assembling to this solemn commemorative Sacrifice was more like to a Carousal than to a celebration of the Holy and Blessed memory of a dying Saviour These were the Disorders and Irregularities concerning which they were to examin themselves and thereby avoid an unworthy Communicating and the consequences thereof We do not say Baptism is an useless Rite or that the Baptism of Children is altogether vain What the Wisdom of God has appointed to all Nations is not to be esteemed useless tho' we our selves knew not the uses of it and it is use enough that this Sacrament is an initiating Rite Nor is it a good Exception against this Sacrament's being continued still that now people are Christians by Education Seeing there is the same reason for its continuance as for its institution namely a solemn public and formal Initiation into the Religion of Jesus And this may in some sense be done in Infancy by the intervention of Undertakers commonly called God-fathers and how it can be done without 'em I see not But it is without all reason that Parents should not be admitted to be Undertakers when others cannot or cannot easily be had It were well methinks if the Minister and Church-Wardens together with the Parents were obliged to be Undertakers ex Officio or ratione Officii by their Place and Office and it were yet better if the whole Church undertook for the Infants Moreover where Infant-Baptism is the custom of the Church Confirmation or the person 's taking upon himself the Covenant and Promises that were made in his name by his Undertakers ought to be as little neglected as Baptism nay the person cannot be said to be a compleat Christian or to be Christianly baptized till he is consumed that is has publickly taken upon himself his Baptismal Engagements Paedo-baptism or Infant-Baptism and sprinkling instead of dipping have occasioned an unnecessary Seism from the Church for neither of these are Doctrines of the Church or imposed on any The Church requires dipping except in case of Necessity or Danger The words of the Rubric in the Office of Baptism are these If they the Godfathers certify that the Child may well endure it He the Minister shall dip it dip the Child in the Water saying I baptize thee c. But if they certify that the Child is weak it shall suffice to pour Water upon it Neither of these is sprinkling they are both of them Baptism or Washing in the strictest sense of the word As to Infant-Baptism it doth not certainly appear that it was not practised by the Apostles rather it seemeth that when the Parents were baptized so also were the Children for such was the custom of the Jews toward their Proselites from whom Baptism the Sacramental Supper and in a word all the antient Ecclesiastical Rites and Church-Discipline Hierarchy or Church-Government was taken by our Saviour and the Apostles Notwithstanding for satisfaction of such as do not approve Infant-Baptism the Church has an Office called in the Liturgy the Baptism of such as are of riper years That as I said the seism of the People and Churches that are vulgarly called Baptists or Anabaptists seems not well grounded Lastly as to that I believe there is no distinct Function or Office of Ministers and that the very Lord's Supper may be administred by a private Christian I answer for my self and most other if not all Unitarians There is a threefold distinction of Church-Officers by themselves modestly called Ministers namely Bishops Presbyters or Priests and Deacons The two former seem to be of Divine Right the other of Apostolical Institution only and that too as appears from Acts 6.3 4. not by any particular Inspiration but meerly on Motives of Prudence and Charity These three Orders Bishop Priest and Deacon are of that Antiquity and Universality that as soon as and wheresoever Christianity was professed the Churches were govern'd after this form A form received among all the Sects of Christians as well as by the sounder part of 'em called commonly the Church till Mr. Calvin in a case of Necessity introduced a new sort of Church-Administration These are they to whom only except in case of necessity such as the Reformation was it belongs to administer the Sacraments and to instruct and exhort publickly But what makes a case of necessity is a question by it self on which I do not here enter I wish the Church had not given or may never give cause to the Unitarians either by Exclusion or Persecution or unlawful or over-harsh Terms of ' Communion to have recourse to Mr. Calvin's Expedient XI As to moral Points I believe that officious Lies are lawful the motions of Concupiscence not vitious idle or obscene words Gluttony Drunkenness Riot Luxury and impure Desires and Lusts were not forbidden till Christ's time By officious Lies are meant those Falsities that do good to some without doing hurt to others as the Lie of the Hebrew Midwives to Pharaoh the Tale of Michal to her Father Saul when she suffer'd David to escape and Jonathan's feigned excuse for David when he hid David from his Father's Anger Exod. 1.19 1 Sam. 19.17 and 20.6 To officious Lies belong also Compliments very low Bowings and respectful Carriage towards Persons for whom we have not the kindness or regard of which we make flow by those external and false Significations I think it may excuse Volkelius whom Mr. Edwards cites for this part of his Charge that the officious Lies of the Midwives of Michal and of Jonathan are related in Scripture without blaming them they are not censured by the Inspired Writers they are told by the Prophets Moses and Samuel without the least signification that they were Sins Volkelius might infer from hence that the Texts which forbid lying and falseness are intended of such lying as is hurtful or prejudicial to others and that what dos no hurt can be the Subject of no forbidding Law To forbid what helps some even to the saving of Life or Goods without any hurt or wrong to another why should any Law-giver who respects at all the good of his People so enact Notwithstanding I think Mr. Edwards says well If once such Doctrine is commonly taught all Lies will be reckned some way or other officious and Truth and Sincerity will be banisht from the Earth The motions of Concupiscence are not vitious or sinful By Concupiscence is meant some unlawful Desire or Inclination arising in the mind but not consented to or put into practice Methinks so far forth as such Motions in the mind are involuntary they should rather be called Frailties than Sins and the disapproving and resisting them shall be rewarded by God Concerning obscene Words Riot Gluttony Drunkenness impure Desires not forbidden by the Law and not strictly unlawful till prohibited by the Gospel We are not much concerned in such a Dispute it being granted on all hands that they are forbid in the Writings of the New Testament Notwithstanding I wonder that
or what is the same to be distinguished by was is and shall be seeing 't is confessed on all hands that he carrieth all Perfections into every Succession of his Duration But is it not a Scandal that some Unitarians of foreign Parts have denied the Spirituality or Incorporeity of God his Omnipresence and Omniscience saying and contending for it that he is a Body with such Configuration of Parts as Men have consequently that he is in Heaven inspecting indeed and governing all things but by the ministry of the several Orders of Angels and that he doth not foresee contingent Events but only such Events as are necessarily not arbitrarily produced by their Causes Doubtless but no more a scandal to the Unitarians than to their Opposers for they are Errors which some of the Fathers even the most antient learned and pious of 'em have defended as Truths Nay it should seem they were some time the prevaling Opinions in some places namely when the Anthropomorphite Doctrine was so zealously espoused that the Hermits and Cenobites would not indure their Bishops if they but suspected 'em of Origen's Doctrine that God is a Spirit without Parts or Passions And in denying the Spirituality and Omnipresence of God they must needs be understood not to believe his certain and absolute Prescience of contingent Events About the year 400 when almost every body concerned themselves in condemning and departing as far as possible from the opinions of Origen the Anthropomorphite Doctrine and its consequences were the Standard Orthodoxy of many places and were Heresy no where Even St. John Chrysostom at Constantinople hardly defended the Fratres Longi from the Prosecutions of Theophilus Archbishop and Patriarch of Alexandria who was a profest Anthropomorphite and had expelled the Fratres Longi for adhering to Origen's Doctrine of the Spirituality and Omnipresence of God But as I said we not only dislike but utterly reject the dangerous Doctrine That God hath a Body is like to Man toge-with its consequences That he is neither Omnipresent nor Omniscient It may as well be said he is not at all nay this latter tho the Anthropornorphites see it not seems to be implied and included in the former But we condemn not the Schechina or glorious Appearance of God in Heaven which many Learned Men hold nor the spiritual Body of Christ III. I believe farther concerning God That there is no distinction of Persons or Subsistences in God And that the Son and Holy Ghost are not God The former of them being only a Man the latter no other than the Power or Operation of God That there was nothing of Merit in what Christ did or suffered and that therefore he could not make satisfaction for the Sins of the World But Mr. Edwards too much mistakes The question is not at all concerning three Persons or three Subsistences in God but whether there are three infinite Subsistences three eternal Minds and Spirits We deny the latter with the whole Catholick Church against the Tritheists We never questioned the former Persons or Subsistences but only as Persons are used or taken for Spirits Minds and Beings I shall explain this matter however more fully in my Answer to the Bishops of Worcester Sarum and Chichester annexed to this Agreement or any one may see what is our sense in the Judgment of a disinterested Person concerning the Controversy between Dr. S th and Dr. Sherlock By a Divine of the Church of England What that Author makes to be the Doctrine of the Nominals and of the Church concerning the Blessed Trinity the Divinity of our Saviour and the Satisfaction is and ever was the belief of the Unitarians as well as of the Catholick Church But we say the Lord Christ is only a Man and the Holy Spirit only the Power of God No we say our Lord Christ is God and Man He is Man in respect of his reasonable Soul and human Body God in respect of God in him Or more scholastically in respect of the Hypostatical or Personal Union of the Humanity of Christ with the Divinity By which the Catholick Church means and we mean the Divinity was not only occasionally assisting to but was and is always in Christ illuminating conducting and actuating him More than this is the Heresy of Entyches and less we never held tho we confess that careless and less accurate Expressions may have been used by both Parties of which neither ought to take advantage against the other when it appears there is no heterodox Intention That by the Spirit of God is sometimes meant in Holy Scripture the Power of God cannot be denied but concerning the Three Divine Persons we believe as the Catholick Church believes That they are relative Subsistences internal Relations of the Deity to it self Or as the Schools after St. Austin explain this Original unbegotten Wisdom or Mind reflex or begotten Wisdom called in Holy Scripture the Logos and the eternal spiration of Divine Love But do you not say There was no Merit in what Christ did or suffered and that he could riot make satisfaction for our Sins He may for our parts be Anathema that teaches or believes that Doctrine We believe that the Lord Christ by what he did and what he suffered was by the gracious acceptance of God a true and perfect Propitiation for Sinners that repent and turn to the good ways IV. In the next Article he makes us to believe a great many things as that The first Man was not created in a state of Vprightness As if it were possible that men in their right senses should think the first Man was created a Sinner That By his Fall Adam did not lose Righteousness and Holiness which are part of the Image of God As who should say that by being a Sinner he did not sin or become unlike to God That Adam's Posterity have received no hurt nor stain by his Apostacy As if you should say that neither his bad Example nor the Curse that made the Earth so much less fruitful was any hurt and that the Rebellion of an Ancestor no not against God is not any blot in his Family I shall grow quite out of conceit with these Unitarians if they say many more such weak things But in very deed I imagine Mr. Edwards had a mind to have charged 'em more home when he does we shall consider what to answer I am of opinion that in this part of the Article he was somewhat ashamed of his own Doctrine and that he feared to make himself and Party ridiculous by a clear and distinct Representation of their opinion That Mankind notwithstanding Adam's fall have by nature an ability to desire and embrace all spiritual Good and to avoid all that is sinful or vitious They are bold Britains What embrace all the Gospel-precepts by mere nature when 't is not possible so much as to know divers of them but by Revelation Divine And can they avoid too all that is vitious at all times
he be God or Man or whether he satisfied Divine Justice for our Sins by his Death but only that a Man of Nazareth was ordained and sent by God to be a Saviour I see all Mr. Edwards his Colts-teeth are not yet out of his head he cannot forbear dealing sometimes in Railery and Wit but I must seriously desire him to name me any Socinian or Unitarian Writer that ever said no more is required to make a Christian but only that he believe Jesus is the Messias The truth of the matter is this Mr. Edwards has been lately very much foiled first by a Learned Gentleman then by a Divine of the Church of England upon this Question Whether it be of the essence of a Christian as a Christian to assent to more than this one Article that Jesus is the Messias sent by God to instruct and save the World They do not doubt that 't is a Christians duty to learn by degrees all the other Articles of the Christian Creed and to believe them but if he hath attained or by occasion of whatsoever Impediments that were not caused by his own Negligence or Perversness he can attain to more either Knowledg or Faith yet this one Article doth make him a Christian It doth not satisfy Mr. Edwards that upon all the points in question they have declared themselves to be Anti-Socinians he resolves for all that they shall be Socinians and this opinion which they maintain against him a new Article of the Socinian Creed It may be one way he thinks to reduce 'em to silence if he calls their opinion Socinianism and if after that they will not pull in their Horns it shall be Irreligion or downright Atheism or at least abnegation of Christianity or Popery his other Compliments to those whom he is pleased to attack I have now answered concerning all the Articles of our Religion with sincerity without any the least disguise or reserved or unusual meaning or meanings And I am not sorry that Mr. Edwards almost constrained us to explain our selves concerning these points For as unsincere and untrue as his Imputations are and as scurrilous as his manner of representing them and discoursing upon them sometimes is the Retortion or Answer here made will be judged by indifferent and discerning Persons to be home and satisfactory As to the man himself Mr. Edwards has been serviceable to the common Christianity by divers learned Books therefore I wish to him whatsoever good himself desires to himself these Concertations between us notwithstanding THIS Scheme as it expresses the real Sentiments of the Socinians so it perfectly agrees with the Doctrine of the Catholick Church and of the Church of England saving that in the fourth Article concerning Original Sin Freewill and Grace the Answer is not so explicit and direct as it would have been if Mr. Edwards had not affectedly declined to declare and express the Doctrine of the Church concerning those matters In their first Rise the Unitarians followed the Doctrine of St. Austin and Mr. Calvin in the Article of Original Sin and the depending Articles Free-will and the Grace of God but F. Socinus coming into Transilvania and then into Poland revived among 'em the Pelagian Doctrine so that for about an Age they were Pelagians in the question of Original Sin and its Dependents In this last Century as they speak or Age being the seventeenth from the birth of our Saviour those Questions have received a new turn in all the Western Churches that is to say among the Roman Catholicks and the Protestants of all denominations A kind of Semipelagianism is grown into repute in most places being a temper or expedient of Peace both Parties yielding somewhat and yet both retaining enough to make their Doctrine consistent with our natural Notions of the Justice and Mercy of God And to this I think the Unitarians now rather encline but not generally that is not universally or not all of them In short the above-recited Scheme is direct and clear except only in the fourth Article concerning Original Sin and the Points thereon depending But those Questions being now variously held in all Churches and among all Parties the Socinians are no more Dissenters on the account of what some or most of them believe concerning that Article than Bishop Jer. Taylor for instance and Dr. Hammond and the Remonstrant Party supposed to be the greater part of the Church of England are So that upon the whole we may say There is now no Sociniun Controversy The misunderstanding that was common to both Parties the Church and the Unitarians is annihilated and Mr. Firmin by approving and publishing the Scheme of Agreement professed himself of the same mind with the Catholick Church and the Church of England Mr. Firmin was sensible of this notwithstanding as Curator of the Unitarian an Religion he resolved to have continued his endeavours that no false Notion oâ— the Trinity should corrupt the sincere Faith of the Vnity He was perswaded that the Faith of the Unity is the first Article of Christianity the Article that distinguishes Christians from Pagans as the belief of the Messiah already come distinguishes us from Jews He judged that tho the unscriptural terms Trinity three Divine Persons and such like in the sense they are intended by the Church contain a Doctrine which is true yet taken in the sense they bear in common familiar Speech in which sense the greater number of men almost all the unlearned must needs understand them they imply a more gross and absurd Polytheism than any of the old Heathens were guilty of He that understands three Divine Persons to be three distinct infinite all-perfect Spirits or Beings or Minds three Creators three several Objects of Worship is more guilty of Polytheism than the Greeks or Romans ever were before their conversion to Christianity for tho they and other Nations were Heathens that is Polytheists Asserters of more Gods yet they never believed more than one Infinite All-perfect Spirit the Father and King of the lesser Deities Mr. Firmin knew well that the Majority of vulgar Christians and not a few Learned Men have a Tritheistick Notion or Conception of the Trinity or three Divine Persons each of which is God namely that they are three distinct Infinite All-perfect Minds or Spirits Meeting this every day in Conversation as well as in Books he was not less zealous for the Doctrine of the Unity after the Publication of the Scheme of Agreement than before And therefore he purposed besides the continuation of all his former Efforts to hold Assemblies for Divine Worship distinct from the Assemblies of any other denomination of Christians But he did not intend these Assemblies or Congregations by way of scism or separation from the Church but only as Fraternities in the Church who would undertake a more especial care of that Article for the sake of which 't is certain both the Testaments were written The great design and scope of both