we do whence we conclude he is because he said so which if he were not he had asserted a Lye spoken Blasphemy and the Jews had been in the Right but seeing he said he was the Son of God he spoke the Truth which Socinians denying they bring the Lye and Blasphemy upon themselves and as good as say as the Jews did to Pilate He ought to die because he made himself the Son of God John 19 7. The other Text to prove how the Name Son of God when spoken of Christ signifies God is this Lazarus's Sickness was for the glory of God that the Son of God might be glorified thereby We may see how the word God is explained by that of Son of God So that whether the name God be taken Essentially or Personally still the Person of the Son is God for therein is but One Glory of God and of the Son of God the Father is glorified in the Son if they have one equal and common Glory then they have a common and equal Nature for we know the true and eternal Almighty God hath said My Glory will I not give to another In my Book I at large have asserted this Divine Filiation of the Lord Jesus with the manner of it and thereunto expected an Answer if they had been willing and able to give it That Divine and Proper Sonship and his Godhead John in several places of his Gospel and Epistles both as his own belief and in the very words of our blessed Lord in those Comparisons which he so often makes between himself and the Father lays it so clear that for an unprejudiced mind there is no ground left to doubt of it the Pronoun possessive My in the Singular number joined with Father which so frequently he makes use of doth denote the Singular Nature of his Sonship and distinguish it from every other Kind I shall mention only what when he was but Twelve Years old upon the occasion of his being found in the Temple asking the Doctors of the Law Questions and Mary having said Son why hast thou thus dealt with us He answered Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business The meaning of which they understood not as the Evangelist observes he thereby signified another kind of Filiation that what had any relation to Mary As according to the Flesh he was her true and proper Son because begotten of her own Substance so in relation to the Spirit and Deity he is God's own and proper Son because begotten of the Substance of the Father If there be any such as certainly there is and in the Chapter about his Eternal Generation I sufficiently proved it then ye Socinians cannot deny the Lord Jesus to be He and if he be not the proper Son of the Father as the Apostle affirms he is then God the Father is not properly a Father for the works of Grace do not properly make one a Father but it must be the work of Nature of Humane in Men of Divine in God Humane Nature may receive some Divine Gifts but only thus much as it is capable of within certain bounds and degrees or else it were to make Humanity to be Deity But Christ hath not the Spirit by Measure or by Grace but by Nature and Infinitely in him which no Finite being such is every Creature is capable of the reason is because in Christ dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily Thus he must necessarily be God primarily and not derivatively or in part only for Divine Nature is indivisible either wholly God with all Attributes of the Godhead or no God at all No Creature Man Angel or Arch-Angel can have all the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in him because none of them is the Infinite God But since all the fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in the Person of Christ he must needs be God Infinite for all this fulness of the Godhead is a fulness of Nature of the Essential Attributes of that same Nature of Immensity Power Eternity and of any thing else proper to that Nature If in the whole Word of God there was no other Text but this to prove the Godhead of our Saviour it were sufficient to do 't it being so positive so full and so plain All is an Absolute word to be taken without any restriction or limitation whatsoever All Fulness What more can be said Of the Godhead What more Divine and Expressive But what upon the matter remains in the same place is this Whether a God and a God and a God do not amount to more than One God To take the thing as I ought and not as some others do I say that your Arithmetick in this doth fail and deceive you wherefore believe Revelation before your Reason which indeed may tell you how in humane and finite things One One and One make Three but Revelation which contradicteth not it self calls the Father God the Son God and the Holy Ghost God the same also saith there is but One God A Divine Nature common to Three Persons doth imply Three Persons but no more than One God which is One Divine Nature subsisting in Three Persons and Three Persons existing in One Nature Must I with Scripture conclude that Father Son and Holy Ghost are but One God or with your Arithmetick and Reason that they are Three Gods make but your Reason first agree with Revelation and then you and I shall agree so that the Dispute is more between your Reason and Scripture than between you and me But surely with me Gods Word is of greater Authority than your Reason ye must not suffer your Reason that Ignis fatuus to wander from the Rule Do you know what Solomon saith He that trusteth in his own heart is a Fool if you know it not I tell you and your Partner he speaks to you when he saith Cease from thine own Wisdom or Reason Now having done with this I must go back where I left and there shall find things of another nature you call Enemies to the common Rights and Liberties of Humane Nature Those who permit not every one a free liberty to make Interpretations and Inferences for themselves from Scriptures and this you ground on a false Supposition that Both the Word of God and the best means of understanding it are Originally and Vncontroulably given to every Man For Scripture and Experience convince us that every Man hath not the Word not Means to understand it and therefore 't is neither Originally nor Uncontroulably given to every Man this is a truth which elsewhere I made good and shall by Gods grace be ready again to do upon occasion But besides that it would require some time this is no place to do 't and I ever avoid going from the Question However this I say that ye go upon a Principle destructive to Order if every one must be allowed to believe and profess what he pleases tho' never so
of all Offences committed in the County of Middlesex in consideration of our Duty and in obedience to the Directions given us by Mr. Justice Rookeby in his Charge do humbly present that We find by daily experience that several great and fundamental Articles of the Christian Religion as they are professed by the Church of England and contained in the 39 Articles and established as the Avowed Doctrine of the Church of England by several Acts of Parliament are not only disputed and questioned but absolutely denyed and particularly the Doctrine of the Trinity of the Divinity of Christ and of the Divinity of the Holy Ghost and Books are daily writ printed and published either directly contrary to the said Doctrine or by consequence in opposition to them denying all the Mysteries of the Christian Religion and resolving all into such Notions as are to be made good by Humane Reason and thereby making void the whole revealed Religion and destroying the Necessity of Faith in order to Eternal Salvation by means whereof Arianism Socinianism Atheism and Deism do greatly abound and there are Proselytes to the same daily made to the great Scandal of the Church of England and the Orthodox Members thereof For preventing of which for the future We do present that all care possible ought to be taken for the speedy discovering of all such Books as are so writ printed or published contrary to the known Doctrine of the Church of England and the Authors Printers and Publishers of the same and for punishing the Authors Printers and Publishers thereof according to the utmost severity of the Laws and for the suppressing all such Books of that kind as are already printed and for preventing the printing any more for the time to come And we do farther present that a Book Entitled Christianity not Mysterious or a Treatise shewing That there is nothing in the Gospel contrary to Reason or above it and that no Christian Doctrine can be properly called a Mystery supposed to be written by one Mr. Toland And also another Book Entitled The Reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures And also one other Book Entitled The Lady's Religion in a Letter the Honourable the Lady Howard are Books fit to be suppressed and the Authors Printers and Publishers of the same ought to have such Punishment inflicted on them as by the Laws of the Land they may Item We present a Pamphlet lately published Entitled A Letter to a Convocation-Man concerning the Rights Powers and Privileges of that Body to be Scandalous and against the Constitution of the Government and ought to be suppressed and the Author punished Now ye may see by the Agreement of this Presentment with the things contained in my Epistle and Preface to which 't is posteriour how in what I said or did I was not in the wrong nor out of the way I faithfully give it as it is without changing Words or altering the Sense as some of you have done of some of your Citations out of my Papers ye are always sure to give the worst Construction of Words and Things like Spiders ye turn all things into Poison about which besides what I already observed I shall on the way take notice of one thing more when I say no Soldier in an Enemy's Country ought to struggle out of the way c. for he that doth so ventures to be knocked on the head you put in ought instead of ventures is this fairly done Certainly 't is a great difference between saying a Man runs the hazard of being knocked and he ought to be knocked on the head so if I should but write or speak Reason you with adding one Letter would soon make it Treason and if you write or speak Treason with taking off one Letter you can soon make it Reason this is said to shew your Partiality As to what follows in the same Page and the next after about Dr. Sh against his Antagonist as against me I shall not trouble my head about it only God forgive and give you Grace to mend I see all that have any thing to do with this Man or lye in his way and are not of his mind must prepare for the like usage but I say I do not concern my self about Persons so much as about the Cause and therefore whosover would in the Godhead set up three Spirits and Substances is in my opinion fallen into a fundamental Heresie and whosoever is against such in that same thing I join with because I always love to be for the Truth In what follows I desire the Reader to take notice of the Man's want of Sincerity As well as I he knows we are not and cannot be agreed upon the very Terms he sets down for they contain the quintessence of their Error about the Holy Trinity for Sirs ye would have Jesus Christ to be not a Person but only an Attribute as the Wisdom of God so the Holy Ghost to be only the Vertue and Power of God and not an Hypostasis a Person of the Godhead for tho' one of you saith that for Peace-sake ye submit to the Phrase of the Church that is to the name Person yet ye interpret it not as the Church doth Therefore tho' you say the Vnitarians the Catholick Church the Translator and I are at perfect Agreement and tho' we agree in the Oneness of the Godhead or of one Divine Nature and to make use of your words that there is One Infinite Spiritual Substance yet we are far from agreeing with you in what follows with three Properties unbegotten begotten and proceeding c. except ye explain your meaning otherwise than ye use to do Arius under a word which if well taken might be harmless enough sheltered his Error so 't is usual with you ye are meerly for Words but we do besides Words look for Things and would have such Words as are proper as much as may be to signifie the Things Now your threefold distinction of Original Mind reflex Wisdom and Divine Love may be sufficient to represent what you mean thereby but not what we believe We make a distinction between the Property and the Person of the Godhead but you do confound them and would have it to be but one and the same Now if with us you will say that in one and most simple Nature of God are three distinct Persons to whom the infinite and singular Nature of one only God is common and that these three distinct Persons the Attributes of that one God do belong to then you say something to the purpose or else like the Gibeonites you come in to us only to deceive us We assert three Persons and not barely three Properties in the Godhead we say the Father is a Person the Son a Person and the Holy Ghost a Person and so three Persons but we don't say the Father is an Attribute the Son an Attribute and the Holy Ghost an Attribute thereby of three Persons to make
great Thunder-claps which shall end like crackling of Thorns under the Pot. The ground of all this is my Humble Address to both Houses of Parliament that they would be pleased to take some care of the Cause of Christ and to put a curb upon his Enemies such I call those who would rob him of his Divine Nature and Attributes and attempt to overthrow the first Article of our Faith of One God in Three Persons There are some Men in the World that if one doth but look them in the Face they are apt to cry out Murther whether or not at that time a guilty Conscience flies into their Faces God knows That same may happen sometimes to disturb them so far as to make them grosly mistake in their Judgment as about Things so about Persons as they are very much in me who in my Heart and Opinion am as much against Persecution upon account of Religion and for a due regard to tender Consciences as any Man in the World When the Question is about indifferent and not very material things then for Peace and Charity 's sake Gentleness and Meekness ought to prevail but it must be otherwise when Fundamentals are not only shaken but overturned and when Religion it self is pulled up by the very root as 't is when humane Reason is made a standing Rule whereby to judge of Revelation when the Doctrines of the most Holy Trinity of the Satisfaction which the Lord Jesus hath by the Sacrifice of himself made for our Sins with other things thereupon depending and what Scriptures with the received Creeds of the Primitive Church do affirm about it and what our Church believes I say it ought to be otherwise when all these lie at stake and are blown up at oncâ— then or never 't is high time to speak out especially when we see how boldly and openly these things are carried on We use to say There is a difference between mad and stark staring mad People distemper'd in their Minds are dealt withal according unto the nature and degree of their Distemper some confin'd to their Chambers others to their Beds others bound and chained up The like we observe in the Distempers of the Politick Body he who rashly speaks ill of the Government deserves some Punishment but not so great as he who violently attempts to overthrow it or to destroy the Persons in whose hands God hath lodged the Power so it must be in spiritual Diseases which affect the Body of the Church and these several ways I mean when I speak of a true and proper Remedy whereof the applying depends upon the Skill of the Physician 't is not any effect of Cruelty to make Incisions and cut off dead Flesh out of a Wound to prevent a Gangrene nor to restrain People that have the Plague from coming among those that are free from it for fear of infecting them So 't is no Persecution to take care that Hereticks such all Orthodox Christian Churches take Socinians to be do not come in among those that are sound in the Faith This great Danger may in a due respect and humble way be represented to the superiour Power whose Office is to prevent and remedy Inconveniences This I humbly conceive to be a Branch of the Right of the Subject and it may not be called To prescribe them what to do they cannot be every where nor know every thing therefore stand in need of being informed this is the usual course of Justice for no Redress when no Complaint is made and I was so far from presuming to prescribe therein that in my Epistle pag. 18. I declare against it All that are no Socinians are agreed how their Tenets about the most holy Trinity are heretical and consequently contrary to the Doctrine of the Church as by Law established Now the Laws of the Land do forbid any thing to be published that is contrary to it it is known to all how Socinians do in Print and otherwise daily publish their blasphemous and heretical Opinions whereby they break the Law the Consequence is good to say they deserve to be punished as do all Law-Breakers and I hope they cannot pretend to come in within the Act of Indulgence tho they deny their Opinions to be heretical yet that 's not enough for them to be accounted innocent for 't is very rare to see a guilty Man when he is lyable to and sure of Punishment to confess his own Guilt yet his bare denyal doth not free him from it for if to deny was enough to clear no Man could be found guilty Both Authors of the Letters are very angry and much cry out against what I said about a Field of Honour which is in relation to the Cause to be defended against its Enemies and not to any capital Punishment which had been an imprudent thing of me and contrato my inclination to have suggested against Hereticks but these Gentlemen who often call me hot and fiery hastily skipp'd from the Second Page of my Epistle to the Seventeenth of the same to make the Field of Honour to be Smithfield These two things are written too far asunder to be joyned together as indeed there was in my thoughts nothing like Smithfield when I was insinuating that as God's Work is glorious so the occasion offer'd to promote it is as a Field of Honour as expressed in the place and what there I mentioned of one who for Socinianism suffered in Smithfield was not of my own but in consequence of a Citation out of Sir Thomas Ridley ' s View of the Civil and Ecclesiastical Laws where he saith Against such is provided Sentence of Death and there I gave two Instances how what he said had been executed Let any impartial Man peruse the places and they shall find it to be as I say and then may take notice how rash hasty and unjust are these Men who pretend to so much Calmness and Meekness of Spirit in making Reflections upon others who through God's Grace have a more Christian charitable frame of Spirit than themselves We indeed hate abominable Blasphemies and Heresies but neither Blasphemers nor Hereticks for some of them God if he pleases may shew Mercy and give Repentance unto their Conversion not their Ruin is wish'd for and also Endeavours are used to preserve others from being infected The true and short account of the business is this Things being in the state and condition as I represent in my Epistle and Preface I looked upon it as a Duty incumbent upon me as a Christian with what little strength God hath given me to lay it out in the Defence of the most just and best Cause in the World namely the due Honour of the most holy and adorable Trinity and the Divinity of our blessed Lord and Saviour and of the Holy Ghost which so many Legions of Martyrs have freely shed their Blood and gloriously laid down their Lives for I went not about to support it with enticing Words
no Foundation but Humane Reason which is not allowable chiefly in things of the nature of those now in question what they call Cant is out of Scripture Writings of Antient Fathers and out of Schools which as I think are the proper Store-houses whence to draw our Materials but with them every thing is Cant which doth not suit with their Tunes those Men would have all Notions of things manner of Expression and Stile to be but one and the same but theirs to be the Original for others to go by which especially in Men who so highly pretend to Reason is as unreasonable as if one would have all features in the Face all shapes of the Body all humours and inclinations of the Soul to be alike a thing impossible For every man saith the Apostle hath his proper gift of God one after this manner another after that However these great Masters of Wit Learning and Reason find fault with the way of other Mens Writing if it be not as they would have it that they call Nonsense and what else they please for their Tongues and Pens are their own wherewith they will do what they have a mind to Their Ironical Expressions may well be retorted upon them yet they should know how Truth is better when naked and needs no painting as doth Falshood to Paint is the part of an Harlot not of a vertuous Woman I ask Is not Gold Gold still and good tho' it be not Enamel'd or otherwise curiously wrought If they have their way of Writing I have mine which they shall not put me out of but will keep to 't till I see a Law enjoining others to Conform to theirs I thank God my ways are different from and would not change them for theirs tho' they would set up for Censors and Reformers of other Mens Works but by what Patent I cannot hear nor see and if I could help it I would have nothing Common with them because their Plague is in the Head and to give them their due in what they say there is more of flashy Wit than of solid and sound Reason they prefer the Bark before the Body of the Tree and the Cloaths before the Person who wears them They dislike my Quotations or Fragments of Scripture as one of the two calls them and good reason they have for they are so many strong and destructive Batteries against them they would not see the Mouth of that Cannon which shatters their false Opinions to pieces If to Quote Scripture be a Fault they are not guilty of it they travel not much into that Country and when they do 't is with a Cup of Venom in their Hand if possible to poison the Springs Their Reason is the God-Idol for whose sake they slight Revelation but saith he those Fragments are ill applied I see you had more Curiosity than your Brother which of the two is Simeon and which Levi I cannot tell however one calls himself a Lay-man for you read the Book but what 's the reason you give not one Instance of these Fragments of Scripture being ill apply'd surely you are apt enough to take advantage if any was offered and I cannot believe you would have so much Charity as to spare me for by the sowrness and gall of bitterness which I find in the Letters I have cause to think so you cannot so soon have forgotten all those Portions of God's word ill apply'd I had been glad to have seen some named then upon a good account I could have said something to you but you give me cause to think those Misapplyings to be the Man in the Moon I mean your Humane Reason As for me about Matters in question Scripture is my Stong-hold and the Arsenal whence I draw both offensive and defensive Weapons which they would have us to throw away but they must pardon us for not complying with them they themselves cannot and will not do so for therein they would find their Condemnation We follow better Examples those of great Captains in this Warfare as Paul who in this same Cause reasoned out of the Scriptures and at another time he testified concerning Jesus Christ out of the Law of Moses and out of the Prophets from morning till evening He was not weary of it neither must we be let Socinians say what they will to the contrary And tho' he was immediately inspired by the Holy Ghost yet on all occasions he appealed to the Scriptures for a confirmation of what he said Thus when he affirmed that Christ died for our Sins he immediately addeth according to Scripture and in the 11th Verse he saith that he was buried and that he rose again still according to the Scriptures His Death Burial and Resurrection three Articles of our Faith he proves by Scriptures which is a Rule laid before us to prove his Divine Nature and Attributes which we ought to follow except we think we about such things know more than the Apostle And then Apollos whose great Commendation is that he was mighty in the Scriptures and that he mightily convinced the Jews publickly shewing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ So if we will convince Socinians that Christ is the true Natural Son of God we must do 't out of Scripture as out of the same Apollos did mightily convince the Jews that Jesus was Christ Besides we have the Example of a number of People I mean of Berea said to be more Noble than those of Thessalonica because they searched the Scriptures daily whether those things preached to them were so Thus we obey our blessed Saviours Command to Search diligently the Scriptures for they bear testimony of him And accordingly when he was with his Disciples he taught them out of the Law of Moses the Prophets and the Psalms all things written concerning him as after his Resurrection he put them in mind of it then he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures without which no knowledge of him to be had and in these Matters the Question is about him his Person Besides that 't is usual as with Paul and the other Apostles so with the Evengelists out of Texts of the Old Testament to prove what they affirmed in the New nay in the Old we sometimes find one Prophet quoting some Texts of another and upon this very account of Sanctifying the Lord of Hosts the Messiah the Prophet sends the People to the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in them without it their natural Reason is but Darkness I am blamed for using Sundry Metaphors called A Flourish of wild Rhetorick but if it was transplanted into their Garden it would be Natural enough there as indeed it would be in its proper center If sometimes I make use of Metaphors I wonder why they dislike it in some respect it may be called a Creature of their own for
did use the Superlative degree instead of the Positive But these are but Quibbles of your own which argues that seeing you stick at such things you have little else to say for your selves ye leave things for Words and like drowning Men lay hold upon any thing that lieth in your way to save a sinking Cause when no serious Man but would think it below himself to stay upon such things all your Observations and Inferences are an effect of a distemper'd Imagination and not of a sound Reason whereby you deserve the name of the Ridiculer ridiculed As well as you we know Essence to be one thing and Circumstance another but that were tolerable if ye did not as ye do jest with Holy things But I think to know where the Sore lieth ye do not like the words Essential nor Essence derivative nor primitive and tho' in the Schools of Divinity and Philosophy they be used yet ye dislike them because in so many Letters not to be found in Scripture but here you might see I use it not in a Religious but Civil account I own I am at a loss to find a way how to please such nice Spirits as ye are for of one side ye would not have us to use the words Essence Trinity Person because you say they are not in the word of God yet ye both find fault with me for making use of Scripture so much as I do against you in my Book So ye Gentlemen prodigies of Learning may now see which if you do not others do how ye sin against very common Rules what then will become of the four things you learned after you put your Wits to the rack to make others pass for Nonsensical Scriblers who hardly can write three words of good Sense Thus if your witty Premises do fall how can your learned Inferences stand These miserable Shifts which every solid Man would scorn to trouble his head with do tend only to shew how in you is an earnest desire but want of power to make others who differ from you to pass for Silly and Ridiculous so take to your selves what you had prepared for others But what 's all this to the Cause but a putting it off and running away from it Having shewed how when I penned my Epistle I thank God I was in my right Senses the next thing I must do is to prove my Charge against Socinianism which he calls false and disagreeing yet I make no doubt but it will stick First I call it Blasphemous and I shall prove it out of better Authority than that of the Polonian Knight or Bidle's or what the Reasons to the contrary of the Authors of both Letters can come to In order to 't I say there is a twofold Blasphemy one Positive when Men call or otherwise make God a Liar and to deny himself or the like and the other Negative when Men deny him to be Infinite Almighty or Eternal the first when God is made to be what he is not the second when he is deny'd to be what he is That Blasphemy is an abominable Injury directly against God's Nature Attributes or Works is so plainly and frequently set down in Scripture that I think unnecessary for me to prove it and if the same offence committed against God's Nature Attributes and Works be called Blasphemy and that committed against the Lord Jesus's Person be called Blasphemy it follows first that Jesus Christ is true God then secondly that whosoever denies Christ to be God in his Nature Attributes and Works he is a Blasphemer Now Socinianism denieth our Saviour Divine Nature and Essential Attributes of that Nature therefore Socinianism is a Blasphemous Opinion and Doctrine as much for denying Christ to be true God by Nature as by denying Divine Nature Almightiness and Eternity Now that the Sin called Blasphemy is sometimes committed against the Lord Jesus we learn it out of his own mouth upon the occasion of the Pharisees saying he did cast out Devils by Beelzebub the Prince of Devils this he called Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost the chiefest of all And when he was in the hands of the Jews the things by them done and spoken against him were by the Evangelist called Blasphemy and many other things spake they blasphemously against him Thus when the Jews spake against the things that were spoken by Paul and what were those things That Christ was the Son of God which to prove he made use of the words of Psalm 2. Thou art my Son c. in the proper Sense their speaking against this is call'd Contradicting and Blaspheming upon the same account in another place 't is said they opposed and blasphemed Thus Paul saith of himself he was before his Conversion a Blasphemer and compelled others to blaspheme that is to deny and speak ill of Christ so to say that Christ is not God of the same Nature and Power equal with the Father is as great a Blaspemy as to say he was or is a Sinner which any one that hath a religious Honour and Love for him and hopeth for Mercy at his hands when at the last day he shall appear in his Glory cannot and as much as in him lieth must not endure The next Charge against Socinianism is Atheism and Deism he doth couple them thinking to shew a Contradiction but there is none I say to worship the true God not in a true manner is Idolatry as well as to worship a false God Jeroboam for worshipping the true God in an undue manner is branded with Idolatry and provoked God as much as Ahab for worshipping Baal or a false God or else with Papists we must take away the Second Commandment In like manner I say not to know the true God in a true manner is Atheism as well as not to know him at all and the true way to know God is to know him in Christ without whom no true knowledge of God to that purpose the Apostle saith unto the Ephesians that at that time when they were without Christ they also were without God in the world That is they were Atheists and is it truly to know God in Christ only to know him there in a Creature seeing the very Heathens can tell us Praesentemque refert quae libet herba Deum and not rather as in him in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily These fragments of Scripture please not Socinians for they not knowing God in Christ as his Eternal and Natural Father are thereby branded with Atheism As for Deism I take it in the Sense wherein it is taken now adays for a Deist is he who prefers Humane Reason before Faith and Revelation so you own my Charge is not a perfect Nonsense tho' in some degree you would have it still to be a Nonsense for you are pleased thus magisterially to decide Now I confess this sort of Charge is not so perfect a Nonsense as the other however I
the first Oecumenick Council and others following the Arminians not so I mean not Worstius and the like but such as in comparison of others are Moderate But still I say that the Cause against Socinians cannot so effectually be handled upon Arminian Principles for in some things their Bounds are so near and undiscernable that sometimes a Man cannot fall upon one but he must tread upon the other and one blow sometimes hits them both so sometimes the Arminian doth not strike home upon the Socinian for fear of hurting himself However to shew you what a difference we ought to make between Adversaries and Adversaries we have some Disputes both against Lutherans and Papists yet much more and greater against the last than against the first certainly we will not carry our selves equally towards both for there is cause to make a great distinction between them which to shew upon occasion we keep Communion with Lutherans when we may not with Papists yet the former are in a gross errour to think the Substance of the glorified Body of Christ which is now in Heaven and shall be until he comes to Judge the Quick and the Dead to be included in with and under the Bread and Wine yet because they declare they adore not the Bread nor the Wine we do not look upon them as Idolaters as we take Papists to be for they adore a Wafer under the notion that it is turned into the Substance of the Body of Christ and we are forbidden to have Communion with Idolaters Thus we ought to make a difference between Lutherans and Papists so we must between those who would destroy the Grace of God in Christ which is very ill and those who impiously fly against his Person as ye do nay I say Socinians in some things are worse than Papists who own the Article of the Trinity of Persons in the Unity of Divine Nature and the Divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost which ye deny Ye are the worst of all Christian Societies which Name ye are unworthy of because ye reject despise and undervalue the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ from whom we are called Christians and will not take his Word nor God the Father's when he is by him and by himself called Son of God This Man as well as his Partner will make use of his Arithmetick and because I complain'd of the increase and number of Socinians he makes a pother about almost all the Church a moiety of the Presbyterians Nine parts in Ten of the Quakers like a Squirrel in a Cage which turns again and again but never the farther on in his way always within the Circle so he which way soever he turns himself is ever upon his Dunghil As to the Number of Socinians tho' it was never so inconsiderable comparatively yet 't is ever too great tho' never so few yet still too many One Wolf in a Sheepfold can do Havock enough only one that hath the Plague can infect a whole Town always Vermin multiplieth too fast wherefore to prevent the Growth and Increase of it 't is necessary a sufficient care be taken by those who are concern'd especially those whose Diocess is much infected with and made the center of that Vermine whom David a great King and Judge of Israel and a Prophet too gives this Charge unto Be Wise now therefore O ye Kings be instructed ye Judges of the Earth Psal 2. Dignity calls for and commands Duty and to whom much is given of them much shall be required Not only a Disposition but also a Resolution in Magistrates is necessary for 't is that which helps to put Life into those Laws which otherwise languish for want of due and discreet Execution wherein one is to go to the root of the Evil if he will extirpate it In some Distempers the Dose must not be weak else it will but stir the Humours and not remove them But what is it that David would have Kings and Judges of the Earth to learn and be instructed in in the next Verse he saith it to serve the Lord with fear in their station to defend his Cause and maintain his Concerns is part of the Service required here But whom is this Service due to to Christ the Messiah to whom the Lord hath said Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee to whom the Heathen are given for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the Earth for his possession whom he shall break with a Rod of Iron and dash them in pieces like a Potters Vessel Certainly such a Potent Lord Son of God deserves to be served with fear by all Kings and Judges of the Earth and 't is his Cause not Man's which now is under debate his Right and Title being questioned which if Men in Places and Power do not as they are bound Assert and Vindicate to speak in Mordecai's words to Esther Deliverance shall arise from another place some others will do God's Work but thou and thy Father's House shall be destroyed For the Lord Jesus himself will in his due time not only do 't but also require it at the hands of those who neglected it which is a most abominable Crime no less than as much as in them lieth to set their hands to his Condemnation and suffer him again to be Crucified for pretended Blasphemy for affirming himself to be the Son of God which the Jews did well call making himself God For the Names God Son of God simply properly and absolutely taken imply Divine Nature as Man Son of Man do Humane therefore said the Jews to Pilate By our Law that is of Blasphemy he ought to die for he made himself the Son of God which if he was not then without Blasphemy let it be spoken and the thoughts make my Hair stand on end he had been a Blasphemer a Lyar and an Impostor and such the Socinian Principles impiously make him to be And because I said it had been well if at first that necessary care had been taken especially by those that are most concern'd to prevent it thence he doth infer that tho' not indeed in plain words but intelligibly enough I said it had not been done which after his usual calm and Christian-spirited way he calls a meer Story my own pure Invention and a notorious Slander and to prove it so in his Head he frames an Idea of an Hurly burly and Confusion in opposing of Socinianism and this he would make a Play of and without any distinction ridicule all that appear'd against it The Opposers saith he did but scuffle tumultuously with they knew not whom nor what and in the event it appeared they were more afraid than hurt and to ridicule it the more he saith This zealous Leader would scower through the dark Vales of Antient Fathers and General Councils that learned Author would bustle in the thorny Thickets of the School-men here indeed is to be found the flourish of wild
three Attributes We cannot say the Son of God to be a Property or Attribute we cannot say an Attribute of Divine Nature was made Flesh we cannot say three Properties appeared in our Saviours Baptism or that we are baptised in the Name of three Properties Therefore ye may see we are not so far agreed as you said if you will have us to be agreed you must come to us for we declare we cannot go to you that 's the easiest and surest way of the two for we are tyed by a Revelation and may go no farther than it doth allow us but your Human Reason is a Latitudinarian which can stretch a great way we may not we cannot go beyond the bounds which God in his Word hath prescribed us but ye are Free-willers and at liberty to day your Reason may teach you one thing to morrow another for as you say your selves a Doctrine which at one time may be convenient may be otherwise when Circumstances of Times shall alter but with us no Circumstances can alter our Heavenly Doctrine Out of this you may see how all this while I have not been fighting against the Man in the Moon or as you very civilly express it making a Rod for a foolish Back of my own or to speak home a Fagot to roast my own Ribs But upon a surer ground I may say he hath been in a Dream or in a hot violent Fit for he hath been striking on all sides and spared none that lay in his way as for me I am the Man and therefore in the Fit having forgotten the Cause he hath at me almost in every Page and in one place he admires at my extravagant Zeal who would have the Socinians burnt for their complyance with the Church of England If so then indeed there were cause to admire but there is true ground of admiration that he thinks it so but really nothing is to be admired at either in or from him for he calls me a Papist a Calvinist and a Zealous one a Socinian nay a Real one He saith he is no Socinian but I am when he writes for and I against them this is a Hocus Pocus 't is and 't is not surely there is cause to suspect something is out of order within that brains of his or an extraordinary brazen-fac'dness however let him as he can secure all this from Contradiction Et erit mihi magnus Apollo When I think upon such Men as pretend to alter the Nature of things I am put in mind of what a famous Popish Author saith That the Pope can make that to be Sin which is no Sin and that not to be Sin which is Sin so do these Men who would seem to be much against Popery yet follow several of their Maxims and would make that to be a Nonsense which is good Sense and that to be no Contradiction which is and so on the contrary If these Men themselves be not Mysteries as one calls me their dark Sentences are all this while the Cause is safe enough But Calvin not so how roughly doth he handle him on all occasions if he were alive he would not be good to give to Dogs tho' neither he nor a dosen more such one 's would be worthy to carry his Books I confess 't is to me and ought to be a wonder to others to find how mad some Men in the World are against that faithful Servant of God once in his Life and Conversation and now in his Works and Labours an Eminent Instrument in his Hand as for Instruction so at first in the Work of Reformation This is a Fit of Rage which several Years since out of Envy some in Parts much inferiour to him began to be possessed of and by Men of the same Kidney hath been propagated to this very day whereof the Authors of the Two Letters are real Instances for to speak in Paul's words they are exceeding mad against him and as they are against his Memory and Person now far out of their reach so they are broken loose and so hot and fiery against the Doctrines he taught that all the Water of the Leman Lake could hardly cool them what they call Calvinism they adorn with these Epithets Proud sowr and fiery Qualifications Calvinistical Impatience and many such more whereof this Orthodox is one The Heresie of the Tritheists is not worse than uncharitable and ill natur'd Calvinism Therein I shall conclude with this In truth I think Heylin was over modest to esteem a Presbyterian that is a Calvinist worse than a Papist Here is your Protestants and as if this had not been enough his own venom he throws out in the same place for my part I esteem a Christian from whatsoever Sect denominated not excepting the Socinians more honourable than a Persecuting Calvinist Tho' the word Persecuting had been left out it had been all one to that Christian Righteous Soul of his But as for Socinus he was a most excellent Man very sound in the Faith and who if we will believe this Man hath by his Works laid a great Obligation upon the World and he subscribes to what one of the Gang said of him That none since the Apostles hath deserved better of the Christian Religion so that a Man may more avail himself by reading his Works than by perusing all the Fathers together with the Writings of more modern Authors This People either never read or care not for what Paul saith Let your Moderation be known unto all men for they observe it neither for Socinus nor against Calvin but having elsewhere had an occasion in few few words to do this faithful Servant of Christ some Justice I shall leave off speaking of his Person to take some brief notice of his Works That which most nettles his Enemies are the Doctrines about Grace and Providence mentioned in the Two Letters which they call Calvinism But if they would not so proudly despise all Antiquity but peruse some of Augustin's Works who lived 1200 Years before Calvin they might find he was a Calvinist so were Hilarius Prosper Fulgentius and others who so long before he was born could as well as he did afterwards find those same Doctrines in the Word of God and accordingly the beginning progress and end of our Salvation and from first to last we attribute to God's free Grace which in that matter we can never yield too much nor too little to any thing of our own we do not like the Pharisee boast in our Prayers that we Fast twice a Week give Tithes and are not Extortioners Unjust and make no Comparison with our Neighbours as being better Men than they but we say God be merciful to us miserable Sinners for we are commanded to trust in the Lord with all our hearts and forbidden to lean unto our own understanding which is as good as to say depend not upon your own Reason therefore in any