are hence the Distinction of a Specifical and Numerical Unity and of a Specifical and Numerical Essence though I take Essence to be a common Nature or General Idea taking in several things at one view and that there is no such thing as particular Essence distinct from particular Beings so that there is no multiplication of Essence in several Divine Persons or Beings Now as to those three being One it may be meant in any way whatever so far as those words alone import but there are other places of Scripture and there is a connexion and analogy of our Faith from all places compared together which oblige us to believe that the Son and Holy Ghost have the same Divine Nature and Essence with the Father derived and communicated to them Eternally Permanently and Perpetually and that they are in the Father as in the Fountain of their Being and are naturally and inseparably united to him and that he is the self-existent Unoriginated Principle the Root and Fountain of the other two and therefore they are One with him because though having real Beings and subsistences of their own yet they are from him and in him But still it will be objected that each of them is God the Father is God the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God and then there must be Three Gods and yet but One God which brings the contradiction still upon us I Answer The One God is spoken of God the Father in Scripture as I have shown you and as a great many * Ignat. Irenae Athanas Greg. Naz. Euseb Novat Hilar. Ambrose Austin Calv. Zanchy Comen Petav. Bull. c. and particularly Bishop * Art 1. Pearson upon the Creed observes That the Name of God taken absolutely is often in Scripture spoken of the Father and is in many places to be taken particularly of the Father and from hence says he he is stiled One God the True God the Only True God and this he sayes further is a most necessary Truth to be acknowledged for the avoiding multiplication and Plurality of Gods He laying the Unity mainly here as I have done so that though the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God which they are not often call'd in Scripture which rather reserves and gives the name of God absolutely and peculiarly to the Father * Observandum est quod plerumque Paulus suis Epistolis no nen Dei Patri tribuit in Novo Testamento plerumque tantum prima persma vocatur Deus Flac. Illyric Clavis Scripturae in verbo Deus as God loved the World God sent his Son and the like yet neither of them are meant by that one God which the Scripture speaks of when it speaks peculiarly of the Father They indeed having the Divine Nature and the Divine Attributes and Perfections belonging to them may each of them be properly called God and the Divinity does certainly and truly belong to each of them but then the Word God is not taken alwayes in one and the same Sence but it is sometimes meant of one Person and sometimes of another or of all being taken either Essentially or Personally as all Divines own and generally if not alwayes in Scripture taken absolutely and spoken so of one God it is meant of God the Father which may give us such an account of the Trinity and of the Unity Vbi enim est diversa significatio non estcontradictio Affirmantis negantis Aequivocatio enim impedit contradictionem Aquin Sum. P. 1. Qu. 13. as may take off all the charge of a contradiction since they are not one three nor is each of them God and all of them God or one God in the same respect sense and meaning of the words but in different Those Terms being not alwayes taken in the same adaequate Univocal Sense but are used often Equivocally The Father is the only self-existent unoriginated Being the Cause and Root 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the other two as the Antients often call him and so is the most absolutely Perfect Being and God in the highest Sense and the Scriptures Creeds and Christian Offices call him so absolutely and by way of Eminence and Prerogative The Son is produced of the Father and so is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or God in that Sense as the Father who is from none but is God of God and is very God as having the Divine Nature and Perfections belonging to him but Communicated and derived from the Father as the Holy Ghost from both 3. As by our Faiths being Mysterious and Incomprehensible and Unaccountable to our Reason I do not mean that ' its Idea's or Terms destroy one another or imply a contradiction which is to make it contrary to it self so neither is it contrary to any certain Principle of Reason nor to any Natural Truth whatsoever known to us If it were it could not be true for one Truth cannot be contrary to another and what is true by Nature cannot be false by Revelation for then God the Author of both and the God of Truth would lye and contradict himself There are common notions Principles of Reason and some Natural Truths known by Sense and Experience which we are as certain of as of our Beings and which are the Foundations of all Knowledge and which we have such evidence of that to give them up would be to run into boundless Scepticisme and own nothing to be True or False but that God hath made us of such faculties that we might be deceived in every thing now Revelation can by no means destroy these as that the whole is greater then a part that one is not three nor three one in the same respect and meaning that a Body cannot be in two places at once that our Senses are true and the like and therefore Transubstantiation cannot be true nor can that be the Sense of those words this is my Body but now in the Trinity there is nothing contrary to any Natural Truth or to any Principle of Reason for that God should have a Son of the same Nature and Divinity with himself and that an Eternal Spirit should proceed from both tho' it be a Truth by it self and of pure and immediate Revelation which our Reason could not have found out from any known Property of the Divine Nature nor from any Reason and Necessity in the thing it self yet there is nothing in it contrary to the Natural Notion of a God or to any other certain Principle of Truth or Reason The only thing that can be pretended is that of the Divine Unity which is thought to be such a Natural Notion as to be inconsistent with any more Divine Persons then one and therefore has been objected against the Trinity by all the Adversaries of this Doctrine by the Jews and Mahometans by the Samosatenians the Photinians the Arrians the Macedonians and the Socinians who have all charged it with Tritheism and Polytheism contrary to the Divine
cap. Helmon in Alcoran Nec Christum Deum adorare confessus est sc Mahomet ne forte duos Deos adorare deprehenderetur Cantacuzen in Mahomet Orat. 3. offers several reasons against it among which this is one That God and his Son would make two Gods and that they must worship only one God These Reasons I think may be fairly answered but Reason it self could nor have known or collected this either from the Divine fecundity or from any Natural Perfection or Property of God knowable by the Light of Nature 't is only Revelation acquaints us with it and lets us at the same time see the admirable ends and uses and purposes of this if not for the designs of Creation and Providence yet for the Redemption of the World by this Son of God which is a work as great and as Divine if not more so than the other two 'T is the peculiar Character Frame and Scheme of Christianity to reveal this Mystery fully to us this adorable Mystery of Divine Love and Wisdom God's Saving Lost and undone Mankind by his Son Jesus Christ Reason could not have discovered this nor can it now penetrate into all the deep Counsels of the Divine Govenment and hidden Reasons of the Divine Wisdom which made this either absolutely necessary or to be sure the most fit and convenient Method to Save and Redeem Mankind This is such a Mystery of State such a Secret of the Heavenly and Divine Policy and Management that whether God could have Effected and Accomplished this any other way is unknown to us and our Reason must cry out upon the Thoughts of it O the Depth of the Riches both of the Wisdom and Knowledge of God Rom. 11.33 how unsearchable are his Judgments and his ways past finding out Further The Christian Revelation discovers to us another Divine Person besides the Son to wit the Holy Ghost who proceedeth from the Father and the Son and who was sent by them in a Visible and extraordinary manner and was to be the Comforter and Paraclete as Christ the Redeemer and Saviour and was to Sanctifie and Fit and Qualifie all Christians for that Salvation which Christ had Purchased and Obtained for them without whom Christianity could not have been spred and established in the World nor in the Hearts of Men and who was therefore to bear a Peculiar and Distinct part and Office in the Accomplishing the great work of our Redemption which was to be Performed by the Fathers sending his Son and both sending the Holy Ghost to Perfect and Effect this Great Thing and This is the Constitution the Frame the Faith of Christianity as a Religion distinct from Natural and which is such a Mystery as could not have been found out by Natural Light and Reason without an immediate Divine Revelation for it was not any Natural Property of the Divine Nature so far as we know to have a Son and a Holy Spirit nor did the Purposes of Creation and Providence require this and therefore the Deists and others think more than one Divine Person and one Infinite Being Unnecessary and as far as Reason alone goes neither the Truth nor the Necessity of more would appear but Revelation and especially the Christian acquaints us with God's having a Son and a Holy Spirit distinct Persons from himself the one Begotten of him and so his only Son the other proceeding from him and the Son both and these two still in the Father naturally and inseparably united to him as to the Fountain of their Being One with him in the same Divine Nature and Essence and All Three together Accomplishing Effecting and Perfecting the Redemption of Mankind and bearing distinct parts in that Great and Blessed Work 2. As Reason could not have known or found out any thing of this so the Revelation of it was at first very Obscure and Imperfect there being only some smaller Glimpses and lesser manifestations of it and those covered with Types and shadows and Prophetic Symbols through which the Fathers saw as through a Glass darkly and beheld the Promises of the Messiah yet afar off so that the Jewish Law and Dispensation though it wholly pointed at this thing and Christ was the end of it yet was but a Shadow of these good things to come and Moses had a vail over his face by which the Children of Israel could not see to the end of their own Typical Institution till the vail was taken away in Christ And the Mystery which was kept secret since the World began a 2 Cor. 3.14 which had been hid from Ages and Generations b Rom. 16.25 and which in other Ages was not made known unto the Sins of Men c Col. 1.26 was by the Gospel revealed and manifest and made known to all men to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews d Eph. 3.5 Adam immediately after his Fall had this Mystery of Gods sending the Messiah into the World for the Salvation of Mankind promised and revealed to him in those words The Seed of the Woman shall break the Serpents head Gen. 3.15 And no doubt he transmitted this great and comfortable Tradition to all his Posterity and there seem to be the broken remains and Characters of it in some parts of the Religion of all Mankind especially in the general if not Universal Custom of Sacrifices and the secret Cabala and mysterious design seems to run through the Gentile Theology which was a corruption of the Patriarchal Religion from whence some Marks and Footsteps of this Original Mysterious Tradition were preserved and continued among the Gentiles as appears in the Prophesies of Balaam of Old and the Sybils afterwards and in the Notion of a Trinity among the Platonists and others which outdoes any thing to be found about that matter in any Jewish Writer and must come from some Antient Cabala and Traditionary Account of it How far the Jews had a knowledge and belief of it we want their Writings to acquaint us though in some of those we have there are remarkable intimations of it as in the Caldee Paraphrase the Messiah is often called the Mamra Jehovae the Word of God the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as St. John calls him and there and in the Hierusalem Targum he is represented as a substantial Word and as a Divine Person and several of their Rabbies interpret that of 110 Psalm The Lord said unto my Lord of the Messiah and so that of Jeremy 23. where he is called the Lord or Jehovah our Righteousness and they often speak of their Emanations from the Kedem or Essence of the Antient of days and in their Prayers and Liturgies particularly in a Collect used at the Feast of Tabernacles God is invoked as Sanctified with three Sanctifications and in a Famous Book among them called The Gate of Righteousness this Sanctification is called a Mystery whereby they say is meant the Procession of the Emanations from the Corona which is the Mystery
Unity but this has been from not understanding what the Divine Unity was and wherein it truly consisted according to the Scriptural account I have given of it which wholly takes off this Objection There are several things I own in the Blessed Trinity Incomprehensible to our Reason and Unconceivable and Unaccountable to our Finite Understandings when they are imployed about so great and Infinite an Object which is too big for them and so much above them As why and how an Infinite All-sufficient God should produce an Eternal Son and Communicate the same Nature to him with himself whether this were by a voluntary or a necessary Production and Emanation and how the Procession of the Holy Ghost differs from the Generation of the Son any otherwise than as that was an Emanation from both and not from the Father alone and how three such Infinite Persons are so distinct from one another as not to be confounded or be the same tho' Omnipresent and in the same Infinite Vbi and tho' so Inseparably united yet the one to take flesh and be Incarnate and not the other These and other things relating to this Mystery of our Christian Faith are I say Incomprehensible Unconceiveable and Unaccountable to our Reason by which I mean only that we can compare 'em to nothing else that we certainly know that we have no perfect or absolute likeness of them in any thing else that we have no adequate Idea simple or complex no similitude or Representation of any such thing in our minds from any thing else in Nature but that 't is a Truth purely known and manifested by Revelation joyning together and connecting such Idea's concerning God and so presenting them to the mind as united together under one view and so compounded and complicated with one another that tho' they do not disagree nor are contrary to one another yet we see not perfectly their agreement or connection but have only an obscure and general and confused view and conception of them as we have a sight of such Objects which are too high or too remote for our eye thoroughly to ken and yet we see them tho' not by the naked Eye yet by the help of a glass or Telescope so as to be satisfied of the Truth of them Revelation is as a Telescope and our Reason and Understanding is as the Eye which could not by its naked Power discern or find out those high Objects and supernatual Truths of our Christian Faith but now by Revelation they are discovered to us and our Reason and Understanding as the Organ without which we cannot see or believe any thing does plainly see and discern them but it is as through a glass darkly as having something of Cloud and darkness about them or as we see the Sun which is an object too dazling and illustrious to look fully upon with our weak Eyes The Sun with ' its coeval light and heat is an usual resemblance of the sacred Trinity and is the best material one that is in Nature but light and heat are but qualities and motions not substantial Things and are though not divided from the Sun yet without it and not in it so the fountain River and streams are but imperfect partial Resemblances as having the same water in all and not being cut off or separated from the Fountain but all material likenesses must fail when applyed to Spiritual things Our own Soul is the best Image of God and without it we should not know what God or Wisdom or any of his Perfections were the two faculties of Understanding and Will are the most like to the Divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Wisdom and to the Divine Spirit power and Energy and in allusion to these the Schoolmen would have the Son to be begotten per Intellectum by a direct act of the Divine Mind conceiving an Idea of ' its Self and the Holy Ghost to proceed by a reflexion per amorem by an active Love of it self upon such a Conception But these men have been the most rash and bold explainers of the Trinity which is a Truth and an Object by it Self to which nothing else is perfectly like and of which we can have no Comparative knowledge nor no compleat and adequate Idea or Comprehension for the two sacred Originated Persons are not two faculties but two substantial Persons and Real Beings the Scripture ascribing as distinct Properties Relations Attributes Characters Acts and Operations to each of them as to any other distinct Persons and Beings whatsoever as the Son to be begotten of the Father to be sent into the World by the Father to pray to the Father and mediate with the Father Now the same Being and Person cannot be Father and Son to it Self beget and be begotten of it Self send and be sent by it Self pray to and mediate with it Self and the like may be said as to the Spirit These are not therefore like one and the same mind with two faculties or two acts or operations or only as variously considered two ways nor are they one thing or one Being diversified only with three Names Titles Offices Characters Capacities Respects or any three differences whatever belonging to one Person or Being but three true proper real Divine Persons The One the Father the other the Son the third the Spirit of both Now nothing in our own minds or in visible Nature is perfectly like these or to which we can compare them or from whence we can draw a Similitude Representation or Idea of them and therefore they are Incomprehensible and Unconceivable by us for 't is by Comparison and likeness we chiefly know and conceive things and 't is hard to distinguish between Knowledge Conception and Imagination so that what some persons cannot imagine or cannot have a picture or likeness of in their Fancy and Imagination they say they cannot conceive and therefore some pretend they can have no Conceptions of a Spiritual Substance and others no Idaea of the Trinity nor even of God by which they mean they cannot have a Picture or Idea or likeness of these things in their Imagination but we know and believe and are well assur'd of a great many things without that as of all Mathematical and Metaphysical Verities about abstracted things of all Axioms and Common Notions of all Demonstrations about Lines and Numbers of all things not Corporeal as Time Motion the Acts and Operations of our own Minds such as Understanding Choosing Suspending Doubting and the like all which we know by Reason and can reason about though we can have no Pictures or imaginary Idaea's of them or any other likenesses of them I shall show for the Defence of Mysteries and of the Mystery of the Trinity and the Christian Faith that there are a great many other things which are Incomprehensible and unconceivable to us concerning which we are well assur'd and have no doubt of them and this in several Particulars 1. In visible Nature and
Infinite Division of Numbers in Decimal Fractions the Case of asymptotes How two Lines may be so drawn as always to approach and come nearer one another and yet never touch one another tho' drawn in infinitum The like Instances might be given of other Mysteries in Arts and Sciences which are as Incredible and Unreasonable to those who do not know them as any Mysteries in Religion and yet are certainly true and unquestionably believed by those who do and yet to them a great many of them may be Incomprehensible 'T is only Ignorance and want of Knowledge makes them seem unreasonable and incredible the more we improve in those Arts the more we shall see the Truth of them and have no doubt about them And so it is in the Mysteries of Religion 't is the shallowness and weakness of our Faculties makes them difficult and incomprehensible to us When we come to know God better especially in another World these reveal'd Truths concerning his Nature will be better understood and comprehended by us though now to deny and disbelieve them after they so are fully revealed because they are Incomprehensible is as if an Ignorant Person should call in question all Truths of those Arts and Sciences which he does not understand and which are Incomprehensible to him 4. There are Incomprehensible Truths in Natural Religion as well as in Revelation and in the Mystery of the Christian Faith God who is known by Nature and whose Being and Perfections are the great objects of natural Religion is as Incomprehensible and as much too big for our finite Reason and Faculties fully to Comprehend as any of the Articles of Revealed Religion or Christian Faith His 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-Existence is such a thing as our Thoughts are wholly lost about when we consider of it and yet something must be self-existent even by the Atheistic hypothesis So something must be Eternal and yet let any man try his thoughts about Eternity Infinite Duration or Infinite Succession and see how they are swallowed up in those deeps of Speculation Let him conceive if he can Eternity without Succession and Immensity without Extension and clear himself from that Contradiction if applyed to any thing but God that what is past or future is yet present that he now exists to morrow and that a thousand years ago his Duration was the same as now and nothing is added to it he may improve these into as puzling and incomprehensible difficulties if he pleases as any thing about the Trinity What shall we think of that inextricable Difficulty of Gods prescience of all Humane Actions by which they are certain and yet of our Liberty by which they are contingent when it is as hard to make those two Consistent as to make Father and Son to be one and yet we must do so or else rob God of one of his greatest Perfections or else rob Man of his Will and Freedom and so destroy all Moral Good and Evil. Since there are then so many Mysteries and Incomprehensible Truths even in Natural Religion which our Deists I hope do sincerely believe and which is owned to be the foundation of all other why should we wonder at those which are not much greater in Revelation and in the Mystery of Christian Faith The Creation of the World out of nothing is as Inconceivable and as Mysterious as the Generation of the Son from the Father and one Infinite Being is as much too big for our Finite Understandings to Comprehend as Three and his Attributes and Perfections are as hard to be distinguished and as irreconcileable with the simplicity of the Divine Nature as multiplicity of Persons His Justice and his Mercy his Power Wisdom and Goodness are no more the same as conceived by us but excite as truly different Ideas in us as his being a Father and begetting a Son and having a holy Ghost proceeding from him but yet the three Persons are more than three Attributes and the same person cannot be Father and Son to himself as he is Just and Merciful to us nor is it only three Considerations Capacities or Titles of one Being but three proper and distinct Persons that constitute the Sacred Trinity But we may as well conceive a monad emaning or producing two from it self as Creating all things out of nothing and being as Infinite as himself and the World both and as having three several Attributes distinct in themselves and not Confounded or Identified with one another 5. There are other Truths in Revelation as Incomprehensible and Unconceivable as this of the Trinity or the Mystery of Christian Faith To mention nothing else those many Miracles which are the proof and demonstration of the Divine Revelation and which must be acknowledged by all those who admit it and are not at all question'd by our Socinian Adversaries these are as Incomprehensible and Unintelligible to us as any Articles of our Faith they are matters as much above our Reason and do as much exceed all other things we know and all the likenesses and compositions of any thing we are acquainted with in Nature as the Trinity or any thing else in Revelation The Divine Power is no more limited to do those things only which we can conceive than the Divine Veracity to Reveal those things only which we can Comprehend and yet we are to believe both If we could conceive fully how the one was done we might do it our selves and if we could comprehend perfectly how the others are true and how those several Ideas are connected and agree together we might compound them our selves and so God would not be more Powerful or more Wise than Man is Our Finite Understanding is no more able to comprehend all that God does than our Finite Power to effect every thing that he can Miracles are as much above us as to Facts and as much Mysteries as to the Laws of Matter and Motion and the known properties of Bodies as Revealed Articles are above us as to Truths and known principles of Reason and as to any other comparative Ideas and representations of things which are Familiar to us and which we are well acquainted with Our Adversaries may therefore as well deny all Miracles as being Unconceivable and Incomprehensible to their Reason and as Mysterious Facts which are very much above Nature and above all our Conceptions as the Mysteries of Faith and the Principles of Revealed Religion such as the Blessed Trinity upon this very score and account and may for the same Reason discard all revelation and all natural Religion which I fear is the design of some of them but I hope not of the greatest part Lastly I proposed to show that there are as many Difficulties and more Mysteries in their sense that is Inconsistencies and Absurdities in the Socinian Scheme and System of Opinions than in the Orthodox Faith they oppose Thus to make a mere Man a God to exalt a Creature to such a Degree as
v. 30. So that they took up stones to stone him as guilty of Blasphemy because being a Man he made himself God v. 33. There were some Hereticks of old and are so now in our days who call themselves Christians but are much of the Jews Opinion and think Christ is but a mere Man or a Creature and that he is not the Son of God in a true and proper sense nor One with the Father as to the Divine Nature though they do not like the Jews take up stones to throw at Christ as challenging this to himself yet they are if not so angry yet more disingenuous than they upon one account that they deny the true sense and meaning of Christs words as he spoke and understood them which the Jews fairly acknowledged and accused him upon it The Jews owned the words of Christ in his and in a right sense but denyed the truth of the thing the Arrians and Socinians deny both the truth of the thing and the true meaning of the words Now 't is a matter of very great importance to be satisfied in both to know and believe that that great Person whom we call our Saviour in whom we put our trust and confidence and hopes of Salvation whom we worship and pray to to whom we devote our selves in our Baptism and at other times that he is not a mere Man or Creature but as he said of himself the Son of God in a proper sense and one with the Father as having the same Divine Nature and Essence and Perfection with him that begot him and so a proper object both of our Faith Hope and Worship which he could not be without both Internal and External Idolatry if he were not thus God and the Son of God and One with the Father in respect of the same Divine Nature with his Father It shall be my business at present to Prove this after I have made a few General Remarks upon this passage and these words of our Saviour The First of which shall be this That the Jews understood our Saviour in this sense they supposed and concluded that he made himself God by saying That he was One with the Father and the Son of God for this was all we know he said He did not say directly and expresly that he was God so far as appears by the account given by the Evangelist And a great Man observes Cardinal Cusa in Cribrat Alcoran lib. 1. cap. 11. Cardinal Cusa Christus Filium Dei se nominavit Deum Patrem non Deum cum nominatio Dei sit nominatio Patris Christi And an Eminent Protestant Flaccius Illyricus agrees with him Flac. Illyric Clavis Scriptur in verbo Deus In Novo Testamento plerumque prima Persona vocatur Deus plerumque Paulus in suis Epistolis nomen Dei Patri tribuit But to be one with God was to be understood to have one Nature with him and to be the Son of God was to have this Divine Nature communicated to him from God the Father and so to be God or to make himself God or assert and declare himself to be so in that sense Thus the Jews took our Saviours words and thus understood him and they probably had very great and particular Reason so to do from the Phrases and Expressions then in use and from some Learned Writings or Authors of Credit among them at that time 't is certain they immediately put this sense upon them And this was the Ground and Reason of their charge of Blasphemy against Christ that he made himself God by making himself one with the Father and the Son of God and no doubt this was the true sense and meaning and import of our Saviours words according as they understood them especially 2. Because our Saviour did not deny this nor any way disown this sense of them nor say any thing to show they were mistaken in the sense of his words or to correct and undeceive them Now he would certainly have done this both to have corrected their Error and to have defended himself against their Charge had it not been true that he made himself God by those words of his as they understood them Had his words been to be taken in the sense which our Socinian Adversaries would now put upon them That he was One with the Father only by Consent and Agreement and not by Nature and the Son of God only by Adoption and Favour or upon the account of his extraordinary Human Birth his Resurrection from the Dead his Mediatorial Office and great Authority to which he was advanced after his Ascension though it had been a strange Prolepsis to have called himself so then upon the three last accounts and not as the True Proper and Natural Son of God our Saviours words had then given no ground or occasion for such a Charge as they laid against him and he might easily have took it off and vindicated himself by telling them that they mistook his words and that he did not mean them in the sense in which they falsly understood them and this no doubt he would have done had it been truly so and had not their sense of them been true and allowed by our Saviour It would have been hardly consistent with his Sincerity and Probity his Integrity and Honesty as a Man if he had not been God too as he was the Son of God and One with the Father to let the Jews understand his words in such a wrong sense and lay such a high Charge of Blasphemy against him upon it and not to say any thing to show they were mistaken and to correct their Error and to prevent their Sin and to vindicate and defend himself for otherwise it will look as if he had been willing to let their Mistake pass though he knew it to be so and to assume to himself the Vanity of being thought to be God and by his words to make himself such tho' he had never said it or thought it but knew the contrary which is an intolerable Reflection upon the meek and humble Jesus and not only upon the Truth of his Divinity but even his Honesty as a Man 3. The Argument which our Saviour used to defend himself against their Charge This does not invalidate as our Adversaries imagine the truth of his being One with the Father by Nature and the proper Eternal Son of God 'T is this at the 34 35 36. Ver. Jesus answered them Is it not written in your law I have said ye are gods If he called them gods unto whom the word of God came and the scripture cannot be broken Say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world Thou blasphemest because I said I am the Son of God These were called Gods in the stile of the Jewish Scriptures and particularly Psal 82.2 who were called by God to be his immediate Ministers and Officers as Moses and other Magistrates therefore whoever
used that Name was not according to them to be charged presently with Blasphemy much less he whom the Father hath sanctified chosen and appointed to the great Office of Messiah and then sent him into the World to execute it Whether there be any force in what some observe (a) Quod alii ad humanium tantum Naturam restringunt ego extendo ad totam Christi Personam nam ex tribus Persnis in Coelo hic unus fuit selectus ad hoc Officium Mediatoris Zanch. de trib Eloh p. 124. that the Father chose him the Second Person of the Trinity rather than the Third and that there is also an Emphasis in the words And sent him into the world after he was first sanctified and appointed by God the Father in Heaven where he was before his Natural Begotten Son (b) Maldonat in loc and afterwards sent into the World This I shall not insist on but only allow that this was Argumentum ad homines as we say such as Christ thought the fittest and properest to offer at that time to those gross and stupid and ignorant Jewish Accusers and that was indeed only a minori ad majus whereby he designed only to wipe off the blackest and foulest parts of this Charge but not to inform and instruct them so fully and perfectly in a Truth they could not bear and were not prepared then to receive however he would not deny but did own and acknowledge their Charge of his making himself God in their sense And if this be not proved from these words of his here yet it is no way disproved any more than when he was asked whither he were the Christ or Messiah his not answering directly proves that he was not or his not instructing his Disciples so fully about his Crucifixion or Resurrection proved he was not to Dye or to Rise again Neither the Jews nor the Disciples themselves could bear some Truths at first nor the full opening the Mystery of the Gospel all at once nor had Christ dispatched all the work of his Life nor was then willing to dye or be stoned by them for a direct Charge of Blasphemy And therefore though he did not deny the Charge which he would have done had it been false yet he avoided it and defended himself against it as far as his Infinite Wisdom thought then prudent and convenient But there are other places and other Arguments to prove Christs Divinity to us his being one with the Father in Nature and the Natural and Eternal Son of God which I shall now produce and then show the usefulness and necessity of this Doctrine I shall not produce all but only select some that are the most plain and considerable The First shall be his Title and Character here given by himself The Son of God and his making God his Father which is to be meant in a proper and most excellent and natural sense upon the account of his Divine and not his Humane Nature or any thing belonging to that as he was the Son of God antecedently to his being born of the Virgin being begotten of the Father from all Eternity and having his Divine Being from the Father of the same Nature with himself For tho' the Title of the Son of God is given to others in Scripture and to Christ himself upon other accounts as God calls the Children of Israel his Son and his First-born Exod. 4.22 as being in a state of Favour and Covenant with him And Christians are thus more especially the Adopted Sons and the Children of God in the Scripture stile And Christ himself is called the Son of God upon several other accounts as upon his Extraordinary Humane Birth and Conception by the Holy Ghost Luke 1.35 upon account of his Resurrection his being the First-born or First-begotten from the Dead St. Paul applying to him the words of David in the second Psalm Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee upon this very account Acts 13.33 and as afterwards upon his Ascension he was made Heir of all things 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Col. 1.15 The first-born and heir of the whole Creation But there is a higher Ground and Reason than all these of this great Character given to Christ in Scripture the Son of God namely his Eternal Divine Generation his being begotten of the Father in his own Likeness and Image and having his Divine Nature communicated to him for this is the first and most proper Notion of a Son Another Person or Being for nulla res generat seipsam as St. Austin sayes de Trin. l. 1. c. 1. produced or begotten in the same Nature and Likeness with its Father or Producent That Christ was thus generated of the Father and of the Substance of the Father and not Created or Made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Arrians held and that he was the Son of God and God his Father in this proper and excellent sense as the Christian Church has alwayes declared and believed so the Scripture bears witness to it in all those places where it calls Christ God and ascribes the Divine Nature and Divine Perfections to him as I shall show it does and sayes he was in the beginning before the World or from all Eternity with God and that he was in the Form of God and thought it not robbery to be equal with God i. e. as having the same Nature with him which must be by that Communication of it which we call Generation for he had not this from himself or from none but from another who is therefore call'd his Father But on this Head I insist only upon the propriety of those phrases his being the Son of God and God being his Father which are to be understood in the proper literal and natural meaning as all persons would understand them when spoken of a Humane Father and Son and so they are to be taken when there is not a Connotation or a particular Reason expressed to denote an improper and Metaphorical use of them And there is one word frequently used in Scripture which I think is a sufficient proof of this and that is when Christ is call'd not only the Son but the only Son and the only begotten Son of God as John 1.14 John 3.16 1 John 4.9 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a verbal signifying as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or uni-genitus is one who has no partner or sharer in that Sonship which is ascribed to him but Christ as an adopted Son has many Brethren and therefore it must be meant of that Divine Generation and Sonship which belongs to him alone and God by sending his only begotten Son intended to express his utmost Love to Mankind and to that purpose St. John uses the phrase God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son But nothing raises this Love so high as his sending his own Natural Son a Person of the highest
Dignity next to himself and one of the same Divine Nature with himself whereas if he were only an Adopted Son or a Son upon the other accounts only neither the Love of the Father nor the Condescension of the Son would appear in such Great Characters as the Scripture designedly sets them out by I have insisted longer on this Title of Son and only begotten Son because they are the only words in the Apostolick and the oldest Creeds to express the belief of Christs Divinity thereby designing to answer a great Objection of our Adversaries I shall be more brief on the rest 2. As Christ is called the Son of God so he is called God also in Scripture in several places John 1.1 The Word was with God and the Word was God My Lord and my God John 20.28 God blessed for ever Rom. 9.5 And in others especially those taken from the Old Testament and applyed to Christ in the New Now what can our Adversaries say to this Sometimes they say The Word is not meant of Christ But that is so undeniable in some places that they cannot but own it And therefore they say Christ though having only the Humane and not the Divine Nature is called God in a certain sense viz. by Office as Moses and other Magistrates who were the Ministers and Deputies and Embassadors of God and upon that account have that Name sometimes attributed to them and Christ by having that extraordinary Office of Messiah and that extraordinary Power over all things committed to him as Mediator after his Ascension is upon this account they say God and may be called God and the True God and the most High God as Socinus Stichlingius Smalcius Ruarus and others of them speak but still they deny that Christ is God by Nature or that he has the True Divine Nature the same with the Father belonging to him but only as a Man he is made and exalted to be a God by being advanced to an extraordinary Power and Authority over all other Creatures but this leaves him still in the rank and order of Creatures nay makes him a God of a meer Man a Late not an Eternal God One who had no Being before he was Born of the Virgin and no Divinity till after his Resurrection and his Ascension into Heaven so that they may date his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and know exactly how many Years and Dayes he has been God in their Ridiculous Blasphemous and Heathenish Sense of the word God But God is an Eternal Infinite All-perfect Being who was and is and is to come whose Existence is Necessary and not Contingent Eternal and not of Yesterday who has the True Divine Essence and Nature and the Incommunicable Excellencies and Perfections belonging to it And in this sense Christ is God and True God and God by Nature as I shall prove evidently from Scripture He is not indeed God the Father or God from none 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in that sense we believe in One God the Father Almighty and to us there is but One God the Father as the Apostle speaks 1 Cor. 8.6 and Christ is the Son of this God the Father who had his Being and Nature from him but he is God of God very God of very God as the Nicene Creed expresses it has the Divine Nature and Divine Perfections Naturally belonging to him and in that Sense is true God This I shall prove further 3. From his being joyned with the Father in the Baptismal Office and in the Christian Form of Benediction as we have them Mat. 28 19. 1 Cor. 13.14 Now can we think that Christ and the Holy Ghost would be joyned together in both those with the Father if they were only Creatures though of the highest Dignity and Quality and were not truly God and of the same Nature Honour and Dignity with the Father We may as well and much better suppose that a Charter of Priviledges should be Granted in the name of the King and of two of his greatest Subjects or Homage Sworn to them and to the King both together and that they should be joyned in the same Royal and Sovereign Acts of Favour and have the same acknowledgements and Oaths of Fidelity made to them as that God the Father should be joyned with two mere Creatures in such Solemn Religious acts of Christianity Baptism is the Highest and most Solemn Devoting and Dedicating our Selves to God and professing the Christian Faith by the special and distinguishing Characters of it as containing the Belief of Father Son and Holy Ghost which are the Fundamental 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Christianity as distinct from natural and Jewish Religion Now to do this to Creatures or in the name of Creatures as well as God would be a strange anomally and unaccountable absurdity The Jews indeed were Baptized into Moses in the Cloud and in the Sea 1 Cor. 20.2 as our Adversaries often remind us but this was only Mystically and Figuratively and almost into the Religion delivered by Moses they were not Devoted to Moses but to the God of Israel nor were Baptized in the name of the God of Israel and of Moses joyned together as Christians are in the name of Father Son and Holy Ghost nor was there ever any Benediction given in the name of Moses or of Abraham and the like but only in the name of God the God of Israel who would not give his Glory to another nor allow any Creatures to be his Rivals or share with him in the most Religious Acts of Homage and Fealty and in the incommunicable rights tenders and acknowledgments of Divine Honour payed to Him or in the Grants and Donations of special Favour that flowed and issued from himself alone So that I take this Form of Christian Baptism and Christian Blessing to be a very strong Evidence to all but perverse Unbelievers of the Divinity both of the Son and of the Holy Ghost who are thus joyned with the Father in very short and solemn Forms as of equal Honour Power and Dignity with him to whom Christians are alike to Devote themselves and to expect like Blessings and Favours from all of them 4. The Divinity of Christ is fully proved and Demonstrated from such Divine Acts and operations such Divine Excellencies Attributes and Perfections as belong only to God and the Divine Nature and which are expresly ascribed to Christ in the Holy Scriptures as to Create and make the World to be Omnipotent Omnipresent Omniscient Eternal and the like The Notion we have of a God is a being endued with these Infinite Persections which cannot belong to a Finite and Limited Creature however excellent unless we confound the Idaea's of Finite and Infinite of God and a Creature and bring the one down so low or raise the other so high as to make no difference between them These are the proper Attributes Properties and Excellencies of the Divine Nature and he that hath these must have the Divine
must be very arrogant in our Adversaries to oppose themselves to the Belief of the whole Primitive Church and to disagree with all those Holy Men and Learned Writers whom we call the Fathers who have transmitted Christianity and this Doctrine down to us and this Socinus even frankly and openly owns Patres omnes ab ipsis dissentire in his Answer to Wiekus Tom. 2. Resp ad 2 Cap. Wieki Clas 7. c. 9. p. 618. and sayes Haec authoritatum testimoniorum ex Patribus Concilii congeries nullas vires habet praesertim adversus nos qui ab istis Patribus Conciliis quae extant nos dissentire non diffitemur This was said with great freedom but greater insolence his followers have had more cunning and less Honesty than to own this It is not proper at this time and place to prove what their Master owns and to prove the Divinity of Christ from the Antient Church and from the universal suffrage of its Writers in all Ages that has been done beyond all possibility of an Answer from the boldest Pretender But our very Enemies have all along bore witness to this Truth that the Christians believed and worshipped Christ as a God so sayes Pliny in his Letter to Trajan that the Christians met and sang a Hymn to Christ as to God and Celsus charges the Christians with worshiping Christ as a new God and Julian writ to this purpose to Photinus agreeing with him that Christ was but a Man against the Churches Doctrine of a Galilean God as he blasphemously speaks so Lucian in his Philopatris exposes the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the God of Christians and Mahomet all along through his Alcoron finds fault with the Christians for believing and worshipping Christ as God whom he owns to be a Prophet and a great Man sent of God as well as Socinus The Christians would have disowned this charge had it not been true especially when in the hands of their Enemies and under Persecution for it when they might have escaped Death and the greatest Tortures and Sufferings had they been Socinians and denyed Christs Divinity They had none of their subtle distinctions of a God by Nature and a God by Office to help them out but they believed Christ to be as true a God by Nature as he was a Man and they took God in the true and plain sense for a Divine Almighty Being who was to be worship'd by them and that Christ was such an one as well as a Man This was the Doctrine they were taught by the Church and by the Scriptures and that all Christians believed till the Subtleties of Arrius Eunomius Artius and others and the greater Subtleties of the School-men afterwards in making One to be Three and Three One and the as great Subtleties of the Socinians in opposing them darkened and obscured the plain Christian Doctrine which we are Baptized into of Father Son and Holy Ghost and that the Son who was born of the Virgin and dyed for us and rose again and was Christ the Saviour of Mankind that he was also the Son of God and the only begotten of God the Father who had the same Divine Nature with him and so was God and to be worship'd and pray'd to The Usefulness and Necessity of which Doctrine I should come now to show had I time In a word I take all Christian Faith and Hope and Worship to depend upon it and even Christianity it self as it is a distinct Religion from Natural and as it obliges us to such peculiar Articles of Faith as well as to such common Rules of Morality If Christ be not God and have not the Divine Nature belonging to him but be only a Man as he is not to be worship'd as I have shown so how we trust and hope and believe in him for Salvation and put such a full confidence in a Creature that it would not be greater if he were a God A poor finite Creature like our selves is not a fit object of our hope and trust for so great a matter as an Infinite Divine Being who has all Power and all Goodness The great God may exalt if he pleases any of us or any other Man to as much Power and Dignity as the Socinians say he has done Christ and they may have been made their own Saviours or Saviours to all the World in the Socinian Notion as well as he but surely none but a God no Man or Creature could be the Redeemer and the Saviour of Mankind Our Redemption is a greater Work than our Creation and the Lord that bought us deserves as great Thanks and Gratitude Praise Honour and Acknowledgment from us as he that Made us and therefore we should necessarily run into Idolatry if he were not God also Could this great and Mysterious Work have been accomplished any other way than by the Son of God a God Incarnate and made Flesh the Divine Wisdom which does nothing in vain would in all likelyhood have found out an easier and a cheaper Method and not have been at the expence of such a Miraculous such an Extraordinary such a Mysterious way as Men and Angels are astonisht at when they look into the mighty depth and profound greatness of it God the Father shewed his utmost Love to Mankind and exhausted the Riches of his Mercy to Sinners in sending his Son his only begotten Son into the World to save us and his Son showed the greatest Condescension and utmost Humiliation and emptying of himself thus to come into the World and become a Man but had he been only a Man where had the Mystery of this been This great Love of the Father and this Condescension of the Son on both which the Scripture layes such a particular weight and Emphasis had been lost and sunk and dwindled into very little and had all its mighty Figures and Characters in which it is represented in Scripture abated lessened and diminisht if Christ had been only a Creature and a meer-Man and had not been truly and properly the Son of God begotten of him from all Eternity as well as of the Virgin afterwards and One with the Father in respect of his Divine Nature and Original To him God blessed for ever be all Honour and Worship Praise Glory and Thanksgiving now and for evermore Amen FINIS
THE MYSTERY OF THE Christian Faith AND OF THE Blessed TRINITY VINDICATED AND THE Divinity of Christ PROVED In Three SERMONS Preach'd at Westminster-Abbey upon Trinity-Sunday June the 7th and September 21. 1696. By the Late Reverend WILLIAM PAYNE D. D. In the Press before his Death and by himself ordered to be Published LONDON Printed for Richard Cumberland at the Angel in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1697. MVNIFICENTIA REGIA 1715. GEORGIVS D.G. MAG â—â—â—â—ET â—â—â— REX â—D J. Pine sculp THE MYSTERY OF THE Christian Faith AND OF THE Blessed TRINITY VINDICATED SERMON I. 1 TIM iii. 9. Holding the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience THIS Advice which is here given to Deacons does almost equally concern all Christians for tho' here are some Duties peculiar to the Ministers of Religion relating to their Office yet the common Duties of Christianity are bound upon Them and the People with equal tyes and obligations So that every Christian is under the same engagements to be a Good Man to live as Vertuously and Religiously and to perform all the Duties of our common Christian Religion as either a Presbyter or a Deacon both which some think are meant here Faith and a Good Conscience are to be kept or held by All and he is not a Christian who le ts go or makes Shipwrack of either The Christian Faith though it be a Mystery yet is not as the Heathen Mysteries to be a Secret kept up and concealed from the Vulgar and known only to the Priests to the Mystae and Adepti by a sort of Disciplinâ Arcani but is by the Gospel Revelation discovered and communicated to All All Catechumens are to be Taught and Instructed in it All who are Baptized are to profess it and all the Fideles are to understand and to keep it as the Faith once delivered to them by Christ and his Apostles and by the Church and Holy Scriptures The believing Christ to be the Messiah and Sent of God is not the only Fundamental Article of Christianity as some would have it for if it were all the Hereticks in the Apostolick and after Ages had come up to it against whom notwithstanding St. John in his Epistles and other Canonic Writers speak so much as well as St. Clement Polycarp Ignatius and the earliest Writers who renounced both the Faith and the Communion of those Heretics notwithstanding they owned Christ to be the Messiah so that this was not a sufficient Faith for a Christian as such But it may be asked Are ordinary Christians then to believe the Mysterious and Abstruse Doctrines of Christianity Such as the Trinity the Divinity and Incarnation of Christ and the like which are so difficult and unintelligible that the most Learned cannot understand them or agree about them are these to be accounted Fundamental and Essential Articles of Faith necessary to be believed by the meanest and most ordinary Capacities which are so puzzling and so intricate to the highest I Answer Whatever is Essential and Fundamental to Christianity and as such is plainly Reveal'd by God upon which the Peculiar Faith Hope and Worship of it is built however incomprehensible and Mysterious it is which shall be considered immediately is to be believed by every Christian as that God sent his only Son into the World and that we are Redeemed by him and that we are to place our Hopes Trust and Confidence in him for Salvation and that we are to Worship him and Pray to him and to Honour him even as we Honour the Father This which is the Peculiar Scheme and Character of Christianity and necessarily supposes Christs Divinity and that he is not a Creature and also the Divinity of the Holy Ghost the Comforter and the Sanctifier and so consequently a Divine Trinity this is as necessary to be believed by every one as Christianity for it is the very make and peculiar oeconomy of Christianity as 't is distinct from Natural Religion This Faith with a Good Life or a Life answerable to the Rules and Precepts of the Gospel is necessary to make and constitute a good Christian To ask whether a good Life will not save a Man without this Faith is to be answered with the same question or one much like it Whether such a good Life will save a Man without believing Christianity They are both necessary to a Christian who is thus to hold the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience I shall from the words Consider these two General Things I. Why the Christian Faith is call'd a Mystery II. How we are to hold it in a pure Conscience I. Why the Christian Faith is call'd a Mystery Which it is upon Three Accounts 1. As it was not knowable by Natural Reason without an Express and Immediate Divine Revelation 2. As it was very obscurely and imperfectly Revealed before the Gospel and the coming of Christ 3. As it is Incomprehensible to our Reason and what we cannot fully conceive and Apprehend even after it is clearly Revealed 1. As it is not knowable by Natural Reason without an Express and Immediate Divine Revelation For thus that God should have a Son an Eternal only begotten Son of the same Nature and Likeness with himself and that he should send this his Son into the World to become a Man to take on him our Nature and be made Flesh that so he might dye for us and be a Sacrifice for our Sins and Save and Redeem Mankind according to this Mysterious Method Oeconomy and Dispensation of the Gospel this is what Reason could never have found out nor any thing but the Infinite Wisdom and no less Infinite Goodness of God have contrived That there is a God an Invisible Maker of the World a First Cause of All Things this Reason and the Light oâ— Nature teaches us and the invisible things of him from the Creation are plainly seen by the things he hath made even his Eternal Power and Godhead His Power and Wisdom and Goodness are sufficiently manifest to our Thoughts and Reason by the admirable Structure and the commodious and beautiful and orderly contrivance of the World and all the things that are in it and we can know most of his Attributes and Essential Perfections from Reason and the plain deductions and consequences of it but that this Infinite and Almighty and All-sufficient God who had all possible perfections in himself and all Perfections sufficient to his own Happiness and Self-enjoyment and to the Needs and Necessities of his Creatures and to all the Purposes of Creation and Providence that he should beget a Son another Divine Person and Being like himself and communicate the same Divine Nature and Godhead to him that belong'd to himself this which the Scripture Revelation acquaints us with is so far from being known by Reason that That staggers at it and asks two bold questions about it How this can be And to what purpose it is And Mahomet in his Alcoran * Azoarâ 12.
in Isa 6.3 Holy Holy Holy Galatinus and Voisin and other Rabbinical Writers produce many such Instances out of the Jewish Writers to this purpose notwithstanding which I doubt the Notion of the Messiah as a Divine Person and as the Son of God in our Sense was lost among all the latter Jews who looked upon him only as a Temporal Prince and an Earthly Monarch and though in many places of the Old Testament and especially in the Book of Psalms there are several Proofs and Authorities for the belief of a Trinity and the Messiah's being a Divine Person yet there is nothing in their Revelation that has any Evidence of it equal to that of the Gospel and therefore notwithstanding all imperfect and obscure Revelations of it before it is called there a Mystery which hath been hid from Ages and Generatiins but is now made manifest Colos 1.26 Which was kept secret since the World began but now is made manifest Rom. 16.26 Which in other Ages was not made known unto the Sons of men as it is now revealed unto us Eph. 3.6 Our Socinian Adversaries will allow the Christian Faith to be a Mystery upon these two Accounts I have mention'd And I must confess the word Mystery is generally used in Scripture in these Sences but it is not so much the Word as the Thing we are to Consider namely whether there be any Truths in Religion Incomprehensible to our Reason And this is the Third Reason why I would have the Christian Faith called a Mystery which they so much Expose and Ridicule and which I shall endeavour to Defend as it contains 3. Something Incomprehensible and Vnconceivable and Vnaccountable to our Reason and Vnderstanding even after it is the most fully and clearly revealed by the Gospel By which I do not mean that we have no Idaea Conception or Knowledge at all of what we do believe concerning it for then it would be just such a Mystery as it is to those who know nothing at all of it a Thing perfectly unknown a Nullity a Non-Entity which is no manner of Object of our Faith and concerning which we can neither affirm or deny any things not have any Perswasion or Disswasion about it The Trinity would then be only an empty word or sound without any meaning or signification like the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the unlearned Greek Scribes mention'd by St. Hierome Epist 136. put for the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but we know very well what is meant by those words of Father Son and Holy Ghost or Spirit though to connect and unite those Idea's and to make such Propositions out of those Terms as are agreeable to Faith may be a difficulty 2. Yet neither are we so to joyn and unite those Idea's nor to make any such Propositions out of those Terms as shall be inconsistent with themselves and destroy and contradict one another as to say that they are One and that they are Three in the same respect the same sense and consideration The doing this or endeavouring to do it has wretchedly perplext our Christian Faith and made it be called by its Enemies a Mystery of Nonsense Absurdity and Contradiction and exposed it as such to our Heretical Adversaries whereas had we gone no farther then Scripture the only Rule of our Faith in this matter and held with that that to us there is One God the Father One God 1 Cor. 8.6 Eph. 4.6 John 17.3 and Father of all who is above all and had we known him the onely true God as Christ calls him not exclusively but eminently and by way of Excellency and Prerogative by which the Name and Title of God is peculiarly praedicated of God the Father in Scripture Calvin in Protheses Valent. Gent. as Calvin ingenuously delivers it to use his own words Ingenue tradimus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dei nomen Patri proprie ascribi And another Protestant Divine his Follower Zanchius de tribus Elohim L. 5. C. 5. Patrem sic vocari Vnum solum Deum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quia totius est Deitatis fons which is the great Reason given by the Fathers of the Divine Unity and in this the * Peculiaritèr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tribuitur Patri nomen Dei Ravanell Bibl. v. Deus Persona Papists agree with them Had we considered this plain Scriptural account and observation that one God is spoken and praedicated of the Father and meant of him when it is said both in the Old Testament and the New The Lord thy God is One God Deut. 6.4 Mark 12.32 and there is none other but he or besides him we had not given occasion for that objection of our Adversaries against our Faith of its implying a Contradiction or of its setting up more Gods than one The One God whom we Pray to in the Lord's Prayer and in other Christian Offices and Addresses whom we profess to believe in in our Creed and whom the Scripture calls so is God the Father Almighty and he hath an onely begotten Son of the same Nature and Essence with himself who is the brightness of his Glory and the express Image of his Person and there is also an Holy Spirit proceeding from both and sent by both who hath the Characters and Attributes of Divinity plainly ascribed to him and who is joyned with the Father and the Son in the Office of Christian Baptism and in the Form of Christian Blessing and against whom the most high and unpardonable Sin may be committed This is our Christian Faith which as it lies in the Scripture has no contradiction in it that I know of nor do the several terms whereof it consists destroy or oppose one another These three are one is the only thing in Scripture or in our Faith that sounds as a Contradiction and in one and the same sense it must be owned such a downright contradiction that it cannot be true some would therefore suspect and throw out that passage and are very willing to find some Copies of the Bible without it it being the only place of Scripture that sayes this but our Saviour sayes He and his Father are one John 10.30 and three may be one as well as two We must therefore consider the true sense and meaning of the words which was not to teach us a new way of numbring or to destroy the nature of numbers no more then when it is said Man and Wife are One Christ and Believers are One and the many hundred Converts to Christianity were of one Heart and of one Soul there are several sorts of Unity there is an Unity of Consent and agreement which may be amongst a great many of Power and Authority which may be possessed and executed by several Persons who may be all one General Admiral Chancellor and even one Sovereign and Royal Monarch A great many Individuals may be one in Nature and Essence as all Mankind
in the Material World that lyes before us 2. In our own Minds and in Spiritual Beings 3. In Arts and Sciences 4. In Natural Religion 5. In Revelation or the other parts of it besides the Mystery of the Trinity and the Christian Faith 6. I shall add that the Socinians and other Adversaries to Mysteries run into greater Difficulties and Incomprehensible things in their Schemes than those they oppose But these and what remains upon the second General Head of Discourse to wit how we are to hold the Mystery of Faith in a pure Conscience I shall leave to the Afternoon THE MYSTERY OF THE Christian Faith AND OF THE Blessed TRINITY VINDICATED SERMON II. 1 TIM iii. 9. Holding the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience I Proposed to Discourse from these words on these two things I. Why the Christian Faith is called a Mystery II. How we are to hold it in a pure Conscience The Christian Faith was a Mystery I have shewn upon three Accounts 1. As it was not knowable by Natural Reason without an Express and immediate Divine Revelation 2. As it was very Imperfectly and Obscurely revealed before the Gospel and the Coming of Christ 3. As it is Incomprehensible to our Reason and what we cannot fully Conceive and Apprehend even after it is clearly Revealed The Socinians and other Adversaries to Mysteries and to the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity are for Believing nothing which they cannot Comprehend and Understand and will admit nothing Mysterious in Christianity and therefore are for rejecting such Doctrines those especially of the Trinity as are so and will allow the Christian Faith to be a Mystery only in the two former Senses but not in the latter and they expose and ridicule all Mysteries and the believing things they do not understand as the most absurd and unreasonable Opinions as the believing only so many words without any sense or meaning as destroying the certain principles of Truth and Reason and unmanning our selves to become Christians and swallowing down the most monstrous Absurdities and Contradictions and calling them by the name of Faith and Mysteries I have shown that our Christian Faith even that of the Trinity is not liable to those Objections that by its being Incomprehensible we do not mean that we have no Knowledge or Conception at all of it or that it is only so many words without any sense or meaning understood by us or that it is contrary to any natural Truth or to any Principles of Reason known to us or that it implies a Contradiction or has any Inconsistencies in it but only that we cannot understand it fully and every thing that belongs to it that there is nothing else we know to which we can compare it nor have any perfect likeness or resemblance of it by any thing in visible Nature or in our own Minds that it is a Truth and an Object by it self made known to us purely by Revelation and such a Complex Idaea or Connexion of Idaeas that we have no other Idaea Similitude or Representation that exactly answers or comes perfectly up to and therefore it is Incomprehensible and Unconceivable by us and an Object too great and too big for our weak Reason and Imperfect Faculties fully to understand That there is something in it beyond all our Knowledge and all our Conceptions and yet that it is not upon that account to be rejected and disbelieved by us but since the Truth and Reality of it is made known and discovered to us by Revelation the Difficulty and Incomprehensibleness and Mysteriousness of the thing is not a sufficient Argument or Reason for our not believing it To Prove and Maintain this and to Defend the Mystery of our Christian Faith and the Doctrine of Mysteries in General I proposed to show and make out that there are a great many other things which are Mysterious and Incomprehensible to us and which we cannot fully Conceive or Understand and yet do no way doubt the Truth of them but Mankind are very well satisfied and assured about them As 1. In Visible Nature and in the Material World that lyes before us 2. In our own Minds and in Spiritual Beings 3. In Arts and Sciences 4. In Natural Religion 5. In Revelation I mean the other parts of it besides the Mystery of the Trinity and the Christian Faith 6. Lastly To these I shall add That the Socinians and other Adversaries to Mysteries have as many Difficulties and Incomprehensible Things in their Schemes as those they oppose 1. There are many things in Visible Nature and in the Material World which are Mysterious and Incomprehensible to us Indeed all Nature is full of Mystery and showes the admirable and incomprehensible Wisdom of its great Author and Contriver the Heavens above where are so many glorious Luminaries so many shining Worlds and new Earths so much bigger than ours so many Globes of Fire that are maintained we know not how that keep such exact Order and Distance to us and to one another and move in their Liquid Aether in such exact Lines by Causes unknown to us as if so many Intelligencies guided them rather than the whirling Streams of their own fluid Vortices The Earth also beneath where are so many Animals of such curious Make and Structure that the formation of them their Life Motion the Composition and Uses of all their Parts are things to be admired not comprehended by us where every Fly and Mite and Insect and every Spire of Grass we tread on is beyond all our Knowledge and Phylosophy to give a full account of and the greatest Theorist can no more understand all that belongs to 'em than he can make ' em These are sufficient Instances of the Imperfection of our Knowledge and of the Greatness of Gods we that know so little of them and of our selves how we live or how we move so much as a Finger how our Bodies were wonderfully formed and curiously wrought in the Womb and how Blood and Spirits make their brisk Sallies through every part and by such various Fermentations keep up Life and Heat in us and how the solid parts are nourished and increased by them and how every new Fibre and Muscle is woven and knit about them what an admirable Net-work and unaccountable Mechanism is in the Eye Brain Heart in every part and in the whole of us We that comprehend and understand so little of this and of our own bodily Nature how can we be supposed to understand and comprehend every thing that belongs to the Divine Nature and not be as much puzzled and confounded about the knowledge of that as we are about our own If we knew any thing perfectly it should be matter surely and what lies just before us and yet we know nothing of that but its outward accidents and a few of its qualities its colour and figure and hardness or softness or the like but its inward substance and what is the subject
and Substratum of these accidents and qualities we know nothing of How the parts of Matter are united what makes them so close and inseparable in a solid Stone or Diamond more than in a heap of Sand whither rest and juxta position or what hooks and fastnings tyes them together is unknown to us whether the parts of matter are divisible or indivisible is such a puzzling Problem that both sides have a Demonstration though it be for a plain Contradiction Light is the clearest object of our Senses and yet our Knowledge of that is very dark and obscure we know not how it darts it self in a moment from Heaven to Earth and how it causes Vision in the Eye and how so vast a number of Objects are received into that small Room at once and make their several motions and draw all their Pictures there indeed how any of our Senses perceive these Objects and how we have such Conceptions and Phantasms raised in us by them which are not in the Objects themselves for Bitter and Sweet Pain and Pleasure Heat and Cold is not in any of them nor any thing like them but only in our selves and by what secret Powers they excite those Sentiments is as unaccountable as it is obvious We must resolve all these things and all the Phoenomina of Nature into the will and appointment of the first cause thither we must bring and there we must leave all the Laws of Matter and Motion We can trace them all thither and we can go no farther but must stop at these incomprehensible bounds and limits of all our Natural Knowledge 2. If we rise higher and look beyond Matter and consider what we know of Spiritual Beings and of the Intellectual World we shall find that to be a dark Hades and as unintelligible to us We know indeed that there must be something above Matter and that Wisdom and Thoughts and Contrivance which every where appear in the Fabrick of the World and in the Structure of our own and every Animals Body must proceed not from rambling Atoms and from senseless and heedless matter but from a Wise Mind and an Understanding Being and we feel and perceive in our selves something that is above body that thinks and reflects and considers that reasons and discourses and deduces one thing from another and determines it self and acts freely and moves our Bodies as it pleases and stops their motion and has an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and is sensible of Pain or Pleasure from things past or future which Body and Matter cannot be and this is what we call our Soul and we know it by these Properties and have as much an Idaea of it as of Body Thinking being as certain and well known to us as Extension but what is the Essence or Substance or inward Constitution of what thinks or is extended this we are equally ignorant of and how this Spiritual Substance came into the Body whether it was infused by God upon an immediate Creation or Emaned and propagated from the Parents Soul which was an old Opinion of the Easterns the Syrians and Arabians and of many others and does no way infer its Corporeity by what Vital Charm or Congruity it is united to it by what nexus it is so joyned and fastned to Matter as not to be released from it when it pleases this is unconceivable and unintelligible to us Why are we therefore so afraid and unwilling to believe the Mysteries of the Divine the highest Spiritual Nature when we have so many in our own which is the lowest Why is the Divine Generation of the Son so incredible when so many Wife and Learned Persons * As St. Hierome tells us Tom. 2. Ep. 82. have been of Opinion that even Humane Souls are generated and this without any discerption or division of parts which belongs not to Spiritual Beings Why is the Incarnation of Christ or the Divine Natures being united to the Humane thought more unintelligible than the Soul being United to the Body without any commensuration of parts or equal Extension And why is the Sacred Trinity Condemned as so absurd a Mystery or three Divine Persons so inseparably united together when so many Philosophers of old have thought that every Man had three Immaterial Principles or Souls in him the Rational the Sensitive and the Vegetative though of late we have held that these Three are One. Is not the Mind one pure Act or Energy and yet it has three Faculties in it of Understanding Will and Memory which are not the same and yet belong to one Soul 3. There are a great many things in Arts and Sciences which are Unconceivable and Unintelligible to those who are the best skilled in them and especially to others who are not Thus in Physicks in Mathematicks in Chymistry in Astronomy in Navigation and other Sciences how many strange and extraordinary and wonderful things are there which those who are ignorant would hardly believe and to those who know them they are Incomprehensible I might produce a great many Instances from all of them but shall only touch upon a few Who would not have thought the Loadstone a very Mysterious thing and the Pixis Nautica when first found out and who does not think them so still and who can give a full account of them by striate Particles and the Magnetism of the Earth which is going very little further then to an occult quality And a great many such occult qualities and unaccountable Appearances there are in Nature and Phylosophy which are much like Mysteries in Religion and in Revelation which when our knowledge is improved we shall know better The Flux and Reflux of the Sea continues to be so still for any Hypothesis that can perfectly solve it The Circulation of the Blood through the whole Body was not long ago thought to be so and the Periods of Agues and Feavers is still acknowledged to be one The believing there were Antipodes was not many Ages ago thought to be Heresy Aventin Annal Anno 745. and Virgilius a Bishop in Germany was condemned for it by Pope Zachary in the 8th Century The Phylosophers Stone has been greatly talked of and will be acknowledged a Mystery though so many have pretended to it and even though it were found out And to one who has lived always in the Hot Countreys and under the Torrid Zone the having Water turn'd into Ice and a River congealed into a Solid Rock will be as Incredible a Mystery so likewise to have a Transparent Glass made out of Sand and an opac Body and a Plant as they say raised out of its Ashes by the Power of Chymistry The Power of Numbers and the performances of Algebra and many Problems in Mathematics may pass for Magical to a great many as they have done always to the ignorant and some of them are unaccountable and Incomprehensible to those who know and can demonstrate them as the
Nature from whence they Result and to which they peculiarly belong Now that Christ is Omnipotent appears from his making the World for nothing but Almighty Power could do that and produce all Things out of nothing which is what we mean by Creation Now the Scripture is positive that all things were made by him and that without him was not any thing made that was made Joh. 1.3 For by him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisibe all things were created by him and for him Colos 1.16 and by him God made the World Heb. 1.2 To say all this is meant of a Spiritual Creation or of Christs making a new Gospel World and not a Natural is such an unnatural and ridiculous force and violence to the Words as not only Confutes but Exposes it self and makes the plainest words in Scripture even those that describe the Creation in Genesis and Christs Birth in St. Matthew and the whole Scripture History to be liable to be rarefied away by a strained and forced Allegory If Christ then Created all Things He is certainly God for he that Built or Made all Things is God according to the Apostles Argument Heb. 3.4 And if his Creating the World doth not prove him to be truly God then we cannot prove a God from the Creation and that undoubted Argument for the proof of a God must be given up which the Atheists will very much thank the Arrians for That Christ is Omnipresent appears by his Promise to his Disciples Mat. 18.25 that where two or three of them were gathered together in any part of the World there he was in the midst of them That he is Omniscient is testified by St. Peter Lord thou knowest all things Joh. 21.17 and that he knoweth the hearts of all Men and will judge all Men at the last Day That He is Eternal and was not only before Abraham but in the beginning before the World which is a Jewish Phrase for Eternity is plain also from Scripture notwithstanding all the little Cavils of our Adversaries If Christ then be the Omnipotent Maker of the World who upholdeth all things by the Word of his Power by whom all Things subsist who is an Omnipresent Omniscient and Eternal Being He is a God by Nature of whom we cannot have a higher Idaea and Conception only that He is not from himself or from none which belongs only to the Father from whom he received his Being and all the Perfections of it 5. The Divinity of Christ appears from our Praying to him and Worshipping him our invoking and Adoring him as we are Commanded to do in Scripture and as has bin Observed by the Christian Church in all Ages For nothing is an Object of Divine Worship but God or a Being that has the Divine Nature and Perfections Thou shalt Worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve is a standing Rule both of the Jewish and Christian Religion Deut. 6.13 Mat. 4.10 and of Natural too for the Glorious and Infinite Excellencies of the Divine Nature which cannot be Communicated to a Creature and wherever they are Communicated Constitute that Being a God these are the Ground of that Peculiar and Incommunicable Honour which we give to God and the Infinite distance between God and Created Beings who however Excellent yet are Infinitely below the supream and transcendent Excellencies of the Divine Nature makes Creatures uncapable of Divine Worship and makes it always unlawful in us and a robbing God of his Glory to give it them The Arrians therefore were alwayes accused by the Orthodox of Idolatry for Worshipping Christ and believing him to be a Creature though of the highest Order that could be And when Socinus had perswaded his Disciples to Dis-believe Christs Divinity Davidis and several of them rightly concluded that then he was not to be Worshipped and our late Sophisters seem inclined to agree with them in this finding it impossible to avoid the same Charge in Worshipping Christ as a Man though never so exalted that lyes against the Church of Rome for Worshipping Saints and Angels and the Virgin Mary and that they can no way come off but by the same distinctions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sovereign and Inferior Worship which are equal but very weak Pleas to Defend Popery Paganism and Socinianism But how bold and rash an Assertion is it on the other side to deny that Christ is to be Worshipped when all the Angels are Commanded to Worship him Heb. 1.6 and when all Men are to Honour the Son even as they Honour the Father Joh. 5.20 and he that doth not thus Honour the Son Honoureth not the Father that sent him No pious and good Christians who own Christ to be their Saviour will ever be brought off from worshipping and praying to him and calling upon his name as the first Christians did Acts 9.14 21. and St. Stephen Acts 7.59 and St. Paul Acts 12.8 and the whole Christian Church afterwards Socinus was so sensible of this that he set himself most zealously to defend and assert both the Lawfulness and Necessity of it though many of his Followers have been against both But this is such a weight upon Socinianism as will help to sink it It can never free it self from one of those streights that will ruine and destroy it Either to throw off wholly the worship of Christ which is to throw off Christianity and which will never be born by any number of Pious Christians or to own that Idolatrous Principle That a Creature may be worship'd which will never be admitted by Protestants They who will not worship and pray to Christ cease to be Christians and they who do pray to him must own him to be Omnipresent Omniscient and Almighty to be able to grant their Requests to know their Hearts and to hear their Prayers and be present with them in all places and so to have those Divine Attributes and Perfections that belong only to God 6. And Lastly I might prove the Divinity of Christ from the Universal Consent and Belief of the Christian Church and from the Testimony of the greatest Adversaries to Christianity who alwayes supposed and charged this as the Sentiment of Christians that they held Christ to be God The Consent and Belief of the Christian Church is evident from its Creeds and its Prayers its Doctrine and its Practice in worshipping Christ and from its Zeal against all those early Hereticks that opposed this Doctrine and its determinations both in Private Synods and General Councils for the maintaining and asserting it It must be very strange that the whole Christian Church should be mistaken in a matter of this Importance and should have all along a False Object of Worship and when it was so zealous against all Idolatry and had so many Martyrs upon that score that it should bring in the same another way and worship a meer Creature It