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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36090	A Discourse concerning the nominal and real trinitarians		1695 (1695)	Wing D1589; ESTC R29734	36,049	42

or of any others But then say I the Realists would cover such flat Impossibilities such gross Contradictions to common Sense in a Word such Monstrosities under the cloak of Mystery that they have infinitely more need of that wretched Blind than the Nominals who only by explaining their Terms which Custom and Law have imposed on them go a great way in fairly satissying all Difficulties and when they cannot perfectly account for them they make some small use of Mystery To understand this we must take a short view of the polite happy Things said by them both The Nominals teach there is but one numerical God or one God in Number who yet is three Persons That the Father is God the Son is God the H. Ghost is God yet all three are but one God one God in Number one self-same God They are perfectly aware this were equally Impossible and Ridiculous if 't were not dextrously interpreted and explained it would not be Mystery or Mysterious Truth but notorious Falshood and Absurdity they well know if wholly left in these Terms without an Explication Therefore they declare that by the term Persons and the words Father Son and Spirit they mean not with the Vulgar several subsisting Persons that is to say So many intellectual Substances with each his own particular Life Understanding Will and power of Action for they confess there is in God but one Substance Life Understanding Will Energy in number but three Persons in God are so many States or Respects or Properties or Relations or something equivalent to these of the same ore Divine intellectual Substance or Nature And in this Sense also according to the Nominals the words Father Son and Spirit when used of God are to be understood namely as Relations or States all of them sustained by one and the same subsisting Person or intellectual Substance not as in so many Subjects or as denominating variously three distinct Beings They show that so the Classical Authors both Greek and Latin spoke and as their Language was adopted by the Church in speaking of God with great Propriety so in process of Time the use of Words being much altered occasion was given to introduce the Heresy of the Realists who unlearnedly understanding the old Words in a novel Sense have brought into the Church three Gods instead of one Again they the Nominals say the second Person of the Trinity or of God was Incarnate in the Man Christ Jesus in such manner that thereby the Lord Christ is God as well as Man This also is called by that Mystical Name the Hypostatical or personal Union But they mean no more by it than this that God was as much and truly united to the Humanity as the Human Nature is capable of that is to say in a most extraordinary marvellous and to us unaccountable Manner When they say O God the Father have Mercy on us O God the Son O God the Holy Ghost have Mercy on us they intend not hereby three Objects of Worship or so many several Patrons and Helpers but only as these are so many Relations and Respects of the Deity either to himself or to us so they invocate him by these Distinctions or in these several Properties and Relations In short the whole Mystery consists in the Terms they use and scarce at all if at all in the Sense or things intended by those Terms which things or sense are received and imbraced by us the Unitarians for we admit the whole Doctrine as here declared and explained But 't is quite otherwise with the Realists their Non-sense is in the thing meant not in the Words or Terms They say there are three Divine subsisting Persons three infinite Spirits three omniscient Minds three distinct Almighties as distinct as so many Angels or Men each of them as truly properly adequately and perfectly God as each Man is a Man and each Angel an Angel and yet all of them are but one God This we confess is Mystery with a Witness the Mystery every one sees lies not in the Words and Terms but the thing it self is absurd and impossible to cry Mystery here is to profess that by Mystery we mean Contradiction and Impossibilities The Excuses they make for this Mystery are as mysterious or more mysterious than the Mystery for which they would apologize For to say these three most perfect Gods become one God by their mutual Accord and Love is as if you should pretend that by Love and Accord three Men are one Man And when they say they are one God by likeness or sameness of Nature and Properties and by being in one another they might equally say that two or more Angels because they have the same Nature and Properties and being Spiritual do immeate or are in one another are thereby one Angel These Explications of their Mystery are assuredly as great Mysteries as direct Contradictions to Reason and common Experience as the Doctrine it self of one God and three Divine subsisting Persons But why do the Realists expect that Mankind will be perswaded to accept such palpable abnegations of all consistent Sense for Mystery words that are hardly Sense or of either ambiguous or obscure meaning may be put off with some or other who care not for the Trouble of considering for Mystery but gross Contradictions obvious and notorious Non-sense will never be mistaken for Mystery 'T is true People may be constrained to profess it or to subscribe to it but they never believe it no not when through a long habit of Submission to the Commands of others they seem to themselves to believe it I doubt not that the Doctors of the Church of Rome seem to themselves to believe the Transubstantiation because having accustom'd themselves to submit to the Declarations of the Church they have never suffered any reluctance to arise in their Minds against any of those Declarations notwithstanding I am perswaded not a Man of them truly believes that Mystery were all Fears and Hopes and other blassing Interests removed they would presently perceive that in very Deed they believe it not their Reasons never assented to an impossible Proportion nor could assent but only as I said through a long habit of Submission they did not discern that they assented not to the Church's Declarations And this I believe is true also of all who pretend or seem to believe any other inconsistent or impossible Doctrines The Tritheism of the Realists not grounded on the H. Scripture BUT this once more 't is not on a probable or prudent Ground that the Realists sometimes pretend that the Tritheism they impose has such a Foundation in Holy Scripture that as on the one side to believe the Trinity in their Notion of it is a violence done to Reason so not to own and profess it would oblige them to as great a Violence and Disobedience to Holy Scripture I confess I have often wondred that Men so Learned and Discerning as very many of the Realists are

related it is such pitious Trifling as utterly destroys the Patience of the Realists that hear it while others think that the Philosopher who is said never to have laughed but once might even have done it a second Time on this ocasion In very Deed our Brother S th has need of all his Talents and Helps his Leisure Learning Wit Courage the Council of Lateran and all the Moderns to defend him against the insults of the Realists who have here so manifest an Advantage and are for the most part Men so able to take and manage it that he will find at length he has no way to rescue his Explication or himself but by Recriminating that is by shewing the as great Absurdity and plain Impossibility of the Explication of the Trinity b the Realists It may be worth while to inquire here whether the Nominals do not know or are not aware that in very deed they are Unitarians or as some call us Socinians I am of Opinion they are sensible of it and I ground my self on the express words of some of them and those too the most esteemed For example Dr. J. Wallis and Dr. S th intimate plainly enough that the Socinian Doctrine and theirs is the same Dr. Wallis answering to a Socinian in his 3d Letter or Vindication of the Athanasian Creed p. 62 63. has these words That which makes these Expressions he means the Terms used by Trinitarians especially this God is three Persons or three Persons are one God seem harsh to the Socinians is because they have used themselves to fancy that Notion only of the word Person according to which three Men are accounted to be three Persons and these three Persons to be three Men. But they may consider there is another Nation of the word Person and in common use too wherein the same Man may be said to sustain divers Persons and those Persons to be the same Man that is the same Man sustaining divers Capacities And then it will seem no more harsh to say the three Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost are one God than to say God the Creator God the Redeemer and God the Sanctifier is one God which I suppose even to this Answerer he means the Socinian to whom he is there answering would not seem harsh or be thought nonsense Here he saith these two things 1. That three Persons when affirmed of God are not to be taken as when we say three Men are three Persons but in that sense wherein the same Man is commonly he means by Grammarians and Classical Authors called three Persons because he hath three Capacities as suppose of a King an Husband and a Father This is the Sense in which God is said to be a Trinity or three Persons he hath these three Capacities of Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier and in that regard or sense is said to be three Persons 2. That to a Socinian this account not only will not be Non-sense but not so much as harsh or uncouth No one can deny that the Doctor well perceived that the Socinian Doctrine and his were indeed the same a Sicinian he says would not be offended at this Explication of a Trinity of Persons Person here not being intended for a subsisting Person as a particular Man is but for a Capacity only of a really subsisting Person And whereas the Socinian Author of the Considerations on the Explications of the Trinity had said if Dr. S th and the Nominal Party believe but one Divine Substance in Number which hath one only Understanding one Will one Energy or power of Action in Number he is a Socinian or Unitarian for in very Deed this is but one really subsisting Person Dr. S th nothing abash'd with his usual dexterity and presence of Mind answers to this effect That so he believes and so the Church believes and that 't is a good hearing that the Socinians are come over to him and to the Church or fal in with him and the Church I cannot at present find the particular page of Tritheism charged where this is said not having made a mark against those Lines but I remember well that I report rightly the Sense of the Passage His words need no Comment they are a plain acknowledgment that by that way of expressing themselves the Socinians fall in with the Church and with him But whereas he saith they fall in with the Church as the Socinians are content that in Honour to the Church it be so said so the English Vnitarians or as they call us Socinians claim it as their right to be owned the first Discoveres that all the Heats between the Church and the Socinians have arose from this only this they mistook one anothers true meaning by occasion of the canting un-scriptural Terms Trinity Persons and such like used by the Church For it is most true that tho for Peace-sake we submit to the Language of the Church as 't is interpreted bby the Nominals yet the Church's Terms are very improper for the same single numerical subsisting Person as the Church and the Socinians believe God to be is not now in any Language called three Persons by occasion of three Relations Modes or Properties adhering to him tho 't is confessed the Roman Classical Authors so spake But whereas the Nominals or the Church since the Council of Lateran that they may seem not to have departed from the Fathers still talk of Trinity Paternity Generation Procession Hypostatical Union Father Son and Spirit on which as we have seen they put such a meaning even those of them that speak most Harshly and Improperly as no ways destroys the Unity of God or that he is but one physical and subsisting Person and hereupon the Realists insult them as People that know not or at best heed not what they say the Socinians think 't is even necessary nay a due Justice to have more regard and respect for these their weak Brethren First We consider that after all the improper Terms impertinent Language and unsignificant and sometimes dangerous Words used by the Nominals all the Denominations of them agree at length in this Sound and Orthodox Explication and Conclusion that there is but one Divine intellectual Substance but one infinite Spirit but one subsisting Person of God Secondly The Nominals choose indeed to speak almost a Realist would say altogether Nonsensically and to retain the dangerous Tritheistical Terms of the Fathers Trinity c. but this was that they might restore the true Faith and genuine Christianity without Noise and Tumult the School-Divines and Council at Lateran reformed the corrupted Doctrine of the Church by only interpreting soberly and dextrously the Language and Terms which their Tritheistick Predecessors had brought into the Church into her very Liturgies and Creeds So many Councils so many Fathers and from them so many Nations had affirmed a Trinity of Divine Persons that to oppose this Doctrine would have begot endless Strises bitter Contentions and Persecutions and