years Disputation a Doctor of Divinity and a Dean has been hardly perswaded out of the Heresy of three Spirits Minds or Substances yet the continuance of these unscriptural Terms without an exact Explication of them in Sermons and Catechisms heathenizes all the common People nay and great numbers of not unlearned persons 'T is evident now I suppose to every body that the Disinterested was not concerned to reply to such an Answer as this Dr. Sherlock indeed confuted most plainly all his Reasons and trampled upon his Authorities but kindly granted him the Doctrine for which he contended I was in hope therefore all the dust and noise had been at an end but Dr. Sherlock who has no mercy on a conquer'd Enemy thought fit to make a new Onset He publisht a Sermon concerning the danger of corrupting the Faith by Philosophy in which with a great deal of bitterness and many Invectives against the Unitarians he declares that The Unitarian and all other Heresies have their rise and strength from Philosophy and Reason He pretends that Religion must be learned and taught only from Holy Scripture not indeed from the meer Letter or Phrase of Holy Scripture without allowance for Metaphors and such like Schemes of Speech but from the obvious and natural senfe of the words of Scripture without presuming to mollify or change in the least what seems to be the proper sense of the words on the account of any Opposition thereto by Reason or Philosophy He takes occasion here to declame against Reason and Philosophy as most dangerous Deceits and Impostures the true Originals and Causes of all Heresies and Errors in Religion His topicks of Argument for these things are the same that have been always advanced by the maintainers of Transubstantiation other such like Doctrines which have been rejected by the Protestant Churches on the account that they are flatly contrary to Reason and Philosophy This Sermon had been out but a little time when Mr. Firmin publisht Remarks on it The Author of the Remarks first makes an Abstract or Summary of the Sermon and then examins part by part the said Summary or Abstract He proves that the use of Philosophy and Reason is even necessary for the right understanding of Holy Scripture or of any other Book or Speech whatsoever and that 't is by Reason which is no other thing but common sense and by Philosophy which is nothing but experimental Knowledg that we can judg when a Book confest on all hands to be true and certain speaks figuratively and popularly and when strictly grammatically and literally In a word 't is by Reason and Philosophy chiefly that the true meaning and intention of any Book which Book or Writing is granted to be certainly true can be found The Remarks are so written that Dr. Sherlock thinks fit to deny that his Sermon is truly represented he says in his Vindication of the Sermon The Author of the Remarks gives the sense of my Sermon in his own words and directly contrary to my meaning I who made the Sermon knew nothing of it but by mere guess as it lays in his Abstract Vind. p. 4. He adds again at p. 28. The Author of the Remarks has not opposed the Doctrine of my Sermon but his own Chimeras and Follies In short the Doctor complains that his whole Sermon is misreported by the Author of the Remarks and that it was not at all his Intention in the Sermon to speak against Philosophy or Reason but only against what some men call Philosophy and Reason and against vain pretences to Reason and Philosophy Vind. p. 5. He quotes two or three mincing passages of his Sermon which speak not of philosophy and Reason but of Pretenders and Pretences to Reason and Philosophy and these two or three Passages he offers as the true and whole intention of his Sermon But It is certain himself had other thoughts of the intention of his Sermon when he publish'd it and before he law it confuted for he gives it this Title The danger of corrupting Religion by Philosophy not by Pretender or Pretences to Philosophy 'T is certain also that the Arguments he alledges are directed against Philosophy it self and Reason it self as every one sees in the Sermon and in the Vindication of it He has for instance this passage laugh'd at by so many If a. Contradiction to fallible Sense be not a good objection against the truth of any thing how comes a Contradiction to much more fallible Reason to be an unanswerable objection Vind. p. 14. Farther when he is explaining his Text he says Beware lest any spoil you thro' Philosophy and vain Deceit that is thro' the vain deceit of Philosophy Philosophy cheats men with a flattering but false appearance It may unsettle weak minds but cannot lay a sure or solid foundation for Faith it may cheat men out of their Faith but when that is done can give nothing in the room of it Serm. p. 2. He has divers such passages addressed directly against Reason and Philosophy but after the Remarks on those passages came abroad he thought it should seem that seeing what he had so hastily said could no ways be defended his best way would be to deny that ever he said or intended it He thought perhaps it would be a less loss of Reputation if two or three prying malicious Fellows will read the Sermon again and thereby discover either that the Doctor had forgot himself or would venture in a streight on an apparent falsity than to make himself contemptible to learned and discerning Men by pertinacy in Opinions that had been so clearly refuted I leave it to others to judg whether this were an exact Computation But I think I had not mentioned this Sermon or its Vindication but that here again the Doctor calls in his Heterodoxies concerning the Trinity He disowns here the expression three infinite Minds and Spirits as very inconvenient and liable to an heretical Interpretation it ought not to be used he saith in the absolute but only in a qualified and restrained Sense His words are I freely acknowledg that three infinite Minds and Spirits is liable to a very Heretical and Tritheistic Sense if understood absolutely Serm. p. 3. But this was never acknowledged till the Judgment by the Disinterested and the Remarks had extorted it from him I come now to his third and last book of Retractations his present state of the Socinian Controversy which as 't is much larger than any of the rest so 't is more express and direct against the Heresy of three infinite eternal Minds Spirits Beings or Substances 'T is also written so much more calmly than any former piece by the same hand that I could scarce believe it was Doctor Sherlock's Abating a little grumbling of the gizard against Dr. S th and the Oxford Heads for former harshness and irreverence and a small aking of the teeth against the unpardonable Socinians the Causers or however the Occasioners of
only by nature In good truth they are better and stronger by nature than I ever hope to be in this Life by the superadded Grace of God But here again he did not strike home he intended more than he durst say and he durst not say it lest we should ask him whether he believes the just contrary That There is no need of the Spirit to repent to believe or to obey the Gospel and perform religious Acts. 'T is a serious point We answer with St. Paul the Spirit HELPETH our Infirmities Rom. 8.26 But we judg for all that the Holy Scripture gives no occasion to any to turn Enthusiasts and to resolve the whole duty we owe and must perform to God and to our Neighbor into preternatural Impulses as if we were Machines and not men or Puppets moved by invisible Wires not Men that act by their own Reason and Choice That Men are righteous before God not by the merit of Christ but by their own good works We answer with all but Antinomians and the more rigid Calvinists the Merit of Christ is not reckoned to us without Faith and good Works of our own But I am not certain that the Calvinists or the Antinomists would not assent to that Proposition or not allow it to be orthodox I incline to think those People have no real difference with the Church nor the Church with them but that they mistake one anothers meaning V. Another branch of our Creed according to Mr. Edwards runs thus I believe concerning a future State That the Souls of the Deceased have no knowledg or perception of any thing they are not sensible of any Rewards or Pains and that their very Nature is absorpt That at death the Soul as well as Body sleeps was an error of some of the most ancient Fathers as well as of some Unitarians But neither of 'em said as Mr. Edwards pretends that in death the very Nature of the Soul is absorpt which is to say extinct they both of them held that there is a Resurrection of the Soul as well as Body But why dos Mr. Edwards impute that opinion to us when he has read for he quotes the book in the first Part of the Considerations on the Explications of the Trinity what is our sense of that matter The words at p. 33. are these This Error was common to Socinus and some of the Fathers The Learned Mr. Du Pinn in his Abridgment of the Fathers has noted that Justin Martyr Irenaeus Minutius Faelix and Arnobius were in this Sentiment There was no reason to object this to Socinus as if it were a peculiar opinion of his much less to the English Unitarians who never defended it nor that I know of do any of 'em hold it VI. He says next I believe we shall not rise with the same Bodies but that another Matter or Substance shall be substituted in their place I see most of our Opposers have affected to mistake our meaning concerning the resurrection of the Body We hold nothing that is singular in the case we differ not from the Catholick Church about it We say with St. Paul 1 Cor. 15.35 How are the dead raised and with what Bodies do they come Thou sowest not the body that shall be The Body that is raised is not in all respects the same that was committed to the earth in divers perhaps in the most it is We rise not Infants or decrepit old Men or lame or deaf or any way distorted tho' many so lived and so died Nay as to the Passions resulting from the present complexion of the body and therefore to be reckon'd the Modifications and as it were parts of the body we rise not with them it is not the same Body in respect of those Passions that it here lived For instance some are by complexion very cowardly or pensive or choleric or jealous the Body that shall be will not be such It will be conformed to the likeness of the glorious Body of our Lord Christ that is be freed from all both external and internal Imperfections Farthermore our present body Physicians and Philosophers say is in a continual Flux all the parts of it internal as well as external continually decay and are continually also renewed They decay by the Perspiration that is continually caused by the internal heat and are continually renewed by the Nourishment taken in and converted into Blood Spirits Flesh and Bones 'T is said by the Learned in these matters that no man's body is the very same as to the matter and substance of it this present year that it was the last year and will be the next year 'T is wholly new by the nourishment of the present year We say therefore there shall be a Resurrection of the Body and as some of the Antient Creeds spoke of the same Body as truly and as properly as N.N. is the same Man this year that he was one or seven or twenty years ago If Mr. Edwards requires us to say more he exacts more than the Church believes For by the Resurrection of the same Body the Church intends only that 't is as truly the same as a Man notwithstanding the Flux of his parts is now the same N. N. or J. B. that he was seven or ten years past Yet not altogether the same because inconceivably better That is without any external or internal Deformities or Weaknesses VII I believe that at the Day of Judgment Men shall not be required to give an account of their Actions the most flagitious Sinners shall not be examined concerning any thing of their past Life Only they shall be punished and their Punishment is this to utterly cease or perish for ever The unquenchable Fire is nothing but Annihilation I do not know that the Scriptures or the Catholic Church do require any to believe that Sinners shall be examined concerning their past Life at the day of the general Judgment To what purpose I pray doth the All-knowing Judg need to be informed concerning the particulars of their Guiâ—â—â— If every person is to be severally exâ—â—â—â—ed concerning the particulars of his â—â—ansacted Life the Day of Judgment will extend it self to many Millions of Ages more and farther than the whole duration of the World from its beginning to its consummation It should seem Mr. Edwards thinks that because the Scriptures speak of the great Judgment by God in the language of Men and of Human Judicatures such as Trumpets the Throne of the Judg a formal Sentence the Pleadings of the Guilty the Answers of the Judg that therefore in very deed we are to expect such a Scene at the Judgment by God as at a common Assize I conceive on the contrary that all such expressions and words wherever they are found in Scripture are not intended as real Descriptions but as Comparisons or Resemblances by which the capacities of the Vulgar may he assisted and their affections wrought upon All that is intended by such expressions is
only this that every one shall be so recompensed at the Resurrection as is worthy of the holy Judg and compassionate Father of the World But we hold he saith that the Punishment of the Wicked is only Extinction Their life shall be destroyed for ever by the unquenchable Fire into which they are cast Which opinion that it may look ridiculous he words for us thus the unquenchable Fire is nothing but Annihilation What the Scriptures have said concerning the Punishment of the Wicked after the Resurrection is not so clear but that the opinions of Learned Men Fathers and Moderns have been very different about it Some of which number is Origen the most considerable of the Ante-nicens held that not only wicked Men but the very Devils will repent and reform under the Punishments they endure that therefore they will be pardoned be admitted to a new trial of their Behaviour and may attain to Blessedness These say that Man being a reasonable is therefore a docile or teachable Creature and it not looking probable that the Wisdom of God will lose any part of his Creation but will bring it to the Perfection and upon that to the Blessedness of which 't is capable therefore what by Instructions what by Punishments and Encouragements God will reclame the Bad will perfect and confirm the Good and so in the long-run of things be acclamed the Saviour of all Others among whom have been some it may be the most of the Forein Vnitarians have thought that the Righteous are rewarded with an everlasting Life of Blessedness and the impenitent Wicked punisht by that unquenchable Fire that will wholly destroy their being They believe this is the reason why the Punishment by Hell-Fire is called Eternal Death in Holy Scripture But the more current opinion among all denominations of Christians is that the Punishment of the Impenitent in Hell-fire is called Death not because it utterly destroys the life of the Sufferer but because 't is a continual and endless dying The extreme pains of Hell may well be called an everlasting dying or an eternal Death tho' the Sufferer is never extinct I do not find any thing in the Books of the English Vnitarians concerning these opinions they may hold as variously concerning them as the Christians of other denominations But if I may answer for them by what I judg of them by conversation with them I would say we approve the doctrine delivered by Arch-bishop J. Tillotson in a Sermon before her late Majesty of happy memory March 7.1689 on Matth. 25.46 which Sermon was printed by their Majesties special Command VIII I believe as to Christianity it self every thing in it is to be submitted to the dictates of Human Reason and that there are no Doctrines in it that are mysterious Neither of these was ever said by any Vnitarian and all our Prints more especially those in the English Tongue are express that there are many things as well in Religion as Nature that are far above the capacity of human Reason to declare or understand the manner of 'em or how they should be what we either see or are infallibly taught they are We never pretended that the Human Reason is the measure of Truth as Mr. Edwards and Mr. Norris charge us so that what our reason does not comprehend we will not believe on any other evidence whatsoever We never said it or thought it we reject no Doctrines but such as are contrary to Reason and of that I speak fully in the answer to Mr. De Luzancy hereto annexed IX As to Divine Worship I believe it may be given to another besides God to Christ who is but a Creature But we have disavowed nothing more in all our Prints than giving Divine Worship to any but only God that 't is a marvel to me that Mr. Edwards should impute to us such a doctrine we have scarce any English Print where we do not expresly oppose it Nor do we reckon of the Lord Christ as but a Creature I have said before he is God and Man The Divinity did so inhabit in the Humanity of Christ doth so exert in it the most glorious effects of Omnipotence and Omniscience that if others have been called God because they represented God Christ is to be so called because he exhibits God X. I believe Prayer was not required under the Old Testament The Lords-day is a ceremonious Observance abolished by the Gospel There is no spiritual Blessing conferred in the use of the Sacraments Baptism is an useless Rite and the Baptism of Children altogether vain There is no distinct function or office of Ministers in the Christian Church the very Lord's Supper it self may be administred by a private person I think Mr. Edwards is in the right against those if any such there were who deny'd that Prayer was a duty or precept of the Old Testament and the Law when he says It is included in the general precepts of fearing serving worshipping God But he is as much out in the next Article that some have said the Lords-day is abolished by the Gospel for it was never said by any He meant I suppose that the Seventh-day or Sabbath is abolisht and I take it to be the doctrine of the Catholic Church that the Seventh-day-Sabbath was ceremonial and is abolisht It may better however be said that the Sabbath is transferred from the seventh to the first day than that 't is absolutely abolisht or taken away In short the English Vnitarians hold no private opinion about either the Sabbath or Lord's day but as well in principle as practice concur with the Catholic Church It is too loosly said That there is no spiritual Blessing conferr'd in the use of the Sacraments For there is no ordinance of God but the serious and devout performance of it draws a blessing on the doer For all that many exceed in ascribing to the Sacraments certain Powers and Energies without competent warrant from the Word of God I do not know that Baptism is any thing more than a federal Rite by which we are initiated into the Christian Religion or the Holy Supper any thing more than a commemoration of the Sacrifice of Christ offering himself to God as an atonement for repenting sinners I know not to what purpose so many superstitious Books are written to teach people how to prepare themselves for the Memorial Supper when an honest Intention and a reverent Performance are sufficient both preparations and qualifications for and in all Gospel-Ordinances The Apostle says He that eateth that Bread unworthily or unworthily drinketh of that Cup is guilty of the blood of Christ nay eateth and drinketh Judgment to himself But he also warns them what he means by unworthy partaking namely their not tarrying for one another and withal eating and drinking with so little regard to God or Men that some of them made themselves drunk with the Sacramental Wine while others could not so much as tast of it Briefly their
Testaments and the reason that they were given by God was to regain Mankind to the belief and acknowledgment of but one God to destroy Polytheism of all sorts Mr. Firmin intended to recommend it to the Unitarian Congregations as the very reason of their distinct assembling to be particularly mindful of and zealous for the Article of the Unity to cause it to be so explained in their Assemblies Catechisms and Books without denying or so much as suppressing the Catholick Doctrine of the Trinity that all men might easily and readily know in what sense the Vnity of God is to be believed and the Mystery of a Trinity of Divine Persons each of them God is to be interpreted Mr. Firmin feared that without such Assemblies the continual use of terms which in their ordinary signification are confessed by all to imply three Gods would paganize in some time the whole Christian Church which is Heathen already in the majority of its Members by occasion of those terms and that no sufficient care is taken to interpret them to the people I though to have ended here but the Dean of St. Pauls having published a large Book in Quarto to which he gives the title of the present state of the Socinian Controversy I think my self obliged to take notice of it and make a fit Answer to it In order whereunto it will be even necessary to consider also briefly his former Books indeed my Answer will be little more than a comparing the Doctrine of these Books with this last in which as to his Notions tho propos'd commonly in somewhat improper unconvenient and dangerous expressions he has given satisfaction to Dr. S th and the Oxford Heads in other words he is become truly Catholic and perfectly Unitarian Mr. Firmin had caused to be written a brief History of the Vnitarians and brief Notes on the Creed of Athanasius in the years 1689 and 1690. Dr. Sherlock was then more at leisure than he desired so he answered in a wrathful Book entituled A Vindication of the Doctrine of the H. Trinity In this Vindication he lays about him for that sort of Trinity that had been oppos'd in the aforesaid History and Notes a Trinity of Infinite Eternal All-perfect Minds Beings and Spirits The Doctrine of his Book may be summ'd into this following short Abstract The H. Trinity is three such Persons as are substantially distinct or are three distinct Spiritual Substances Being distinct Persons they must needs be distinct Substances Persons and intelligent Substances being reciprocal terms or signifying the same thing The Divine Persons are three Beings three Spirits three Minds as distinct as three human Persons as distinct as Peter James and John Each of these Minds or Spirits has a distinct Vnderstanding Wisdom and Will of his own a distinct absolutely-perfect Wisdom Goodness and Power for these perfections may be and are in more than one And as each of them is an all-perfect Spirit each of them also is a God Yet are they not three Gods because being internally conscious to each others thoughts and actions by means of this mutual consciousness tho they are three all-perfect Spirits and each of them a God they are but one God If we will say truth Dr. Sherlock was no more overseen in this explication of the Trinity than the principal Divines and Preachers at London and both Universities To my knowledg they upbraided Mr. Firmin with this Book of Dr. Sherlock's and some of them told him If Dr. Sherlock's Book did not reclame him from his Heresy it would rise up in Judgment against him It came forth cum licentiâ superiorum and shortly after the Doctor was restored to all his Preferments which he had forfeited by refusing the Oaths to the Government with the addition of the Deanary of St. Pauls But neither the Canonical License nor the new and great Preferment nor the approbations and applauses from so many and so considerable Fautors could prevent a most terrible after-clap For to say nothing of the Answer first by the Socinians and then by Dr. S th the Heads of Colleges at Oxford Nov. 25. 1695 made and ordered the publication of this Censure and Decree These words there are three distinct Minds and Substances in the Trinity and these words the three Persons in the Trinity are three distinct infinite Minds or Spirits and three individual Substances are Erroneous Heretical and Impious And we require all persons who are committed to our institution or care that they affirm no such Doctrine either by preaching or otherwise When this Decree came abroad Dr. Sherlock's former Abettors deserted him in whole troops and now they said Universities speak but seldom and by way of Authority without giving the reasons of their Decrees but as they interpose but rarely and in important Cases 't is always with certainty In short from this time Doctor Sherlock was left almost alone That I know of the same Doctors Dignitaries Deans Bishops who had boasted of his Book not only as orthodox but as unanswerable now tackt about and as much approved the Oxford-Decree The most now said it was even necessary to make and publish the Decree Tritheism being so much worse than Sabellianism or Socinianism as Paganism or Heathenism is worse than mere Judaism there is no body but will prefer the faith of the Jews tho' so unperfect before the many Gods of the Heathens Dr. Sherlock was often told of these murmurs and that they were grown general his answer was that he was sure that he was in the right And accordingly he shortly published his Examination of the Oxford Decree In this Examination he often repeats his former doctrine He says for instance P. 46. These Decreeing and Heresy-making Heads of Colleges have condemned the true Catholic Faith the Nicene Faith and the Faith of the Church of England He adds in the same page Three Divine Persons who are not three distinct Minds and Substances is not greater Heresy than 't is Nonsense P. 31. The present dispute is about three distinct infinite Minds and Substances in the Trinity whether this be Catholic doctrine and Catholic language If it appears that they the Fathers owned three distinct Substances both name and thing there can be no dispute about three Minds P. 23. If God begets no substance he begets nothing that is real And then neither is God a real Father nor the Son a real Son P. 22. If a Divine Person as a Person and as a distinct Person from the other two Persons be not an infinite Mind there is an end of the Christian Trinity P. 18. The three Persons must be as distinct Minds Spirits and Substances as they are distinct Persons Every body disliked this Answer to the Oxford Heads it was owned to be Heresy in excelsis Dr. Sherlock's more warm Opposers call'd out for the sitting of a Convocation to censure such a manifest subversion of the Catholic Faith in the first and chief Article of it The Doctor however
was still constant to his Doctrine he persevered in his former I am sure that I am in the right Shortly after came forth the judgment of a disinterested Person concerning the Controversy between Dr. S TH and Dr. SHERLOCK This Author states the Doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation or Divinity of our Saviour as they have been for many Ages held in the Catholic Church and proves his explication of them by a great number of incontestable Authorities especially of General Councils He evinces by divers clear both Theological and Philosophical Reasons that three infinite spiritual Substances three eternal all-perfect Beings Minds or Spirits are most certainly three Gods He concludes that Dr. S th and the Oxford Heads are undoubtedly in the right in censuring the Doctrine of three infinite all-perfect spiritual Substances Spirits Minds or Beings as Tritheism yet that Dr. Sherlock had no ill meaning for he only proposed to himself to defend the received Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation tho he unhappily mistook in the explication of those Doctrines One may say this Book is perfectly well written the Catholic Doctrine is truly stated and asserted by the very Authorities and Reasons on which it has been so long and so generally received and tho the Author is constrained by the evidence of the proofs which he alledges to assent to the Oxford-Heads and to Dr. S th yet he always speaks of Dr. Sherlock not only with much tenderness but with a great deal of respect and deference Dr. Sherlock on the contrary answers with so much virulence as if the Author had done to him some personal irreparable or even mortal Injury and with so much self-conceit and confidence as if himself had obtained the monopolies of Learning and good sense He intitles his answer to the disinterested The Doctrine of a real Trinity vindicated in answer to a Socinian Pamphlet As if it were Socinianism to oppose Tritheism He begins his Book with these words This Author calls himself a Presbyter of the Church of England I pray God to preserve the Church from such Presbyters who eat her Bread and betray her Faith His other Sippets are Socinian Heretic bantering Socinian and such like Sweets with which this Doctor 's dishes are always enchaced But to let those matters pass in this Answer he recites the Authorities and Reasons urged by the disinterested and in a Paragraph or two bestowed on each of them he triumphs at last gloriously over all of them But what is very surprizing tho he confutes all the Reasons and baffles all the Authorities in the whole Book yet 't is in this very Answer that he begins to bethink him and retracts all his Heterodoxies nay becomes altogether of the same mind with the Author against whom he writes Let us hear what he says Pag. 12. The Nominals i. e. Dr. S th and the Oxford Heads and the Socinians differ in some forms of Speech but there is no considerable difference in their Faith P. 6. These Phrases three Minds three Spirits three Substances ought to be used very cautiously and not without great necessity P. 14. They are Expressions liable to a very heretical sense to Arianism and Tritheism P. 30. In the common acceptation of the word the Divine Persons are not three Substances but one Substance actually and really subsisting thrice He meant to say three manner of ways subsisting thrice is nonsense P. 35. The Trinity is one supream Being this is the Doctrine of St. Austin the Schools and Fathers Can any one say Dr. Sherlock hath not given satisfaction to the Oxford-Heads and Dr. S th Were F. Socinus Smalcius Crellius and Ruarus to judg of this Doctrine they would be content it should be inserted into their Racovian Catechism they would embrace the Author as an absolute Unitarian P. 36. Father Son and Spirit are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one and the same Substance they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the unity of Sameness or Identity This is true Catholick Doctrine and the Language of the Nicene Fathers And of all the Socinians from F. Sacinus to Mr. T. F. But we shall hear by and by he will confess that also P. 61. Three infinite Persons each of which is Mind and Spirit are but one and the same infinite and eternal Spirit Catholick again and Unitarian all over For when the Church says each Divine Person is Mind and Spirit the meaning is the Divine Persons are internal relative Properties of the same infinite Mind and Spirit and being so each of them indeed is Mind and Spirit but not a Mind or a Spirit Had Dr. Sherlock but known this in time he had never wrote against the Unitarians nor fallen under the Oxford-Censure P. 65. The Socinians will grant that one Divinity is but one God and the reason why they assert that one God is but one Person is because they think it impossible the same undivided Divinity should subsist distinctly in three Persons But then before they had charged the Faith of the Trinity with Tritheism they should have remembred that the Persons of the Trinity are not three such Persons as their one Person is whom they call one God and therefore tho three such Persons three such Minds Spirits and Substances as their one Person and one Spirit is who is the whole Divinity confined to one single Person would indeed be three Gods yet three such Persons as the Catholic Church owns who are all the same One Substance are not three Gods The short of this is the Church doth not mean by three Persons what the Socinians mean if she did they would rightly accuse her of Tritheism three such Persons as the Socinians oppose are indeed three Gods He repeats the same thing p. 67 in these words The three Divine Persons as we have now explained them are not three such Persons as the Socinians must confess three Persons must be who are three Gods Right for you have now acknowledged that what you call three Persons is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one self-same spiritual Substance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Vnity of Indentity one supream Being one and the same infinite and eternal Spirit which in all your former Books was Nonsense and Heresy and not greater Nonsense than Heresy as they who please may see in the places I have quoted and in above forty other places of your Writings I shall tell you not only the Oxford-Heads or Dr. S th but F. Socinus or T. F. would never have required you to say more than you now say it was not the Trinity held by the Catholic Church that Socinus or T. F. rejected but only a Trinity of such Divine Persons as are distinct Substances Spirits and Minds which at length you also expresly disown but which too many in the Church misled by the dangerous unscriptural terms now so much contended for did and do hold There can never be a sincere Peace till those terms are discarded For tho after eight