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
Ecclesiastical Policy expresses this Doctrine though not so fully yet more intelligibly to the Unlearned in these words The Substance of God with this property to be of none doth make the Person of the Father the very self-same Substance in Number with this property to be of the Father maketh the Person of the Son the same Substance having added to it the property of proceeding from the other two maketh the Person of the Holy Ghost So that in every Person there is implied both the Substance of God which is one and also that Property which causeth the same Person that is to say the Divine Substance with one of the three Properties before said as suppose the Property to be of none really and truly to differ from the other two That is to differ from the Divine Substance considered under the Properties to be of the Father and to proceed from the Father and Son Mr. Hooker then as well as Dr. S th understood the Doctrine of the Schools and Church concerning the Trinity to be this That there is but one infinite intellectual Divine Substance in Number which Substance is the Subject if we may so speak of sundry Divine Attributes such as Omnipotence perfect Goodness consummate Holiness and the rest none of which Attributes is more than once in the Divine Substance or Godhead there is in God but one Omniscience one Omnipotence one Holiness one Goodness in number as the Nature or Substance is but one in number so each Attribute is but once not thrice in the Nature or Godhead But then besides these Attributes there are also three Persons in God not subsisting Persons for that would plainly make three Beings three Spirits and three Gods but three such Persons as in very Deed are but so many Properties or Modes or if you will give them any the like Name Such Properties as Grammarians and Classical Authors and after them Metaphysicians call Persons for according to them a Father is a Person a Son is a Person a Sanctifier is a Person and whosoever sustains these three Relations or any other the like is by them called three Persons Thus for example M. Tullius acknowledges in every Man no less than four Persons namely first The rational Nature by which we differ from Brutes next the particular Properties of Body and Mind which distinguish one rational Nature or Man from another thirdly the circumstance or manner of Life of each Man as that he is a Rich Man or a Poor lastly The Profession that any one takes up as to be a Civilian a Professor in Philosophy a Pleader a Poet or Writer to the Stage De Officiis l. 2. c. 30 32. A Person then in grammatical critical speaking is not a subsisting Being but some either characterizing Property or some Relation or State of a subsisting intellectual Being and it is of Persons critically so called that the Church would be understood when she says there are three Persons in God she doth not mean three subsisting Persons or Persons who are called Persons because they are so many intellectual Beings Dr. S th very well understood the Doctrine of the Schools when he notes that the three Divine Persons are three relative Subsistences but so saith he that their Subsistence is nothing else but their Relation that is they are meer States Modes or Relations which in a sense subsist in the Divine Substance Nature or Godhead Which indeed is to say God is three Persons as any particular Man may be three Persons for the same Man may be a Father a Son and may proceed from two others namely from Father and Mother And though this is not the very manner of God's being three Persons yet the ternary Personality in God is sounded on the same Notion and Conception of the word Persons and that Conception no more destroys his real Unity whether as a Being as a Spirit or as God than that three-fold Personality in a Man makes him to be more than one Man or than one subsisting Person The short is according to these Gentlemen God is but one subsisting or real Person but this one physical Person having three internal Relations is thereby three relative Persons three such Persons as one Man or one Angel who happens to have three Relations is The three relative Persons no more contradict the Unity of God than the theeefold Relation of Solomon namely as Son of David as Father of Rehoboam and as proceeding from David and Bathsheba contradicts his being but one Man or one subsisting and physical Person It is well known what Judgment the Real Vnitarians make of this Explication of the Trinity Mr. How because he delights to be civil contents himself to say the Real Trinitarians will judg it is not Sense View of the Considerations pag. 50. The Bishop of Gloc. thinks it can have little better Success than only to make sport for the Socinians so he concludes his 28 Propositions in his 2d Defence of them But Dr. Cudworth cries 't is the Philosophy of Gotham Nay Mr. How himself though out of regard to so great a Party as the Nominal Trinitarians are he will only say of their Explication 't is not Sense yet he reckons P. Lombard the supposed Parent of this Explication of the Trinity one of the four Evangelists of Anti-Christ Dr. Bull also and the Learned Author Mr. J. B. of the Answer to Dr. S th's Animadversions on Dr. Sherlock say a great many bitter things of the Divines of the Schools by occasion of this senseless Explication of the Trinity These Gentlemen cannot bear it that the same intellectual Substance in number which is but only to say the same numerical Person should be made to be three Persons because of three pretended internal Relations or a threefold Relation to himself which he is absurdly feigned to sustain They confess that the same intellectual Substance or subsisting Person may be a Father and Son and may proceed from another or others but then these must be external not internal Relations that is he cannot be Father and Son to himself as is implied in the Scholastick Explication because it supposes this Father Son and Proceeder are really but one subsisting or physical Person though they are three and may be 300 Critical or Metaphysical Persons If the Schools and Nominals said God is three Persons because of three external Relations that is three Relations to his Creatures this might be understood because the same Man may have three Relations to others and is on that account called by Classical Writers three Persons though now and in the English Tongue that Sense of the word Persons is quite out of Use But to talk of three internal Relations or that the same intellectual Substance which is to say the same subsisting or physical Person is Unbegotten and Begotten is of none and yet proceeds from two to make him a Father and a Son when there is none but himself to whom he is either way so
thinking that the Son is Almighty that he every where denies that he may be Prayed to except only as to a Mediator who saith he is to Pray with us and for us Origen's first and 2d Books concerning Prayer have so many Arguments directed against Praying to any but the Father and particularly that we should not Pray to the Son he calls them Fools that do that it well appears indeed he held Father and Son to be subsisting Persons as the Realists do and that he durst say there are two Gods a first and a second God but yet that in Truth the Supream Divinity or true Divinity is in the Father only Which also is the Opinion of all the Ante-Nicens and was the Doctrine that Arius afterwards maintained with whom those Modern Realists who hold the Inequality do almost wholly symbolize it may be said that most of those who hold the Inequality of the supposed three Divine subsisting Persons perfectly agree with the Ariani molles the moderate Arians But here comes one that will make all the World to know the inmost thoughts of the Realists he perfectly and in terms discovers their Secret 'T is St. Basil called by his Party of Realists who hold the Inequality Basilius Magnus Basil the Great To those saith this bold Man who accuse us as holding three Gods we answer God is not one in Number but only in Nature He means as the Nature of Man namely the common Humanity is one but there are many particular Men Peter James John c. So the Nature of God or the common Divinity is one but there are as truly more Gods in number or more particular Gods as there are more particular Men Father Son and Spirit are each of them as truly a God as Peter James and John are each of them a particular Man This famous Passage is to be found in Basil's 141st Epistle ad Caesarienses Again Adv. Eunom In the Number and in the Properties there is a Diversity or Multiplicity in the Properties by which each Divine Person is characteriz'd we believe a Diversity and an Vnity only in what makes the Deity i.e. In the Divine Attributes that are common to all the three Divine Persons for each Person has Omniscience Omnipotence and Omnipresence perfect Goodness which Attributes make the Deity as Rationality and Risibility make the Humanity Basil then held that to this Question how many Gods it must be answered three Gods in Number or three Personal Gods and one in Nature or Divine Properties Which is to say in very Deed three Gods but yet Gods so resembling one another that from the sameness of their Attributes or Essential not Personal Properties they may be called one God even as all Men or Mankind from the sameness of their Nature namely the Rational are in common speech often times called Man Which Comparison or Explication of their Meaning and Doctrine is often used by St. Basil and St. Gregory Nyssen the Patriarchs and Founders of those Realists who affirm the Equality of the supposed Divine subsisting Persons As for the Modern Realists they are only some late Writers of our own Nation the first and chief is Dr. Cudworth after him followed Dr. Bull then Dr. Sherlock my Lord the Bishop of Glocester Mr. How Mr. Milbourn Mr. J.B. in his late Learned and Bitter Answer to Dr. S th Some of these are for the absolute Equality of the Divine Persons in all Essential Attributes such as Power Wisdom Omnipresence but some as Dr. Cudworth especially will allow the Son and Spirit to be equal in nothing to the Father but only that they are Coeternal and by this he thinks he sufficiently acquits himself of Arianism But both Parties most openly avow their Tritheism and that many ways By saying there are three infinite Spirits three Omniscient Minds three Divine intellectual Substances three Divine Persons as really Subsisting and as truly Distinct and divers as three Angels or three Men are Again by their Explication of the Possibility and the Manner of an Unity in Trinity Some of them saving three subsisting Divine Persons are one God by a certain most close Unition of their Substances Others by mutual Consciousness of one another's Thoughts and Actions or because besides their having like Substances and Properties they are also in one another They see nor what 't is marvellous Men of their Sense should not see that several subsisting Persons each of which is a perfect God three Almighties three Omniscients whether Conscious or not Conscious to one another whether in or out of one another whether agreeing or at odds none of these Foreign Considerations can so alter the Case but that all Three must as truly be three perfect Gods as each of them is confessed to be one perfect God But let us hear Mr. J. S. in his late Answer to Dr. S th's Animadversions on Dr. Sherlock For as this Gentleman is well skilled in these Questions so he delivers his Mind without much Reserve he seems not to be afraid to say what he thinks because 't is so certain that the Fathers after the Year 380. were in the very same Sentiments concerning the Trinity namely that the Persons of the Trinity arc really distinct and subsisting Persons and equally have all Divine Perfections in the highest Degree He faith pag. 141. Each distinct Divine Person is as compleatly and perfectly God as each distinct Angdical Person is a compleat perfect Angel He demands at pag. 75. Will the Animadverter Dr. S th deny that one Divine Person is one God I will answer for Dr. S th 'T is Heresy to say that the Persons of the Trinity are as distinct as three Angelical Persons for Angels or Angelical Persons are distinguished in their Substances and have so many several Understandings Wills and Energies but in all these Respects the Persons of the Trinity are not distinct but are Identically the same Nor is one Person of the Trinity as compleatly and perfectly God as an Angelical Person is compleatly and perfectly an Angel for one Angelical Person is a compleat and perfect Angel but all three Persons of the Trinity and not one only are necessary to compleat the Notion and due Conception of one God Therefore to his Question Is not one Divine Person one God I answer no three Divine Persons are one God that is to say taking the word Persons in the Sense that the Church intends it namely for Relative Persons or the threefold Relation of the Deity But taking a Divine Person as this Author and his Fellow-Realists do for a subsisting Person a distinct intellectual Being and Infinite Mind and Spirit I answer and the Church also so answers that indeed every such Person is one God and three such are three Gods Page 85. When God is said to be three Persons the term God is taken in a Logical Sense and is equivalent to a terminus Communis or a Species As who should say there are truly three Gods in
after all probably the Reformers would have come off no better than the Socinians have done that is with all the clear Truth they have of their side and all their Dexterity and Wit in managing it being over-powered by the numbers of the contrary Herd they should have been answered with Penal Laws and Sanguinary Prosecutions of the those Laws They took therefore a Course that would do their Business unperceived by the most and when perceived by some few it would not be hard to convict them of Tritheism and explode them as Tritheists and so de facto they served Abbat Joachim And then getting their Explication of the Trinity confirmed by the Council of Lateran they happily restored the publick Profession and Faith of the Unity of God by an Authority which none dares to contradict for a General Council as was before noted is the highest Court of the Church that last Tribunal on Earth from which there lies no Appeal Of the Noetians and Sabellians THERE is yet another Branch of Nominal Trinitarians more antient far than those yet mentioned for about the Year of Christ 200 the Noetians and but a little after them the Sabellians arose both these said there is but one Divine Substance Essence or Nature and as the Substance of the Father Son and Spiirt is numerically One so consequently said they there is but one Person of God Father Son and Spirit are but only three Names of God given to him in Scripture by occasion of so many several Dispensations towards the Creature For in regard of the Creation God is called the Father he is named the Son as he wrought Miracles and accomplished the whole Work of Man's Redemption by the Lord Christ in whom he dwelt after a peculiar and extraordinary manner and who indeed was the Son of God by miraculous Conception in the Womb of Holy Mary He has the Name of the Holy Ghost or Holy Spirit from his omnipotent Energy or Power by which he effecteth all things In a word the Noetians and Sabellians held that God is but one subsisting Person yet that with respect to things without Him he may be called as the Modern Nominals now speak three Relative Persons the one subsisting Person of God sustaineth the three Names of Father Son and Spirit which being the Relations of God towards things without him he is so many Relative Persons or Persons in a Classical critical Sense And this too is the Explication of the Trinity by that Party in the first Nicene Council who contrived the word Homo-usios or Consubstantial by which they meant that the three Divine Persons have all the same Substance and this is the Party which after the breaking up of that famous Council and upon the sudden Prevalence of the Arian Faction were persecuted by the Arians and were considered by all others as the true Nicene Party till about the Year of Christ 380 the Realists obtained that it should be said that God is tres Hypostases three subsisting Persons Indeed there are several Comma's in the Nicene Creed very hardly reconcilable to the Sabellian Doctrine but as there were three powerful and almost equal Parties in the Nicene Council the Arian Party the Realists and the Sabellians the latter thought it enough if they could procure Homo-usios consubstantial to be inserted into the Creed For that ambiguous Word may be interpreted in favour of all those Parties It may be interpreted the same Substance the very same or same in Number and so it establishes the Sabellian Doctrine or the same in Kind and all Properties and so it countenances the Realists or it may be understood of like Substance and so it pleases the Ariani molles the moderate Arians tho the rigid Arians in the Council would by no means admit of it they rather chose to lose their Bishopricks But when the Council was broke up it was perceived by the other Parties that the zealous Assertors of Homo-usios of the same Substance were all of them Sabellians believed that God is but one subsisting Person and therefore destroyed the real Existence of the Son whom the Arians as well as the Realists took to be a subsisting Person not a relative Person a Respect or a Name only And as the Arians discovered that the Homo-usians were indeed Sabellians so these latter charged the Arians and Realists as guilty of a manifest Tritheism because they so interpreted Homo-usios as to make Father Son and Spirit to be distinct intellectual Substances or subsisting Persons Let us hear their own Historian Socrates L. 1. c. 23. After the Council the Bishops wrangled about the word Homo-usios Those that were for it were censured by the contrary Party as Sabellians and were called Impious because they destroyed the real Existence of the Son Those that were against it were condemned by such as were for it as reviving Gentilism or the belief of more Gods And this Truth that Sabellianism was then taken to be the Nicene Doctrine or the same with the Doctrine of Consubstantiality is owned by the Learned Critick H. Valesius in his Notes on Sacrates L. 1. c. 24. For whereas the Historian saith That Cyrus Bishop of Berea was deposed for holding the Sabellian Doctrine Valesius notes hereupon in these words that is for the Doctrine of the Consubstantiality or the Doctrine of the Nicene Council which Council brought in the Homo-usiotes or Consubstantiality The Sum of what has been said concerning the Nominals THESE at length are the Divisions of the Nominals They all agree that the three Persons of God are not subsisting Persons they are not so many distinct Lives Understandings Wills or Energies which together with a particular Substance make a subsisting Person and if they are more than one they make so many physical real or subsisting Persons no they are Persons in a quite different Sense from that vulgar acceptation of the word Persons They are either three Attributes of God Goodness Wisdom and Power Or three external Acts Creation Redemption and Sanctification Or two internal Acts of the subsisting Person of the Father that is to say the Father Vnderstanding and Willing himself and his own Perfections Or three internal Relations that is three Relations of God to himself namely the Divine Substance or Godhead considered as Unbegotten and Proceeding Or three Names of God ascribed to him by the Holy Scriptures because he is the Father of all things by Creation and because he did Inhabit and Operate after an extraordinary and miraculous manner in the Person of the Man Christ Jesus who was verily the Son of God by his wonderful manner of Conception and last of all because he effecteth all things more especially our Sanctification by his Spirit which is to say his Energy or Power Every one sees these are very crude Conceits to be dignified with the Name of Mysteries but withal the Reader is to know that the Mystery is still behind For the Mystery lies not here that one subsisting Person is
seems self-evident that either the Father only must be said to the truly God because he only hath omnimodous Perfection and in the highest Degree or that there is one Great God and two Inferior or lesser ones To this they that maintain the Inequality of the three Persons answer by retorting the Argument thus If the Divine Persons are equal then there are three Omnipotents and three Omniscients which is the very Notion of three Gods and is denied in terminis or expresly by the Athanasian Creed which saith not three Almighties but one Almighty c. But was it ever heard since the Creation of things say the common Enemy to both the Nominals that two contending erroneous Parties did more effectually ruin one another's common Mistake For as 't is self-evident on the one Hand that it being the very Definition of God the Notion that all Men have of him that he is a Being Omnimodously or absolutely Perfect therefore if the Son or Spirit want some Perfections or some degree of Perfection neither of them can be God but the Father only So on the other hand 't is noless incontestable that three Distinct and really subsisting Persons each of which possesses all Perfections and every degree of those Perfections must of necessity be three Gods Why do not these unhappy Men say the Nominals see that three Almighties and three Omniscients are most certainly three Gods and that on the contrary if only one of them is internally and verily Almighty as well as Superiour in Dignity to the other two he only is true God they are Gods only by Courtesy and Civility of Speech Do not the two contrary Arguments of these unlucky Reasoners make a Dilemma that overthrows their common Foundation even this that the Persons of the Trinity are subsisting Persons Have they not shown us how to argue succesfully against them both for we learn from themselves to say either the imagined subsisting Persons of their Trinity are equal or not equal if equal they must be three Gods because nothing is wanting to any of them toward making him a perfect God if unequal only one of them is properly and truly God the other two by Civility and Courtesy only they may be Gods to those that have a mind to compliment but wanting some Perfections or some Degrees of Perfection neither of them can be God in a Theological or Philosophical Sense But the Pleasure and Sport of the Nominals increases when the Realists seek to extricate themselves from these Noozes For example The Realists that are for the Equality say Father Son and Spirit though omnimodously Perfect and subsisting Persons are one God by their mutual Concord and Agreement So also Origen and other Antenicenes make out the Unity of God in a Ternary of Persons tho they did not believe the Equality To this the Nominals answer the supposed Divine subsisting Persons are hereby loving Friends which is a good Hearing for should three Almighties fall out what would the World do but if they are not only distinct but subsisting Persons they are as much three Gods in a proper and natural Sense as if they were never so much at odds Concord doth not make a Real or Physical Unity which is the Unity of God but only a Moral Vnity or such as is between Friends or Allies Other Realists almost all the Moderns see and confess this therefore they say their Gods are one because they are in one another But say the Nominals God is in his Creatures more especially in the Faithful and they in him as our Saviour himself witnesses are they thereby all but one God is the Creature deified by being in God and he in us No no say others but the Divine Persons who are thus in one another have like Substances Natures and Properties which cannot be said of God and the Creatures Admirable again cry the Nominals but remove this one Scruple If these resembling Gods are so united in their Substances or so in one another that their Substances are continuous like the Parts of the same Angel or like the assignable Parts of the same Divine Person 't is plain that by such an Union or mutual Immeation of their Parts they are become but one subsisting Person in number which is what the Nominals and Socinians contend for but if they are only so united or so in one another that their Parts are only Contiguous like Wine and Oil shook together and yet never incorporating this is but only Contact and Juxta-position and doth not make the three Persons to be one much less one God any more than all the Men in a close Croud are one Man or than the Wine and Oil before-said are one Substance In a word say the Nominals who sees not that the three Divine subsisting Persons having like Substances or Properties or what is all one like Natures are but only Gods resembling one another and whether they be in at out of one another likes are never the same 'T is well but it may be they have better luck who say the Divine Persons are not equal but the Second and Third are subordinate in Authority and inferiour in their Perfections The Objection against them is that hereby either the second and third Persons are neither of them God but only the First or here is one great God and two lesser They reply that as a Father and his two Sons are one Master of the Family though the Authority and Power is in the Father and only secondarily derivatively and less absolutely in the Sons So Father Son and H. Spirit are one God because the two latter though subject and inferior to the former have like Authority and Power with him for that he always concurs with them But the Nominals cry this is not one God in a Physical or Natural Sense but only in a Political and that the supposed Father of the Family and his two Sons may as well be said to be one Man as one Master For in very Deed only the Father is Master though he delegates Authority and Power to his Children during his Pleasue or if Power and Authority is absolutely and irrevocably conferred on them they are as much Masters as he and there is no longer one Master but three Secondly Another Argument of those that contend for the Equality is if the Son and Spirit are unequal to the Father and he only hath omnifarious Perfection with all degrees of those Perfections then the two former are very unnecessarily superadded to the latter he is perfect God without them they add nothing to him we can understand them but only as Foils to set off and to recommend his Perfections This Reasoning also is retorted by them that hold the inequality of the Persons in the supposed Trinity for they reply if there are three equally perfect Divine subsisting Persons two of them are redundant or more than needs If we suppose them say these Gentlemen unequal we leave but one God because the