Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	body_n	church_n	union_n	1,510	5	9.6741	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61548	A discourse in vindication of the doctrine of the Trinity with an answer to the late Socinian objections against it from Scripture, antiquity and reason, and a preface concerning the different explications of the Trinity, and the tendency of the present Socinian controversie / by the Right Reverend Father in God Edward, Lord Bishop of Worcester.	Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699.	1697 (1697)	Wing S5585; ESTC R14244	164,643	376

to go about to prove them But to shew what use we are to make of them we must consider that it cannot be denied that the Doctrine of the Trinity did meet with opposition very early in the Christian Church especially among the Iewish Christians I mean those who strictly adhered to the Law of Moses after the Apostles had declared the freedom of Christians from the obligation of it These as I shall shew by and by soon after the dispersion of the Church of Ierusalem gathered into a body by themselves distinct from that which consisted of Iews and Gentiles and was therefore called the Catholick Christian Church And this separate body whether called Ebionites Nazarens or Mineans did not only differ from the Catholick Christian Church as to the necessity of observing the Law of Moses but likewise as to the Divinity of our Saviour which they denied although they professed to believe him as the Christ or promised Messias Theodoret hath with very good judgment placed the Heresies of the first ages of the Ch●istian Church under two distinct heads which others reckon up confusedly and those are such as relate to the Humanity of Christ as Simon Magus and all the Sets of those who are called Gnosticks which are recited in his first Book In his second he begins with those which relate to the Divinity of Christ and these are of two kinds 1. The Iewish Christians who denied it Of these he reckons up the Ebionites Cerinthians the Nazarens and Elcesaitae whom he distinguished from the other Ebionites because of a Book of Revelation which one Elxai brought among them but Epiphanius saith he joyned with the Ebionites and Nazarens 2. Those of the Gentile Christians who were look'd on as broaching a new Doctri●e among them of these he reckons Artemon as the first then Theodotus whom others make the first Publisher of it as Tertullian and the old Writer in Eusebius supposed to be Caius who lived near the time and of whom a considerable Fragment is preserved in Eusebius which gives light to these matters The next is another Theodotus who framed a new Sect of such as set up Mel●hisedeck above Christ. Then follow Paulus Samosatenus and Sabellius who made but one Person as well as one God and so overthrew the Trinity with whom Marcellus agreed in substance and last of all Photinus But Theodoret concludes that Book with this passage viz. That all these Heresies against our Saviour's Divinity were then wholly extinct so that there were not so much as any small Remainders of them What would he have said if he had lived in our age wherein they are not only revived but are pretended to have been the true Doctrine of the Apostolical Churches Had all men lost their Senses in Theodoret's time And yet there were as many learned and able Men in the Christian Church then as ever were in any time CHAP. III. The Socinian Plea for the Antiquity of their Doctrine examined BUT this is not the age our Vnitarians will stand or fall by They are for going backward and they speak with great comfort about the old Ebionites and Nazarens as entirely theirs And that they had considerable men among them as Theodotion and Symmachus two Translators of the Hebrew Bible And among the Gentile Christians they value themselves upon three Men Paulus Samosatenus Lucianus the most learned Person they say of his age and Photinus Bishop of Sirmium As to the Vnitarians at Rome whom they improperly call Nazarens they pretended that their Doctrine was Apostolical and the general Doctrine of the Church till the times of Victor and Zepherin This is the substance of their Plea which must now be examin'd I begin with those Primitive Vnitarians the Ebionites concerning whom I observe these things 1. That they were a distinct separate body of men from the Christian Church For all the ancient Writers who speak of them do mention them as Hereticks and wholly divided from it as appears by Irenaeus Tertullian Epiphanius Theodoret S. Augustin and others Eusebius saith of them That although the Devil could not make them renounce Christianity yet finding their weakness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he made them his own He would never have said this of any whom he look'd on as Members of the Christian Church But wherein is it that Eusebius blames them He tells it in the very next words that it was for the mean opinion they entertained of Christ for they look'd on him as a meer Man but very just And although there were two sorts of them some owning the miraculous Conception and others not yet saith he They at last agreed in the same Impiety which was That they would not own Christ to have had any Pre-existence before his Birth nor that he was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God the Word It 's true he finds fault with them afterwards for keeping to the Law of Moses but the first Impiety he charges them with is the other That which I inferr from hence is that Eusebius himself to whom they profess to shew greater respect than to most of the ancient Writers for his exactness and diligence in Church-History doth affirm the Doctrine which overthrows the Pre-existence and Divinity of Christ to be an Impiety And therefore when he affirms the first fifteen Bishops of the Church of Ierusalem who were of the Circumcision viz. to the Siege of it by Hadrian did hold the genuine Doctrine of Christ it must be understood of his Pre-existence and Divinity for the other we see he accounted an Impiety And he tells us the Church of Ierusalem then consisted of believing Iews and so it had done from the Apostles times to that of Hadrian 's Banishment of the Iews Which is a considerable Testimony to two purposes 1. To shew that the Primitive Church of Ierusalem did hold the Doctrine of Christ's Pre-existence and Divinity But say our Vnitarians this doth not follow For what reason When it is plain that Eusebius accounted that the only genuine Doctrine No say they he meant only the miraculous Conception and that they held that in opposition to those Ebionites who said that he was born as other men are This is very strange when Eusebius had distinguished the two sorts of Ebionites about this matter and had blamed both of them even those that held him born of a Virgin for falling into the same Impiety What can satisfie such men who are content with such an answer But say they Eusebius only spake his own sense Not so neither For he saith in that place that he had searched the most ancient Records of the Church of Ierusalem Yes say they for the Succession of the first Bishops but as to their Doctrine he had it from Hegesippus and he was an Ebionite himself Then Eusebius must not be the man they take him for For if Hegesippus were himself an Ebionite and told Eusebius in his Commentaries that the Primitive

Church of Ierusalem consisted of all such then Eusebius must suppose that Church guilty of the same Impiety with which he charges the Ebionites and would he then have said That they had the true knowledge of Christ among them No say they Eusebius spake his own opinion but Hegesippus being an Ebionite himself meant otherwise But Eusebius doth not use Hegesippus his words but his own in that place and withal how doth it appear that Hegesippus himself was an Ebionite This one of their latest Writers hath undertaken but in such a manner as is not like to convince me It is thus Hegesippus was himself a Iewish Christian and made use of the Hebrew Gospel and among the Hereticks which crept into the Church of Jerusalem he never numbers the Ebionites or Cerinthians but only the Gnosticks I will not dispute whether Hegesippus was a Jewish Christian or not Grant he was so yet how doth it appear that all the Iewish Christians were at that time Ebionites or Cerinthians It seems they were neither of them Hereticks although they were opposite to each other the one held the World created by inferiour Powers the other by God himself the one we see made Christ a mere Man but the Cerinthians held an illapse of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 upon him and so made him a kind of a God by his Presence as Nestorius did afterwards But honest Hegesippus took neither one nor the other for Hereticks if our Vnitarians say true But yet it doth not appear that Hegesippus was either one or the other For he speaks of the Church of Ierusalem as is plain by Eusebius and the Cerinthians and Ebionites were in other parts the former in Egypt and the lesser or Proconsular Asia and the latter about Decapolis and Coelesyria from whence they spread into Arabia and Armenia as appears by Epiphanius But Origen saith That all the Iewish Christians were Ebionites What! no Cerinthians among them Were not those Iewish Christians Or were they all turned Ebionites then No such thing appears by Origen's saying But we are not enquiring now what they were in his time but in the Church of Ierusalem Doth Origen say all the Iewish Christians there were such And as to his own time it is not improbable that those who then made up the separate Body of Jewish Christians were Ebionites But what is this to the first Christians of the Church of Ierusalem Very much say they because the first Christians were called Nazarens and the Nazarens held the same Doctrine with the Ebionites But the title of Nazarens did not always signifie the same thing It was at first used for all Christians as appears by the Sect of the Nazarens in Tertullus his Accusation of S. Paul then it was taken for the Christians who stay'd at Pella and setled at Decapolis and thereabouts as Epiphanius affirms for although all the Christians withdrew thither before the Destruction of Ierusalem as Eusebius saith yet they did not all continue there but a great number returned to Ierusalem and were there setled under their Bishops but those who remained about Pella kept the name of Nazarens and never were united with the Gentile Christians but kept up their old Jewish customs as to their Synagogues even in S. Ierom and S. Augustine's time Now these Nazarens might be all Ebionites and yet those of the Church of Ierusalem not so at all 2. The next thing observable from this place of Eusebius is that while the Nazarens and Ebionites were setled in Coelesyria and the parts thereabouts there was a regular Christian Church at Ierusalem under the Bishops of the Circumcision to the Siege of Hadrian Eusebius observes that before the destruction of Ierusalem all the Christians forsook not only Ierusalem but the Coasts of Iudea But that they did not all continue there is most evident from what Eusebius here saith of the Church and Bishops of Ierusalem between the two Sieges of Titus Vespasian and Hadrian which was in the 18 year of his Empire saith Eusebius Who produces another Testimony out of Iustin Martyr which shews that the Christians were returned to Ierusalem For therein he saith That Barchochebas in that War used the Christians with very great severity to make them renounce Christianity How could this be if all the Christians were out of his reach then being setled about Pella And although Eusebius saith That when the Iews were banished their Country by Hadrian 's Edict that then the Church of Ierusalem was made up of Gentiles yet we are not so strictly to understand him as though the Christians who suffer'd under Barchochebas were wholly excluded Orosius saith That they were permitted by the Emperor's Edict It is sufficient for me if they were connived at which is very probable although they did not think fit to have any such publick Persons as their Bishops to be any other than Gentiles And Hegesippus is allow'd after this time to have been a Iewish Christian of the Church of Ierusalem so that the Church there must consist both of Iews and Gentiles but they can never shew that any of the Ebionites did admit any Gentile Christians among them which shews that they were then distinct Bodies 2. They were not only distinct in Communion but had a different rule of Faith This is a point of great consequence and ought to be well consider'd For since our Vnitarians own the Ebionites as their Predecessors we ought to have a particular eye to the rule of Faith received by them which must be very different from ours if they follow the Ebionites as I doubt not to make it appear They say The Ebionites used only S. Matthew 's Gospel But the Christian Church then and ever since have receiv'd the four Gospels as of divine authority Eusebius one of the most approved Authors in Antiquity by our Vnitarians reckons up the four Evangelists and S. Paul 's Epistles as writings universally received by the Christian Church then he mentions some generally rejected as spurious and after those which were doubted among which he mentions the Gospel according to the Hebrews which the Iewish Christians follow'd Now here is an apparent difference put between the Gospel according to the Hebrews and S. Matthew 's Gospel as much as between a Book receiv'd without controversie and one that was not But if the Gospel according to the Hebrews were then acknowledged to be the true Gospel of S. Matthew it was impossible a man of so much sense as Eusebius should make this difference between them But it is worth our observing what our Vnitarians say about this matter And by that we may judge very much of their opinion about the Gospels I shall set down their words for fear I should be thought to do them wrong Symmachus and the Ebionites say they as they held our Saviour to be the Son of Ioseph and Mary so they contended that the first Chapter of S. Matthew's

thought he could not honestly conceal so fundamental a Point of the Christian Faith and which related to their being entred into the Christian Church For if the Profession of this Faith had not been look'd on as a necessary condition of being a Member of the Church of Christ it is hard to imagine that Iustin Martyr should so much insist upon it not only here but in his other Treatises Of which an Account hath been given by others Athenagoras had been a Philosopher as well as Iustin Martyr before he professed himself a Christian and therefore must be supposed to understand his Religion before he embraced it And in his Defence he asserts That the Christians do believe in Father Son and Holy Ghost in God the Father God the Son and the Holy Ghost And he mentions both the Vnity and Order which is among them Which can signifie nothing unless they be owned to be distinct Persons in the same Divine Nature And in the next Page he looks on it as thing which all Christians aspire after in another Life That they shall then know the Vnion of the Father and the Communication of the Father to the Son what the Holy Ghost is and what the Vnion and Distinction there is between the Holy Ghost the Son and the Father No man who had ever had the name of a Philosopher would have said such things unless he had believed the Doctrine of the Trinity a● we do i. e. that there are three distinct Persons in the same Divine Nature but that the manner of the Union and Distinction between them is above our reach and comprehension But our Vnitarians have an Answer ready for these men viz. That they came out of Plato 's School with the Tincture of his three Principles and they sadly complain that Platonism had very early corrupted the Christian Faith as to these matters In answer to which Exception I have only one Postulatum to make which is that these were honest Men and knew their own Minds be●t and I shall make it appear that none can more positively declare than they do that they did not take up these Notions from Plato but from the Holy Scriptures Iustin Martyr saith he took the Foundation of his Faith from thence and that he could find no certainty as to God and Religion any where else that he thinks Plato took his three Principles from Moses and in his Dialogue with Trypho he at large proves the Eternity of the Son of God from the Scriptures and said He would use no other Arguments for he pretended to no Skill but in the Scriptures which God had enabled him to understand Athenagoras declares That where the Philosophers agreed with them their Faith did not depend on them but on the Testimony of the Prophets who were inspired by the Holy Ghost To the same purpose speaks Theophilus Bishop of Antioch who asserts the Coeternity of the Son with the Father from the beginning of S. John's Gospel and saith their Faith is built on the Scriptures Clemens Alexandrinus owns not only the Essential Attributes of God to belong to the Son but that there is one Father of all and one Word over all and one Holy Ghost who is every where And he thinks Plato borrowed his three Principles from Moses that his second was the Son and his third the Holy Spirit Even Origen hims●l● highly commends Moses above Plato in his most undoubted Writings and saith That Numen●us went beyond Plato and that he borrowed out of the Scriptures and so he saith Plato did in other places but he adds That the Doctrines were better deliver'd in Scripture than in his Artificial Dialogues Can any one that hath the least reverence for Writers of such Authority and Z●al for the Christian Doctrine imagine that they wilfully corrupted it in one of the chief Articles of it and brought in new Speculations against the Sense of those Books which at the same time they professed to be the only Rule of their Faith Even where they speak most favourably of the Platonick Trinity they suppose it to be borrowed from Moses And therefore Numenius said That Moses and Plato did not differ about the first Principles and Theodoret mentions Numenius as one of those who said Plato understood the Hebrew Doctrine in Egypt and during his Thirteen years ●ay there it is hardly possible to suppose he should be ignorant of the Hebrew Doctrine about the first Principles which he was so inquisitive after especially among Nations who pretended to Antiquity And the Platonick Notion of the Divine Essence inlarging it self to three Hypostases is considerable on these Accounts 1. That it is deliver'd with so much assurance by the Opposers of Christianity such as Plotinus Porphyrius Proclus and others were known to be and they speak with no manner of doubt concerning it as may be seen in the passage of Porphyrie preserved by S. Cyril and others 2. That they took it up from no Revelation but as a Notion in it self agreeable enough as appears by the passages in Plato and others concerning it They never suspected it to be liable to the Charge of Non-Sense and Contradictions as our modern Vnitarians charge the Trinity with although their Notion as represented by Porphyrie be as liable to it How came these Men of Wit and Sense to hit upon and be so fond of such absurd Principles which lead to the Belief of Mysterious Non-Sense and Impossibilities if these Men may be trusted 3. That the Nations most renowned for Antiquity and deep Speculations did light upon the same Doctrine about a Trinity of Hypostases in the Divine Essence To prove this I shall not refer to the Trismegistick Books or the Chaldee Oracles or any doubtful Authorities but Plutarch asserts the three Hypostases to have been receiv●d among the Persians and Porphyry and Iamblicus say the same of the Egyptians 4. That this Hypostasis did maintain its Reputation so long in the World For we find it continued to the time of Macrobius who ment●ons it as a reasonable Notion viz. of one supreme Being Father of all and a Mind proceeding from it and soul from Mind Some have thought that the Platonists made two created Beings to be two of the Divine Hypostases but this is contrary to what Plotinus and Porphyry affirm concerning it and it is hard to give an Account how they should then be Essentially different from Creatures and be Hypostases in the Divine Essence But this is no part of my business being concerned no farther than to clear the Sense of the Christian Church as to the Form of Baptism in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost which according to the Sense of the Ante-Nicene Fathers I have proved doth manifest the Doctrine of the Trinity to have been generally receiv'd in the Christian Church 2. Let us now see what our Vnitarians object again●t the Proof of the Trinity from these