all our Misfortunes the book is wrote in a reasonable and pacific manner the only book of a great many so written by this Author I will present the Reader with the Doctrine of this remarkable and useful Book under distinct heads that every one may see he hath entirely chang'd his opinions that were censured by the Oxford Heads and refuted by the Vnitarians First concerning God what is the definition of God and of what sort is the Divine Vnity He answers P. 25. This is the notion that all mankind have of one God one infinite eternal Being or Nature P. 35. God is an eternal infinite Mind So all as well Christians as Philosophers hold P. 49. What is the natural Notion we have of God But one eternal Being the cause of all other Beings P. 309. They the Divine Persons are as perfectly One as a created Mind is P. 319. A Perichoresis Vnion or mutual Inbeing of minds can never make three compleat absolute Minds to be essentially one P. 343. Three absolute whole individual Divine Natures is Tritheism P. 371. The Divine Persons cannot properly be called three infinite Minds or Spirits For Mind as well as God is not the name of their persons but of their nature which is identically the same in all three We see here he propounds the Doctrine of the Church and of the Unitarians both Affirmatively and Negatively and both ways makes it his own In defining or describing God he saith one God is one infinite BEING one eternal and infinite MIND And tho' we say three Divine Persons yet whatever is thereby meant and he will tell us by and by what is meant they are as perfectly one MIND as a created mind is one Then Negatively he says The Divine Persons are not three Minds or Spirits and as to what some say and himself had often said in former Books of the Perichoresis he now owns no mutual Inbeing of three Spirits or Minds can ever make them to be one In accounting for the nature of the Divine Persons he speaks the very language of the Disinterested of the Author of the Remarks and of the Agreement that was wrote in answer to Mr. Edwards to my Lords the Bishops of Sarum Chichester Worcester and to Monsieur de Luzanzy His words are these P. 256. We acknowledg one God distinguished only by these personal Properties Paternity Filiation Procession as each of them has a compleat Hypostasis distinguish'd only by MODES of subsistence P. 258. The Divine Nature subsists distinctly in three according to their distinct characters of Unbegotten Begotten and Proceeâ—ing And these we call Persons because they have some Analogy or likeness to individuals in created Beings which in an Iâ—telligent nature are called Persons P. 197. We must use such words as we have and qualify their sense as we can P. 259. When we distinguish between Person and Essence and say there are three Persons and one Essence By one Essence we mean one Divinity by Persons we mean the Divine Essence as unbegotten and as communicated by Generation and Procession P. 280. Tho each Divine Person is the Divine Nature and Essence yet three Divine Persons are not three Natures or Essences but three Relations in one singular absolute Nature P. 297. That one Nature is but one Person and one Person but one Nature that individual Natures and Persons must always be multiplyed with each other is the fundamental Principle of all Heresies relating either to the Trinity or the Incarnation Sure this last effort was a very hard and grievous strain to him for 't was the very principle that misled him into the Heresy of three spiritual infinite Substances Minds and Beings He took it for his foundation that Persons and intelligent Natures or Substances are convertible or are the same and this error made him obstinate in it even after the Oxford Decree that the Divine Persons ye so many distinct spiritual Substances distinct Spirits and Minds Well but let us put together this whole reformed Doctrine about the Divine Persons They are not distinct Beings Natures Substances Minds or Spirits but only personal Properties or distinct Relations in the same singular nature Would you know the Mystery more particularly what you are to understand by personal Properties and distinct Relations in the same singular Nature or Essence The Doctor will not be difficult or reserved in the matter he answers The Persons personal Properties or distinct Relations are the Divine Essence or Substance unbegotten and communicated by Generation and Procession that is Begotten and Proceeding Do you except against it or make doubt that Relations personal Properties Unbegotten Begotten and Proceeding are properly called Persons or may have the names of Father Son and Spirit He will deliver you from your scruples he wisely minds you that we must of necessity use such words as we have and regulate or qualifie their sense as well as we can In two words he saith The Divine Persons are so called because we must use such words as we have and because they have some likeness to Persons of the created Nature but in truth they are only personal Properties or distinct Relations of the same singular nature namely of the Divinity Or if you had rather they are the Divine Essence or Divinity considered as Unbegotten Begotten and Proceeding This is a true and an exact Abridgment of his large Book I will not think he has so little conscience as to pretend that the Unitarians have in their late Contests opposed this Trinity 't is the account that themselves give of it and profess to believe in that part of the Agreement which is in answer to my Lords the Bishops of Worcester and Chichester 'T is the account also given by Dr. S th in his Animadversions and his Tritheism charged by the Disinterested by the Bishops of Worcester and of Sarum In eight years time this fierce Opposer of the Unitarians has with much to do learned that the Trinity is not three Minds Spirits or Substances but three internal Relations three personal Properties of the Divinity In eight more it may be he will understand that those are good Catholics and orthodox Christians who reject no other Trinity but of distinct Substances Spirits or Minds We are all agreed in the Faith it self and even as to the ordinary terms the more learned Trinitarians wish as the Vnitarians do that they were abolisht but as to some other less usual terms that occur in the debating these questions there is some disagreement among Divines I take notice that as to these Dr. Sherlock is always on the worse side and for the weaker Reasons For Instances 'T is a question whether we may not say three Divine Substances as well as three Persons They that put the question or that so speak grant that in very deed there is but one Divine Substance in the absolute sense of the word yet may we not say with Sr. Hilary three Substances in a restrained limited
and relative sense That is meaning thereby the one real Divine Substance considered in its distinct Relations or Properties for hereby the Substance tho 't is not multiply'd yet 't is thrice numbred and in that respect it should seem may be called three relative Substances This is a very slight Reasoning and never misled any body but St. Hilary For men never say THREE on the account that a thing is considered three manner of ways with three Modes three Properties or three Relations Why therefore should we introduce such an improper as well as dangerous form of speaking concerning God a form of speaking that in its natural and immediate sense destroys the divine Unity and introduces by their own confession three Gods Notwithstanding Dr. Sherlock is pleased to approve of that form he saith P. 379. We must not say three Substances in the Trinity for fear of saying three Gods Yet we must own that each Divine Person is true and perfect substance and three in substance are three Substances not indeed three absolute but three relative Substances In the Trinity there is one absolute and three relative Substances P. 287. An absolute Substance is one entire perfect individual Whole Relative Substances are internal subsisting Relations in the same one whole individual substance The meaning is Orthodox the words Heterodox and Phantastical He grants that to affirm three Divine Substances is to affirm three Gods but then meaning by Substances what no body means the same one absolute individual Substance numbred three times or numbred with its three Properties or Relations we may affirm three Divine relative Substances Again Those that grant it must not be said in any sense whatsoever that there are three Divine Substances yet they make it a question Whether the one only Divine Substance is one numerical Substance and one singular Substance They own the Divine Substance is really but one identically one 't is one self-same Substance not two or three in whatsoever sense For all that they are not willing to say the substance of God is numerically one is one numerical or one solitary or singular Substance their wise Reason is this Tho' the Divine Substance is one in Nature and in the thing numbred as the School-Doctors speak yet being thrice numbred for it is numbred distinctly to or with its three Properties or Relations therefore we deny it to be numerically one tho 't is really naturally and identically one Now we grant to these Anti-Grammarians that the thing they intend is true but they should not deny propositions that are true in their Grammatical and immediate Sense because they are not true in a sense that no man ever was so wild as to impose it upon them 'T is something worse than trifling to deny orthodox and necessary Propositions on a pretence that mad men may take them in a sense contrary to their direct immediate and constant meaning When we say the divine or any other Substance is numerically one or is one numerical one singular one solitary Substance every body knows that the words solitary singular and numerical are used only in opposition to plural more or many so that one solitary singular or numerically one Substance is intended only as a denial of this heretical Proposition three Substances If the reason given by Dr. Sherlock and some few others why they will not say one singular or solitary or numerically one Substance were good they must never say one numerical one solitary or singular Earth or Sun or other body or thing whatsoever Nay they must not dare to say numerically one GOD one singular or solitary GOD which yet are forms that I presume they will own as orthodox nay as necessary There is no thing or being whatsoever but must be at least thrice numbred namely to the three Properties of every Being Verum bonum unum therefore if we must not say one numerical or one singular or solitary Divine Substance because this Substance is thrice numbred viz. with or to its three Relations or Properties neither may we say one numerical or one solitary or singular Earth or Sun because they are thrice numbred are distinctly numbred to the three Properties of Verum bonum unum But this impertinent niceness Dr. Sherlock every where takes up and contends for it as an important truth unless we exclude the terms solitary singular and numerical he is positive that we shall lose the three Divine Persons P. 195. The singularity of the Divine Substance is a Sabellian Notion and destroys the faith of a real Trinity P. 213. An individual Substance but not one solitary or singular Substance P. 246. The Unity of the Divine Substance or Nature is not an unity of number but of sameness and identity P. 249. 'T is not a singular Nature or Substance with the singularity of solitude but of identity or sameness I imagine Dr. Sherlock's best Friends will not deny 't is an odd melancholy humour of his to espouse and affect Terms and Phrases that have been rejected by all Learned Men as improper dangerous and tending to Tritheism merely that he may amuse Novices in these Questions and may afterward explain his Riddles to the admiration of the weak or unlearned and the sleight of the learned and discerning He concludes his Book with an Address to the Unitarians to this effect They were not best to concern themselves with him or against his Book for if they do they shall certainly be called to account for it in this World as well as in the World to come I take this to be another melancholy Fit for the Orthodox will but laugh at the threatnings of a Man under publick Censure for the very worst Heterodoxy What! three relative substances call to account honest orthodox one absolute Substance Believe me Doctor they despise the menace They send you word Physitian heal thy self Mr. Informer purge your own Books even this last of the many Heterodoxies in it As Page 191. The Son is nothing else but the whole entire immediate participation of the Father's Substance and therefore is as perfectly one with the Father as the Father is one 'T is Sabellian The Son is not so one with the Father as the Father is one for the Father is numerically one as all confess but Father and Son are numerically two with all but Sabellians P. 198. Each of them Father Son and Spirit is perfect God and therefore an infinite Mind and an infinite Spirit 'T is Tritheism For if each of the Divine Persons is an infinite Mind or an infinite Spirit then there are three infinite Minds and Spirits which is the Heresy you have been retracting throughout this whole Book I supoose however he meant to say each Divine Person is infinite Mind and Spirit which is Catholic and Unitarian P. 247. To have asserted one singular Divine Substance which is but one in number had given up the cause to the Sabellians One singular Divine Substance and one in number is the Language of the Catholic Church and is refused by none but Arians and Tritheists P 369. The name God doth not originally absolutely and immediately belong to the Son or Spirit but only relatively P. 373. Only the Father is absolutely and simply God 'T is absolute Heresy Taking Father Son and Spirit in the personal senfe the Son and Spirit are no less absolutely and simply GOD than the Father is When the Unitarians say only the Father is God in the absolute sense they do not take the word Father personally but by Father they mean the Deity Father Son and Spirit as Persons of the Deity taking Persons in the Ecclesiastical sense or sense of the Church are equally God neither is afore or after other neither greater or less than the other as Athanasius rightly teaches In short this perpetual Litigant understands not well either the Doctrine of the Church or the Party he opposes these are not Questions in which he might concern himself they require an attention and subtilty of thought which either he seems not to have had or to have lost He has concerned himself in the supposed Controversy between the Church and the Socinians with like prudence dexterity and success as the present Archbishop of Paris has intermedled between the Jansenists and Molinists The Archbishop published an Ordinance against a Book entituled An Exposition of the Catholic Faith touching Grace and Predestination Father Quesnel a Priest of the Oratory and Mr du Guè a Learned Person but who has laid aside the habit have severally written upon this Ordinance They agree that what is proposed as Catholic Doctrine in the second Part of the Archbishop's Ordinance is really the same with what is censured in the first Part as the Heresy of the Jansenists but in another point these two Criticks differ For Mr. du Guè thinks the Archbishop may be pardoned the Errors in the first Part in consideration of his second Part but Father Quesnel doth not approve this Indulgence of Mr. du Guè he maintains that the Archbishop cannot make satisfaction but only by a Recantation 'T is well for Dr. Sherlock that he dos not write among or to the Wits of France for his Books concerning these Questions in truth are nothing but heaps of Contradictions A Person well versed in the Controversy may spell out his meaning and find what is the Writer's aim but he must pardon a thousand Improprieties and Blunders and as many Contradictions some of them in the very stress turn or as they speak nicety of the Controversy FINIS
or what is the same to be distinguished by was is and shall be seeing 't is confessed on all hands that he carrieth all Perfections into every Succession of his Duration But is it not a Scandal that some Unitarians of foreign Parts have denied the Spirituality or Incorporeity of God his Omnipresence and Omniscience saying and contending for it that he is a Body with such Configuration of Parts as Men have consequently that he is in Heaven inspecting indeed and governing all things but by the ministry of the several Orders of Angels and that he doth not foresee contingent Events but only such Events as are necessarily not arbitrarily produced by their Causes Doubtless but no more a scandal to the Unitarians than to their Opposers for they are Errors which some of the Fathers even the most antient learned and pious of 'em have defended as Truths Nay it should seem they were some time the prevaling Opinions in some places namely when the Anthropomorphite Doctrine was so zealously espoused that the Hermits and Cenobites would not indure their Bishops if they but suspected 'em of Origen's Doctrine that God is a Spirit without Parts or Passions And in denying the Spirituality and Omnipresence of God they must needs be understood not to believe his certain and absolute Prescience of contingent Events About the year 400 when almost every body concerned themselves in condemning and departing as far as possible from the opinions of Origen the Anthropomorphite Doctrine and its consequences were the Standard Orthodoxy of many places and were Heresy no where Even St. John Chrysostom at Constantinople hardly defended the Fratres Longi from the Prosecutions of Theophilus Archbishop and Patriarch of Alexandria who was a profest Anthropomorphite and had expelled the Fratres Longi for adhering to Origen's Doctrine of the Spirituality and Omnipresence of God But as I said we not only dislike but utterly reject the dangerous Doctrine That God hath a Body is like to Man toge-with its consequences That he is neither Omnipresent nor Omniscient It may as well be said he is not at all nay this latter tho the Anthropornorphites see it not seems to be implied and included in the former But we condemn not the Schechina or glorious Appearance of God in Heaven which many Learned Men hold nor the spiritual Body of Christ III. I believe farther concerning God That there is no distinction of Persons or Subsistences in God And that the Son and Holy Ghost are not God The former of them being only a Man the latter no other than the Power or Operation of God That there was nothing of Merit in what Christ did or suffered and that therefore he could not make satisfaction for the Sins of the World But Mr. Edwards too much mistakes The question is not at all concerning three Persons or three Subsistences in God but whether there are three infinite Subsistences three eternal Minds and Spirits We deny the latter with the whole Catholick Church against the Tritheists We never questioned the former Persons or Subsistences but only as Persons are used or taken for Spirits Minds and Beings I shall explain this matter however more fully in my Answer to the Bishops of Worcester Sarum and Chichester annexed to this Agreement or any one may see what is our sense in the Judgment of a disinterested Person concerning the Controversy between Dr. S th and Dr. Sherlock By a Divine of the Church of England What that Author makes to be the Doctrine of the Nominals and of the Church concerning the Blessed Trinity the Divinity of our Saviour and the Satisfaction is and ever was the belief of the Unitarians as well as of the Catholick Church But we say the Lord Christ is only a Man and the Holy Spirit only the Power of God No we say our Lord Christ is God and Man He is Man in respect of his reasonable Soul and human Body God in respect of God in him Or more scholastically in respect of the Hypostatical or Personal Union of the Humanity of Christ with the Divinity By which the Catholick Church means and we mean the Divinity was not only occasionally assisting to but was and is always in Christ illuminating conducting and actuating him More than this is the Heresy of Entyches and less we never held tho we confess that careless and less accurate Expressions may have been used by both Parties of which neither ought to take advantage against the other when it appears there is no heterodox Intention That by the Spirit of God is sometimes meant in Holy Scripture the Power of God cannot be denied but concerning the Three Divine Persons we believe as the Catholick Church believes That they are relative Subsistences internal Relations of the Deity to it self Or as the Schools after St. Austin explain this Original unbegotten Wisdom or Mind reflex or begotten Wisdom called in Holy Scripture the Logos and the eternal spiration of Divine Love But do you not say There was no Merit in what Christ did or suffered and that he could riot make satisfaction for our Sins He may for our parts be Anathema that teaches or believes that Doctrine We believe that the Lord Christ by what he did and what he suffered was by the gracious acceptance of God a true and perfect Propitiation for Sinners that repent and turn to the good ways IV. In the next Article he makes us to 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 nor 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 not any 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 was 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 embrace all spiritual Good and to avoid all that is sinful or vitious They are bold Britains What embrace 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 at all times
only by nature In good truth they are better and stronger by nature than I ever hope to be in this Life by the superadded Grace of God 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 to believe or to obey the Gospel 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 gives no occasion to any to turn Enthusiasts and to resolve the whole duty we owe and must perform to God and to our Neighbor into preternatural 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 Faith and good Works of our own But I am not certain that the Calvinists or the Antinomists would not assent to that Proposition or not allow it to be orthodox I incline to think those People have no real difference with the Church nor the Church with them but that they mistake one anothers meaning 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 that their very Nature is absorpt That at death the Soul as well as Body sleeps was an error of some of the most ancient Fathers as well as of some Unitarians But neither of 'em said as Mr. Edwards pretends that in death the very Nature of the Soul is absorpt which is to say extinct they both of them held that there is a Resurrection of the Soul as well as Body But why dos Mr. Edwards impute that opinion to us when he has read for he quotes the book in the first Part of the Considerations on the Explications of the Trinity what is our sense of that matter The words at p. 33. are these This Error was common to Socinus and some of the Fathers The Learned Mr. Du Pinn in his Abridgment of the Fathers has noted that Justin Martyr Irenaeus Minutius Faelix 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 'em hold it VI. He says next I believe we shall not rise with the same Bodies 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 present complexion of the body and therefore to be reckon'd the Modifications and as it were parts of the 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 choleric or jealous the Body that shall be will not be such It will be conformed to the likeness of the glorious Body of our 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 also 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 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. or J. B. 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 punished and their Punishment is this to utterly cease or perish for ever The unquenchable Fire is nothing but Annihilation I do not know that the Scriptures or the Catholic Church do require any to believe that Sinners shall be examined concerning their past Life at the day of the general Judgment To what purpose I pray doth the All-knowing Judg need to be informed concerning the particulars of their Guiâ—â—â— If every person is to be severally exâ—â—â—â—ed concerning the particulars of his â—â—ansacted Life the Day of Judgment will extend it self to many Millions of Ages more and farther than the whole duration of the World from its beginning to its consummation It should seem Mr. Edwards thinks that because the Scriptures speak of the great Judgment by God in the language of Men and of Human Judicatures such as Trumpets the Throne of the Judg a formal Sentence the Pleadings of the Guilty the Answers of the Judg that therefore in very deed we are to expect such a Scene at the Judgment by God as at a common Assize I conceive on the contrary that all such expressions and words wherever they are found in Scripture are not intended as real Descriptions but as Comparisons or Resemblances by which the capacities of the Vulgar may he assisted and their affections wrought upon All that is intended by such expressions is