Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A36090
|
A Discourse concerning the nominal and real trinitarians
|
|
1695
(1695)
|
Wing D1589; ESTC R29734
|
36,049
|
42
|
A DISCOURSE Concerning the Nominal and Real Trinitarians Non Partûm Studiis agimur sed sumsimus arma Consiliis inimica tuis Discordia vecors Printed in the Year 1695. Of the Nominal and Real TRINITARIANS The Distinction of Trinitarians into Nominals and Realists and the Design of these Sheets IT will easily appear to all that have seen the late Prints between the Trinitarians and Unitarians That the Questions controverted between us are managed here on another Foot as they speak in another Method and by different Arguments than in Foreign parts or by the Latin Writers Among other remarks that we have made and urged the English Vnitarians show That their Opposers do indeed all go under the common name of Trinitarians but are in truth a great many several and contrary Sects They all cast up their Caps and cry Trinity Trinity But the Ideas they have of the Trinity and consequently their Faiths concerning this pretended Mystery are so many and so contrary that they are less one Party among themselves than the far more Learned and far greater Number of them I mean hereby the Nominal Trinitarians are one Party with Us. As much as the Socinians are clamour'd on for abominable intolerable Hereticks there is nothing more certain than that the Nominal Trinitarians who are truly and properly the Church and who are by much the Majority of Christians are altogether in the same Sentiments concerning Almighty GOD and the Person of our Saviour that we are This is one of the Points that I shall insist on and evince in these Sheets but I shall argue divers other Matters these two especially That the several Sects of Real Trinitarians are guilty of a manifest Tritheism their Doctrine necessarily and immediately infers three Gods and that the Nominal Trinitarians have causlesly innovated the Language of the Holy Scripture and of the Primitive Church concerning GOD and the Person of the Lord Christ I said in the Language of Scripture and of the antient Church for they have retained the Primitive and true Doctrine only they have not kept to the Form of sound Words I will speak first of our Brethren the Nominal Trinitarians then of the Tritheistick Tribes or Realists Of the Nominal Trinitarians that these are the Church THE first observation to be made on the Nominals is that these are the Church which I prove by two incontestable Arguments 1. Their Doctrine has been espoused by a General Council The Council assembled at the Lateran in the Year 1215 established in the most ample manner and most express Terms the Doctrine of the School-Divines or Nominal Trinitarians and condemns in the Person and Writings of Abbat Joachim the Doctrine of the Real Trinitarians as Heretical and Mad I use the very words of the 2d Canon of that Council To this Argument I must note two things First This Council was more truly General than almost any of the Councils that are so called Here were present 1200 Fathers the Ambassadours of the Emperour of Constantinople the King of the Romans the Kings of France England Arragon Hungary Jerusalem Cyprus and divers others Here also were the five Patriarchs partly in Person partly by their Legats the Roman Constantinopolitan he of Jerusalem the Antiochian and Alexandrian whose Presence by themselves or their Legats is supposed necessary towards constituting an Oecumenical or General Council Secondly Divines and Canonists do not give the name of Heresy to any Doctrine because 't is rejected by a great number of Learned Men or by a National Council but they reckon it Heresy if it has been censur'd by a General Council which represents the Vniversal Church Be the mistake never so great let it have been condemned by never so many Writers whether Fathers or Moderns or both 't is only Error 't is not Heresy unless it has been Anathematiz'd by the Catholick or Universal Church and the Catholick Church is never understood to speak but by a General Council which for that reason is called the Church Representative Briefly Heresy and the Faith can be declared but only by a General Council the General Council at the Lateran in Rome has avowed the Doctrine of the Nominal Trinitarians and Anathematiz'd the Hypothesis and Explication of the Real Trinitarians therefore say I the former are the Church the latter are Hereticks I am amazed when I hear some Real Trinitarians say in their Books That the Doctrine of the Nominals never had any other publick Authority but the Creed and 2d Canon of the Council of Lateran for what other equal Authority thereto can it have is not a General Council the highest Court of the Church Her Canons declare the Faith her Anathemas Heresy And what other Council ever was so General as this in which were assembled the Emperour and Kings of the East and West the Latin and Greek Churches 1200 Fathers and what especially makes a General Council the five Patriarchs of Christendom What will the Realists say here that this was a Popish Council First it would be News indeed that the Roman Catholicks are not Orthodox in the Questions concerning the Trinity and the Incarnation It has ever been granted to them both by the Lutherans Calvinists and Church of England that they are sound in Fundamentals in the Doctrines of the Trinity the Incarnation the Satisfaction and such like their Error consists in the Additions they have made to the Fundamentals and namely by their Doctrines of Indulgences Transubstantiation Worship and Invocation of Images and Saints and the rest And is the Greek Church also Heretical in the Doctrine of the Trinity for in this Council the Greek Emperour and Church were represented as well as the Latin Church nay of the five Patriarchs here present four of them belong to the Orient or Greek Church When the Realists have turned themselves all ways they will find themselves held and even bound by the Authority of this Council which is too Great and Venerable to be openly or directly disclaimed 'T is objected to this Council by Mr. Spanheim the present Learned Professor at Leyden that they assented to and published 70 Canons in 20 days Time and that the Canons were not framed by the Fathers but by the Pope These are frivolous Exceptions unworthy of so Learned an Historian for 't is not at all to the purpose who contrived these Canons seeing they were approved assented to and published by the Council Canons are oft-times composed by some particular Father in a Council sometimes by a Committee of the Council sometimes as in the present Case by the President but by whomsoever they are drawn up they are not the Canons of that Person or Persons but of the Council when the Council has examined approved and voted them But Mr. Spanheim doth not find Fault with this Council for their Explication of the Doctrine of the Trinity or the Canons that refer to any part of that Article but because it was convened under pretence indeed to carry on
a proper physical and natural Sense of the word God for the words God and Man are specifical Terms the former implies divers personal Gods as the other implies many personal and individual Men. He is so far from being ashamed of all this that he adds again Page 85. The Fathers of the Nicene Council nay the whole Eastern Church did appropriate a the title one God to the Father and God of God to the Son The Fathers meant thereby the Son is God not of or from himself but from or by or of the Father See what use Mr. J. B. makes of this at pag. 91. The Phrase God of God does necessarily imply a Multiplication of the term God in some Sense or other And one and the same numerical God in concreto can never be God of God and not God of God these two cannot be verified of the same Subject of one and the same God in concreto or in Person 'T is Heresy in excelsis and the last words in Person designed only to blind his true meaning or to mollifie it to those that happen to understand him do but increase the grossness of his Tritheism He hath said in those words in effect the Nicene Creed and Oriental Church acknowledging one who is God of God this God who is God of or from God cannot be the same God with him from or of whom he is God namely with God the Father these two must be several Subjects different Gods This avowed Tritheism I say is neither hid nor sofmed by adding different Gods in concreto or in Person for it was never said or so much as thought before that the multiplication of Persons in the Godhead or these expressions God the Father God the Son God the H. Spirit would warrant any one to say several Gods or that God of God is not the same both Subject and God with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit In short that which this Author and his Party of Realists intend and say though somewhat Covertly and Artificially is that as all the Men in the World in concreto are notwithstanding sometimes expressed by the general abstract word Man So the three Gods in concreto three Personal really subsisting Gods may also be expressed but they care not how seldom the seldomer the better by that scurvy Socinian abstract word God I have not made these short remarks on Mr. J. B. with a malevotent Intention to create Envy or to raise up Enemies to him I shall confess that as broadly as he has spoke St. Sasil Gregory Nyssen and other Fathers after the Year 380 so Taught and so Spoke and I have before given some instances of it as I shall give more in the Continuation of my Answer to Dr. BuII's Defence of the Nicene Faith and Judgment of the Catholick Church But all that I design is only to appeal to the World whether the Realists have not notoriously owned and professed their Tritheism with which they are charged not only by the Socinians but by the Nominals which is to say by the Church Dr. S th is but one Man he is only a private Doctor but he has rightly understood the Doctrine of the Church if a General Council were again to assemble they would certainly espouse his two Books he hath said neither more nor less nor otherwise than the Catholick Church since the Council of Lateran has constantly taught Mr. J. B. is a Learned and very discerning Person so are other Realists of this Nation I must not say of the English or of the Catholick Church for they are departed from both who have lately written against the Socinians but they have opposed to ours such an Explication of the words God Persons Trinity as Dr. S th hath deservedly called a Trinity of Gods nor will they be ever able to wipe off the Imputation Mr. J.B. must not think he has answered Dr. S th he hath only sometimes mistaken him sometimes misreported or perverted his plain and obvious Meaning or quarrelled with the Doctrine of the Schools and of the Lateran Council which is to say of the Catholick Church to make room for the exploded Tritheism of St. Basil and some other Fathers The Doctrine of the Catholick Church Mr. J.B. knows well can be fetched only from General Councils the Church is never understood to speak but by a General Council particular Fathers are but only particular Doctors they are not the Church how many soever they are Therefore I desire Mr. J. B. to tell me what Council ever used his Language that one Divine Person is one God as perfectly one God as one Angelical Person is one perfect Angel In what Council shall we find that the word God is equivalent to a Species which is to say the Divinity no less than the Humanity or the Manhood comprehends several Individuals of the same both Nature and Denomination as there are many Men in concreto so there are divers Gods also in concreto Can he direct us to that Council which teaches that God of God and God not of God that is Father and Son are not the same God or that the term God implies any Multiplication Did ever any Council so far apostatize from Christianity as to deny that there is but one numerical God and call that Doctrine the Faith of Jews Mahometans and Heathens But this is Mr. J. B's Language and the Doctrine of all the Realists they all intend as he has said nor will any of them censure his Book but applaud it as a great and extraordinary Performance I do not regard the Impertinences of Mr. Tho. Holdsworth of North-Stoneham near Southampton in his late Impar Conatui which he hath opposed to Mr. J. B. This Orlando has vomited up his Crudities on a Person too much above him to take notice of him and all that I shall trouble my self to say of him is that if as he has been careful to tell us the Place of his Residence and of his Vicinage so he had also told us his Age we might have guessed with more certainty than now we well can whether he raves or dotes The Realists speak much more Mystically or Absurdly than the Nominals I Must make another Remark on the Realists namely That the absurd contradictory and impossible Things partly expresty said by 'em partly implied in their Doctrine are far less tolerable or accountable than the forced Improprieties in the use of Words and Terms by the Nominals are I confess both Parties so often depart from the common use of Terms and Words that one as well as the other is frequently forced to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Mystery when they cannot assoil the Difficulties objected to themselves by each other or by the Socinians to both when they find that the use of Words and the nature of Things are both against them they cry Mystery their Doctrine then they confess though a Truth is however a Mystery above the Capacity whether of themselves