true and proper Personality of the Son and Holy Spirit were very absurd and guilty of Heinous Nonsense in saying That the Son is Eternally generated and the Spirit Eternally proceeds These are Nice Speculations which the Arian Controversy engaged them in but the Nicene Fathers contented themselves to affirm no more concerning the Eternal Generation than that the Son was begotten of his Father before all Worlds God of God Light of Light Very God of Very God And this Notion of an Eternal Generation our Author has no Objection against and we do not think our selves bound to answer for all the Subtilties either of the Fathers or Schools nor to determine every Curious Question which Perverse and Heretical Wits can start concerning the Divine Generation and Procession which is above the Comprehension of Angelical Minds and which we know no more of but that the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds And yet this Reasoning is very absurd when applied to an Eternal and immutable Nature Things which have a beginning which are made which are successively and gradually perfected by Art are incompleat and unfinish'd while they are a-making and if they are always a-making or always incompleat but a Generation or Procession without a Beginning and without Succession must always be perfect and always the same if it be at all here is no new Production no making any thing no transient Action in which sence the Catholick Fathers denied the Divine Generation to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Action but only an Essential 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 habitude relation between Father and Son who both perfectly and eternally subsist and co-exist with each other but so that the Son is of the Father and the Holy Spirit of Father and Son Thus they were without any Beginning and thus they always are and this is all they meant by an Eternal Generation and Procession and this the Immutability of the Divine Nature forc'd them to own for though external Acts and Relations make no Change in the Divine Nature yet what is ad intrà does and therefore could we conceive any distinguishable moments in Eternal Duration when God was no Father when he begot a Son and when he ceased to beget this would make an internal Change in the Divine Nature it self which is inconsistent with perfect Immutability But the Son always was and is of the Father and this is his Eternal Generation and the Holy Spirit always was and is of Father and Son and this is his Eternal Procession and thus the Divine Essence always was and is the same a Trinity in Unity and this is the perfect Immutability of God And yet his Philosophy is very absurd when he argues from an Eternal Generation and Procession that therefore the Son and Holy Spirit must be incompleat and unfinish'd for this will not be granted him even in created Nature much less in the Divinity They are no mean Philosophers who tell us that the World may very properly be said to be perpetually created that what we call Preservation or upholding all things in being is the very same Act and Power which at first gave Being to them and such a permanent Act is Creation still though no new Production of any thing But these Men would scorn any one who should hence conclude that there is no compleat or finish'd Substance no really subsisting substantial World Much more absurd is it to conclude this of an Eternal Generation which produces nothing new nothing that ever began to be and is the same that ever it was without any Succession And he defends the Nominalists just as wisely and philosophically as he opposes the Realists as if his only design were to expose both He says this Eternal Generation proves the Son and Holy Spirit to be only immanent Acts in God reflex Wisdom or the Wisdom that resulteth from Original Minds Eternal Contemplation and Knowledge of the Divine Nature and Perfections and the everlasting Spiration of Love that must proceed from the Original and reflex Wisdom of the Deity And here we have just such a Trinity in the God-head as there is in every particular Man his Mind and the immanent Acts of Wisdom or Reason and Love which all Learned Men know to be one kind of Sabellianism That the Son is the Wisdom and Power of God and that the peculiar Character of the Holy Spirit is Love is the language both of Scripture and Fathers but not as immanent Acts but the living subsisting Wisdom of the Father and living subsisting Love eternal and infinite Persons co-eternal and co-equal with the Father But it is a new Language unknown to Scriptures and Fathers to call an immanent Act of Wisdom a Son and the Minds producing such an Act its generating or begetting a Son and to call such an immanent Act in God the Son of God and God by which Rule every Thought or Act of Reason in any Man is Man and the Son of that Man whose Thought and Act it is And it as new Philosophy to talk of immanent Acts in God for there can be no immanent Acts but where there are Powers and Faculties which is the Imperfection of the Creature-State not incident to the perfect Simplicity of the Divine Nature But besides this what does he mean by the Eternal Generation and Spiration of an immanent Act an immanent Act according to all the Accounts I ever met with of it and as every Man may feel in himself is not an abiding as he calls it but a transient Act it has no permanent stable Nature no Subsistence of its own but vanishes and dies assoon as generated to speak in his language which is a necessary Reason to remove all such immanent Acts from God in whom there is nothing vanishing nothing successive but if Men will attribute immanent Acts to God reflex Wisdom as opposed to a living subsisting personal Wisdom they must speak of them according to the known Nature of such Acts and then an Eternal Generation of such an immanent Act which vanishes assoon as generated can signifie no more than an eternal successive Repetition which is a Contradiction of the Acts of reflex Wisdom that as one vanishes another succeeds that though God has always this reflex Wisdom yet he has not always the same Act of reflex Wisdom but produces it a-new every moment which he calls an Eternal Generation just as it is with Men who may have the same Thought for kind some time together but yet every moment it is new produced To talk of such an Eternal Son as this and such an Eternal Generation is Heresie in Philosophy and in common sense as well as in Christianity and it would be loss of time to expose it I must no more omit than he another surprizing Argument whereby he proves that the Catholick Church did believe that the second Person is the reflex Wisdom of God and the Third Divine Love because for this reason as he tells us this
but not as God that he receives his Person but not his Essence or Divine Nature of the Father he observes that we cannot conceive the Person without the Essence unless by Person in the Divinity we mean no more than the meer mode of subsistence which is plain Sabellianism So that this Writer has done Dr. Sherlock a greater kindness than he was aware of and as it will quickly appear has lost his own Cause by it if Dr. Bull have truly represented the sense of the Fathers as all learned and unprejudiced men must own he has For here are such a Cloud of Witnesses to the Doctrine of a Real Substantial Subsisting Trinity as no later Authorities whatever they are can stand against What I have now quoted is only what first came to hand but there is hardly any thing in the whole Book but what by immediate and necessary consequence proves the real dictinction of proper subsisting Persons in the Trinity that each Person is by himself in his own proper Person as distinguisht from the other Two Infinite Mind Substance Life Wisdom Power and whatever is contained in the Notion and Idea of God Instead of particular Quotations for the proof of this I shall only Appeal to the Titles of the several Sections of that learned Work which I believe no man can make common sense of without acknowledging a Trinity of proper substantial subsisting Persons The First Section concerns the Preexistence of the Son of God That he who afterwards was called Jesus Christ did subsist before his Incarnation or Nativity according to the Flesh of the Blessed Virgin in another and more excellent Nature than that of Man That he appeared to the Holy Men under the Old Testament as a kind of Anticipation of his-Incarnation That he always presided over and took care of his Church which he was to Redeem with his own Blood That he was present with God his Father before the foundation of the World and that by him all things were made This is the Faith of Christians and this he proves to be the constant Doctrine of all the Catholick Fathers for the first three hundred years and so it continued to After-ages Now let any man consider what a pretty kind of dispute this is about the Preexistence of the Son if he have no proper permanent Existence of his own but considered as a Divine Person is only another Name for the Father or an immanent Act like the transient Thought or transient Act of Reason in Man For if the Son be not a distinct Person from the Father and as proper a subsisting Person as the Father himself is the Question will amount to no more but this Whether God the Father had a Being before Jesus Christ was Born of the Virgin or before the World was made Or Whether he had any immanent Acts of Wisdom or Reason before he made the World Or Whether he took the Name of Son upon himself before he made the World or made any Creature to know him or his Name The Christian Fathers were Wiser men than to talk at this impertinent rate and therefore they did believe that God had a Son in a true and proper Sense a subsisting living omnipotent Son by whom he made the World who appeared in his own proper Person to several of the Patriarchs under the Old Testament and in the fulness of time was Incarnate of the substance of the Virgin Mary The very Question it self necessarily supposes this to make Sense of it much more impossible is it to understand what the Fathers say upon this Argument upon the Sabellian or Socinian Hypothesis The Second Section concerns the Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father That the Son of God is not of a created or mutable Essence but perfectly of the same Divine unchangeable Nature with his Father and therefore is True God of True God Now What Sense can be made of this if the Son be not as truly and properly Substance in his own Person as distinguished from the Person of the Father as the Father is in his own Person For How can the Son be Consubstantial or of the same Substance with the Father if he be no Substance at all Especially since this Learned man has proved That the Catholick Fathers rejected the Homoousion in the Sabellian Sense for one singular Substance of Father and Son and that they assert as common Sense would teach us that nothing is Consubstantial to it self but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one thing is Consubstantial to another The Third Section concerns the Co-eternal Existence of the Son with the Father Now for Father and Son to Coexist necessarily supposes that they both Exist and actually subsist by themselves for two cannot Exist and Subsist together unless each of them actually subsist For as the Fathers observe nothing can properly be said to Coexist with it self For it can admit of no Question Whether any one has been as long as he has been And therefore since the Co-eternity of the Son has been a very serious Dispute between the Catholicks and the Arians it is certain that both of them owned Father and Son to be two distinct Persons which did distinctly Exist and Subsist The Fourth Section teaches the Subordination of the Son to the Father that tho' the Son be Co-equal with the Father as having the same Divine Nature with the Father without any change or diminution yet he is Subordinate to the Father as receiving the Divine Nature from him That the Father is God of himself the Son God of God Now if the Son receive the Divine Nature by an eternal Communication from the Father he must have it in himself in his own Person and be a living subsisting Son true God of God and if he be a true proper Person and subordinate to the Father he must be a distinct Person for no Person can be subordinate to himself These Questions Dr. Bull has discoursed at large with great variety of Learning and acuracy of Judgment and it is a Mystery to me how those who pretend to admire Dr. Bull should quarrel with Dr. Sherlock or that those who pay any reverence to the Catholick Fathers should quarrel with either of them This Socinian as I observed before was glad to draw Dr. Bull into the number of Tritheists but by that means he has drawn in all the Catholick Fathers too and has now drawn together so many Tritheists as he will never know how to get rid of again or to speak more properly he has unanswerably Confuted the Charge of Tritheism and discovered the Trick and Mystery of it by charging the Catholick Faith it self and all the Catholick Fathers the most zealous Patrons and Advocates of it with Tritheism SECT II. This Author's Account of the Doctrine of the Realists and Nominalists concerning the Holy Trinity THE very Name of Socinianism is justly abhorred by all Christians who place all their hopes of Salvation in the Incarnation Sacrifice and
the Holy Ghost without any division or partition of Substance And this is the Doctrine of the Lateran Council That this One supream Thing is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 veraciter truly and really Father Son and Holy Ghost Three United Persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tres simul Personae and each of them distinct from the others 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ac singulatim quaelibet earum And therefore there is only a Trinity not a Quaternity in God as Abbot Joachim had objected And that each of these Divine Persons is this Divine Substance Essence and Nature All this Athanasius himself would have subscribed who yet with the other Catholick Fathers rejected the Notion of a singular and solitary Divinity They add That this one supreme Nature Substance Essence which is Father Son and Holy Ghost neither begets nor is begotten nor proceeds Nor did ever any Man in his Wits assert That the Divine Nature and Essence as common to Father Son and Holy Ghost that is That the whole Trinity did either Beget or was Begotten or did Proceed This belongs to Persons not to Nature formally considered as they expresly teach That the Father Begets the Son is Begotten and the Holy Ghost Proceeds so that there is a distinction of Persons and Unity of Nature That the Father is alius another the Son another the Holy Ghost another but not aliud another thing but what the Father is and what the Son is and what the Holy Ghost is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they are all perfectly the same that according to the Catholick Faith we may acknowledge them to be Consubstantial for the Father from Eternity Begetting the Son 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 gave his own Substance to him as he himself witnesses The Father who gave them me is greater than all Nor can it be said that the Father gave part of his Substance to his Son and retained another part himself for the Hypostasis or Substance of the Father is indivisible as being perfectly simple Nor can we say That when the Father Begat the Son he so communicated his own Substance to him as not to have it himself for then he must cease to be an Hypostasis Substance and a substantial Person himself So that it is evident That the Son when Begotten received the Father's Substance without any diminution of the Father and thus Father and Son have the same Substance and Father and Son and Holy Ghost are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one and the same supreme Nature and Substance which they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Unity of Sameness and Identity This is true Catholick Doctrine and the very Language of the Nicene Fathers And if Joachim rejected this Essential Unity of the Trinity and asserted a meer collective Unity as many Christians are one Church as the Council affirms he did he was very justly Condemned and the Nicene Fathers themselves would have Condemned him The only thing which looks like an Innovation in this Decree is That whereas the Catholick Fathers allowed of those Expressions A Begotten Nature Begotten Substance Begotten Wisdom Begotten God and that Substance begets Substance and Wisdom begets Wisdom c. This Council denies That this One supream Divine Essence Nature or Substance which is the Blessed Trinity does either Beget or is Begotten or Proceeds which some Schoolmen think absolutely condemns those Expressions That Substance begets Substance and Wisdom Wisdom That the Son is Deus Genitus and Natura Genita Begotten God and Begotten Nature and Begotten Wisdom which is to condemn all the Catholick Fathers who used these Expressions without any scruple nay who thought that the Mystery of the Divine Generation could not be secured without them But I confes I am of Petavius his mind though I find the Learned Doctor Bull dissent from him that this Council never intended absolutely to condemn all such Expressions when Personally used For though the Divine Nature in a general Notion as common to all Three Persons neither begets nor is begotten yet the Father begets the Son by a true and proper Generation and a true and proper Son and therefore that Learned Jesuit tells us That the Lateran Council considered the Divine Nature absolutely and in it self and as abstracted from the Three Persons not as subsisting distinctly in each Person for so it is very Catholick to say That the Divine Nature in the Person of the Father begets the Divine Nature in the Person of the Son For we cannot understand what a Person is without its Essence and Nature and it is absurd to say That the Son receives his Person from the Father without receiving that without which he cannot be a Person And the reason he gives why they rather chose to say that the Father begets the Son than that Essence begets Essence was to avoid the ambiguity of that Expression which might signify the production of another Essence as well as the generation of another Person whereas this Divine Generation is the communication of the same Eternal Essence which is in the Father to the Son which gives existence to a second Person not to a second Nature This is indeed very subtil but there is some sense in it and while they acknowledge that the Son by an Eternal Generation receives a true Divine Nature from the Father and is in his own Person true God but yet not the Father this is the Old Catholick Faith how new soever the Expressions may be Thus I have done with his General Councils and I hope every one sees how well he understands Councils or how honestly he deals with them What concerns the Church of England needs no answer after what I have already said and the Story of Valentinus Gentilis is much to the same purpose for he was so far from being a Realist that he was a down-right Arian But that he may not think himself and his Nominalists so secure of all the Divinity-Chairs in Europe I will refer him to the Learned Spanhemius to learn how it lately fared with some of them in the United Provinces who were censured and condemned by various Synods and by the publick Judgment and Authority of several Universities The first Proposition condemned was concerning the name of Son and his Eternal Generation of the Father that this is not to be understood properly of a true and proper Generation as if the Father who begets were a true and proper Father and the Son who is begotten a true and proper Son but that these Terms in Scripture only signify 1. That the Second Person has the same Nature and Essence with the First Person and did coexist with him from Eternity Denying the manner of his having the same Nature by an ineffable Generation and the Personal Subsistence of the Father who begets and the Son who is begotten and consequently that true relation between Father and Son which the Scripture constantly teaches which gave just suspicion either of Sabellianism or Tritheism 2.
the Trinity upon your Fingers and if you can but tell to three you will infallibly find three Gods The Father is true and perfect God there say they is One God the Son is true and perfect God there are Two Gods the Holy Ghost is true and perfect God there are Three Gods quod erat demonstrandum But do they think that all the Catholick Fathers knew not how to find Three in the Trinity till they taught them to tell three upon their Fingers and if they found three but yet could not find three Gods in the Trinity they might in Modesty have thought that something more than Arithmetick or telling their Fingers was necessary to make good this Charge and because they either are or would seem to be ignorant of this I will tell them what it is In that Dispute whether there be only One God or more Gods than One By One God in the first place all Men understand One Divinity one Infinite Omnipotent Essence and Nature for all the Arguments relating to the Unity of God directly prove no more than the Unity of the Divine Essence that God is but One Person as well as One Divinity as most Men did and as all Men might reasonably conclude before the Revelation of a Trinity of Divine Persons in the Essential Unity of the God-head is not owing to any direct and positive Proof but to a common Presumption For since we have no Example in created Nature of more than one proper Person in one individual inseparable Nature most Men hence concluded naturally enough that one Divinity was but one Divine Person also But God who understands his own Nature best has revealed to us in Scripture that there are Three Father Son and Holy Ghost who equally and perfectly communicate in this One infinite and undivided Essence and therefore that there are Three Divine Persons and One God And this has occasioned a Confusion of Terms on which our Socinian Adversaries have grounded all their noisie Triumphs for now One God and One Person signifie very differently in the Mystery of the Trinity from what they do in common Acceptation and must of necessity do so One God in natural Religion before the Revelation of this Sacred Mystery signified One Divinity One infinite Nature and Essence without any Notion of more than One Subsistence and One Personality and then consequently One Person who is this One God must signifie One who has this whole Divinity perfectly in himself and exclusively to all other Persons But in the Christian Mystery One God signifies also One perfect undivided Divinity but communicable whole and perfect and indivisibly to more than One and actually subsisting in three distinct Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost and therefore consequently Person also in this Mystery signifies One who has the whole Divine Nature perfectly in himself and therefore is true and perfect God but has not the whole Divinity incommunicably in himself exclusively to all other Persons and therefore is not the one God in the Sense of one perfect incommunicable Divinity peculiar to himself and communicated to no other Person nor subsisting in any other And now let any Man judge of the mean Sophistry of our Adversaries who from their Notion of One Person and One God which the Catholick Church with great Reason rejects charge the Catholick Faith of a real subsisting Trinity with Tritheism for they do not dispute ad idem but impose upon Men with an equivocal Use of Words Three such Divine Persons indeed as they own that is each of which has a whole perfect Divinity in himself which no other Person communicates or can communicate in must be in a proper Notion three Gods or three perfect self-originated separate Divinities but this does not prove and yet in the last Result this is all the Proof they offer at that three Persons who have but one comon Divinity though distinctly and perfectly subsisting in each of them are therefore three Gods for neither of these Persons is so God as to exclude the others from the same Divinity and therefore are not three Divinities not three self-originated divine Essences and therefore not three Gods according to the natural Notion of Tritheism God and God and God who have the same One Divinity subsisting in them all are not Three Gods but One God because One Divinity Here it is they should attack us and if they have any thing to say to this Point we are ready to join Issue with them Fifthly His last Argument which he places great Confidence in is very easily answered It is this That all the Reasons used by Philosophers or Divines to prove that there is but one God do as certainly and as clearly prove that there can be but one infinite and all-perfect Spirit All this still is nothing but the same Equivocation and Fallacy which I have already sufficiently answered One infinite and all-perfect Spirit may either signifie one Person who is infinite Mind or Spirit in his own Person and here we are ready to joyn Issue with him that all the Arguments which prove that there is but one God do not prove that there is but one Divine Person but One who is this One God or it may signifie one Divinity which is Essentially one infinite all-perfect Spirit but personally three and in this Sense we agree with him for we assert one undivided Essence Essentially one in three that is we believe there is but one God who is One in Nature and Three in Persons And this seems a pretty surprizing Undertaking to prove that the Arguments for one God confute a Trinity of real subsisting Persons in the Unity of the same God-head It is certain before he can do this he must make three Gods of these three Divine Persons for if they be but one God the Arguments for the Unity of God can never confute a Trinity of Persons and here I might reasonably leave this Argument till he has answered what I have already said in this Cause But let us hear his Arguments against Polytheism and see how he applies them First That created Nature has nothing needless or in vain much less can we suppose that the uncreated Divine Nature hath ought that is superfluous or redundant But now is it not a Superfluity say they to suppose more Gods when because one is sufficient more Gods are needless and wholly in vain I do not remember that I have met with this Argument in these Terms in any of the antient Apologists for Christianity I think it is a very bad Argument against the being of any thing but much more so when applied to the Divine Nature That Nature does nothing in vain has been allowed for a Maxim among all Philosophers who have acknowledged a God or that all things are made by a wise Cause the necessary Consequence of which is that nothing is made in vain and this is the only Proof and the only Reason of that Maxim but that created