The Pains therefore he has taken in this long sixth Chapter which was designed for the Strength of his whole Book are lost and he has all things to begin anew You will say Have we done then with our explaining and vindicating the Trinity No Sir When his Lordship had wrote his Book and upon a Review of it perceived that he had not sufficiently no nor tolerably explained his Notion of the Trinity nor yet what is meant either by Persons or Personalities which must be explained and distinguished or we shall dispute about we know not what and with we know not whom I say his Lordship perceiving his Oversight wrote a Preface of 62 Pages chiefly to declare himself upon and to clear these Matters I will lay together what he hath said up and down in his Preface which I may rightly call his Book upon second Thoughts The Trinity in Unity is one individual Substance under three different Modes of Subsistence p. 13. Or 't is three peculiar Properties in one and the same Divine Nature p. 14. But more particularly as to Personality and Person A Personality is no more but a different Mode of Subsistence in the same common Nature p. 14. In created Beings every Personality doth suppose a distinct Substance But not from the Nature of Personality but from the Condition of the Subject or Substance in which it is p. 15. But I do not advise him to explain too particularly the latter part of this Theorem lest the Realists should turn it into Ridicule 't is a very obnoxious Proposition But when we come to consider a Divine Essence there can be no way of Distinction conceived in it but by different Modes of Subsistence or what is the same relative Properties in the same Divine Essence p. 16. In short then a Personality is only a particular Mode of Subsistence and in the Divine Nature Essence or Substance 't is most properly called a relative Property For instance Paternity or active Generation Filiation or passive Generation or begotten So much for Madam PERSONALITY now for Sir PERSON The Notion of a Person besides the relative Property comprizes the Divine Nature together with it p. 17. And again in his Book at p. 119. They agreed in the name Persons to express their Meaning which was That there are three which have distinct Subsistences and incommunicable Properties but one and the same Divine Essence You are to wot here Sir that by the Divine Nature or Divine Essence they mean the Deity it self that is the Divine Substance with its several Attributes Omniscience Omnipotence infinite Justice and Goodness and the rest These namely the Divine Substance and Attributes are called the Divine Nature or Essence and because herein are three relative Properties unbegotten begotten a proceeding therefore each of these Properties when consider'd with the Divine Essence and Attributes is called a Person But here his Lordship is in bodily Fear lest this Explication of the Trinity or three Divine Persons should be taken for Sabellianism and therefore be understood to be an entire yielding the Cause to the Unitarians The Men from whom he fears this Imputation are the Realist Party chiefly Dr. Cudworth who saith of this Explication that it is the Philosophy of Gotham a nominal Trinity and three such Persons as cannot be in Nature But see now how dexterously his Lordship comes off It is not Sabellianism to teach that every Divine Person is a Person as he hath the Divine Nature Essence or Substance belonging to him For Sabellianism is the asserting such relative Persons as have no Essence at all p. 18 19. So that if the Unitarians do but confess that the three Properties unbegotten begotten and proceeding which are here called RELATIVE PERSONS subsist or are in the Divine Essence or Nature they are not Sabellians but Catholicks they should be Sabellians if they said these Properties are in no Essence at all But I think they must be called Fools as well as Sabellians if they asserted relative Properties or any Properties that were in no Essence I perceive his Lordship and we shall agree But let us hear also how he goes on Farthermore it is to be noted that there is a Communication of the Divine Essence to each Divine Person p. 19. For each Divine Person has an absolute Nature distinctly belonging to him tho not a distinct absolute Nature p. 9. The eternal Father is and subsists as a Father by having a Son and by communicating his Essence to another The Relation between Father and Son is founded on that eternal Act by which the Father communicates his Divine Nature Essence or Substance to the Son p. 10. Lastly he adds at p. 112. of his Book The Divine Persons are distinct as to personal Properties he means the Father is unbegotten the Son begotten the Holy Spirit neither begetting nor begotten but proceeding but they are not distinct as to essential Attributes i. e. they have not distinct Omnisciencies or Omnipotencies they have but one Intellect and one Energy You will say Sir this last is very sound that unbegotten begotten and proceeding are distinct Properties in the Divine Essence and that there is but one Omniscience and Omnipotence but one Omniscient and Omnipotent not three Omniscients or three Omnipotents But may there not be a Snake in the Grass in what is said that there is a Communication of the Divine Essence and that the Father by an immanent and eternal Act communicates his Divine Nature to the Son By no Means for you shall hear from the Bishop of Sarum and the Divines of the Schools nay for greater Surety and Caution from Dean Sherlock and the Fathers what that eternal Act is by which the Father communicates the Divine Essence to the Son and both of them to the Spirit as also what is meant by Father Son and Spirit nothing I assure you that any Unitarian ever questioned but what we believe as sincerely as Bishops and Deans do I pray Sir observe we are inquiring what is the eternal Act by which the Divine Essence is communicated to the Divine Persons and what those Persons are Let us first hear Dr. Sherlock who saith he hath all the Fathers of his side He affirms 1. It is essential to an eternal Mind to know it self and to love it self 2. Original Mind or Wisdom or Knowledg of it self and Love of it self and of its own Image are distinct Acts and can never be one Act. 3. These three Acts being so distinct that they can never be the same must be three substantial Acts in God that is the three Divine subsisting Persons 4. These then are the true and proper Characters of the distinct Persons in the Trinity the Father is Original Mind or Wisdom The Son is the reflex Knowledg of himself namely of Original Mind or the perfect Image of his own Wisdom that is of the Wisdom of Original Mind The Holy Spirit is that Divine Love which Father and Son have for
Existence of one Individual from the rest it depends on the separate Existence which it hath from all others For that which gives it a Being distinct from all others and divided by individual Properties is the true ground of the Difference between them and that can be no other but the Will of God But we are not yet come by a good way to the bottom of the Matter Truly I am sorry for it for I am half tired already and quite lost in this Labyrinth of 1 2 3 2 1. 2 1 2 1 2 2 but let 's go on since we needs must As to Individuals so he proceeds towards the bottom there are these things to be considered 1. Actual Existence in it self which hath a Mode belonging to it And otherwise the human Nature of Christ could not have been united to the Divine but it must have had also the personal Subsistence and consequently there must have been two Persons in Christ I suppose it may be Kabbala or Chaldee but Sense it is not 2. A separate and divided Existence from all others which arises from the actual Existence but may be distinguished from it As the human Nature of Christ altho it had the Existence proper to Being yet had not a separate Existence after the Hypostatical Union Be not abash'd Sir the Meaning only is some things exist separately others in Union or Composition But deep Men as his Lordship somewhere says of his Party must express themselves deeply to keep up the Reputation of what they falsly call Learning for were their Theorems deliver'd in plain English they would be thought to be childish Trifles 3. The peculiar manner of Subsistence which lies in such Properties as are incommunicable to any other and therein consists the proper Reason of Personality Which doth not consist in a mere intelligent Being but in that peculiar manner of Subsistence in that Being which can be in no other For when the common Nature doth subsist in Individuals there is not only a separate Existence but something so peculiar to it self that it can be communicated to no other The downright English is this Tom hath something so peculiar to himself that tho he is a Man yet he is not Will or Ned but only Tom. 4. There is a common Nature which must be joined with this manner of Subsistence to make a Person otherwise it would be a mere Mode but we never conceive a Person without the Essence in conjunction with it But here appears no manner of Contradiction in asserting several Persons in the same common Nature In English thus Tallness or Leanness or such like Modes do not alone make a Person there must be some Essence Nature or Substance added to the Mode of Tallness suppose or Leanness else mere Tallness will not be a Person And hence it is clear as the Sun that there is no manner of Contradiction in asserting several Persons such as Tallness Leanness Dulness when joined to some Essence or Substance in one and the same common Nature as suppose of Humanity We shall consider this poor Elusion by and by 5. The Individuals of the same kind are said to differ in Number from each other because of their different Accidents and separate Existence Or thus Tom and Ned are two Men not one Man because they are several Men and have several different Qualities I think the Critick might have left out the different Qualities for tho the Qualities of Tom and Ned were the same yet by only being several Men they would be two Men and not one 6. There must be a Separation in Nature where there is a Difference of Individuals of the same kind I do not say an actual Separation or Division as to Place but there is and must be in Nature where one common Nature subsists in several Individuals For all Individuals must divide the Species and the common Nature unites them Or Will is not Harry the human Nature is divided in these two Persons yet they are both of them Men they are not Camels nor yet Dromedaries for they are united in the human Nature not in the Camel or Dromedary-Nature 3. This 3dly comes but oddly after 6thly but let us hear what it is We are now to inquire how far these things will hold as to the Persons in the Trinity I shall answer in short they will not hold at all and that for this demonstrative Reason which the Builder of this intricate Labyrinth hath unhappily overlook'd These 1 2 3 2 1 2 1 2 1 2 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 3 are so many Boxes with each of 'em a Mystery in it but here is the Misfortune They speak of such Natures as have no Existence but only in our Conception mere abstracted Natures such as human Nature Camel-Nature Angelical Nature that have not a real Existence but only an imaginary for there is really no such existing thing as human Nature or Camel-Nature but they are Notions only of the Mind framed by our Understandings while they are imployed in considering wherein or in what Properties all Men do agree They all agree for instance in Rationality and Risibility and therefore these two have been named by Metaphysicians the human Nature As the Natures of which the aforesaid Boxes speak are only abstracted notional and imaginary Natures not really existing Natures so on the contrary the Persons in them are not mere Metaphysical Persons or such relative Properties that several of them do or can subsist in the same rational Being but they are such Persons as necessarily suppose distinct Substances as well as distinct Properties For instance the Properties that make the Personalities of Harry and Charles require distinct Substances to make the Persons of Harry and Charles those Properties if they existed only in a common Nature as the Humanity and had not also distinct Substances they would never make distinct Persons In short the Boxes speak of imaginary Natures or Essences and of Persons who are so many real Substances They will not therefore hold at all in the Question of the Trinity For the Blessed Trinity is of a just contrary Nature to the Mysteries in the Boxes In the Trinity the Nature is a really existing Nature 't is a spiritual Substance and indued with a great Number of Divine Attributes not an abstracted or mere notional imaginary Nature and the Persons are as unlike to the Persons in the Boxes for the Divine Persons are not distinct Substances or real Beings but Properties only in a real Being and in an infinite Substance To argue as his Lordship does from imaginary Natures to a real Nature and from Persons that are distinct Beings and distinct Substances to Persons which he dares not but say they are only relative Properties in the same intellectual Substance and Being I say to argue after that fashion is to shoot as wide of his Mark as the Natures and Persons of which he is to discourse are different which is no less than infinitely
each other All Men who know the Fathers know that this is their constant Language Vindic. of the Trin. p. 130. To make this Testimony the more considerable the Author intimates in the last Paragraph but one of his Preface that in writing this Book he must thankfully own he was divinely assisted If you will not take the Word of Dr. Sherlock and the constant Language of the Fathers then hear the Bishop of Sarum with all the School-Divines and the universal Church They conceived that the primary Act of the Divine Essence is its Wisdom this they thought might be called the Son as being the Generation of eternal Mind From this Fountain-Principle eternal Mind and the inward WORD or Logos or Wisdom a Love did issue forth which was to be the Soul of the Creation and more particularly of the Church This was rested on and became the universally-received Explication of the Trinity and was dressed up by the Schools with a great deal of dark Nicety Discourse to Clergy p. 99. Now Sir lay your hand on your Heart and answer like a true Unitarian Do you your self or know you any of the Denomination that question this Trinity the Trinity our very Opposers say of the Schools the Fathers and the universal Church Namely 1. One Divine Nature Essence or Substance with one only Omniscience and Omnipotence and consequently with one only Intellect and Power of Action 2. Three Properties called by the Bp. of Worcester RELATIVE PERSONS viz. Vnbegotten eternal Mind Reflex or begotten Knowledg or Wisdom and Divine Love proceeding from both This from themselves is what they mean by Persons in the Trinity and Communication of the Divine Nature without Division or Separation by immanent and Eternal Acts. I confess I fear much that were Dr. Cudworth alive that great Divine and Philosopher would either reason or laugh us out of this Gibberish he would constrain us to return to the Language of Scripture about these Matters And it is most true that these Terms are not to be found either in Holy Scripture or in the Creeds or received General Councils of the Catholick Church They were first advanced by some particular Fathers especially St. Austin in his 15 Books de Trinitate were taken up from them by the Divines of the Schools that is of the middle Ages and have been confirmed by the constant Use of the Moderns or Divines of the two last Ages We declare openly and therein consists our whole Heresy that we like 'em not not only as they are unscriptural which in matter of Faith is a most just Exception for divers very weighty Reasons but because by their dangerous Ambiguity they give occasion to Heresy not only among the People but even among Learned Men. These are the Terms that have occasioned the Heresy of the Realists or Tritheists maintained at this time by divers Learned Men among us Yet for Peace sake we admit the Terms interpreted in the known Sense of the Church which Sense we acknowledg the Bps. of Worcester and Sarum Dr. S th and the Oxford-Heads have as we have seen already rightly understood and especially Dr. S th in his Latin Letters under the Name of a Transmarine Divine dextrously declared I may pass I think to the last thing to be considered The Conciliation of Dr. S th and Dean Sherlock DR Sherlock in his Books against the Unitarians had taken this for his Ground and Foundation that the three Divine Persons are three eternal infinite Spirits each of them a God but the three Gods are made up again into one God by being internally conscious to one anothers Thoughts and Operations Dr. S th in two English Books by him written and in three Latin Letters excepts against this Explication of the Trinity as false heretical and directly introducing three Gods He saith as we do that the Deity is one numerical individual Nature Substance Mind Spirit with one only Understanding Will and Energy As to the Divine Persons they are the one individual Nature or Essence of God with three Relative Properties each Property consider'd with the Divine Essence is called a Person What these Properties and Persons are hath been said already The Bp. of Worcester seeing in what danger an old Friend is undertakes first to excuse Dr. Sherlock from the Imputation of Heresy and then to reconcile him to Dr. S th and the Nominals He inlarges himself on these three Points 1. That Dr. Sherlock's Explication not only will do no manner of Service towards clearing the Difficulties in the Doctrine of the Trinity but that it introduces a specifick Divine Nature which is inconsistent with the Divine Perfections Pref. p. 29. He adds at p. 30. 'T is impossible to conceive that the same individual Substance should be in three Persons as the Catholick Church teaches if those Persons have peculiar Substances of their own as Dr. Sherlock affirms and contends Immediately he cites an excellent Reasoning of Maimonides by which to know when Men affirm three Gods and concludes that Dr. Sherlock's Explication differs not from what Maimonides proves to be an introducing more Gods p. 30. He forbears not to own at p. 31. that he thinks it impossible to reconcile Dr. Sherlock's three individual Essences or Substances with the Catholick Churches one individual Divine Essence and that the former looks too like asserting three Gods and yet but one 2. But now how to save his Friend from the secular Arm He says in short Dr. Sherlock holds the Article of the Trinity and only mistakes in the Explication of it but it is not Heresy he saith when a Man assents to a Fundamental Article and only mistakes in the Explication Interpretation or Sense of it Pref. p. 22 23. But I fear our Brother S th is too quick-sighted to let this pass he will assuredly say that an Article whether fundamental or not fundamental and the Explication or Sense of such Article are the very same thing and that an Article falsly interpreted or explained is by no means the Article but a Contradiction to the Article He will certainly laugh out that his Antagonists can be no way excused from Heresy but by giving up at once the whole Doctrine of the Catholick Church For the Doctrine of the Church is most certainly yielded up if once it be granted that a Man believes her Articles while he expounds or takes them in a wrong Sense of them At this rate will he say Philoponus Joachim and Gentilis were good Catholicks for what makes a Catholick is not holding the Article in the true Meaning of it but in any Meaning in a false Meaning or a contrary Meaning I shall leave Dr. S th to argue it out with the Bp. and pass to the next 3. He alledges last of all that tho Dr. Sherlock affirms three individual Essences three eternal Minds three infinite Spirits which is Heresy yet he also says the Father communicated his Divine Nature or Essence wholly and intirely to the Son
Article he makes us believe a great many things as that the first Man was not created in a State of Vprightness As if it were possible that Men in their right Senses should think the first Man was created a Sinner That by his Fall Adam did not lose Righteousness and Holiness which are part of the Image of God As who should say that by being a Sinner he did not sin or become unlike to God That Adam's Posterity have received no hurt or stain by his Apostacy As if you should say that neither his bad Example nor the Curse that made the Earth so much less fruitful was any hurt and that the Rebellion of an Ancestor no not against God is no blot in his Family I shall grow quite out of Conceit with these Unitarians if they say many more such weak things But in very deed I imagine Mr. Edwards had a mind to have charged 'em more home when he does we shall consider what to answer I am of opinion that in this part of the Article he is somewhat ashamed of his own Doctrine and that he feared to make himself and Party ridiculous by a clear and distinct Representation of their Opinion That Mankind notwithstanding Adam's Fall have by Nature an Ability to desire and imbrace all spiritual Good and to avoid all that is sinful or vitious They are bold Britans What imbrace all the Gospel-Precepts by mere Nature When 't is not possible so much as to know divers of them but by Revelation Divine And can they avoid too all that is vitious by only Nature In good truth they are better and stronger by Nature than ever I hope to be in this Life by the super-added Grace of the Gospel But here again he did not strike home he intended more than he durst say and he durst not say it lest we should ask him whether he believes the just contrary That there is no need of the Spirit to repent believe and perform religious Acts. 'T is a serious Point We answer with St. Paul the Spirit HELPETH our Infirmities Rom. 8.26 But we judg for all that the Holy Scripture giveth no occasion to any to turn Enthusiasts and to resolve the whole Duty we owe and must perform to God and to our Neighbour into praeternatural Impulses as if we were Machines and not Men. Or Puppets moved by invisible Wires not Men that act by their own Reason and Choice That Men are Righteous before God not by the Merit of Christ but by their own good Works We answer with all but Antinomians and the more rigid Calvinists the Merit of Christ is not reckoned to us without good Works of our own But I am not certain that the Calvinist or Antinomians would not assent to this Proposition or not allow it to be Orthodox V. Another Branch of our Creed according to Mr. Edwards runs thus I believe concerning a future State that the Souls of the Deceased have no Knowledg or Perception of any thing they are not sensible of any Rewards or Pains and their very Nature is absorpt That at Death the Soul as well as the Body sleeps was an Error of some of the most antient Fathers as well as of some Unitarians But neither of them said as Mr. Edwards pretends that in Death the very Nature of the Soul is absorpt they both held that there is a Resurrection of the Soul as well as Body But why does Mr. Edwards impute that Opinion to us when he had read for he quotes the Book in the first Part of the Considerations on the Explication of the Trinity what is our Sense of this Matter The Words there at p. 33. are these This Error was common to Socinus with some of the Fathers The learned Mr. Du. Pinn has noted in his Abridgment of the Fathers that Justin Martyr Irenaeus Minutius Foelix and Arnobius were in this Sentiment There was no Reason to object this to Socinus as if it were a peculiar Opinion of his much less to the English Unitarians who never defended it nor that I know of do any of them hold it VI. He says next I believe we shall not rise with the same Bodies that we now have but that another Matter or Substance shall be substituted in their Place I see most of our Opposers have affected to mistake our Meaning concerning the Resurrection of the Body We hold nothing that is singular in the case we differ not from the Catholick Church about it We say with St. Paul 1 Cor. 15.35 How are the Dead raised and with what Bodies do they come Thou sowest not the Body that shall be The Body that is raised is not in all respects the same that was committed to the Earth in divers perhaps in the most it is We rise not Infants or decrepit old Men or lame or deaf or any way distorted tho many so lived and so died Nay as to the Passions resulting from the Complexion of the present Body and therefore to be reckoned the Modifications and as it were Parts of our Body we rise not with them it is not the same Body in respect of those Passions that it here lived For instance some are by Complexion very cowardly or pensive or cholerick or jealous the Body that shall be will not be such it will be conformed to the Likeness of the glorious Body of the Lord Christ that is be freed from all both external and internal Imperfections Farthermore our present Body Physicians and Philosophers say is in a continual Flux all the Parts of it internal as well as external continually decay and are continually renewed They decay by the Perspiration that is continually caused by the internal Heat and are continually renewed by the Nourishment taken in and converted into Blood Spirits Flesh and Bones 'T is said by the Learned in these Matters that no Man's Body is the very same as to the Matter and Substance of it this present Year that it was the last Year and will be the next Year 't is wholly new-built by the Nourishment of the present Year We say therefore there shall be a Resurrection of the Body and as some of the antient Creeds spoke of the same Body as truly and as properly as N. N. is the same Man this Year that he was one or seven or twenty Years ago If Mr. Edwards requires us to say more he exacts more than the Church believes for by the Resurrection of the same Body the Church intends only that 't is as truly the same as a Man notwithstanding the Flux of his Parts is now the same N. N. that he was seven or ten Years past yet not altogether the same because inconceivably better that is without any external or internal Deformities or Weaknesses VII I believe that at the Day of Judgment Men shall not be required to give an Account of their Actions the most flagitious Sinners shall not be examined concerning any thing of their past Life only they shall be
this Discovery is owing to the Sagacity and Dexterity of the English Vnitarians who having first distinguished those that pretend to be the Church into Nominal Trinitarians and Real Trinitarians or if you will into Trinitarians and Tritheists they next prove their Agreement with the former of these the Nominals and then that the Nominal Party is what ought to be called the Church That the Nominal Party is the Church is incontestably proved because their Doctrine or Explication of the Trinity has been directly and in Terms espoused by General Councils and the contrary the Explication or Doctrine of the Realists as expresly and directly censured and condemned by the same Authority The Realists believe that the Trinity is three distinct infinite Substances Minds and Spirits all of them co-eternal of like Dignity Power Wisdom and all other Divine Attributes And as to three such Persons being one God they say Because they immeate or are inseparably in one another therefore they are called one God tho each of them distinctly considered is perfect God Yet this Perichoresis Immeation or Inexistence is not such an In-being of these three Spirits or Substances in one another but that they really remain as distinct Substances Minds Spirits and Beings as three Angels or three Men are But the Nominals abhor this as perfect Tritheism they see plainly and proclaim it aloud to every body that three infinite Spirits tho as Spirits they may and as infinite Spirits they must be supposed to immeate or inexist in one another yet they are no more made to be one God by such alternate Penetration than if they were at never so great a Remotion from one another The Reason is because notwithstanding their mutual Inexistence neither their Understandings or Wills or other Powers nor their Substances become continuous or identified but remain truly distinct several and divers They are supposed indeed to be in one another but as distinctly and without Confusion either of their Substances or Powers as three Angels while they occupy the same Space and exclude not one another are Or to use another perhaps a better Comparison as these three Divine Spirits themselves are in all things in the whole Creation and the whole Creation in them Such an Inexistence as this every one sees is so far from making three eternal infinite Spirits to be one God that we can possibly have no other Notion of three Gods For what is the Conception that any Man has or can have of three Gods but this viz. so many infinite Spirits which so pervade or inexist in one another that notwithstanding their Substances Faculties and Attributes remain distinct and divers This is such a Reason and so obvious that the Nominals utterly reject and with the greatest Abhorrence the Doctrine of three infinite Spirits and explain the Trinity or three Divine Persons in a metaphysical way They say we are not to conceive of the three Divine Persons as we do of created Persons the Conception we ought to have of their Personalities or what they are as they are Persons is as different from the Personalities of created Beings whether they be Angels or Men as the Perfections of the Divinity are superiour to Human or Angelical Perfections God is but one Being but one Substance Mind or Spirit with one only Will Understanding Energy or Power of Action nor are the Divine Attributes multiplied or repeated in the Deity for there is in God no more than one Omnipotence Omniscience or other Divine Perfection It is only God that physically and properly exists as a vital Being or a compleat Spirit and Mind the Persons are only the Substance of God his infinite spiritual and most perfect Substance or Nature with the three Properties to be of none to be begotten and to proceed Some are yet more particular in declaring or explaining what the Personalities and Persons are These consider in God first original Mind or original Wisdom this is the Person of the Father Then reflex Wisdom even the Logos or Wisdom that resulteth from God's contemplating or knowing his own Perfections or what is the same the perfect Image that is generated or begotten by God's knowing and understanding himself which is called the Son Lastly the immanent Act of LOVE by which God willeth or loveth himself his eternal Spiration or as it were Breathing of Love toward himself this is named the Holy Spirit In short the Trinity believed by the Realists is three distinct infinite and pre-eternal Spirits each of which is a perfect God and all of them but one God by their mutual Inexistence or that they are in one another but without Confusion or identifying their Substances or their Powers The Trinity believed by the Nominals is one living eternal infinite Spirit consider'd under this threefold Distinction Unbegotten Begotten and Proceeding or Original Mind which is unbegotten reflex Wisdom which is generated and Divine Love which proceeds Original Mind being unbegotten is therefore named the Father reflex Wisdom being manifestly generated by original eternal Mind is called the Son the last being a Spiration of God has therefore the Appellation of Holy Spirit And tho the Nominals use sometimes other Terms in speaking of the Trinity such as Modes Relations relative Subsistences yet no more or other is meant by them than has been already said This Trinity of the Nominals is most directly as I said and explicitly affirmed by divers General Councils in whom only it is to declare the Faith and to pronounce what is to be deemed Heresy And this also is the Explication that has been followed without any Variation by all particular Writers whether Reformed or Roman Catholicks or of the Greek or Oriental Church since the Year 1215. But if this be the Catholick Faith as it certainly is the Unitarians are as sound Catholicks as any other Denomination of Christians whatsoever They believe the Trinity before-said even one infinite spiritual Substance with its three Properties Unbegotten Begotten and Proceeding One eternal Spirit under the triple Distinction of Original Mind Reflex Wisdom and Divine Love They approve of it that the first of these being unbegotten the second generated and the third a Spiration they be therefore called Father Son and Spirit Indeed the Terms Trinity and Person are unscriptural but we accept them according to the Explication by the Church that is as the Catholick Church has in the manner abovesaid explained her self concerning the three Persons of the Trinity We have therefore no Difference with the Church but only with the Realists who are a few English Writers that have departed from the Doctrine of the Catholick Church It was a strange Imputation on his Grace the late Archbishop that he was an Unitarian his Grace was a Realist He understood by Persons in the Deity not Persons in a metaphysical Sense as the Nominals do and as was before explained but Persons in a physical Sense of the Word or such Persons namely as vitally subsisting and as
allow the eternal Generation of the Logos Son or Wisdom he explains also the Incarnation or Divinity of our Saviour He makes the Incarnation of God in the human Nature to be such and to have like Effects as God's inhabiting the Cloud of Glory during some part of the Old-Testament Ages for this Cloud was worshipped he saith and he might have added is called God because of God in it But in his Letter he contends that the Indwelling of the Godhead in Christ was a vital Indwelling like that of the Soul in the Body and not an assisting Indwelling like that of Inspiration or the Gift of Tongues or of Miracles This must be candidly interpreted or it is the Apollinarian Heresy condemned in so many General Councils but I am perswaded he meant no Heterodoxy by a vital Indwelling He meant not that the Humanity lives by its Union with the Divinity which was the Doctrine of Apollinaris he intends only that the Humanity of the Lord Christ is entirely under the Impressions and Conduct of the Indwelling Divinity and receives constant Communications of Light and Impulse from it So I find him speaking at p. 107. And in the next Page thus The eternal WORD assumed the Man into an inward Oeconomy so as always to illuminate conduct and actuate it This is the clearest Thought we can have of the human Nature's subsisting by the Subsistence of the WORD that is of the Incarnation or Hypostatical Union This is far enough to be Orthodox but the Unitarians believe somewhat more they are a degree or two more Catholick and Orthodox They believe indeed with his Lordship not only that God did inspire our Saviour or so far communicated himself that the Lord Christ wrought Miracles by the Virtue that was always in him and not by a Power bestowed only occasionally and incidentally but that our Saviour's Humanity was constantly illuminated conducted and actuated by God in him and had unfading Communications of Light and Impulse from the Divinity he was entirely under the Impressions and Conduct thereof Yet as his Lordship also adds at p. 107. still leaving to the inferiour Mind to the rational Soul of Christ it s own Liberty and all its natural Powers And we reflect also on it that 't is with much more Justice and Propriety that our Saviour is called God on the account of such Indwelling of God than Moses or Solomon or even than Angels themselves who can be called Gods but only by Representation or at most on the account of God's assisting and inspiring them as occasion hapned to require But the Unitarians as I said believe somewhat more They do not appropriate the Incarnation to merely the WORD They hold that the whole Deity or Godhead dwelt in our Saviour all the Fulness of the Godhead as St. Paul speaks and not only the WORD dwelt in him bodily Not that the whole Essence of the Infinite God became commensurate to a finite Man or that there followed hereupon a real Communication of Idioms as some have heretically conceited which is in very deed a Revival of Eutychianism but only as God is every where whatsoever he is he is God perfect God in one Place in any Point of Space no less than in the whole interminable Extension of Place or Space This being the Unitarian Doctrine concerning the Incarnation hypostatical or personal Union and Divinity of our Saviour always believed and professed by 'em his Lordship had no Reason to snatch at so many Occasions of venting his Choler on the Considerer as if he were in danger of losing his Bishoprick by occasion of the Growth of Unitarianism which he mistakes to be a Departure from the Doctrine of the Catholick Church when 't is nothing but an Opposition to the Heresy of the Realists Of which this Prelate has made it appear he has not the least Tang. Of the Satisfaction as 't is stated in the Letter THE Unitarians differ somewhat from some other Catholicks in explaining the Doctrine of the Satisfaction but they approve of his Lordship's Notions concerning that Subject There are two Accounts given of the Satisfaction One of them supposes there was a Necessity that an adequate Satisfaction should be made to the Justice of God for the Sins of Men and that otherwise God could not dismiss us of the personal Punishment due by the Divine Law to our Sins The other supposes there was no Necessity of an adequate Satisfaction on our Behalf there being no such vindictive Justice essential to God whereby he is obliged to punish unless a full Satisfaction be given for Offences and Offenders The greater Number of the more learned Catholicks whether they be Protestants or Romanists hold the latter of these as well as the Unitarians do they believe It was neither necessary nor perhaps possible that a Satisfaction should be given to the Divine Justice every way equal to the eternal Punishment of an infinite Number of Sinners As my Lord of Sarum argues at p. 35. The Acts of Christ tho infinite in Value have not a strict Equality with all the Sins of so many Men every one of which is of infinite Guilt He confesses hereby that an adequate Satisfaction was not only not necessary but not possible in the nature of the thing unless there had been as many Redeemers not only as there are Sinners but as there are Sins But let us consider yet more particularly what his Lordship's Doctrine is He saith The Lord Christ was loaded with all the ill Usage that malicious Men could invent he suffer'd inexpressible Agonies both in Body and Mind and last of all was crucified But in all this he willingly offer'd himself to suffer upon our Account and in our stead which was so accepted by God that he not only raised him from the Dead and exalted him on High but gave to him even as he is Man all Power both in Heaven and Earth and offers also to the World Pardon of Sin Of this Account of the Satisfaction the Considerer said the Unitarians have ever professed it His Lordship in the Letter replies that the Racovian Catechism and the first Writers of the Socinians expresly deny the expiatory Virtue of the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross but he owns that some Socinians are come off from that Error and do own the expiatory Virtue of that Sacrifice He adds that Dr. Outram's learned Performance on this Subject is universally applauded and acquiesced in and all he saith may be satisfied by Dr. Outram's Book what is the Doctrine generally received in the Church of England But as to the poor Wretch the Considerer he is a Stranger his Lordship pronounces to the History of this Controversy His Lordship frequently discovers his great Passion for the Considerer often bestows on him his formed Compliments and this particular Compliment I suppose has the Property of most other Compliments that is to say the Speaker knows 't is more than measure while he gives it for just