sensible Beings and bids fairest for a Deity especially if he was as they supposed animated by a Spirit endued with knowledg and understanding And if a man who had been bred in a dark Cave should all on the sudden be brought out at Noon-day to behold this visible World after he had viewed and consider'd it awhile he would in all probability pitch upon the Sun as the most likely of all the things he had seen to be a Deity For if such a man had any Notion of a God and were to chuse one upon sight he would without dispute fix upon the Sun and fall down before Him and worship Him And Macrobius manageth this as his main Plea for the Idolatry of the Heathen that under all the several Names of their Gods they Worshipped the Sun And this diversity of Names was but a more distinct conception and acknowledgment of the many Blessings and advantages which Mankind received from Him and a more particular and express Adoration of the several Powers and Perfections which were in Him And this was the very best defence and all the tolerable sense which the Wisest among the Heathen could make of the multitude of their Deities And yet whilst they generally owned One Supreme Being that was the Principle and Original of all things they worshipped several subordinate Deities as really distinct from one another Some of these they fancied to be superior to the rest and to have their residence in Heaven by which Marsilius Ficinus supposes Plato to mean no more but the Chief of the Angels These were called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dij Superi and Dij Caelestes superior and heavenly Gods The Scripture terms them the Host of Heaven meaning the Sun Moon and Stars which they supposed to be animated or at least to be inhabited by Angels or glorious Spirits whom they called Gods Other of their Deities were accounted much inferior to these being supposed to be the Souls of their deceased Heroes who for their great and worthy Deeds when they lived upon Earth were supposed after Death to be translated into the number of their Gods And these were called Semidei and Deastri that is half Gods and a sort of Gods And as the other were Celestial so these were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a kind of Terrestrial Spirits that were Presidents and Procurators of Human affairs here below that is a middle sort of Divine Powers that were Mediators and Agents between God and Men and did carry the Prayers and Supplications of Men to God and bring down the Commands and Blessings of God to Men. But in the midst of all this Crowd and confusion of Deities and the various Superstitions about them the Wiser Heathen as Thales Pythagoras Socrates Plato Aristotle Tully Plutarch and others preserved a true Notion of One Supreme God whom they defined an infinite Spirit pure from all Matter and free from all imperfection And all the variety of their Worship was as they pretended in excuse of it but a more particular owning of the various representations of the Divine Power and Excellencies which manifested themselves in the World and of the several communications of Blessings and Favours by them imparted to Men Nay Tertullian tells us that even when Idolatry had very much obscured the Glory of the Sovereign Deity yet the greater part of Mankind did still in their common Forms of Speech appropriate the Name of God in a more especial and peculiar manner to One saying If God grant If God please and the like So that there is sufficient ground to believe that the Unity of the Divine Nature or the Notion of One Supreme God Creator and Governor of the World was the Primitive and general belief of Mankind And that Polytheism and Idolatry were a corruption and degeneracy from the Original Notion which Mankind had concerning God as the Scripture-History doth declare and testify And this account which I have given of the Heathen Idolatry doth by no means excuse it For whatever may be said by way of extenuation in behalf of the wiser and more devout among them the generality were grossly guilty both of believing more Gods and of worshipping false Gods And this must needs be a very great Crime since the Scripture every where declares God to be particularly jealous in this Case and that he will not give his glory to another nor his praise to graven Images Nay we may not so much as make use of sensible Images to put us in mind of God lest devout Ignorance seeing the Worship which Wise men paid towards an Idol should be drawn to terminate their Worship there as being the very Deity itself which was certainly the Case of the greatest part of the Heathen World And surely those Christians are in no less danger of Idolatry who pay a Veneration to Images by kneeling down and praying before them and in this they are much more inexcusable because they offend against a much clearer Light and yet when they go about to justify this Practice are able to bring no other nor better Pleas for themselves than the Heathen did for their worshiping of Images and for praying to their inferior Deities whom they looked upon as Mediators between the Gods in Heaven and Men upon Earth There is but one Objection that I know of against the general Consent of Mankind concerning the Unity of God and it is this That there was an ancient Doctrine of some of the most ancient Nations that there were two First Causes or Principles of all things the one the Cause of all Good and the other of all the Evil that is in the World The reason whereof seems to have been that they could not apprehend how things of so contrary a nature as Good and Evil could proceed from one and the same Cause And these two Principles in several Nations were called by several Names Plutarch says that among the Greeks the Good Principle was called God and the Evil Principle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Devil In conformity to which ancient Tradition the Manichees a Sect which called themselves Christians did advance two Principles the one infinitely Good which they supposed to be the Original Cause of all the good which is in the World the other infinitely Evil to which they ascribed all the evils that are in the World But all this is very plainly a corruption of a much more ancient Tradition concerning that old Serpent the Devil the Head of the fallen Angels who by tempting our First Parents to transgress a positive and express Law of God brought Sin first into the World and all the Evils consequent upon it of which the Scripture gives us a most express and particular account And as to the Notion of a Being infinitely Evil into which this Tradition was corrupted after Idolatry had prevailed in the World besides that it is a Contradiction it would likewise be to no purpose to assert two opposite Principles of infinite that is
reasonably presume that they who talk of them did themselves never thoroughly understand and least of all is it necessary to believe them The modesty of Christians is contented in Divine Mysteries to know what God hath thought fit to reveal concerning them and hath no curiosity to be wise above that which is written It is enough to believe what God says concerning these matters and if any man will venture to say more every other man surely is at his liberty to believe as he sees reason II. I desire it may in the next place be considered that the Doctrine of the Trinity even as it is asserted in Scripture is acknowledged by us to be still a great Mystery and so imperfectly revealed as to be in a great measure incomprehensible by Human Reason And therefore though some learned and judicious Men may have very commendably attempted a more particular explication of this great Mystery by the strength of Reason yet I dare not pretend to that knowing both the difficulty and danger of such an Attempt and mine own insufficiency for it All that I ever designed upon this Argument was to make out the credibility of the thing from the Authority of the H. Scriptures without descending to a more particular explication of it than the Scripture hath given us lest by endeavouring to lay the Difficulties which are already started about it new ones should be raised and such as may perhaps be much harder to be removed than those which we have now to grapple withal And this I hope I have in some measure done in one of the former Discourses Nor indeed do I see that it is any ways necessary to do more it being sufficient that God hath declared what he thought fit in this matter and that we do firmly believe what he says concerning it to be true though we do not perfectly comprehend the meaning of all that he hath said about it For in this and the like Cases I take an implicite Faith to be very commendable that is to believe whatever we are sufficiently assured God hath revealed though we do not fully understand his meaning in such a Revelation And thus every man who believes the H. Scriptures to be a truly Divine Revelation does implicitely believe a great part of the Prophetical Books of Scripture and several obscure expressions in those Books though he do not particularly understand the meaning of all the Predictions and expressions contained in them In like manner there are certainly a great many very good Christians who do not believe and comprehend the Mysteries of Faith nicely enough to approve themselves to a Scholastical and Magisterial Judge of Controversies who yet if they do heartily embrace the Doctrines which are clearly revealed in Scripture and live up to the plain Precepts of the Christian Religion will I doubt not be very well approved by the Great and Just and by the infallibly Infallible Judge of the World III. Let it be further considered That though neither the word Trinity nor perhaps Person in the sense in which it is used by Divines when they treat of this Mystery be any where to be met with in Scripture yet it cannot be denied but that Three are there spoken of by the Names of Father Son and H. Ghost in whose Name every Christian is baptized and to each of whom the highest Titles and Properties of God are in Scripture attributed And these Three are spoken of with as much distinction from one another as we use to speak of three several Persons So that though the word Trinity be not found in Scripture yet these Three are there expresly and frequently mentioned and Trinity is nothing but three of any thing And so likewise though the word Person be not there expresly applied to Father Son and H. Ghost yet it will be very hard to find a more convenient word whereby to express the distinction of these Three For which reason I could never yet see any just cause to quarrel at this term For since the H. Spirit of God in Scripture hath thought fit in speaking of these Three to distinguish them from one another as we use in common speech to distinguish three several Persons I cannot see any reason why in the explication of this Mystery which purely depends upon Divine Revelation we should not speak of it in the same manner as the Scripture doth And though the word Person is now become a Term of Art I see no cause why we should decline it so long as we mean by it neither more nor less than what the Scripture says in other words IV. It deserves further to be considered That there hath been a very ancient Tradition concerning three real Differences or Distinctions in the Divine Nature and these as I said before very nearly resembling the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity Whence this Tradition had its original is not easie upon good and certain grounds to say but certain it is that the Jews anciently had this Notion And that they did distinguish the Word of God and the H. Spirit of God from Him who was absolutely called God and whom they looked upon as the First Principle of all things as is plain from Philo Judaeus and Moses Nachmanides and others cited by the Learned Grotius in his incomparable Book of the Truth of the Christian Religion And among the Heathen Plato who probably enough might have this Notion from the Jews did make three Distinctions in the Deity by the Names of essential Goodness and Mind and Spirit So that whatever Objections this matter may be liable to it is not so peculiar a Doctrine of the Christian Religion as many have imagined though it is revealed by it with much more clearness and certainty And consequently neither the Jews nor Plato have any reason to object it to us Christians especially since they pretend no other ground for it but either their own Reason or an ancient Tradition from their Fathers whereas we Christians do appeal to express Divine Revelation for what we believe in this matter and do believe it singly upon that account V. It is besides very considerable That the Scriptures do deliver this Doctrine of the Trinity without any manner of doubt or question concerning the Unity of the Divine Nature And not only so but do most stedfastly and constantly assert that there is but One God And in those very Texts in which these three Differences are mentioned the Unity of the Divine Nature is expresly asserted and where St. John makes mention of the Father the Word and the Spirit the Unity of these Three is likewise affirmed There are Three that bear record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Spirit and these Three are One. VI. It is yet further considerable That from this Mystery as delivered in Scripture a Plurality of Gods cannot be inferred without making the Scripture grosly to contradict it self which I charitably suppose the Socinians would be as loth
to admit as we our selves are And if either Councils or Fathers or Schoolmen have so explained this Mystery as to give any just ground or so much as a plausible colour for such an Inference let the blame fall where it is due and let it not be charged on the H. Scriptures but rather as the Apostle says in another Case Let God be true and every Man a liar VIIthly and Lastly I desire it may be considered That it is not repugnant to Reason to believe some things which are incomprehensible by our Reason provided that we have sufficient ground and reason for the belief of them Especially if they be concerning God who is in his Nature Incomprehensible and we be well assured that he hath revealed them And therefore it ought not to offend us that these Differences in the Deity are incomprehensible by our finite understandings because the Divine Nature it self is so and yet the belief of that is the Foundation of all Religion There are a great many things in Nature which we cannot comprehend how they either are or can be As the Continuity of Matter that is how the parts of it do hang so fast together that they are many times very hard to be parted and yet we are sure that it is so because we see it every day So likewise how the small Seeds of things contain the whole Form and Nature of the things from which they proceed and into which by degrees they grow and yet we plainly see this every year There are many things likewise in our Selves which no man is able in any measure to comprehend as to the manner how they are done and performed As the vital union of Soul and Body Who can imagine by what device or means a Spirit comes to be so closely united and so firmly link'd to a material Body that they are not to be parted without great force and violence offer'd to Nature The like may be said of the operations of our several Faculties of Sense and Imagination of Memory and Reason and especially of the Liberty of our Wills And yet we certainly find all these Faculties in our selves though we cannot either comprehend or explain the particular manner in which the several Operations of them are performed And if we cannot comprehend the manner of those Operations which we plainly perceive and feel to be be in our Selves much less can we expect to comprehend things without us and least of all can we pretend to comprehend the infinite Nature and Perfections of God and every thing belonging to Him For God himself is certainly the greatest Mystery of all other and acknowledged by Mankind to be in his Nature and in the particular manner of his Existence incomprehensible by Human Understanding And the reason of this is very evident because God is infinite and our knowledge and understanding is but finite and yet no sober man ever thought this a good reason to call the Being of God in question The same may be said of God's certain foreknowledge of future Contingencies which depend upon the uncertain Wills of free Agents It being utterly inconceivable how any Understanding how large and perfect soever can certainly know beforehand that which depends upon the free Will of another which is an arbitrary and uncertain Cause And yet the Scripture doth not only attribute this Foreknowledg to God but gives us also plain Instances of Gods foretelling such things many Ages before they happen'd as could not come to pass but by the Sins of Men in which we are sure that God can have no hand though nothing can happen without his permission Such was that most memorable Event of the Death of Christ who as the Scripture tells us was by wicked hands crucified and slain and yet even this is said to have happened according to the determinate foreknowledg of God and was punctually foretold by Him some hundreds of years before Nay the Scripture doth not only ascribe this power and perfection to the Divine Knowledge but natural Reason hath been forced to acknowledg it as we may see in some of the wisest of the Philosophers And yet it would puzzle the greatest Philosopher that ever was to give any tolerable account how any Knowledg whatsoever can certainly and infallibly foresee an Event through uncertain and contingent Causes All the reasonable satisfaction that can be had in this matter is this that it is not at all unreasonable to suppose that infinite Knowledg may have ways of knowing things which our finite Understandings can by no means comprehend how they can possibly be known Again there is hardly any thing more inconceivable than how a thing should be of it self and without any Cause of its Being and yet our Reason compels us to acknowledge this Because we certainly see that something is which must either have been of it self and without a Cause or else something that we do not see must have been of it self and have made all other things And by this reasoning we are forced to acknowledg a Deity the mind of Man being able to find no rest but in the acknowledgment of one eternal and wise Mind as the Principle and first Cause of all other things and this Principle is that which Mankind do by general consent call God So that God hath laid a sure foundation of our acknowledgment of his Being in the Reason of our own Minds And though it be one of the hardest things in the world to conceive how any thing can be of it self yet necessity drives us to acknowledge it whether we will or no And this being once granted our Reason being tired in trying all other ways will for its own quiet and ease force us at last to fall in with the general apprehension and belief of Mankind concerning a Deity To give but one Instance more There is the like Difficulty in conceiving how any thing can be made out of nothing and yet our Reason doth oblige us to believe it Because Matter which is a very imperfect Being and merely passive must either always have been of it self or else by the infinite Power of a most perfect and active Being must have been made out of nothing Which is much more credible than that any thing so imperfect as Matter is should be of it self Because that which is of it self cannot be conceived to have any bounds and limits of its Being and Perfection for by the same reason that it necessarily is and of it self it must necessarily have all perfection which it is certain Matter hath not and yet necessary Existence is so great a Perfection that we cannot reasonably suppose any thing that hath this Perfection to want any other Thus you see by these Instances that it is not repugnant to Reason to believe a great many things to be of the manner of whose Existence we are not able to give a particular and distinct account And much less is it repugnant to Reason to believe those