whether its Acts are as is commonly believed one with the Essence or distinct from it This Essence having necessary Existence in its first Conception those free Acts that might not have been are not easily apprehended to be one with his Essence and if those Acts are said not to be free then all things exist by the same necessity by which God exists for if the Immanent Acts of God are one with his Essence then since all the Transient Acts do certainly follow his Immanent ones there is an Universal Necessity equally spread over the whole frame of Nature and God can do nothing otherwise than he does But if those Acts of God are different from his Essence and distinct from it such as our Thoughts are then here are Accidents in God and a succession of Thoughts which seem inconsistent with infinite Perfection that is all one Eternal and Unchangeable Act. Here is a difficulty that perhaps few reflect on but it is every whit as great and as unaccountable as any of the Mysteries of Revealed Religion can be pretended to be tho this arises out of Natural Religion If to this we add all that we be believe concerning the Attributes of God his being every where his knowing every thing his Providence in governing all things together with those unsearchable Methods in which it exerts it self we must acknowledge that he dwells in a Light to which we cannot approach But that as the present frame of our Bodies and structure of our Eyes cannot bear the looking stedfastly on the Sun or the being brought much nearer him of which yet we may be capable in another texture of our Eyes and Bodies so in this state in which we have narrow Notions and gross Imaginations we are not able to frame distinct Ideas even of those Attributes of God of which we make no doubt but yet we find such difficulties in apprehending them that they do blind and confound us and put us to a stand in all our thinkings about them But for all that we still go on believing firmly those his Attributes In fine We are to make a great difference between those plain perceptions we have either of the objects of sense or of simple Theories and the difficulties and deductions that belong to them The one is the voice of our Faculties and we cannot oppose it or believe against it because it is in some sort the voice of God within us since it is the natural result of those powers that he has put in us but it is quite another thing when we go to Inferences and to frame difficulties In this appears our Ignorance of the nature of things of the several ways and manners in which they may operate and of the Consequences that seem to belong to them because we are apt to judge of every Being by our selves and have not extent enough of thought and observation to reason always true or to judge exactly So that this must be setled as a clear difference between plain perceptions and a train of Consequences we are always to be determined by the one but not by the other To instance it then in that which is now before us we have a plain perception that no Being can be both One and Three in the same respect because we are sure that is a plain Contradiction which cannot possibly be true but if a thing is represented as both One and Three this in different respects may be true Thus I have dispatched this first part in which it seemed the more necessary to state this matter aright that so it may appear that no part of the plea for Mysteries belongs to Transubstantiation since here is the fullest evidence of sense in an object of sense which plainly represents to us Bread and Wine to be still the same after Consecration that they were before and therefore we can never be certain of any thing if in this case we are bound to believe in contradiction to such a plain and simple perception but this is not at all applicable to any speculations concerning the Divine Nature I go on from this Previous Discourse to the Subject it self that I am now upon in which there have been three different Opinions the one is That Christ was a Divine Person miraculously conceived and wonderfully qualified for revealing the Will of God to the World which he did in so excellent a manner and set so perfect a pattern both in his Life and Death that in Reward of that God has given him the Government of the World putting the Divine Authority in him and commanding him to be Worshipped and Acknowledged as God and has subjected both Angels and Men to him tho he had no Existence before he was formed in the Virgin 's Womb and no other nature but that which he derived from his Miraculous Conception Others have thought that there was an Essence created by God before all Worlds by which he made and governs all things and that this Essence which was like God dwelt in Christ Iesus and was by the Gospel revealed to the World So that all were bound to honour and obey him Some of these called him a Being of a Nature quite different from and unlike the Divine Nature which was found to be of an unacceptable Sound so others softned it by saying that he was of an Essence like the Father But this was only a milder way of speaking since if this Being was created so that once it was not its nature must be essentially unlike the Father for sure nothing can be more unlike than created and uncreated And by Likeness such Men could only understand a Moral Likeness of imitation and resemblance so that he might be like God as we are called to be like him tho' in vastly higher degrees The 3 d. Opinion is That the Godhead by the Eternal Word the Second in the Blessed Three dwelt in and was so inwardly united to the Human Nature of Iesus Christ that by vertue of it God and Man were truly one Person as our Soul and Body make one Man And that this 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 Name Person came to be applied to the Three which the Scripture only calls by the Names 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 compleat intelligent Being distinct from every other 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 This is the Doctrine that I intend now to explain to you When I say Explain I do not mean that I will pretend to tell you how this is to be understood and in what respect these Persons are believed to
by Tho indeed this is a point in which it is more possible for us to arrive at distinct Ideas or somewhat very like them than the other We plainly see that the Union of our Souls to our Bodies consists in a Harmony that God has setled between such an Organization of matter and such Sensations that arise out of the different motions of this Matter so organiz'd Upon which this Matter is in many things under the power of the Mind which by its thoughts commands and moves it and it has from it a continual Influence and Actuation that is called Life so that the Union of the Soul and Body is the result of such a proper Harmony of the Body according to the Mechanical Structure of its necessary parts as makes it fit to give proper Sensations to the Mind and to receive and obey the Impressions of the Mind the breaking of which Harmony brings on death From hence we may apprehend several degrees of the Union of thinking being with Matter The lowest is that if Infants where there is a thought but a thought so entirely under the Impressions of Matter that it is not able to rise above them and either to think of any thing else or to stop the Violence of these Impressions So here is a Spirit wholly immersed in Matter that is in every thing under its dominion and is a slave to it and in this state Ideots continue their whole life long A second degree is that of men in this Life duly ripened in which their Minds are as to their Sensations still subject to Matter that is they must feel pain or pleasure according to the dispositions of Matter but then there is a power in the Soul to govern Matter and not to yield to those Sensations So that there is a lasting struggle between the Sensations that arise from the Body and the Cogitations that spring in the Mind which have the better of one another by turns Here the Soul and Body are as it were equally yoked together only the Soul may by the use of Reason and Liberty be so assisted as to have the ascendant over the Body for the greatest part From these we may conceive two other degrees of Union which may be between Souls and Bodies The one is a State in which the Soul shall have an entire Authority over Matter but yet shall need the assistance of it as a necessary mean of Motion and as having in it a repository of Images and Figures for memory and imagination So that in such a state the Body shall have no power at all over the Mind but shall only serve it as Instruments do a Mechanick and this seems to be a Philosophical Notion of the use that our Bodies shall be of to us in another State in which they shall be no more clogs upon us to give us uneasy or grievous sensations but shall only be the proper Machines for Motion and Memory and for such like uses in which the Body when well tuned can serve the Mind A Fourth degree may be a State in which a Mind may be so entirely perfect in its self and in its own acts that it may have no need of a Body upon its own account but only in order to the ministring to another Spirit that is yet under the power of Matter to give it either Warnings or Assistances which perhaps it cannot communicate but through the Conveyance or by the Mechanical Motions and Impressions of one piece of Matter upon another Upon this account and for this end Spirits of the highest form nay God himself may at some times and for some unknown ends make use of a Body and put it in such a form and so actuate it as thereby to communicate some Light or Influence to minds that are yet much immersed in Matter These are all the ways that we can apprehend of a Mind 's assuming Matter and being united to it which is the having it under its Actuation or Authority so that the Acts of the Mind give such Impressions to the Body as govern and command it By the same way of thinking we may apprehend yet more easily how one Spirit may be united to another which is when a superior Spirit has another of an Inferior Order so entirely under its conduct and Impressions that the Inferior receives constant Communications of Light and Impulse from the Superior And as the Body lives by the presence of the Soul even when it does not by any distinct Act work upon it or enliven it so a superior Mind may have a perpetual conduct of an inferior even when it leaves it to its own liberty and does not break in upon it by any immediate enlightning or animating of it And thus we may conceive the Subsistence of an Intelligent Being to be its acting entirely in it self or upon Matter united to it without any other Spirit 's being constantly present to it actuating it or having it under any immediate Vital and inseparable Influence This seems to give some light towards the Idea of a Subsistence as separated from the Essence and by consequence of one person's Subsistence in by and from another I do not pretend to say that this is the strict Notion of Subsistence but it is the nearest thing that I can imagine to it which will at least help to form some general Idea of it for these being all the distinct Notions that we can frame of the Union of Spirits to other Spirits or of Spirits to Matter they will help us to a more distinct Apprehension of the Union of the Eternal Word to a Human Nature by which it assumed the Man into such an inward and immediate Oeconomy that it did always actuate illuminate and conduct him as we perceive our Souls do our Bodies This is the clearest thought that we give our selves of that Human Nature's subsisting by the Subsistence of the Word that dwelt in it This also agrees well with the Expressions of the Word 's dwelling in Flesh and of the bodily Indwelling of the Fulness of the Godhead in Christ Iesus But having now shewed how far these things may become in some sort intelligible to us I go to my main Design which is to examine no longers whether this ought to be believed or not in case we should find it very expresly affirmed in the New Testament for I hope I have already made that out fully Therefore the only question that now lies before me is Whether this is contained in the New Testament or not for if it is in it and is a part of its Doctrine then since that Doctrine is proved to be all true and revelled by God this must be likewise true if it is a part of it This I will also yield That Authorities brought to prove Articles that are so sublimeâ— as to rise above our ways of Apprehension ought to be made out by a greater fulness of express Proofs and bare Precepts of Morality or more easily
and since it was singly upon this point that they could let it pass without raising Objections or Difficulties about it and since we find in fact that they did let it pass and that the Apostles made no Explanations upon it we have all possible reason to conclude that it was thus understood of all hands at that time I think it is not possible to imagine that this could be otherwise so that upon these Reasons we may well and safely determine that Christ was truly both God and Man and that the Godhead did as really dwell in his Human Nature and became united to it as our Souls dwell in our Bodies and are united to them Having then laid down this Matter from Authorities that run through the whole New Testament and that return often in every Book of it I may now upon greater Advantages refer such as will descend to a more particular Enquiry to all those passages that assert Christ's having created all things Angels as well as Men that he is over all and in all before all things in whom all things do subsist that he is the Lord of Glory the Great God and the true God the Lord Almighty who was is and is to come who knows all things and can do whatsoever he will who is the first and the last the King of Kings and Lord of Lords who alone hath Immortality who was in the form of God and thought it no robbery to be equal with God who will raise the dead at the last day and judge the World who is God manifested in the Flesh the great Mystery of Godliness who is over all God blessed for ever These and many more such like passages but above all the beginning of the Gospel of St. Iohn on which I need not insist since that has been done with such Strength and Clearness of Reason by a much better Hand All these single passages I say are so many express Proofs of this great Article of our Religion that I am confident those who have clear'd themselves of that great prejudice against it to which the first part of this Discourse was directed cannot read them without feeling that they are wrestling against the full current of the whole New Testament who oppose this I know a great deal has been said to take off the force of every one of them for if a Man resolves beforehand not to believe a thing he may easily bring out matter enough to avoid the most express words that can be invented yet this I dare positively affirm that at their rate of answering passages with which we urge them it were easy to answer the most express words that we could be capable to contrive for setting out our Doctrine to which this is likewise to be added That it will be very hard to preserve any respect for Writings that are filled with such Intimations of so Important a Doctrine all which at first view seem to carry a Sense which they judge Monstrous and Impious and that with much labour and difficulty are wrought to another sense It will not be easy to think those men had the common degrees of Honesty and Discretion not to speak of Inspiration who writ in such a Style with such Phrases and in such a continu'd Strain that ordinary Readers must stumble in every step and that in a point of such vast Consequence as whether a meer Creature is the great and true God or not and that a great deal of Dexterity and Diligence is necessary to give them another sense I must own that if I could think so of the Scriptures I should lose all Esteem for them and could think no other of the Pen-men of them but that their great Affection for their Master had led them to say many things concerning him that were Excessive and Hyperbolical and not strictly true This is literally and without any aggravation the sense that I have of this Matter and the prophane Tribe of Libertines go all into this of laughing down all Mysteries knowing well that when they have once gain'd that point the New Testament it self will be laughed down next in which they are so plainly contain'd And indeed the Christian Religion must be the most self-contradicting of all the Religions in the World since it does so often condemn the worshipping of Creatures and yet heaps all sorts of Divine Honors on a Creature and St. Iohn must be a most incongruous Writer who could at the conclusion of his first Epistle say of Christ Jesus This is the true God and Eternal Life and in the very next words add Little Children keep your selves from Idols when in the very preceding words he had been setting them on to it if St. Paul's definition must hold true that Idolatry is a service to those who by nature are not gods It is true upon this they will recriminate and say That there being nothing more expresly and frequently contain'd in Scripture and that indeed arises more plainly out of our Idea of God than that he is One we destroy that by setting up Three This would press hard if we did affirm three distinct Beings but since that wich is One in it self may be Three in other respects it is only a consequence that they infer but which we deny That we set up more Gods than one and no man is to be charg'd with the suppos'd Consequences of his Doctrine when he himself does not own them but denies them and thinks he can plainly show that they do not necessarily follow from it We do plainly perceive in our selves two if not three different Principles of Operation that do not only differ as Understanding 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 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 die and do not know how all this is done It seems to be by 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 of words at pleasure Some disorder in our Mechanism hides or flattens them
Authorities and Observations to believe some things of which he not only has no Notion but fancies he has very clear ones to the contrary From hence I will make another step to shew that indeed we believe almost every thing that we do believe under the like difficulties and disadvantages for Instance we know that we move and yet there is something very like a demonstration against Motion let A. move from B. to C. two supposed contiguous Points in a supposed Instant D. A. when it moves is supposed to be in B. so in that Instant it cannot go to C. because it is supposed to be in B. and it cannot be in the same Instant both in B. and C. for then it should be in two places at once that is in the same Instant therefore in the Instant in which it is in B. it cannot go to C. and so it cannot do it in any other Instant because it is still supposed to be in B. When a Man has turned this over and over in his Thoughts he is indeed very sure that it is false and is very certain that he moves yet he feels a contradiction to that in his reasoning from which it is not so easy for him to free himself as he might at first view apprehend This of Motion carries me on to a greater difficulty whether there are vacuities in Nature or not that is distances between Bodies in which there is no sort of Body at all It is very hard to apprehend how things can be either of these ways Motion it self Condensation and Rarefaction Weight and the crouding of all things to the Centre can hardly be explained without admitting a Vacuum And yet as our thoughts cannot receive the Idea of it so the whole connexion of things the whole Chain of Matter and the Communication of Motion from the Heavenly Orbs down to us is all broken and interrupted nor can we see how the Frame of Nature can hold together if a Vacuum is once allowed So that tho' we are certain that either it is or it is not yet when one weighs well the difficulties of both Hypotheses he is so equally ballanced that he is apt to lean against that whose difficulties were the last and are the freshest in his thoughts If from this we go into the Compositions of Matter we are sure that either it is divisible on to Infinity and that there are no Indivisible Points in it or that it has Points either such as have no Parts or extended Atoms that may have Parts but that are Indiscernible It must be one or other of these that must be true for they may be reduc'd to the terms of a Contradiction since either Matter is divisible into Infinity or not if not then either those Indivisibles have parts or they have not So that it is plain one of them must be true and yet every one who has gone through that famous question must see that there are such Insuperable difficulties against every one of them that they seem to amount to a demonstration I shall Instance but in one other particular which though it is that of all others that we should understand the best yet carries no fewer nor less difficulties in it and that is our own Composition We plainly perceive that we think and that we act freely Then either this rises out of meer Matter or we have another principle in us of another nature and order of beings that thinks and moves both it self and also our Bodies That meer Matter can have no liberty and that it cannot think seems to be evident of it self all our Observations of Matter shew it to be passive and to act necessarily and that it neither has in it self a power of motion nor liberty but always goes in a Chain and thought being perceived by us to be one simple act it must flow from a single principle that is uncompounded but on the other hand what should Chain down such a subtile being into so gross a one as body and how a thought should move it or how the motions of Matter should affect the thinking-principle how they should give it either pleasure or pain how the mind should be furnished from the body with such Images and Figures by which it remembers imagines argues and speaks how these should be so subtile and yet stick so long and lie in such order are things that the more a Man dwells upon them and spreads them out before himself he not only comprehends them the less but seems to find such difficulties against them that he is lost and knows not what to think of himself When a thinking man lays all these and a great many more which will arise from these hints if he has a mind to look for them together they shew him how limited our faculties are how little able we are to dive into the nature of things and that we can much more easily raise difficulties than solve them Yet the use that I plead for in all this is neither to lead men to be sceptical and believe nothing nor to be too implicite to believe every thing but only to evince this That we may be bound either from our own Observation or upon the Authority of other Persons to believe some things of which we are not able to give our selves a distinct account nor to answer the objections that may lie against them Great difference is to be made between the believing a thing and the apprehending the manner of it If we have sufficient Authority to guide our Belief it will be no just objection against it that the manner of it cannot be explained And this is yet more evidently true if the Being in which a thing is proposed to our Belief is of an Order and Rank above us and most of all if it is infinitely above us We perceive in the gradations of our own being that a Child is not capable of those Thoughts which he himself will come to have when he is more ripened And a man of low Education cannot frame those apprehensions which are easy to those who are born and bred in better circumstances If then the difference of Age and Education make thoughts that are plain and easy to some seem unconceivable to others this ought when applied to the Divine Essence make us conclude that there may be Mysteries in that Being of infinite Perfection and Elevation above us far beyond all our apprehensions And therefore if God lets out any hints of any such to us we are to receive them in such a plain sense as the words do naturally bear And if this should happen to import that which does not at all agree with our Conceptions of other things we ought not to wrest it to another sense that seems easier to us We can frame no distinct Idea of that Infinite Essence and it were not Infinite if we could How things were made out of nothing is above our reach how it thinks is an amazing difficulty
the acceptance of them if well kept The Iews also fixed one Anniversary in commemoration of their Deliverance from Haman's wicked designs against them and another for remembring the Purifying the Temple from its Idolatrious Defilement by Antiochus Epiphanes This last was observed by our Saviour at least we find him in the Temple on that day Now can any reason be assign'd either from the nature of things or from any special limitations in the Scripture that should restrain the Power that is naturally in every body of men for appointing things of this nature The commemorating the Dispensation of the Gospel committed to the Apostles has nothing of the Superstition of Popery in it No Invocations or Addresses being made to them and no Sacraments administred for their Honor or recommended to their Intercession God is only blessed for those several Dispensations of which they were made the Channels and Instruments But we ought rather to be concern'd That these Commemorations are practic'd in so slight a manner that we seem much more liable to an Objection upon that account and tho in the first fervour of Christianity in which those early Converts lived almost wholly in the Meditations of Christ and of what related to him some Institutions of days for more special remembrances of particular Circumstances had not been made there might have been very good reason for the succeeding Ages to have studied to keep alive that fervour by such appointments of days for the more solemn Commemoration of such signal Blessigns and tho there were not the same clear warrants from Antiquity for every one of these yet it was still in the Power of the Church to make such new Orders as should seem necessary for carrying on the main Design of Religion The Ancient Church thought that the whole fifty days between Easter and Pentecost ought to be kept with a special Solemnity of Rejoycing for the Resurrection and Ascension of our Saviour and for the Effusion of the Holy Ghost since some more particular Devotions on those heads during that whole time did not break off the labours of their other Employments nor interrupt the common business of life upon the same parity of reason they might appoint some time before that season of Ioy to be spent in confessing past sins and mourning for them in higher degrees of Prayer and Fasting This being only the prescribing a method for appropriating such Exercises in Devotion to the several seasons of the year an over-valuing of these things together with a nice distinction of Meats was a piece of Superstition which might corrupt that which was good in any Constitution The distinction of Meats for that season is among us founded meerly on a Law of the Land for Civil and Political Ends since the Church only recommends Prayer and Fasting in general witout any further Specialities as to the measure of the Fast so no just exception lies to any part of this whole matter concerning days and times appropriated to particular Exercises I wish our Practice in these were such that this part of our Constitution were not too evidently a matter of Form and observed with too visible a slightness And thus I have gone round â—ll that I remember ever to have met with in Books or Discourses from any of the Dissenters except from those call'd Quakers against our Constitution and have offer'd you those answers which to me after the most impartial search that I am capable of seem full to satisfy 'em all It remains That I consider such as are offer'd by those who are called Quakers First They are against all sorts of stated Forms their main Principle being That nothing is to be done by us by virtue of any outward warrant unless there is an inward excitation or opening of the Spirit that leads to it And therefore all fixed Rules being contrary to the freedom of the Spirit they are against them all But either this Principle must have some limitation to restrain it or it will cast open a door to subvert all Religion and Policy for those inward Excitations being only known to those who have them every man's word must be taken concerning them If then a man by affirming that he had or had not such or such an excitation will be thereby justified or excus'd then he may do or not do what he will and the whole Order of Religion Morality and Civil Society will be thereby dissolv'd but if they say that there is that Harmony between the secret leadings of the Spirit and the Scriptures that whatsoever is commanded in the one is always witnessed to by the other then we are to examine this matter by the Scriptures and to conclude That if there are rules given in them for the constant use of the Sacraments then they are hereby condemned who have laid them aside Our Saviour encourag'd his Apostles to go and execute the Commission that he gave them to make Disciples and Baptize all Nations with this Promise That he was to be with them alway even to the end of the World The promise is given as as an encouragement to the duty enjoin'd and from hence we may conclude that the precept of Baptisme must continue likewise to the end of the World To this we must join those other words of our Saviour Except a man is born of Water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven which is affirmed without any limitation of time By the Kingdom of Heaven is plainly meant the Dispensation of the Gospel and since Baptism was then practised and was well understood by them who were born Iews nothing in reason can be understood by the being born of Water and of the Spirit but the being initiated by Baptism and the being inwardly Sanctified The one as well as the other is made indispensably necessary to the being a member of this new Dispensation St. Mark also has recorded those words of our Saviour He that believeth and is baptized stall be saved but he that believeth not shall be damned Now since Baptism is only enjoined by Precept and is not necessary as a mean but only as an act of Obedience therefore tho the doing it is commanded in order to Salvation yet Damnation is not the consequent of its not being done since one may be prevented in it by death or other Impossibilities may put it out of his power to procure Baptism to himself And therefore as the one branch of this period shews the obligation laid on us to be baptized in order to Salvation so the leaving it out in the other branch shews that our not coming within the rites of our Religion when that failure is no fault of ours does not exclude us from Salvation or bring us to a state of Damnation In the beginnings of Christianity the wonderful effusion of the Holy Ghost was thought a true reason for baptizing such persons on whom it fell and therefore St. Peter said when