding Christ from the Supreme Pleroma and Divinity. Now things are inexistent in others, either as things contained in things containing, or as parts in the whole, or one part in ano­ther. The first Mode cannot belong to the inexistence of the Deity in our nature; the second or third form of inexistence may be conveniently asserted here. For first the whole Christ being a Compositum of the Word and Manhood, the God-head of the Word may be said to be in Christ, as part in the whole. But if you take Christ here Synecdochically for that part of him which is distinct from the God-head, which is often done, sometimes expresly, as the Man Christ Jesus, sometimes implicitly from the necessary sense of the Texts, then this Text will be thus interpretable, In Christ, i.e. the Man Christ, or his Man­hood, dwelleth all the fullness of the God­head, as the superior in the inferior part of the [...], and as the Soul in a Bo­dy. But neither of these Senses inferr, that all that in which the fulness of the God­head dwells bodily, as a Soul in a Body, is [Page 35]thereby really God and the true Jehovah, for this would inferr an Eutychian confu­sion of Natures and Attributes. To illu­strute this, his Lordship may observe, that we say, an excellent Soul is found in this Man, either as part in the whole, or strict­ly as the whole Man is put only for the Body; yet no Man will hence inferr, that all that in which the excellent Soul dwells thereby becomes a true Soul, for this would confound the two Natures into one. And truly as the formal Structure of his Lord­ship's words is heretical, so his Arguments for it from the Jewish Shechinah are Idola­trous, and will justifie Idolatry ( i.e. Crea­ture-Worship) both in Jews and Christians. 'Tis true, indeed, the Fathers generally teach a gracious, adoptive, and metapho­rical [...] of our nature in Christ, and of all Saints by him; but not so as to make that Nature, or these Saints, the true Jehovah, notwithstanding their mutual co­inhabitation to all Eternity.

§. 15. It must be allowed, and I allow it freely, that the Argument brought from the perpetual rendring of Jehovah by [...], and the signal appropriation of [...] in the New Testament to our Lord, while both Testaments establish only one and the same Lord, is in it self exceeding [Page 36]good, and urged generally by most learned Men to this purpose; but however, it is almost marred by his Lordship's conjuring up an Objection, which he had not skill enough to lay. The great Objection, *P. 37. says he, that ariseth against this, is, that though [...] is indeed the common translation for Jehovah; yet sometimes it is put for other Hebrew words, both Elohim and Adonai, and that in the New Testament it is used rather in opposition, or more properly in subordination to the name of God, which seems to be sta­ted very plainly by St. Paul; †1 Cor. 8.5, 8. when he says, there were many that were called Gods, whether in Heaven or in Earth, as there were Gods many, and Lords many. In opposition to all which he asserts, that to Christians there is but one God the Father, of whom were all things, and we in him, and one Lord Jesus, by whom were all things, and we by him. From hence it seems, that the true Notion of this according to St. Paul, is, that as the Heathen Nations believed some supreme Deities, and other deputed or lower Deities that watched over particular Nations; so we Christians do own one only Eternal God the Creator and Conserver of all, and one Lord to whom he has given the Government of all [Page 37]things. So that this, as it favours the No­tion of one exalted to Divine Authority and Honour, does take away quite the whole force of this Argument. Now let us see how his Lordship solves this. The sum of what at large he tells us is, †P. 37, 38. that he that is at large the God of the Uni­verse, was also the federal God and Lord of the Jews, and his federal name was Jehova rendred [...], as the Heathens also were supposedly under the Dominion of some of their Supreme Deities. So here St. Paul sets one God for us, who is also our federal God, Lord, or Jehovah by his dwelling in the Humane Nature of Jesus Christ. But certainly 'tis hazardous to hang so weighty a point of Faith on so thin a Cob-web. For what, first of all, if a Man should deny Jehovah to be a Name restrictively and re­latively federal to one People, how will his Lordship convince him? It is for the most part put by it self, seldom with any Genitive, never that I have yet observed with a Genitive of that People. And being put simply it is a name of pure and abso­lute Essence or Existence, and altogether irrelative even to the whole World, as pro­perly belonging to his Eternal Being before all Worlds. And yet it may consequent­ly import a negative reflexion on the Non-existence [Page 38]of all other Heathen Gods. It seems indeed † Exod. 15.16, [...] prefixed to the relative and fede­ral Name, which was the God of their Fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, declared unto Moses *Ibid. v. 6.13. be­fore the name Jehovah was given: But it is plain that he was long before the federal God of their Fathers, un­der the mystical name of Elohim, Adonai, and Elschaddai, before ever Moses was. But till the appearance in the Bush, God was not known to the Fathers by the name * Exod. 6.3. Jehovah, though he was their federal God of Old. So that this name Jehovah, when added, is added as a name of Essence to the federal Titles of the God of their Fathers, the God of Israel, which were set so relatively to that People, in opposition to those relative Ti­tles and local Denominations, which the Heathen gave their tutelar and respective Deities. And this I take for a certain Rule, that an Absolute name of God is set alone, and a federal name always with a Genitive Case, or Suffix. Nay, Moses expresly uses the name Jehovah without this federal re­lation in the Story of Ba­laam, * Num 22.8.13. & 23.3, 8, 12, 26. & 24.6.13. & 23.17. & 24.11 whom with Balak [Page 39]also Moses makes to call God Jehovah. And if it shall be pretended that they used this as the known federal Name, for that Ba­laam said of Israel, † Numb. 23.21. [...] Numb. 22.18. Je­hovah his God is with him, it is to be observed that the same Mesopotamian Diviner calls him by the same Term * [...] Jehovah my God. And the same Moses, or whosoever gave us the Book of Job in Hebrew, names the God of Job * Job Ch. 1. Ch. 2. Ch. 38. Ch. 40. Ch. 42. Jehovah, and †Ch. 1. v. 21. brings in Job cal­ling him by that name, though neither Job, nor probably the Original Author of that Book, was of the Children of Israel, nor within their especial Covenant. Nay, God him­self discharges this name from all federal re­striction. Behold, I am Jehovah the Lord God of all flesh. And in those numerous places, wherein he is relatively called Je­hovah Isebaoth the Lord of Hosts, the Hosts of Heaven are denoted, not the Armies of Israel, though sometimes †1 Sam. 17.45. these two Titles, the Je­hovah or Lord of Hosts, and God of the Armies of Israel, are joyned together, of which however the latter only is federal to [Page 40]that People. And infinite other * Psal. 144.15. Zech. 13.19. Texts there are to shew Jehovah to be a name unlimited, and in its natural signifi­cation antecedent to that of the God of Israel * Zech. 14 9., and to be ac­knowledged by all Na­tions in their general Conversion. But further, if the Septuagint used [...] as a federal Name in the rendring the Hebrew Jehovah, yet does it not follow, that they took Jehovah for a federal Name. For where-ever they render it [...] (as I be­lieve they do every where) there they ac­cording to the custom of their Nation read [...] by Adonai, according as they have since pointed it for that way of reading, a religious first, and at last a superstitious fear restraining the People from the common pronunciation of that greatest Name. And hence it will follow, that the Septuagint might take Adonai for a federal Name of God, as their tutelar Lord in opposition to the Baalim, or Lords adored by the borde­ring Nations. So that whereas his Lord­ship throws up not only Elohim, but Adonai too, to the Objection, he has un­dermined his own foundation for the fede­ral signification of [...], especially since [Page 41]in the 110th. Psal. God the Father is called * [...]. Jeho­vah, and God the Son A­donai, the chiefest Text cited out of the Old Testament in the New for the Dominion of Christ over his Peo­ple, and consequently an argument that the New Testament [...] came from the Septuagint, as reading Adonai. How then shall the Apostles sense be cleared, so that it may not establish two adorable Lords and Gods, nor make Christ a Lord only by Advancement and Oeconomy? And here­unto, first let it be noted, that this was written not to Aliens or Infidels, and Stran­gers to our Faith; for to such, I confess, it had not been so perfectly clear and in­telligible, but to a Christian Church, who all from the highest to the lowest had been taught the mystery of the Trinity in Uni­ty; and to these St. Paul's words are as intelligible in their truth as the Apostles Creed or any other, which an uninitiated Heathen might easily misunderstand, ei­ther to conclude our Lord not to be God, as being not called God in the Apostles Creed, (which Hereticks and Latitudina­rians lay hold of to their evil Ends) or another God; because in other formularies he is called God of God. But this funda­mental [Page 42]Institution, that we have no other God nor Lord than the Jews had, and that Lord of the Jews being only one God Al­mighty, we cannot err in understanding this Creed of St. Paul, or any other, to believe that Christ is a Lord in nature dif­ferent from God the Father Almighty. To exhibit this more clearly. I will set these words of St. Paul, and those of the Nicene Creed that are most apposite to them, and liable to an Heathen misconstruction.

Now to shew the most designed intention of St. Paul's words, and that they do not at all give any colour to the Socinian notion of one advanced to Divine Honour, but make him with God the Father Creator of all things, I shall digest them into a due Pa­raphrase, thus; For though the Heathen [Page 43]Worshippers of Idols have many celestial and terrestrial Gods, as they call them, which they Worship by their Idols, their Supersti­tion to their falsly so called Gods arising from this truth, that God hath set Presidential and Tutelary Powers over us, who are there­fore by Office, though not by Nature, Gods and Lords, as the Angelical Princes of Greece and Persia, and here on Earth the Kings and Rulers of the World; yet we Christians have but one Almighty God the Father, from whom all things originally are, and we are in him, or for him; and one on­ly Tutelar Lord next God the Father, Jesus Christ, by whom we were created, and by whom we subsist, for the Object of our Ado­ration. By this Paraphrase it appears, that the Father is called God, and Christ Lord, but the Creation attributed to both in this form of distinction, that all things are of, or from God the Father as the first Origi­nal, and by the Lord Christ, because by him the Father created all things; and hence it follows, that the Lord Christ in that nature which created all things is un­created, and if uncreated, then of the same Deity of the Father, who by him created all things, and hence adorable with the Father; whereas the Heathen Gods, and all other Gods by deputation or advance­ment [Page 44]are not adorable, as not being Au­thors of our Creation and Being, nor un­created in themselves. Whatsoever He­brew word therefore [...] or [...] in this place may be referred to; yet our [...] our Lord Jesus, being as our Lord and Creator, the Object of our Adoration is vindicated from the reproach of a Creature advanced to the Honour of Divine Adora­tion, by the very context it self. And to this sense the words were fully clear to the Christian Church, who knew St. Paul, both as a Jew and Christian, an utter Ad­versary to all Creature-worship. But how­ever, I note here that [...] spoken of Christ, answers not to the Hebrew Jehovah; for being set opposite to the many [...], it must answer to a word in Hebrew, that is capable of a plural number, which Je­hovah is not, for there cannot be a plurali­ty of Jehovahs. But what shall be done to convince an Arian, who will confess our Lord a Sub-Creator of all things be­side under the Father, and so their Lord on the Title of that Creation, though him­self was created by God the Father? Why this place must be interpreted by others, such as that he is God, the true God, God over all blessed for ever, that he was ever in the form of God, and equal with God [Page 45]the Father, and one with him, all which will bear weight, while the federal whim­sie vanishes into soft air. And therefore after all his critical trisling, he wisely †P. 38.40. comes to this way of interpretation, and says a great many Good and Orthodox truths on this Article so far as that that Christ was God, who manife­sted himself in our flesh, which being so dissonant to all his former Modes of expres­sion and avowed Notions, seem to have dropp'd from him either unawares, or for a colour of defence against a foreseen charge of Heresie, or perhaps the singular Providence of God might so over-rule the madness of the Prophet, to make him speak that for the Christian Faith, which he had no mind to, that his manifest inconsisten­cies might render him of no Authority for the use of Hereticks either in present or su­ture Ages.

§. 16. His Lordship's last Argument for the Deity of Christ is, †P. 39, 40. that the Jews, and Apostates from Christianity never charged the Apostles nor the Church with Idolatry or Creature-Worship, which they would certainly have done, had the Christian Principles been Arian, or Socinian. And had there been any such Objection, we should have had [Page 46]the Apologies of the Apostles against it. For so we find them vindicating themselves against the Charge of the Jews, for quitting the Mosaical Ordinances, and calling the Gentiles, things of less prejudice than the worshipping and Deifying a Creature. Now for my part, I believe it was the common opprobrium both of Jews and Gentiles and perfect Apostates, that the Christians ado­red a mere Malefactor, and that surely is an imputation of Creature Worship; and though we find it not in the Acts, or Epi­stles of the Apostles expresly charged; yet many passages asserting his Deity, seem di­rectly set in opposition to such calumnies. In the Acts of the Apostles the recorded disputes with the Jews are, whether our Jesus was the true Messias, for on concession of this, all the other Doctrines of Christia­nity were to have been admitted without scruple; and so the questions of his Deity and Adoration came not into course with the Jews, while they denied this Truth, that was first to be proved in order to their conviction, that he was the Christ. And all that is written against Judaism in the Epistles, is against Judaizing Christians, or Semi-Christian Judaizers, that adhered to the Levitical Institutes as necessary to all Christians. Now these not making Christ [Page 47]an Idol or a mere Creature, there was no need of a Vindication of us with them against an Idolatry that they charged us not with; but against those Hereticks that made Jesus a mere Man, and consequently would impeach us for the Worship of a Creature, St. John's Gospel and first Epi­stle were expresly written; and these were a sort of Un-Christian Judaizers of seve­ral Characters from their proper Authors. So that his Lordship's Observation, though never so well intended, is however partly false, and partly impertinent. And yet allowing this Argument as much force as can be designedly granted it, it will amount to no more than this, That the Enemies of our Religion could not upbraid us with a professed Worship of a professed Creature, because he whom the Christians worshipp'd in our flesh, was by them owned to be the Eternal God: Yet no doubt the Jews ever did, and do at this Day charge us with the Worship of a vile Creature, who really (as they think) had no Deity in him; else, had they also thought him to be God, they had been ipso facto conver­ted to us, the want of this Faith being the only Bar to their Conversion; and the cause why they execrate both our Lord and us for this very Doctrine. So unlucky [Page 48]is his Lordship, even in the fairest part of this Discourse, as if God had laid this Curse on him, that he that had sophisti­cally handled the Christian Faith in most part of it, should not have the Glory or Comfort of having served it in any one particular.

A Vindication of the Primitive Fathers against the Imputa­tions of Gilbert, Lord Bishop of Sarum, &c.
PART II.

§. 1. I Have now (I think) performed my first undertaking, that his Lordship hath ill stated the Do­ctrines of our Faith: A truth so evident to his own Clergy, even those that would throw a friendly skirt over these Nudities, that they ascribe all (or seem willing so to do) to haste, inconside­ration, and want of judgment, not to any heretical Designs or Contrivances. Whe­ther his Lordship will be thankful for these kinds of Excuse, I cannot tell, but at the best they are but Fig-leaves. For [Page 50]can any Candour excuse an heedless or in­judicious Lecture in a Bishop or Divinity Professor, first uttered to a learned Body, and after exposed to the Censure of the World, in a matter most fundamental in Christianity, most liable to prejudices; and this after the most accurate determi­nations of the Church Universal; especi­ally since he so openly upbraids the Fa­thers and Patrons of this Faith, with their unaccuracies and impertinencies, and this not in their particular and private conce­ptions, which the Church hath not autho­rized, but in their most Catholick and established Theories? Surely such a Cen­for ought to have been accurate above all Men, and not to have needed the Candor of a Reader.

§. 2. This dealing with the Fathers is such an indecent sort of immorality, that 'tis not to be endured in one of his Lord­ship's Character. The Fathers, it is true, were Men, and they have their [...], those slips here and there incident to the infirmities of Humane Nature, and if his Lordship had reverently touched upon any of these, not with a design to blacken their memory, but only to caution his Clergy against such forms or notions, he had dealt very commendably. But it falls [Page 51]out quite otherwise. For he Taxes them for no real obliquities, but their Catholick Principles; fixes on them such Theories as they never dreamed of, and such as are de­structive of their own avowed Faith, and this without quoting so much as one pas­sage out of them; he gives them not so much as one good word, but finally pre­sents them to us as a parcel of imperti­nent and self contradicting Bablers; which how it conduces to the encouraging Deism and Heresie, I humbly leave to the Censure of my Holy Mother the Church of Eng­land. Sure I am, as this ill office was ut­terly needless to his Exposition of the Faith, so modesty ought to have repressed it; if for no other consideration, yet for this one reason, That they may receive him into their Society with joy at the day, when he shall be gathered unto his Fa­thers.

§. 3. The Business then of this second part is to discuss the truth and justice of his Lordship's Imputations cast upon these Ho­ly Worthies, which he introduces thus, by telling his Clergy, that †P. 31. he will not pretend to inform them how this Mystery is to be understood, and in what respect these Persons (which he calls so according to custom, not his own sense) [Page 52] are believed to be one, and in what respects they are Three. By explaining a Mystery can only be meant the shewing how it is laid down and revealed in Scripture; for to pre­tend to give any other Account of it, is to take away its mysteriousness, when the man­ner how it is in it self is offered to be made intelligible. Now what doth this prima facie intimate, but that it is not laid down in the Scripture, in what respect the Per­sons are one, nor in what respect they are Three. But first in the Doctrine of Unity, I think the Scriptures do sufficient­ly teach, that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one in respect of Essence, not­withstanding all the wriggles of Hereticks, not only in that passage of St. John 1 Ep. 5.7. which his Lordship has exposed *Letter I from Zu­rich. for doubted, but in many o­thers. And if his Lordship dares deny this respect of Essence to be taught by the Scri­ptures concerning the Unity, I will adven­ture the proof of it. But if his Lordship be not so hardy, then let him recant this Impeachment of the Scriptures, that they have not taught us in what respect the Persons are One. I am however content that Men of Candour take this only for an heedless slip, not a designed Artifice. Let [Page 53]it be so; yet is it a dangerous one, and used by the Men of the broad way that leadeth to destruction, to the service of he­retical Comprehensions. The Antapolo­gist to Dr. Sherlock owns the forequoted Text of St. John for undoubted; There are Three that bear record in Heaven, the Fa­ther, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these Three are One. This, saith he, is Scripture, * Antap. p. 5. but how they are one the Scripture teacheth not. What is this fetch for, but that we may not press the Heretick's to own an essen­tial Unity, but whatsoever else will serve their several Turns, and deliver them from the Canon of the Faith? But secondly, his Lordship ought to have instructed his Clergy in what respects they are Three, according to the Scriptures, which do in­struct us herein, with certain notions and respects, by which they are distinguished from each other in the Unity of Essence. For are not Father and Son Personal Cha­racters, and founded on a substantial ge­neration, the Father being the Person Ge­nerant as such, and the Son the Person gene­rated as such? And is not the Logos the substantial Issue of the Eternal Mind, and as such distinguished from its Parent? The Holy Spirit is of the Father and the Son, [Page 54]and does the personal Offices of a Para­clete by mission from the Father and the Son, on which account he hath personal and distinctive Pronouns and Attributes given him. Which shews the form of di­stinction to be Personal, and the different Mode of their descent, origination, and mission. So much therefore of the Modes of their distinction being taught by the Scriptures, is also well taught by the Church, and ought to have been so by his Lordship; though other Modes of this Subsistence, that are not revealed, pass our measures and capacities, and Men's inau­thentick speculations on them are not to be admitted for Catholick or Canonical.

§. 4. And now we come to consider the exorbitances of the Fathers in their teach­ing the Respects and Modes of this Unity and Distinction. †P. 31. In this (saith his Lordship) too many both An­cients and Moderns have perhaps gone be­yond due bounds, while some were pleased with the Platonical Notions of Emanations, and a foecundity in the Divine Essence. Now here it must be noted, that the An­cients and Moderns, which his Lordship here speaks of, are the Defenders of the Faith of the Trinity against the Arian and other Ancient Heresies. Now as great [Page 55]Friends as my Lord and Petavius are, I would fain know how they can be recon­ciled herein. For if * Petav. citat Bullo. in Prooem. Defens. Fid. Nicen. p. 8. A­rius were a genuine Pla­tonist in the created pre­existence of the Logos, how came any of the Anti-Arian Ancients to be Platonick in their Doctrines of Eter­nal Pre-existence and Emanations? 'Tis hard that Arians and Catholick Fathers should both be in the same Platonick Er­rors, in a point in which they were contra­dictory, and in which alone their great di­vision was founded. But as for the Eter­nal Emanations asserted by the Fathers, they were taught purely from all ill mix­tures of Platonists and others, in that while they from sacred Tradition assert those Ef­fluxes, yet they all deny them to be like corporeal Emanations by corporeal abscis­sions or divisions of parts. It would be endless to cite places of this kind. Let it suffice that the Do­ctrine of Emanation *Sap. Sal. 7.25. [...]. was pure Jewish Theology; by which term received into the forms of Christian Theology, they meant the derivation of the whole Divinity from the Father to the Logos and the Holy Spirit, [Page 56]without † Athan. Expos. Fid. [...]. Id. de Syn. Nic. con. Arian. decret. [...]. any division, or partition of Substance. For the truth of which I referr instead of many to one Athanasius, that spake the sense of the whole Church in his time, and of the Fathers before him. Now the Fathers all deny­ing an emanation, which like that of Bodies con­sists in abscission of Parts, will hereby be discharged from the fancies of Pla­tonick Emanations, which the *P. 28. Defender of Dr. Sher­lock's Notion of a Trini­ty in Unity charges with such Abscission in the Pla­tonick Triad. We are not yet advanced to the Bea­tisick Vision, nor the tongues of Angels, nor, if we were, could we adequately de­scribe the glorious Mysteries of these Di­vine Subsistences; yet God himself gives us leave to speak of his revealed Truths herein according to our infirmities; that we, who see these Mysteries remotely and only by dark resemblances, may commu­nicate those notions in as remote forms of [Page 57]expression, while we keep however to the Schemes himself has set us, and embase those Theories with no Humane Corru­ptions. And hence I freely allow the words of Emanation, as being taken from the Images of corporeal Effluxes, not to be fully equal to the Mystery intended, but such as would be apt to lead us into crass and material conceptions of the Dei­ty, did not our Theology expresly fore­fend us. But under this guard the terms are not only innocent, but Authentick, and that Authority with the Fathers de­scended not from Plato, but from Cano­nical and allowed Scriptures, which have set corporeal Emanations as dark Symbols of these internal Communications of the Divine Essence in the Trinity; of which sort of Similes are the * Athan. ad Serap. Sp. S. non esse Crea­turam. [...] &c.— [...], &c. Id. de Syn. Nic. con. Arian. De­cret. [...]— [...], — [...], — [...] — [...]. Vid. con. Arian. Orat. 3. [...], the Rays and Emanations of Light and Glory; and the streams of Fountains, from which in the Scri­ptures the Fathers have taken those Emanatory forms of expression, which therefore owe not their Authority or Reception to Plato; that so his [Page 58]Lordship should call them Platonical in derogation to the Grandeur of the Christian Theology; like the reproach of Amelius upon St. John, as if he also had preached the Phi­losopher. 'Tis true, in­deed, the Primitive Fa­thers writing for our Faith against Gentilism, do often cite this Philo­sopher, not as an Author of our Principles, but as a good witness to the Greeks for their Credibi­lity, though sometimes, when upbraided with him by the Hea­thens, they freely call him a plagiary of the Jewish and Sacred Theology, which he afterwards cook'd up after a Greek Mode. Now the Corruptions in Plato's Doctrine of the Trinity the Fathers use not, nor are pleased with, but those seeds of true The­ology that are in him, they love and che­rish, not as Plato's, but as God's; the Wis­dom of God having graciously permitted some Notions and Rudiments of Faith to be conveyed to the Wise of the Heathen, before the publication of Christianity, to [Page 59]prepare a way for its after-reception and vindication among them. And having thus vindicated the Ancients in their Do­ctrines of these Essential Emanations, let me observe how tectly sly and abusive his Lordship's Reflexion on them is: Some, saith he, were pleased with the Platonical Notions of Emanation, as if all the Catho­lick Ancients had not the same Notions of Emanation, but some were for, and some against these Emanations. But here it had been fair to have graced the Margin with the Catalogue of the Emanatory and Anti­emanatory Ancients; and I do here urge and challenge his Lordship to produce them in foro to speak for themselves, be­fore sentence be passed upon them. This I doubt is an hard task, but a demand that cannot be denied me without shame. But it seems these Platonick Ancients were grown old unto Dotage, and become Chil­dren again, and as such were pleased, poor Souls, with the pretty Baubles that Plato invented for them; and thus we have made a good beginning upon the Fifth Commandment, if the Sense thereof may extend to the Fathers of our Religion, and the Church.

§ 5. To the absurdity of Emanations succeeds that of foecundity in the Divine Es­sence, [Page 60]which his Lordship taxes in both Ancients and Moderns, that is, most emi­nently in St. Athanasius and Bishop Pear­son, that were in their respective Ages, the exactest and gravest Divines in the World, without exception or diminution of any, that indulged not to Humane Wit or Fan­cy in their Theological Theories, but re­lyed wholly on the force of the Scriptures and the Tradition of their Fathers. Now * Athan. con. Sabell. Greg. — [...]. Id. con. A­rian. Orat. 2. [...] — [...] Id. con. Arian. Orat. 3. [...], — [...], &c. Atha­nasius so far insisted on this Doctrine of foecundi­ty, that he looked on it as necessary against both Sabellianism and Arianism, both which Heresies stood on this Principle, (which was therefore heretical) that there is no foecundity in the Divine Essence, for the concession of this in­ferrs the Eternal Persona­lity and Existence of the Son. And the wonder­ful †Expos of the Creed. Artic. His only Son. Pearson sticks to this Doctrine of foecundity as essential to our Faith, not only against those Elder Here­ticks, but their Bastards also, the Mahome­tans; and is it not an unaccountable sort [Page 61]of confidence or ignorance in his Lordship to joyn with Sabellians, Arians, and Ma­hometans in flurting at the Doctrine of foe­cundity, on which alone stands the Faith in the Father and the Son? Either there­fore let his Lordship deny, or own this foecundity? if he deny it, let him be ana­thema; if he owns it, why doth he accuse the Fathers and Moderns that teach it, as transgressing due bounds? But, perhaps, it was necessary to do that by oblique refle­xion, which it is not yet safe to do by open mouth to avoid an open conviction. But a Man is as well know by his hints as protestations, and, perhaps, much better.

§. 6. Let us now see how Heathenish his Lordship makes these Divine and Catho­lick Notions of the Fathers. † For, *P. 31. saith he, we have footsteps of a Tradition, as ancient as any we can trace up, which limited the Emanations to Three. And these thought there was a production, or rather an eduction of two out of the first, in the same manner that some Philosophers thought, that Souls were propagated from Souls, and the figure by which this was ex­plained, being that of one Candle being lighted at another, this seems to have gi­ven the Rise to those words Light of Light. It is certain that many of the Fathers fell [Page 62]often into this conceit, &c. Now sure I am, that I have set his Lordship's words in their due connexion with those cited in the last Section: And are the reason assigned, why they exorbitated beyond due bounds that taught Emanations and Foecundity, be­cause the Notion is Platonick and the Tra­dition heathenish and false. For those (which his Lordship notes) who limited the Emanations to three, resembled it to the imagined propagation of Souls, and lighting of Candles, and consequently from these [Heathens] came our Light of Light. This is the true Grammar Sense of his Lord­ship's Words. For the Relative these re­spects the Heathens only last before-men­tioned, and the representation by Souls propagated and Candles lighted, reflect back only on the Heathen Tradition, and is not this a great Credit to the Nicene formula, to have such an heathen and exor­bitant Original: The Discourse to this pe­riod is of an heathen Tradition, heathenish­ly expounded by the Similes of Souls pro­pagated, and Candles lighted; for I dare engage no Catholick Author ever represen­ted the Essential Foecundity and Emana­tions in the Deity, by those Figures of Souls and Candles, that thence probably his Lordship might be thought to have set [Page 63]these as the Figures of Christian Authors, of which he makes no mention within these words here cited. Afterward indeed he tells for certain, that many of the Fa­thers fell often into this conceit, which he owns to be heathenish, and gives it no other original, either in Scripture or Jew­ish Tradition. The most that can be most favourably imagined (though contrary to the order of his Lordship's words) is that the Tradition was heathenish, though dressed up by Christian Ancients under the Similes of Souls propagated and Candles lighted, for many of the Fathers most cer­tainly fell often into this conceit, and so probably came our Nicene formula Light of Light. The upshot then is; the Tra­dition of Emanation and Foecundity is ex­orbitant and heathenish, set off either by Heathen or Christian Expositors by the ex­orbitant Similes of Souls and Candles, from which Figure of Candles probably came the Nicene form Light of Light. That this is the genuine sense of his Lordship is manifest, for he accuses these Principles as exorbitant, for this cause, that they are hea­thenish, and set off with ill Similes, one of which was probably the ground of the Nicene Confession. For, if his Lordship will not own this sense, let him declare, if [Page 64]the Simile of one Candle lighted from ano­ther, give a regular notion of the Faith in the Doctrine of Emanations and Foecundi­ty? If it does, why does he blame the Do­ctors of those Emanations, Foecundities, and Similes, as Men that have gone beyond due bounds, and fallen into these exorbi­tant conceits? But if he will stand to it that these Doctrines and their Similes are irregular conceits, than the Nicene form has an ill foundation in his Lordship's pro­fessed Opinion. But, before I come to vin­dicate the true Originals of the Nicene form, I will examine the truth of this Hi­story, whether many of the Fathers often fell into this conceit; that the Emanations in the Divine Essence are of the same man­ner that some Philosophers thought Souls propagated from Souls, or Candles were lighted from Candles. Sure I am, the Con­ceits and Similes are not only improper, but contrarily dissimilar to the Notions of the Catholick Theology. For this teaches a co-eternal Emanation of the second and third Persons, with a co-eternal and inse­parable Unity, and essential Dependence of the two latter on the first Person; but Souls propagated from Souls, and Candles lighted from Candles are neither coaeval, nor united, nor dependant one on the [Page 65]other, and so are fitter for an Arian than a Catholick Simile; though, I confess it not fit for all Arian conceptions neither. These then being such absurd conceits char­ged upon many Fathers, as often used by them, one should have hoped for a large list of them, and the places cited in the Margin; but, alas! here is no such dire­ction either for the Student or Examinant. And for my own part, I confess, I never remember any such conceit in any Father. Of the imagined propagation of Souls, I have not made the least observation among the Fathers; but of what may seem to come near these Candles, or might occa­sion this rash conceit of his Lordship for want of memory or care, I will here offer. Now first, I confess, I have found this my­stery * Athenag. Legat. [...]. Aug. Exp. in Joh. c. 5. Tract. 20. & Ser. 199. De quin (que) Hae­resib. & de Verb Apost. & quor. al. Ser. 1. assimilated to the light, motion, and heat of fire, which are all coaeval. I have also observed a Si­mile of fire, generating fire in it self, brought by † Hilar. De Trinit. l. 7. Affert autem pro parte sidei hujus sig­nisicationem ignis in se ignem habens, & in igne iguis manens. Nam cum sit in eo splendor luminis, na­turae calor, virtus u­rendi, mobilitas ae­stuandi, totum ta­menignis est, & haec universa una natura est.—Quaero ita­que nunc utrum di­visio ac separatio, cum ignis ex igne est? Aut nunquid abscinditur natura ne maneat, aut non sequitur ne insit, cum accenso Lumine ex Lumine per quendam quasi Nativitatis profectum naturae nulla defectio sit, & tamen sit lumen ex lumine? Aut nun­quid hoc non manet in eo quod ex sese sine defectione sub­sistit. Aut hoc non inest in eo unde non recisum est, sed cum unitate substantiae naturalis exivit? Et quaero an non unum sint, cum lumen ex lumine nec divisione separabile sit, nec genere naturae? Et haec ut dixi ad intelligentiam sidei tantum comparata sunt, non etiam ad Dei dignitatem. — Sed quia simpliciorum fidem furor haereticus turbaret, ut id de Deo credi non oporteret, quod difficile nisi per cor­poream comparationem possit intelligi. St. Hilary to illustrate the Homoousion, with an excuse for its singularity and indignity, to which he was forced hereby to succour the Faith of the [Page 66]plainer and simpler sort of People against the tricks of the Hereticks, who endeavoured to shake their Faith by objecting to them the difficulty of its conception, which he thought fit to be helped by corporeal comparisons. But note, he is so far from the Simile of two separate Candles, or Fires, or Lights that his Discourse runs altogether against them; and so in his judgment these sepa­rate Lights are no proper, or safe, or con­gruous representations, or originals for the received Light of Light.

§. 7. But here it is absolutely necessary, that I examine what his Lordship ordered to be sent me for his Defence in this parti­cular. This was a passage in Tertullian's [Page 67]Apologetick ch. 21. Ita de Spiritu Spiri­tus, & de Deo Deus, ut Lumen de Lumine accensum. Manet integra & indefecta mate­riae radix; (so I suppose his Lordship read out of Dr. Whitby) etsi plures inde traduces qualitatum mutuens. In this imperfect Seg­ment, I will only translate what is inten­ded for this purpose of his Lordship, viz. So (is Christ or the Verbum) Spirit of Spi­rit, and God of God, as Light kindled from Light. Now supposing this place exactly full to his Lordship's design, I ask, is this Doctrine true or false, good or bad? If true and good, why is Tertullian said a­mong many other Fathers to have fallen into this Conceit? To fall into conceits is an expression for giddiness and error, not for Judgment and the discerning of great and true Mysteries. How has Tertullian gone beyond due bounds if this be cano­nical Theology? But if this Doctrine be false and bad, let his Lordship anathema­tize it, and the Catholick Church toge­ther, that ever owned it. But further sup­posing this still to be the Simile of two Candles, whether good or bad; yet this is but one Author, not a Father, not every where sound or constant to himself in these Theories, and this is but one place, which if a reproachful one, yet ought not to af­fect [Page 68]the reputation of many Fathers as fre­quently guilty of the same, except those other many Fathers and their frequent use thereof be produced against them. Again, supposing still this to be a Simile of fire, yet how can his Lordship prove that it in­tends two separate fires; why not fire, or flame, or light in and from the same origi­nal fire, without division or separation, like the late adduced Simile of St. Hilary? Since what went before, and shall be by and by inserted, brings the inseparability of the Logos, under the representation of this Simile? But after all, this is not a Si­mile of Candles, or common separate fires, but only of the Sun and its Ray. For thus runs the whole Simile. Etiam cum Radi­us ex Sole porrigitur, portio ex summâ, sed Sol erit in Radio, quia solis est Radius, nec separatur substantia, sed extenditur. Ita de Spiritu Spiritus, & de Deo Deus, sicut lumen de lumine accensum. Manet integra & indefecta Materiae Matrix, etsi plures inde traduces qualitatum mutuer is. Ita & quod de Deo profectum est, Deus est, & Dei Filius, & unus ambo. Ita & de Spiritu Spiritus, & de Deo Deus, modulo alterum, non numero, gradu, non statu fecit, & à matrice non recessit, sed excessit; iste igitur Dei Radius, ut retro semper praedicabatur, [Page 69]delapsus in virginem quandam, &c. Which I will endeavour to translate to the taste of the Reader. Even when the Ray is dilated from the Sun, it is a portion taken from the Principal, but the Sun will still be in, or within the Ray, because it is the Ray of the Sun, neither is his Substance separated by the Ray, but only extended. So the Word is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, like Light kindled from Light. The Original of the Substance or Matter remains entire and unimpaired, though you receive from it many derivations of qualities. So also that which proceeded from God, is God, and the Son of God, and both are One. So also he that is Spirit of Spirit, and God of God, is another from his Original by Mode, not by Number, by Order, not by Nature, and he departed not away from his Original, but only proceeded. Wherefore this Ray of God, as he was ever in past Ages prea­ched, descending into a certain Virgin, &c. Here the beginning enters, and the end concludes with that Simile of the Ray, (which title of the Logos was ever before acknowledged) and there is no other. The substance of the Simile and Similatum are both in themselves undivided, and so paral­lel; the first Ita joyns the immediate con­sequents to the Simile of Sun and Ray im­mediately [Page 70]foregoing, and repeated in the Lumen de Lumine accensum, within the same period, as it is, or should be pointed. And all the other Ita's coming after with vehement elegancy look back to this Si­mile, with which at last the whole Theory is concluded in these words, Iste igitur Dei Radius. This I think as clear as if written with the very Sun-beams. Ay! but if this Lumen de Lumine be not Can­dle of Candle, how comes accensum to be used, which does not agree to the Emission of the Sun Rays? No? What not by a Me­taphor, or a light and acute Catachresis? May not a Man say Radii de Sole accensi, as well as Lumen de Lumine accensum? Rays kindled from the Sun, as Light kindled from Light? especially on this Hypothesis, That the Sun is a Globe of fire, as to the Eye it seems to be? On this notion I think it proper even without a Trope. But why will not his Lordship allow me a Trope (if the truth needs it) in accensum, who requires it for himself in Lumen? For with­out a Trope Lumen doth not signifie either Candle, or Fire; and if all the words must be taken in their Primitive intention, then his Lordship loses his pretence, that this place speaks of two Candles, or two Fires. But had it here really signified Fire, yet it [Page 71]does not hence follow, that it speaks of two separate Fires, since St. Hilary has found ignem in igne, and lumen de lumine accensum in the same Fire. Which answer I shall give also, if any Man shall object that *Cit. Bullo Defens. Fid. Nicen. p. 368. of Hippolytus, tan­quam lumen de lumine, & aquam ex fonte, aut ra­dium à Sole; where the lumen de lumine, and the radius à Sole being both distinctly set with another Simile interposed; I take lumen de lumine in general to respect all sorts of luminaries whatsoever, which send forth a coaeval Ray, or sort of flaming Light from their Original Substance with­out any diminution. So much for his Lord­ship and Tertullian.

§. 8. But there are two passages offered to my consideration, that seem much more apposite to his Lordship's purpose, one out of Justin Martyr, the other out of Tatian his Scholar, which I will exactly consider. Justin in his Dialogue with Trypho had as­serted, that in the beginning before all Crea­tures God begat out of himself a certain ra­tional Virtue (or Power), which is also cal­led the Glory of the Lord by the Holy Spi­rit, and sometimes Son, and sometimes Wis­dom, and sometimes Angel, and sometimes God, and sometimes Lord, and Word, some­times [Page 72]he calls himself the Captain of an Host, when he appeared in the shape of a Man to Joshua the Son of Nun.— For that he is capable of all appellations, in that he ministreth to his Father's will, and for that he was begotten by * [...]. The Interpreter leaves out [...], and so the consequents re­quire. the Will of the Fa­ther, after the manner we see a word produced in us. For when we utter a word, we beget it not by abscissi­on or separation, so as to lessen the internal word or reason by this utterance. And as we see in Fire, that out of one Fire another is kindled without the diminution of the first Fire from whence it was kindled, this remaining the same. And that which is kindled of it also † [...] appears to subsist not having lessened that from whence it was lighted. Now some­time after the Father shews the reason to those Jews, why he so often repeated this truth; because, saith he, I know that there are some willing to prevent me, and pretend that the Power that appeared from the Fa­ther of all things unto Moses, or to Abra­ham, or Jacob, is called Angel in its pro­gression unto Men, because by it the purpo­ses of the Father are declared unto Men. [Page 73]And that it is called Glory, because it pre­sents it self in an incomprehensible appea­rance, and Man because it appears in such [humane] shapes, as the Father will; and they call it Word, because it brings the speeches of God unto Men. They say also; that this Power is indivisible and insepara­ble from the Father, after the same man­ner as they say, the light of the Sun upon the Earth is not to be cut off, or separated from the Sun which is in Heaven, but when he sets the Light is carried off with it. So say they the Father, when he pleaseth, cau­seth his Power † [...] to leap forth. to fly a­broad, and when he listeth retracts it again to him­self. After this manner also they teach that he makes Angels. But now that there are Angels always abiding, and not resolved again into that of which they were made, hath been [already] demonstrated, and withal * [...], videntur vi­tiosa. it hath been abun­dantly shewn so of this power, which the Prophe­tick Word calls God and Angel; and that he is not as the Light of the Sun only † [...]. nominally numbred, but really is another in number, I have shewn by exquisite reason in [Page 74]my former discourses in short, when I said this virtue was begotten by his Power and Will, not by Resection, as if the Essence of the Father were divided asunder, as all other things divided and parted, are not the same they were before the division. And for example's sake, I took those instances, as we see from one Fire other Fires kindled, that Fire not being lessened from whence ma­ny may be kindled, but remaining the same. Thus Justin. By which it appears, that these kind of Pro-Sabellians used the Simi­le of the Sun and its light to prove the Lo­gos non-subsistent, no Person, Son, or An­gel of the Father, and therefore Justin re­jected that Simile, by which the Sun and its Light, and God and his Logos are only nominally distinguished, and took the Si­mile of Fires kindled from Fires, in which there is none of that diminution, which those Adversaries object to our Doctrine of the consubstantiality, and both Fires sub­sist really after one is kindled from the o­ther in a true diversity. If then Justin threw off the Simile of the Sun as favou­ring the Heresie after called Sabellian, and took that of Fires kindled from other Fires, as Tatian also uses the Simile of Torches lighted from Torches; is it not probable [Page 75]that our Light of Light came from these Similes used by Justin and Tatian, which are neither Sabellian as putting two subsi­stent subjects, nor Arian as illustrating the Homoousion? In answer to this I need be but very short, that Justin doth not speak of the Eternal, Internal, and Substantial Emanation of the Logos, but of his first progression at the Will of his Father to the Creation of all things; that this progressi­on was a kind of generation or nativity was the unanimous conception (I think) of all the Philosophick Ancients, because as here below nativity produceth the Child into light and action, that was be­fore wrapp'd up secretly in the Womb qui­escent and non-apparent; so the Logos by this emission from the Father to the Crea­tion of all things did in a manner come out of the Father's [...] (to use the words of Theophilus Antiochenus) to the publick sight, apprehension, or perception of the intellectual World created by him, and acted also providentially in every part of the Creation. Nor was this form of Theology ever condemned in the Church, though it was not made or esteemed mat­ter of necessary Faith or Doctrine. Now the Nature of this Theory was, that [Page 76] *Athenag. Leg. Edit. Oxon. p. 38. [...] Whom yet he there calls the [...], because of his [...] in the ope­ration of all things. Theoph. ad Autolyc. p. 81. [...]. God the Father, being an Eternal Mind, had e­ternally in him a consub­sistent reason, † Tertull. adv. Pra­xeam. Ante omnia enim Deus crat solus, ipse sibi & mundus, & locus, & omnia. Solus autem, quia ni­hil extrinsecus praeter cum. Caeterum ne tunc quidem solus: habebat enim secum, quam habebat in se­metipso, rationem suam scilicet. Ratio­nalis enim Deus, & Ratio in ipso prius, & ita ab ipso omnia. Quae ratio sensus ipsi­us est. Hane Graeci [...] dicunt, quo vo­cabulo etiam sermo­nem appellamus. Ide­o (que) jam in usu est no­strorum per simpli­citatem interpreta­tionis Sermonem di­cere in primordio a­pud Deum fuisse, cum magis rationem com­petat antiquiorem haberi; quia non Ser­monalis à Principio, sed rationalis Deus e­tiam ante Principi­um. Et quia ipse quo­que Sermo ratione consistens priorem eam ut substantiam suam ostendat. Ta­men & sic nihil inte­rest. Nam etsi Deus nondum sermonem suum miserat, proin­de cum cum ipsa & in ipsâ ratione intrà semetipsum habebat tacitè cogitando, & disponendo secum quae per Sermonem monerat dicturus. Cum ratione enim sua cogitans atque disponens Sermonem eam efficiebat quam Sermone tractabat. —Vide cum tacitus tecum ipse congrede­ris, ratione hoc ipsum agi intra te occurren­te ea tibi cum sermo­ne ad omnem cogita­tus tui motum, & ad omnem sensus tui pulsum. Quodcun (que) cogitaveris senno est, quodcunque senseris ratio est. Loquaris illud in animo neces­se est, & dum loque­ris, conlocutorem pa­teris sermonem in quo inest haec ipsa ratio, qua cum eo cogitans loquaris, per quem loquens cogi­tas. — Quanto er­go plenius hoc agi­tur in Deo, cujus tu quoque imago & si­militudo censeris, quod habeat in se e­tiam tacendo ratio­nem, & in ratione sermonem: Possum ita (que) non temere prae­struxisse, & tunc De­um ante universitaris constitutionem so­lum non fuisse ha­bentem in semetipso proinde rationem, & in ratione sermonem, quem secundum à se faceret agitando inter se. Haec vis & haec divini sensus dispositio apud Scripturas etiam in Sophiae nomine ostenditur. Ouid enim sapientius ratione Dei sive sermone? Ita (que) Sophiam quoque exaudi ut secundam personam conditam, Dominus creavit me initium viarum suarum. Nam ut primum Deus voluit [...]ea quae cum ratione & sermone disposuerat intra se, in substantius & spe­cies suas edere, ipsum primum protulit sermonem, haben­tem in se individuas suas rationes Sophiam, ut per [...]ipsum fierent universa per quem erant cogitata atque disposita, imo & facta jam quantum in Dei sensu — Tunc igitur ipse ser­mo speciem & ornatum suum sumit, sonum & vocem cum dicit Deus, fiat Lux. Haec est nativitas perfecta sermonis, dum ex Deo procedit, conditus ab eo primum ad cogita­tum in nomine Sophiae, Dominus condidit me, initium via­rum; dehine generatus ad effectum: Cum pararet coelum aderam illi: Exinde cum parem sibi faciens de quo proce­dendo filius factus est, primogenitus ut ante omnia genitus, & unigenitus ut solus ex Deo genitus. Vide plura ibid. which was not yet an actual word, till God thereby spake and commanded all things to be made, which was a kind of birth to him as such an actual word. That Justin speaks of this generation and e­mission is manifest in that he compares it to our ut­terance of words from our internal Reason, which is not diminished by that utterance, and withal as­serts this generation to be not only by the Power, but the Will of God the Father, which is not pro­per to the Eternal Emana­tion. Now Justin's mea­ning is, that this Power (called among other Terms the Logos) was of the Fathers substance, from which he was not divided by this progres­sive [Page 77]emission or nativity, and that after this pro­gression into the World from the Father he has subsisted in making se­veral appearances in it, being never called back from the World again, as the Rays of the Sun are upon the setting, but re­maining and subsisting in the World as a Fire does that is kindled from ano­ther, being not drawn back again into that from whence it was kindled. This appears further to be his Sense from the like Doctrine of Ta­tian, *Con. Gent. who after he had taught that God the Father had before the Creation the Logos subsi­stent in him, at length thus speaks; By the Will of Gods simplicity the Lo­gos [...] goes forth, and going forth not in vain. [ [...] per vacu­um] he becomes the first [Page 78]born production [...] of the Spirit. But thus he became by [...] com­munication, not abscission. For that which is cut off is separated from its first original, but that which is Communicated [...] being endowed with its proper function, did not leave him from whence it was taken void of the Logos. For as many Fires are kindled from one Torch, and the light of the first Torch is not di­minished through the kind­ling of many Torches: So also the going forth out of the power of his Father did not render his Father void of Reason, or without the Logos. So all the [Page 79]discourse is about the [...], which Justin and Tatian both make a kind of na­tivity or production, and the Simile is ap­plied only thereto, not the eternal Ema­nation of its subsistence from the Father. Now the Nicene Creed in this form Light of Light, hath respect to the Original of the Essential and Eternal Subsistence of the Logos, to wit, whence he is what he is, that is, God and Light, and defines that he is God of God, and Light of Light es­sentially, not mentioning his Office in the Creation, till after other interposed Arti­cles of his Being and Subsistence. And for the truth of this sense in the Nicene Creed, I appeal to the suffrage of all Antiquity. So then these places of Justin and Tatian touching only the prosiliency of the Son from the Father to create all things, by which the Co-eternal Wisdom had a kind of probletick nativity of an actual Word, pertain not to the matter of this Light of Light in the Nicene form. But doth not [Page 80] Justin say, that the Sun and its Ray are not two really, but only nominally? I grant he does so, but this in concession to the pertinacy of the Opponents, who ob­stinately urged this, that the Light of the Sun is [...] an unsubsistent virtue, and so the Logos likewise: Not that other­wise Justin would have waved the Simile of the Sun and his Rays, which had its Authority in the Scriptures; to satisfie therefore the perverters of a Simile other­wise good did Justin wave it, and chose that of Fires. And yet what is it that Ju­stin illustrates thereby? Not the manner how the Logos eternally issues from and subsists in his Father, no, nor the manner of this prosiliency to the Creation, but on­ly the non-diminution of the Father by this prosiliency, or non-separation of sub­stance therein, and the substantial perma­nency of the Logos in the World, after this prosiliency, without revocation out of it back again: Whereas his Lordship fixes his Figures of Candles on the conceits of the Fathers, concerning the foecundity in the Divine Essence, and the essential Edu­ctions of the two last from the first. So then these places give no colour to that Opprobrium. But though this be a full answer, yet will I ex abundanti adventure [Page 81]further to consider the Antiquity of the Si­mile of the Sun Rays, and how it came to be perverted by Justin's Adversaries, and therefore waved by him. It is evident therefore, that though Justin greatly admi­red the Platonick Philosophy before he tur­ned Christian; yet after that he admired the Theology taught in the Church by Theories received from the Scriptures, in which also the better part of the Jews a­greed. Now it is certain that *Prov. 8.22, &c. Solomon's Proverbs and the †Sap. Sal. c. 7. c. 8. c. 9. c. 11. c. 12. Theories there­upon in the Apocryphal Books of the Wisdom of Solomon † Eccl. c. 1. c. 24. and Ecclesiasti­cus teach the Deity, Consubstantiality, Ge­neration, and this Progression of the Di­vine Wisdom. And by the Jewish Author of the Wisdom of Solomon *Ch. 7.26. he is called [...], that is, Ray of the everlasting Light, and according to that Hebrew Notion the Di­vine Author † Hebr. 1.3. to the He­brews calls Christ the [...] of the Father's Glory. So then it seems hence, that the Ancient pious Jews looked on the Wisdom of God, as a Personal Companion with God, issuing from him as a Ray from the glorious Lu­minary [Page 82]the Sun. This Wisdom, as by it God spake and commanded the Creation of all things, or as being that Archetypal Reason whence the World was formed, was called by the Hellenist Jews Logos, and was looked on as a Son, a Personal Mini­ster and Angel of God in the Creation, Providence, and Revelations. This being then their celebrated and traditional Theo­logy, the next Curiosity was to enquire into his generation and descent. And here no wonder if that of Esaias 53.8. most a­greeably quadrated to the Jewish igno­rance, Who shall declare his generation? Yet for this they go back to their great Master Moses, who declared that God spake the Fiat of all things, and therein therefore they conceive a certain Produ­ction and Genesis of their Logos, his in­ternal conception being the geniture, and its emission into its effects its nativity, af­ter the manner that our Notions are con­ceived and offered in our voice. And this I believe is that which * Philo de Mund. Opific. [...] & an'ea [...]. Philo meant, that God did voluntarily prefigure in himself the Archety­pal World, which is his Logas, after the manner of all Artificers that pro­pose [Page 83]Schemes to them­selves according to which they perform their exter­nal works. For as Philo does not say that God made or created, but on­ly prefigured in himself the archetypal World; so by that he only means, that of all the Ideas in the Divine Mind, of which consists the Eternal Rea­son and Wisdom of God, God chose that of this World to be the pattern of what he would create by it, and according to it. For one cannot think, that so great a Man as Philo should think, that ever there was any imaginable point or time, when God's essential reason was not, or was without the Idea's of all things possible. I take it therefore, that the Eter­nal Reason, which with all other possible Idea's, eternally had in it the Idea of such a World (as ours is) possible, is by Philo conceived to be in this Idea designed by God, for an actual pattern and principle also of this future World, and so in this [Page 84]Respect the Logos and first begotten Son of God. And from this Jewish fountain pro­ceed the like Notions in the Platonick The­ology. Now hereupon Justin disputing with Jews, does in the first citation above made argue with them upon the Theology of their Fathers * Philo. de Confus. Dialect. [...]. — [...] & ad verb. Zach. 6.12. [...]. Vid. Euseb. Praep. Evan. l. 11. c. 15. declared by Philo, to whose very words he seems to have had an especial respect, if you but compare them. But now the Sadduces, that had not Religion e­nough to believe any An­gels or noetick Beings, de­nied all this, and to evade the force of Moses his Te­stimonies (whose Books only they admitted) they grant indeed † Calv. Instit. l. 1. c. 14. S. 9. that the Power of God appeared to the Fathers, and was called Angel, as delive­ring God's Will; but not as really a subsistent Spirit, but only an agitated Vir­tue. And I indeed am of opinion, that after Chri­stianity, and our Doctrines of Christ as the Divine [Page 85] Logos increased, the Jews quitted their former Theology of the Logos so far, as herein to admit Sadducism, and to deny his Sonship, Personality, and Angelical Ministration to his Father. And as Trypho himself looks on the pre-existence of the Messias, as the Divine Logos, to be an in­credible Paradox; so those others that Justin says were willing to pre-occupate him with those Answers which he there recites and refutes, seem to be perfect Sad­duces in this Point of the Logos, and all Angels; and those some of Trypho's Com­pany. But whether they were Jewish Sad­duces, or some Hereticks of a pretended Christian Character; it is plain they used the old Traditional Simile of the [...] or light of the Sun, on purpose to de­stroy the Traditions of Angels, and conse­quently the Personality and Office of the Logos. Thus say they, our Tradition re­presents the Powers apparent, as mere [...], mere impersonal unsubsistent rays, that abide no longer than their Office, but return again to their original presently after, as the light goes off when the Sun sets. So all this put together proves, that the Simile of the [...] was used in the old Traditional Theology of the Jews, and continued among Christians, but was [Page 86]perverted by Sadduces, especially since Christianity, to oppose our other Theolo­gical Theories; and therefore Justin wa­ved it to avoid the wrangles of those Jews he then dealt with. And hence, notwith­standing all such Jews or Sadduceans, the Christian Church still ever kept this Simi­le, and always alledged it to the explica­tion of the Nicene form, without fear of being impeached of Sabellianism. But as for Justin's Simile of several Fires, and Ta­tian's several Torches, though the invalua­ble Dr. Bull ( [...]) hereby well shews, that these Ancients held the Homoousion, yet * Bull Defen. Fid. Nie. p. 357. Similia au­tem, quae post ea quae hue usque explicavi­mus, adbibet Tatia­nus, ad mysterium, sive aeternae produ­ctionis, sive [...], ut­cun (que) i [...]strandum, nolo omnino praesta­re, &c. he confesses Tatian's Si­mile (which is the same with Justin's) to be lame, and such as he will not make out, and so with this note I conclude this long disquisition.

§. 9. But before we leave this our form of Faith, it may not be amiss to find it out a better Original. Now the Glorious purity of the Divine Essence is such, that for it we have no adequate conception, and therefore we are forced to celebrate it by names of the greatest Glories and Purities, [Page 87]which we know, and which seem by the intention of God in Nature to be Symbols of it. And of all these the most Excellent is Light. This in Gene­ral St. Paul * Eph. 5.13. excellently defines, that † [...] à [...] inde [...], &c. whatsoever doth make manifest is Light, according to the Greek derivation of the Word. And accordingly the Ʋrim in the Pontifick Pectoral is by the Septua­gint rendred [...]. So that that which is most excellently manifeslative, that is the most perfect and true Light. Of these there must be two sorts according to the two great parts of the Mundane System, i. e. intellectual and corporeal, and of these the intellectual are really the nobler, and of these the manifestative Light of the Deity must be the truest and highest of all, upon which no Manichean darkness can border. Hence St. John saith, that *1 Joh. 1.5. God is light, and in him is no dark­ness at all, which is originally true of God the Father, and as really true of the Son and Holy Spirit. For of the Son the same St. John saith, † Joh. 1.9. That he is the true Light that Lighteth every Man that cometh into the World; and if true, then not Parabolical or Metaphorical Only. So that as the Scriptures teach the [Page 88]Father to be originally God, and the Son really God of God the Father, so when they teach God the Father to be true ori­ginal Light, and the Son to be true Light also, by immediate consequence they teach the Son to be true Light of Light Origi­nal, like that Text which the Fathers ap­ply to this purpose; In thy Light shall we see Light. So that our Light of Light is not the product of a Simile in two Can­dles, but a literal truth revealed in the Scriptures, and thence as truly taken as God of God. And we may as well deny the reality and truth of the Life of God, de­ny him to be the living God, though he himself swears by that Life, and attests the truth of it, as to deny that he is true Light, which is expresly asserted of the Father, and the Son. Now the Son being what he is from the Father, here is literal Scri­pture for Light of Light, Light indeed in­accessible, yet Light true and essential. And from hence I dare deduce the Nicene form, instead of that Chandlers Shop, whence his Lordship's fancy had its illumi­nation. Here then will I fix his Lordship in this Question; Whether the Logos the Son of God be really what the Scripture calls him true Light, and Life? If not, I yield the Argument, but at his Lordship's [Page 89]peril. But if he really be, then the Creed is true without a Metaphor from Divine Revelation, not from humane conceits and adumbrations. As for the [...], I grant it a term metaphorical, but that is nor in the Creed, perhaps, because a Si­mile, and the same like all Similes, below the dignity of the Hypostasis represented thereby; but however this is nothing to his Lordship's pretty Simile, that he found out for the good old Faith and Fathers; but the Light of Light is as literally true, as any thing spoken of God can be, or is in Holy Scripture.

§. 10. But supposing many Fathers had borrowed their dim light from these Can­dles, yet it seems it led them like an Ignis fatuus into strange brakes, if, as his † Lordship taxes them, *P. 31. in this way of explaining this matter they have said many things, which intimate that they be­lieved an inequality between the Persons, and a subordination of the second and third to the first. That the Fathers do teach a Pensonal Gradation or Subordination in the Deity Igrant, and for the account hereof, I referr to Dr. Bull's fourth Section of his Great Monument of the Faith. But had these Fathers fallen into the conceit of this Simile of Souls propagated from Souls, or [Page 90]Candles lighted from Candles, I cannot see how they could have bended it to assi­milate such, or any Subordination. For there is none such between Souls propaga­ted from Souls, or Candles lighted from Candles, though there be succession of time. Beside Inequality and Subordination either Respects, Essences, or Persons, and his Lordship ought to have named the par­ticular sort, least his Reader should be apt to mistake, that these Fathers held an es­sential Inequality and Subordination, as many Heresies did, and the terms to com­mon Ears will seem to import; but this he leaves undetermined, that we may not see him in the dark. Besides, even in the Per­sonal Subordination his Lordship ought to have been clear, that it signifies no proper Inferiority or Subjection, such as is between supreme and inferiour Authorities among Men, the plenitude of the Highest not be­ing imparted to the Subject Governour, which no Fathers assert in the Trinity; and yet the terms of Inequality and Perso­nal Subordination simply set without an explanatory guard will to common senses suggest this wrong Notion as the Sense of the Fathers, though their Subordination is explicitely no other, but what consists in the order of Emanations, and the Opera­tions [Page 91] ad extra accordingly, the Father ori­ginally working all things by the Logos and the Holy Spirit, who therefore were commonly called * [...]. Mini­sters and Officers to the Father, till Hereticks took up their Words and Authorities for a Ca­vil to a greater degradation than ever was intended or would have been endured by those Fathers. Wherefore his Lordship is obliged by all Laws of integrity to shew the exorbitancy of this Subordination which they all own, or if not, to prove that these Ancient Souls and Candlesticks propagated the Doctrine of any other Sub­ordination, which I dare undertake he can never do, but without doing it must incurr the guilt of defaming the Innocent that are now with God.

§. 11. But yet it seems ill-luck would have it, that these subordinating Fathers in the very career of their exorbitant Sub­ordination, fell into such Notions of the Homoousion, which overturn their own dear Subordination, †P. 31. So that by the same Substance or Essence they do in many places express themselves, as if they only meant the same being in a general sense, as all Humane Souls are of the same Substance, that is, the same Order, or sort [Page 92]of Beings, and they seemed to entitle them to different Operations, not only in an Oeco­nomical way, but thought that the one did that which the other did not. Now suppo­sing this had been true, how could they at the same time have fallen into the sub­ordinating Heresie? For this Heresie is at least Arian, grounding the Subordination of Dignity on Inequality of Essence; but all Humane Souls are essentially equal as are all individuals of the same Species, howe­ver entitled to different Operations. But in truth his Lordship falfly charges them with a mere specifick Homoousion in the Trinity. I own they bring it for illustra­tion so far, that as separate individuals of the same kind are called [...], and there­by is implied an equality of Essence, * Dionys. Alexand. ap. Athan. de Syn. Nsc. con. Arian. Decret. [...]. — [...]. — Athan. de commun. Essent. Pat. & Fil. & Spir. Sti. [...]. — [...]— [...] (against his Lordships diffe­rent Operations) [...]— so the same word used in the God­head of the Father and the Son, excludes that essential inequality of the Arians, which his Lord­ship would yet trump up­on these very Fathers. But then the Fathers teach a proper originary Homo­ousion, by which the Fa­ther communicates his [Page 93]own Substance to the Son, and thereupon the [...], and [...], the essential in­separability of these Per­sons in the Godhead, which a mere specifick Homoousion will not reach to. But thus the argument runs strongly against the Hereticks; If Fathers, Sons, and Kins­men be [...], as being of the same nature, and descended from the same loins, if more loosely all things of the same kind are [...] and [...], though separate and much differing in shape, humors, and actions one from ano­ther, how much more are the Father and the Son [...] in the Divine Na­ture, that are in all respects undivided, and without any dissimilitude or inequality? But, though this be the strongest way of arguing against Hereticks, from the speci­fick Homoousion to the individual, by shewing that the term in general admits [Page 94]different Modes or Degrees of coessentia­lity or connaturality, of which the indivi­dual is the greatest and exactest in the Tri­nity; yet even simply the term it self in its utmost generality, and without restri­ction will by consequence inferr a co-eter­nity in the Persons. Let the Term there­fore open to the loosest Importance, let it be fansied that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, are Three Persons of one common Kind diversly acting in themselves; yet even this Notion will hold them to be equally of an Eternal and Divine Essence, which was strong against Arians, Photi­nians, and Macedonians; but it not being so clear against Tritheism, therefore all the Fathers asserted the [...], and the origination of the Son, and Holy. Spi­rit, inseparably in the Father on purpose to disclaim and silence those charges of Tri­theism, which yet his Lordship does not blush to fix on them (in words to be consi­dered immediately) notwithstanding their express remonstrances and demonstrations to the contrary. And yet after all, suppo­sing that the cavils of the Hereticks had forced the Fathers into such forms of argu­mentation, as might then appear expedi­ent and good ad hominem, which now in an Age of other apprehensions seem not so, [Page 95]these are not to be stretched by us to re­proachful and unintended Consequences, of which the Church in those Ages knew them to be innocent, and therefore gloried in their Piety. But, as to the diversity of Operations, with which his Lordship twits them, whatsoever forms may drop from them in popular or homiletical discourses (in which no Men take so much care to be critical as affective) I believe his Lordship can produce no Divine Operations ad extra so applied to one Person, as positively to exclude all concurrence in the others. For I wot not that they op­pose St. Paul's *1 Cor. 12.6. Doctrine, that there are diversities of Operations, but the same God which worketh all in all.

§. 12. And yet we find his Lordship †P. 42. falling into that very guilt with which he upbraids the Fathers, by framing worse Similes, (as shall appear in due place) and from them framing a Theological conceit, that in the Divine Essence, which is the simplest and perfect est Ʋnity, there may be Three, that may have a diversity of Operations, as well as Oecono­mies. Here his Lordship did not much re­member St. Paul above-cited, nor himself in his 31. page on which we now are. But whether this may be so, or not so, God [Page 96]knows, it follows not from the Simile of a compounded Nature, operating diversly from Principles, Parts, and Virtues speci­fically and naturally opposite, which in his Lordship's expression, may be brought to the Terms of a Contradiction, of which. I sup­pose, there is no capacity in the most sim­ple Nature of the Deity.

§. 13. But let us see the foul aspect of the Homoousion in the Writings of these Fathers, and what Reformation followed, thereupon. This was, saith his Lordship, *P. 31. more easily apprehen­ded, but it seemed so directly to assert three Gods, which was very contrary to many most express declarations both in the Old and New Testament, in which the Ʋnity of the Deity is so often held forth, that therefore others took another way of explaining this, making it their foundation, that the Deity was one numerical Being. In this Reflexion here are two things, which in his Lord­ship's judgment (and he says the judgment of the after Ancients) seem directly to as­sert three Gods, viz. their Arguments from a specisick Homoousion, and their ascribing divers Operations. The Jews and Greeks of old charged us * Athan. con. Arian. Orat. 4. with Polytheism, on the account of our Trinity, and his [Page 97]Lordship here seems to justifie and second the Infidels in that Charge against all the Fathers, who argued from the specifick Homoousion, and distinct Operations, which I think were well nigh all the Greek Fathers, after the Nicene Council, even Athanasius, who thus *Ubi sup. argues, and yet dissolves the Crime of Polytheism, which his Lordship with Jews and Heathens lays upon them, but from which I have clear'd them also §. 11. But if divers Operations as well as the Argu­ments from a specifick Homousion seem directly to assert three Gods; how came his Lordship to grant such a conception al­lowable, that there may be three, that may have a diversity of Operations as well as Oe­conomies? For if he be no Tritheist in al­lowing this Conception, why does he re­flect on it as Tritheite in the Fathers? And yet his Lordship diversifies the Operations much more exclusively (each of other Per­son) than any Fathers do, and in such a manner as inferrs a Tetrad in the Deity, in which according to his Lordship the Fa­ther must be a second Principle. For his words run thus; †P. 42. In the Divine Essence, which is the simplest and perfectest Ʋnity, there may be three, that may have a diversity of Operations, as well [Page 98]as Oeconomies. By the first God may be supposed to have made and to govern all things, by the second to have actuated and been most perfectly united to the Humanity of Christ, and by the third to have inspired the Penmen of the Scriptures, and the Wor­kers of Miracles, and still to renew and pu­rifie all good Minds; all which notwithstan­ding we firmly believe there is but one God. Now whatsoever acts by another is di­stinct from that other by which it acts, and prior in the Agency by the order of Rea­son. If then God acts by the first, which is the Father, that God is in Nature and Subsistence antecedent to the Father, and the first hath a former; and if God who acts by three be distinct from those three by which he acts, there are then four Di­stincts and Distinctions in the Deity, or else the three are not essential in the Deity, but only operant and unsubstantial Powers and Qualities. Yet is it against Faith to say that God acts or creates by the Father, because it makes him secondary by an un­allowable conception, the Canonical Faith herein being that God original, or God the Father acts by his Son and Holy Spirit. But whether we make the Father primary or secundary, if we attribute the Creation to him exclusively of the Logos, and Holy [Page 99]Spirit, and the Inspirations to the Spirit exclusively of the Father and the Son, and the Divine Operations in the Union of our Nature, with the Logos to the Logos, only exclusively of the Father and Holy Spirit, according to his Lordship's scheme of con­ceptions, we rove from truth, from Scri­pture, from Catholick Tradition, which ascribes these to the single Persons by a pe­culiar respect of Oeconomick Order, but not by an exclusive propriety of Operation. And, yet, though his Lordship recommends this conception, of such a separate Agency in his three Divine Anonymities, yet can he find no such incongruities in the recei­ved Doctrines of those his despised Fathers. But 'tis time to take breath, and consider what reformation following extinguished this Tritheism in the Catholick Church and Faith. Why, Others therefore laid another foundation in one numerical Deity or Being. Now what is this, but to insi­nuate, nay, openly to assert that the for­mer Fathers, that believed Emanations and Foecundity, and argued from the specifick Homoousion, with the respective Opera­tions, did not fundamentally own one in­dividual Deity? And yet how could they that stuck to the Nicene Creed, deny the fundamental Article of one God, which [Page 100]yet all the taxed Fathers defended as the Faith of all the former Fathers, who made the Monarchy a fundamental Principle a­gainst Gentilism, and were herein exactly and professedly followed by all their Suc­cessors? Nay, the feature of his Lordship's reflexion seems to attaint all Antiquity of Tritheism, till after the Doctors of the spe­cifick Homoousion and distinct Operations ceased, as not holding the Unity of the Godhead; for his conjunction therefore makes this Unity a post-nate Principle, ta­ken up upon the apprehension that the for­mer Doctrines of the Church were Tri­theite, according to his Lordship's general Imputation.

§. 14. And now it seems high time to observe upon what fancies (for they are represented as such) these Tritheite Prin­ciples were reformed by these over- seri pa­trum nepotes. * They then obser­ved, †P. 32. that the Sun besides its own Globe had an Emanation of Light, and ano­ther of Heat, which had different Opera­tions, and all from the same Essence. And that the Soul of Man had both Intallection and Love, which flowed from its Essence. So they conceived that the Primary Act of the Divine Essence was its Wisdom, by which it saw all things, and in which as in [Page 101]an Eternal Word it designed all things. This they thought might be called the Son, as being the generation of the Eternal Mind, while from the fountain Principle, together with the inward Word, there did arise a Love that was to issue forth, and that was to be the Soul of the Creation, and was more particularly to animate the Church, and in this Love all things were to have life and favour. This was rested on, and was after­wards dressed up with a great deal of dark nicety by the Schools, and grew to be the universally received explanation. So that it seems these conceptions, these reforming conceptions, are very novel, and the Do­ctrine derived from them became not universal, but by the Definitions of the Schools.

§. 15. But before we come to justifie their due Antiquity, let us consider whe­ther, as his Lordship represents them, the Tritheism of the former Fathers were real­ly amended by them. For in this Simile here are two Emanations from the Globe of the Sun, Light and Heat, which have different Operations, which if they repre­sent different Operations of the different Persons in the Deity, this reduces that Tri­theism which the Simile was designed to avoid. So unhappy were these Theologi­cal [Page 102]Tinkers in mending the former Theo­ries.

§. 16. But however, let us see whether these Theories had not really a more early Original and Reception in the Universal Church. I begin with the Simile of the Sun; †Apolog c. 21. sup. citat. §. 7. Vide. Now Tertullian the most ancient of all our Latin Writers used this Simile, and says, that in respect there­of the Logos was ever backward celebrated under this Title as the Ray of God. So *Instit. l. 4. c. 29. ille tanquam Sol, hic quasi radius à Sole porrectus. Lactantius had learned the same Simile from Ter­tullian, or his Church. So †In Evan. Joh. c. 5. Tract. 20. Si separas candorem Solis à So­le, separa Verbum à Patre. St. Austin (an African likewise) had from his Fathers derived the same Example of the Sun. The Greek Fathers that lived in and just after the Nicene Council so of­ten, so uniformly, and canonically use it (who yet argued from the specifick Sense of the Homoousion) that the citations of them would fill a Volume; so this Fancy is not later than these Tritheit Homoou­fiasts. And to let his Lordship see, that it was an Ante-Nicene Simile, not only the Scripture term [...] may con­vince, [Page 103]but the express production of it * Theognost. ap. A­than. de Syn. Nic. con. Arian. Decret. [...] — [...]. by Theognostus, who still maintains the Old Jewish and Primitive Simile a­gainst all Sadducean and Sabellian perversions of it, such as we above saw practised by the Adversa­ries of this truth in the days of Justin Martyr. See above. §. 8.

§ 17. Secondly the Antiquity of the Si­mile taken from our Minds admits so large a Vindication, that to quote † Arm. Alex. Protrep. Tertull. adv. Prax. Theoph. ad Autolyo. Orig. con. Cels. l. 7. & de Princip. l. 1. c. 2. Euseb, con. Marcell. l 2. c. 17. Athan. Syn. Nic. con. Hoer. Arian. Decret. & con. Arian. Orat. 2. Orat. 3. Orat. 4. & con. Gent. Greg. Nyss. de hom. Opific. c. 5. Greg. Naz. Ire­nic. 2. Ambros. de dignit. human. condit. Aug. in Evan. Joh. Tract. c. 1. sayings at large would make a little com­pendious Library of the Fathers, and therefore to avoid a bulk, I must re­ferr to a few Authors and Authorities in the Mar­gin, that are confessedly of a much greater anti­quity than his Lordship assigns to the invention or use of this Simile, who [Page 104]yet resemble the Theology of the Trinity by the image thereof in our Minds, which the Scriptures affirming to be created after the Image, and in the Likeness of God, recommended to those Fathers, and us to learn Theories of God by those glances of his Divinity, with which he has both ador­ned and enlightened our intellectual Pow­ers, from those inspired strains of Theolo­gy, that so expresly suit with that Idea we have of our own internal Principles.

§. 18. But now let us further try, whe­ther his Lordship, *P. 32. that flouts the Fathers for their many imper­tinent Similes, does not pretend to supply us with others in our own Nature, which really are much more impertinent to [...]e conception of the Trinity. We do pl [...]ly perceive, †P. 41, 42. saith he, i [...]ur selves two, if not three Princi­ples of Operation, that do not only differ [...] Ʋnderstanding and Will, which are only dif­ferent Modes of thinking, but differ in their Character and way of Operation. All our cogitations and reasonings are a sort of Acts, in which we can reflect on the way how we operate. We perceive that we act freely in them, and that we turn our Minds to such objects and thoughts as we please. But by another Principle, of which we perceive [Page 105]nothing, and can reflect upon no part of it, we live in our Bodies, we animate and actu­ate them, we receive sensations from them, and give motions to them, we live and dye, and do not know how all this is done. It seems to be from some Emanation from our Souls, in which we do not feel that we have any liberty, and so we must conclude, that this Principle in us is natural and necessary. In acts of Memory, Imagination, and Dis­course, there seems to be a mixture of both Principles, or a third that results out of them. For we feel a freedom in one re­spect, but as for those marks that are in our brain, that set things in our memory, or fur­nish us with words, we are necessary Agents; they come in our way, but we do not know how: We cannot call up a figure of things, or words at pleasure; some disorder in our Mechanism hides or flattens them, which when it goes off, they start up and serve us, but not by any act of our Ʋnderstanding and Will. Thus we see, that in this single undi­vided Essence of ours, there are different Principles of Operation, so different as li­berty and necessity are from one another. I am far from thinking that this is a proper explanation or resemblance of this mystery, (and here I indeed jump in judgment with his Lordship) yet it may be called in some [Page 106]sort an illustration of it, since it shews us from our own Composition, that in one Essence there may be such different Principles, which in their proper Character may be brought to the terms of a contradiction of being free and not free. So in the Divine Essence, which is the simplest and perfectest Ʋnity, there may be three that may have a diversi­ty of Operations, &c. Tenderden Steeple and Goodwyn Sands! This is a worthy Si­mile indeed (to supplant that scouted one of the Ancients) in which is no representa­tion of the Logos, and its Parent Principle, nor of the Spirit of Holiness that is in the Father and the Son, none of their co-essen­tiality, co-eternity, or order, all which are resembled in that Simile which this un­dermines. But however, let us try the stuff, first generally, and then particular­ly. In the general view here are two Prin­ciples of necessity and freedom. The ne­cessity consists in our being, and its Physi­cal Operations of Life and Death, the li­berty in the Elective faculty of our Minds. Now, what can this resemble in God, but the natural necessity of the Divine Life and the Operations, (if we may so speak) by which the Son is generated from the Fa­ther, and the Holy Spirit derived from both, and the liberty of all God's other [Page 107]acts? But this cannot amount to a Trini­ty, nor resemble contrary or different Prin­ciples, since God's liberty of acting differs not really from his necessary existence. And both that necessity and liberty equally agree to every Person in the Trinity, and so cannot resemble their distinction. But now we will be more particular, and trace these Philosophick dictates [...], that so we may see the depths of them. First then his Lordship cannot tell whether there be in us two or three Principles of Opera­tion, only if there be not three, be sure there are two; so then we are sure of a Fi­gure for two, but not for three Principles, or rather Persons in the Deity. This at first setting out is like to be a sweet illustra­tion of the Trinity! I doubt 'tis crack'd through some disorder in its Mechanism. But whether two or three, they differ not like Ʋnderstanding and Will that are but different Modes of thinking. Now if we take Understanding and Will for the Prin­ciples of actual intellection and volition, as his Lordship's comparison of Principles to them seems to do, then I deny them to be Modes of thinking, since Principles are not the Modes of their Principiates, but give them to their Principiates. If his Lordship means not the Principles, but only the acts [Page 108]of intellection and volition, then I deny volition to be a Mode of thinking. And whether you conceive the acts of intelle­ction, and will mixt or pure, yet according to the true abstract distinctions of them they are not divers Modes of the same spe­cifick Act, but Acts whose formal reason is specifically different. Now as trifling as all this is, and seems to be, yet his Lord­ship seems to have had a great feteh in it against the Canonical Similitude of our Minds, lest Understanding and Will, being near the same with Understanding and Love, and flowing from our Mind as its Parent, should be thought a fair Simile for the Trinity; for this cause it was necessa­ry that they should be but two Modes of thinking. This being premised, our cogi­tations and reasonings are acts of a free Principle, but our animal Operations are necessary. But what is this to the Theory of the Divine Nature? For these contrarie­ties of Operations proceed from the com­position of contrary Substances, Soul and Body; whereas the Deity is most simple and uncompounded, and consequently cannot be represented by any compositum whatsoever, especially a compound of con­traries. Well! but necessary Operations of the animal Life, seem to be from some [Page 109]Emanations from our Souls. Very well! and do these seeming Emanations represent an Idea of the Emanations of the second and third Person? I doubt not; for those in the Deity are but two, but these of our Souls on our Bodies (if they were Emana­tions, as they are not) are very manifold. But if they be representative Emanations, why then his Lordship here goes beyond due bounds in being pleased with the No­tions and Similes of Emanations, or else these Notions are regular, and then why are the Fathers taxed for exorbitancy in them? But if these Emanations of the ani­mal life are not representative, why are they brought in here under the term of Emanations, to make us believe them re­presentative of the Divine Emanations? So much then for a Dyad representative. Now a Kingdom for a third. Well then we have in acts of Memory, Imagination, and Dis­course a mixture of both Principles, ( i. e. free and necessary) or a third that results out of them. As for his mixtures, I leave them purely to himself; but for his third resulting Principle I am to seek. For it must be a Principle that is neither free, nor necessary, and such a one is hard to be got for love or money; but however, that a Principle, neither free, nor necessary, should [Page 110]result from two, whereof one is free, and the other necessary, will I doubt bring his Lordship of mere necessity to the terms of a contradiction, how uncontradicted soe­ver he affects to be.

§. 19. Advance we now from the old Similes of the Fathers to the Theology it self represented by them. Now it is not a novel Observation or Fancy, as his Lord­ship snearingly suggests, but the ancient, internal, Catholick, and substantial Wis­dom of the Faith, that the * Iren. l. 2. c 47. De­us enim, cum sit totus Mens, totus Ratio, & totus Spiritus ope­rans, &c. Octav. ap. Minuc. Foelic. Quid aliud & à nobis De­us, quam Mens, & Ratio, & Spiritus praedicatur? Greg. Naz. ad Patr. cum Eccl. Naz. ipsi per­misit. [...] (scil. lablorum) [...] ad Graec. Inlid. Ser. 2. de Prin­cipio [...]. three adorable Per­sons in the Godhead, are an Eternal and Substan­tial Mind, Reason, and Holy Spirit. Now to a­void all cavil and equivo­cation, it is not unneces­sary that I state the ex­actest Notions of the Fa­thers in these Terms of their Theology; For that the words being of very various and involved sig­nifications in common use, will be liable to easie mi­stakes in this profound and critical Theory, espe­cially when Readers shall discover some­times [Page 111]the same terms to be promiscuously used for different Persons.

§. 20. I begin therefore with that of Mind. This most properly and primitive­ly signifies the noetick or intellectual Prin­ciple in all rational Beings, the Spring, the Fountain, the Original of those intellectual Graces and Perfections, that are found in such Spiritual Natures. But by an easie Trope it is also very commonly used in all sorts of Writings for the [...] the Conce­ptions, Counsels, Sentiments, Propen­sions, and Resolves of the Mind, as, were it necessary, might be shewn in infinite in­stances. But thirdly there hath been a Phi­losophick and Artificial Sense of the word of a more late invention, setting [...] or Minds for single Spirits. Now the exact Notion of Mind as the first Principle in the Deity is the first of these, the proper and the Primitive, as it is the Original of God's Essential Reason, and Holy Spirit. Now according to this exact and canonical Notation the term Mind is not only an Es­sential, but a Paternal and Producent Cha­racter, so that speaking with canonick ac­curacy we cannot say, that there are three Minds, for this is directly to assert three Fathers, and by consequence three Sons, or Logoi, and so likewise three Holy Spi­rits, [Page 112]since every such Mind must have its Reason and Spirit, of which it is and must be a natural and necessary original. To assert three Minds in the sense of Spirits is directly to assert three Gods, it being the same thing, and as irregular to say, there are in the Deity three Spirits, as three Gods. But if we will take the term equi­vocally in different Senses, then we find some Fathers calling not only * Athenag. Leg. p. 38. [...] at prius [...] scil quod dixerat [...]. Sic forte intelli­gendum illud p. 110. [...]. Theoph. ad Autolyc. p. 129. [...] (Logon) [...] (Pater) [...] Clem. Alex. Protrep. [...] at Strom. l. 7. [...], de codem Logo. the Father the Mind in distinction from the Logos, but the Logos also tropically by the name of Mind, as being the essential [...] and Reason of the Father, of the same Essence, and therefore in respect of that Essence loosly cal­led by the same name, according perhaps to the Pattern and Language of Plato, the Philosophick Ancients using this ho­monymy, according to the tast of the Pla­tonick Philosophers, (which were of so great credit among the Greeks) whom our Worthies cited as of Authority with the Gentiles in their Apologeticks in order to [Page 113]their more easie conversion. And yet nei­ther in this laxer acception or comprehen­siveness have I ever read among our An­cients the assertion of three Minds. For using the term mind in an essential Notion only, not a paternal, the assertion of three Minds would have looked like three Es­sences.

§. 21. But though we have sufficiently proved our Doctrine not to be a novel whimsie, but a Primitive and Catholick Tradition; yet will I prove its foundations to be really Divine. For the Son of God is so called with relation to a Father from whom he derives his proper Subsistence and Character. And this Son of God the Father is he whom St. John calls the Logos according to the old Jewish Theology, God of God, the internal substantial Reason of God the Father, in whom or who is the Image of his Father, by whom the Father made and governs all things. And from hence this hath ever been the avowed Faith of all the * Iren. l. 1 c. 1. l. 2. c. 55. l. 3. c. 18. l. 4. c. 14. c. 28. c. 37. c. 75. l. 5. c. 6 Just. Martyr. Apol. 2. Dial. cum Tryph. Clem. Alex. Protrep. Tertull Praesc. & adv. Jud. & con. Marcion. l. 2. & con. Prax. No­vatian. de Trinit. Euseb. Praep. Ev. l. 7. c. 15. con. Marcell. l. 2.17. & Eccl. Hist. l. 1. c. 2. Panegyrista Pau­lini ap. Eus. Eccl. Hist. l. 10. Constant. ad Sanctor. Caetum ap. Euseb. c. 9. Pastor Hermae. l. 3. Similit. 9. Athenag. Legat. Theoph. ad Autolyc. Orig. con. Cels. l. 1. l. 2. l. 3. l. 4. l. 5. l. 6. l. 7. & de Princip. l. c. 2. Cypr. de Idol. Vanit. Basil. con. Eunom. l. 5. & Serm. in Princip. Naz. de sacr. Pasch. Prudent. [...]. de Roman. Martyr & in Apotheof. Greg. Thaumat. ad Origen. Athan. ubi (que) Pseudo-Ambros. de fide con. Arian. Aug. con. 5. Haeres. & in Evan. Joh. c. 1. Tract. 1, 2. & de Tempor. Ser. 190. & infinities plu­ra reperies ejusdem generis apud omnes. Primitive, as well as suceeding Ages, to be sealed with their Blood and Sufferings, and was not a mere upstart project to supply the for­mer Tritheism taught in [Page 114]the more ancient Church. Now, if according to the common and universal Senses and Notions of all Men, the Mind is the Pa­rent and Original of all actual Reason in it, then if the Divine Reason be the truest and most Essen­tial Reason, the Parent Principle thereof must be the truest and most Essen­tial Mind; which Princi­ple of this Reason the Scripture having owned Paternal, it follows that God the Father is an Eter­nal Mind, having a co­essential Reason for its co­essential Issue, the perfect Image and Character of its Parent.

§. 22. In the next place let us see, whe­ther the Character of the Holy Spirit a­grees well to the Substantial Love of God, according to the Doctrine of the traduced Ancients. Let it then be noted, that that Mind, in which a vital and consubstantial [Page 115]reason perfectly subsists, doth by that rea­son in one clear, intuitive, luminous, and Archetypal Idea discern all possible Forms, Essences, Habitudes, Powers, and Reasons of things, and therefore very particularly all the distinctive forms and differences of good and evil. From whence there must proceed in such a Mind and Reason a vital and essential Spirit (which we in our Lan­guage would perhaps call a Principle) of Holiness, to wit, an essential Love of all the Forms and Reasons of Good, and there­in an essential aversation of all the kinds and degrees of Evil, this being but one and the same Spirit, having different aspects on different objects. Now without such a Spi­rit of Love and Holiness no being can be perfectly good or happy, since perfect goodness, as well as happiness, consists es­sentially in love and purity. Now the goodness of things must be the proper ob­ject of such Love, and must be discerned by that actual Reason, that contains in it the Idea's of all things possible. Whence this Love is as essential to the Deity as Rea­son, and thereupon the Apostle faith, †1 Joh. 4.8. that God is Love, the suum of which truth is nobly ce­lebrated * Const. ad Sanct. Caet. ap. Eus. c. 7. [...]. by the great [Page 116] Constantine, as the Do­ctrine which he had been taught by the Christian Fathers herein, according with the perpetual Theo­logy of God's People, who ever acknow­ledge this Holiness of the Divine Wisdom and Spirit from its constant indication. For *Sap. Sal. 1, 3, 4, 5. froward thoughts separate from God, and in­to a malicious Soul Wisdom will not en­ter, nor dwell in the Body that is subject unto sin. For the Holy Spirit of Discipline will fly deceit, and remove from thoughts that are without understanding, and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in, for Wisdom is a loving Spirit, &c.

§. 23. But here again a fresh difficulty arises from the homonymy of terms. For St. Paul calling our Lord †1 Cor. 1.24. the Wisdom of God, the generali­ty and the exactest of the Fathers follow him in that style, and make the Wisdom and Logos to be the same subsistence di­stinct from the Holy Spirit. Some of the Ancients, as great as any, speaking distinct­ly *Iren. Theoph. An­tiochen. p. 81. c. 108.114. distinguish the Logos from the Sophia, and make the Sophia the Per­son of the Holy Spirit; [Page 117]and yet again at other times †Theoph. Antioch. p. 81. confound the Lo­gos and Sophia for the same second Person the Son, *Theoph. p. 81. Ter­tull. whom also they call the Spirit of God the Father. Wherefore 'tis necessary to our Theory, that we remove this Cloud. And here we are to distinguish Wisdom into spe­culative, and practical, for which distin­ction there is apparent authority in the Scripture, and ground in our own inner Experience. Now the Reason of any Spi­ritual Nature is its formal proper specula­tive Wisdom, but an Holy Spirit and tem­per of Mind is the practical. In this latter sense the forequoted place out of the Apo­chryphal Wisdom calls the loving Spirit of God, or his Spirit of Discipline, Wisdom; but †Sap. Sal. 7.22, &c. elsewhere the same Author Preaches, that in Wisdom, which is the Artificer of all things, there is a Spirit, which among other attri­butes is Holy, and loves the thing that is good, and is Almighty, where the in-exi­stence of the Holy Spirit of Love in that Wisdom, the Artificer of all things puts a distinction between this Spirit and Wis­dom, and so hereby Wisdom in this place, as well as by its Character, must be the [Page 118]Archetypal Logos, or Architectonick Rea­son of God the Father. And hence these ambiguous Fathers seem to have copied their Theories and Language, sometimes calling the Logos Wisdom, to wit the in­tuitive, sometime the Holy Spirit, as the practical Wisdom of God the Father. And so there are learned Men, that ground the alledged homonymy of the Word Spirit in some forms of Scripture. But I, that think the Scripture as a Rule for Canonick Theo­logy, thinking it unsafe to fix any exorbi­tant Senses on the Terms expressive of the Trinity, without absolute necessity, am apt to think those Fathers called the Logos the Spirit of God sometimes, through some Scriptures by them so mistaken, or appea­ring in that sense to them, under a loose and general Notion, that whatsoever issues from the Essence of God the Father so issues by a Spiritual Efflux, or else is of a Spiri­tual Substance as the Father is, and so as Tertullian calls the Logos, Spirit of Spirit, and God of God. But since all these Fa­thers expresly own a Trinity of Persons, the third of which is signally characterized by the appropriate Title of Holy Spirit, there can be no doubt of the consonancy of their Faith to the Catholick Doctrine, and to this Theory of it in the Holy Spi­rit, [Page 119]which to serve his Lordship I am here to illustrate.

§. 24. These Bars being thus removed, we shall proceed to examine on what ground this Substantial Love of God is called by the name of Spirit. Now this word, though so very variously significant, is however used either absolutely, as when it's said, God is a Spirit, or Angels are mi­nistring Spirits, a Spirit hath not Flesh and Blood, and other sayings of the same for­mal intention in the Word, or else rela­tively and attributively to something whose Spirit it is, or is called. Of this latter form is the characteristick Title of the Spi­rit of God, or Holy Spirit of God and Christ, &c. And the Word Spirit thus re­latively attributed to Beings simply imma­terial denotes an active Principle, Power, or Virtue in them, and this either Poten­tial, or Moral. Thus it is mentioned as a potential Principle; Josh. 5.1. Esa. 19.3. Luk. 1.17. as a moral Principle; Ezr. 1.1, 5. Psal. 32.2. and 34.18. and 51.10, 17. Esa. 57.15. Ezek. 11.19. and 36.26. Matth. 5.3. Luke 9.55. Joh. 4.23, 24. Rom. 8.15, 16. 1 Cor. 4.21. Eph. 4.23. 1 pet. 3, 4. and so in infinite other places. So likewise the Spirit of God seems oft to denote in him, what we commonly call a [Page 120]Principle acting potentially, but chiefly and most especially in the sanctifical Ope­rations, of all which the Holy Spirit is the proper and immediate Spring and Original. Hence the Works of the Creation as attri­buted to the Spirit of God; Job 26.13. and 33.4. where I see no reason to depart from the ordinary and canonical and cha­racteristick sense of the Term. From which places in my opinion we may best interpret, Gen. 1.2. where it is said, that the Spirit of God moved or hovered upon the face of the Waters. In this potential way of Operation, the Spirit of God a­cted the Prophets, Judges, and other Wor­thies of Israel in their mighty Words and Works, that exceeded the Power of Hu­mane Nature, as may be seen in very ma­ny Texts of Scripture. Thus the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin Mary, and the Power of the most High did over-shadow her, Luke 1.35. For I here preferr the Catholick Interpretation of the Creeds (which teach this to be the supervention of the Holy Spirit, from other like Texts, and Universal Tradition) before the sense of *Ad Autolyc. p. 81. [...], &c. Theo­philus Antiochenus, who applies them to the Logos, as speaking by the Prophets, though [Page 121]the †Symb. Constanti­nop. [...] Catholick Church hath determined the Di­vine Spirit that spake by them, to be the third Per­son; Which Spirit acting Elias was feared by Obadiah, that it would carry the Pro­phet out of all discovery, 1 King. 18.12. And according to this potential notation, we call all subtle and vigorous Powers in Nature Spirits, as also the courage and a­ctivity of any animal. I know the Rab­bins, Crellius, and others make this poten­tial Spirit to be a created effluent Virtue; but the permanency of it in God, with its other properties and descriptions every where exhibited in the Scriptures, do evince the contrary, reason it self also witnessing, that God never was without an omnipo­tent Spirit of Holiness, which may very properly consist in the essential Love of God, than which what can be more vigo­rous, active, influential, and productive? We see how strong the Spring and Spirit of an ardent love is toward the most mighty adventures, and how infinitely more must it be in the Divine Nature, from which it gave Life and Spirit to universal Nature, and blessed every thing according to its order, and cherishes all things by a lively and penetrating Providence, and drives on [Page 122]all the Motions and Springs of the whole Creation, by a perpetual and constant im­pulse, and at times exerted miraculous O­perations, to the manifestation of its tran­scendent Power, Goodness, and Holiness, and thereby to the conversion of Men to the Living God? But this Principle (if I may so call it without offence, as I design without error) more exhibits its own ap­propriate celebrated Character of Holy to our Conceptions, by actual Inspirations of Sanctity into all sanctified Minds. And such is the sense of the Catholick Antiqui­ty. For being * Orig. Hom. 11. in Numer. 18. & de Princip. l. 1. c. 8. Greg. Thaumat. in Symbol. Revelat. A­than. con. Arium Disp. & Dial. de Trinit. Naz. de Heron Phi­losoph. Basil. con. Eu­nom. l. 5. de Sp. S. Episcop. Philosopho in Concil. Nicen. ap. Socr. Eccl. Hist. l. 1. [...] Pseudo-Chrys. in Matth. 7. Hom. 18. Aug. de verb. Dom. in Evan. Matth. c. 12. Ser. 11. Faustin. ad Flaccil. Imperat. de fide con. Arian. original Holiness it self, it's most connatural and consimi­lar Operation is the san­ctifical, for which cause it is signally called Holy, as the substantial imme­diate Principle of all com­munications of Sanctity and Goodness to the Crea­tures: And as a † Clem. Alex. Strom. l. 6. [...] (Christiani) [...] good and holy temper in the Soul of Man is called a good and holy Spirit, which therefore acts ac­cordingly, and gives us thereby a Theory of the [Page 123]Holy Spirit of God; So the essential Spirit of Ho­liness in God, is (if my infirmities may be per­mitted to speak my sense) as it were the very tem­per of his Nature, called often also his Heart and Soul under the same connotation; which the impious Man is said to grieve; Esa. 63.10. Eph. 4.30. as being an internal and essential Principle offended by those Wits, to which it bears an eternal and unaltera­ble aversion, which is also very strong and potential, being † Ambr. de dignit. hum. condit. c. 2. Greg. Nyssen. de homin. O­pisic. c. 5. Aug. in Ep. Job. Tract. 6. & in Evang. Job. c. 2. Tract. 9. & in c. 17. Tract. 105. expre­sly called by some Fathers the substantial Love of God from the Authority of St. John. From this property of Love, Good­ness, and Holiness, it is called by St. Paul the Spirit of Holiness; Rom. 1.4. (for I see no reason to recede from the canonical propriety) and by Ne­hemias and David the good Spirit of God teaching and leading Men unto righteous­ness. Neh. 19.20. Psal. 143.10. And the Psalmist describes the Holy Spirit of God, and a right Spirit in Man as consimilar Principles of moral Goodness, the one as [Page 124]the temper of the Divine, the other as the Temper of an Humane Mind. Psal. 51.10, 11. which being by Sanctification li­kened to the Spirit of God, is said to com­municate of the Holy Spirit, 2 Cor. 13.13. Philip. 2.1. whereby we are said to be one Spirit with God, 1 Cor. 6.7. by being herein transformed into his Image, 2 Cor. 3.18. and purified in obeying the Truth by the Spirit unto an unfeigned love of the Brethren. 1 Pet. 1.22. And when St. Paul asserts the fruits of the Spirit to be Love, Joy, Peace, Long-suffering, Gentleness, Goodness, Faith, Meekness, Charity, Righ­teousness, and Truth, Gal. 5.22. Eph. 5.9. by the Fruit he shews the nature of the Root and Principle, viz. that the Spirit of God is by Nature Loving, Good, and Ho­ly, and by Grace endearing and sanctifical. And this Character of the Spirit of God does also illustrate the potential Notion; for the more pure and unmixt any Powers are, the more quick and spirituous are their Faculties and Operations, from which in­vigorating influences of God's Holy Spirit, we are not only sanctified, but made fer­vent in Spirit, Rom. 12.11. and strengthe­ned in our inner Man, Eph. 3.16. and ar­med against the Powers of Evil, Eph. 6.17. to mortifie the deeds of the Body, Rom. [Page 125]8.13. and to abound in hope through the Power of the Holy Ghost. Rom. 15.13. This is the mighty Spirit that acted Elias, this was that Spirit, that made Jeremy a defenced City, and an Iron Pillar, and bra­zen Walls against the whole Land, &c. Jer. 1.18, 19. and supported all the Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs against all the Pow­ers of Hell and this World. And yet by what influence, but that of the Divine Ho­liness and Love, by which they were not only inspired, but inspirited with such ho­ly ardours and rapturous affections of God, as made them to despise and triumph over all Oppositions, and to tread upon the Ad­der, and Scorpion, and all the Power of the Enemy? Now if this be nor true Do­ctrine, I desire his Lordship to refute it; if it be, let him forbear to flout the Ancients, that taught the Holy Spirit to be Love.

§. 25. But as I have here given a consue­tudinary and canonical account of this Ti­tle from common and sacred Language, so will I endeavour to add an Etymological. The Word Spirit then in all our learned Languages is derived from Verbs of brea­thing, or blowing, and so primitively sig­nifies a Breath, or Gale of Air, which see­ming to common apprehensions the most subtil, agil, and penetrating of all sublunary [Page 126]Elements, its name was therefore, for want of another more suitable, applied to imma­terial Substances, Principles, and active Powers, especially plastick and animant, by way of eminent distinction from gross matter, and passive dulness. Now such immaterial and subtil Powers exert their Operation by at least a seeming spiration of influences. And the moral Principles of the Mind proceed internally from it, * Athan. ad Serap Sp. S. non esse Creatur. [...] as it were by an odorous form of Spiration, grate­ful unto it self, and God the Author, when good, and inspired from above for a sweet savour. And such a Notion the Apo­chryphal Wisdom of Solomon gives us of the Divine Wisdom as including in it the †Ch. 7. v. 25. Spirit of God. For it is the [...] the breath of the Power of God, and an [...] an Ef­flux of the glory of the Almighty. And Job's Friend Elihu seems to have taken the Spirit of God, as a Virtue or Principle in the Deity, that gave him (and all Men) life by a spirant Operation; the Spirit of God hath made me, and the [...] the Breath of the Almighty hath given me life, Job 33.4. referring to the Tradition thus [Page 127]recorded in Gen. 2.7. that God breathed into Man the Breath of Life, of which *Symbol. Constanti­nop. [...] we own his Spirit to be Lord and Giver. But as to sancti­fical Operations on created Spirits and Minds, it is universally acknowledged that the Spirit of God exerts them by a Divine manner of Inspiration. So that I conclude, that Etymologically the Spirit of God is so called, as being derived from the Father and the Son by an unconceivable manner of in­ternal Spiration of Love essential, and as inspiring into all Beings, their proper Vir­tues and Powers by an invigorating stream of influences, especially in the sanctifying Operations on our Minds, by which new and holy Spirits are created in us.

§. 26. Now lest this Spirit of Love and Holiness in the Divine Nature, should be reputed Personal from its Personal Descri­ptions in Holy Writ, some have fansied it to be a mere unsubstantial and impersonal Quality in God the Father only, persona­ted only by Trope and Figure. But against these it is to be noted, that he is the Spirit of the Son also, and so for that cause, even upon this Hypothesis, the Son must be God with the Father. But further there being no possible imperfection in the Dei­ty, [Page 128]it can admit of no unsubstantial Quali­ties, for as they are imperfections in them­selves, so do they suppose an imperfection in their Subjects, whether adorned, or vi­lified by them. If therefore there be a per­manent Spirit of Holiness in the Deity, it must be perfect, and for that cause sub­stantial. And this Substantiality is the ground of that Personality, which we at­tribute to the Father, Son, and Holy Spi­rit according to the order and measure of our Conceptions, with­out the help of any Soci­nian Metonymy, or Pro­sopopaeia, according to † Aug. in Ev. Joh. c. 17. Tract. 105. Spi­ritus est Patris & Fi­lii, tanquam charitas substantialis, & con­substantialis ambo­rum. the Catholick and Pri­mitive Theology asserted by St. Austin.

§. 27. But to evade this Truth, there were * See Didym. de Sp. S. Hereticks of old, as well as of late, that fell in with the Rabbins, and made the Holy Spirit a mere Operation, or an effluent Vir­tue, not in God, but without, and from the Deity, terminated in us, which † See his Book de Spirit. Sancto. Crellius eve­ry where calls a middle quality between the essential Power of God, and its more manifest effects, to which middle quality, he (much like his Master [Page 129] Socinus, says, Personal Attributes are given by a Metonymy, or a Prosopopaeia arising sometimes from a Metonymy of the effect, which is this Spirit, for the efficient, which is God, whose Person this effected Spirit, or middle Quality figuratively bears, or from a Metonymy of the Adjunct, which is this effected Spirit, for its divinely inspi­red Subject, whose Person also this Spirit in like manner sometimes doth sustain. For the Confirmation whereof he quotes Exod. 31.3. and 35.31. comparing therewith Exod. 28.3. and 35.35. Numb. 24.2. and 27.18. Deut. 34.9. Judg. 3.10. and 6.34. and 11.29. and 13 25. and 14.19. and 15.14. 1 Sam. 10.6, 10. and 11.6. and 16.13, 14, &c. and 18.10. and 19.9, 20, 23. 1 King. 18.12. and 22.24. 1 Chr. 12.18. and 28.12. 2 Chron. 15. 1. Job 33.4. Psal. 51.11, 12. Esa. 44.3. and 63.11. proofs enough one would think in all Conscience.

§. 28. But supposing, that all these Texts had denoted a Principle created or instilled into us, yet here is no Personal Represen­tation thereof; whereas it was to be pro­ved, that the Spirit of God in those Texts, that Characterize him Personally, is a mere created Quality in us, and that it is no where otherwise, never any virtue essential [Page 130]to God. For we need not deny, that the Holy Spirits and Principles, inspired by, and from the Substantial Spirit of God in­to us, may sometimes derive the Name as well as the Nature of that their Original, and the most Catholick Divines concede it; but where the Original Spirit of God is distinguished from, and asserted the Au­thor of those Operations and Graces, there the Spirit cannot be those very Operations, or Graces produced by them, as those mid­dle Virtues and Qualities must be. See 1 Cor. 12.1. to 12. 2 Thess. 2.13. 1 Pet. 1.2. Gal. 5.22. Joh. c. 14. c. 15. c. 16. 1 Joh. 5.7. In which last the Holy Spirit is said to be in Heaven, and consequently can be no middle Quality in us, and yet in Heaven personally distinct from the Fa­ther, and the Word; which I take to be a good Argument from a good Authority in despite of Hereticks and defective Libra­ries; to which I could add very many more, were it necessary. But the truth is, the Texts alledged by Crellius do not all manifestly denote by the Spirit of God a mere created Virtue or Quality, but may (except some few to be by and by conside­red) denote the essential Spirit of God su­pervening upon Men, and creating in them the Spirits of Wisdom, Vigour, Prophecy, [Page 131]Life, &c. And particularly where Elihu, Job 33.4. saith, the spirit of God hath made me, he implies the prae-existence of that Spirit before himself, and so not after effected in him, being indeed a Virtue ope­rant, not operated, but a precedent cause of the Operation it self. And though ac­cording to the literal form of the Hebrew, the evil Spirit, that troubled Saul, is cal­led the Lords evil Spirit, 1 Sam. 16.15, 16, 23. and 18.10. and 19.9. yet this may denote, not a divine Operation sure­ly, which is not evil, but a wicked infer­nal Personal Spirit, the Lictor or Carnifex, which God sent to punish him. But if we keep to Crellius's Notion, and let the evil Spirit here be a Quality effected in Saul, it must be from some inspiring Agent, which, the Quality being evil, cannot be God, and so must be an evil Spirit of dark­ness [...] 1 Sam. 16.14. sent from the Lord. And if so, how can it be evin­ced, that the Term evil Spirit does not de­note the Person of the Evil Angel, but on­ly the effect of his infernal Operation? And as to the Spirit of Wisdom, with which God had filled some Persons for ma­king the Priests habits, &c. Exod. 28.3. it appears not to be that effected Wisdom it self, but the Divine Principle efficient [Page 132]thereof from Exod. 31.1. Where God says, he had filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of God, in Wisdom, and Understanding, &c. where the filling Power, i. e. the Spirit of God is distinguished from its effect, i. e. that Wisdom and Understanding inspired by the Spirit of God into him. And that Spirit of God producent of that Wisdom, Exod. 31.3. might well be called the Spi­rit of that Wisdom, which it produced, as likewise Esa. 11.2. So that in all these places, I am verily perswaded, that the Spirit of God signifies not a mere Divine Operation, nor a mere Virtue divinely ope­rated, but a Principle and Substantial Power operant. But that the Term Spirit of God may be sometimes put for the Grace effected thereby; nay, and that actions of Subjects are many times elegantly attribu­ted to their Adjuncts (as it may also hap­pen to the effect for the efficient) I shall not gainsay; but such mere Metonymies do not presently exhibit a formal Prosopo­poecia of those Adjuncts or Effects without other technical Schemes, such as usually appear in Poetick or Dramatick fancies, not in serious Prose, plain Discourse, di­dactick Institutions, especially in the Sim­ple, Catechetical, and Inartificial Rules of Faith delivered by Christ and his Apostles. [Page 133]Besides with Poets and other Painters per­sonated Qualities put on the feminine Veil, Face, and Sex; but Christ describes his Holy Spirit * Joh. 14.16. [...] & 16.13, 14. [...] ita 15.26. [...] &c. as a Mascu­line Person, when he calls him Paraclete, with a Per­sonal Pronoun He, to shew him as it were ex­actly both in Nature and Person. Where, as Bi­shop Pearson well observes on Joh. 16.13, 14, &c. upon the Article of the Holy Ghost, those personal Attri­butes of the Spirit can be by no means ap­plied to God the Father, nor to the Apo­stles by any Metonymy whatsoever accor­ding to the Socinian pretention. But fur­ther, that supreme Spirit of God is only one, which yet by manifold Operations creates many kinds of Virtues, which therefore are plurally called Spirits, 1 Cor. 12.10. 1 Cor. 14.32.

§. 29. Now to break off this blow, Crel­lius coins a double sort of Unity for the Holy Spirit; One generical consisting in this, that all such Spirits, how numerous and various soever, are yet of one Genus of Spirit, as all individual Bodies, and sorts of Bodies are included in one Genus of Bo­dy. But such Unity is but merely notio­nal, [Page 134]and uncapable of individual Acts and Offices, which yet are ascribed to the one Holy Spirit. For when † [...]. one and the self same Spirit is said to distribute all gifts according as he will; it is manifest that many single, and many sorts of Gra­ces are given by the will of one only Spi­rit, individually One. For individual and actually existent effects must be the pro­ducts of individual and actually existing Cause, or Causes, not from mere Genus and Species, which are not the subjects of Historical Relations. For it cannot be said of Substance, or Body in general, that one and the self same Substance, or Body produces all Physical effects in the material World, nor of Man in Specie, that one and the self same Man performs all the Acts and Offices that are done by all and every sin­gle Man. Nor is Genus and Species capa­ble of Personal Unities and Distinctions. But now the Apostle distinguishes both the Operations and Effects of one and the self same Spirit, both from themselves, and that Spirit, not only numerically, but spe­cifically, and yet asserts them the products *1 Cor. 12. of one and the self same Spirit, one and the self same Lord, one and the self same God; shewing at [Page 135]least the Unity of the Spirit, to be such, and the same, as is the Unity of the Lord and God, which must be therefore most perfectly Individual. But if each particu­lar Divine Inspiration, or its produced Graces had been so many distinct Holy Spirits of God in themselves, since there are such multitudes, and multiplicities of them, there was no reason why in the same breath he should assert them many and manifold, and yet but one operant Spirit only, which therefore must be di­stinct from them as the Cause from the ef­fect, as the Author from the product, and as the Donor from the gift.

§. 30. His second sort of Unity is that of Origine, by which he pretends the Spirit to be called One, because though infinitely manifold, or divisible in it self, yet it pro­ceeds from one God, and in this respect may be called One. But neither will this last fit. For the Terms [one and the self same] are too narrow, and express a closer Unity, and cannot be applied to innume­rable particulars that are only of one Ori­ginal. For all particular Men cannot be said to be one and the self same Man, which performs all humane actions that are, be­cause all Men originally descend from one Father Adam: Nor can all the Israelites [Page 136]be said to be one and the self same Israelite that destroyed the Canaanites, because they all descended from one Father Israel: Nor can all the Socinians be called one and the self same Socinian, that wriggles him­self into a thousand tricks and turnings, because they all descended from one Do­ctor or Father Faustus (for I will not med­dle with Laelius.) But in truth, if there had been a vast number of the Holy Spi­rits of God, and these but mere Qualities, to which Personal Names, Pronouns, and Predicates are so often attributed in the singular number of one Holy Spirit, on the score of a mere generical or originary U­nity, why do we never plurally read of many such Holy Spirits of God so perso­nated according to this invention, with an open acknowledgment of their Plurality, and sometimes of their Impersonality; but only of one such Holy Spirit, under such Personal Titles and Descriptions? Or why had not the Article of the Holy Spirit in the Greeds been always taught and profes­sed according to this pretty novel inter­pretation? Since the Church ought to have been taught and dealt with plainly, and not tricked into mazes or impieties by Figures, Fetches, and Sophistries more am­biguous and involved than the Devil's Ora­cles. [Page 137]Nor will the seven Spirits of God in the Revelation help, for they are wai­ting Ministers at the Throne of God, not Qualities inspired into us, and they are but seven neither, a number far too small for the kinds or numbers of inspired Gra­ces. We see then, that the Wit of Man cannot bear up against the Truth and Wis­dom of God. And herein our Country­man Biddle was so con­vinced of * Bid. of the Holy Spirit. the errors of his Socinian Fathers, that he even scouts them, and roundly falls off to the Elder Enemies of the Holy Spirit, with whom he passed for a created Per­son.

§. 31. Hoping then that this may help to convince his Lordship of the Personali­ty of the Holy Spirit of Divine Love, I will a little for the sake of others endeavour also to prove the Holy Spirit not to be a created Person. This will appear first from all those places in which he is said † Didym. de Sp. S. l. 1. ex version. Hieron. Ipsum quo (que) Effusio­nis nomen increatam Spiritus Sancti sub­stantiam probat. Ne (que) enim Deus, cum An­gelum mittit, aut ali­am creaturam effun­dam dicit de Angelo meo, aut throno, aut dominatione. to be put, or poured out upon Men, which is no where spo­ken of Angels, which yet are Spirits ministring to the Heirs of Salvation, which argument convin­ced [Page 138]the Socinians of the Macedonian Error. But a Divine Virtue, though in its Energies it recede not from God, yet because of those influences is it self said, and in a manner seems to be poured out upon, and communicated to divinely-in­spired Souls, into which a connatural, con­genial, or consimilar Virtue is thereby in­fused. So the Spirit of God poured out upon all Flesh, Joel 2.28, 29. is a Virtue substantially intrinsical to the Deity, which yet St. Peter testifies to be the same Spirit which acted the Apostles at the Feast of Pentecost, Act. 2. and which is celebrated with Personal Titles, Pronouns, and At­tributes, Joh. c. 14. c. 15. c. 16. And here­in also is asserted his omnipresence, as also by the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, ch. 1. v. 7. The Spirit of the Lord filleth the World; and by the Psalmist, Psal. 139.7. Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? Here the Spirit of God cannot be a middle Vir­tue inspiring David, since this he had no reason to dread or shun, and yet all Men by sinning (especially by knavery and doubling) shun and fly from this Grace too easily. Nor are the acts of Divine Ven­geance ever called the Spirit of God in the [Page 139]Patient. Neither is this Spirit of God here a created Spirit, whose Presence cannot be escaped, since the Psalmist here only speaks of God's Presence and Power. See onward to v. 17. And further * Didym. de Sp. S. l. 1. Demonstratur An­gelica Virtus ab hoc prorfus aliena. Ange­lus quippe; qui ade­rat, verbi gratia, A­postolo in Asia oran­ti, non poterat simul eodem tempore ades­se aliis in caeteris par­tibus constitutis. Vid. praeced. & seq. praed. & Athanas. omnino Disp. con. Arium. though one created An­gel can follow one single, or more sociated Men, wheresoever we can sup­pose one way for their flight, yet one single An­gel cannot at once follow, or be present to all Men in all their Dispersions, which omnipresence how­ever all Men ought to own in the Spirit of God. Now if any Man shall urge, that the Words [thy Spi­rit] are put for [thee], as [my Spirit] for [I] Gen. 6.3. The same Psalmist's same words in a full literal intention, Psal. 51.11. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me, must in­terpret our present Text without a circum­locution, as many others will that of Gen. 6.3. And yet admitting a Figure or Trope, it represents the Spirit of God as God, which is what I contend for, as being in­ternal to the Divine Mind, Esa. 40.13, 14. With this Omnipresence he hath also a Di­vine [Page 140]Empire, by which he distributes all the Divine Graces to whom, and as he will every where, 1 Cor. 12.11. All which put together doth more fully set forth the Singularity, Omnipresence, and Suprema­cy of the Holy Spirit, than those mere forms of Speech, which as they are attri­buted to the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God, are also attributed to the Prince of Devils in the Kingdom of Darkness, which is Biddle's grand Evasion from our Argu­ments taken from such sayings, that the Spirit dwells in us, teaches us, &c. for these, and such like expressions are uttered of the Devil, that he deceives the World, blinds the Souls of Unbelievers, Captivates Im­penitents, takes away the Word out of the hearts of the Hearers, became a lying Spi­rit in Four Hundred Prophets, &c. which sayings do not indeed denote the Devil's Personal Omnipresence to all at once, but only that he thus reacheth Men by his Mi­nisters, which Biddle would perswade us of the Holy Spirit also; but they had cer­tainly denoted a terrestrial Omnipresence, if it had been added, that there is but one only Evil Spirit, and that he alone by his own Personal Operations had thus acted on all wicked Men, and that no mortal Man can avoid his Presence and Power, [Page 141]none of which is expressed of the Devil, and yet if it had, his exclusion out of Heaven is asserted also, where yet the Ho­ly Spirit of God dwells and shines in essen­tial Glory; not to mention also, that the Devil, who long time universally tyranni­zed, is yet never said to be poured out up­on all Flesh. But now the aforesaid Attri­butes given to the Prince of Devils, mani­festly set forth his Supremacy in the King­dom of Darkness; and therefore in the Kingdom of God the like Phrases of the Holy Spirit of God must denote his Supre­macy therein, and by consequence his Dei­ty, since God alone is the one Supreme King of that Kingdom, and thus our Faith is established firmly against the Macedonians also.

§. 32. Now of what hath been said, thus much I believe would be granted by all the Anti-personists, that there is in God the Father an essential Reason, and Spirit of Sanctity, though not personally subsistent. For a Person being with them a complete suppositum rationale, and intellectual Sub­ject, or Being separate and standing sin­gle from all others, they hold it a contra­diction to hold three Persons in one indivi­dual Deity.

§. 33. To this, I hope, to give so just and candid an answer as may embolden his Lordship to joyn in the Litany hear­tier, and to speak clearer next time in his Theological Essays. The name Person, or whatsoever answers thereto in the learned Languages, first of all signifies a Man's Face, natural and artificial, and thence the whole single Man; hence after were the Gods in profane, and intellectual Spirits in sacred Writings represented personally, and so now the Term Person agrees to all sin­gle intelligent Beings by common and in­artificial use. But we, that have no natu­ral Idea of the Modes of Subsistence pecu­liar to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit with­out Divine Revelation, cannot without it conceive the form of their Personality. So for this we must rest wholly on Divine Re­velation. And accordingly I would de­scribe a Person for a Theological Term thus; whatsoever hath Personal Titles, and Characters properly attributed to it by God's Word, the same is a Person, though we cannot frame an Idea of the form of its Personality. And then I can add, but the Divine Mind, Reason, and Holy Spirit have three properly distinguishing Personal Characteristick Titles, Father, Son, and Paraclete to be owned in our avowed Faith [Page 143]and Baptism, therefore these three are three distinct Persons, though we cannot form a natural Idea of the Mode of their Perso­nality; * Aug. de Tempor. Ser 189 Ego Perso­nas in Patre, & Filio, & Spiritu Sancto non dico quasi personas hominum. Perso­nam Patris dico quod Pater est, & Filii quod Filius est, & Spiritus Sancti quod Spiritus Sanctus est. — dividuntur enim proprietatibus, sed naturâ sociantur. and though yet we are sure they are not separate and disjoyned like three Humane Per­sons. In this mystery therefore the sense of this term is not vulgar, nor of common Notion, but pe­culiarly and necessarily Technical. For since God hath revealed that in the Unity of his Nature, there is one first Principle with two other co-eternally emanant or descendent from him, and subsisting individually in him, by which he created and governs all things, and this under the Personal and Distinctive Characters of Father, Son, and Holy Spi­rit the Paraclete, and many other Perso­nal Attributes distinctive of their proper Subsistences in the Essential Unity of the Godhead, the Term Person fell unavoida­bly into Canonical use, though under a strict care against the vulgar notion of Hu­mane, or such like separate Persons, and restrained only to the revealed Theories of the Mystery. And under this regular li­mitation, [Page 144]I challenge the Art of the World to sind out any one Characteristick Term so fit, proper, and congruous to denote their formal Personalities ascribed to them in the Scripture as this of Person, in which the whole Catholick Church of old unani­mously agreed antecedently to any Conci­liar Definitions, and is therefore of grea­ter Antiquity and Authority than the Greek Hypostasis, which though well foun­ded in * [...]. Heb. 1. 3. yet was a while of ambiguous use and interpretation, till it was by the help of Athanasius and others canonically adjusted and fixed according to the sense of our Term Person. And yet supposing a sensible defect in these Terms Person, and Subsistence; what mo­dest Man would upbraid the whole Church of God for such an insuperable impotency in Humane Nature (which all wise Men perceive, and own in their speaking of God) after its utmost endeavours, cares, and consultations upon cogent necessities to fix the terms of our Faith and Doctrine in the best manner possible, while yet the Revilers can produce nothing better or e­qual? 'Tis certainly an intollerable inde­cency against the Gravity, Duty, Care, and Right' of Men that are in Authority of [Page 145]proscribing Doctrines in any Profession what soever; for to such certainly it belongs, to fit Terms of Art to their Theories, as reason shall require, as well as they can, without the merit or hazard of malevolence and detraction.

§. 34. But because I would fill the thir­sty and candid Soul, with a satisfying The­ory herein, I will dig deeper into the grounds of these Personal Characters in the Scriptures, and the Traditional Term of Person thence Canonically used. First then, Personality is a Character only of what is substantial and intellectual, as are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit the Para­clete, who therefore have a good ground of bearing those Personal Titles. But tho' these peculiar Titles have this common Basis, yet have they their peculiar and for­mal reasons of Distinction: The first Prin­ciple of all being called Father from his E­ternal generation of the Logos, which is called Son from being so eternally genera­ted of the Father's Substance, without di­vision or partition there­of. And *Con. Arian. Orat. 2. here the Fa­ther being ever Father, never Son, and the Logos ever Son, never Father, St. Athana­sius justly as well as sagaciously, appro­priates these Titles to these Persons in a [Page 146]primary Right and peculiar Excellency a­bove all others, since earthly Persons change their Character, being one while Sons, other while Fathers and Sons, other while Fathers only, and other while nei­ther. The Personal Distinctives of the Ho­ly Spirit are taken from his connatural O­perations and Offices, which are Personal, and the Titles therefore apposite. Now that the essential Reason and Spirit of God the Father, should each be as equally Per­sonal, as the Socinians themselves confess the Father to be, will hence appear ratio­nal, for that they are consubstantial with him, and as substantially Divine as that Eternal Mind, from, and in which they are, and live, without any inequality in their Nature, Perfection, or essential Dig­nity. And therefore, if one be distinctly Personal, so must the others also. And therefore the Pronoun He, first belonging to God original, i. e. the Father, as the first Person, is properly also communicable to the other Persons, each of them deri­ving their Deity and Personal subsistence from him, with peculiar reasons of their proper Personal Characters and Distinctions. And hence it was necessary to a just perfe­ction of Christian Theology, that our Scri­ptures, Faith, and Tradition should Cha­racterize [Page 147]the second and third Hypostasis as personally as the first, for otherwise a Personal Distinction and Notion of one, and Impersonal Distinctions of the others, or ei­ther of them, must have set them as une­qual, specifically different, and heteroge­neous in the same Deity, and consequently not consubstantial or co-essential; for that the Impersonals must have been in nature inseriour to the Personal; which would make a most corrupt mixture, a most prae­rupt and monstrous anomaly in the God­head.

§. 35. But perhaps some Men, with whom no diversities are taken for true, but the separate, gross, and material, may censure this Diversity between the Eternal Mind, Reason, and Holy Spirit of Love, so then, notional, and imaginary, that it cannot sustain, or ground any Characters personally distinctive, without a very vio­lent and abusive impropriety. Now if my Lord, or any other be in this prejudice, let them note that there is a certain true Di­versity between them, and such as we can somewhat conceive from the Shade we have of it in our own Souls; Whence a sedate Theory will conclude, that the true and proper Modes of this their distinct subsi­stence in the Unity of the Godhead are in [Page 148]themselves most perfect, and clear, and as Illustrious as the Individual Glory of the Divine Essence, which one day it will be our Heaven and Happiness more immedi­ately to view in the fulness of indistant Light, if at present we will be content to learn our Theories from God's Tradition, and not preclude our selves from that bles­sed capacity, by a wanton and affected infi­delity; for to this glorious intuition this Faith prepares us, by cleansing us from Hea­then Phaenomena of Providence, and draw­ing us to the nobler Theories of the Crea­tion, and the Powers of its Author, and exciting us to an active hope and pursuit of that Glory and Happiness that consists in the uninterrupted Vision of God. In the mean time however it is rational to believe, that there is a far greater reason in that di­versity of their Individual consubsistence, upon which Personal Attributes, Chara­cters, Predicates, and Distinctives are by the Rules of our Faith given unto them, than any humane faculties can reach, tho' in these upon Divine Revelation, there is Light enought to support the congruity of this Tradition against all opposite Heresies whatsoever.

§. 36. But the Scoffers will be apt to de­ride this Theory, as aiming to render the [Page 149]Faith intelligible, which as they think im­possible, because their prejudices have so fatally blinded them, that they fansy no Man can discern what they cannot, so will they say, that these Theories take away the Mystery, and consequently expose the venerableness thereof to contempt, whereas it hath been our common Wisdom to cover our Absurdities with a superstitious veil and pretence of unsathomable Mystery. Now what shall we do? how shall we behave our selves between these contrary extremes? To the Anti-Mysterists therefore, I reply, That if it be hereby made intelligible, they have no reason to quarrel at it, since their only complaint for their infidelity is, that it is unintelligible. But to the Crypto-My­sterists (who give occasion to the Anti-My­sterists to deride us for absurdities, &c.) I shall only need to say with *Con. Arian. Orat. 2. [...], &c. St. Athanasius, The Faith is no Riddle, (to be kept in the dark) but a Divine Mystery (to illuminate our Souls.) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. This was not given from Heaven to stupifie and amuse, but to sublimate our Theories of God, and to exercise our inner Senses unto previous Idea's of that Divinity, which [Page 150]will be more immediately opened unto in the State of Glory. St. Paul thought it a noble Wisdom to understand Mysteries, 1 Cor. 13.2. to which all the Sons of Wis­dom (though to others there is an [...]) are initiated. Let it therefore be deep and recondite, while it is rich and noble; the treasure is the better for its dif­ficulty, and what is to be gotten is with joy to be communicated to such as have Ears to hear. Tell but a Man that there are three in one, and one in three, without any other Theories, how dry and infant must that Notion be? How little life and taste is there in such a Rudiment? But when a Man is brought by heavenly Theories of the Logos to have some apprehensions of the super-essential Excellency of the Fa­ther, and almost to feel the vital Love of the Holy Spirit, to view hereby the Ori­ginals of the Creation, and the Schemes of Providence in the Ray of Light Essential, in the Archetypal Tables of the Almighty Mind, this is Transport, this is Aether, this is Heaven it self, to which we are waf­ted up by these depreciated Senses of the Fathers. Yet whatsoever flight a religious Mind may take in these contemplations, God knows these advances of mine are ve­ry short, and I have no more to advise an [Page 151]aspiring Piety, but to drink of these living Waters from their first Fountains, the Ho­ly Scriptures, and the Fathers. But he that thinks it no Mystery or valuable The­ory, that the first Principle of all is an eter­nal glorious lucid Mind, our of whose foe­cundity there coessentially streams a lumi­nous and infinite substantial Reason, with a benign and adorable Spirit of Substantial Love and Holiness, the noble Springs and Fountains of the whole Creation, and the World to come, forgets the thick darkness of the old Heathen, and even of the pre­sent untutour'd World in these Idea's and Informations; he forgets the shortness of the most sublimate Theories in proportion to the full Glory of the Mystery; he for­gets how much the Wise of the Heathen admired some few glances of it among the Jews, and are themselves valued for them, even by our Fathers and our Moderns al­so; he conceives not how divine and sur­prizing this Light appeared to the World upon the first opening of Christianity, how it clears up the delusions of Gentilism, and spiritualizes our Idea's of God above all mixtures of carnality, and prepares them for a glorious intuition of him hereafter; and lastly such Men loath Manna and the Food of Angels, forgetting their first weak­nesses, [Page 152]and the difficulties they struggled with before they attained to this Theolo­gy; neither do they humbly reflect on their present narrowness in respect of what yet remains within the Veil, or else they could never have sallen into contempt of this Revelation as light and void of depth and mystery.

§. 37. Now lest any Man from hence should frame an Objection, that upon this Theory we may frame as many Persons in the Deity, as there are Attributes of God, let it be observed, that all the received At­tributes of God do denote one, or more, or all of these three *This word in our tongue, I suppose, may not offend, as being somewhat turned from what [...] and Principium common­ly denote. And I call them so only in respect of the crea­tures, not absolutely in respect of their own subsistence, as if they were three unprincipiated Prin­ciples; for so there is but one, viz. God the Father. So I a­gree with the Do­ctrine of the Fa­thers, as they deny three Principles non­prinoipiate, for o­therwise three such Principles would be three Gods. Prin­ciples, and so are not re­ally distinct from them, or simply describe the whole Divine Essence, and so no single one of these Principles, or else are merely negative, and so signifie no positive Prin­ciple, or Hypostasis in the Deity, or else are extrin­secal, and relative only to exteriour productions, and so touch nothing Eternal or Inessential to the Di­vine Nature, that I men­tion [Page 153]not how, that Eter­nal Generation and Pro­cession can be conceived of no Attributes distinct from the Trinity, the Father, Logos, and Holy Spirit. There is therefore in the Deity no positive distinct intelligible Pow­er, Virtue, or Principle, but Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Mind, Reason, and the Holy Spirit of Love, by the Revelation of whose Nature, Subsistence, Personality, Counsels, and Operations the Christian Theology and Religion is most pure, dese­cate, sublime, full, and absolute, as be­came the last revelations by the Son of God, but had not been so, had it wanted any of these received Articles and Theories concerning the adorable and ever blessed Trinity.

§. 38. But whereas there are, who pro­fessing the Catholick Faith themselves, would yet open the Church Doors to con­trary Opinions, by making the Gospel, Fa­thers, and Religious Councils naked unto shame, and contriving to abrogate the San­ctions of our Faith, I pathetically beg them to consider deeply what I have said hereup­on, especially in the four last Sections, and further remark, that since by the Grace of the Holy Spirit, and the Mediation of the [Page 154]Son, we have an access unto union with God the Father, the first Parent and Prin­ciple of all, that dwells in Light otherwise altogether inaccessible, it was necessary that our Rule of Faith (if justly perfect) should shew us the way of this ascent, and particularly what that Logos, and Holy Spirit properly and essentially are, by whom we arise into this Communion with the Fa­ther. Else such a defect had remained in these necessary Notices, as had rendred our Faith and Theology blind and uncertain to the inevitable danger of a fundamental Impiety. For Men, hearing of the Son and Holy Spirit, must have been curious for a Notion of them, and must have taken them for create, or uncreate. Now if be­ing uncreate Men had taken them for crea­ted, (as we see many will against express Revelation, and universal Tradition to the contrary) Men would have prosaned them and their Deity, the sault whereof had been imputable to God, had he not yiel­ded us the necessary Revelation of their Order and Godhead. And so likewise had they been created, God would not have left us without sufficient notice thereof, lest we mistaking should have adored them for Divine, as the whole Church hath done, and does. But certainly he could not so [Page 155]much, so fully, so often, so perpetually have asserted their Godhead, and Persona­lity, had they been merely created, or im­personal. To have revealed nothing of them had been to have shewed no way to Communion and Knowledgge of God the Father, and to have said somewhat of them, but not enough to fix a Faith and Notion of their Essence and Character, had been a Snare. But since what is now taught, is both necessary and perfect, I think it a damnable Sin not to keep such a Divine Depositum perfect, whole, and undefiled as it was delivered unto us, but by false indul­gences of Latitude to betray it up to pro­fanation, corruption, contempt, and infi­delity.

§. 39. And here having made a sufficient Apology for those Theories of the Fathers against his Lordship's charge of Novelty and Humane Fancy, I could heartily have begg'd a Nunc Dimittis, and have ended in these pleasing Contemplations. But our Life is a Warfare, and his Lordship's further process requires my further attendance. But many (saith his Lordship) have thought, that the Term Son did not at all belong to the *He means to any one of them. bles­sed Three, but only to our Saviour, as he was the Messias, the Jews [Page 156] having had this Notion of the Messias, that as he was to be the King of Israel, so he was to be the Son of God. We find Nathanael addressed himself thus to him, and when the High Priest adjured our Saviour, he knits these two together, art thou the Christ the Son of the most High God? Which shews that they did esteem those two as one and the same thing. This account of the Jews no­tion his Lordship seems to have taken out of Dr. Hammond's Annotation on Psal. 2. v. 7. Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. For these are that great and good Doctor's words;— the learned Jews themselves resolved, that he was to be the Son of God, and that in an eminent man­ner; (So the High Priest, Matth. 26.63. Tell us, whether thou art the Christ the Son of God, and Joh. 1.49, Rabbi thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel,) &c. Which Text therefore the Doctor pro­phetically interprets of his resurrection and exaltation according to good New Testa­ment Authorities. But he that said this, never taught his Lordship that the term Son did not at all belong to any of the bles­sed Three, but expresly in the same Anno­tation proves from Rom. 1.4. that he was declared to be the Eternal Son of God (the second of the blessed three) by his Resur­rection [Page 157]from the dead. And it is not fair play in his Lordship to cite a place and conceal the Author, that so God's truth, and his doubling might not be discerned. But since we are upon a critical disquisition of these terms, Messias and Son of God, we will consider first what the real truth is; and secondly the opinion of the Jews. First then it is certain, that God's constitution of any Person in a State of favour gives the favourite the Title of a Son by virtue thereof. Thus God calls the People of Is­rael his Son, and his First Born, Exod. 4. 22. and so literally; Hosea 11.1. and ma­ny other places set God as their Father, be­cause God had admitted them as the seed of Abraham into his especial Covenant, as we are also Sons of God by the adoption of the New Covenant. And hence exaltation by God to an high Authority has founded a title of Gods, and Sons of God, unto Men, and Angels. And consequently the various signal Exaltations of Christ in his Humane Nature, above all others make him in those respects justly to be styled the Son of God. If then he had been only exalted into the heavenly Throne, without any antecedent Death or Resurrection, this alone would have founded a Filial Title, much more [Page 158]when in Order thereto, he was born again our of a Virgin Sepulcher, whereby he became the first Born, or first Begotten from the Dead. So his Transfiguration on Mount Tabor, and his Unction by the Ho­ly Ghost at his Baptism (in both which the Bath-Col, the voice from Heaven pro­nounced him God's beloved Son) were fair grounds for the same Character. His Con­ception by the Holy Ghost in the Virgin's Womb was a foundation thereof *Luk. 1.35. [...], &c. [...]. where [...] shed's that this was not the first ground of his Filia­tion. before all these, though not the primary. By the † Heb. 1.2. Son God made the Worlds, and thereby the Son became Heir of all things. And hereupon it was by many Ancients preached as Good Theo­logy, that herein also he was the Son of God, and the * Col. 1.15. [...]. first Born and Heir of the whole Creation, they setting it off as a kind of Nativity and Production of the Logos into Light and the World. And those many Texts of Scripture, besides the Catholick Tradition of Creeds, that teach him to be in the form of God, and equal with God, the true God, God above all [Page 159]blessed for ever, and that he hath received his being from the Father, have established the Faith of an Eternal Paternity and Co­eternal Filiation. So that if we take the Humane Nature into the Conception and Character of the Christ as his Lordship does, here are several grounds for the Cha­racter of Son, before our Lord actually was a Man, or could be on his Lordships No­tions the Messias. And so Son of God and Messias cannot really in the true intention of the Scriptures be altogether synony­mous, equaeval, or equipollent, though be­longing to the same Person. Now if Na­thanael, made a good and full Confession, when he told our Lord, * John 1.50. Thou art the Son of God, thou art the King of Israel, then he owned all the truth of the Filial Character; but if his Faith were defective, then it is no ground for his Lordship's Criticks to stay so low in it, and not advance to the High­est revealed Excellency of the Character, which I believe the true Israelite reached as well as † Matth. 16.16. Joh. 6.69. St. Peter and others, since the Gospels set this for a good memo­rial of their and the Catholick Faith. But however, let us see what the Faith of the [Page 160] Jews contributes to our Edification. By the Testimony of the Fathers from after Josephus's days, it appears an established or received Doctrine among the Jews, as also other Hereticks herein so judaizing, that the Messias was to be a mere Man, and so no wonder if all Rabbins since, that own him to be the Son of God, take him only for a positive or adoptive Son by mere ad­vancement. Now if his Lordship thinks this to have been their Faith also in our Lord's days, then those some Criticks of his Lordship's cannot found the Filiation of the Theanthropus in this Jewish Faith. But if these Jews did believe their expected Mes­sias to be a real Immanuel according to their Prophet, and this Immanuel to be the Son of God, how can his Lordship's Criticks prove that in the Imma­nuel's Filiation * P. 32. in which the Humane Na­ture being the first Conception? † the first Conception of the Sonship was in his Humanity? For if there were another Conception of Sonship in the Divine Nature, how can they, or his Lordship prove it to be poste­rior to that in the Humanity? To be Son of God is a Character at least of Dignity, and if there be any thing in the Deity that bears it, it cannot derive it from any Crea­ture, [Page 161]and so in order of Conception it ought not to be posterior to the Title in a Creature. His Lordship had best have a eare, lest he and his Cri­tick's * Vid. Euseb. con. Marcell. call in upon Mar­cellus in this rode of Con­ceptions, and father the Heresie upon the Jews. But if there be no real Son in the God head, there will be no Father neither before the Creation, and consequently the Humane Nature being originally filia [...] be­ing united to God (who by the Creation thereof only is its Father, i. e. natural Pa­rent) will convey the Title of Son to its own Father by this Union, which since it can be only a nominal dispensation, here comes in a beloved Sabellianism. But if there be a Sonship in the Godhead, since it cannot be derivative, it must be Primitive to the Character given to the united Hu­manity, because of that Union, and if so, how can its Conception be first lodged in the Humanity, to which it is socially com­municated in the entire Suppositum of the Theanthropus, but not singly distributed by any dividing Conception, except we will put up with Nestorius. But to look a little further into this matter; I think it manifest, that the Jews believed the Son [Page 162]of God to be a Person not Humane, but equal to the Father, and so had no first Conceptions of it in Humane Nature The Personal Title of Son, with others, that Philo gives the Logos, which he did not believe to have been incarnate, is a full proof of this first point, that he was called Son by the Jews without any respects to Humanity, since he taught this as the Theology of Moses, and the Tradition of the Elders; and that this Filial Logos was by them believed equal to God the Father. * Joh. ch. 5.17. &c. vid. ch. 10. St. John proves, for that the Jews would have kil­led Jesus, for saying that God was his Father, making himself there­by equal with God, and so God; which our Saviour refuses not, but defends. And even Josephus after the Destruction of Je­rusalem owning our Jesus to be Christ, doubts whether it were lawful to call him a Man, because the old Notion, that God was, and was to be the King of Israel, was not yet worn out. They looked on the Kingdom of the Messias as the Kingdom of God, and they looked for the Son of God (whom Agur of old knew under that Character) to come, and set up his Reign among them, and to subdue all Nations [Page 163]thereunto. And therefore St. John shews him, and the Devils confess him the Son of God also as well as his Disciples; nay, the Conturion at his Crucifixion owned him to be the Son of God; who never saw him to have been, nor ever hoped to see him hereafter to be the King of the Jews, according to their Notions of his Royalty. For though they looked on their King to come to be God, the Son of the Father, yet they took his Kingdom to be secular. And he that considers, that in the Gospels the terms of Father, Son, and Holy Spi­rit are spoken of to, and by the Jews fami­liarly, without any of our Lord's corre­ction of the Jewish Notion, or Institution of any other, either in common among the multitudes, or privately among his Disci­ples, must resolve that the true notion of these three Persons was popular, and re­ceived by an indubitate and good Tradi­tion, or else our Lord and his Apostles, ha­ving a recondite Notion of them unexplai­ned, could not be understood by that Peo­ple. Nor could Nathanael and Peter and others have made a right confession of Faith, without any preliminary Catechism of the Notion, had it not been general? And in vain had God the Father at his [Page 164]Baptism declared him to be his Son, in whom he was well pleased to all the mul­titude, had they been Strangers to the true sense of the Title, which imported not on­ly a Royalty, but an *Matth. 4. Mar. 1. Luke 4. omnipotent Divine Pow­er, even, had he pleased, of turning Stones into Bread by his mere Com­mandment, †Matth. 8.29. Mar. 5.7. Luke 8.28. and to tor­ment even Devils before their time; and also a Divine Knowledge of the Father, for no Man knoweth the Father but the Son, who being the * Luke 4.34. Holy One of God, was there­fore the Holy One of Israel. And though it may be objected, that when the Jews demanded him, to come down from the Cross, if he would be believed, 'tis said by the Evangelists, If he be the Christ, the King of Israel, let him come down from the Cross; yet this supposes, that, had he this Power, he must have it as God the Christ and King, and not as a Man only anointed King of Israel. So that neither the true, nor false Conceptions of the Jews concerning his Filial Character, can help his Lordship and his Criticks in their first Conceptions of it in his Humanity. And [Page 165]here, indeed, there lies a large and noble Field before me for a Theory, concerning the Titles of Christ, Lord, King of Israel, &c. on what grounds they stand in the Divine and Humane Nature, wherein might be shewn that neither are the first Conceptions of all these in our Lord's Hu­manity, to the utter ruin of Criticism; but it being not here necessary, and withal be­ing a matter of a large speculation, I wave it in this place; and the rather, because, if my unhappy Eyes will hold out so far to serve my designs, I intend a peculiar Trea­tise concerning the Kingdom of God, in which these Titular Characters of our Lord will be largely discussed. In the mean time, I am sorry his Lordship's Criticks are spoiled in their kind aims to explain the Texts, that teach the inferiority of Christ as Man to the Father; but I am pretty well pleased however, that the Catholick Doctrine has no need of such new fashioned planes to smooth its difficulties.

§. 40. But now at last the Scene opens, and the whole mysterious intrigue comes out, why all this pother is made. For saith my Lord, *P. 32. If this be true all the Speculations concerning an Eternal Generation are cut off in the strict [Page 166]sense of the words, though in a larger sense every Emanation, of what sort soever, may be so called. But was it my Lord's part to leave this in suspense, whether it be true or no? To leave hereby a liberty to deny the Nicene Faith, that he was be­gotten of his Father before all Worlds? Would not common honesty oblige a Divi­nity Professor to determine one way or o­ther, between the inconsistent Fathers, and these sagacious Criticks, either for, or a­gainst an Eternal Generation? and yet to let us see which way he inclines, he brings Texts of Scripture perverted for the sense of Hereticks, but not one sacred syllable for the Fathers; nothing but fastidious and exposing Censures. Yet this was not e­nough. The distinct Emanations of the Son, and the Holy Spirit were to be con­founded, though one be from the Father only, and immediately, the other from the Father and the Son, as we Westerns con­fess; or, to speak more like the Greeks, from the Father by the Son; that so the Emanation of the Holy Spirit being in a larger sense called Generation, the Holy Spirit may in a larger sense be called the Son of God: And so God the Father shall have improperly two Sons, but really [Page 167]none at all till the being of Christ's Hu­manity.

§. 41. And now for a blessed Epiphone­ma. *P. 32. But it may be justly que­stioned, whether by these they have made it better to be understood, or more firmly believed, or whether others have not taken advantage to represent these subtilties as Dregs, either of Aeones, of the Valenti­nians, or of the Platonick Notions.— And it being long before these Theories were well stated and settled, it is no wonder if many of the Fathers have not only differed from one another, but even from themselves in speaking upon this Argument. When Men go about to explain a thing, of which they can have no distinct Idea; it is very natural for them to run out into a vast mul­tiplicity of words; into great length, and much darkness and confu­sion. Many † Witness P. 41, 42. &c. impertinent Similes will be urged, and often impertinent reasonings will be made use of, all which are the unavoidable conse­quences of a Man's going about to explain to others, what he does not distinctly under­stand himself. Now to this calumnious re­flexion it were enough to say, the Lord rebuke thee; but for the sake of others, [Page 168]that may either glory in it, or be beguiled by it, I will answer it in order. First then all these traduced Theories of Faith are uni­versally professed, and received in the whole Church of God, and have but a very few Adversaries: And we have reason to attri­bute this universal Consent herein to the Piety and Labours of the Ancients, who so victoriously defended it against the Highest Parts, Principalities, and Powers. For whatsoever failures and lesser mistakes (from which no mortal is, or can be se­cure) may sometimes appear in a course of nice Disputations, yet the main Body of them appeared so strong and convincing, that they bowed down the whole World into Conviction: I mean the Christian World; while the Adversaries thereof have deservedly attained the glory of preparing the way for Mahometism. What matter then is it if these Divine Theories (which his Lordship opprobriously calls subtilties) be abusively represented by wicked Men? Does it follow that the Theology is vicious, and to be quitted? Such Counsel as this would soon have strangled the whole Chri­stianity, which at first was every where traduced. What they, if that Impostor Sandius * Enucl. Hist. Eccl. l. 1. [Page 169]would derive our Faith from Valentinus? The vulgar Christians do not know, nor trouble themselves with those fabulous Ae­ons, nor is there any danger of frighting them from the Faith by this imputation. And as for the Learned, or Students in An­tiquity, they will soon discover the fal­shood, and even to save, or facilitate their labour, 'tis unanswerably † Bull. Defens. Fid. Nicen. p. 64, 65. & alib. Sect. 3. c. 1. done to their hands al­ready, by an Author his Lordship will never be a­ble to answer. But this Calumny is as sil­ly as it is false and debasing. For Irenaeus the great mawl of Valentinianism, defends our very Faith and Theology against that and all other Gnostick Heresies. Nay, and St. John one would think was a Preacher of our Doctrine. And can any one be brought to believe, that St. John and St. Irenaeus were tainted or drunk with the Lees of Aeo­nism? Let Sandius therefore and his Lord­ship make what advantages they please a­gainst our Theories by their Valentinian Character; there is no great danger: The Lion's Hide covers a very tractable Ani­mal. For after all Sandius his Disguises, his Father Arius, his Thalea (which he swaggered as descending from Men [...] [Page 170]had its [...] from Grandsire Kalentine, and his Symmystae. Well, to go along with his Lordship, how came the poor old doa­ting Fathers to nod thus? His Lordship tells us, 'twas because 'twas long before these Theories were well stated and settled. And here I had been at a sad loss for an E­pocha of this settlement, if I had not by good fortune met with Dr. Burnet's Letter of Remarks upon the two strong Box Pa­pers, where he tells us thus: It seems plain, that the Fathers before the Council of Nice believed the Divinity of the Son of God to be in some sort inferiour to that of the Father, and for some Ages after the Coun­cil of Nice they believed them indeed both equal, but they considered these as two diffe­rent beings, and only one in Essence, as three Men have the same Humane Nature in com­mon among them, and that as one Candle lights another, so one flowed from another; and after the fifth Century the Doctrine of one Individual Essence was received. If you will be further informed concerning this, Father Petau will satisfie you as to the first Period before the Council of Nice, and the Learned Dr. Cudworth as to the second. So then the Primitive Faith till the Nicene [Page 171]Council was, That there were two Divini­ties or Deities, one of the Father, and ano­ther of the Son, and that of the Son some­what inferiour to that of the Father. From the Council of Nice to the sixth Century, they believed two or three different *What is this but [...], essences, or [...] Beings, and these equal, and no other­wise of one Essence than three Men that are of one common Na­ture. But in the beginning of the sixth Century, then their Eyes and Faith opened into one individual Essence; and then I suppose the matter was settled. Be this so for once; what will it amount to? That all the Fathers till the sixth Century were Polytheists and Idolaters, not excepting the Nicene. When a Man thinks upon this he must needs confess it not †Discours. 3. p. 65. It were perhaps too invidious to send Men to Petavius to find in him how much the Tradition of the several Ages has va­ried in the greatest Articles of the Chri­stian Faith. only perhaps, but for certain invidious to send Men to the Jesuit for a Calumny against the Primitives, and were so to Dr. Cudworth to make his History of such Con­sequence. But as for Pe­tavius and his Admirers, I think them all refuted by Dr. Bull beyond all possibility [Page 172]of a reply; and as for the Arguments upon a Specifick Homoousion cited by Dr. Cud­worth and others, I have above accounted for their innocency, §. 11. and proved, that though they argued from a specifick Homoousion through the Arian Cavils, (especially to avoid the Charge of Sabel­lianism) yet they did not assert this alone, as his Lordship charges them. But now to come upon my Lord's blind side: In his Letter he says, the Post- Nicene Fathers were for an equality, and used for their Theory the Simile of Candles. In the Dis­course we are upon he says, the Simile of Candles gave rise to the Nicene form Light of Light, and therefore must be used by the Ante-Nicene Fathers, whom he asserts to be for an inequality. In his Letter the specifick Homoousiasts are equalizers; but in his Discourse the same are Subordina­tors. But here again I would sain see the Simile of Candles produced among the Post-Nicene Homoousiasts, to whom in his Letter my Lord assigns it. Again in his Discourse the Theory of the Divine Wis­dom and Love is said to be consequent or concomitant to the Doctrine of one indivi­dual Essence. In the Letter this Doctrine commences with the sixth Century. But [Page 173]all the Fathers that I have above-cited for the Theory of the Wisdom and Love of the Divine Mind, especially §. 21. §. 23. lived long before his Lordship's Epocha, even in the fourth Century the very lowest, and latest. But since his Lordship is become a Father, no wonder if he falls into contra­dictions too against himself and truth too; for it seems 'tis of ancient prescription with Men of that Character. But in short, I thought all these traduced Theories to have been ever settled, and that settlement not begun, but continued and defended only by the Councils and Fathers in several A­ges, according as seemed then most seaso­nable in respect of the Heresies, and Sen­timents then fermenting; which occasions a seeming variety in forms of expression, but no real difference in the Substance of their Faith, that so Men herein might charge them with mutual or self-contradi­ctions. And yet that which we stand for is not every notion of every Father, but what they all agree in, and such are those Theories which his Lordship hath exposed as Exorbitant: Let his Lordship prove their express contradictions each to other in these established and received Theories, and then indeed he may more creditably [Page 174]expose his Father's Nakedness, though that practice is but of ill and execra­ble prescription. But as his Lordship has upbraided the Primitive Tradition of the Faith and the Scriptures in these Dis­courses, and the forementioned Letter, and loaded the Traditors with so much reproach; he has done what in him lies to discourage Students from reading or regarding them, and not only so, but he has put such a Dagger into the hands of Deists, and the open Enemies of all Revealed Religion, as he himself will ne­ver be able to extort; for who will be­lieve the Church, that she received the New Testament from Men divinely in­spired, when for Five Hundred Years af­ter Christ her Principles were Polytheist and Idolatrous, and she knew not the very first Rudiments of a true Faith, and when she at last did so, yet fell into divers silly conceits and Similes about it since scorned and rejected by the Cri­tick Tribe?

§. 42. And now I am resolved to end, though his Divinity affords much more corrigible matter: At the horrour whereof, I leave him to God's Mercy, [Page 175]and the Churches Prayers; but his Wri­tings of this stamp, either to his own ingenuous Recantation, or Canonical Censure.