THE JUDGMENT OF THE Ancient JEWISH Church Against the VNITARIANS IN The Controversy upon the Holy Trinity and the Divinity of our Blessed Saviour With a Table of Matters and a Table of Texts of Scripture Occasionally Explain'd By a Divine of the Church of England LONDON Printed for Ri. Chiswell and are to be sold at the Rose and Crown and at the Rose in St. Paul's Church-Yard MDCXCIX THE PREFACE ALTHOVGH the Jews by mistaking the Prophecies of Scripture concerning the Kingdom of their Messias expected he should have a Temporal Kingdom and because our Lord Jesus was not for that therefore they would not acknowledge him fâ—â— their Messias yet all things considered there is no essential difference between our Religion and theirs We own the very same God whom they formerly Worshipp'd the Maker of the World and their Lawgiver We receive that very Messias whom God promised them by his Prophets so many Ages before his coming We own no other Spirit of God to have Inspired the Apostles besides the Holy Ghost who spoke by the Prophets and by whose manifold Gifts the Messias was to be known as one in whom all Nations should be Blessed This plainly appears in the way and method which both Christ and his Apostles followed in preaching the Gospel They endeavoured to take off the prejudices the then Jews laboured under concerning the Nature of the Messias and the Characters by which he was to be known For they argued all along from the Books of Moses and the Prophets and never proposed any thing to their Disciples but what was declared in those Writings which the Jews acknowledged as the Standard of their Religion which may be seen in Christ's Discourse to the Jews John v. 46. and to his Disciples after his Resurrection Luke xxiv 47 and 44. in the words of St. Peter Acts x. 43. and of St. Paul Acts xxvi 22. The truth is in those Sacred Books although One only God be acknowledged under the Name of Jehovah which denotes his Essence and therefore is incommunicable to any other yet not only that very Name is given to the Messias but also all the Works Attributes and Characters peculiar to Jehovah the God of Israel and the only true God are frequently bestowed on him This the old Jewish Authors as Philo and the Targumists do readily acknowledge For in their Exposition of those places of the Old Testament which relate to the Messias they generally suppose him to be God whereas the Modern Jews being of a far different Opinion use all Shifts imaginable to evade the force of their Testimonies The Apostles imitated in this the Synagogue by applying to Christ several places of the Old Testament which undoubtedly were primarily intended of the God of Israel But because they sometimes only touch at places of the Old Testament without using them as formal Proofs of what they then handled Socinus and his Disciples have fancied that those Citations out of the Old Testament which are made use of by the Apostles though they represent the Messias as being the same with the God of Israel yet for all this are but bare Allusions and Accommodations made indeed by them to Subjects of a like nature but not at all by them intended as Arguments and Demonstrations Nothing can be more injurious to the Writings of the New Testament than such a Supposition And there can hardly be an Opinion more apt to overthrow the Authority of Christ and his Apostles and to expose the Christian Religion to the Scorn both of Jews and Heathens For the bare Accommodation of a place of Scripture cannot suppose that the Holy Ghost had any design in it to intimate any thing sounding that way and consequently the Sense of that Scripture so accommodated is of no Authority Whereas it is a most certain truth that Christ and his Apostles did design by many of those Quotations to prove that which was in dispute between them and the Jews To what purpose should Christ exhort the Jews to search the Scriptures of the Old Testament because they testified of him John v. 39. if those Scriptures could only give a false Notion of him by intimating that the Messias promised was the God of Israel This were to suppose that Christ and his Apostles went about to prove a thing by that which had no Strength and no Authority to prove it And that the Citations out of the Old Testament are like the Works of the Empress Eudoxia who writ the History of Christ in Verses put together and borrowed from Homer under the Name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or that of Proba Falconia who did the same in Verses and Words taken out of Virgil. It follows at least from such a Position That in the Gospel God gave a Revelation so very new that it has no manner of Affinity to the Old although he caused this old Revelation to be carefully written by the Prophets and as carefully preserved by the Jews to be the Standard of their Faith and the Ground of their Hopes till he should fulfil his Promises contained in it and although Christ and his Apostles bid the Jews have recourse to it to know what they were to expect of God's promises The Christian Church ever rejected this pernicious Opinion And although her first Champions against the Ancient Hereticks did acknowledge that the new Revelation brought in by Christ and his Apostles had made the Doctrines much clearer then they were before which the Jews themselves do acknowledge when they affirm that hidden things are to be made plain to all by the Messias yet they ever maintained that those Doctrines were so clearly set down in the Books of the Old Testament that they could not be opposed by them who acknowledge those Books to come from God especially since the Jews are therein told that the Messias when he came should explain them and make them clearer This Observation is particularly of force against those who formerly opposed the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity and that of our Saviour's being God These Hereticks thought they followed the Opinion of the old Jews Therefore they that confuted them undertook to satisfy them that the Christian Church had received nothing from Christ and his Apostles about those two Articles but what God had formerly taught the Jews and what necessarily followed from the Writings of Moses and the Prophets so that those Doctrines could not be rejected without accusing the Divine Spirit the Author of those Books of shortness of Thought in not foreseeing what naturally follows from those Principles so often laid down and repeated by him These old Writers solidly proved to those Hereticks That God did teach the Jews the Vnity of his Essence yet so as to establish at the same time a Distinction in his Nature which according to the Notion which himself gives of it we call Trinity of Persons And that when he promised that the Messias to come was to be Man at the very same time he
Creature But his Disciples building upon this firm Maxim of Scripture that God alone is to be adored justly concluded against him that he was not to be adored since strictly speaking he was but a Creature and no God This Division was plainly occasioned by the strength of Scripture-proofs which on the one hand clearly shew that none can be a Christian without adoring Christ and on the other positively affirm that none but the True God ought to be adored Thus these two opposite Parties did unwillingly do the business of the true Church which ever opposed to the Enemies of the Trinity and of the Godhead of Christ the Authority of the Holy Scripture which teaches that Christ ought to be adored and withal convinces the Arians of Idolatry who adored Christ without owning him to be the true God though they bestowed on him a kind of a Godhead inferior to that of the Father I cannot but admire that they who within these few years have in this Kingdom embraced Socinus his Opinions should consider no better how little success they have had elsewhere against the truth and that upon the score of their Divisions which will unavoidably follow till they can agree in unanimously rejecting the Authority of Scripture Neither doth it avail them any thing to use Quibbles and Evasions and weak Conjectures since they are often unanswerably confuted even by some of their Brethren who are more dextrous than they in expounding of Scriptures But being resolved by all means to defend their Tenents some Chief men amongst them have undertaken to set aside the Authority of Scriptures which is so troublesome to them And the Author of a late Book intitled Considerations maintains that the Gospels have been corrupted by the Orthodox Party and suspects that of St. John to be the work of Cerinthus It is no very easy Task to dispute against men whose Principles are so uncertain and who in a manner have no regard to the Authority of Scripture It was much less difficult to undertake Socinus himself because he owned however the Authority of Scripture and that it had not been corrupted But one knows not how to deal with his Disciples who in their Opinion seem to be so contrary to him and one another They do now affirm the adoration which is paid to Christ is Idolatrous thus renouncing Socinus his Principles who lookt upon it as an essential piece of Christianity So that they can no longer be called Socinians and themselves affect the name of Unitarians And as their chief business seems to be to accuse the sincerity of Scripture-writers so the main work of them who undertake to confute them must be the establishing both the Sincerity and Authority of it which is no very hard task For even Mahometans though they take some of the same Objections that the Socinians are so full of against the Divinity of Christ yet are so far from accusing Christians of having corrupted the Scripture that they furnish us with Weapons against the Unitarians of this Kingdom as the Reader will find at the end of this following Book And although there be but small hopes of bringing to right again Men of so strange Dispositions and Notions yet they ought by no means to be left to themselves They have been often confuted by them that argued from the bare Principles of Christianity that is the Authority of Scriptures of the Old and New Testament which are the very Word of God And it has been plainly shewed them that what Alterations soever they have made in Socinus's Opinions yet their new Conceits are neither more Rational than his nor more agreeable to Divine Revelation I say that their Opinions are not more agreeable than his to right Reason For when all is done to affirm That Christ received from God an Infinite Power to govern the World without being essentially God is to affirm a downright Contradiction viz. that without partaking of the Divine Essence he received one of the Attributes which are Essential to God It is true some Popish Divines allow the Soul of Christ to be all-knowing by reason of its immediate Vnion to the Divine Nature wherein they do much service to the Socinians in holding as they do that a Creature is capable of receiving such Attributes But Protestant Divines reject this Notion as altogether false as false as many of the Schoolmens Speculations even the absurdest of them that are exploded by the Socinians They have been also further refuted as to what they aver that Justin Martyr was the first that taught the Doctrines of the Trinity of Christ's Eternal Godhead and of his Incarnation And at last that Learned Divine Dr. Bull having observed that the Jewish Tradition was favourable to those Doctrines of which the Socinians make Justin to have been the first Broacher Howsoever M. N. treats him for this neither like a Scholar nor a Christian I shall venture his displeasure in making out this Observation without meddling at all with his Arguments drawn from the Fathers to shew clearly that the like Exceptions of M. N. against Philo as being a Platonick and against the Ancient Jews and their Tradition can help him no way in the Cause he has taken in hand The Doctrine of our Church being the same which was taught by Christ and his Apostles it will be an easy matter to prove it by the same places of Scripture by which Christ and his Apostles converted the Jews and the Gentiles over to the Christian Faith and by which the Hereticks were confuted who followed or renewed the Errors which the Jews have fallen into since Christianity begun But I will go farther and prove that the Ancient Jewish Church yield the same Principles which Jesus Christ and his Apostles builded upon and by this Method it will plainly appear That the Socinians or the Unitarians let them call themselves what they please must either absolutely renounce the Authority of Scripture and turn downright Deists or they must own those Doctrines of the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ as being taught us by God himself in the Holy Scriptures and acknowledged by the Ancient Jewish Church THE TABLE OF THE CHAPTERS THE Preface Chap. I. The Design of this Book and what Matters it Treats of Page 1. Chap. II. That in the times of Jesus Christ Our Blessed Saviour the Jews had among them a common Explication of the Scriptures of the Old Testament grounded on the Tradition of their Fathers which was in many things approved by Christ and his Apostles Page 11. Chap. III. That the Jews had certain Traditional Maxims and Rules for the understanding of the Scripture Page 32. Chap. IV. That Jesus Christ and his Apostles proved divers points of the Christian Doctrine by his common Traditional Exposition received among the Jews which they could not have done at least not so well had there been only such a Literal Sense of those Texts which they alledged as we can find without the help of such
Eminent Divines of the old Jewish Church and consequently as subject to several weaknesses and oversights which are common to the greatest as well as to the meanest men Even the most Learned Men in all Ages though they agree in the truth of certain Doctrines are yet often divided in their ways of expressing them and also in their grounding them on this or that place of Scripture For the Jews since Christ's time we are less concern'd what they say because when they had once rejected their Messias the Lord Jesus Christ they soon found that if they stood to their Traditional Expositions of Scripture it could not be denied but he whom they had rejected was the Word the Son of God whom their Fathers expected to come in our Flesh but rather than yield to that they would alter their Creed and either wholly throw out the Word the Son of God or bring him down to the state of a created Angel as we see some of them do now in their ordinary Comments on Scripture And so they deal with the Shekinah likewise confounding the Master with the Servant as we see that some few perhaps one or two Cabalists have done in their Books In consequence of this alteration they are forc'd to acknowledg the Patriarchs Abraham Isaac and Jacob worshipped a created Angel and have left themselves no way to excuse them from Idolatry therein but by corrupting their Doctrine concerning Religious Worship and teaching that it is lawful to pray to these Ministring Spirits which is effectually the setting up of other Gods plainly contrary to the first Commandment of their Law Some of themselves are so sensible of this that they cannot deny it to be Idolatry Which is certainly the more inexcusable in the Jews because on other occasions they constantly affirm that when God charged the Angels with the care of other Nations he reserved to himself the sole Government of his people Israel Deut. xxxii 8 9. And therefore it must be a grievous sin in them to worship Angels howsoever they should imagin it might be permitted to other Nations After all this they have not been able so totally to suppress the ancient Tradition but that in their Writers since Christ's time there appear some footsteps of it still And that it is so I am next to shew that notwithstanding their aversness to the Christian Doctrine they yet have a Notion distinct enough both of a Plurality and Trinity in the Divine Nature which will be the whole business of my next Chapter CHAP. XI That this Notion of a Trinity in the Divine Nature has continued among the Jews since the time of our Lord Jesus Christ TO begin with the Jewish Authors who have writ Medrashim that is a sort of Allegorical Commentaries upon Scripture and the Cabalistical Jews whom their people look upon as the wisest Men of their Nation viz. those that know the truth more than all others among them this truth passes for undoubted I know very well that the method of those Cabalistical Men who seek for Mysteries almost in every Letter of the words of Scripture hath made them justly ridiculous And indeed one cannot imagin an occupation more vain or useless than the prodigious labour which they undergo in their way of Gematria Notarikon and Tsirouph But besides that Vice is not so general among the Jews I am fully resolved to lay aside in this Controversie all such remarks my design being only to shew that the ancient Tradition hath been kept among those Authors who have their Name from their firm adherence to the Tradition of their Forefathers So I am not willing to deny that some of the Books of those Cabalistical Authors which the Jews who are not great Criticks look upon as very ancient are not as to all their parts of such an antiquity as the Jews suppose them to be But I take notice that those who attack the antiquity of those Books are not aware that notwithstanding some additions which are in those Books as for example in the Zohar and in the Rabboth the very Doctrine of the Synagogue is to be found there and the same as it is represented to us by the Apocryphal Authors by Philo or those who had occasion to mention the Doctrine of the Jews After all let us suppose that almost all those Books have been written since the Talmud and that the Talmud was written since the beginning of the seventh Century that could not be a prejudice against the Doctrine which the Jews propose as the ancient Doctrine of the Synagogue But to the contrary it would be a strong proof of the constancy of those Authors in keeping the Tradition of their Ancestors in so strange a dispersion and among so many Nations chiefly since in the Articles upon which I shall quote their Authorities they so exactly follow the steps of the Authors of the Apocryphal Books of Philo the Jew and of their ancient Paraphrast who had more penetrated into the sense of Scripture I say then that both the Authors of the Midrashim and the Cabalistical Authors agree exactly in this that they acknowledg a Plurality in the Divine Essence and that they reduce such a Plurality to three Persons as we do To prove such an assertion I take notice first That the Jews do judg as we do that the word Elohim which is Plural expresses a Plurality Their ordinary remark upon that word is this that Elohim is as if one did read El hem that is They are God Bachajè a famous Commentator of the Pentateuch who brings in his work all the senses of the four sorts of Interpreters among the Jews speaks to this purpose upon the Parascha Breschit fol. 2. col 3. 2ly It is certain that they make use of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to express those Persons as they use to express the two first human Persons viz. Adam and Eve Thus speaks of them the same Bachaje Ibid. fol. 13. col 2. 3ly They fix the number of three Persons in the Divine Essence distinguishing their Personal Characters and Actions which serve to make them known 4ly They speak of the emanation of the two last from the first and that the last proceeds by the second 5ly They declare that this Doctrine contains a Mystery that is incomprehensible and above human reason and that in such an unsearchable secret we must acquiesce with the Authority of the Divine Revelation 6ly They ground this Doctrine upon the very same Texts of Scripture which we alledg to prove the several Positions of ours which deserves a great deal of consideration And indeed those things being so we must necessarily conclude either that they mock their Readers or that they do not understand what they say or one must acknowledg that the consequences and conclusions which Christians draw from the Scriptures to this subject of Trinity are not so easie to be avoided as the Socinians believe Let the Reader reflect upon each of those Articles while I
expresly told the Jews that he was withal to be God blessed for ever The force and evidence of the Proofs of those Doctrines is so great and the Proofs themselves so numerous that Hereticks could not avoid them but by setting up Opinions directly opposite to the Scriptures On the other side the Hereticks were so gravelled that they broke into Opinions quite contrary one to another which greatly contributed to confirm the Faith of them whom they opposed in those Articles so that it still subsisted whereas the opposite Heresies perish'd in a manner as soon as broacht The meanness of Christ and his shameful Death moved the Ebionites in the very first Age after him to look upon him as a meer Man though exalted by God's Grace to the Dignity of a Prophet But the Cerinthians another sort of Hereticks maintained that the Word did operate in him though at the same time they denied the personal and inseparable Vnion of that Word with this human Nature In the beginning of the Third Century some had much ado to receive the Doctrine of the Trinity by reason that they could not reconcile it with that of the Vnity of God But Praxeas Noetus and Sabellius who opposed that Doctrine were soon obliged to recant And then from one Extremity they shortly fell into another For being satisfied that the Scripture does attribute to the Father to the Son and to the Holy Ghost the divine Nature which is constantly in the Old Testament expressed by the Name Jehovah they undertook contrary to the plain Notions of Scripture to maintain that there was but One Person in God which had appeared the same under three differing Names Whereas some others did so plainly see the distinction which the Scripture makes between the Persons that they chose rather to own Three distinct Essences than to deny that there are Three Persons in God as the Scripture does invincibly prove Two sorts of Hereticks did formerly oppose the Divinity of Christ Some did acknowledge that as to his divine Nature he was before the World and that by it he had made the World though Himself as to that nature was created before the World and these afterwards formed the Arian Sect. Others but very few such as Artemas and Theodotus denied that Christ was before he was born of the Virgin They acknowledged in him no other besides the human Nature which said they God had raised to a very high Dignity by giving to it a Power almost infinite And in this they made his Godhead to consist But these two sorts of Hereticks were happily destroyed one by the other for the Arians on the one side did confound Artemas his Disciples by proving from places of Scripture that Christ was before the Virgin nay before the World And on the other side Absurdity and Idolatry were proved upon the Arians both because they acknowledged more than one divine Nature and because they worshipped a Creature whereas by the Christian Religion God alone ought to be worshipped Artemas his Disciples were so few and so severely condemned even whilst the Church laboured under Persecutions that their Name is hardly remembred at this day which clearly shews how strange their Doctrine appeared to them who examined it by the Books of the Old and the New Testament As for the Arians they made it is true more noise in the World by the help of two or three of Constantine's Successors who by violent Methods endeavoured to spread their Opinion But that very thing made their Sect odious and in a little time quite ruined the credit of it Within a hundred and fifty years or thereabouts after their first Rise there hardly remained any Professors of it which plainly shews that they could not answer those Arguments from Scripture which were urged against them I observe this last thing that Arius's Heresy was destroyed by Proofs from Scripture for the Eternal Divinity of our Saviour though it was a long time countenanced by the Roman Emperours by the Vandal Kings in Africk and by the Kings of the Goths both in Spain and in Italy lest any should fancy it was extinguished only by Imperial Laws and Temporal Punishments Besides that the first Inventors of that Heresy had spread it before such time as Constantine by vanquishing Licinius became Master of the World Whoever shall consider that the Christian Religion had before Arius already suffered ten Persecutions without shrinking under them will easily see that all the Power of Constantine and of his Orthodox Successors who punished the Arian Professors had never been great enough to suppress their Opinion if it had not been a Gospel-doctrine not to say that these Laws and their Authority extended no further than the Roman Empire What had happen'd in those ancient Times soon after the Christian Church was establisht happened likewise again in the last Century at the Reformation of the Western Church As in those early days there arose many Heresies entirely opposite one to the other so in these latter times the very same was seen among us For when God raised up many Great Men to reform the Church in this and our neighbouring Kingdoms there appeared soon after some Men who being weary of the Popish Tyranny both in Doctrine and Worship did fancy that they might make a more perfect Reformation if they could remove out of the Christian Religion those things which human Reason was apt to stumble at And the Roman Church having obtruded upon her Votaries such Mysteries as were directly repugnant to Reason they imagined that the Doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ's Divinity were of that number and thus used all their Endeavours to prove that they were absurd and contradictory Had not these Doctrines been grounded on the Authority of the Books of the Old and the New Testament they might easily enough have confuted them But being forced to own the Authority of those Books which they durst not attack for fear of being detested by all Christians they fell into the same opposite Extremes into which those Hereticks of old had fallen when they opposed these fundamental Doctrines of Christianity and thus were as divided in Opinions about those matters as the ancient Hereticks had been before them For whilst some of them as Laelius Socinus and his Nephew Faustus denied the Divinity of Christ and thus revived the Opinion of Artemas and his Disciples others seeing how absurd the Answers were that Socinus and his Followers gave to those places of Scripture which assert the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ run so far to the contrary of this Socinian Heresy that they acknowledged three Gods And not only the Adversaries of Socinus but even some of his Disciples did oppose his Opinion moved thereto by the Authority of Scripture For he held it a fundamental Article of the Christian Faith that Christ is to be adored in which he was a downright Idolater in adoring Christ as true God when he believed Christ to be a meer
Exposition Page 52. Chap. V. Of the Authority of the Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament Page 66. Chap. VI. That the Works which go under the Name of Philo the Jew are truly his and that he writ them a long while before the time of Christ's Preaching the Gospel and that it does not appear in any of his Works that ever he had heard of Christ or of the Christian Religion Page 75. Chap. VII Of the Authority and Antiquity of the Chaldee Paraphrases Page 84. Chap. VIII That the Authors of the Apocryphal Books did acknowledge a Plurality and a Trinity in the Divine Nature Page 99. Chap. IX That the Jews had Good Grounds to acknowledge some kind of Plurality in the Divine Nature Page 115. Chap. X. That the Jews did acknowledge the Foundations of the Belief of the Trinity in the Divine Nature and that they had the Notion of it Page 138. Chap XI That this Notion of a Trinity in the Divine Nature has continued among the Jews since the time of our Lord Jesus Christ Page 158. Chap. XII That the Jews had a distinct Notion of the Word as a Person and of a Divine Person too Page 181. Chap. XIII That all the Appearances of God or of the Angel of the Lord which are spoken of in the Books of Moses have been referred to the Word by the Jews before Christ's Incarnation Page 201. Chap. XIV That all the Appearances of God or of the Angel of the Lord which are spoken of in Moses have been referred to the Word of God by the ancient Jewish Church Page 214. Chap. XV. That all the Appearances of God or of the Angel of the Lord which are spoken after Moses his time in the Books of the Old Testament have been referred to the Word of God by the Jews before Christ's Incarnation Page 233. Chap. XVI That the ancient Jews did often use the Notion of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Word in speaking of the Messias Page 253. Chap. XVII That the Jews did acknowledge the Messias should be the Son of God Page 265. Chap. XVIII That the Messias was represented in the Old Testament as being Jehovah that should come and that the ancient Synagogue did believe him to be so Page 278. Chap. XIX That the New Testament does exactly follow the Notions which the Old Jews had of the Trinity and of the Divinity of the Messias Page 293 Chap. XX. That both the Apostles and the first Christians speaking of the Messias did exactly follow the Notions of the Old Jews as the Jews themselves did acknowledge Page 313. Chap. XXI That we find in the Jewish Authors after the time of Jesus Christ the same Notions which Jesus Christ and his Apostles Grounded their Discourses on to the Jews Page 327. Chap. XXII An Answer to some Exceptions taken from Expressions used in the Gospel Page 339. Chap. XXIII That neither Philo nor the Chaldee Paraphrases nor the Christians have borrowed from the Platonick Philosophers their Notions about the Trinity But that Plato should have more probably borrowed his Notions from the Books of Moses and the Prophets which he was acquainted with Page 413. Chap. XXIV An Answer to some Objections of the Modern Jews and of the Unitarians Page 365. Chap. XXV An Answer to an Objection against the Notions of the Old Jews compared with those of the new Ones Page 380. Chap. XXVI That the Jews have laid aside the Old Explications of their Forefathers the better to defend themselves in their Disputes with the Christians Page 392. Chap. XXVII That the Unitarians in opposing the Doctrines of the Trinity and our Lord's Divinity do go much further than the Modern Jews and that they are not fit Persons to Convert the Jews Page 413. A Dissertation concerning the Angel who is called the Redeemer Gen. XLVIII Page 433. THE JUDGMENT OF THE Ancient JEWISH Church Against the VNITARIANS c. CHAP. I. The Design of this Book and what Matters it treats of IF the Doctrines of the Ever-Blessed Trinity and of the Promised Messias being very God had been altogether unknown to the Jews before Jesus Christ began to preach the Gospel it would be a great prejudice against the Christian Religion But the contrary being once satisfactorily made out will go a great way towards proving those Doctrines among Christians The Socinians are so sensible of this that they give their Cause for lost if this be admitted And therefore they have used their utmost Endeavours to weaken or at least to bring under suspicion the Arguments by which this may be proved It is now about sixty years ago since one of that Sect writ a Latin Tract about the meaning of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Chaldee Paraphrases in Answer to Wechner who had proved that St. John used this word in the first Chapter of his Gospel in the same sense that the Chaldee Paraphrases had used it before Christ's time and consequently that it is to be understood of a Person properly so called in the Blessed Trinity which way of interpreting that word because it directly overthrew the Socinian Doctrine which was then that St. John by the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 understood no other than Christ as Man it is no wonder that this Author used all his Wit and Learning to evade it The Construction which Socinus put upon the first Chapter of the Gospel of St. John was then followed generally by his Disciples But some years since they have set it aside here as being absurd and impertinent And they now freely own what that Socinian Author strongly opposed That the Word mentioned by St. John is the eternal and essential Vertue of God by which he made the World and operated in the Person of Christ Only they deny that Word to be a Person distinct from the Father as we do affirm And whereas Socinus taught That Christ was made God and therefore is a proper Object of religious Worship now the Unitarians who believe him to be no other than a meer human Creature following the Principles of Christianity better than Socinus condemn the Religious Worship which is paid to him As they do believe that the Jews had the same Notions of the Godhead and Person of the Messias which they have themselves so they think they have done the Christian Religion an extraordinary service in thus ridding it of this double Difficulty which hinders the Conversion of the Jews Mr. N. one of their ablest Men having read Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho in which Trypho says that he did not believe that the Messias was to be other than Man makes use of this Passage of Trypho for proof that the Doctrines of the Divinity of the Messias and by consequence of the Trinity were never acknowledged by the Jews This he does in a Book the Title whereof is The Judgment of the Fathers against Dr. Bull. His design being to prove that Justin Martyr about 140 years after Christ was
have to do with do very confidently affirm any thing that comes into their heads be it never so little probable so they may thereby give any plausible Solutions of the Difficulties in which they find themselves entangled and perplext and they are much given to vaunt of their unanswerable Arguments so they call them which are many times but weak Objections such as Men of Learning and Wit should be ashamed of For this reason I thought it necessary to prevent as far as it was possible all that they can object against my Position of the Opinions the Old Jews held concerning those Doctrines which were exactly followed and fully declared by the Apostles and first Christians And because I foresee some Objections may arise I will shew that nothing can be more absurd than to imagine that the Jews or the first Christians borrowed their Notions about the Trinity or the Divinity of Christ from Plato's Disciples whereas Plato hath in truth followed the Jewish Notions of those things After this I shall make it appear that however some of the Modern Jews have changed their Opinions in these Articles yet the Socinians can make no advantage thereof because the Jews have in reality much alter'd their belief since Christ's time and are guilty of great Disingenuity as is common to all those who are obstinately set upon the maintaining of erroneous Doctrines In fine I shall plainly shew that the Socinians to defend themselves against the Orthodox have been forced to imitate those Modern Jews and have much out done them in changing and shifting their Opinions when they dispute with Christians I hope to manage this Controversy with the Socinians so plainly and fully as to satisfy the Reader That as on the one side they most falsly accuse the Church of having corrupted the New Testament to favour the Doctrines of the Trinity and of Christ's Godhead So they cannot on the other side get any ground upon the Jews in their Disputes with them though they fancy they got a great way towards their Conversion by rejecting those Doctrines In a word both the Ancient and Modern Jews do so far agree in those things which make on the Church's side against the Socinians that if they appeal to the Jews they are sure to lose their Cause which when they have better considered they will find it their best way for the maintaining of their Opinions to abandon the Jews altogether as Men that understood not their own Scriptures viz. the Old Testament and to reject both as they have gone a great way towards it in rejecting that traditional sense of the Old Testament for which it was quoted in the New and without which it would have signified little or nothing to those purposes for which it was quoted And so it will appear that for all their brags of the Aptness and even Necessity of their way for the Conversion of the Jews they have taken the direct way to harden them by giving up that sense of the Old Testament Scriptures which Christ and his Apostles made use of for the converting of their Forefathers But we have the less reason to complain of them for this when we see how apt they are to question the Authority of the Books of the New Testament as oft as they find them so clearly opposite to their Doctrines that they cannot obscure the Light of them by any tolerable Exposition To shew that I do not say this without cause I shall show some instances in the last Chapter of this Book CHAP. II. That in the times of Jesus Christ our Blessed Saviour the Jews had among them a common Explication of the Scriptures of the Old Testament grounded on the Tradition of their Fathers which was in many things approved by Christ and his Apostles THE Jews have to this day a certain kind of Tradition received from their Forefathers which contain many precepts of things to be done or avoided on the account of their Religion This they call their Oral Law by which name they distinguish it from the written Law which God gave them by Moses They make five Orders of such a Tradition which are explained by Moses de Trano in his Kiriat Sepher Printed at Venice Anno 1551. The first is of the things which they infer from Moses and the Prophets by a clear consequence and they are certainly of the same Authority as the rest of the Revelation although they call it a Tradition We are not such Enemies to Names as not to like such a sort of Tradition and we receive it with all imaginable reverence we like very well the Judgment of Maimonides who leaves as uncertain whatsoever the Jewish Doctors speak upon many things as being without ground when their Tradition is not gathered from Texts of Scripture de Regib c. 12. The second Order is of the Ceremonies and Rites which they keep as coming from Mount Sinai but of which there is not a word in the Law The third Order is of the Judiciary Laws upon which the two Schools of Hillel and Shammai were divided The fourth is of some Constitutions of the Ancients which they look upon as an hedge to the Law The last is of their Customs which are various in several places of their dispersion Tho' in many things they cannot but see that those last four Orders of Tradition do not agree with the Law of Moses or are quite unknown in it yet they seem to like it never the worse Nay their Rabbins professedly ascribe a much greater Authority to this Oral Law than to the Law of Moses They say in the Talmud Avoda zara c. 1. fol. 17. Col. 2. that a Man who studies in the Law alone without these Traditions is a Man which is without God according to the Prophecy of Azariah 2 Chr. 15.3 Of this sort were all the Traditions which were condemned by our Lord Jesus Christ He plainly calls them the Commandments of Men Mat. XV. 9. and has purposely directed several of his Discourses against them because even where their observing these Traditions would not consist with their Obedience to God as particularly in the case of Corban Mat. XV. 3. yet they gave Tradition the preference and so as our Saviour there tells them Ver. 9. They made the Commandments of God of no effect by their Tradition The Author of these Traditions or new Laws as one may term them did almost all of them live since the time that the Jews were under the power of the Seleucidae and they were the Leaders of those several Sects that corrupted their Religion by adding to it a great number of Observations which were perfectly new We have therefore no reason to look upon this sort of Tradition as the fountain from whence the Jews in Christ's time took their measures of the sense and meaning of the Writings of the Old Testament But for the Interpreting of their Scriptures the Jews in Christ's time had some other kinds of Traditions much different from
their Disciples and the Object of David's and all other Prophet's Longings and Desires Reuchl Ib. p. 634. They maintain that David did not think himself to be the Messias because he prays for his Coming Psal xliii 3. Send out thy Light i. e. the Messias as R. Salomon interprets it And from hence they conclude that he speaks also of the Messias in Psal lxxxix 15. They did think Isaiah spake of him ch ix 6. So R. Jose Galilaeus praefat in Eccha Rabbati as it is to be seen in Devarim Rabba Paras 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at the end of it and in Jalk in Is § 284. And indeed what he there saith could not be meant of Hezekiah who was born 10 years before nor was his Kingdom so extensive nor so lasting as is there foretold the Messias's should be but was confined to a small part of Palestine and ended in Sedecias his Successor not many Generations afterwards And it is the general and constant Opinion of the Jews that Malachi the last of the Prophets spake of him ch 4. under the Name of the Son of Righteousness for this see Kimchi 4. It ought to be well considered that we owe the Knowledge of the Principles on which the Holy Ghost has founded the Doctrine of Types to the Jews who are so devoted to the Traditions of their Ancestors which Types however they who read the Scripture cursorily do ordinarily pass by as things light and insignificant yet it is true what St. Paul hath said 1 Cor. x. 11. That all things happened to the Fathers in Types and were written for their instruction upon whom the ends of the World are come or who live in the last Times as the Oeconomy of the Gospel is called and the last days by Jacob Gen. xlix 1. That is acknowledged by the Wisemen of the Nation in Shemoth Rabba Parasha 1 and by Menasseh ben Israel q. 6. in Isaiah p. 23. Indeed the Jews besides the literal sense of the ancient Scriptures did acknowledge a mystical or spiritual Sense which St. Paul lays down for a Maxim 1 Cor. x. 1 2 3 c. Where he applies to things of the New Testament all these following Types namely the Coming of Israel out of Egypt their passage through the Red Sea the History of the Manna and of the Rock that followed them by its Water We see in Philo the figurative sense which the Jews gave to a great part of the ancient History He remarks exactly and often with too much subtilty perhaps the many Divine and Moral Notions which the common prophetical Figures do suggest to us We see that they turned almost all their History into Allegory It plainly appears from St. Paul's way of arguing Gal. iv 22 c. which could be of no force otherwise Wee see that they reduced to an Anagogical sense all the Temporal Promises of Canaan of Jerusalem of the Temple in which St. Paul also followed them Heb. iv 4 9. quoting these words If they shall enter into my rest from Ps xcv 11. which words he makes the Psalmist speak of the Jerusalem that is above and this also is acknowledged by Maimonides de poen c. 8. This Remark ought to be made particularly on the mystical Signification which Philo the Jew gives of several Parts of the Temple of which the Apostle St. Paul makes so great use in his Epistle to the Hebrews Josephus in those few words which he has concerning the Signification of the Tabernacle Antiq. iii. 9. gives us reason enough to believe that if he had lived to finish his design of explaining the Law according to the Jewish Midrashim he would have abundantly justified this way of Explication followed by St. Paul with respect to the Tabernacle of the Covenant It is hard to conceive how the Apostles could speak of things which came to pass in Old time as Types of what should be accomplished in the Person of the Messias without any other proof than their simple affirmation As for instance that St. Peter should represent Christ as a New Noah 1 Pet. iii. 21. and that St. Paul should propose Melchisedeck as a Type of the Messias in respect to his Sacerdotal Office Heb. vi vii unless the Jews did allow this for a Maxim which flows naturally from the Principle we have been establishing namely that these Great Men were look'd on as the Persons in whom God would fulfil his first Promise but that not being completely fulfilled in them it was necessary for them that would understand it aright to carry their View much farther to a Time and Person without comparison more august in whom the Promise should be perfectly completed It may be demanded why the Prophecies seem sometime so applied to Persons then living that one would think he should not need to look any farther to see the fulfilling of them as namely the prophetical Prayer as in behalf of Solomon which is in Psalm lxxii as the Birth of a Son promised to Isaiah ch vii and ch ix 6. and where Isaiah seems to speak of himself when he saith Isa lxi 1. The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and the like But it is not hard to give a reason for this with which the ancient Jews were not unacquainted And it is this That though all these Predictions had been directed to those persons yet they had by no means their accomplishment in them nor these persons were in any degree intended and meant in the Prophecy To be particular Solomon was in Wars during the latter part of his Life and so he could not be that King of Peace spoken of in the Prophecy and his Kingdom was rent in his Son's time the smaller part of it falling to his share as the greater was seized by Jeroboam so far was the Kingdom of Solomon from being universal or everlasting Isai vii 14. The Son born to Isaiah neither had the Name of Emanuel nor could he be the Person intended by it as neither was his Mother a Virgin as the word in that Prophecy signifies And for the Prophet himself though the Spirit of the Lord was upon him and spoke by him as did it by all the other Prophets 2 Pet. 1.21 Yet that the Unction here spoken of Saadia Gaon Emunoth c. 18 D. Kimchi in rad 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Isaiah lxi 1. did not belong to him but to the Messias is acknowledged by the Jewish Writers and seems to have been so understood by those that heard our Saviour apply this Prophecy to himself Luk. iv 22. So that nothing was more judiciously done and more agreeable to the known Principles of the Synagogue than the Question proposed to Philip by the Eunuch who reading the liii of Isaiah asked from him Of whom did he speak of himself or of another Again It may be asked Why the Prophets called the Messias David and John Baptist Elias Not to trouble the Reader with any more than a mention of that fancy of
some of the Jews that held the Transmigration of Souls and say particularly That the Soul of Adam went into David and the Soul of David was the same with that of the Messias I say to pass by that the true Reason of such use of the Names of David and Elias is this because David was an excellent Type of the Messias that was to come out of his Loins Act. ii 30 31. And for John Baptist he came in the Spirit and Power of Elias Luk. 1.17 That is he was inspired with the same Spirit of Zeal and holy Courage that Elias was formerly acted with and employ'd it as Elias did in bringing his People to Repentance and Reformation 5. We ought to do the Jews that Justice as to acknowledge that from them it is that we know the true sense of all the Prophecies concerning the Messias in the Old Testament Which sense some Criticks seem not to be satisfied with seeking for a first accomplishment in other persons than in the Messias The Jews meaning and applying those Prophecies to the Messias in a mystical or a spiritual sense is founded upon a Reason that offers it self to the Mind of those that study Scripture with attention Before Jacob's Prophecy there was no time fixed for the Coming of the Messias but after the giving of that Prophecy Gen. xlix 10. there was no possibility of being deceived in the sense of those Prophecies which God gave from time to time full of the Characters of the Messias It was necessary 1. That the Kingdom should be in Judah and not cease till the time about which they expected the Coming of the Messias 2. That the lesser Authority called here the Law-giver should be also established in Judah and destroyed before the Coming of the Messias which we knew came to pass by the Reign of Herod the Great and some years before the Death of our Saviour And indeed the Talmudist say that forty years before the Desolation of the House of the Sanctuary Judgments of Blood were taken away from Israel Talm. Jerus l. Sanhedr c. dine mammonoth Talm. Bab. C. Sanhedr c. Hajou Bodekim And Raymondus Martini who writ this Pugio at the end of the XIIIth Century quotes Part III. Dist 3. c. 16. § 46. One R. Rachmon who says that when this happened they put on sackcloth and pull'd off their hair and said Wo unto us the Scepter is departed from Israel and yet the Messias is not come And therefore they who had this Prophecy before them could not mistake David nor Solomon nor Hezekiah for the Messias Nor could they deceive themselves so far as to think this Title was applicable to Zorobabel or any of his Successors In short there appeared not any one among the Jews before the Times of our Blessed Saviour that dared assume this Title of Messias although the Name of Anointed which the word Messias signifies had been given to several of their Kings as to David in particular But since Jesus Christ's coming many have pretended to it These things being so it is clear that the Prophecies which had not and could not have their accomplishment in those upon whose occasion they were first delivered were to receive their accomplishment in the Messias and consequently those Prophecies ought necessarily to be referred to him We ought by all means to be perswaded of this For we cannot think the Jews were so void of Judgment as to imagine that the Apostles or any one else in the World had a right to produce the simple words of the Old Testament and to urge them in any other sense than what was intended by the Writer directed by the Holy Ghost It must be his Sense as well as his Words that should be offered for proof to convince reasonable Men. But we see that the Jews did yield to such Proofs out of Scripture concerning the Messias in which some Criticks do not see the force of those Arguments that were convincing to the Jews They must then have believed that the true sense of such places was the literal sense in regard of the Messias whom God had then in view at his inditing of these Books and that it was not literal in respect of him who seems at first-sight to have been intended by the Prophecy And now I leave it to the Consideration of any unprejudiced Reader that is able to judge Whether if these Principles and Maxims I have treated of were unknown to the Jews the Apostles could have made any use of the Books of the Old Testament for their Conviction either as to the Coming of the Messias or the Marks by which he was distinguishable from all others or as to the several parts of his Ministry But this is a matter of so great importance as to deserve more pains to shew that Jesus Christ and his Apostles did build upon such Maxims as I have mentioned And therefore any that call themselves Christians should take heed how they deny the force and authority of that way of Traditional interpretation which has been anciently received in the Jewish Church CHAP. IV. That Jesus Christ and his Apostles proved divers points of the Christian Doctrine by this common Traditional Exposition received among the Jews which they could not have done at least not so well had there been only such a Literal Sense of those Texts which they alledged as we can find without the help of such Exposition IF we make some reflections which do not require a great deal of Meditation it is clear that Jesus Christ was to prove to the Jews that he was the Messias which they did expect many Ages ago and whose Coming they look'd on as very near He could not have done so if they had not been acquainted with their Prophetical Books and with those several Oracles which were contained in them Perhaps there might have been some difference amongst them concerning some of those Oracles because there were in many of them some Ideas which seem contrary one to another And that was almost unavoidable because the Holy Ghost was to represent the Messias in a deep humiliation and great suffering and in a great height of Glory But after all the method of calling the Jews was quite different from the method of calling the Gentiles They had the distinct knowledge of the chief Articles of Religion which the Heathen had not They had all preparations necessary for the deciding this great question Whether Jesus of Nazareth was the Messias or not They had the Sacred Books of the Old Testament they were acquainted with the Oracles as well as with the Law They longed after the coming of the Messias They had been educated all along and trained up in the expectation of him They had not only those Sacred Books in which the Messias was spoken of but many among them had gathered the Ideas of the Prophets upon that subject as we see by the Books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus And indeed we see that Jesus
the Son of the Free-woman and Israel according to the Flesh by Ishmael the Son of the Bond-woman and having thus brought unbelieving Israel into Ishmael's place he proceeds upon the Old Jewish Nation recited in Baal-Hatturim that Ishmael should pierce Isaac with an Arrow which they illustrate by Gen. xvi 12. instead whereof the Text saith only that he laughed at or mocked Isaac We see St. Paul Rom. x. 6. applies to the Gospel those words of Deut. xxx 11 12 13 14. which seem to be spoken of the Law given by Moses to the Jews But then the Old Synagogue applied these words of Moses to the times of the Messias as is clear from Jonathan's Targum on the place which is enough to justify St. Paul's Usage of the words We read in the Song of Zacharias Luk. 1.69 that these words are referred to the Messias he hath exalted the horn of his Anointed The very same words are pronounced by Hannah the Mother of Samuel 1 Sam. ii 10. where the Targum referrs them in like manner as the sense of the Synagogue The same Targum understands of the Messias that passage 2 Sam. xxiii 3. And the lxx have the like Idea with the Targum which is a farther Confirmation of the Tradition of the Synagogue It is certain this Notion of the Messias was very common among the Jews otherwise they would not have thrust it into their Targums on places where naturally it ought not to come in For instance It is said 1 Kings iv 33. That Solomon discoursed of all the Trees from the Cedar of Libanus even to the Hyssop that springeth out of the Wall Now the Remark of the Targum hereupon is this And he prophecied touching the Kings of the House of David which should rule in this present World as also in the World to come of the Messias 6. We see our Lord Jesus Christ was careful to instruct the Pharisees of the two different Characters of the Coming of the Messias Luk. xvii 20. Of which the one was to be obscure and followed with the Death of the Messias the other was to be glorious and acknowledged by the whole World Christ instructed them in this the rather to remove their mistakes through which they confounded his two Comings Though in truth they were both of them confessed by the Jews for some time after Christ's ascension into Heaven 7. We see that Christ himself Matth. xxi 16. and also his Apostle St. Paul 1 Cor. xv 27. Eph. i. 21. Heb. ii 6 7 8. apply the words of Psal viii to the Messias How could they do it were it not before the sense of the Synagogue Now that such was the sense of the Synagogue ye see till this day if we read what they say in their Rabboth upon the Song of Songs ch iv 1. and upon Ecclesiastes ch ix 1. that the Children were to make Acclamations at the Coming in of the Messias the second Redeemer according to those words of Psal viii 3. Ex ore infantium c. Lastly We see St. Paul Rom. x. 18. does refer the words of Psal xix 4. to the Preaching of the Apostles and saith Their sound went over all the Earth and their words to the end of the World What would an unbelieving Jew have said to this that Paul should apply the Psalmist's words in this manner But the Apostle was secure against this or any other Objection from the Jews if he used the words in the sense of their Synagogue And that he did so there is little reason to doubt The Encomiums which David gave to the Law of Moses they would most readily apply to the Law of the Messias And they expected he should have his Apostles to carry his Law throughout the World To this expectation of theirs the Psalmist's words were very applicable That the Divine Word is called the Sun Philo plainly affirms and if I take R. Tanchum aright he understands that it was the Messias that was called the Sun of Righteousness Mal. iv 2. St. John saw Christ in that figure of the Sun and his Apostles as twelve Stars and that in Heaven which to him is the state of the Gospel Rev. xxi 1. According to this figure in this Psalm the Sun of Righteousness is described as a Giant which rejoyceth to run a Race v. 5. And here is a description of his Course together with that of his Disciples and of the manner by which they made their Voices to be heard This Idea shocked R. Samuel in a Book he writ before his Conversion ch 18. which he communicated with a Rabin of Morocco And whoever considers that Idea of the Writer of the Book of Wisdom xviii 5. shall find it is no other than that of this xixth Psalm mixed a little with that Idea in the Canticles which the Old Jews refer to the Messias and with that of the Song of Isaiah v. touching the Messias which served the Jews for a Commentary to understand the Song of Solomon by I could gather a much greater number of Remarks on this Head but having brought as many here together as I take to be sufficient for the proving of what I have said I think I ought not to enlarge any further So I come next to search out the Store-house where we may find these Traditions of the Jews which Jesus Christ and his Apostles made use of either in explaining or confirming the Doctrines of the Gospel They must be found in the ancient Books of the Jews which remain among us such as the Apocryphal Books the Books of Philo the Jew and the Chaldee Paraphrases on the Old Testament The Authority of all these ought to be well established Let us begin by the Apocryphal Books some of which Mr. N. hath ridiculed very boldly Then we shall consider what he has said to Philo whose Writings Mr. N. hath endeavoured to render useless in this Controversy How justly we shall consider in the next Chapters CHAP. V. Of the Authority of the Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament ALthough the Protestants have absolutely rejected the Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament which the Church of Rome make use of in Controversies as if they were of the same authority with the Books of the Law and Prophets notwithstanding they keep them as Books of a great antiquity And we make use of their authority not to prove any Doctrine which is in dispute as if they contained a Divine Revelation and a decision of an inspired Writer but to witness what was the Faith of the Jewish Church in the time when the Authors of those Apocryphal Books did flourish Any body who sees the Socinians making use of the Authorities of Artemas or of Paulus Samosatenus to prove that the Christian Church was in their opinion must grant the same authority to the Books of Wisdom Ecclesiasticus and the like touching the Sentiment of the Jewish Church in the age of those Writers Grotius a great Author for the Socinians was
so well satisfied of the truth of what I advance that he thought fit to Comment those very Apocryphal Books and to shew that they followed almost always the Ideas and the very words of the Authors of the Old Testament But as he was a Man of a deep sense seeing that they might be turned against the Socinian cause which he favoured too much he did things which he judged fit to make their authority useless against the Socinians And first he advanced without any proof that those things which were so like to the Ideas of the New Testament had been inserted in those Books by Christians according to their notions and not according to the notions of the Synagogue 2ly He endeavoured to give another sense to the places which some Fathers in the second and third Century had quoted from these Books to prove the Doctrine of the Trinity and the Divinity of our Saviour Now since the Socinian Authors have employed against the authority of these Apocryphal Books the very Solutions which Grotius made use of to lessen their authority it is necessary being resolved to quote them for the settling of the Jewish Tradition to shew how much Grotius whose steps the Socinians trod in was out in his Judgment 1. Then I suppose with Grotius that those Apocryphal Books were written by several Jewish Authors many years before Jesus Christ appeared The third Book of the Macchabees which is indeed the first hath been written by a Jew of Egypt under Ptolomaeus Philopater that is about two hundred years before the Birth of our Saviour It contains the History of the Persecution of the Jews in Egypt and was cited by Josephus in his Book de Macchabaeis The first Book of Macchabees as we call it now hath been written in Judea by a Jew and originally in Hebrew which is lost many Centuries ago We have the translation of it which hath been quoted by Josephus who gives often the same acccount of things as we have in that Book It hath been written probably 150. years before the Birth of our Saviour The second Book of Macchabees hath originally been written in Greek in Egypt and is but an extract of the four Books of Jason the Grecian a Jew of Egypt who had writ the History of the Persecutions which the Jews of Palestina suffered under the Reign of Antiochus Epiphanés and his Successors The Book of Ecclesiasticus hath been written Originally in Hebrew by Jesus the Son of Syrac about the time of Ptolomy Philadelphus that is about 280. years before Jesus Christ and was Translated in Greek by the Grandson of Jesus the Son of Syrac under Ptolomy Euergetes Some dispute if that Ptolomy is the first or the second which is not very material since there is but a difference of 100. years R. Azaria de Rubeis in his Book Meor Enaiim ch 22. witnesseth that Ecclesiasticus is not rejected now by the Jews but is received among them with an unanimous consent and David Ganz saith that they put it in old times among the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is the Hagiographes So in his Tsemac David ad A. 3448. The Book of Wisdom according to Grotius his Judgment is more ancient having been written in Hebrew under Simon the High-Priest who flourished under Ptolomeus Lagus Grotius thinks that the Greek Translation we have of that Book was made by some Christian who hath foisted into that Book many things which belong more to a Christian Writer than a Jew He raises such an accusation against the Translator of Ecclesiasticus But it is very easie to confute such a bold Conjecture First because that Book was in Chaldaick among the Jews till the Thirteenth Century as we see by Ramban in his Preface upon the Pentateuch and they never objected such an Interpolation but lookt upon it as a Book that was worthy of Salomon and probably his Works It was the Judgment of R. Azarias de Rubeis in the last Century Imre bina ch 57. The Epistle of Baruch and of Jeremy seem to Grotius the Writings of a Pious Jew who had a mind to exhort his People to avoid Idolatry And 't is very probable that it was Penned under the Persecutions of Antiochus when it was not sure to any to write in favour of the Jewish Religion under his own name The Book of Tobith seems to have been writ originally in Chaldaick and was among the Jews in St. Jerom's time who knowing not the Chaldaick Tongue called for a Jew to his assistance to render it into Hebrew that so he might render it in Latin as he saith in his Preface to Chromatius and Heliodorus Grotius supposes the Book to be very ancient Others believe but without any ground that it was Translated into Greek by the Seventy So that it would have been writ more than 250. years before Jesus Christ Whatsoever Conjecture we may form upon the Antiquity of it it is certain it was in great esteem among Christians in the second Century since we see that Clemens Alexandrinus and Irenaeus have followed his fancy of seven created Angels about the Throne of God and took that Doctrine for a Truth although we see no such Idea among the Jews who have the Translation of that Book but do not now consider it very much Grotius thinks that the Book of Judith contains not a true History but an Ingenious Comment of the Author who lived under Antiochus Epiphanés before the Profanation of the Temple by that Tyrant to exhort the Jewish Nation to expect a wonderful Deliverance from such a Tyranny which they groaned under And we see no reason to discard such a Conjecture although R. Azarias thinks Imre bina ch 51. that this History was alluded to in the Book of Esdras ch 4.15 He judges the same of the Additions to the Book of Daniel viz. the Prayer of Azaria the Song of the Three Children in the Furnace and of the History of Susanna he looks upon them as written by some Hellenist Jew So the Additions to the Book of Esther he judges to be the work of some Hellenist who invented the Story which were afterwards admitted among the Holy Writings because they were Pious and had nothing which could be lookt upon as contrary to the Jewish Religion Grotius saith nothing of the third and fourth of Esdras and hath not judged them fit to be Commented probably because they are not accounted in the Canon of the Church of Rome And indeed the fourth is only extant in Latin But after all a Man must have viewed the third with very little judgment who cannot perceive first that it is certainly the work of an ancient Jew before Jesus Christ his time 2ly That it was among the Jews as a Book of great Authority Josephus p. 362. follows the Authority of that third Book of Esdras in the History of Zorobabel We have not ancienter Writers than Clemens Alexandrinus St. Cyprian and St. Ambrose who have quoted the 4th Book of
thus 1. we find in many places the connexion of one History with another which is very often the imagination of a Rabbin who fancied what he pleased and fathered it upon Moses 2. We find Explications in these later Targums different from the former ones yet added to the former with an impudence not to be endured and this in several places 3. We there find long Narrations which have no other foundation than their method of explaining Scripture by the way of Notarikon as they call it as where we read of the five Sins of Esau which he committed on the same day in which he sold his birthright to Jacob and in pursuance of their manner of explaining Scripture by Gematria of which Rittangel on Jetzira has given some examples p. 31 32 33. But all this makes nothing against the authority of those places in the Paraphrase where they do little more than render the Text out of Hebrew into Chaldee In them there was no occasion to shew any more than the sense of the words such as the Paraphrasts had received by Tradition from their Forefathers Whereas the Authors of those Additions thereby made a shew of Learning out of the common road and gave themselves the pleasure to see their own fictions come into such credit that they were received as the Oracles of God But beyond that we must take notice that as on one hand those Targums have been enlarged by so many Additions so on the other hand they have been altered in many places and new Ideas substituted to the old To shew the alteration which was made in those Targums by Modern Jews we can remark a thing which hath been often taken notice of by Buxtorf in his Lexicon Talmud viz. that there are many places cited from those Targums 500 years ago by the Author of Aroule that are not to be found in them as they are now in Print So we can prove clearly that new Ideas have been put in instead of the old chiefly upon the points controverted between Jews and Christians For in many places where St. Jerome in his Comments upon the Prophets brings the common explication of the Jews as agreeing with the explication of Christians we find the Targum brings an explication quite different from what it was to be according to St. Jerome's account It appears by this the Jews have done in their Books the same thing which Papists have done in the Books of the Fathers They have added many things to help their Cause and they have cut out many places which might have done great service to Truth As for the Additions then I will scarce cite any of them but when it is evident that they speak the sense of the Ancients and truly whatever one may say of the Corruptions of these Jewish Paraphrases I will maintain that it is as easie for an attentive Reader to distinguish these Corruptions from the ancient Text which it seems Arias Montanus had a design to do in a particular Treatise as it is for one that looks on an old Pot or Kettle to tell where the Tinker has been at work and to distinguish his Clouts from the Original metal The ancient pieces have a sort of simplicity that makes them to be valued and which easily shews their antiquity The Additions are the rambling fancies of bold Commentators which they devised in later times as occasion required and thrust them upon the ancient Paraphrasts who lived in those times when there was no such occasion nor could they foresee that there would be any such in after-times As for example we do not find that the Jews before Christ's time ever spoke of two Messias the one the Son of David who was to reign gloriously the other a suffering Messias the Son of Joseph of the Tribe of Ephraim The reason is plain for they had no occasion for that fancy of a suffering Messias That arose upon their Disputes with the Christians who proved that the Sufferings of Christ were no other than what the Messias was to suffer according to the Prophecies of Scripture At first the Jews tried other ways to avoid the force of these Prophecies but when no other would do they came to this to devise another Messias the Son of Joseph and to give him the Sufferings which the Scripture attributes to the Messias the Son of David In a word all these Conceits of which the greatest part of these Additions do consist do so evidently demonstrate their Novelty that when one is acquainted with a little of the History of the World as well as that of the Jews it is scarce possible that he should take them for the Text of Jonathan or of the ancient Paraphrasts Besides all this in the Modern Paraphrases themselves we find very often these words Another Targum and sometimes yet Another Targum which shews that the following words are not the ancient Targum but are the Additions of some Modern Authors whom the Copyers of the Paraphrasts have joyned as a new light to the ancient Whether the Jews's inserting such things into their Paraphrases has been out of fondness of these Discoveries which appeared to them new or whether they have found it turn to account to insert these Additions in the Body of their ancient Paraphrases thereby to enhance the value of them or whether they thought by publishing them under the Names of those ancient Commentators whose Authority is so venerable to wrest from the Christians all the advantages they might draw from any thing in their Paraphrases the things that they added being oftentimes contrary to what the Ancients did teach is a secret among the Jews but a secret little worth since the Providence of God has preserved the Apocryphal Books and the Books of Philo which can give us so much light into the knowledg of what is ancient and what is modern in these Paraphrases I will add nothing upon this matter but this that we see in the most ancient Books of the Jews as in the Books call'd Rabboth Mechista and in their old Midrashim almost all composed before the 7th Century and in the Talmud of Babylon the same Ideas and the same Doctrine which we meet in the Apocryphal Books and in Philo's Writings And those Ideas have been constantly followed by the most considerable part of the Jews those very Men who have their name from their constant sticking to the old Tradition of their Forefathers CHAP. VIII That the Authors of the Apocryphal Books did acknowledg a Plurality and a Trinity in the Divine Nature HAving finished our General Reflexions on the Traditional Sense of the Scriptures which was receiv'd among the Jews before the time of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Books wherein we can find such a Tradition it is time we should come to the chief matter we designed to treat of The Question is Whether the Jews before Christ's time had any notion of a Trinity For the Socinians would make us believe that Justin
Martyr having been formerly a Platonist and then turning Christian was the first that invented this Doctrine or rather adopted it out of the Platonick into the Christian Divinity and that neither the Jewish nor the Christian Church had ever before conceived any Notion of a Trinity or of any Plurality in the Divine Essence The Doctrine of the Trinity supposes the Divine Essence to be common to three Persons distinguished from one another by incommunicable Properties These Persons are called by St. John 1 Joh. v. 7. the Father the Word and the Spirit There are Three saith he that bear Witness in Heaven the Father the Word and the Spirit and these Three are One. This Personal distinction supposes the Father not to be the Son nor the Holy Ghost and that the Son is not the Father nor the Holy Spirit Revelation teaching that the Son is begotten of the Father and that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son or from the Father by the Son And this distinction is the foundation of their Order and of their Operations For although the Unity of the Divine Nature makes it necessary that these three Persons should all co-operate in the Works of God ad extra as we call them nevertheless there being a certain order among the Persons and a distinction founded in their Personal Properties the Holy Scripture mentioneth an Oeconomy in their Operations so that one work ad extra is ascribed to the Father another to the Son and a third to the Holy Spirit But this distinction of Persons all partaking of the same common Nature and Majesty hinders not their being equally the Object of that Worship which Religion commands us to pay to God I touch this matter but very briefly because my business is only to examine whether the Jews had any notion of this Doctrine And our Opinion is this that though the Gospel has proposed that Doctrine more clearly and distinctly yet there were in the Old Testament sufficient notices of it so that the Jews before Christ's time did draw from thence their Notions concerning it On the contrary the Socinians maintain that this Doctrine is not only alike foreign to the Books of the Old and New Testament but that it was altogether unknown to the Jews before and after Christ till Justin Martyr first brought it into the Church In opposition to which I affirm for truth 1. That the Jews before Jesus Christ had a notion of a Plurality in God following herein certain Traces of this Doctrine that are to be found in the Books of Moses and the Prophets 2. That the same Jews following the Scriptures of the Old Testament did acknowledg a Trinity in the Divine Nature I begin the Examination of this Subject by considering the Notions of the Authors of the Apocryphal Books Now one cannot expect that these Authors should have explained their mind with relation to the notions of a Plurality and of a Trinity in the Godhead as if they had been Interpreters of the Books of the Old Testament But they express it sufficiently without that and speak in such a manner that no body can deny that they must have had those very Notions when it appears that their Expressions in speaking of God supposes the Notions of a Plurality in the Godhead and of a Trinity in particular Let us consider some of those Expressions 1. They were so full of the notion of a Plurality which is expressed in Gen. i. 26. that the Author of Tobith hath used it as the Form of Marriage among the Jews of old Let us make unto him an aid So Chap. 8.6 Thou madest Man and gavest him Eve his Wife for an helper and stay of them came Mankind Thou hast said It is not good that Man should be alone Let us make unto him an aid like unto himself whereas in the Hebrew it is only I shall make 2ly We see that they acknowledg the Creation of the World by the Word of God and by the Holy Ghost as David Psal xxxiii 6. So the Book of Wisdom Ch. ix 1. O God of my Fathers and Lord of mercy who hath made all things with thy Word or more properly by thy Word as it is explained in the 2. vers and ver 4. he asketh Wisdom in these words Give me Wisdom that sitteth by thy Throne And v. 17. Thy counsel who hath known except thou give Wisdom and send thy Holy Spirit from above Where he distinguisheth the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Wisdom and the Holy Spirit from God to whom he directs his Prayer And so the Book of Judith ch xvi 13 14. I will sing unto the Lord a new Song O Lord thou art great and glorious wonderful in strength and invincible Let all creatures serve thee for thou speakest and they were made thou didst send forth thy Spirit and it created them and there is none that can resist thy voice 3ly They speak of the Emanation of the Word from God Those are the words of the Book of Wisdom ch vii 25. For she is the breath of the power of God and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty therefore can no defiled thing fall into her That description of Wisdom deserves to be considered as we have it in the same place ver 22 23 24 25 26. For Wisdom which is the worker of All things taught me for in her is an understanding spirit holy one only manifold subtil lively clear undefiled plain not subject to hurt loving the thing that is good quick which cannot be letted ready to do good Kind to man stedfast sure free from care having all power over-seeing all things and going through all understanding pure and most subtil Spirits For Wisdom is more moving than any motion she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness For she is the brightness of the everlasting Light the unspotted mirrour of the power of God and the image of his Goodness And indeed St. Paul Heb. i. 3. hath borrowed from thence what we read touching the Son that he is the brightness of God's glory and the express Image of his Person So the Book of Ecclesiasticus saith ch xxv 3. That it is come out of the mouth of the most High 4ly There are several Names in Scripture which serve to express the second Person the Son the Word the Wisdom the Angel of the Lord but who is the Lord indeed Now those Authors use all these Names to express a second Person For they acknowledge a Father and a Son by a natural consequence Thus the Author of Ecclesiasticus ch li. 10. I called upon the Lord the father of my Lord in the same way as David speaks of the Messias Psal ii and Psal cx and as Solomon in his Proverbs ch viii 25. as of a Son in the bosom of his Father and ch xxx 4. What is his Sons name if thou canst tell They speak of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as
lectitant Nazaraei Salvator inducitur lâ—quens Modo me arripuit Mater mea Spiritus Sanctus This Passage of the Nazarene's Gospel would never have been understood if we had not known that the Jews call the Holy Spirit Imma Mother as well as Binah Understanding as we see in Zohar and other Cabalists And perhaps from hence Philo de Temul calleth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Mother of the World Nor are we to fancy that the Talmudists oppose the Cabalists herein No Maimonides who is a Talmudist agrees in this with the Cabalists as appears from his Book de fundament legis ch 2. Mor. Neb. p. 1. ch 68. Lastly Nor is it to be urged against what I have said that the Jews have formal Disputes against the Doctrine of the Trinity as Saadiah Sepher Emunoth ch 2. Maim Mor. Neb. p. 1. c. 71. For we may remember 1. That all their Disputes with the Christians are built on this wrong bottom That the Christians are Tritheists and deny the Unity of the Deity 2. That almost all those who dispute against the Christians on this Head contradict themselves in their Writings that are not Polemical but are drawn up in cool Blood out of the heat of dispute of which Saadiah Haggaen as I have shewed before is a Proof 3. The Study of their Rites having been the great business of the Jews for many Centuries it hath happen'd that their greatest Authors have applied themselves but little to the Study of the Traditions concerning their Doctrines In Maimonides one of the greatest Men the Jews ever had we have a plain Example of it He tells us That it was towards the declension of his Life before he could turn himself to study their Traditions and he laments his Misfortune in that he could not begin this Study sooner This is related by R. Elias Chaiim who saith he had it from a Letter of Maimonides to one of his Scholars I have said before that these Notions of the Cabalist Jews are received in all parts of the World where the Jews are found in any numbers And I say it not without good reason For 1. The Rabboth are Books received whereever there are Jews Now this Book begins with the Notion of a Second Person 2. For the Cabalists they are dispersed with the other Jews and in all places where Learning is cultivated and Study encouraged there they are to be found 3. We may well infer the Universality of this Tradition from the several different Authors that have written alike on this Subject without any Consent or Communication together that we know of R. Saadiah Hagaon writ in Babylon in the Tenth Century He was an Egyptian by Birth and the Translator of the Pentateuch into Arabick and wrote a bitter Book against the Christians which hath been printed at Thessalonica and since at Amsterdam where he disputes against the Christians Trinity yet he teaches not only the Unity but this distinction from everlasting in the Deity R. Moses Bar Nachman in the Thirteenth Century and R. Judas the Levite writ in Spain and yet we see how they agree in their Notions with the Cabalists which flourished other-where R. Aaron writ at Babylon and yet his Notions are as exactly like those of Spain as if he had trod in their Steps R. Moses Botril writ in France and he teaches the same things He that would see the Places at large may consult their Comment on the Book Jetzira It is now time to return to the Judgment of the Ancient Synagogue and to consider how it agrees or differs with us in the other Matters we have in hand CHAP. XII That the Jews had a distinct Notion of the Word as of a Person and of a Divine Person too A Great part of the Dispute we have with the Socinians depending on the true meaning of the first Chapter of St. John's Gospel where the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is spoken of as being he that created the World and was at length made Flesh and whom we Christians look upon as the promised Messias I think I can't do the Truth a greater service than in clearing this Notion of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and shewing what thoughts the ancient Jews had concerning it Socinus confesses that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a Person for he owns that St. John did describe the Man Christ Jesus by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and attributed to him the Creation of the Church which is according to him the new World But here in England the followers of Socinus will not stand by this Exposition but understand by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that virtue by which God created Heaven and Earth as Moses relates Gen. i. They obstinately deny this Virtue to be a Person i. e. an Intelligent Subsistence and rather look upon it as a Divine Attribute which they say was particularly discovered in the Mission of Jesus Christ for the Salvation of Mankind It cannot be denied us that St. John being one of the Circumcision did write with an especial respect to the Jews that they might understand him and receive benefit by it and therefore it cannot be doubted but that when he called Jesus Christ the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he used a word that was commonly known among the Jews of those times in which he lived Otherwise if he had used this word in a sense not commonly known to the Jews he would have signified to them the new Idea he had affixed to it But he gives not the least intimation of any thing new in it though he uses the word so many times in the very beginning of his Gospel It is certain therefore that he used it in the sense wherein it was then commonly understood by the Jews Now the Idea the Jews had of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was the same they had of a real and proper Person that is a living Intelligent free Principle of Action That this was their Notion of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Word we shall prove by the Works of Philo and the Chaldee Paraphrases To begin with Philo He conceives the Word to be a true and proper cause For he declares in about a hundred places that God created the World by his Word He conceived the Word to be an Intelligent Cause Because in him according to Philo are the Original Ideas of all things that are expressed in the Works of the Creation De Opif. p. 3. G. 4. C.D. He makes the Word a Cooperator with God in the Creation of Man and says that God spake those words to him Let Us make Man Gen. i. 26. It may be added that he calls the Word the Image of God and makes Man the Image of this Image * Lib. Quis rer Divin Haer. p. 400. E. F. These are some of the Characters that represent the Word as a true Person But there are others no less demonstrative of this Truth As 1. where Philo asserts that the 〈◊〉
very words he shews he was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because the Jews believe till this day that although the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is Jehovah nevertheless the Father is the Superior Light and they call it the great Luminary R. Men. fol. 135. col 2. He saith to his Disciples Joh. xv 16. Whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my Name he may give it you to hint to them that he was the Shekinah by whom they were to have access to the Father The same of whom God said My Name is in him as the Jews acknowledge R. Menach fol. 56. col 3. fol. 53. col 4. He speaks of the Holy Ghost Joh. xv 26. as proceeding from the Father and the Jews have this Idea when they suppose that the third Enumeration or Person which they name Bina and which they render by the Holy Ghost as you see in the famous Book Saare Ora proceeds from the first by the second So Zohar and the Book Habbahir quoted by R. Menach fol. 3. col 1. In the same Chapter he represents his Emanation from the Father as the Jews conceived the Emanation of the Wisdom or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the first Enumeration from which it draws all the Influxes and Blessings This is the Doctrine of R. Nechounia ben Cana and of the Rabboth quoted by R. Menac fol. 1. col 2. He saith Joh. xvii 21. That all may be one as thou Father art in me and I in thee Just according to the Idea of the Jews who say of the time of the Messias that God then shall be one and his Name one Zech. xiv R. Men. fol. 135. col 4. We see in the Acts of the Apostles ch vii 52. St. Stephen reproaching the Jews that they sold the just for Money What is the Ground which St. Stephen builds upon It is clear according to the Jewish Notions who give to the Shekinah the name of Just and apply to him the words of Amos ch ii 6. where it is spoken of the just sold for Money R. Men. fol. 17. col 3. fol. 19. col 2. St. Paul Act. xx 28. saith that God hath redeemed the Church by his Blood and that according the Jewish Notions whose constant Doctrine is That the Salvation of Israel is to be made by God himself who refer to him Psal xxii and the place of Zechary ch ix 9. and who pretend that the Shekinah shall be their Redeemer R. Men. fol. 19. col 4. fol. 58. col 4. fol. 59. col 1. The same St. Paul 1 Cor. xv calls Jesus Christ the Adam from above shewing that he followed the Notions of the Jews who call the Shekinah the Adam from above the heavenly Adam the Adam blessed which are the Titles which they give only to God R. Men. fol. 14. col 3. He makes a long and deep Reflection Ephes v. upon the love of Jesus Christ to the Church who gave himself for her Redemption he considers the Church as his Wife and seeks in the first Match between Adam and Eve a great and a deep Mystery and a Type of that between Jesus Christ and the Church In all these he follows the Jewish Notions who look upon the Shekinah as the Bride of the Church R. Men. fol. 15. col 3. St. Paul Hebr. vi and vii considers Melchisedek as a Type of Jesus Christ and that according to the Notion of the Jews who agree that Melchisedek was the Type of the Shekinah which they call the King of Peace and the Just R. Men. fol. 18. col 1. fol. 31. col 1. He calls God Hebr. x. a consuming fire and applies to Jesus Christ that very Idea But he speaks so after the Jewish manner for they believe the power of judging the World belongs to the Shekinah and they refer to him what is said in Exodus that God is a consuming fire R. Menach fol. 6. col 4. fol. 8. col 3. He supposes Hebr. xii that Jesus Christ gave the Law and spoke upon Mount Sinai but this according to the Jewish Idea of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Shekinah which they believe to have given the Law and to have appeared then and to have spoken with the Israelites R. Men. fol. 56. col 2. Jesus Christ calls himself Apoc. i. the First and the Last because Isaiah hath spoken so ch xlix but chiefly according to the Notion of the Jews who did acknowledge the Word to be the first King and that he shall be the last all Nations being to be subjected to him after the destruction of the fourth and last Monarchy spoken of in the iid and in the viith of Daniel He calls himself King of Kings Apoc. xix 16. But exactly according to the Jewish Notion which is that such a Title belongs to Jehovah and to the Shekinah that is Jehovah R. Men. fol. 64. col 2. So in the last Chapter of the Revelation xxii 2. you see that it is spoken of the Tree of Life as of the Eternal Food What is that Tree of Life according to the Jewish Notion They conceive 't is the very Shekinah or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 who is the food of Angels as saith R. Men. fol. 65. col 2. fol. 66. col 4. And they give him that Name in relation to the happiness it will cause to those which shall be saved by him R. Men. fol. 143. col 3. fol. 146. col 1. I could easily enlarge much more upon this Article but it should be more fit for a Comment upon the New Testament than for such a Work which we are now engaged in What has been said shews sufficiently that the first Christians followed exactly the steps of the Apostles and that the Apostles and Jesus Christ himself followed exactly the Notions of the ancient Synagogue CHAP. XXII An Answer to some Exceptions taken from Expressions used in the Gospel WHat has been said about the Notions which the Writers of the Gospels the Apostles and the first Christians had of the Messias shews plainly that they were the same that were then common among the Jews But because some Objections are made against what has been said I will for the satisfaction of the Reader examine those which seem most material and might prejudice which I have already established The first is raised from our Saviour's Expressions when he speaks of himself It is that which St. Chrysostome T. i. Hom. 32. observes that although Christ declared himself to be God as appears by his way of speaking all along and named himself the Son of God yet he never actually took upon him the Name or Title of God while he lived upon Earth Which seems very strange for there was great reason to expect that he should have exprest himself more clearly upon so important an Article on which the Authority of the Christian Religion does depend I answer first that Christ used that caution for fear of destroying in the opinion of
mouths and which was near really in their hearts Come let us kill him and let us seise on his inheritance And not only out of hatred but out of policy also they opposed him that they might keep themselves safe and quiet They lookt for a Conquering Messias who should subdue all Nations and bring all their Enemies under them But here they saw Christ a Man destitute of all human succours necessary to bring about so great a design They thought it therefore more advisable to set him aside without following his Doctrine than to espouse a Quarrel which might incense the Romans against them and cause the ruin of their Nation This they meant by saying The Romans shall come and take away both our place and Nation To be satisfied of this one ought to observe that Speculative Doctrines are not the common Rules of publick Deliberations and Counsels Let the Papists be an instance of it They proceed in their decisions upon the Principle of the Pope's Infallibility when at the same time hardly any one of them believes it and many do confute it both by reasons and matters of fact not to be answered The Jews likewise though they knew themselves to be fallible enough yet Papists like they acted in their publick Assembly as if they had been infallible And this was enough to satisfie those who could not distinguish or would not further inquire into the business which was the case of most ordinary people Accordingly of the two Thieves that were Crucifyed with Christ one had observed the Injustice of that violent hatred the Jews had for him But the other curs'd him looking on him as a false Prophet justly condemned by the greatest Authority known to him in the World Lastly It is certain that when a decision is once made the People for the most part do not much inquire into the justice or reasonableness of it but quietly acquiesce in it and relye upon the Authority of those who made it The Jews had a particular reason to do so being assured that their Religion came from God and not seeing any danger in professing it as it was delivered to them by their Forefathers And this is now the only reason they have for professing Judaism Neither is it to be wondered at that the Notions the old Jews had of it should make but little impression on their minds no more than the Doctrines of their Doctors which they call Cabalists because they follow the Traditions of the old Synagogue For their late Teachers moved by a spirit of contradiction have raised many new Questions about the Characters of the Messias and other like Articles of Religion controverted between them and the Christians by which they have plunged their People into inextricable difficulties and they are so exasperated now against us that they can hardly be calm enough to take notice of those visible Contradictions which may be seen between their ancient Writers and their now Doctors writing upon the same subject They deny now adays what the old Jews freely granted and their whole study is to keep their People in a blind submission to their Authority Insomuch that they have this Maxim amongst them that the People are obliged to believe that the right Hand is the left when their Rabbies have once so declared But I shall make some more particular Reflections upon the proceedings of the now Jews and shew that their obstinacy is altogether unreasonable and that there is no fairness at all in their way of disputing against Christians CHAP. XXIII That the Jews have laid aside the Old Explications of their Forefathers the better to defend themselves in their Disputes with the Christians Eus dem Ev. Lib. iv 1. IT hath been long since observed by Eusebius that the Jews have varied from the belief of their Fathers as to the sense of several places in the Old Testament and it is no more than they themselves freely own in their Disputes with us The spirit of Disputation hath wrought much the same effect among the Papists as Maldonat was not ashamed to confess on St. John ch vi Of this alteration in the Jewish Sentiments which is acknowledged by one of the Socinian Writers viz. Volzogeniùs in Luc. xxiv 27. R. Salomon Jarchi fully witnesses He was the most famous Commentator the Jews had about five hundred years ago yet he in his Exposition of Psal xxi 1. hath these words Our Masters did understand this Psalm of the Messias as indeed they did Gemar on Talm. tr Massechet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ch v. Targ. on this Psalm ver 8 18. but it is better to understand it of David himself that we may the more easily reply to the Hereticks that abuse some passages in it But this is not the only place where the Jews have changed the faith of their ancient Masters There are many others examples of it some of the chief of which I shall produce after I have observed the several degrees by which they arrived to so wide a disagreement with their Ancestors 1. Their Doctors as I have already noted did early introduce new Notions of several Texts of the Old Testament I speak not now of their Fabulous fancies only such as that of Philo who Lib. de Septenar supposes the Voice of God uttered on Mount Sinai to have been heard in all parts of the World to which the Jews Pirke Eliez c. 41. Tankuma fol. 73. col 1. have added many more new conceits but I speak of such their Explications as were contrary to and in effect did overthrow the ancient Notions of the Prophets As for instance where Philo seems in some manner to maintain the Transmigration * Lib. de Somn. pag. 455. of Souls where he delivers the Doctrine of the Souls Preexistence before the Body †De Mund. p. 891. where he seems to hint the Eternity of Matter according to Plato * Mund. op p. 214. De mund Incor pag. 728. A. De Viat off p. 669. F. although it is certain in his Treatise of Providence he doth assert the Creation of Matter 2ly It is observable that after the Emperour Hadrian's time some of the Jews who expected the Messias according to Daniel's Prophecy of the Seventy Weeks but were out in their Accounts of those Weeks had almost intirely lost the hopes of his coming This we gather from the History of R. Hillel in Gemara tit Sanhed fol. 98. col 2. fol. 99. col 1. who maintained that the Promise of the Messias was accomplished in the Person of Hezekiah and that there was no more Messiah to be expected by the Jews Now they say that this Hillel was the Grandson to R. Juda the Compiler of the Misna 3. We see how careless they have been in preserving the Apocryphal Books formerly in esteem with them and which indeed but for the Christians had totally perished Philo has borrowed some of his Notions in his 2d Book of Agriculture and let any