which from such a Possession would prescribe to our Belief Pag. 57. of the Interpolated Edition What more ridiculously silly than to build so weighty a Doctrine upon Implicit Faith in two Bishops partial to their own Sees whereof the one gave it Birth and the other Maintenance And what more odious than to persecute as Hereticks and Malefactors all such as should refuse to be so grosly imposed upon Pag. 57. of the first Edition Certainly whoever shall carefully observe how the now established Doctrine was from first to last advanced by gross Partiality of the most guilty kind and at last imposed by a Novice Emperor upon Implicit Faith of two Bishops of whose Sees the one brought it into the World and the other maintain'd it and a new coin'd Tradition lately obtruded by the guiltier of those Sees but unpleaded because unheard of in those former long and miserable Times which it might and ought to have delivered from the Convulsions they suffered Whoever I say shall carefully observe this and withal what foul Tricks the Church of Rome used in the West and with what ill Success in the East whose Churches did at last more Universally embrace Arrius 's Opinion than at first they condemned it may be tempted to number the Athanasian among the Roman Doctrines and cannot but think it fairly dealt with if its boasted Possession pardoned it be left upon the same level with the Arrian equally unworthy not only of our Faith but of our Study Pag. 57. If further we consider what the Historian expresly declareth that at the rise of this Controversie most of the Bishops understood not it's meaning we cannot think it necessary to Salvation that every private Christian should believe that as an Article of Faith which the best Ages of the Church thought not worth knowing This upon second thoughts is thus express'd in a 2d Edition An Opinion which so many wise and good Men as lived within 300 Years after Christ were so far from believing Matter of Faith that they did not receive it as Matter of Certainty nor perhaps of Credibility Pag. 59 Pag. 58. The Athanasians abhor Polytheism no less than do the Arrians If their Positions seem to infer it they deny the consequence if this contradict the Rules of reasoning they avow it for they allow Reason no hearing in Mysteries of Faith if this make them Hereticks it is not in Religion but in Logick On the other side the Arrians profess to believe of Christ whatever himself or his Apostles have spoken and where one expression in Scripture seemeth to contradict another they take such a Course to reconcile them as the Laws and Customs of all the World direct It is very frequent for Rhetorick to exceed but never to diminish the Grammatical Character of a Person whose honour the Writer professeth to advance and upon this account they think it more reasonable that those Expressions which exalt our Saviour's Person to an Equality with the Father should stoop to those which speak him Inferior than that those which speak him Inferior should be strained up to those which speak him Equal And however this is the safer Way since it will lead us to such a Belief as will suffice for that end for whose sake alone Belief itself is required Pag. 70. To this Question Whether any Promise of God does necessarily import a Restitution of the same Numerical Matter He answers That the Words of St. Paul Thou fool that which thou sowest c. plainly deny the Resurrection of the same Numerical Particles P. 70. To another Question Whether it be more honourable to God and more serviceable to the design of the Gospel that we believe the Contrary He answers That it is the same as to ask Whether it be more honourable to salve all his Perfections or to robb one that we may cloath the other The very mentioning of these Opinions is a sufficient Confutation to all such as have heartily imbraced the Doctrine of the Church of England But the Author in his Vindication pretends that what he hath written was only to enlarge Charity i. e. to procure a Toleration of such Opinions as he hath published I shall only discover that Line of Socinianism much blacker than his Ink which runs through his whole Book and then the Reader may judge to what his inlarged Charity doth tend The Design of the Preface is to shew saith the Doctor that the Success of the Gospel which made such great Conquests at first hath been hindred by the difference of the Modern Gospel from the Primitive in its Doctrine which difference he says is so great that if an Apostle should return into the World he would be so far from owning it that he would not be able to understand it Answ If the Gospel which we receive be so intirely corrupted he doth utterly overthrow that Providence of God which he admires in giving it so great a success whereas all good Christians believe the Gospel to be the same and bless the Providence of Almighty God in preserving it pure and uncorrupt to this present time and we still say if an Apostle or an Angel from Heaven shall preach any other Gospel contrary to or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 besides what we have received let him be accursed I hope therefore the Doctor doth not think of setting up any other Judge of Controversies than what the Church whereof he calls himself a True Son doth own and profess if the Success of it hath been hindred in any Age it may not be imputed to the Doctrine therein delivered nor to the Providence of God in preserving it intire but to those false and contrary Doctrines which by the Instruments of Satan transforming themselves into Angels of Light endeavoured to destroy in its infancy such as St. Peter calls damnable errors denying the Lord that bought them and teaching that Jesus Christ was no◠come in the flesh i. e. that God the Word was not made flesh but the flesh was made God Such were Ebion a Jew Cerinthus and Marcion who spread their Errors against the Deity of Christ while St. John was living with which Errors the Church of Ephesus was so infested that she besought St. John to write in confutation of them as he did both in his Gospel and Epistles The other Apostles were diligent in confuting the Errors of the Gnosticks who would have brought in the worshipping of Saints and Angels as inferior Gods These generally condemned St. Paul's Epistles and kept to the Jewish Observations which the Apostles wrote against the Nicolaitans also mentioned Rev. 2.6 were of the like Opinion with the Gnosticks and Cerinthus For hating of whose Deeds the Church of Ephesus is commended Ireneus l. 3. c. 11. says that St. John wrote his Gospel to destroy that Error which had been sown by Cerinthus and before him by the Nicolaitans So that the Success of the Gospel was hindred by not only those false Doctrines but the impure Lives of
the Gnosticks and Nicolaitans whose deeds God hated Mahomet was of the same Opinion with those Hereticks for though the Doctor says he professed all the Articles of the Christian Faith yet it 's evident he denied the Deity of Christ though he owned him to be a true Prophet and Messenger of God in which respect the Doctor might say he owned as much of the Christian Faith as the Socinians do and we may say he was for a Naked Gospel as well as the Doctor The Question therefore which the Doctor makes whether Mahomet or Christian Doctors have more corrupted the Gospel and hindred the success of it is easily resolved for the Gnosticks Cerinthians Ebionites c. all which called themselves Christian Doctors and Reformers of the Gospel as he calls Mahomet Were those Christian Doctors who by their corrupt and Antichristian Errors defamed the Gospel and opposed the Deity of its Author And these and such others made way for Mahomet by shewing that they held a Gospel whereof every Article was to be found in the Alchoran And had our Doctor lived in the days of Mahomet it 's not unlike but he might have been one of those Christian Doctors that would have reformed the Gospels according to the Alchoran As for any new Additions or Impositions in Matters of Faith the Doctor knows the Church of England utterly disclaims them And to avoid such traditionary Impositions the Church of England retaining whatsoever is agreeable to the Scriptures and Primitive Churches hath reformed herself from all the corrupt Innovations and Impositions of the Church of Rome as well in Matters of Doctrine as of Government and Discipline And now to the Doctor 's Question Whether Mahomet or the Christian Doctors have more corrupted the Gospel c. This was the Tempting Opportunity says the Doctor offered to the Impostor and he laid hold on it to set up himself for a Reformer Sir W. Temple p. 107. of the Second Part of his Essays may inform him who was the fore-runner of Anti-Christ as the Fathers termed Arius About the Year 600 the time when Mahomet appeared the Provinces of the East were over-run with Arianism who denied or undermined the Divinity of Christ and allowed only his Prophetical Office The Countries of Arabia and Egypt were filled with great numbers of the scattered Jews who on the destruction of their Country in Adrian's time had fled into these Provinces to avoid the utter ruine of their Nation threatned by that Emperour Arabia and Egypt were inhabited by Gentiles who were given to pleasures and Riches Mahomet to humour and comply with these three sorts of men and by assistance of Sergius a Monk an Arian Heretick who fearing the Censure of the Church of Constantinople which then resolved to suppress that and the Heresie of the Monothelites fled into Arabia and was entertained by Mahomet's Master where he grew into acquaintance with Mahomet and became his only Confident framed a Scheme of Religion which might take in the common Opinions and Dispositions of all those three Parties which yet might be agreeable to his own temper and designs He professed One God Creator of the World and that God sent Moses his first and great Prophet to give his Laws to Mankind which were not obeyed by the Jews nor received by the Gentiles therefore in later Ages he sent Christ who was the second Prophet and greater than Moses to preach his Laws in greater purity but to do it with gentleness patience and humility which found no better reception or success among Men than Moses had done and therefore God had now sent his last and greatest Prophet Mahomet to publish his Laws with more Power to subdue them by Force and Violence who would not willingly receive them that such as would not obey should be ruined but the obedient should have the possession of his and their Enemies as a Reward in this Life and a Paradise hereafter with all sensual enjoyments especially of beautiful Women newly created for that purpose these prevailed with Arians Jews and Gentiles in those parts c. Hence it appears what this Reformer was and what were the tempting opportunities which he laid hold on To please the Jews Mahomet observed Circumcision in imitation of Abraham and recommended to them the Laws of Moses to please the Gentiles he permitted Polygamy to the number of four Wives and as many Concubines as they could maintain and to please the Christians he permitted them to have a Naked Gospel and a Natural Faith in Christ as a Messenger of GOD greater than Moses but not God or the Saviour of the World for they deny that he was crucified but was taken up alive into Heaven but these are not all the Articles of the Christian Faith he denied the Crucifixion of our Saviour his Resurrection Ascention and that he should come to Judge the World to reward or punish Men according to their Works Sandius p. 347. mentioneth some other of Mahomet's Doctrines As that God is One both in Essence and Person and that there are not Father Son and Holy Ghost that Christ is to be worshipped but not with that Divine Worship as his Lord and God is He says That Jews and Gentiles and every one that worshippeth and feareth God and doth Good Works may be saved and he quotes Baronius saying That the Mahomitans do worship Christ as the Arrians and Nestorians do p. 348. The Author of Mahomet's Life Printed before the English Alchoran says He was ordained to be a Scourge for the Christians who in multitudes at that time had forsaken the Truth to follow the Sects and Heresies of the Arrians Nestorians Donatists and others By such as these the Candlestick by God's just Judgment was removed out of the Asian Churches at first and the pure Light of the Gospel is much darkned in these later Ages by Anti-Trinitarians Servetians and Socinians who have well nigh extinguished that Gospel which is the Light of the World and would leave Mankind as naked and as much ashamed as our first Parents when they had eaten of the forbidden Fruit. I confess that when I first read that Mahomet profest all the Articles of Christ's Faith I was not aware that the Doctor might mean according to his New Gospel or the Socinian Creed but on enquiry into the Alchoran and computation of Time when the Alchoran was written viz about the year 600 before which time the whole World as St. Hierome observed was become Arrian and Sergius the Monk that had a chief hand in contriving it was an Arrian I found that the Doctor makes a very great Agreement in Matters of Faith between the Alchoran and his Naked Gospel so that as he says Mahomet set up for a Reformer of the Gospel in his time so we have another Sergeus who sets up for a Reformer of the Gospel according to the Alchoran in our time as by the following particulars will appear The English Alchoran as it is Reprinted 1688 is that
set forth at Antioch a third by Narcissus and some Bishops with him the fourth by Eudoxius three others at Sirmium one of which was read at Ariminum the eighth was that of Acacius published at Selucia which was the same that was published at Constantinople with an Appendix forbidding the use of the words Substance and Hypostasis Now all these were conceived and brought forth in a few Years together under Constantius and by the influence of that Arian Emperour who made it his business to advance and propagate that Heresie But what are these scuffles for Interest and Promotion which though favoured by an Arian Emperour were not only strenuously opposed but generally defeated to the constant and unanimous Decrees of the four first General Councils and many others of the Eastern Churches and by all the Western or Latin Churches who constantly asserted the Doctrine of the Trinity I cannot better compare these Alterations in Matters of Faith which were made after the Nicene Council than to the various Revolutions that hapned in this Kingdom after the Dethroning of King Charles I. of blessed Memory wherein the several Factions as they got into Power strove not so much for Religion which was always made the pretence as for Interest and Advantage to the overthrow both of a well-establish'd Government and Religion which now through the Blessing of God are returned to their ancient Channels and may they ever bear down all opposition and run on without interruption to make glad the City of God I cannot omit one Remark more in this place namely how partial the Doctor is in relating the History of Athanasius and Arius He summs up in few words whatever Philostorgus and Sandius the Arians had suggested against Athanasius How he was banished by the Council at Tyre Antioch Sirmium and Ariminum but is ashamed to mention those Sham-Plots that were contrived against him and retorted upon his adversaries to their perpetual Infamy as Dr. Cave and Dr. Sherlock have discovered nor have we a word how at the Council of Millan where the Catholicks were forced to condemn Athanasius Constantius drawing his Sword and telling them That he himself accused Athanasius and ought to be believed and banished such as would not consent to it But as for Arius he pleads for him as if he had been as much a Messenger sent from God as our Saviour in his opinion was as much doth he speak in defence of Arius That he was justified by such as had condemned him by the Emperor and a Council at Jerusalem p. 37. c. 2. And Athasius threatned to be deposed if he did not receive him into communion though the Doctor confesseth he would not admit the word Consubstantial into his Creed That the Eastern Bishops but such as the Doctor says p. 38. c. 2. were generally Arians took Arius his part against Athanasius and condemn'd him in the Council of Sardica But all this trouble was not occasioned upon the account of Athanasius his Faith but the Arian perfidy who falsly accused and maliciously condemned him Wherefore it will be seasonable in this place to give you a short Account of what the most Authentick Historians have related which you shall have presently In the third Proposition he says That the Evangelists in setting down our Lord's Genealogy do not satisfie but amuse us and professing to instruct us do doubly disappoint us first by deriving it from a wrong Father and then by destracting us two several ways which he says is a warning against searching after the Eternal Generation As supposing it to be needless and therefore impossible to prove him derived from David though the Scripture calls him both David's Son and David's Lord he concludes it to be impossible to understand his Eternal Generation And thus the knowledge both of the Generation of our Saviour as Man as well as that as God are both concluded to be impossible to be known because they are above our Understandings So that he first raiseth a doubt of our Saviour's Descent from David according to the Flesh that he may make that a ground of his Eternal Generation by the Father In the fourth Proposition he intimates That a Heathen might justifie Polytheism at the same rate as the Athanasian Fathers have done the Doctrine of the Trinity and that the Papists may justifie their no-less-beloved Mystery of Transubstantiation as he calls it and affirms with them That the Scripture is no less express for the one than the other and the Contradictions no less gross in the one than the other And then ridicules that learned and ingenuous Tract which was lately Printed to shew what better grounds the Doctrine of the Trinity hath in the Scripture than that of Transubstantiation for want of Argument to confute it As if we could as easily apprehend the Nature of Things immaterial and removed above our Reason as well as our Sence as we can of those corporeal Beings such as the consecrated Hosts which contradict both Reason and Sence In the Fifth Proposition he affirms That the Questions concerning the Trinity were decided by no other Evidence but of Imperial and Papal Authority The Pope would be much more obliged and grateful to him than the Church of England if he could prove the Supremacy of the Bishop of Rome over all the Churches and that in Matters of Faith as ancient as Constantine In the Sixth That there is danger of Blasphemy in examining the silly Question concerning the Eternity of the Godhead of Christ and that we have no firm ground to go upon But is not that Rule of Vincent Lirinensis a good ground Quod semper quod ubique quod ab omnibus But in this he joyns with Smalcius to call us Blasphemers and Antichristians In the Seventh That the only advantage of the Catholicks is long possession That they have so handled matters as to hide much and varnish all That the Sentence which determined the Controversie in the Council of Nice was not by the Merit of the Cause but the Interest of Parties Answ Long possession of such Truths as have a good Foundation in the Scripture is a Title beyond any that pretends against it when the Universal Church hath in all Ages except only a short interruption under one or two Arian Princes judged the Doctrine against the Deity of our Saviour as a destructive Herosie If we may thank the Doctor for any thing it is for granting us this long possession even ever since the Gospel was first published In the Eighth Proposition he says This long and mischievous Controversie was at last decided by Theodosius who receiving his Instructions and Baptism from a Consubstantialist required all his Subjects to conform to that Religion which Peter the Prince of the Apostles from the beginning delivered to the Romans and which at that time Damasus Bishop of Rome and Peter of Alexandria held and that Church only should be esteemed Catholick which worshipped the Divine Trinity with equal Honour and those
omits that the Word was God that it was in the bosom of the Father ought to be explained with respect to this express Declaration of the Saviour of the World so that if he said he was the Son of God it was because the Father had sanctified him and sent him into the World and according to this Passage I may says he lawfully explain any other Passage wherein Christ is called God or Son of God for they are all taken from the Economy or Ministry of Christ We shall meet this Gentleman again anon in the mean time we must not be uncivil to the Doctor who hath been so civil as to grant That Christ was first sanctified and afterward sent whereas others were first sent into the World the common way and afterward sanctified To them God sent his Word by their Betters but it is not sent to me by my Betters but by me to my Inferiors Now if Christ were first sanctified and then sent into the World then he had a Being before he came into the World and that Being must be as a Creator or a Creature or a middle Nature a made God as the Arians call him the Arians say more That he was God's Instrument or Agent in creating the World which is so evident in the Scripture that no Man of sence can deny that diligently reads John 1. Colos 1. and Heb. 1. Now if God to qualify him for so great a Work as that of the Creation did communicate to him the great Attributes of Divine Wisdom Omnipotence and Omnissience which are Infinite why might he not communicate to him also that other Attribute of his Eternity in his Generation But to come to the Doctor 's Argument viz. That Christ spake nothing to the Jews of what he was from Eternity in himself but what he was in relation to the World Doth not the Doctor grant he was first sanctified and then sent into the World And what is that Sanctification but his being ordained by God to be the Redeemer and Saviour of the World So Crellius says l. 1. sect 2. c. 31. To sanctify signifieth in Scripture to separate one and choose him to a singular Office Now Christ by an everlasting Decree was set apart to be the Lamb slain as an All sufficient Sacrifice for the Sins of all Mankind his Sanctification or Ordination to the Office of a Redeemer was by that Decree of which the Psalmist gives us a Copy Psal 2. I will declare the decree the Lord hath said to me Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee which the ancient Jews affirm to be spoken of the Messias And the Hodie the day was from all Eternity for the Redemption of Mankind could not be effected but by an Infinite Price as Scripture teacheth The Argument urged by our Doctor and the Socinians is That our Saviour on so pressing an occasion ought to assert his Right yet spake nothing of what he was from Eternity So Crellius and our Doctor But we affirm that our Saviour was not obliged so to do on this occasion it was sufficient for him to clear himself from the Accusation of being a Blasphemer which he doth by an Argument out of their own Law which may be thus illustrated The Doctor stiles himself A true Son of the Church of England to which it may be said that he being an Arian or Socinian doth blaspheme i. e. speaks evil of the Church of England in making himself who is a Socinian a true Son of that Church which owns no such for her Sons that are of that Belief Now how will the Doctor vindicate himself from this Accusation will he say I was baptized into the Faith of that Church in the Name of the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost I was for Twenty five Years a Professor of Divinity in that Church a Rector of Exeter-Colledge This would be an impertinent Argument for there have been many of that Church which are gone from it some to the Church of Rome others to Socinian Conventicles the most proper Argument would have been to shew that in our Law the Articles of our Religion our Litany and Homilies the Arrian Religion or Socinian Religion asserted or that neither in his Writings or Sermons he hath affirmed any other Doctrine than what is established in that Church for the Question is not concerning the Dignity of his Person or his Birth or Qualifications but whether he be a true Son of that Church and can shew the consonancy of his Faith to that of the Church of England This was our Saviour's Argument to vindicate himself from the Jews Accusation who accounted him a Blasphemer in that he being a Man made himself the Son of God he doth not argue from his being the Son of God or from his doing such Works as no other Man did but proves from their Law wherein the Title of God is given to Men that were inferiour to him viz. to Princes Priests and Prophets he was not concern'd to tell them whether he was the Son of God by distinguishing between a Son of God by Nature and a Son by Office he doth not deny but still asserts the first both before v. 30. I and my Father are one and after ver 38. The Father is in me and I in him And his being sanctified and sent into the World proves the same viz. that he was the Son of God for otherwise God sent not his Son and sanctified him before he came into the World but first sent him into the World and then sanctified him to be his Son which though contrary to what the Doctor grants from the Text yet the Socinians generally deny and ascribe his Sonship to his Birth his Baptism Unction to his Office his Resurrection and Exaltation on any thing but his Eternal Generation and Ordination to be the Saviour and Redeemer of the World for which Office all the Angels of God were not sufficient And now we return to the thoughtful Gentleman This Gentleman thinks to thrust home this Argument to the Ruin of the Catholick Doctrine For he says it is written with the Finger of Truth and unanswerable p. 3. col 2. But that the Orthodox are wont to swallow all sorts of Contradictions and to cast dust in the eyes of the simple This Reproach notwithstanding we will go hand in hand with him in search of that Truth which this Scripture propounds for we are agreed that our Saviour delivers his Doctrine in profound Wisdom having regard to the Circumstances of Place Time and Person by these Particulars we shall examine the Text laying down this general Observation That St. John was desired by the Church of Ephesus who were pestered with the Heresies of the Gnosticks Ebion and Cerinthus who denied the Deity of the Son of God and ascribed the Creation to certain Aeones or Angels denying it to be ascribed to Christ both which Errors he particularly refutes 1. Then consider the Persons with whom he had to
and what other or better sence can we find than what the Catholick Church alway affirmed viz. That Christ with his Father and the Holy Ghost is the only true God And thus St. Augustine as hath been said renders it This is Life eternal to know thee and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent to be the only true God Cont. Arium Tom. 6. n. 17. P. 54. Against Christ's Righteousness imputed to us he tells a Story of a Land that was wasted with a raging Plague to whom came a great Physitian declaring he had a Nostrum which never failed to cure those that trusted it that it cost him dear but he would freely communicate it to all that needed and desir'd it and exhorted all to come to him which many did and were cured but some said there needed no more but to trust to the Medicine The Physitian was infinitely skilful in his Art and faithful in his Promises wherefore by confidence in him they should have all his health imputed to them and that should cure them as perfectly as if they received real health by the use of his Prescriptions This is a Fiction of his own to serve his Hypothesis which I shall answer by a more probable Story out of the Midras Tehillim or the Exposition of the Psalms where on those words Kiss the Son we have this Parable This is as when a certain King was displeased with the Inhabitants of a great City the Citizens went and made Supplication to the King's Son to appease his Father's displeasure The Son went and effectually prevailed with his Father to forgive them and take them into his Favour which the King's Son having signified to the Citizens they addressed their Thanks to the King The King bid them go and give Thanks to his Son for had it not been for his Mediation their City had been destroyed This is that which is said Kiss the Son and it may be well for the Doctor if he would go and do likewise It is not good to make sport of holy Things and droll on the Mysteries of our Salvation comparing them to Fables and this in Scripture Phrase ridiculing the Peace of God as passing all understanding and the Meritorious Death of our Saviour to the Prescriptions or Juggles of a Quack as if Faith in the Power and Merits of our Saviour were as vain as the Opinions of the Mobile concerning an Empyrick yet we read of great Miracles wrought by Faith in the Person of Christ P. 41. Thus the Leaper by his Faith Lord if thou wilt thou canst make me clean And the Centurian's Faith prevailed for his Servant Matth. 8. And as many as touched the hem of his garment were healed by their faith in his almighty power There could not therefore be a more odious Comparison he says of the Mystery which the Apostle spake of to the Ephesians That though it were hard to be believed yet it was easie to be understood for it signified only That the Gentiles were Fellow-Heirs with the Jews But was not this a Mystery hid from that Nation until Christ and his Apostles revealed it wiser Men than the Doctor do rightly admire some Secrets in Nature which when their Causes and Natures are discovered very ignorant Men may apprehend this the Doctor says to shew That it is so far from being an honour that it is rather a defect As if there were no difficulty in Matters of Faith and the Mystery of Godliness mentioned by St. Paul in Timothy viz. God manifested in the flesh were no harder to be understood than that Mystery which had been so clearly revealed The admission of the Gentiles to a fellowship with the Jews This is to serve another Hypothesis of his That we are not bound to believe what we cannot understand by our Reason and so to invalidate our belief of the Union of the Divine and Humane Nature in Christ for saith the Doctor p. 32. col 1. If we will needs enquire into the Mysteries of Christ's Divinity and Incarnation we shall find our Understandings no less confounded by the brightness of the Mystery than our Eyes are by the Sun and of this the Holy Ghost warns us not only by a careful silence concerning our Lord's Genealogy but by express Types and Prophesies concerning its inscrutability So that by the Doctor 's Propositions neither our Knowledge nor our Faith have any thing to do about the Divinity he will not call it the Deity of our Saviour or his Incarnation it matters not whether we know or believe any thing concerning either I shall not charge the Dr. with any thing that he hath not expresly said and therefore do acknowledge that what he speaks of the Doctrine of Transubstantiation falls not under our debate but I know that the Socinians say that there is no firmer footing for the Doctrine of the Trinity in the holy Scripture than for Transubstantiation and the Socinians at Alba Julia in a Treatise printed 1568. say thus Whoever believes the Pope to be Antichrist doth truly believe the Popish Trinity Infant Baptism and other Popish Sacraments to be the Doctrines of Devils And when I consider that the Naked Gospel is bereaved of this Doctrine and intended not so much against the Doctrine and Sacraments retained in that Church as against what is maintained in the Church of England I submit it to the Judgment of others whether these following expressions of the Authors do not reflect on the Doctrine of our Church when he speaks of a pack of impertinent Mysteries p. 58. col 2. And that Mahomet among all his Whimsies hath nothing comparable to it p. 59. col 1. And that the Athanasian Doctrine may be numbred with the Papal and of the Contradictions which are in the one as well as in the other P. 41. c. 1. P. 21. c. 1. P. 56. c. 2. The Doctor seems much offended at the word Mystery thô he knows thereis nothing reserved from the youngest Catecheumen in the Church of England who is diligently instructed in the Principles of Religion by order of the Church yet he must grant that there were many things in the Scripture which continued to be so until they were revealed such were those Mysteries mentioned by St. Paul 1 Tim. 3.16 Without question great is the mystery of godliness God was manifest in the flesh justified in the spirit seen of angels believed on in the world received up into glory And such were those Parables which our Saviour proposed to his Disciples which exceeded their apprehensions until they were expounded to them by our Saviour And such was that Mystery which the Apostle speaks of Ephes 1.10 and Ephes 3.6 which was not made known to the Sons of Men in other Ages as it was revealed to the Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit viz. That the Gentiles should be Fellow heirs and of the same Body and partakers of his Promise in Christ by the Gospel But when the Gentiles were taken in to be
Fellow heirs with the believing Jews then it ceased to be a Mystery and surely there is another Mystery in v. 9. of that 3d Chapter which our Doctor cannot yet apprehend thô plainly revealed viz. That God created all things by Jesus Christ See Crellius Heb. 1. v. 10. which though frequently asserted in the Scripture as Col. 1. Heb. 1. c. yet the Socinians utterly deny nor can they apprehend what is that Righteousness which is by Faith as opposed to that which is by the Law or to our Doctor 's Natural Faith but the Doctor tells us of another Mystery little less than a Contradiction as p. 1. c. 2. viz. The Patriarchs knew only the Fathers yet Abraham had the knowledge of Christ and our Saviour says that Moses spake of him and the Doctor affirms the same That Moses spake of Christ Deut. 30.12 for the Doctor saith p. 41. c. 1. that the Apostle applied that place to Christ If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved It was not so much in dislike of the Popish Mysteries that the Doctor so often rejects whatever is above human Reason under that Notion as in dislike of the Doctrine of the Trinity and the Eternal Generation of our Saviour of which he speaking p. 34. c. 1. says If you understand not this you must not wonder at least not gain-say it for it is a Mystery which Reason cannot fathom and therefore must be rejected as one of the Packs of Impertinent Mysteries p. 58. c. 2. The Doctor that writes so mystically himself should not be so much displeased if he meet with some Mysteries in other Writings especially in the Scripture wherein as St. Peter observes of St. Paul's Epistles There are some things hard to be understood and will not be fully explained till Elias come And indeed as Naked as his Gospel is it is darkned with so many obscure mists and subtle insinuations that it will appear to some of his most diligent Readers to be one continued Mystery of Iniquity It is a sorry shift which Sandius and others that write against the Trinity make to excuse themselves for thus Sandius pleads see his Appendix p. 107. That he wrote his Book on behalf of the Protestants against the Papists to convince them that the Scripture is the only Rule of Faith because they could not prove the chiefest Articles of their Faith viz. the Trinity Consubstantiality and Coequality from the Tradition of the Fathers of the three first Ages In this our Doctor follows Sandius and would perswade us to renounce the Doctrine of the Trinity because it is a Popish Doctrine See more of this in another Epistle of Sandius p. 261. I have proved saith he that the whole World in the fourth Age was Arian and the Arians enjoyed Temporal Felicity and wrought Miracles to shew against the Papists that these are not marks of the true Church I reckoned diverse Councils of the Arians who condemned the Catholick Faith to shew that we ought not to depend on their Determinations in Matters of Faith but on Scripture only I have shewn that the Church of Rome hath honoured many Arians that were of very evil lives as Saints to shew you what manner of Saints the Papists do Invocate by the Authority of the Infallible Church of Rome c. All this is right but when the whole design of his Book is to shew that the Doctrine of Arius denying the Godhead of Christ and making him a Creature is more consonant to Scripture and Antiquity than that of the Trinity in the Church of Rome is to condemn all other Churches that maintain the same Doctrine for to this purpose tends that which remains in the Third Enquiry concerning the Papists who do impose new Articles of Faith and set their Traditions and Decrees in an equal rank with the Scriptures and sometimes above them with a Nonobstante to Christ's own Institutions as the Socinians do by their Reason let them therefore dispute the Case with each other and let Baal plead for himself He cannot wound the Church of England through their sides unless he can prove the Doctrine of the Trinity to be a Popish Tradition which he doth more than intimate and herein he would do them more service than any of their Champions by proving Popery to be more ancient than the Council of Nice I am now come to the Conclusion of the Author who shuts up his Naked Gospel as generally the Socinians do with a Plea for Toleration to all that confess the Lord Jesus and believe that God raised him from the Dead though they leave him as Naked a Lord as the Doctor hath left the Gospel robbing him of his Eternity and Deity and that Honour and Worship which on those considerations are due to him our Faith in his Name Obedience to his Commands a devout use of his Holy Sacraments and so turn Turks Jews o◠as some English Socinians have done Quakers and live above Ordinances satisfying themselves with a Christ within them and a Natural or Naked Gospel as Mr. Pen in a Socinian Tract hath done This he calls giving Faith its due Bounds by imprisoning it and dismembring it separating Obedience and Love which are inseparable from Evangelical Faith And as for Love saith he we must give it its due boundlesness even to them that love not but deny and bid open defiance to the Godhead of Christ to whom the Apostle denounceth Anathema I wish heartily the Doctor had shewn more Charity to the Church of Christ in general than to think and speak of them as guilty of Idolatry in all Ages for so are they that give Divine Worship to a Creature and that he who stiles himself a Son of the Church of England would not defame her as tainted with Popish because she holds the Athanasian Doctrine for he calls that and the Nicene their Creeds and our Litany their Litany and so becoming a Papist to the Papists and it 's much better to be an Athanasian Papist than an Arian or Socinian Heretick The Doctor tells us in the Vindication p. 7. of his intention to have presented his Naked Gospel to the Convocation that they might be induced to enlarge their Charity at a time when all the Christian World expected it from them And was all the Christian World once more become Arians that they should become Disciples to his Naked Gospel I cannot conceive what compliance the Doctor could presume of from that Convocation he well knows their Prolocutor was the same that agreed shortly after to the burning of it in the Convocation at Oxford and doubtless both he and the several Members would have had the same Resentment of it at Westminster as the Oxford Convocation had When therefore we see a Viper rising out of the Fires of Oxford and hissing p. 5. That the Heresie lay not in the Book but in the
granted and all sort of Heresies were impunely permitted and Orthodox Doctrines discountenanced there are so few persons infected with Heresie and so many learned persons left us to vindicate the Truths of the Gospel yet are there some Thousands infected with Anabaptism and Quakerism among whom the Pelagian and Socinian Doctrines have got the Ascendent They talked formerly of being Godded with God and Christed with Christ and now they deny the Godhead of Christ and Man it with Man what number of such Hereticks are now among us the Author of the NAKED GOSPEL may know better than others doubtless he presumes of a large Muster otherwise he would not appear as a Leader to head them but that he should appear under the Notion of a Son of the Church of England is the greatest Affront that could be done it for as Plutarch says he had rather Men should say there was never such a Man as Plutarch than that they should say he was a Vicious Person So is it a less reproach for the Papists to say there never was such a Church as the Church of England than to say it is a Church professing Pelagian and Socinian Doctrines The Fathers and Sons of our Church have not and by the Grace of God will not be wanting in their Duty to Assert her Doctrines and to Silence all her Adversaries The University of Oxford have manifested their Abhorrence of it in Condemning the Book to the Fire And the Right Reverend the Bishop of Exeter Visitor of that Colledge whereof the Author was Rector hath as the Statutes of the Colledge directed him in Case of Heresie very seasonably repremanded him whereby it is hoped the Gangreen of his Heresies will be mortified and cut off from infecting the Members of that Famous Colledge Nor do I doubt but all that have any Authority in Causes Ecclesiastical will shew the like Detestation of that Damnable Heresie that denieth the Lord that bought them The Ancient Fathers were very severe against such Ignatius mentioning that passage in Jer. 17. Cursed is the man that trusteth in man saith that they are under the Curse that affirm Christ to be a meer man Origen on Job l. 1. c. 4. Whatever men shall do without Faith in the Holy Trinity they do in vain and shall have no reward Fulgentius de fide p. 9. saith he cannot be a Christian that shall not confess the Lord Christ to be his God The Fathers have said as much concerning the Arians that they were Antichristians rather than Christians Yea they say the like of Arius as of Julian That they were both guilty of the Sin against the Holy Ghost and if to the rest of our National Sins we should add this to suffer the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity to be thus publickly derided and made the Subject of profane Pamphlets that the Writers should confidently own them and falsely profess themselves Sons of the Church of England that there should be a Secret Press still in Labour to be delivered of such Monsters that there should be a Club to Father them and such Hectors to defend and support them and so many to applaud them and such Books as were long since written in Latin are taught to speak English and French and our English Books in requital are taught to speak Latin and French Arrianism is one of the great Provocations for which the Lord's hand is not withdrawn but is still stretched out to be avenged on us Luther on his Death bed was wont to exhort those who came to visit him Oremus pro Domino nostro ejus Evangelio Let us pray for our Lord and for his Gospel The Gospel was then reviving and gaining its liberty it is now imprisoned in all Countries where Popery doth prevail and it is like to be stript Naked at home if some charitable Hand doth not seasonably prevent it to which that Doom which our Saviour hath denounced Mat. 25.43 Go ye cursed for I was naked and ye cloathed me not should excite every good Christian otherwise we may justly fear that for all the Affronts and Indignities which the Prophane on the one hand and the Hereticks and Blasphemers on the other hand between whom our blessed Saviour is crucified afresh and put to open shame he deal with us as he did with the Church of Ephesus Rev. 2.5 I will come unto thee quickly and remove thy Candlestick except thou repent And the great haste which so many do make to banish the true knowledge of God out of the Land is a fearful Prognostick that our Saviour will come quickly to be avenged on such a People My present Undertaking is only to do the Office of a Watch-man or Sentinel to discover the approach of an Adversary and to sound an Alarme to such as are better furnished with Arms and Abilities to vanquish them of which by the Blessing of God our Church is provided with many thousands who I doubt not will fight it out Usque ad Triarios If I have for the sake of my Country-men collected a few Arguments against the Socinian Tenets it is what the Discourse of the Author led me to my intent was to discover the dangerous Design of the Naked Gospel which the Author pretends was for the enlarging of Charity and for condemning of Impositions in Matters of Faith under which Notion he industriously condemns those Doctrines of the Nicene Fathers and of Athanasius which have been received in the Church of England not only from them but from the most Primitive Times But the Doctor says We have no firm ground to go upon not from Scripture because the Arrians capt Scripture with the Orthodox nor from Antiquity which they claimed with the same confidence nor from Councils which determined sometimes on one side and sometimes on the other p. 37. c. 1. Yet he grants that the Catholicks have the advantage of long possession and that after Sentence and at last leaves both the Arrian and Athanasian Doctrines on the same level with Roman Impositions equally unworthy of our Faith or Study By this and what I shall further urge from the Naked Gospel it will evidently appear that if the Doctor be of any Religion that names the Name of Christ he must be a Socinian As to the Author's design he pretends it to be 1. For the enlarging of Charity i. e. for a Toleration of his Opinions 2. To prevent Impositions in Matters of Faith to both which I have replyed and shewn that the real design is to ridicule the Athanasian Creed and the Council of Nice and to prefer a Natural Religion above that which is taught by them which he accounts among his unreasonable Impositions as having 1. No footing in Scripture in answer whereto I have shewn the Harmony of the Old and New Testament in Confirmation of those Doctrines 2. Whereas he says they have no Foundation in the Fathers I have produced their Authorities And thirdly as for the Councils Because the Socinians decline
their Authority I have but briefly toucht them As to my Method having first considered his Preface in the next place I have considered his Apology 3. I have made some general Reflections on the Book and lastly I have discovered what Socinian Doctrines are covertly delivered in each Chapter for I find his Oracles like those of old to carry a doubtful or double Sence to be as a Reserve and Refuge that being driven from the one he might flye to the other and indeed it is more difficult to discover and draw him forth from those Ambushes wherein he lies in wait to deceive than to baffle his greatest Strength in a plain and open Field the first is my chief endeavour though I have not on occasion declined the other what I have attempted was not in confidence of my own Abilities having never been exercised in this spiny Controversie and being now by Age Miles emeritus but only to excite and provoke others to contend for the common Salvation in the Faith once delivered to the Saints and whatever the success be I hope I shall obtain the Pardon of all good Men seeing I have according to my power cast in my Mite into the Church's Treasury AN ANSWER To a Late TREATISE ENTITULED The Naked Gospel THE Author of the Naked Gospel calls himself a true Son of the Church of England now the Doctrine of the Church of England is declared in her Liturgy her Articles and Homilies in her Liturgy she hath inserted the Three Creeds viz. that called the Apostles the Nicene and the Athanasian these two last our Author would have to be restrained to the Letter of the former because that only is used in the Offices for Administration of Baptism and Visitation of the Sick but if he be a true Son of the Church he hath or should ex animo have given his Assent and Consent to all the Doctrines avowed by the Church However it is well that the Doctor seems to approve of the Apostles Creed because I find the Socinians deny the Godhead of the Son and Holy Ghost being it is not expresly affirmed in that Creed yet certainly they had not been made Objects of our Faith if they were not of the Godhead This Creed is but a larger Profession of our Christian Faith which we made at our Baptism where we dedicate ourselves to the Service of that one God who is Father Son and Holy Ghost The Right Reverend Bishop of Chester hath sufficiently proved the Deity of the Son and Holy Ghost in his learned Exposition of that Creed Nor have we ever heard of any of the Fathers that have interpreted it otherwise than as the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds have done yet I have been credibly informed that a Doctor who stiles himself of the Church of England gravely declared That this Creed also might be reformed But in the Church of England we find the reiterated Acknowledgment of the Blessed Trinity Father Son and Holy Ghost so in the Doxology in the Form used in Baptism and in the Litany O Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity Three Persons and One God c And in that very ancient Hymn after the Communion it is said of our Saviour Thou only art Holy thou only art the Lord thou only O Christ with the Holy Ghost art most high in the Glory of God the Father In the Te Deum Thou art the King of Glory O Christ thou art the Everlasting Son of the Father In the first Article concerning the Trinity the Church of England says That in the Unity of the Divine Nature there are three Persons of the same Essence Power and Eternity Father Son and Holy Ghost In the Homely for Whitsunday she says The Holy Ghost is a Spiritual and Divine Substance the third Person in the Deity distinct from the Father and the Son Which thing may most easily be proved by most plain Testimonies of God's Holy Word Canon 〈◊〉 1640. And in the Canons it is forbidden to read Socinian Books And in the former Book of Canons we are forbid to teach any thing but what is agreeable to the Doctrine of the Old and New Testament and what the ancient Fathers and Bishops have collected out of them It was therefore a Protestatio contra factum to stile himself a true Son c. and under that Title to publish to the World what is so opposite to her Doctrine May not the Church complain of such Sons in the words of the Prophet Isaiah c. 1. I have nourished and brought up children and they have rebelled against me But God be thanked the Church of England doth not want more dutiful Sons such as on all occasions are ready and able to vindicate her Doctrines and assert her Discipline That famous University whereof the Author was a Member seasonably manifested her Detestation of his Heretical Opinions by condemning them to the Flames that there might not be a Spark left to kindle such dangerous Fires in the Church which Decree for the Reader 's satisfaction is here inserted The Judgment and Decree of the Vniversity of Oxford delivered in a Convocation held August 19th 1690. against some Impious and Heretical Propositions transcribed and quoted out of an Infamous Libel of late perfidiously printed within the said Vniversity and published with this Title The Naked Gospel which do Impugne and Assault the principal Mysteries of our Faith alway retained and preserved in the Catholick Church and especially in the Church of England IMPRIMATUR Jonathan Edwards Vice-Can Oxon. WHereas there is lately published an Infamous Libel entituled The Naked Gospel which under that specious Title destroys the Foundation of the Primitive Faith once delivered to the Saints assaults the chief Mysteries of our Religion and not only denies but reproacheth him that bought us the Lord Jesus Christ who is God blessed for ever And whereas it appears that this Libel deserving to be condemned to eternal Flames hath been by an unheard of Persideousness printed and published within this University therefore for the Honour of the Holy and Individual Trinity for Preservation of the Catholick Doctrine in the Church and moreover for the Defence as much as in us lieth of the Reputation and Esteem of this University which with all care we desire to preserve intire and inviolable We the Vice-Chancellor Doctors Proctors the Regent and Non-Regent Masters convocated in a full Senate of Convocation on the 19th of August 1690 in manner and place accustomed certain Propositions in the said Libel contained which we have caused to be transcribed and hereafter recited being first Read have by our Common Suffrages and the Unanimous Consent and Assent of Us all Decreed in manner following I. We do Condemn all and every of these Propositions and others to them belonging which for Brevity's sake are pretermitted as False Impious and Contumelious to the Christian Religion and especially to the Church of England And we Decree and Declare most of them to be Heretical as contrary
which I quote p. 3. speaking to the Christians Mahomet says Say not God hath a Companion equal to him because you know the contrary P. 4. God created the Heavens and the Earth and then ascended into Heaven P. 44. Zachary prayed to God for a Progeny the Angels declared to him from God That he should have a Son called John he shall affirm the Messias to be the Word of God Jesus is with God as is Adam God created him out of the Earth I do not associate God him with any one and acknowledge no other Lord but him P. 46. There is no God but God alone the Omnipotent and Wise P. 86. There be some that alter the Scripture in reading it and will make us believe that what we read is in the Scripture though it be not they blaspheme and know it well God gave not to Men the Scripture Knowledge and Prophesies to say to the People Worship me instead of God but that they should say Observe exactly what you read in the Scripture God doth not command you to adore Angels or Prophets P. 48. We believe in what was inspired by Moses Jesus and generally by all the Prophets Abraham was not of them that believe in many Gods P. 49. Follow ye the Law of Abraham that is pleasing to him he profest the Unity of the Divine Majesty he was not of them that believe in many Gods P. 94. Certainly they that believe Messias the Son of Mary to be God are impious The Messias commanded the Children of Israel to worship God his and their Lord. Paradise is forbidden to him that shall say God hath a Companion equal to him Such as affirm there are Three Gods are impious P. 86. The Messias the Son of Mary is a Prophet and Apostle of God like to the Prophets that came before him His Mother is Holy say to him Who can hinder God to extirminate the Messias and his Mother P. 86. Of the Jews he says few of them shall believe because of their Malice and Blasphemies vomited against Mary They said We have slain the Messias Jesus the Son of Mary the Prophet and Apostle of God Certainly they slew him not neither crucified him they crucified one that resembled him such as doubt it are in a manifest Error for God took him up to himself Such as have the knowledge of the Scripture ought to believe in Jesus before his Death he shall be a Witness against them in the Day of Judgment P. 80 81. You shall hear many Christians that have an inclination towards true Believers and have Priests and Religious that are humble and their eyes full of tears say Lord we believe in thy Law write us in the Number of them that profess thy Unity P. 95. He shall say in the Day of Judgment O Jesus didst thou injoyn thy People to Worship Thee and thy Mother as two Gods Jesus shall answer Praised be thy Name I will take heed of speaking what is not true I delivered nothing but what thou commandest me to speak viz. Worship God your Lord and mine p. 99. Infidels believe not in his Unity p. 101. The Jews say That the Son of God is most just and powerful The Christians say That the Messias is the Son of God their words are like the words of Infidels but God shall lay on them his Curse p. 153. Consider how they blaspheme they adore their Doctors and Priests and the Messias also the Son of Mary who commanded them to worship One God alone there is but one sole God there is nothing equal to him they would extinguish the Ligqt of God but he shall not suffer them How the Naked Gospel agreeth with the Alchoran in most of these particulars might be shewn but he that reads it will be soon satisfied that it is a Commentary on that Text. But since the Doctor or some one for him hath written his Vindication I shall briefly consider what is said in Defence of those Propositions condemned by the University And first I observe That in these Propositions and what may be added to them from the Naked Gospel the quintessence of the Arian and Socinian Controversies is contracted and composed Secundum Artem and by him or some other on his behalf recommended as a safe means to promote a General Comprehension and an enlarged Charity but to the destruction of Catholick Verity Now because these Propositions are not only published in several Impressions of that Libel but defended by the Author or some other on his behalf and the Gangreen begins to spread among prophane and unstable Wits which too much abound it seemed necessary to provide an Antidote against those old Errors to which the Author hath given a new Resurrection like that which he maintains of our Bodies not in the same form but another more agreeable to his new Divinity and Philosophy and equally opposite to the written Gospel as understood by the Primitive Fathers and received by the Church of England The difference which the Author fancieth to be made in the Gospel is the preaching of the Doctrine of the Eternal Deity of our Saviour which this Author explodes as not to be comprehended by his Reason and not agreeable to that Natural Religion which he makes the Foundation of the Gospel now if there be any alteration made it is by those which have denied the Eternal Deity of our Saviour for as I said while St. John was yet living Ebion and Cerinthus began that Heresie Ebion taught That Christ was a meer Man and had no existence before he was born into the World of which the Church of Ephesus then complained to St. John desiring him to write in Confutation of that Heresie and Justin Martyr and Ireneus brand this Heresie as did Ignatius before them and St. John before him who called such as denied that Jesus Christ was come in the Flesh Deceivers and Antichrists Cerinthus held a pre-existence of Reason or the Word which he says descended on our Saviour at his Baptism and ascended from him into Heaven when he was crucified for which Opinions St. John meeting him in a Bath fled from his company as fearing least the Walls of the Bath wherein he was might fall on him Against these Heresies St. John being importun'd wrote his Gospel purposely to assert the Divine Essence of the Son of God as he tells us ch 20.31 These things are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God and that believing ye might have life through his name And besides the Historical part of that Gospel the whole is one continued Argument for the Confirmation of this Truth which we shall have occasion to speak of more at large and shall only observe here what he says 1 Job 5.20 We know that the Son of God is come and hath given us an understanding to know him that is true This is the true God and eternal life And in the 2 Epistle v. 7. Many deceivers are
entred into the world who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh This is a deceiver and an Antichrist And 1 Job 5.7 he plainly asserts the Doctrine of the Trinity There are three that bear witness in heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these Three are One. It is very observable what Grotius says in the Preface of his Annotations on St. John The Ancients among other causes of St. John 's Writing this Gospel do generally assign this as the chief that he might apply a Remedy to that Poyson which at that time was dispersed in the Church among all that professed the Name of Christ which could be no other than the denying of the Eternal Deity of the Son of God which that Evangelist asserted Now tho' it may seem a superfluous work to enquire into the Opinions of the Author of the Naked Gospel after the Censure of the University the reading whereof may satisfie any Judicious and Impartial Reader yet least I should seem to make an Adversary where I find none and to fight against my own Shadow as against some formidable Monster I shall 1. Consider what the Author hath said to clear himself from the Reasons of that Decree 2. Make some few general Remarks on the design of the Naked Gospel And 3ly More particularly Examine the Opinions asserted or insinuated by the Author In his Vindication p. 4. he declares his Faith to be no other than that of the Church of England and renounceth any word which in that or any other Book may seem to contradict it The Contradiction is not seeming but real and differs as much as Time doth from Eternity or the Doctrine of the Church of England of which I have given an account from the Arrian and Socinian Heresies if he renounceth any thing he must renounce almost all but how he will do it so as to remove the Scandal from the Church of England which as Monsieur Jeru observes is now conceived to be tainted with Socinian Doctrines from such Writings as this of the Naked Gospel I cannot well conceive unless he disclaim his being a true Son of the Church of England He says The Author of that Book is so far from denying the Divinity of Christ that he plainly asserts it But what Divinity is that is it the Eternal Godhead and Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father This is not to be found yea it is the whole design of the Author to impugne it he grants him no other Divinity than the Arrians did of a created God nor indeed so much for he speaks of our Saviour under the same Notions and Expressions as Socinus and Smalâ—ius did granting him a Divinity but not a Deity of which more hereafter But he would prove his Assertion from these words of his That the Author of our Gospel was not only great but infinite But the Question is whom he means by our Author whether God the Father the prime or God the Son as the immediate Author for thus the Moral Law was given by Moses yet God was the prime Author and in this sence an Arrian may and the Socinians do say Christ waâ— the Messenger of God and received all his Commands from God and so the Author of the Gospel in the Socinians sence is infinite for thâ—s Crellius on Heb. 2. v. 3. says Christ was not the first Author of the Gospel as neither were the Angels of the Law but God was the prime Author of both the Law and Gospel though the Law was published by Angels and the Gospel by Christ so that Christ was no otherwise a Law-giver in publishing the Gospel than Moses was in proclaiming the Law which Crellius in his Book de Uno Deo endeavours to maintain at large and in the same sence I fear the Doctor calls the Author of our Gospel infinite viz. that God the Father is the Author of the Gospel But being conscious that some Expressions unsuitable to so plain an Assertion as that of the Infinity of the Author of the Gospel might drop from his hasty Pen he says p. 5. that such hasty Expressions ought to be thereby i. e. by the word Infinity to be interpreted Answ And so it might if he had applied it to the Person of Christ but he tells us the occasion of that Expression was Ch. 11. from the assurance of a Christian grounded on the Resurrection beyond the hopes of a Heathen and the Persons in whom the one and the other believed Now whom do the Arrians believe to be the Author of that Resurrection but God the Father whom they often affirm to have raised our Saviour from the Dead and it s no wonder if they own his Infinity this being the substance of what they say is necessary to be believed viz. That God raised Jesus from the Dead and to confess him our Lord denying that Christ arose by any power of his own Therefore he would not have his Expressions imputed to his setled Opinion but his too great hast and heat in a Question which did nor concern the Divinity of Christ but the manner of his Generation the former as he adds was on both sides acknowledged the latter was the whole subject of the Dispute which Constantines Letter so often calleth Silly Answ If the Divinity of Christ in its proper sence i. e. his Deity had been acknowlegded I believe there had been no dispute concerning the manner of his Generation the Question was Whether he were Consubstantial with the Father or not not concerning the manner or modus but whether he were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the same Substance with the Father If the Dispute in Constantine's time had been only about the manner of Christ's Generation the Doctor might have taken in the Parenthesis of Dr. Wallis that it is not distinctly declared by God nor are we able fully to comprehend it nor is it necessary for us to know but it is necessary to know that this Generation was from Eternity that we may ground our Faith and Hope in him that is God and so is able to save to the utmost all that come to God by him he being the Lord i. e. Jehovah our Righteousness What the Controversy in the Nicene Council against Arrius was and how it was decided shall appear anon 2ly He says the design of his Book was only to disable Humane Authority from imposing on our Belief more Doctrines than Christ and his Apostles declared to be necessary Here are two bold Strokes first the Doctor will determine what those necessary Doctrines are and then he will disable Magistrates from imposing any other and so we shall lose the great Fundamental the Eternal Godhead of Christ which his Naked Gospel doth impugne 3ly Another design of this Author he says is By a due confinement of Faith to enlarge Charity Ans The Apostles method to enlarge Charity was not to confine but propagate the Faith once delivered to the Saints as the best motive
to Charity we have one Lord one Faith one Baptism but such as the Author is the Socinians deny the Lord that bought them destroy the Foundation of Faith in the Godhead and satisfaction of Christ and wholly disannul Baptism and so cut asunder this triple Cord that obligeth Christians to Charity and indeed as they acknowledge not the one Lord so they nullify the one Faith in him and make the one Baptism of no effect and therefore have utterly destroyed Charity The next charge of exposing the Divinity of Christ he says p. 5. hath no other evidence but this That he is sometimes stiled a crucified Vagabond and this he says is but once viz. in the Introduction But was it not said with as little modesty p. 21. c. 2. That he was a Vagabond Galilean which expressions by the Rule of Fortiter calumniare aliquod adherebit will not excuse him by saying he personated an Infidel such playing with Holy Things is much worse than his play at push Pin. P. 6. he protesteth That in his whole life he never spent so much time in reading Socinian Books as put altogether would amount to one whole day By spending so much time I suppose he means he did not lose or mispend it but it was well bestowed or perhaps he made the Arrian Controversy his chief Study which is as contrary to the Doctrine of the Church of England as the Socinian So Socinus protested he never read Arrius Credat Judaeus I would here remind the Doctor of the excellent Advice of the incomparable King Charles the First mentioned by himself in his Preface I would have you as I hope you are already well grounded and setled in your Religion the best Profession whereof I have ever esteemed that of the Church of England in which you have been Educated c. It is well known that the Doctor was not only educated in the Church of England but to that very time when he wrote his Naked Gospel that is till he was sixty five Years old as he computes his Age he hath lived in the Communion of that Church we may therefore marvel how he was so soon removed from him that called him to the Grace of Christ unto another Gospel as St. Paul expresseth it Gal. 1.6 which would pervert the Gospel of Christ Did he not judiciously make the Doctrine of the Church of England his own as that Blessed King advised Did he not by his own judgment and reason but by his hand only seal to the Bond which Education had written or take it up only on Mens Customs or Traditions as that good King speaks if so he was guilty of great Oscitancy in the matter of Religion on which Salvation depends or if after so long Profession of the Doctrine of the Church he began to entertain some doubts of the truth of it he was guilty of great Levity in so weighty a Matter not to bestow many Years in the Examination of the Errors of that Doctrine which he forsook and imbracing another vastly and dangerously differing from it without bestowing so much as one Day 's reading the Grounds and Reasons of it On supposition therefore that the Doctor hath embraced either the Arrian or Socinian Doctrines he was unaccountably rash there being so many Books written by learned Men of both Parties to leave a Religion which he had so long profest and had time to enquire into and without more than one Days study in a Case of such consequence to fall off to a contrary Opinion This may tempt Men to think it was done in a Pet some may think because he was not removed to a higher Station as he intimates somewhere the Archbishop promised he should in some short time but being not done he thought to remind him of his Promise by Dedicating that Book of a Constant Communicant to his Grace yet after all he was left in that Place where he spent three Pence of his own to every Penny of his Preferment For my part I have a better opinion of the Doctor and that he had long studied and often discoursed with learned Men concerning the Socinian Controversy and that the Naked Gospel was the product of many Years spent in Reading Conference and Meditation on those Points before he came to a Resolution For I have heard of a Doctor of his Age who often discoursed with his Father a Reverend Divine concerning some Arminian Pelagian and Socinian Points and in heat of disputation did tell his Father That it would not be well till we came up to the Socinian Doctrine this was many years since And what means his sitting down when the Athanasian Creed was said but his contempt of it The next Charge is That the Godhead of our Saviour is declared to be an impertinent and dangerous Speculation This he thinks is discharged by the former distinction of the manner of the Generation c. and adds That those Fathers who were the most earnest Assertors of the Doctrine of Christ's Divinity he doth not say of his Eternal Deity were also the most severe Censurers of Curiosity concerning the manner of his Generation And our Author is a Son of those Fathers who granted a Created Deity to our Saviour and most severely censured those that held his Eternal Generation as being guilty of Polytheism which is often intimated by him This is the sum of the Author's Defence I would willingly know of what sort of Divinity it is that he ascribes to our Saviour because I find that the Arrians acknowledge that he is a Created God and the Socinians grant a Divinity but not so much as a Created Deity I see no more granted him as to his Person by the Socinians than by the Turks which acknowledge he was a Divine Man and a true Prophet or Messenger of God This Divinity he learnt of Smalcius as I shall shew hereafter or of Crellius as is already shewn whose words as well as sence he so often repeats as will give great cause to the Reader to conclude that he spent more than one whole Day in reading the Socinian Controversies The general Remarks which I shall make on the Naked Gospel are as follow 1. That whereas the Author pretends the special Design of it is to enlarge Charity yet that Charity is only designed for a Toleration of the Arrian and Socinian Doctrines and he sharply reflects on all such as he perceived to be averse from such his enlarged Charity p. 39. Col. 1. If Bishop Alexander the first Author of the Nicety thought fit to tolerate the Arrians we can ill prentend to Charity if we allow them no title to God's Pardon or his Church's Communion P. 57. of his interpolated Edition he pleads That nothing can be more odious than to persecute as Hereticks and Malefactors all such as should refuse to be imposed on viz. by the Bishops that asserted the Trinity P. 11. of his Vindication he recommends the charitable Heresie of the Latitudinarians under
which held the contrary should be called Hereticks made infamous and punished All this Constantine and the Council of Nice had done long before He adds Behold now the ground on which one of our Fundamental Articles of Faith is built The meaning of this is that it is an Imperial Imposition to which we shall give an Answer anon Prop. 9. What more ridiculously silly than to build so weighty a Doctrine upon implicite Faith in two Bishops partial to their own Sees whereof the one gave it Birth the other Maintenance and what more odious than to prosecute as Hereticks and Malefactors all such as should refuse to be so grosly imposed on Answ What can be more falsly said than that this Doctrine hath no other Foundation than what this Author allows it When it was confirm'd by that famous Council not as their own Opinions only but as the constant Doctrine of the Churches of God in former Ages grounded on the Holy Scriptures and therefore to reflect on it as the first and most uncharitable Dispute that ever rent the Christian World doth not become any Christian much less a true Son of the Church of England See p. 55. col 1. In the 10th Proposition he affirms That on his Premises being considered Men may be tempted as it seems he hath been to number the Athanasian among the Roman Doctrines and to leave it on the same level with the Arrian equally unworthy of our Faith and Study It appears then that our Doctor never studied this Doctrine whereof he hath long been a Professor so far as to make it an Article of his Faith and if his Pelagian Doctrines and Sermons concerning Original Sin for which many learned Men have severely censured him with which the University was so offended as to oblige him to explain by way of a Recantation and of his Opinion of Turkish Devotion and his Naked Gospel were duly considered the Considerator must be perswaded that the Doctor had made the Socinian Doctrines his constant study and never thought the Catholick Doctrines worthy of his Study or Faith or that instead of not bestowing one days study in reading Socinian Writers he had not bestowed so much time in reading the Articles or Liturgy of the Church of England In the 11th he saith We cannot think it necessary to Salvation that every private Christian and by the same reason that no private Christian should believe that as an Article of Faith which the best Ages of the Church thought not worth knowing Which in the Second Edition he thus expresseth An Opinion which so many good and wise Men as lived within three hundred years after Christ were so far from believing as matter of Faith that they did not receive it as matter of certainty nor perhaps of credibility Answ St. John lived many Years after Christ he not only received it but asserted it throughout his Gospel and Epistles against Ebion and Cerinthus St. Ignatius calls them Serpents that did deny it Polycarp called Marcion The first begotten of the Devil for believing the contrary these I trust every true Son of the Church of England will acknowledge to have been good and wise Men. But you shall hear anon of an Army of Martyrs that have sealed it with their Blood and what a fruitful Seed of this saving Doctrine the Blood of these Martyrs hath been in the Church of God That learned and seasonable Collection of Mr. Bull 's concerning the Judgment of the Fathers in the first 300 Years after our Saviour shews abundantly what was their belief concerning the Deity of our Saviour which may silence the Dispute and save the labour of any farther Collection an account whereof for my Country-mens sake who either understand not the Latin Tongue or cannot compass the Book I shall present to my Reader and refer the Learned to the Book itself where they may find all their Testimonies vindicated and irrefragably asserted against the Objection of Sandius Petavius and other Socinian Authors in their proper place In the Twelfth Proposition he insinuates That the Positions of the Athanasians seems to infer Polytheism and when they deny the consequence he says They contradict the Rules of Reasoning and that they do so because they allow Reason no hearing in Mysteries of Faith and that this cannot excuse them from being Hereticks in Religion or Logick Whereas for the Arrians he pleads That they profess to believe of Christ whatever himself or his Apostles have spoken and where-ever one expression seems to contradict another they take such a course to reconcile them as the Laws and Customs of all the World direct This shews plainly what Party he adheres to The Rule which he gives us for the justification of the Arians is this It is frequent for Rhetorick to exceed but never to diminish the Grammatical Character of a Person whose Honour the Writer professeth to advance and therefore they think it more reasonable that those expressions which exalt our Saviour's Person to an equality wth the Father should stoop to those which speak him inferiour rather than those which speak him inferiour should be strained up to those which speak him equal As if Christ and his Apostles which wrote the History of Christ did not deal more faithfully in relating the truth concerning his Person as being one and equal to the Father than those Rhetoricians who to advance the Doctrine of Arius would depress him beneath himself and leave him as Naked as the New Gospel doth stripping him of all those glorious Attributes that should support his Worship and depriving the Church of that satisfaction which he made for it when he redeemed it with his own most precious Blood which by the Socinian Doctor 's is trampled under foot and counted a vain thing These Propositions will fall under our farther Consideration of the several Chapters To which I now proceed Chap. 1. He treats of the Gospel preached by our Saviour and his Apostles as necessary to Salvation the Character whereof is either that of a Covenant or a Message Of the Gospel as a Covenant he speaks as slightly as short quoting only Jer. 31.33 and Heb. 8.8 and says It is delivered more succinctly ch 10.17 This Covenant he says Leans on the Law of Nature which also keeps it firm in its place Thus the Covenant of Grace is confounded with the Law of Works though the Apostle sets them in opposition We are not under the Law but Grace That Christ is the Foundation of the Evangelical Covenant ratified and sealed by his Blood the Scripture teacheth so plainly that he that runs may read Covenants were wont to be made by Sacrifice as Dr. Outrede hath proved and so was this Covenant it was sealed in the Blood of the Son of God without which there could be no remission The Apostle calls him the Surety of a better Covenant and bringing in a better hope the first Covenant was Do this and live the second is He that believes and is
presume by his short line of Reason and Discourse to fathom the deep things of God which the Apostle says are past finding out When the Socinians say though it be contrary to Reason and Scripture That Divine Worship must be given to a Creature as they affirm Christ to be why may not the same Scriptures be believed when they tell us that Christ is One and equal with the Father God over all c. though Reason cannot apprehend how the Divine Essence can be communicated to more than one Person yet is it good Logick though no Socinian Reason that though the Divine Essence be singular yet it may be predicated of more than One without Multiplication or Division But are the Socinians the only Masters of Reason that all Mankind must stand or fall at their Tribunal Are they the Light of the World and all Men else in Darkness Yea even Christ himself who hath taught many things as contrary to their Doctrines as Light is to Darkness then we may say that neither God is true as well as that all Men are Lyars The Socinians grant That the Man that makes Reason his Judge ought to have divers necessary qualifications as that his Reason be clear and uncorrupt that the Person be of great Probity and Sincerity free from Vice and prejudicate Opinions well instructed and exercised in Human and Divine Knowledge one that hath studied discoursed and meditated on the Things he doubts of considering what is said pro and con by learned Men. And when all these Things meet one thing more is necessary the Illumination and Assistance of the Spirit of God And hath this Spirit and sound Reason forsaken the Universal Church in all Ages and confined itself to the Raccovian Catechists or is every private Man thus qualified Are not the most carnal ignorant or obstinate ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the Truth being lead away with divers Lusts which darken their Understandings and cause them to imprison the Truth of God in Unrighteousness and lean more to their own Understandings than to the Revelation and Assistance of the Holy Spirit I doubt not but the Socinians will grant that such Men are not fit Judges for themselves or others in Matters of Salvation Who then shall judge for them If they choose another it will be probably one of whom they have such a good Opinion as most inclined to their own Sentiments And how are they assured that he is not tainted with some of the same Failings as himself is he ought therefore to consider what the Church of GOD hath held in all Ages what the most general Councils after mature deliberation have approved of and above all what is most consonant to the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament and make these his Rule and then he will plainly see how contrary the long approved Doctrines of Original Sin and of Eternal Death the Wages of Sin the Necessity of Satisfaction to the Divine Justice and in order thereto the Incarnation of the Son of God which are as clear in the Holy Scriptures as the Sun in the Firmament are to his clouded and carnal Reason we may not wonder that there are in all Ages Men of perverse Minds c. because we have been foretold there should be such or that the Sophistry of such Men may raise prejudices against the most evident Truths even against the Being of a Deity and the first Principles of any Religion but for any who hold the Scriptures to be the Word of God and yet deny the Fundamentals of the Religion therein taught and shine as the Sun throughout one end to the other is against Reason as well as Scripture what is more plain than the Creation of the World by God in Gen. 1. yet may an Atheist urge the same Reason by his Metaphorical Sense of that History as the Socinians do by their absurd Interpretation of that of St. Joh. 1. and apply the particulars of the History of the Creation to the Erection of the Jewish Pedagogy and Policy by Moses as the Socinians do the first Institution of the Christian Religion to be the Sense of the Creation of the World by Christ Who was with God and was that God by whom the World was made as is most express Col. 1. and Heb. 1. See the Bishop of Worcester against Crellius Whence is it that the Ancient Fathers and Modern Doctors have lost their Reason and the Socinians found it that they as the Chineses say are the eye of the World Quid est quod Velleius intellegere possit contra non possit as Cicero de Natura Deorum Sure they have as good Intellectuals and as good helps to improve them and have given as great Testimonies of their Probity as any Socinian whatsoever their boast of Reason therefore may be checkt with that of Lucan of the British Druids Solis nosce Deos Coeli numina vobis aut Solis nescire datur Socinus grants That we ought not to forsake the common and usual sence of the Scripture and apply a Metaphorical Sense when the matter is capable of it And if his Disciples would grant but one thing more viz. that we ought not to wrest little words and particles which may admit of various significations contrary to their common import to which the subject matter doth determine them the Controversies between us and them would be soon decided for as the R. R. Bishop notes concerning that great Point of the Satisfaction of Christ which is so obstinately denied that it cannot be more clearly expressed by any Man than it is in the Scripture and if any Company of Learned Men should purposely write of it as the Apostles have done the Socinians would find the like evasions from the Sence of the one as they have to elude the other We say then that no Man of sober Reason assisted by the Illumination of the Word and Spirit of God can dissent from the Revelations of the Gospel because first it doth propose such things as are above the reach of human Reason but not contrary to it for one Light may be greater than another but not contrary to another and that Mind or Reason which is improved and elevated by the Light of Faith beyond the Sphere of its natural activity and is endowed with a spiritual understanding doth not only believe those Mysteries to be true but also may perceive many Reasons for their credibility which are hid from others that have not the same Opticks such as he may infer from the Wisdom of God who proposeth them and from the Nature of the Things proposed And if the Socinians talk of human Reason in the Concreate i. e. such as yet remain in the natural and corrupted Man of which St. Paul speaks 1 Cor. 11.14 it cannot be expected that this should agree with the Gospel for if to the eye of the body many things appear otherwise than in truth they are which
same particle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be used in both places yet the Apostle meant not to use it in the same sence in both the sence of it in the former is contrary to the later we rejoyce that our Sins are taken away by his Death but are sorry to have our Justification taken away by his Resurrection we are justified by his Blood because thereby our Sins are blotted out but we are justified by his Resurrection because thereon our Faith is built The inference which he makes is this So plain it is that the Faith which the Gospel requireth had its foundation in Natural Religion We see here how hard the Doctor strains to advance his Natural or Pelagian Religion he will not admit that the Apostle spake sence but contradictions in the same Period he speaks our sence not his own in the first part viz. that Christ died in our stead and we are justified by his Blood because thereby our Sins are blotted out but he speaks his own sence in the other part because he grounds our Justification on his Natural Religion and thereby evidently destroyeth the Evangelical Faith which we assert viz. That Christ by his Death made an Expiation or Satisfaction for our Sins In this the Doctor Yoaks himself with the Socinians for so Crellius speaking of the Propositions 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says They do not alway signify a meritorious Cause but only a final C. 1. Sect. 6. i. e. That he died for the good of Mankind as St. Paul is said to suffer for the Church and we are to lay down our lives for the brethren Col. 1.24 1 John 3.16 But can this be the sence of those plain places 1 Pet. 3.18 Christ hath suffered for our sins the just for the unjust and 2 Cor. 5.14 He gave himself a ransome for all and to taste death for every man and Luke 22.19 20. This is my bloud which was shed for you and Mat. 20.28 The son of man gave his life a ransome for many And ought we not to interpret this of Rom. 4. by the Analogy of those other places wherein the Scriptures do abound as Col. 1. Eph. 1. 1 Tim. 2. Heb. 7.27 1 Joh. 1.7 Revel 1.5 against all these Socinus urgeth that in 1 Kings 14.16 where it is said God shall deliver up Israel for the sins of Jeroboam who did sin and who made Israel to sin where he contends that the same signification of the words for the sins of Jeroboam ought to be interpreted as we do interpret that of Rom 4. which would be a kind of Blasphemy to say That Christ was delivered for our sins because not only we had sinned but had made him to sin as Jeroboam made Israel to sin Chap. 3. He applauds that Faith which is a Duty in Natural Religion It is saith he a Cardinal Vertue Justice towards God that pays him his due this was taught before Moses brought the positive Law into the World and that the Gospel builds on that foundation read Rom. 4. This speaks of the Faith of Abraham which hath been already considered Another Commendation of Natural Faith is That it is a great Promoter of Obedience wherein the Old Testament being silent as he says he sends us to Heb. 11. in the New Testament But had not those worthies any notice of the promised seed Had they no knowledge of a future state Did not they look for a heavenly country v. 16. And for a city which had foundations v. 10. Did not Abraham receive his Isaac in a type v. 19. Did not Moses see him who is invisible and had respect to the recompence of reward v. 26 27. Did not he write of Christ Did not the rest suffer in confidence of a better resurrection And did natural Faith instruct and enable them to do and suffer all these things If all these were the fruits and effects of a Natural Faith I cannot see what need there was of the Gospel if Nature shewed the way to Life and Immortality which 2 Tim. 1.10 says was brought to light by the Gospel if it taught so much Obedience Constancy and Patience how can Christ say John 14.6 I am the way the truth and the life and no man comes to the Father but by me How is it said That grace and truth came by Jesus Christ in opposition to what was revealed by Moses John 1.17 The law was weak Rom. 8.3 through the flesh and what that could not do God did by sending his own Son c. and made nothing perfect but the bringing in of a better hope Heb. 7.19 This it seems the Doctor would teach the Apostle for Gal. 3.3 This I would learn of you Received you the Spirit by the Works of the Law or by the hearing of Faith was this hearing of Faith the voice of Nature or the preaching of the Gospel It was the knowledge of Christ crucified which the Apostle so valued that he accounted all other vaine and ineffectual to Salvation P. 63. c. 1. And as our Author says What Devotion is there without Love and what Love without some knowledge of the Object And doubtless the more excellent the Object is the more will our love be increased when we consider that he who first loved us was the Eternal Son of God and that he so loved us as to die for us that we might live to and with him this will heighten our love to him above all things for what are Moses and the Prophets or the Apostles were they crucified for us have they redeemed us from the wrath of God They indeed taught us the will of God and gave us Divine as well as Moral Precepts but Christ only can write them in our hearts he only can pardon our sins having obtained Remission at the expence of his own Blood We therefore joyn with the Doctor in recommending the Duties of Natural Religion and say these ought we to do but by no means to leave the Duties of Evangelical Faith undone or disbelieved for though that hath done vertuously in many respects yet this excelleth them all In Chap. 4. he strikes again at the Foundation of Faith under the name of Credulity which he calls a Vice and the danger in this is when we pay that to a * Doth not this insinuate that Châ—â—â—t is a Creature Creature which is due to God only and mentioneth a Question of Mr. Chillingworth's to the Romanists Why implicit Faith in our Lord might not as well avail for Justification as implicit Faith in the Church By implicit Faith in the Church the Romanists mean to believe as the Church believes yet I do not believe the Papists think this implicit Faith will justify them without good Works And if by implicit Faith in Christ he means only a general belief of his Doctrines without obedience to his Commands neither is this available for Justification so that it was no such difficult Question but it might be
as his Church and his Body then the Son is said to be subject not the Godhead of Christ but the whole Church of Christ which is the Head and Members which then make one Christ It is the Mediatorial Kingdom that shall be delivered up not his Everlasting Kingdom he shall reign in the one till he hath subdued all his Enemies but of the other there shall be no end P. 27. c. 1. The Doctor restrains his Singularity of being the only begotten Son of God to his being anointed before his coming into the World And p. 26. c. 2. he says That anointing was a Complement of the greatest Kindness and Honor that could be bestowed on a Guest and from that Office in Festivals was preferred to a Ceremony for enseating Kings Priests and Prophets and our Lord by it is character'd but indefinitely whether Prophet Priest or King or all I perswade myself that the Doctor learnt this from Crellius on Heb. 1.9 upon which he says Our Saviour received an immense measure of the Holy Ghost but not as the Scripture says without measure but some degrees more than what other Messengers of God received Chap. 7. is to shew That it is no more necessary that we should understand what the Person of Christ is than for a Traveller to understand the Features of the Sun c. Which he says concerning Constantine's calling this Enquiry a Silly Question hath been already considered to which he adds That our Saviour could not require a belief of the whole truth concerning the Dignity of his Person because the Gospel was preached to the Poor And must they says he be excluded from the means of Redemption because they are excluded from the means of understanding the Mysteries of his Incarnation Must they perish for want of such a belief as is morally impossible for them to acquire Ans But is it morally impossible to believe what the Blessed Jesus hath revealed of himself Indeed if the Traveller shut his eyes he may walk in the Dark though the Sun shine clearly on him And is the Traveller benefited only by the light of the Sun doth he owe nothing to the comfortable influence of it Or the Poor to whom the Gospel belongs are they only the Ignorant and Unbelievers Christ tells us That the poor to whom the kingdom of heaven belongs are the poor in spirit such are sensible that they are naturally blind and miserable and poor and naked not such as are rich and increased in Goods and have need of nothing as the Laodiceans Revel 4.17 This is the Doctor 's Pelagian sence which hath led him into other gross Errors The Poor in the Gospel are such as can submit their understanding to the Revelations of God and though with the Blessed Virgin they doubt a while how these things can be true yet they believe them to be true on the Revelation and this is that Humility and Lowliness for which she is commended and this is the Power of the Gospel which is mighty through God to cast down the strongholds and imaginations of every one that exalts himself against the knowledge of God and brings into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ 2 Cor. 10.4 5 6. Is it not necessary we should know him in whom we believe Then is not the knowledge of God necessary Is it not necessary to know him on the knowledge of whom our Hope and Belief of Eternal Life is founded Then it is not necessary to know whether CHRIST or Mahomet were an Impostor and if Mahomet have delivered as good Natural or Moral Precepts as our Saviour hath done we may make him the Object of our Faith and expect Eternal Life by Mahomet as well as by Christ Therefore doubtless it is necessary to believe of Christ as St. Peter and St. Thomas did That he is the Son of the living God our Lord and our God which Flesh and Blood hath not revealed to us and on which Faith Christ hath promised to build his Church They who saw his Miracles and heard his Doctrine confessed that God was with him but in the Confessions of St. Peter and St. Thomas there was something extraordinary which they believed of the Person of Christ P. 32. c. 1. Two Evangelists says the Doctor trace our Lord's Genealogy but as they derive it not from his real but supposed Father so they take two several ways not to satsfie but amuse us The design of St. Matthew was to shew that Christ descended from Abraham and David by Joseph's being of that Tribe viz. of Juda being the natural Son of Jacob to which it is objected That though Joseph more of that Tribe yet Christ could not be so by descent from Joseph who was not his natural Father and by the Virgin Mary he could not be of the seed of David she being of the Tribe of Levi and not of Juda. Vossius recites the Opinion of some Ancients who thought it was enough to entitle Mary to the Tribe of Juda because she married into that Tribe therefore he proves Mary to be of the same Tribe with Joseph because Numb 36.6 It was not lawful for a Virgin to marry out of her own Tribe Nor would Joseph being a just Man have taken one of another Tribe and this practise of marrying in the same Tribe was especially observed where the Virgin was an Heiress that the Inheritance might be kept not only in the Tribe but the Family and therefore they usually married the next of kin the Virgin therefore having no Brother was married to Joseph who was of near consanguinity with her See Vossius's Genealogy And he proves the same Descent of the Blessed Virgin from St. Luke's Genealogy viz. from David to which I refer the Reader But if it he questioned why if Joseph and Mary had been both descended from David why St. Matthew had not named Mary rather than Joseph who was only a supposed Father To this he answers 1. Because the Husband was not to be bard of his Honour 2. It was not the Custom of the Jews to derive the Genealogy from the Woman and the Kinred of Joseph and Mary being well known there was no necessity of mentioning it among the Jews which dwelt in Palestine to whom the Evangelist wrote And they were very curious in preserving their Genealogies and it would much have prejudiced St. Matthew's Gospel if undertaking to prove the Descent of Christ from David he should have failed in that chief design and in the beginning of the Book and doubtless the Jews who were living at that time when he wrote which was about forty Years after our Lord's Nativity had their Genealogy preserved and probably some of our Lord's Kinred then living and they having seen his Miracles by which they were induced to believe him to be the Son of God knew also that he descended of David according to the Flesh as the Gospel teacheth and there was no Objection made to the contrary by Jews
deny And though this Position were rash enough yet what he adds is much worse viz. That the Athanasian may be numbered among the Roman Doctrines and to be leveled with the Arian equally unworthy of not only our Faith but our Study Now the Athanasian Doctrine is not only agreeable to the Nicene but they are both retained in the Doctrine of the Church of England and how can he affirm himself a Son of the Church of England who bids such an open Defiance to the Doctrine of that Church The Nicene Council grounded their Decrees on the Scripture as they had been understood by the Primitive and Apostolical Fathers before there was either Imperial or Papal Power in the Christian Church and it is very strange if this be not a more firm Foundation than his corrupt Reason when it is contrary both to Scripture Antiquity and Councils and the sence of the Catholick Church in all Ages as much as to the Faith of the Church of England In this Chapter the Doctor tells us of the Council of Ariminum which was many Years after that of Nice and was the greatest for number that ever was but one of the worst for the major part were Arians the Doctor confessing p. 38. col 2. That the Arians had all the Eastern Churches except that of Hierusalem that in this Council the Latine Church were circumvented by the Greeks who when it was proposed by the Greeks Whether they would worship Christ or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they cried they believed not in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but in Christ Before I answer this Objection I shall add another which the Doctor urgeth p. 14. c. 1. speaking of the Consubstantiality he says It was a Mystery to those very Councils which determined it and as it appears says he by those contrary Determinations of several Councils and by the wavering of the same Council for that of Sermium framed two or three one whereof they would have reneg'd and laboured to recal its Copies Answ This Variety of Councils was occasioned partly by the influence of Arian Emperors under whom at that time St. Hierome observed the whole World became Arians but more especially by subtilty of those Greeks of whom he speaks who pleaded the Cause of the Arians in that Council of Ariminum against the Latine Church for those sort of Greeks were possest of the Eastern Churches as our Doctor observes But the Latine Church adhered to the Athanasian and Nicene Creeds and as Ignorant as the Doctor accounts them they discovered and baffled the Sophistry of his subtile Greeks even in that Declaration of theirs That they believed not in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but in Christ i. e. not in such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as some of those subtile Greeks would have imposed on them contrary to the Opinion they had of Christ Now this piece of Sophistry will thus appear Athanasius speaking of some Hereticks who used the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says That Paulus Samos used it in a sence that might confirm his Error and destroy the true Notion of the Word The Council of Nice agreed the meaning of it to be That the Son had a proper Personality which made him the second Person in the Trinity but was of the Substance with the Father And Socrates l. 1. c. 8. says They held the Son to be of the Father but not as a part of his Substance which was the Error of Paulus Samos Sabellius c. declaring the Divine Essence to be undivided contrary to the Opinion of those Hereticks that held the Divine Substance to be divided between the Father and the Son And in this sence they used the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Council of Nice accounted Heretical this was known to the Latine Church and when they proposed that word in a sence opposite to the Nicene Faith they did as they had just cause reject it and answered that subtile Question with a plain renouncing of the Error of those Hereticks that thought to impose their sence on them We will not worship 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but Christ In this sence it was that the Fathers in that Council renounced the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eustathius had this distinction from Marcellus his Master whom St. Hilary and St. Basil call an Heretick See Socrates l. 1. c. 23. and Sozomon l. 2. c. 11. I shall here once for all give my Reader a short Account of the Controversy between St. Athanasius and Arius Alexander Bishop of Alexandria having heard of the Blasphemy of Arius a Priest under his Jurisdiction called a Synod of his Province to enquire into his Opinions and censure him Arius appeared and maintained That there was a time when Christ was not that he was Deus Factus made a God and so a Creature For these and other Heretical Opinions he was Excommunicated together with some others whom he had drawn to his Opinion and by their means the People were also divided denying to hold Communion with each other The Emperor being informed how far the Dissention spread and what Tumults had been already occasioned by the Controversy between the Catholicks and Arians though not fully informed of the truth of the Question made it his business to apply a seasonable Remedy to so great an Evil and first he sent Letters by Hosius Bishop of Corduba both to Alexander and Arius enjoyning them to Peace and Brotherly Communion I find saith the Emperor that the rise of the Controversy between you is this That when you Alexander required of your Presbyters what they thought of a certain place in the Law or rather of a needless Question and you Arius did imprudently reply what you neither ought to think nor being thought you ought to have supprest by silence the Discord between you caused a breach in your Communion whereby the People also were divided from the Unity of the Church wherefore I Exhort that each of you pardoning each other do embrace what I your Fellow-Servant most justly require for it was neither fit to move such a Question at first nor being moved to return such an Answer to it for such Questions which no necessity of the Law doth prescribe ought to be kept in our own Breasts and not to be unadvisedly committed to the Ears of the Vulgar lest we for the infirmity of our Nature not being able to explain what is proposed and the People through their dulness being not able to apprehend it they necessarily fall into Blasphemy or Schism for the Contention is not about any great Command of the Law nor is there any new Opinion started concerning the Worship of God but you both retain one and the same Opinion so it seems the Emperour was informed and therefore may well live in the same Communion as the various Sect of Philosophers do Let us duly consider how unequal it is that by your Contention about light and vain words the People that lived as Brethren should
be divided as Enemies by your strife about small and unnecessary things These Actions are more agreeable to the Ignorance of Boys than to the Wisdom of Priests and wise Men but seeing you have the same Faith and the same Opinion of our Religion and our Law requires concord of Minds and the Controversie between you doth not concern the Substance of Religion there ought not to be any discord between you This he said before he had been duly informed of the State of the Controversie what his thoughts were afterward you shall hear anon But as Socrat. l. 1. c. 8. says neither the Emperours Letters nor the Endeavours of Hosius could compose the Dissention the Emperour therefore resolved to summon a General Council at Nice in Bithinia to which all the Bishops of Europe Africa and Asia were called and there met above 300 Bishops besides Presbyters Deacons c. many of whom were eminent for Wisdom in Speaking Holiness of Life Patience in Suffering Modesty and Meekness of Manners these being assembled the Emperour appears the Bishops having done their Reverence he sate not down himself until he had beckned to them to sit down and he spake first exhorting them to Peace and Unity and whereas they had accused one another in several Libels the day before he injoyn'd them to burn those Libels and to forgive each other as they expected Christ should forgive them Then he gave them leave to propose the Differences that concern'd Religion of which Eusebius in the Third Book of the Life of Constantine gives this Account That many things being proposed by both Parties the Emperour attended with great patience and intention of mind weighing what was offered by both Parties moderating and allaying their heats and by his own arguments convincing some and perswading others they were at last brought to an agreement which was committed to Writing Some particulars whereof saith Socrates l. 1. c. 8. I will repeat least any should condemn the Proceedings of that Council or as Sabinus did account them ignorant and simple Men as particularly he did Eusebius who subscribed not until he had strictly examined the Controversie however he commends the Emperour as being very skilful in the Matters of Faith Socrates also commends Eusebius Pamphyli as a faithful Witness of what was done in that Council The Faith then agreed on was drawn into the Form which is now in our Liturgy to which they added an Anathema against such as should affirm That there was a time when the Son of God was not and that was made of things that were not or that he had some other Substance or Essence created or subject to change To this 318 Bishops subscribed five only refused because of the word Consubstantial whereof Eusebius and Theognis afterward recanted and were reconciled the rest kept in Banishment with Arius This Eusebius having after long deliberation assented to the Nicene Creed sends a Copy of it to his People of Caesarca with a particular Account how it was examined and tells his People That it was the same which he had received from the Bishops his Predecessors when he was first instructed by them and which they professed at their Baptism and which he would defend with his Life he tells them the Emperour confirm'd it first with the addition of the word Consubstantial to which they all agreed And to remove the prejudices which his People might have conceiv'd against him for standing out so long till he was sentenced to Banishment and then conforming he tells them with how great Judgment he considered both the Reasons of his Dissent and of his Consent suspending his Assent from the first to the last however as long as he met with any thing that offended him but when after due examination he found the sence of the words controverted to agree with that Faith which he at first received he embraced them And what those were he gives a particular Account viz. 1. These words were examined Of the Substance of the Father concerning which there arose divers Questions and Answers and after Examination it was agreed That the words of the Substance signified That the Son was of the Father but not as a part of the Father to this I consented as also to the word Consubstantial for the sake of Peace and that I might not fall from the right understanding of it in like manner to the words Begotten not made because it was urged that the word made was common to the Creatures which were made by the Son to which he had no likeness being of a more excellent Substance which the Scripture teach was of the Father by a secret manner of Generation not to be expressed and this Consubstantiality was not to be in a corporeal manner as in mortal Creatures for it was not by division of Substance nor Abscission nor change of the Father's Substance and Power because this was different from all those but it signifies that the Son had no likeness with the Creatures that were made by him but was in all things like to the Father by whom he was begotten and of no other Substance and to this we consented knowing that many ancient famous Bishops and learned Writers speaking of the Divinity of the Father and the Son used the same word The Emperour also expressed the same sence of the word Consubstantial which he said Was not to be understood as if the Son were of the Father by Division or any Section as in corporeal Substances because an intellectual and immaterial Nature admits not of the Affections of Bodies And that you may know something of the History of Arius I shall give you this brief Account Arius was a Priest of Alexandria in Egypt a Man infinitely desirous of Glory and Novelty as Ruffinus who knew him reports one that corrupted many Virgins who had professed Virginity he and some others of that Church whereof Alexander was Bishop a Learned and Orthodox Divine who suspecting that the Ancient Heresie which denied the Godhead of our Saviour was crept into this Church as the Event shews it was summoned his Clergy and discoursing to them concerning the Mystery of the Trinity told them of the Unity in the Trinity Arius one of the Presbyters skilful in Logick supposing the Bishop affected to the Doctrine of Sabellius thus objects to his Bishop If the Father begot the Son then he that was begotten had a beginning of his Existence and so there was a time when the Son was not and if so he had his Existence out of nothing Socrat. l. 1. c. 5. From these unheard of Assertions he provoked many to consider that Question and from this Spark a great Fire was kindled which spread through all Egypt Lybia and the Upper Thebais and many other Provinces for many others favoured Arius especially Eusebius of Nicomedia which much displeased Alexander so that by a Council of Bishops he removed Arius and some others and writes to the neighbouring Bishops to this purpose That
recalled him to Constantinople to question him for those Tumults which he had raised there but the same mischief followed him for at Constantinople he found his Friend Eusebius of Nicomedia and Alexander his Adversary whom Eusebius threatned that he should shortly be deprived of his Priesthood if he admitted not Arius into Communion at which Alexander being greatly troubled prays and fasts shutting up himself in the Church called Irene and coming to the Altar prostrates himself on the Ground under the holy Table for many days and nights asking of God and he received what he asked That if the Opinion of Arius were right he might not live to the Day appointed for the Dispute but if the Faith which he professed were true that Arius might suffer the punishment due to his impiety The Emperour in the mean time sent for Arius and willing to be better assured of the Faith which he professed asked him Whether he would consent to the Decrees of the Council of Nice he presently answered He would and did subscribe them in the Emperour's presence at which the Emperour wondered and suspecting some fraud urged him to swear to them and this he did also Now the fraud which he used as I have been informed saith Socrates c. 38. was this Arius had written his own Opinions in a Paper which he had hid in his Bosome and swore that he did in his Mind believe as he had written Then the Emperour commanded Alexander who was then Bishop of Constantinople to receive him into Communion the day following Arius being about to go into the Church with his Companions the Judgment of God seized on him for going out of the Emperour's Palace he walked through the City magnificently guarded by a company of Eusebians drawing all eyes upon him when he came to a place where stood a Porphery Statue a great terrour through the consciousness of his wickedness seiz'd on him and with it a great Looseness in his Bowels and enquiring where he might step aside to ease himself he was directed to a place near at hand where being come his Heart grew faint and he voided his Bowels with his Excrements with much Blood and his Liver and Spleen followed the place is yet to be seen which all that pass by do point at relating the manner of Arius's death These Accidents did greatly confirm the Emperour in the Faith which was decreed in the Nicene Council St. Ambrose compares his Death with that of Judas That is not a fortuitous Death saith he where an Example of the like punishment on the like sin was inflicted before that both should suffer the same punishment who had denied and betrayed the same Lord for Sozom. says as it is said of Judas that he burst asunder I shall only remark here how much mischief one Arian Presbyter by his false insinuations with Men in Authority may occasion in a well-established Church which notwithstanding all his arts and industry by God's good Providence tended at last to the confirmation of the Truth In p. 38. col 1. he tells us of the Settlement of the Controversie by Theodosius though he could not be ignorant that Constantine had done it many years before but he conceals the manner of doing it viz. How that he being sick at Thessalonica was baptized by Ascolius Bishop of that place a Person of great eminency both for his Words and Works and adorned with all the Gifts of the Priestly Office being recovered he resolved to propagate that Faith into which he was baptized and which his Ancestors had profest viz. that of the Nicene Creed and he greatly delighted in Ascolius as being of the same belief as he did also in the Illirians because none of them were infected with the pest of Arian Doctrines and asking concerning the other Provinces he was informed that all the Churches as far as Macedonia did all agree in the same Faith and did worship God the Word and the Holy Ghost equally with the Father and being told of the other Provinces towards the East that they were tumultuous and divided into several Sects especially at Constantinople and then thinking it better to declare unto his Subjects his Opinion of the Deity he sent his Rescript from Thessalonica to the People of Constantinople that from thence as from the Fort of the Empire his Rescript might be speedily issued to other Cities Now all this being in the same Chapter which the Doctor quotes I wonder at the Doctor 's Exclamations Behold now the ground on which one of our Fundamental Articles of Faith is built Behold the Justice of that Plea which from such a possession would prescribe to our belief We have traced it says the Doctor from the Spring with no worse intent than to appeal from the Great Theodosius who put it above dispute to the Greater Constantine who put it below dispute Now seeing he appealed to Constantine we have his Decision which I find the Doctor as faulty as he judged Arius to be In the mean time I suppose from his own Quotation that the claim of possession of this great Article of our Faith is not either from the Great Theodosius nor from the Greater Constantine nor the Council of Nice but from the Scripture of him that is God over all blessed for ever and even Socinus himself agrees with us in this and differs from the Doctor in his Third Epistle to Radecius affirming That even from the first beginning of the Church there were so many Men most famous as well for their Learning as their Piety so many holy Martyrs of Christ which cannot be numbred who followed this otherwise most grievous Errour That Christ is that One God that created all things and that he was begotten of his proper Substance And may not the Church of England admire how one of her true Sons is so much more a Socinian than Socinus himself as to deny all this that her Son should suppress the Testimony which he knew to be true to serve an Errour which he knows to be false and damnable Did the Settlement of Christ's Deity begin with the Reign of Theodosius and because he found some Hereticks that denied it was he the first that founded it Shall we call the Doctor the Author of Socinianism because he first published it in Exeter-Colledge We can shew the Succession of those Apostles and Apostolick Men that have derived the Consubstantiality home to our days in all the Churches Greek and Latine I suppose the Doctor will not glory in the Pedigree of his Heresie for so it hath been accounted ever since St. John's Gospel was written or what temptation could a Man of his Education have to number the Athanasian Doctrine which he hath so long profest if he be not an arrant Hypocrite among the Roman Theodosius indeed recommended it to his Subjects by a good Argument viz. That it was the Faith which St. Peter delivered at the beginning of the Plantation of the Gospel to the Church
of Rome Was St. Peter Popish or was his Confession viz. Thou art Christ the Son of the Living God a Popish Confession Were his Successors for Three hundred Years who were Confessors and Martyrs for the same Faith Papal I am heartily sorry and ashamed to hear how to recommend the Socinian Doctrine he proclaims the Arian as well as the Athanasian Doctrine equally unworthy not only of our Faith but our Study Is not this the Quintessence of Socinianism See p 39. c. 1. A very bold assertion is that which followeth That at the rise of the Controversie most of the Bishops understood not its meaning and that the best Ages of the Church thought it not worth the knowing If by the first rise of this Doctrine he means the Council of Nice as it is evident he doth how they understood and valued it is beyond Controversie and how far it was tolerated by Bishop Alexander whom he calls the first Author of the Nicety tolerated Arius and his Confederates by excommunicating and persecuting him until God by an extraordinary Judgment took him from troubling that Church which he had redeemed by his own Blood is known in the Ecclesiastical History of those times if his Scholars can presume of God's Pardon or of Communion with his Church from that instance it is a strong presumption indeed the best means is to do what he derides that is to herd with the Primitive Christians and Martyrs as he expresseth it which departed the World before this unhappy Question was proposed those I mean who died in the belief of their Saviour's Deity and I hope it is of them he says and not of Cerinthus Ebion the Sabellians and Samosatenians that they are saved without dispute Athanasius challenged the Arians to produce one Father of any repute in the Church of God that was of the same Judgment with them which they always studiously declined as Socrates shews by the instance of Sisinnius l. 5. c. 10. And how the World came to be so much Arian as St. Hierom reports is evident from St. Hilary viz. Because their Teachers concealed their own Opinions and used such words in their Homelies to the People as the Catholicks did whereby not only the People but Bishops and Emperours were deceived by them they told them Christ was God the true God and God by Nature perfect God before all Ages And hence as St. Hilary notes the People remained Catholicks under Arian Bishops but as he observes Contra Arium Auxentium p. 215. They had their reserves They give Christ the Name of God says he but as they give the same to Men they confess him to be the Son of God but as others in the Sacrament of Baptism are made the Sons of God They say he was before all Ages and so they say were the Angels and Devils but that Christ is the true God that is that the Deity of the Father and the Son is the same this they deny and hence it is says he that under the Priests of Antichrist the People of Christ are not corrupted while they believe that to be the Faith which they hear in their Teachers words They hear that Christ is God they believe what they hear they hear that he is the Son of God they believe it to be true they hear in Dei nativitate inesse Dei veritatem they hear that he was before all Ages they think he was Eternal Sanctiores sunt aures Plebis quam corda Sacerdotum There is more Sanctity in the Ears of the People than in the Hearts of the Priests Thus was Constantius deceived the Arian Priest whom on the commendation of his dying Sister he took into favour perswaded him that Arius did believe all the Decrees of the Nicene Council and as an ancient Writer says Hereticos admisit Constantius Heresin non Amplexus If Constantius favoured the Arians it was not from any favour he had to their Heresie and it is observed by Theodoret l. 3. c. 8. that though he disliked the word Consubstantial yet he owned the sence of it That the Word was God that Christ was the true and natural Son of God begotten of the Father before all Ages and condemn'd them that call'd him a Creature And Greg. Nazianzen had the same Opinion of him for he term'd him The most Divine Emperour and greatest Lover of Christ and he was never accounted a Flatterer The Councils also under him profest all the Articles of the Nicene Creed the word Consubstantial only omitted Elias Cretensis gives this reason for the Laws which he made on the behalf of the Arians That being deceived by wicked Men he made Laws for their Toleration against them that were pious But this trick was learn'd them by one George Bishop of Laodicea who argued thus Seeing that God made all things and all things were made of what was not therefore the Son was made of things that were not yet was he the Son of God as made by him Eusebius Bishop of Nicomedia and Theognis who after great obstinacy subscribed to the Nicene Decrees but would not consent to the Condemnation of Arius gave this reason for it because partly in the Letters which he wrote to them and in the Conference they had with him they could not judge him guilty of the Opinions charged on him See Constantine's Letter in Socrates l. 1. c. 38. He used that Maxime of Matchiavel He that knows not how to dissemble knows not how to live and therefore he complied with the Opinions of all of other Hereticks but never could with the Orthodox for which reason he was compared to the Camelion of which Creature it is said it could conform itself to all Colours except the White P. 39. col 2. The Doctor seems to accuse our Saviour of a Rhetorical Hyperbole in appropriating to himself such great Titles It is very frequent for Rhetorick saith he to exceed but never to diminish the Grammatical Character of a Person whose Honour the Writer professeth to advance and on this account they i. e. the Socinians think it more reasonable that those expressions which exalt our Saviour's Person to an equality with the Father should stoop to those which speak him inferiour than that those which speak him inferiour should be strained up to those which speak him equal as if ourself had exalted himself above his degree who so humbled himself as to become obedient to death even the death of the Cross But this is an Argument for which he is beholding to Sandius the Arian who p. 139. of his Appendix speaking of the Omniscience of our Saviour pleads That such expressions are taken from the Flowers of Rhetorick by which the things treated of are sometimes exalted and sometimes depressed and in the present Subject saith he is often given in the Praises due to Christ against the Jews and Gentiles thereby to aggrandize not to depreciate him Wherefore the Doctor commends the Arians for a truer Method who when one expression
was apparently designed by the Compilers for some special use to fence the Catholick Faith from the Corruptions Depravations Doubtings and Contradictions of Hereticks as in the Nicene Creed the Oneness of our Lord Jesus Christ was added when the Arians opposed the Apostolick Tradition and by corrupting detected the words of Scripture to their sence which Dr. H. shews more largely in his Note on 1 Joh. 5.7 and of such Additions he says That when the Church hath thought meet to erect an additional Bulwark against Hereticks such as reject them may be deemed to side with those Hereticks p. 86. And this is the summ of what he says concerning the Athanasian Creed the Doctrine whereof he says is well nigh all to assert the Unity of the Divine Nature and Trinity of Persons against those Hereticks who had brought Novel Propositions into the Church of which Doctrinal part he says that Athanasius being only a Father of the Church they were not necessary to be explicitely acknowledged nor absolutely imposed on any but such as were Members of some Church that had actually received Athanasius's Explication or than it appeared concordant with the more authentick universal Confessions as every Doctrinal Proposition of it will be found to do As for the Damnatory Sentences Dr. Ham. supposeth them to be interpreted in opposition to those Heresies that had invaded the Church not that it defined it to be a damnable sin to fail in understanding or believing the full matter of any of those Explications Dr. Ham. having as a wise Master Builder laid this Foundation shews how necessary it is for the end of building on it a holy Life and an uniform universal Obedience to the Commands of Christ in opposition to Idolatry Formality Hypocrisie and to Sacriledge Profaneness and Impiety as also to improve the Vertues of Obedience to Superiours Charity to all Mankind Purity of Flesh and Spirit Contentedness and taking up the Cross and lastly how useful it is to confute false Doctrines 1. Of the Romanists as Penances Indulgences of Supererrogating Merits of Attrition improved into Contrition by the Priest's aid without change of Life Dispensableness of Oaths Arts of Equivocation Purgatory Cessation of Allegiance and especially of Infallibility 2ly Of the Solifidians and Fiduciaries the Predestinarians and irrespective Decrees of Election and Reprobation of the Divine Prescience against the Socinians who deny that God foresees all things and though they grant his Omnipresence and Omnipotence yet question the infinity of his Science which is apparently false as appears by God's Predictions to the Prophets When I considered the Writings of both these Doctors their Foundations and Superstructures it brought to my mind those two sorts of Builders and Building mentioned by our Saviour Mat. 7. the one built on that approved Rock of St. Peter 's Confession the other on that Sand whereon Arius Socinus and that Man of an ominous Name Sandius pitcht their Tabernacles the one stands firm tho' for 1600 Years the Rain descended Flouds came and the Wind blew on it the other tho' like the Walls of Jerusalem it hath been often attempted to be fastned hath still been blown down and may the Fall of it be still great P. 41. c. 2. Our Doctor says If the Relation between the written Word and rational Consequence be so remote as none but a skilful Herald can derive its Pedigree then is a good Christian no more obliged to believe such an Inference than is every good Subject to be a good Herald As if the Ignorant were no ways obliged to follow the Directions of the wise and good Men or as if Subjects were not bound to obey those Laws whereof they cannot ken those Reasons which the wise and consulting Legislators on good Reasons have established for their Security What tho' the Papists do most absurdly infer from Christ's Command to St. Peter to feed his Lambs that all those Popes which pretend to be his Successors are thereby commissioned to Rule and Govern all Nations and Persons in all Ages Cannot so enquiring a Person as the Doctor or one that is more or one that is less rational from such Scriptural premises as God was made Flesh Christ is God over all equal and one with his Father with undeniable Reason infer as the Catholick Church in all Ages hath done That he is the Eternal Son of God But such an Inference is so contrary to the Socinian's Reason that it is equally rejected with contempt and derision as Popish Impositions and by the Doctor numbred among them But Bernardus non videt omnia He undertakes therefore to bless the World with such a description of them that it shall be as easie to know them without pains or art as it was for the meanest Beggar in the street to understand whom King Ahasuerus would Honour when he caused Mordecai in Royal Manner to be publickly honoured and by Proclamation enjoyned the People to bow the Knee as he past by them The Qualifications for Matter of Faith he says must be these 1. It must be easie to be understood by the meanest capacity and therefore he rejects any thing that is called a Mystery though God manifested in the Flesh be so called by the Apostle yea though the same Mystery be implied in that very Scripture which he quotes to prove his assertion viz. Rom. 10.9 If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus i. e. that Jesus is the Lord which no man can say but by the Holy Ghost i. e. not by a natural Faith but by a supernatural Revelation such as our Saviour says Flesh and blood hath not revealed And it is observable that though in the Title of this Chapter he mentioneth the Word as well as the Matter to be believed yet he makes no mention of the Word by which the Person of our Saviour is generally understood so that Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ the Foundation of our Faith is excluded from being the Object of our belief for he writes the WORD in a larger Character which might induce the Reader to believe that he meant as St. John 1.1 The Son of God which is the adequate Object of Christian Faith but speaks nothing of him in all that Chapter 2ly He says It must be an express Word of God This no Protestant denieth but they do generally urge it against the Papists who teach as necessary Articles of Faith the Commandments of Men And may we not conclude by this Position that they who oppugne such a Fundamental to which Eternal Life is promised may come short of Salvation Christ saith He that believes and is baptized this is but one entire proposition as our Author observes that it is not only he that believes but he that believes and is baptized and Salvation cannot belong to them that put asunder what Christ hath joyned as the Socinians do in the Case of Baptism which they call only a Rite and Ceremony 3ly He says It must be expresly honoured with
Conclusion he deserves to be shaken into the Fire again for the impotent Creature doth not only hiss at the mistaken Author of Nolumus leges Angliae mutari but on the whole Convocation for their stiffness to their Constitutions whose very Authors says he in the Conclusion were they now living and true to their own reason must be willing to abolish them This is the Doctor 's enlarged Charity to the deceased Compilers of our Liturgy that they would have done as he desireth i. e. removing the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds the Litany Doxology and I know not what Constitutions besides the Institutions of our Saviour to wit the two Sacraments Baptism and the Eucharist the ends whereof this Doctor with the Socinians doth utterly destroy and retains them only as Rites and Badges of an outward Profession of a Naked Gospel But let us enquire wherein this enlarged Charity of the Doctor 's doth consist Charity is either the love of God or of our Neighbours Now first our love to God ought to bear proportion with the love he hath bestowed on us of which the Apostle Joh. 3.16 saith God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life And Ver. 17. That the world by him might be saved The World then without Christ was in a lost and perishing condition God had for Sin shut them up under a sentence of Condemnation and it was his infinite Goodness and Wisdom to contrive the Means of our Salvation such as might reconcile us to himself to which end he thought this the fittest to send his only begotten Son into the World to dye for our sins the just for the unjust making him to be sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him of this love the Apostle with admiration says Behold what manner of love the Father hath shewn to us c. If God had only sent a Prophet a Man of God to make a fuller Declaration of his Will this had not been a reason of so great Admiration but when he sent his only begotten Son that was one with the Father and laid help on him that was mighty able to save us to the utmost being God and Man this deserves the Sic So and the Ecce Behold and our admiration What manner of Love had he been the Son of God only by a miraculous Conception which freed him from Original Corruption had he only lived a Holy Life and left us a good Example had he only died to confirm the truth of his Doctrine as the Socinians say the Birth of St. John Baptist his austere Life and Death might come near to all this The Gift therefore here spoken of must be such as became the Infinite Goodness of God such as might reconcile his Love to us with his Love to his Justice such as might be sufficient to satisfie for the Sins of all that should believe in his Son and obey the Commands of God by him Which now is the greater Obligation of our Love to God to believe as I have said the Socinians do or as the Catholicks That God sent his only Begotten i. e. his Eternal Son the Wonderful the Mighty GOD to satisfie for our Sins to instruct us in all things that concern the Glory of God and our own Salvation to hear our Prayers and relieve all our Necessities to sanctifie our Souls and make us Partakers of the Divine Nature by the operation of the Spirit of Grace This is Love and this the Gift that God bestowed on us through his Infinite Love and in some proportion we ought so to love God as he first loved us And to think of and esteem of this Gift less than what the Scripture hath valued it at is not rightly to apprehend his Love or our infinite Obligations to make suitable Returns 2. As to our Love to Christ if he were only a Man that taught us the Will of God so did the Apostles if he died only to confirm his Doctrine and give us an Example of Constancy and Patience so have many Martyrs done But Rom. 5.7 8. God commended his love to us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us and had he only died for us and not been able to rise again and to take up his life as well as to lay it down had he not destroyed all the Enemies of our Salvation and ascended to Heaven having all Power committed to him we might argue as the Apostle doth If Christ be not risen and if he be not the Eternal Son of God to make Intercession for us and to send the Holy Ghost to sanctifie us then is our Preaching vain and our Faith is vain and we are yet in our Sins but now we may sing ouâ— Epinicion over all our Enemies The stâ—ng of Death is sin and the strength of Sin is the Law but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ 1 Cor. 15.56 57. Then for his Love to the Holy Spirit of God it is too well known that the Socinians deny his Deity and say That the Holy Spirit is nothing separate from the Word so that we need not to Baptize in his Name to praise him in our Doxology or to pray to him Come Holy Ghost Eternal God c. Our natural Reason and Faith in God makes the assistance of any other Spirit needless and why then should we wait on the Spirit of God any longer or believe that God will give any other Spirit to them that ask it Is there no other Spirit but that which works in the Children of Disobedience Are not some Souls an Habitation of God through the Spirit Read we not of the Spirit of the Son Gal. 4.6 that helps our Infirmities Do we not read of the divers Gifts of the Spirit and that it is Christ's Vice-Roy as I may say to preside over his Church to the World's end And is there no Love no Obedience due to his Spirit but we must joyn with the Socinians to pluck the Holy Ghost from his Throne 2. As for his enlarged Charity to his Brethren what love doth he manifest to the Church of God that hath been founded on this Rock of the Confession of St. Peter Thou art Christ the Son of the living God when by his Principles they are proclaimed to be Idolaters as worshipping a Creature besides the Creator and giving him and the Holy Spirit which by his Maxims are not God by nature the same Divine Honour which is due to God only And as to the Church of England particularly it hath been declared how contrary his Opinions are to her avowed Doctrines more especially his Charity to the Convocation of the Clergy at Westminster whom he condemns to be too stiff to their Constitutions when he says All the World expected a Condescention from them is not very large It was no very good Opinion that he
call me Ishi my Husband for v. 19. I will betroth thee to me for ever c. 1 Kings 8.39 and 2 Cron. 6.30 compared with Revel 2.23 The words are Thou only knowest the hearts of the sons of men All the Churches shall know that I am he that searcheth the Hearts and Reins to give to every Man according to his works The Argument is this The God of Israel only knows the hearts of Men Christ knows the hearts of Men therefore Christ is the God of Israel Both these Propositions are express Scriptures therefore the Consequence is undeniable Isa 63.1 compared with Revel 19.13 c. The words are Who is this that cometh from Edom with dyed garments I that spake in righteousness mighty to save St. John speaking of Christ says He was clothed with a vesture dipt in bloud and his name is called the Word of God Now the Prophet speaks of the God of Israel and St. John applys it to Christ as by the Context in both doth appear therefore Christ is the God of Israel These among many others may suffice concerning the Harmony of both Testaments to which I may add those express Testimonies concerning the whole Trinity in the New Testament The first that I shall mention is such of which I may say as the Doctor doth of his Fundamentals p. 43. c. 1. That if all the rest of the Scripture were lost this alone would be sufficient to confute the Socinians viz. Mat. 28.19 Go ye and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost where we have three distinct Persons of equal Dignity and Power to whom under the same Name we dedicate ourselves and promise Worship and Obedience The Socinians are not ashamed to say That this place is added by Athanasius or some of his Perswasion though not only the practice of the Apostles and the Primitive Fathers may evince the contrary but it is read in all the Greek Copies the Syriack and Aethiopick and Ignatius Tertullian and other Fathers have quoted and expounded this Text and the Socinians retain it in their German Edition of that Gospel An. 1630. 2ly They object That to be baptized in the Name of any doth not conclude him to be God seeing the Israelites were baptized into Moses and some Disciples into the Baptism of John Acts 19.3 Ans To be baptized into Moses was to be baptized by the Ministry or Hand of Moses as the Syriack Version reads and hence St. Paul says That none of the Corinthians were baptized in his name 1 Cor. 1.14 15. lest any should infer that he expected Obedience from them And it is one thing to be baptized in the Name of John and another to be baptized by the Administration of St. John's Baptism the import of Baptism is to believe as we have been baptized and to Worship as we believe i. e. The Father Son and Holy Ghost There are many other Scriptures that confirm the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Judgment of our Divines as Joh. 15.26 When the Comforter is come whom I will send from the Father where we have the Father from whom the Son by whom and the Person of the Holy Ghost that is sent So also 2 Cor. 13.13 in that Benediction The Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Ghost we have a plain distinction of three Persons the Authors of the same Grace So also 1 Cor. 12.5 6. And there are diversities of gifts but the same spirit and diversities of administrations but the same Lord and there are diversities of operations but the same God where we have three Persons and but one God It is evident from these and many other Scriptures that by Concession of the Arians our Saviour had the Divine Attributes of Omnipotence and Omniscience communicated to him and if these were imparted to him by his Father it is not against reason that that other Attribute of Eternity might be also for to be Omnipotent and Omniscient implies an Infinity as the properties of the Eternal God nor can our Saviour be thought less than Infinite when we believe that he hears the Prayers searcheth the Hearts and knows the Thoughts of all Men and shall come to be the Judge of all without which Attributes he could not judge rightly The Creation and Conservation of all things do prove the same for he that made all things is God And so doth his being the only Law-giver and the only Judge and to qualifie him for these Offices he must be God to bind our Consciences to his Laws and to judge righteous Judgment And shall not the Judge of all the Earth judge righteously which none can do but the Omniscient and Omnipotent God Estius one of the best School-men asserts That no Creature can be so highly elevated by a supernatural power as to co-operate by way of a Physical Instrument in the Creation because it is a property that belongs to such an Instrument to have something of its own whereby to week dispositive for the effecting of the Creation Whence he says no Creature can be assumed to the power of Creation as a Physical Instrument the nature of that Instrument still remaining And nothing can be the cause of Creation which hath not an infinite Power because by how much the Form to be produced is removed from the Power of Production by so much a greater power is required in the Agent so that for the production of something out of nothing there is required an infinite Power because the distance between something and nothing is infinite so that our Saviour being as the Scripture affirms the Creator of the World he is also God over all blessed for ever Hence Origen against Celsus proves That God neither did nor could make the World by any thing without himself as the Angels of which it was discoursed were and hence he concludes That Christ by whom the World was made was God See also Ireneus l. 2.55 and l. 4. c. 37. St. Peter in Epistle 2.2.1 speaking of false Prophets that privily should bring in damnable Heresies even denying the Lord that bought them says That they should bring upon themselves swift destruction And v. 3. Their judgment lingreth not and their damnation slumbreth not It may therefore be a good argument with many a person not yet infected with such Heresies to give a short Account of the manifest Judgments of God upon the chief Founders and Patrons of the Arian and Socinian Doctrines for for such Opinions of the Doctrines of the Gnosticks Cerinthus and Ebion c. which had infected the Asian Churches and for the wicked Lives of such as entertained those Heretical Doctrines it was that they had their Candle-stick removed and were left in Darkness and under the Dominion of Mahomet to this day Olimpius an ancient Arian Bishop publickly blasphemed our Saviour in a Bath and suddenly felt as it were three
the Jews only on whom they were imposed neither were they the Worship of God but an Introduction thereunto The true Worship of God which I call my Religion is the Decalogue which is the Eternal and Immutable Will of God which I call mine because it is given me by God not by a Voice from Heaven but ingrafted in my mind from the Creation and because this Ingraven Decalogue is much obscured by the Corruption of Humane Nature and wicked Customs I add a Vocal Decalogue to illustrate it which Vocal Decalogue doth therefore belong to me and to all Men because it agrees with the Ingraven Decalogue and is the same with it This is my Opinion concerning the Messias or the King promised and this is the Religion which I ingenuously profess to you Martyne Seidelius This is another Professor of Natural Religion Servetius was a Spaniard of Tarracon where he profest Physick and joyning the Study of Divinity he fell into the Error of the Antitrinitarians his Blasphemous Writings and Discourses whereby he laboured to seduce others caused him to leave his Country from whence he after he had wandred up and down came and setled at Geneva and there published his Blasphemous Heresies Beza says That he called the Trinity the Three Headed Cerberus Epist 1. And in the seven Books which he wrote concerning the Errors of the Trinity speaking of the Eternal Generation of the Son l. 1. he says That then the Father ought to have a Spiritual Wife or was an Harmophrodite both Father and Mother for the reason of the word permits not that any should be called a Father without a Mother His other Errors were That the Substance of God was mutable and was a part of the Universe He denied the Deity of the Son and the Holy Ghost he affirmed the Mortality of the Soul and that Moses was a ridiculous Impostor and the Church of Israel a Heard of Swine He mentioned saith Calvin the Trinity to be a Devilish Phantasm and Satanical Illusion above and hundred times For these reasons he was imprisoned by the Magistrates of Geneva and that they might proceed judiciavily against him they consulted with the Helvetian Churches who all approved of their intended Proceedings and sentenced him to be Burnt which Sentence was accordingly executed on him in Geneva 1553. Bulling Melach and other great Divines approving of it while he was in Prison many Divines besides Calvin Farel perswaded him to Recant his Errors which he obstinately refused and after Sentence was past he grew more sullen refusing Converse and to joyn in Prayers with others And when he was to be executed called on the People in the Spanish mode Miserere but not at all on God or our Saviour Christ yet this Man as wicked as he was is accounted a Martyr Both living and dead was in great repute and esteem among the Socinians Theophilus Nicolai calls him his Brother and Servant of the Messiah What did not Michael Servetus that learned Man and stout Defender of the Faith suffer unjustly Ostorodus made an Apology for him so did Voidovius And Socinus himself says That he thought much more highly of Christ than the Mahometans did and in some things wrote against them And when he was brought to the Fire he would not acknowledge the Eternal Son of God but the Son of the Eternal God for which they esteemed him a Martyr This sort of Serpents have had their lurking Holes in this Nation and have attempted to poyson the People but hitherto have been prevented as soon as they began to peep abroad I know not what they might have done had they found a Man of such Learning and Confidence as our Author In the Reign of Queen Mary to the great Grief and Scandal of the Protestant Martyrs there were some that suffered for denying the Godhead of Christ in the Year 1579 one Hamant was burnt in Norwich for denying the Deity of Christ and in the Year 1588 one Kett suffered for the same Blasphemy In King James the First his Reign one Legate suffered for the same Heresie Sandius observes p. 430. that Queen Elizabeth complained with grief That such Monsters as the Arians were found in her Kingdom whereof he gives an account that some were executed in the Reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James the First In the Year 1579 there was printed at London an Arian Book as Sandius p. 430. called The Articles of the Family of Love and how deservedly that Family was subverted for their debauched and extravagant Practices is sufficiently known In the late Troubles when all Sects and Heresies were permitted this Gangreen began to spread their attempts were on the weaker sort of People Anabaptists and Quakers many of whom were seduced by some such Leaders as Mr. Beedle and Pen And how far the Infection spread the Reader may see in Pagit's Hiresiology and in Edwards Gangrena where there is so much Filth as makes me forbear to rake it up The Socinians have often boasted that they could vie Authorities from the Fathers of the First three hundred Years who have said more as they falsly boast against the Trinity and the Eternal Essence and Consubstantiality of the Son then those which have asserted it but as yet they have not attempted it and Mr. Bull 's Collection hath wholly discouraged that Attempt it is true that some of those Ancients spake warily of those and other Mysteries and forbore to speak their own sence or discover the nature of them as it is evident they did industriously conceal the manner of administring the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper from not only the Jews and Heathens but the Catechumens also when therefore the publick Prayers were ended 〈◊〉 M 〈…〉 a est the Deacon pronounced a Departure to such as were not the Fideles who were not admitted to the Participation of the Eucharist which practice is generally observed in the Churches of Christ to this day This was called Disciplina Arcani and it was exercised in restraining all but the Fideles from Participation of the Eucharist and the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity also as some suppose This Practice was grounded on the Words of our Saviour who also would not reveal his Deity to all sorts of Persons nor some of the Mysteries of the Gospel which he proposed in dark Parables only for a certain time the People being not able to bear them the words are Matth. 7.6 Give not that which is holy to dogs and cast not your pearls before swine which many of the Ancients understood of not exposing the more sacred Mysteries of the Gospel to such as had not received the more common Doctrines and were not admitted to the number of the Faithful to this purpose are quoted Tertullian Origine Cyprian Athanasius Gregory Nyssene and Nazianzen Basil Heirom Epiphanius both the Cirils Chrysostome Ambrose and Augustine I confess the Church of Rome would make advantage of this Discipline but learned Men have bard them I only
itself but the Divine Nature assuming did confer And thus you have as time gave leave in one View the chief Points of this large and intricate Controversie To God the Father to the Son God and Man and to the Holy Ghost be all Honour Praise and Glory now and for ever Amen The CONCLUSION St. Hilary having vindicated the Doctrine of the Trinity l. 6. n. 2. says Lord I believed thy words if I am deceived Moses David Solomon and thy Apostles have deceived me if it be a Fault to believe these pardon me Almighty God for in this belief I can die deny it I cannot We have been baptized in this Faith we have offered up all our Prayers in this Faith and payed all our Thanksgivings to the Blessed Trinity and therefore we cannot dye comfortably in any other And with much more confidence may the Devout Trinitarian say as St. Heirome expresseth it Ecce Crucifixus meus Deus Behold my God which was crucified for me when he sees him coming in Judgment than the Arian or Socinian who proudly deny his Godhead and Satisfaction who may too late complain in the words of St. Augustine in his Confession l. 5. c. 9. I was going towards Hell laden with all my Sins while I believed not that Christ had satisfied for them FINIS ANIMADVERSIONS ON The Naked Gospel As now Published By ARTHVR BVRY D. D. THat this Book is now first published by the Doctor whose Name is prefixed cannot in Justice be denied by them that have read the former for it is quite another Book and it may be true though either one or the other if not both of the former Editions of the Naked Gospel were published by the same Author because they are not the same Books yet the one which he having caused to be printed and dispersed among his Friends in several parts of the Nation and the other wherein he made several Alterations may be affirmed to be published by the same hand the truth whereof needs no farther enquiry after the Oxford Animadversions That this present Copy is another Book appears by its divers Alterations and Additions which are made whether for the better or the worse will appear to every judicious Reader and that there needs no other or severer Reflections on it than what the Author himself hath made He seems so to tumble in the Net which he hath woven as to be more intangled by striving to get out In his Preface to the Reader he confesseth He had not patience to be silent at such a time when the suppression of such Opinions as he hath published would have been greatly advantagious both to Truth and Peace And whether it would not have been a great degree of sauciness by a point blanck Address of such a Present as the Naked Gospel to direct the Venerable Body of the Convocation of the Clergy in what they had to do is put beyond doubt by the Oxford Convocation I cannot find as he says that it was intended that the Convocation of the Clergy was called to make Alterations in Matters of Faith nor that we are to weigh at the same Beam a Rite in the one and a Doctrine in the other Seale The Convocation I believe would have given up all their Rites and Ceremonies rather than the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation which the Doctor on pretence of Charity would have them to abandon He confesseth That his Book was penned with less caution than was necessary for what was to be exposed to every vulgar eye But how could he imagine that so many learned and good Men would be pleased with his questioning or denying the truth and belief of such Doctrines as they themselves believe to be necessary to Salvation He might therefore very well have spared his unbecoming Reflections on that Body That the Doctor was suspected to disbelieve the Doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation was not because he did not expresly declare his Opinion concerning them which a true Son of the Church of England and one that had been long before suspected as Heterodox writing on that subject was highly concern'd to do but because he hath slily and frequently insinuated divers Arguments against them and his daubing with untempered Mortar in his two new Chapters of the Trinity and Incarnation will render the matter more obscure and defaced As for those words in the conclusion which he conceives some are most offended with wherein he cannot submit to the least compliance Let him enjoy his own Sentiments only I cannot perswade my self that more than his an hundred years experience calls on us to tack about and steer a contrary course to what our Pilots in the greatest part of that time have steered As the number of those Men who are as sick of King William as they were lately of King James is so small that they may be all written in a Ring If he intends as the current of his Discourse would carry it such as were in the late Convocation all which had testified by solemn Oaths and divers of them by their learned Arguments and Exhortations their cheerful Obedience to their present Majesties whom God preserve as the most hopeful Defenders of our established Religion so I heartily pray there may not be one such Prevaricator left among us though even among the Twelve Disciples of our Saviour there was a Judas and I hope there is not one of a thousand among our Clergy that is so ill as the Doctor would represent them such I mean as he says would wish for the cruel French to deliver them from the present Government or that is so unreasonably jealous as to think that his present Majesty designs to make this Church not unlike to that in which himself was educated for which his vile suggestion contrary to His Majesties most gracious Assurances the Doctor is concern'd to beg His Majesty's Pardon and I pray God to pardon him also It is a most invidious and malicious Quere which he adds Which of the two are the truer Church of England-men those who dread the return of King James with his Jesuits or those who wish and labour for it Those who are so stiff as rather to hazard the whole than to part with the least circumstance And cover their stiffness to their own humours and interests with the specious pretence of zeal for the Church To which I answer That as I do not know so if I did know any person so ill affected I should abhor them as the Pests of the Nation To those of the Doctor I shall oppose these Queries Which are the truer Church of England men those who dread the growth and success of the Arian and Socinian Heresies or those who adhere to the established Doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation of our blessed Saviour Those who would erect a Natural Religion a Jewish or Turkish Faith on the Ruines of that which is truly Christian Ancient and Catholick or those who live in the Communion
of the Church of England where this Christian Religion is established Every good Protestant will readily answer these Queries And notwithstanding the Protestation of the Doctor in the close of his Epistle to the Reader That he is not conscious of having contradicted any of the Church's Articles in any one word The impartial Reader will perceive by what hath been discovered to be the design of the Naked Gospel in the foregoing Exercitations that it was mainly intended against the most important of those Articles I only recommend to the Doctor 's serious Consideration that as it is an unaccountable Phrensie for any that abhors Popery and Slavery to grow weary of the present Government and to desire the return of the late King by a French Power so it is the highest degree of impiety for a Person that hath been long educated and instructed in the Doctrine of the Church of England which teacheth to adore the blessed Jesus as King of Kings and Lord of Lords not only to dethrone but debase him as a meer Creature and esteem no otherwise of him than as a King de Facto made and advanced by Imperial and Papal Edicts and Decrees not so ancient as Constantine but by Theodosius and Damasus bishop of Rome See p. 38. of the Edition in two Colums From what Point the Wind blew that hath caused the Doctor to steer a course contrary to what he intended at his first setting out is not so intelligible as to guess at what Harbor he intends to lay up he doth seemingly at least recant many of those Heretical Opinions which he had asserted in the first Edition of the Naked Gospel but so inconsistently that the New Piece which he hath patcht on upon the Old Garment will make the Rent worse But this is no other artifice than what hath been practised by the Arians and Socinians heretofore whose feigned Confessions and Recantations they on occasion recanted again and their later Deeds have been worse than the former Chap. 7. of the Holy Trinity The D.'s first care is to give us a right notion of the usual words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Substance and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Person which he would translate beingness and propriety The word Substance he says p. 45. is so much applied to matter that some with great confidence deride it as a contradiction to say that a Substance can be immaterial of this Opinion were Vorstius and Hobs and how much the Doctor differs from them that which follows may evidence The more we attend to our own Senses says the Doctor or Aristotle's Predicaments the more strongly are our Minds possest that Substance must be material c. As to the word Person p. 46. he says Could we be as sensible that the word Person in its metaphysical height is no less improperly applied to the second Distinction in the Trinity than the word Begotten is in its Physical baseness and could we cast away that improper word and use the warier word Subsistence and Propriety we should more easily satisfie our selves and others Wherefore taking the word Substance for Subsistence and Person for Propriety he proceeds to give us a new Notion of the Trinity such as agrees with the Doctrine of Paulus Samosatenus and Sabellius That the one high God is both Father Son and Holy Ghost His Positions are these 1. That God is a Being absolutely perfect 2. That Mind is the most perfect Being The same with Plato's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Original being derived from none but Author of all and therefore properly stiled the Father As Mind is the most perfect Being so the most perfect Being must be a perfect Mind but an unthinking Mind cannot be a perfect one God therefore was never unthinking and since thought is the first and proper Issue of a thinking Mind therefore may it most properly be stiled The first begotten Son and co-eternal with the Father because the Father was never before him p. 48. A thought is no less than a word conceived and a word is no more than a thought brought forth The Mind or its Wisdom cannot be absolutely perfect if they do not or cannot perform or want Power to act there must therefore be a third Person which the Scripture calls the Holy Ghost which is constantly described by Power and Action This is the Doctor 's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which he thinks he hath obliged all Mankind displayed the Mystery of the Trinity which hath been the trouble of all Ages and in which he hath not advanced one Proposition without warrant from the Scripture the Church of England the Fathers of the Church and the best Champions for that Doctrine and that which is his greatest hope is that the Unitarians will not dissent from one of them if taken in that sence which their terms freely offer p. 51. And I fear it is to serve their Hypothesis that the Doctor hath conceived and published this Notion It is not a little surprising that the Doctrine which was so lately ridicul'd under the term Mystery and which must remain so still a point of Push-pin Divinity The Athanasian Doctrine fit to be numbred with the Roman and would be fairly dealt with if left on the same level with the Arian equally unworthy not onely of our Faith but our Study see The Naked Gospel printed in two Columns p. 38. A long and mischievous Controversie and Behold now the ground on which one of our Fundamental Articles is built should now deserve another Ecce to behold p. 49. of the Doctor 's Edition how the very Light of Nature demonstrates St. John's Mystery There are three that bear witness in heaven c. And p. 53. How our Platonizing Doctor confutes the Atheists who accuse this Mystery as contrary to Reason which he now saith reason in Plato discovereth the Doctor having adapted a Natural Trinity for his Natural Religion But the Doctor is conscious of another Error viz. That he hath Sabellionized with Sabellius for mentioning St. Augustine's Opinion concerning the Trinity p. 50. says that it favors more of Sabellianism than his as above explained As the Doctor 's Opinion is by him explained it may serve as the Center wherein all the Opinions of the Ancient and Modern Hereticks may meet and acquiesce Vm. Lirinensis asks Quis ante sceleratum Sabellium Unitatis Trinitatem consundere Ausus est Whoever so confounded the Doctrine of the Trinity as the impious Sabellius Of whom Sandius says Sabelliani tribuendo patri essentiam filio scientiam sancto vitam videntur negasse subsistentiam filii sancti Sandius p. 120. Consonant to this our Doctor says The Mind is Beingness or the Father the Son is Wisdom the Holy Ghost is Power and Activity Again Sandius p. 111. Sabellius taught the one God in Essence and Substance to be the Father Son and Holy Ghost which three he called three Vertues or Proprieties three Names three Persons and for proof of this Opinion