Selected quad for the lemma: lord_n
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A67388
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An explication and vindication of the Athanasian Creed in a third letter, pursuant of two former, concerning the Sacred Trinity : together with a postscript, in answer to another letter / by John Wallis ...
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Wallis, John, 1616-1703.
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1691
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Wing W581; ESTC R38415
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30,910
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70
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when for our Chancellor we made choice of Iames Duke Marquess and Earl of Ormond though he had three distinct Dignities he was not therefore three Men nor three Chancellors And when Tully says Sustineo unus tres personas meam adversarii judicis which is in English that the Tankard-bearer may understand it I being one and the same Man do sustain Three Persons that of Myself that of my Adversary and that of the Iudge He did not become three Men by sustaining three Persons And in this Answer to my Letter the Friend and his Neighbour may for ought I know be the same Man though he sustain Two Persons And I hope some of these Resemblances may be so plain and so familiar as that He and his Tankard-bearer may apprehend them and thence perceive It is not Impossible that Three may be One. For if among us one Man may sustain three Persons without being three Men Why should it be thought incredible that three Divine Persons may be one God as well as those three other Persons be one Man Nor need he the less believe it for having as this Answerer suggests been taught it in his Catechism or as Timothy did the Scriptures know it from a Child But I would not have him then to tell me the Father is a Duke the Son a Marquess the Holy Ghost an Earl according as he is pleased to prevaricate upon the Length Breadth and Thickness of a Cube but thus rather That God the Creator God the Redeemer and God the Sanctifier are the same God That God the Creator is Omnipotent and Allsufficient that God the Redeemer is so too and God the Sanctifier likewise That God the Creator is to be Loved with all our Heart and so God the Redemer and God the Sanctifier And then there will be no Absurdity in all this As to what he says that All people that have reason enough to understand Numbers know the difference between One and More than one I might reply That all people who can tell Mony know that Three Groats are but One Shilling and Three Nobles are One Pound and what in one consideration is Three may in another consideration be but One. Which if it look like a slight Answer is yet sufficient to such an Argument He tells me somewhat of Dr. Sherlock wherein I am not concerned and somewhat of the Brief History of the Unitarians of which his Neighbour gives the Friend a Copy But he doth not tell me as he might and therefore I tell him that Dr. Sherlock hath confuted that History But Dr. Sherlock says nothing contrary to what I defend For if there be such Distinction between the three Persons as he assigns then at least there is a Distinction which is what I affirm without saying how great it is Nor doth he any where deny them to be one God He tells me a story of somebody who in a publick Disputation at Oxford maintaining a Thesis against the Socinians was baffled by his Opponent Whom or when he means I do not know and so say nothing to it But that I may not be in his debt for a story I shall tell him another which will be at least as much to the purpose as his It is of their great friend Christophorus Christophori Sandius a diligent promoter of the Socinian Cause He printed a Latin Thesis or Discourse against the Divinity of the Holy Ghost which he calls Problema Paradoxum de Spiritu Sancto with a general Challenge to this purpose Ut siquis in toto Orbe eruditorum forte sit qui doctrinâ magis polleat quam quibuscum hactenus sit collocutus ea legat quae à se publice sint edita argumenta seque errare moneat ac rectius sentire doceat Hereupon Wittichius accepts the Challenge and writes against Sandius To which Sandius answers taking in another as a partner with him in the Disputation And Wittichius replies And that with so good success that Sandius and his partner acknowledged themselves to be convinced by it and to change their Opinion This happening but a little before Sandius his death His Partner surviving published to the World an Account hereof and of Sandius declaring before his death that he was so convinced in a Letter of Thanks to Wittichius for it What Sandius would have done further if he had lived a little longer we cannot tell That of Wittichius bears this Title Causa Spiritûs Sancti Personae Divinae ejusdem cum Patre Filio essentiae contra C. C. S. Problema Paradoxum asserta defensa à Christophoro Wittichio Lugduni Batavorum apud Arnoldum Doude 1678. The Letter of Thanks bears this Title Epistola ad D. Christophorum Gittichium Professorem Lugdunensem Qua gratiae ei habentur pro eruditissimis ipsius in Problema de Spiritu Sancto Animadversionibus Scripta à Socio Authoris Problematis Paradoxi Per quas errores suos rejicere coactus est Coloniae apud Ioannem Nicolai He takes it unkindly that I charge it upon some of the Socinians that though they do not think fit directly to reject the Scriptures yet think themselves obliged to put such a forced sence upon them as to make them signifie somewhat else And tells me of some Socinians who have so great a respect for the Scriptures as to say that the Scripture contains nothing that is repugnant to manifest Reason and that what doth not agree with Reason hath no place in Divinity c. But this is still in order to this Inference That therefore what they think not agreeable to Reason must not be thought to be the sence of Scripture and therefore that they must put such a Force upon the Words how great soever as to make them comply with their sence If he except against the words how great a Force soever as too hard an Expression of mine They are Socinus's own words in his Epistle to Balcerovius of Ianuary 30. 1581. Certe contraria sententia adeo mihi absurda perniciosa pace Augustini c. dixerim esse videtur ut Quantacunque Vis potius Pauli verbis sit adhibenda quam ea admittenda That is The contrary Opinion with Augustin's leave and others of his mind seems to me so absurd and pernicious that we must rather put a Force how great soever upon Paul's words than admit it And as to the suspicion I had of some of their Sentiments as to Spiritual Subsistences that it may not appear to be groundless He doth in his Epist. 5. ad Volkelium absolutely deny that the Soul after death doth subsist and adds expresly Ostendi me sentiresnon ita vivere post hominis ipsius mortem ut per se praemiorum poenarumve capax sit that is that the Soul after death doth not subsist nor is in a capacity of being by it self rewarded or punished And how he can then think it an Intelligent Being I do not see St. Paul it seems was of another mind when
both which are Individual from himself But when we say God is Omnipotent we do not say he is Omnivolent He wills indeed All things that Are else they could not be but he doth not will all things Possible And the like of other Attributes If therefore we do but allow as great a Distinction between the Persons as between the Attributes and certainly it is not less but somewhat more there is no incongruity in ascribing the Incarnation to One of the Persons and not to the rest 'T is asked further How I can accommodate this to my former Similitude of a Cube and its Three Dimensions representing a Possibility of Three Persons in one Deity I say Very easily For it is very possible for one Face of a Cube suppose the Base by which I there represented the Second Person as Generated of the Father to admit a Foil or Dark Colour while the Rest of the Cube is Transparent without destroying the Figure of the Cube or the Distinction of its Three Dimensions which Colour is adventitious to the Cube For the Cube was perfect without it and is not destroyed by it Which may some way represent Christ's Humiliation Who being Equal with God was made Like unto Us and took upon him the Form of a Servant Phil. 2. 6 7. So that upon the whole Matter there is no Impossibility in the Doctrine of the Incarnation any more than in that of the Trinity And supposing them to be not Impossible it is not denied but that they are both of them sufficiently Revealed and therefore to be Believed if we believe the Scripture And of the other Articles in the Athanasian Creed there is as little reason to doubt There is therefore no just Exception as to the Declarative part of the Athanasian Creed And as to the Damnatory part we have before shewed that it is no more severe than other passages in Scripture to the same purpose and to be understood with the like Mitigations as those are And consequently that whole Creed as hitherto may justly be received 'T is true there be some Expressions in it which if I were now to Pen a Creed I should perhaps chuse to leave out But being in they are to be understood according to such sence as we may reasonably suppose to be intended and according to the Language of those times When they did use to Anathematize great Errors which they apprehended to be Destructive of the Christian Faith as things of themselves Damnable if not Repented of And I suppose no more is here intended nor of any other Errors than such as are Destructive of Fundamentals Oxford Octob. 28. 1690. Yours Iohn Wallis POSTSCRIPT November 15. 1690. WHen this Third Letter was Printed and ready to come abroad I stopped it a little for this Postscript occasioned by a small Treatise which came to my hands with this Title Dr. Wallis ' s Letter touching the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity answered by his Friend It seems I have more Friends abroad than I am aware of But Who this Friend is or whether he be a Friend I do not know It is to let me understand that a Neighbour of his reputed a Socinian is not convinced by it But names some Socinian Authors who endeavour to elude Scriptures alledged for the Trinity by putting some other sence upon them He might have named as many if he pleased who have to better purpose written against those Authors in vindication of the True sence And if he should Repeat what Those have said on the one side and I say over again what Those have said on the other side we should make a long work of it But he knows very well That was not the business of my Letter to discourse the whole Controversie at large either as to the Evidence or as to the Antiquity of the Doctrine For this I had set aside at first as done by others to whom I did refer and confined my Discourse to this single Point That there is no Impossibility which is the Socinians great Objection but that What in one consideration is Three may in another consideration be One. And if I have sufficiently evinced this as I think I have and I do not find that he denies it I have then done what I there undertook And in so doing have removed the great Objection which the Socinians would cast in our way and because of which they think themselves obliged to shuffle off other Arguments on this pretence Now whether he please to call this a Metaphysick or Mathematick Lecture certain it is that there are Three distinct Dimensions Length Breadth and Thickness in One Cube And if it be so in Corporeals there is no pretence of reason why in Spirituals 〈◊〉 should be thought Impossible that there be â—â—ree Somewhat 's which are but One God And these Somewhat 's till he can furnish us with a better name we are content to call Persons which is the Scripture word Heb. 1. 3. Which word we own to be but Metaphorical not signifying just the same here as when applied to men as also are the words Father Son Generate Begot c. when applied to God And more than this need not be said to justifie what there I undertook to defend Now 't is easie for him if he so please to burlesque this or turn it to ridicule as it is any the most Sacred things of God but not so safe Ludere cum Sacris The Sacred Trinity be it as it will should by us be used with more Reverence than to make Sport of it I might here end without saying more But because he is pleased to make some Excursions beside the Business which I undertook to prove and which he doth not deny I will follow him in some of them He finds fault with the Similitude I brought though very proper to prove what it was brought for as too high a Speculation for the poor Labourers in the Country and the Tankard-bearers in London And therefore having a mind to be pleasant he adviseth rather as a more familiar Parallel to put it thus I Mary take thee Peter James and John for my wedded Husband c. thinking this I suppose to be Witty And truly supposing Peter Iames and Iohn to be the same Man it is not much amiss But I could tell him with a little alteration if their Majesties will give me leave to make as bold with their Names as he doth with the Names of Christ's Mother and of his three Disciples which were with him in the Mount at his Transfiguration Matth. 17. 1. it were not absurd to say I Mary take thee Henry William Nassaw without making him to be three Men or three Husbands and without putting her upon any difficulty as is suggested How to dispose of her Conjugal Affection And when the Lords and Commons declared Him to be King of England France and Ireland they did not intend by alotting him three distinct Kingdoms to make him three Men. And