Convocation and therefore he penned it with less caution than was necessary for what was to be exposed to every vulgar Eye Now is not this a pretty excuse after so long hammering out The Doctor writes a Socinian Book wherein he condemns the belief of nineteen parts in twenty of all the Christians in the World only to enlarge the minds of the Convocation with a more comprehensive Charity This would have been a pretty piece of comprehensive Charity indeed to have damned all the Members of the Catholick Church for so many Ages for worshipping a Creature for God out of pure tenderness to Socinian Consciences Well but he penned it with less caution than if it had been to be exposed to every vulgar Eye Now I should have thought it had been requisite to be more exact in composing what was to be viewed by the more judicious and that it had been a little too presuming to offer a parcel of uncorrected stuff to so learned an Assembly I am sure 't is but a course Complement of the Authour 's to those learned Gentlemen to write what was to be read by them at that rate as he would not care should be view'd by every vulgar Eye But though we should let this Excuse pass for some of his uncouth Expressions or little slips in his Quotations and Chronologies c. I am afraid it will never bear him out for all the premeditated Heresy of his Book Though he be ready to own that there are some scattering Sphalmata in that Treatise yet I believe he would be loth to have it thought one Total and Uniform Erratum Are all his Chapters about the Socinian Notions of Faith nothing but slips in the penning Are so many Arguments against our Saviour's eternal Generation nothing else Are all his scandalous Reflections upon the Doctrine of the Trinity and the Assertors of it his malicious Censures upon so many good and holy Counsels only owing to the want of a little caution in the writing If this be so 't is impossible to know any Author's mistakes from his general Design for if it was not the Doctor 's design to invalidate the Truth of Christ's Divinity he designed nothing at all for there is not one Chapter in his whole Book but some how or other tends that way But he designed he says only to communicate his Book to the Members of the Convocation this is a very fine excuse indeed to make that venerable Body whose business it was to detect and condemn all Heresies to become Patrons to his but however this is but an usual piece of Socinian Confidence not unlike that of the Editor of the Racovian Catechism who dared to dedicate so Heretical a piece to so Orthodox a Member of the Church as King James the First But why this to the Convocation Whom of his stamp did he find there that he could dare to communicate such a Book to This is such an infamous scandal to those great Representatives of our Church that he can never atone for to presume that ever they would steer their Actions by the direction of such an Heretical Treatise as that What would a Foreigner upon reading this Plea be apt to think of the Members of that August Assembly that the Doctor should design that Book for their use which the University as soon as detected condemned to the Fire But after all What constat is there that he designed this to be handed only to those Members Which by the way can be no excuse neither for such a private handing to all the Members of such a publick Body gathered from all the different parts of the Nation is as effectual a spreading of his Heresy as any publication whatsoever But I say What constat is there that he designed only this Why truly none at all but only his saying so and how far his word will go in this matter I cannot tell 'T is plain the Copies of his Book were not essayed to be spread till the Lent after the Convocation was broke up The Gentlemen in Oxford to whom he delivered Copies were not all Members of that Body and the 500 which Litchfield in his Deposition said he printed were more far than the number of which the Convocation did consist Those Copies which were sent to the Bookseller and afterwards upon the dislike of the Book recalled were not I presume all designed to be sold to Convocation Men. Nay if the good Providence of God and the watchful Care of some of our excellent Governours in the University had not interposed we might have had every yound Lad in the University to have gotten one of these wicked Books into his Study So that 't is ridiculous evasion for the Author to say in the Title page of this Edition that the Book is now first published by him for he published it as much as he could before he put the Copies of it into the Publishers hands which was all he could do for his part and that they were stopped there was owing to the Intervention of other Authority And so much for the Doctor 's excuses to pass by his saucy Treating of the late Convocation by the reproachful names of Uncharitable Stubborn Stiff c. which is such Billingsgate stuff as is like calling Whore first to fasten those ill names upon them to avoid if he can the deserved one of Heretick upon himself I now come to speak a word or two to the Errors of this New Edition And those I think mostly lie within his Chapter of the Trinity which is the only New one in his Book for all his others are but the old Heresy pared away and something better varnished over than before And indeed in this Chapter there is something New for there is such an explication of the Trinity as no mortal ever heard before Here is a mixture of Platonism Hobbism and Sabellianism with some other peculiar Notions of the Doctor 's own jumbled together Quantum mutatus ab illo Is this the Author that has been declaiming so much against Mysteries and the explaining of Mysteries and has at last stuffed us out a Chapter with so much mystical Jargon But after all this second Notion of the Doctor 's is no farther distant from Socinianism than a Trinominal Deity is different from him that is personally one without such nominal Distinction or just so much as the Doctrine of Sabellius differed from that of Samosetanus or Photinus Now the first thing that the Doctor does to advance this Notion is to be angry with the terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Substance and Person He says it was proposed in the Council of Alexandria That all Persons should forbear those Terms tho' I do not find any such thing was proposed there There were indeed some Rules given for caution in using them because they said the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was not used in Scripture and the Apostle used the word 〈◊〉
he does one thing with as great ease as another because the greatest thing he does is as far from setting his Omnipotent Power as the smallest his Power to act is infinitely greater than any Power to resist and though one thing may seem more difficult than another to us because we find their resistibility to be so much greater or less than our limited Power of acting yet God's Power is infinitely greater than the most difficult of them and therefore can do one as easily as the other It seems to us indeed that have a finite narrow understanding that can attend to and discern only a few things that are just before us very difficult to find out so many scatter'd Atoms that lie it may be in so many Millions of different places because we cannot discern different things lying in different places and therefore all such disorder confounds our understandings but God who is Omniscient and knows exactly all things every where nothing can lie disorderly to him he knows where every such Atom lies as well as when it possessed its place in the Organized Body and can with as great ease make them return to their former station as to make the new separated Soul go back to the Body that lies yet entire Nay 't is not so great an act of God's Power to range all this scattered matter together as to create another Body for the Soul to be united to for 't is possible that all this matter might be gathered together from never so many different places by a finite Power only and 't is not improbable to think God may do this by the Ministry of his holy Angels but 't is God alone that can create another Body and therefore this would be rather in our Authour's phrase to make God unaccountably exercise his Omnipotency because it would put God to the expence of a new Creation to make a Body to be united to the Soul when the old one would do as well His fourth Argument is against those that make it some advancement of the joys at the Resurrection that we shall be united to our old Bodies which will be like the joyful meeting and embracing of old Friends which he says will not be of old Friends but of old Enemies because of the War between the Flesh and the Spirit Rom. 7. and therefore the Soul cannot rejoice at her being united to her former Body 'T is true indeed that several Ancient and Modern Writers have made use of this as a Rhetorical Argument to set forth in some part the joy of that happy day and truly I think not without some reason For we find the Soul has a great love to the Body both by reason of its being so loth to part with it and because it is found to hanker after the Body after its separation which is the account which some give of Spectrums But besides we find in Men a secret love and esteem for every thing that has any relation to themselves they love their Relations as being born of the same stock they have an esteem for every thing belonging to their native Country they have an extraordinary kindness for their nutriculi Lares the House in which they were born and bred and this Love seems always greater after a considerable time of absence from them Now when a Mans Body is the most nighly related to him as being an essential part of himself he cannot but be more joyed to be united again to that which is so near to him than to see his native Country or the House he was born in after a long time of absence from him As for the enmity between the Flesh and the Spirit he mentions that is only an Enmity Metaphorically so called because all proper Enmity is between two rational beings which are endowed with free wills which the Soul and the Body are not nay that reluctancy of the sensual nature to the dictates of the understanding which is Metaphorically expressed by War or Enmity between the Flesh and Spirit that is very well appeased in the regenerate Man so that he has no reason to hate his Body for that especially now he has master'd it for these inward strugglings of the Flesh have made his Vertue greater to overcome them and therefore he may reasonably expect for this a greater Reward in proportion to his Vertue ENQUIRY II. What Changes or Additions latter Ages have made in Matters of Faith OUR Authour has been hitherto giving us a Hodge-podge of Arianism and Socinianism and some Heresie of his own which wants a Name and this he calls giving us an account What was the Gospel our Lord and his Apostles preached as necessary to Salvation which was the first Enquiry And now when he enters upon his second What Additions latter Ages have made in Matters of Faith one would expect that according to the Tenour of his Book he should give an account how the Doctrine of the Trinity came into the World what Platonick Notions gave rise to the Opinion of our Saviour's Divinity that Plato's Doctrine of the Logos came from the Greeks to the Hellenistical Jews and so from them to the Christians one would I say have expected something of this matter which is used to fill up the Books of the late Socinians and Atheists when they have a mind to blaspheme the ever Blessed Trinity But our Authour I find either wants Courage or Reading or something else to set upon this Enterprize and therefore contents himself only with a little nibbling at this Doctrine but turns the whole Current of his Argument against the Papists and their Innovations Indeed his Charge of Innovations seems to lie against the Orthodox in general but when he comes to make good his Challenge he shams us off with an Instance or two against the Popish Errours But let us consider what these Innovations are he so boldly charges us with 1. He says We extend the Empire of Faith as far as possible and this he proves very strenuously by that vast Army of new Doctrines of Faith which the School-men have got by the Bishop of Rome's setting up for an Oracle to declare that Matter of Faith which was before Matter of Curiosity by implicit Faith in the Church c. But what does all this stuff signifie to us of the Church of England or who else does he mean by this We If he means We Papists and so reckons himself one of that number his Brethren will give him little thanks for thus exclaiming against their Corruptions If he means We Protestants or Church of England here is not one Tittle of Proof of the Charge against us we abhorr all these Romish Corruptions as much as the Authour possibly can do We extend Faith no farther than the Holy Scripture does what that tells us we ought to believe that we readily do believe but do not take into our Belief anything but what the Scripture does expresly assert or but what may by manifest
very well convinced of but I never heard of her Hypocrisy before or at least to have it commended too And truly if what our Authour would make us believe be true that she entertains the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds only in complaisance to the Papists when in reality she disbelieves them she is guilty of the most abominable Hypocrisy in the World 'T is true indeed she uses the Apostles Creed only in those Offices he speaks of because they are the most ancient and the shortest and therefore the fittest for these occasions but yet by the words of the Apostles she understands the substance of what is contained in the other which she looks upon as Comments upon this But however to be sure her use of it in those Offices does not shew her to disbelieve the other Creeds any more than the use of the Athanasian or Nicene in the other Offices of the Prayer-Book shews that she disbelieves the Apostles One would have thought that her using all three did shew her belief of all three for that I am sure is the more natural consequence and not that her using one in one place does shew that she does not believe the other two she uses in other places Well but this may be in compliance with the Papists that she uses them But how does he prove that Has he any 〈◊〉 that the Compilers of the Common-Prayer designed any such thing Do the Rubricks Canons Articles or any other Publick Authority of the Church say any thing like it Till the Authour could have found some such grounds to have gone upon he had better have kept his foolish surmise to himself and not so senslesly have taxed the best Church in the World with such a wicked compliance But what more ample satisfaction could our Church have given to the World of her believing these two Creeds and the Injunction of the same to all her Members than by what she has done She recommends all the three Creeds in her Articles and tells us they ought throughly to be believed for they may be proved by most certain warrants from holy Scripture In her Rubricks she has ordered the Athanasian Creed to be used upon all the great Festivals of the year instead of the Apostles by which it is plain she looks upon it at least an Equivalent to it And this is to be said by the Minister not as something Declaratory to the People but as something they do assent to and in his words do they openly profess as appears by the Rubricks ordering the People to stand at this Creed as at the Apostles which is a token of their assenting to and of their making an open profession of what is then read Now can we suppose that the Church should exact so solemn a profession of the Faith contained in this Creed upon these great days if she did not expect they should believe what they so solemnly profess If the Authour can believe this he should never tax the Orthodox again with the Absurdity of their Faith The Nicene Creed is ordered to be said every Sunday and Holiday and in the Communion Service just before the receiving the Blessed Sacrament if a Sermon does not intervene in the same manner the other Creeds are recited And can we suppose that the Church should oblige her Members to make such an Hypocritical Confession at a time when she supposes them to have the best thoughts and the most pious Resolutions and to seal this their Hypocrisy with no less than immediate Perjury If she did do this instead of being the best she would be the most wicked Church in the World this one Injunction would serve to set against forty Romish corruptions but in truth the Romanists had never Forehead enough to object this against her so that it seems the Hereticks upon occasion can outdo the Jesuits in this qualification for this Authour by this one Calumny against the Church has said enough to silence all the lying Slanders of the Jesuits down from Sanders and Parsons to the little Scriblers in the late Reign As to his saying speaking of the Convocation last year that it will be a great disappointment to his Majesty and his good People if such an opportunity prove fruitless I cannot so well understand what he means if he means fruitless towards the incouraging his Opinions or for the taking away of these Creeds I believe it was more than his Majesty or any of his good People ever thought of or would have been satisfied with if it had been done nor could any but the Authour be so simple to imagine that when the State so lately by an Act of Parliament had excluded the Anti-Trinitarians even from the Benefit of Toleration that they should be let into the Church by an Act of Convocation THE END SOME REFLECTIONS UPON THE Naked Gospel As it is last Published and Owned By D r BVRY SInce these Papers were in the Licensers hands the Bookseller told me it would be expected I should say something to the Book Dr. Bury has since Published under his name so much altered from what it was before I do not think this is absolutely necessary to do in point of justice to the Authour for I have not concerned my self at all who was the Authour of that Book I only took care to Answer the False and Heretical Doctrines I found there which were like to do any mischief in the World which might still do harm enough for all its Authour's retractation It is his first Book that requires an Answer and not this last for that is such a poor Toothless Adder the poison of which is so much drained out that we may venture it any where without an Antidote Indeed 't is easy still to discern here the Tracts of the Heresy in his former Book but now they appear so thin and discoloured that the Reader whose gust lies the Socinian way will throw aside this insipid Heterodoxy for something of the same kind that is more substantial Here is still for the most part the old Heretical Body with here and there an Orthodox Limb so that his Book looks now like one of our old Saxon Idols half Man and half Monster Now whatever of his Erroneous Opinions he has altered or retracted in this last Book I shall not concern my self with them at all and truly I am glad he is come to own them to be such I shall only make a transient Remark or two upon those places in this Edition where instead of recanting he has multiplied his Heterodoxies But by the way it will be worth while a little to consider the Apology the Doctor makes for his first Book in his Preface to this He says this was drawn up against the sitting of the late Convocation at a time he had not patience to be silent in to enlarge some of their minds with a more comprehensive Charity with an intention to communicate what he had wrote to the members of that
each other not by any particular modality but by a true and real subsistence But when the Doctor makes the Son to be only Reason he can only make him an accident or at best but a Modality of the Father For if he only be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or what answers to it the internal Conception of the Father's Mind he would be only an Accident or Attribute or Mode or what else you 'll please to call it but would be far enough from that which the Church has all along called a Person And therefore the learned Fathers in the Church have been always careful to distinguish between this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 between the prolative or enunciative word and the essential and substantial one For the Son is not therefore called the word because he is the Reason of the Divine Mind or the Father but because he is generated of the Father without Passion For they explained this Generation by the production of a thought or word which was not produced by division or separation of parts which implies Passion but in a certain manner incommunicable to all Corporeal Beings So when the Doctor makes the Holy Ghost to be only the Power or Energy or Action of God what is this more than what the Socinians contend for and the Samosetanians and Followers of Simon Magus were Condemned for Nazianzen says that the Simonians thought the Holy Spirit was only an Energy and Leontius tells us that Paulus Samosetanus held the like Besides if the Holy Ghost be only an action with what propriety of speech can he be said to act or do With what tolerable sense can an action be said to speak and the Spirit said unto Peter Act. 10. 20. The Holy Ghost said uno them at Antioch Act. 13. How can an action or energy be said to search all things to make intercession for us to divide to every man severally as he will to reprove the World to guide us into all truth 'T is the nature of an Action to be acted but it can in no propriety be said it self to act But the Doctor says this Doctrine is stated by the Fathers as he has done it I hope by his Fathers he does not mean such as the Ministers of Alba Julia call so the famous Fathers Berillus Samosetanus Photinus c. and indeed some of these we have shewn to have explained the Trinity something at this rate but none of the Orthodox ones that I know of say any thing like it But he says St. Austin the Oracle of the Schoolmen states it thus whom Dr. Sherlock follows in his Book of the Trinity I know St. Austin in his Books de Trinitate if he means those has a great many strange Platonick Notions which I confess I do not understand and which perhaps St. Austin himself had no clear conceptions of when he wrote them but however there is enough in those Books to shew that St. Austin never designed such a nominal distinction in the Trinity as this Authour does What Dr. Sherlock says on this matter I have not time now to consult though when I read his Book I don't remember he gave any Countenance to this Opinion nay on the contrary some have been displeased with that Learned Doctor for making too great a distinction between the Persons of the Trinity not for making them three Names or Modus's as our Doctor does but for making them three distinct Minds or Spirits which are one by mutual Consciousness But what though these great Men should speak more nicely than ordinary of these Mysteries though they should wade deeper into them than other men The great Genius's of these admirable Persons and the strength of their natural reason will help to bear them out but I would advise our Authour to a little more cautiousness he poor Gentleman may be out of his depth before he is aware and therefore I am sure 't is his best way to keep within the ordinary Compass FINIS A Short HISTORY OF SOCINIANISM THE Heretical Persuasion of our Blessed Saviour's being only mere Man and the consequent Doctrines which ensue thereupon have of late Years been called Socinianism from the two Socinus's the most famous Inventors and Propagators of this Doctrine in the last Age for though the Heresie it self as to some parts of it was much older yet it had been altogether unknown for many Ages till by the Books of Servet the Socinus's and some other Hereticks in the last Age it was revived The first that set up this damnable Doctrine was the Heretick Cerinthus who lived in the Apostlick times and was Contemporary with St. John the Evangelist He asserted That Jesus was mere Man as others were and that he did not excell the rest in Justice or Wisdom or Prudence The Confutation of this Heresie was a special motive to St. John to write his Gospel or at least to be more express than the rest of the Evangelists in asserting our Lord's Divinity Ebion the Scholar of Cerinthus followed after his Master in this Heresie and propagated his Doctrines in Asia Cyprus Rome and elsewhere he asserted That Christ was but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 pure Man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 only common and mere Man This Heresie in the Second Age was propagated by one Theodotus Scytes or the Currier who taught likewise That Christ was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mere Man and was excommunicated by Victor Bishop of Rome for this Blasphemy Artemon followed Theodotus who said That Christ was mere Man only more excellent in Vertue or Power 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than the Prophets Against this Artemon there was a famous Book wrote which Eusebius mentions in which it was proved That the Ancient Christians did not believe his Doctrine as he pretended and in which the Authorities of Justin Martyr Miltiades Tatian Clemens are brought to confute him Sixty years after his Death in the Third Age about the Year 270 Paulus Samosetanus disseminated this Doctrine and asserted That Christ had only the common Nature of Man He was condemned in the Council at Antioch 272. Much about this time or somewhat before Sabellius broached his Heresie not much unlike the rest of these he held That there was but One Person in the Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 under Three Names which does in effect as St. Basil says upon this account deny Christ's Divinity Arius who followed after and made such a noise in the World with his Heresie whatever his thoughts might be yet he did not expressly assert Christ to be mere Man but only to be a Creature produced in time yet one that had a Being long before his conception in the Womb of the Virgin and therefore he cannot so properly come into the List of these Hereticks But soon after the Nicene Determinations against Arius Photinus one of the