taken away but strongly confirm'd the necessity of obedience to God's Laws whether written or natural which was as we have before observ'd the general intent of Religion and agreeable to those notions the World commonly had of it Since for the better carrying on this end Mysteries are so very advantageous to religion as to make Men have reverend apprehensions of it upon account of its incomparable Excellencies in its causes and effects and upon account of the weakness and shallowness of their own understandings since all these particulars are true it 's likewise absolutely necessary that the Christian the onely true Holy pure Religion should be built upon such a foundation as might appear to all Men upon the strictest inquiry beyond all doubt or controversie Mysterious inexplicable incomprehensible Nor could it be an impertinent labour to clear this truth because it totally ruines all the pretences of the Socinians that after the Revelation once made of the great fundamentals of our Faith there could remain nothing of so obscure a nature but that we by the pure strength of our own reason might be able to comprehend it In short that though it be true that Scripture as sufficient for that purpose is and ought to be the sole rule of Faith yet reason ought to be the rule of Scripture Reason as it now stands loaded with all the miserable consequences of sin reason so blind as without the extraordinary light of holy Scriptures to be wholly unable to lead a Man to Eternal life it obviates their assertions that the true ancient Catholick Interpretation of this and other Texts of Scripture that speak of the eternal Divine nature of the Son of God or of that glorious Trinity subsisting in the Father Son and Holy Ghost is false and unreasonable meerly because it introduces an unintelligible incarnation and unity of the Divine and Humane nature in Christ a Mysterious co-essentiality of God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost c. notwithstanding all those glorious revelations God has made of himself in Scripture For if it be certainly true that Religion in it's general notion cannot subsist unless built upon a mystick foundation and that therefore Christian Religion in particular cannot subsist without it then it will follow that the continuing Mystick nature of the great Articles of our Faith can create no prejudice in any person whatsoever against our Religion on their account since especially it will remain impossible to draw any genuine consequences from those mysteries but what will be so far from impeaching that they will strongly confirm and re-inforce all those duties relating to God or man which are laid upon us by the natural or written Law and it will follow farther that the Socinians themselves by their endeavours to level all the Articles of our Faith the great saving principles of the Gospel to impair'd reason or by endeavouring to leave Christiany naked of all Mysteries do what in them lies to disannul all the Religion of Christians to take away all the use and advantage of the Gospel leaving the world so involv'd in Atheism or in meer Deism at this time very little to be preferr'd before the other Having done now with the positive assertion our next work is with all exactness and humility to consider the illustration of this Proposition in the severals laid down by the Apostle which altogether afford us the whole sum and substance of the Gospel for all that glad tydings sent from Heaven to Earth for the comfort of mankind consists in this That for their sakes to procure their Salvation God was manifest in the flesh justified in the spirit seen of Angels preach'd unto the Gentiles believ'd on in the world receiv'd up into glory all which particulars tho' the full prosecution of the first be all our present task are incomprehensible mysteries yet as well worth our enquiring into as the Apostles writing them who without doubt would never have laid the weight of piety or godliness or true Religion upon those grounds had they not been worth our looking into or their truth worth our vindicating from all the attacks of prejudiced opinionative or haeretical men It 's true a late author tells us Naked Gospel p 34. c. 1. l. 20. That to dispute concerning a Mystery and at the same time to confess it a mystery is a contradiction as great as any in the greatest mystery the expression is worth our remark for the boldness and absurdity it contains It 's bold not to say impious to insinuate so broadly in a discourse where Christianity's concern'd that all great Mysteries are made up of or at least contain contradictions what have we then nothing at all Mysterious in Scripture what 's that love between the blessed Jesus and his Spouse the Church so admirably character'd in the book of Canticles can our Author find nothing Mysterious in all those adumbrations of ineffable love or can he easily give us a Catalogue of the Contradictions there the real Contradictions I mean for things that are of no mysterious nature at all on any other account may seem to contain somewhat contradictory but seeming contradictions are not real Can he fathom every thing relating to Daniel's weeks Men of a great deal of learning industry and sobriety have taken a great deal of pains to explain the mystery of them and have scarce yet given the world satisfaction were not the Vision mysterious it would be more easily clear'd but because it is not must it therefore be contradictious to it self or to make a yet closer instance the nature of a God can He or any Socinian make it comprehensible to humane understandings or else will the very notion of a God imply a contradiction He must be a very new fangled Son of the Church of England who will assert that but why must it imply a contradiction to dispute or discourse about or to enquire into a confest mystery That God was manifest in the flesh is true we believe that every circumstance relating to his Incarnation as laid down in Scripture is true according to the genuine and common interpretation of such words whereby these circumstances are express'd we believe too That as they are true we may dispute about them and clear them from all that Sophistry whereby some subtle men would fain baffle us out of them is no uncouth or irrational opinion yet after all we take the whole account of this Incarnation as laid down in Scripture to be a very great mystery But where lyes the Contradiction either in believing it a mystery or in defending it as such This truth that God was manifest in the flesh is as before intimated that upon the literal truth of which the whole Salvation of mankind depends How he should have been so is to all mankind mysterious and incomprehensible yet may we without any contradiction explain defend prove and draw inferences from it Hear what a Bishop of our own a genuine
For those rites continued will move the world to belive that the Messias is not yet come that the Faith so long profest in him as if he were come is vain that He who once pretended to that name only impos'd upon the world and was no better than a cheat and that therefore the Jewish Religion is and ought to be still in its full force Now this will appear very absurd and unreasonable to any one who has seriously weighed all those arguments brought to prove that Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God and therefore could be no Impostor and therefore must be that Messias he declar'd himself to be which being true it will follow that our Saviours coming must of necessity put an end to so much of the Jewish Law as was not co-incident with that of Nature and consequently not perpetually obliging That many of the Jews themselves ever look'd upon their Law as of a mutable nature in it self is proved sufficiently by Raymundus Martini in his Pugio fidei against the Jews and that it could never be more properly actually chang'd than by the Messias appears in him who proves from Jewish writers themselves that the Messias the King shall be greater than Moses nay greater than the ministring Angels and therefore the fittest for such a work and as he shews their own gloss in the Midrasch Koheleth upon that of Solomon Eccles 11.8 Pugionis fidei p. 3. dist 3. c. 20 tells us That every Law of all people whatsoever every Law that a man can learn in this world is all but vanity in comparison of the Law of the Messias Things of a less perfect and lasting nature must then vanish when that appears which is more perfect and eternal Whatsoever therefore crosses that end for which God sent his Son into the world and retains mysteries now altogether insignificant as being fully accomplished that cannot be pleasing to God and consequently the present Religion of the Jews cannot be the true Religion There are indeed some mysterious truths in which all Religions agree viz. The existence of a God his spirituality invisibility incomprehensibility c. they all agree That his Providence governs all things in the world however trifling and inconsiderable they may appear in the eyes of the world that He hears sees knows understands every thing tho' they know not how according to the objection of Atheists to reconcile such things to his want of eyes ears soul or any other parts which are all inconsistent with a spiritual being All agree together in granting the present state of Man very wretched and deplorable in looking upon him yet as capable of happiness provided a sutable mean for its procurement could be found out and in expectation of some proper help for that purpose These things being agreeable to the general sence of mankind and being the original reasons of mens putting themselves into a religious course must still be approved by every one and every one of these that Religion setled in the world by our Saviour and his Apostles does advance yet more plainly and confirm more strongly to the world And whatsoever mysterious truths it farther propounds they are all so far intelligible by every one as may serve sufficiently to confirm those first principles whatsoever is farther to be seen in them is what moves mankind to lay aside all brutish malicious and unmanly humour as the meditation upon that extraordinary love of God to mankind of God the Father in sending his only Son into the world to dy for it of God the Son in leaving the bosom of his blessed Father and in our nature and for our sake suffering that bitter and scandalous death upon the Cross of God the Holy Ghost in pursuing us continually with his influences and assistances and so working in us to will and to do according to God's good pleasure this meditation naturally runs into that Apostolical conclusion Joh. 4.11 if God thus loved us then ought we also to love one another If we contemplate our own monstrous demerits our aversion to every thing that is good our inclination to every thing that is evil and so offensive to God our ingratitude for mercies receiv'd our unfruitfulness under the means of grace and Salvation presented to us our natural enmity to God and goodness And if withal we seriously consider that all those forementioned favours are conferr'd on us in a state of obstinate enmity the inference is easie as our Lord has laid it down Matth. 5.44 That we should love our enemies bless them that curse us do good to them that hate us and pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us If again we think on that wonderful mercy of God whereby for the merits of the blessed Jesus he 's pleased to forgive us our sins those natural bars between us and heaven the consequence we must of course draw from thence is that of the Apostle That we should be kind Eph. 4.32 tender hearted forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us Thus we see what excellent influence these very truths the nature and reasons of which are above the reach of our groveling minds may have upon us If we proceed and reflect upon the purity and holiness of that God with whom we have to do that he 's a Being who cannot endure sin who punishes it for its odious nature even in his dearest children all those mysteries reveal'd to us in the Gospel are so far by any fair consequence from perverting our minds that they give us all the motives imaginable 1 Pet. 1.15 that as he who has called us is holy so should we be holy in all manner of conversation A man may be a good heathen and yet a filthy Sodomite a through-pac'd Jew and yet be blind hard-hearted carnal but a man cannot be a true Christian but he 'l endeavour to avoid all appearance of evil Jude 2â— and to keep himself unspotted from the world he 'l live in a continual abhorrence of whatsoever may prejudice his soul or pollute his body and knowing that he is not his own James â—â— but that he 's bought with a price he 'l follow that advice he 'l endeavour to glorifie God in his body and in his spirit which are gods 1 Cor. 6. â—â— and to go no farther than what I had instanced in before a man that meditates on that account the Apostles and Evangelists have given us of the appearance of the Son of God in the flesh and on the ends and designs of such his appearance he 'l never spend his time idly about types and shadows when he is invited to embrace the substance he 'l study to conform himself to the Doctrine of the Gospel to be so far as belongs to a meer man a perfect imitator of all those excellent virtues so apparent in our Saviour during his converse with the world he 'l carefully avoid all
from heaven which all wise men have hitherto believed then the writers of the New Testament had no other way to prove their own inspiration but by agreement with the former lest the holy Spirit to whose conduct both pretended should seem inconsistent with himself or variable as mens humours could apprehend him It 's not now to be doubted but that our Saviour who knew what was in Man therefore all along gave just preventives of those Cavils which the malicious Jews could afterwards raise against him and therefore in his first Sermon upon the Mount he shews himself so far from evacuating what was in its own nature moral and perpetually obliging that he on the contrary clears it from all those putid glosses the Jewish readers or Rabbins had fixt upon it and whereas they had endeavoured to find as many starting holes from the severity of good Morals as the Jesuites of later years have done he gave his hearers the full sense and meaning of the Law that so by pretending to liberty from its rigours they might not run themselves into eternal woes and in plain terms lets them know that whereas they were ready simply to imagine the severities of the Scribes and Pharisees very extraordinary and meritorious they were infinitely deceived and that except their righteousness should exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees they should in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven Matth. 5.20 It was doubtless the full end and design of Moses and the Prophets to advance the honour of that God who employed them to make his Name and his Laws respected not only among the tribes of Israel but among all those nations to whose knowledge their writings were likely at any time to come who by the rationality and tendency of the Laws would certainly judge of the wisdom goodness and integrity of the Law-giver but when those Prophets and others had done their best their endeavours were mixt with so many failures and imperfections that sometimes they fell themselves a great way under God's displeasure as Moses by his infidelity and presumption at the rock The man of God that Prophesied against the Altar in Bethel by yielding to the lying suggestions of the old Prophet Jonah by his frowardness because of God's superseding his prophetical denunciation by his long suffering and mercy extended to penitent sinners c. And besides in all those services those holy Men perform'd they could claim no higher a title than that of undeserving servants for that they had only done what was their plain duty and in case of failure they were obnoxious to very severe penalties and Moses tho' he have that honourable character that he was faithful in all God's house it was but as a servant still and for a testimony of those things that were to be spoken after Heb. 3.5 6. But Christ as a Son over his own house took a more exact and effectual care in all things to promote the glory of his Father It 's natural for the Son to be more sollicitous in such cases than a mercenary servant who does what he does prompted both by a fear of punishment and an earnest expectation of reward above both which things a pious Son always lives and therefore whereas the rest always call God their Lord and King c. the blessed Jesus continually calls him his Father his heavenly father and by that relation he so stands in to the Almighty and by what he has done for us in taking our nature upon him and the consequences of that assumption he has procured the same privilege superiour to what was apprehended by those of old with assurance of being heard to say in our Prayers Our Father which art in heaven But to effect all this in relation to his Fathers honour and our good how many scorns abuses persecutions and barbarous cruelties did he undergo from wicked Men yet as freely as if he had been altogether unconcern'd so long as Men could but any ways be reduced to an acknowledgment of their errors and a serious repentance What he underwent so made him as Man the more fit to prescribe Laws to others who were likely to suffer extremely from the same foolish world for embracing those truths he delivered them as we always esteem an Humble man most fit to teach others humility and a Charitable man charity and a Patient man patience For tho' others may declaim as well in commendation of the same virtues and in reproof of the same vices yet the discourses of exemplary persons are justly expected to make the deepest impressions upon their hearers With this advantage our blessed Lord instructed every one that would receive his Doctrine in the ways of happiness he used all the allurements of irresistible Wisdom and unanswerable Reason all the motives of Mercy and Goodness to procure their attendance and obedience He set them a compleat pattern of obedience to God and of innocence and holiness in his converse and then gives that as a standing rule that his Disciples should follow his example and let their light shine before Men for that very end that others seeing their good works might glorifie their Father which was in Heaven But when the blessed Jesus design'd the reformation of a sinful World the nature of his Doctrine and the manner of its propagation was adapted rightly to so admirable an end And therefore whereas the wretched Heathen part of Mankind did infinitely dishonour their Creator whereas they exactly answer'd that account of the Apostle When they knew God they glorified him not as God neither were thankful Rom. 1.21 22 c. but became vain in their Imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkned they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an Image made like to corruptible Man and to Birds and to four-footed Beasts and to creeping things they changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipp'd and serv'd the creature more than the Creator whence they were filled with all unrighteousness fornication wickedness covetousness malice envy c. Whereas this was their real condition infinite numbers of them by this means running head-long into everlasting damnation and yet the ill-natured Jews to whom the Oracles of God were at that time committed took no care for their recovery pleasing themselves onely with a fond conceit of their own righteousness crying to all the rest of Mankind Stand by your selves come not near us for we are holier than you Since they only talk'd of their being the people of God and boasted of his Temple studying more to proselyte Men to an outward Circumcision and a few empty Ceremonies than to real inward holiness and integrity since these very Jews did but abuse their own greater advantages and trample upon the most excellent and obliging part of the Law our Saviour rectified their Error by the dilatation of his own Doctrine and taking exact care to have it spread as far as humane guilt had extended before so
who reach'd that consummate perfection in our nature and that for His sake we are receiv'd in all these things Heathen wisdom fail'd either prescribing gay impossibilities for practice or propounding happiness as the mark to aim at but teaching Men to shoot the contrary way by engaging them in mean pleasures and downright sensualities and where the speculations were best they had none to appeal to who had ever liv'd up to their own principles their most fam'd Sages being meer prostitutes to notorious immoralities notwithstanding all the fair shew some late Writers have endeavour'd to make with them onely Pagans had some few scatter'd extracts out of Scripture which were in themselves excellent but being onely fragments injudiciously cull'd and incoherent and wretchedly misunderstood were wholly useless Whereas all Rules and Methods of living before discover'd were lame and imperfect not sufficient to carry Men through those extraordinary difficulties and objections they might meet with in a course of virtue as appear'd by the Famous Brutus who because he saw it unfortunate concluded Virtue was nothing but an empty name Scripture is compleat and every way sufficient for the design it carries on and therefore stands at advantage against all other Rules because Whoever follows others most exactly cannot be happy at last but He that sticks close to our Rule cannot be unhappy it informs the Mind it resolves Doubts it answers Objections it encourages Weakness it dissipates Fears it reproves Errors and makes Sufferings easie of which there are so many thousands of instances own'd by Infidels themselves that from hence too it 's past dispute that our Rule has this quality of the Word of God In fine there 's nothing through the whole tenour of it either in its Doctrine or History that 's beneath the Majesty of an infinite God if God would speak to Man he could speak no better therefore he must speak thus and onely thus He that finds Princes composing Sacred Hymns infinitely beyond their Orpheus or Callimachus Moralizing as far beyond their admir'd Antoninus as he beyond Porters or Scavengers He that reads Prophets more soaring and divine than their Plato's or Zeno's or Pythagoras's and in a strain more soft and charming as well as more Majestick and Herdsmen more profound and more truly fatidical than their Sibyls or Apollo and Fishermen more accurate argumentative and rational than their Philosophers of the noblest Sects able to baffle 'em in Disputes to out-reach them in discovering the causes and natures of ordinary appearances in the World He that observes Men of various lives and conditions of different tempers different times distant places different natural abilities writing a series of Historical passages with more clearness better digested â—n point of Chronology more probable in â—atters of fact more full exact and imâ—artial in the Characters of Actions and Perâ—ons more agreeing with one another and â—he best Pagan Writers than all other Hiâ—â—orians whatsoever nay than Old and â—ublick Records themselves though preserv'd and managed with the greatest apparent care and exactness He that can find nothing low flagging and uneven among such variety of Pen-men nothing trifling useless or superfluous let his perswasion be what it will let him be Turk African or Indian if he have but his Reason free he must conclude if God ever did impart his will to Man it must be in this Book which we call Scripture and if He then return to his own principle of the necessity in point of justice that God should give a Rule to Man that might procure his Happiness it will as necessarily follow that our Scripture our Rule must be the Word of God Which proves its own Immortal Original farther in that notwithstanding the continued malice and subtilty of Enemies it could never be destroy'd it could never be disprov'd it could never be interpolated or any thing be added to it nor be made shorter or any thing taken from it but while other Humane Writings have been easily abus'd and additions and alterations made in them not discover'd or well distinguish'd to this day by the most exact Criticks nothing could so be fasten'd upon Holy Writ nor any inferiour Writer or uninspired impose his own upon the World for the Word of God Assur'd of these things We as Christians among other parts of Scripture embrace the History of our Saviour's Incarnation and these things being unanswerable by an Infidel upon his own principles as a Deist and a Rationalist he must own the whole History of Scripture to be true and amongst the rest this of the Birth of Christ for as I have no reason to suspect his Veracity who gives me an account of somewhat to his own advantage who yet has always told me truth in things that made against himself So a Pagan who thinks he has reason to receive all the other parts of Divine History because he finds them exactly true has no reason to suspect the Faith of the same Writers in one particular And besides the thing has been so oft attempted but with so little success that He may justly conclude That matters of fact impossible to be confuted by any argument cannot possibly be false This obliges an Infidel to acknowledge the truth of our History of the Incarnation in particular and Scripture in general own'd to be Divine is a certain foundation to build the Conversion of Infidels upon And thus much for the first head That Jesus Christ the Messias who appear'd on Earth in our Nature was really the Son of God We come now to the Second Particular which is this That the same Blessed Jesus who was the Son of God was God equal with his Father or really and truly God as well as real Man He was God though manifest in the Flesh To prove the Truth of which might seem needless had there not been of old and were there not of late Years reviv'd a Generation of men who under pretence of sacrificing to Reason have set themselves wholly to explode the Belief of a Trinity as a means to make good which adventure of theirs they positively deny the Divinity of the Son of God they cannot well admit of any Mysteries in Religion which themselves cannot comprehend the very pretence to which comprehension is enough to make a Mystery no Mystery for if They who employ themselves in this work can comprehend it every one may do so too or at least the generality of the Intelligent World but what 's generally understood cannot be a Mystery and yet our Apostle in the words preceding the Text tells us that That Mystery of Godliness of which this Text is a part is without all controversie a great Mystery But that Jesus Christ the Son of God was God equal with the Father we shall prove by these Considerations By those accounts of his Appearance and of his Nature laid down in the Old Testament By the Declarations of Himself and of his Apostles in the New Testament By his Actions during
Christ nor Elias nor that Prophet but he answered positively too to their General question v. 19-23 that He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness Prepare ye the way of the Lord make his paths streight as saith the Prophet Esaias Now the Baptist being so very much reverenc'd and so mightily followed as he was his answer could not but be spread about through all Judaea and the expectations of Men be the more rais'd because the person there prophesied of by Isaias was to be the forerunner of the Messias he therefore being come the other could not be far behind Besides if we interpret the Gospel of the glad tydings of Salvation brought to all mankind the Evangelists expression will be untrue For not to mention the Promise to our first Parents and those afterwards repeated to the Patriarchs and frequently declared and enlarged upon by the Prophets that of the Angel to Zacharias the Father of S. John Baptist and that of the same Angel to the blessed Virgin and they were â—â—â—â—einly tydings of great joy and the real beginnings of that which is peculiarly stiled the Gospel both these were before the very conception of our Saviour therefore He as a meer man was not or had no being in the beginning of the Gospel and doubtless the Evangelist here in the beginning of his History taking up the very expressions of Moses in the beginning of Genesis and using his very words as translated by the Septuagint supposed his Readers would take his words in the same sence as they understand those of Moses and so in the beginning in both places signifies as much as before there was any thing existent so before any thing but the eternal God himself had a being God out of nothing produced all things and so before any thing God excepted had a being the Word was therefore that Word was God because God only could exist in the beginning or before the Creation of all things and thus the Evangelist says something peculiar of Christ and what might really set him above the Baptist or blessed Angels or any other Creatures whatsoever Otherwise the Apostle according to the Socinian fancy would have taken pains to prevent an Objection never brought at such a time too as never any Man could have rais'd it for he wrote his Gospel according to all accounts about the 90th year of our Saviour toward the end of his own very long life and when the Gospel was spread in all quarters and Heresies had gotten a great footing in the Church when that Objection about John Baptist would have appeared nonsensical and ridiculous Whereas had he design'd his Master's honour or the advantage of mankind he would have made haste and have pen'd his Gospel very early when such poor objections might have appeared with some countenance But it follows In the beginning the Word was with God this seems to prove very plainly that if the Word here spoken of be indeed the Son of God he had a being before he was visible in our Nature and that above or in Heaven or in the peculiar place of the Divine presence which granted is enough to destroy all the Socinian Doctrine of Christ's being a meer Creature or a Man like one of us and no more That Christ really had such a Being antecedent to his Incarnation we have reason to believe on the authority of concurrent Texts of Scripture for so our Saviour calls himself before the cavilling Jews John 6.51 That Bread which came down from Heaven But if he came down from heaven He must first have been there and that at least some time before he told them so The Jews in general nay his own Disciples thought this a very hard saying an expression that was very hard to be understood and so it was to those who were wholly taken up with carnal thoughts our Saviour cures their amazement or incredulity with a strange intimation What and if you should see the Son of man ascend up into heaven v. 61 62. This question plainly enough asserts that he had been with God before they converst with him here on earth and this Socinus himself acknowledges for he knew not how to disengage himself from the force of this and that yet more astonishing declaration of our Saviour to Nicodemus No man hath ascended up to heaven Joh. 3.13 but He that came down from heaven even the Son of Man which is in heaven which expression according to the Socinian Rational way of exposition as they call it is meer riddle or contradiction but according to the Catholick Faith concerning the eternal generation of the Son of God is easie and intelligible to every man For if it were God that was manifest in the flesh and continued the same eternal God still He might in his divine nature always be with his Father and yet in his Humane Nature be conversant among Men at the same time But tho' Socinus and his followers sometimes own the literal truth of these expressions they cannot hold true to what they allow for one while they 'd change it's nature and make it figurative So Jesus Christ was in heaven by the divine raptures or meditations of his Soul Explic. loc S Script Op. v 1. p. 146. or he was in heaven by that perfect knowledge he had of all divine matters thus Socinus himself But he quits it at last and flyes to that wonderful discovery filium hominis verè propriè de coelo descendisse in coelo fuisse That the Son of Man was truly and properly in heaven and descended from thence before he discours'd these things with the Jews But would you know how it was as S. Paul who tho' but a meer Man was caught up into the third heavens 2 Cor. 12.2 3 4. into Paradise and heard unspeakable words which it â—s not lawful for a man to utter so the blessed Jesus was taken up bodily into heaven and there was conversant some time with God and was there as in a School taught those things he was afterwards to preach and do in the world Would you know when It was say some when he was twelve years old and his parents mist him at their return from Jerusalem and after three days found him among the Doctors Wolzog. in Jo. c. 3. v. 13. Wolzogenius supposes it during the forty days fast in the wilderness for whereas Socinus thinks it highly fit that as Moses the type was with God upon the Mount that he might there learn those Laws and Ordinances he was to deliver to the Israelites so it was very reasonable Christ the Antitype should have some such like converse with God for the same purpose in a nobler place therefore this Author to carry on the parallel the farther would pitch it on that time to which the Evangelists allot forty days because Moses was the same space of time in the Mount and this was the great Invention of Laelius Socinus
but never yet did any inspired Writer call Holy Men Men converted from the vanities of this World from all the Lusts and Follies attending it never did they call such by the name of Worldly Men But is not this a very hard shift to chop and change so often in so very short a sentence Whereas if we believe as we ought that this Habitable World and all things therein were created at first out of nothing by the Son of God the sence will be easie enough that God the Son was in this World this World the Universal fabrick of which his own hand had made and yet the World so far as capable of sence and knowledge understood it not or were not able to distinguish between the Creator and a meer Creature That we should believe the Son of God made all things at first the Scripture seems to take a great deal of care for so S. Paul teaches us that God created all things by Jesus Christ Ephes 3.9 but much more fully Coloss 1.15 16. Where giving thanks to God the Father who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son he describes that Son thus He is the image of the Invisible God the first-born of every Creature for by him were all things created that were in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers all things were created by him and for him and he is before all things and by him all things consist and the Author of the Epistle is acknowledged to apply that of the Psalmist to our Saviour Heb. 1.10 Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the Earth and the Heavens are the works of thy hands A man would be apt to think these Texts were very plain and positive yet here too they 'l make their impious attempts for All things in heaven and in earth must mean only Angels and Men be it so how come the Angels to be renewed by the Word They will not say the fallen Angels were reduced to a state of Salvation S. Jude will contradict them there who tells us Jude v. 6. The Angels which kept not their first state but left their own habitation God hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness to the judgment of the great day They cannot say the Good Angels were so restored or renewed for they were created absolutely happy and they had not lost that happiness and our Saviour himself asserts that He came not to call the Righteous but sinners to repentance that the Whole need not a Physician but those that are Sick The words then are as they sound to us they are general and whereas the Apostle particularises in Thrones and Dominions c. after those general words all things visible and invisible it 's only to supply us with an argument à Majori ad Minus that if even those superiour happy Beings who might seem almost to be above the rank of Creatures if they yet ow'd their first originals to the hand of the Son of God how much more may we conclude the visible or grosser parts of the Universe might owe their beginnings to his power Indeed the design of the Apostle is to set before our eyes in the beginning of his Gospel the wonderful Condescension of the Son of God on behalf of miserable sinners so to work in us a due fence of what we owe to so infinite a goodness and a forward readiness to accept Salvation from so all-sufficient a hand upon the terms propounded i. e. Faith and Obedience but what Topic could the Holy Pen-Man better begin his design with than from that of Christ's being God blessed for ever or from all eternity from his existing always in the glorious presence of his Almighty Father and being infinitely blest in himself as being One and equal with his Father for a compleat and every way perfect Vnion or Identity can only be between equals The Evangelist proves this eternal Greatness by that sufficient argument of his being the great and sole Creator of all things This God this Creator of all things appeared upon Earth where even those who were the Work of his hands were grown to that Blindness through the greatness of their Sins and the corruption of their natures that tho' the whole Creation long'd for the glorious day of his appearance Yet all the Worl'd seem'd utterly unable to discover him this glorious and eternal Word yet assumed Humane Nature that he might be Visible to the eye of the World and that he might be able to offer himself a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World that he might atone his Father's just anger and reconcile us to him by his own most precious blood To this end He underwent all the inconveniences ordinarily attending Mankind and it was a severe beginning of his debasement or humiliation for our sakes that whereas he honour'd the Nation of the Jews by being born among them and whereas out of particular commiseration for that poor lost people he made himself first known among them and Preach'd and did Miracles that they might the better understand him yet after all he came to his own but his own received him not i. e. the generality of that Nation rejected him but those who did receive him were empower'd by him to become the Sons of God they were so influenced assisted supported and dignified by his Sacred Spirit that they attained the Spirit of Adoption whereby they were able to cry Abba Father or to call upon God with that confidence and security which a dearly loved Son may have in an indulgent and well pleased Father He was such because that Holy Lamb to whom John the Baptist gave his testimony did really take away the Sins of the World and this Lamb whose nature and goodness was so little understood appear'd yet especially after his Resurrection when their minds were opened to his Disciples full of Grace and Truth they beholding his glory as the glory of the only Begotten Son of God such lustre would appear in him to the true believers eyes through the thick veil of his flesh and all the dismal clouds of his unparallel'd sufferings Now this glory which the Apostles saw in Christ must be somewhat capable of distinguishing him from others he might have appear'd as a Son of God at large in the same sense as all those who live piously are called the Sons of God but that would not at all have answer'd to what the Evangelist tells us his Glory made him appear i. e. the only begotten Son of God begotten of God in such a manner as never any meer Creature could be glorious in such a Manner as no meer Man was ever capable of but if he could be no Creature he could be nothing but God there being no Intermedial Essence between the Creator and the Creature If then it be the distinguishing Character of
may retort their question and ask Is it possible two should be exactly of one mind and yet not both of one nature I fear they 'l find no instances of that Friends may be said to be One Husband and Wife to be One Two People to be One but are they not all of a mortal nature and consequently capable of equal thoughts and apprehensions of things if therefore God the Father and Jesus Christ be One in their sence it must be by Identity of Vnderstanding and Will and Intention which cannot be but between Persons of equal nature therefore Christ must be partaker of the Divine Nature and therefore he must be God and so what he farther adds in his discourse with the Jews is easily intelligible and a strong confirmation of what we have laid down If I do the works of my Father believe not Me but believe the Works that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in him this passage if interpreted of unity of Will can be no where parallel'd and indeed it intimates a yet closer conjunction than that agreement This Union takes as much of the Subject on one part as on the other therefore if the father be every where and more peculiarly in the Son the Son is every where too and as peculiarly in the Father and therefore when Enjedine would make a shew of some parallel expressions of Christ's being in good Men and they in him he unluckily among other places hits on that of S. Paul where he speaks of Christ's dwelling in the heart by Faith Eph. 3.17 which indeed explains all the rest for Christ being a Meer Man as the Socinians say cannot any otherwise be united so to men as to be said to be in them but by Faith nor can good Men pious and holy Persons be in Christ otherwise than by Faith but sure it was never thought of that the Son of God was in his Father or his Father in him by Faith yet that must be said be it never so absurd or blasphemous if their appeal to that of our Saviour stand good That they all may be one as thou Father art in me Joh 17 21 22 23. and I in thee that they also may be one in us that they may be one even as we are one I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one here the unity between Christians or those who should believe in Christ must be that unity of mind consisting in mutual Love and Charity that Unity must be maintain'd by the vigour of their Faith but cannot that Unity between the Father and the Son be maintain'd without the same Faith If the expressions must be explain'd all one way it will then follow That God loves those who believe in his Son as well as he loves his Son for so it follows in the forecited place That they may be made perfect in one ver 23. and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast lov'd them as thou hast loved me but this would quite ruine all their pretences to an extraordinary reverence of the Person of Christ whom they pretend to prefer in all privileges infinitely before the Holiest of other men Indeed the Prayer of Christ imports only this He begs of his Father that Christians might be as closely united with respect to their mortal state and in proportion to it as he and his Father were in their immortal Nature and that believers should enjoy his presence as effectually to their advantage by their Faith in him as he enjoy'd the infinite glory and happiness of his Father by his Identity or Coessentiality with him and this is the greatest happiness they could wish for themselves or Christ for them The Jews then were not mistaken in the meaning of our Saviour when in saying He and his Father were one they thought he made himself God nor did they mistake him when they sought to kill him before because he said God was his Father Joh. 3.18 making himself equal with God For Christ's permission of any to worship him was a better interpretation of his words than all the glosses of the Socinians put together and as reason commonly teaches us to understand that the begetting Father and the begotten Son are both of one and the same Nature here so the same reason taught the Jews to apprehend that if Christ were the Son of God he then must be of the same nature with his Father which they who saw him in the form of a servant only thought as absurd and impossible as the Socinians do now if the Jews committed a mistake in their apprehensions of Christ's words nothing can possibly excuse either Christ himself or his Apostles from extreme unkindness since they would take no pains to rectifie a Mistake in all appearance involuntary a Care which might in probability have cured them of their unbelieving humour Let us then proceed farther to that Confession of the Apostle S. Thomas when he called our Saviour his Lord and his God Joh. 20.28 Where we may take some notice of the occasion of those words which was this Our Saviour to satisfie the world of his Resurrection and more particularly to satisfie his own Disciples in that point had appear'd to them in that body in which he suffer'd for them and all the World when the Disciples were assembled together their doors shut with a great deal of privacy for fear of the Jews there he blessed them his presence gave them an extraordinary occasion of joy the transports of which being over he blest them again breathed upon them so effectually as by that breath they received the Holy Ghost and with that that Commission and power which afterwards they were more particularly authorised to exert for the management of the Church During this gracious visit of his Master Thomas one of the twelve was absent afterwards returning to his company they joyfully assure him they had seen the Lord their words carry somewhat extraordinary in them they tell him not We have seen our Lord or thy Lord they use no limiting particle but speak positively and generally We have seen the Lord so giving him that title by which the Septuagint translate the name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so that it seems here given to Christ as elsewhere it is to him who by all is acknowledged to be the most high God emphatically and exclusively of all other Lords whatsoever But not to insist on this The report of his brethren to Thomas seem'd extremely incredible the Doctrine of the Resurrection tho' it was a thing which Jews had no reason to stumble at in general nor had the Disciples in particular for they had seen their Master raise Lazarus and the Son of the Widow of Naim and they had doubtless seen those holy bodies which arose from their graves upon the dreadful convulsion of nature when Jesus gave up the Ghost upon the Cross yet the
Jacob Moses Joshua Samuel David and all the rest of the Prophets Of them came Jesus Christ according to the flesh that particularising of his deduction from them according to the flesh intimates plainly enough that according to somewhat else he had another Original he was not wholly of the Jews This the Socinians are forced to own because of that entire story of our Saviour's Conception by the Holy Ghost in the womb of the blessed Virgin To shew how great this privilege was the Apostle adds that this Jesus Christ who came of the Jews according to the flesh was God over all blessed for ever but that they might avoid the force of this Text they would fain â—ly to one of their ordinary shelters a variâ—us reading but there 's no such thing in any of the original Copies and Versions if there be any which intimate such a thing are little to be regarded Then they would fain alter the Pointing which if allow'd would do them little service but there is no ground for allowing that In locum Enjedine pleads that the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 blessed used by the Apostle here is never applyed any where in Scripture to any but only God the Father for this he alledges that of the same Apostle concerning the Gentiles that they worshipped the Creature more than the Creator Rom. 1.25 who is over all blessed for ever But if it be true that Jesus Christ as the eternal Son of God was the Creator of all things as it seems to be his instance turns against himself and methinks it follows as well that if the title of God above all blessed for ever belongs only to the supreme God for that he means when he speaks of its belonging only to God the Father then the Son of God to whom it 's given here should be the supreme God for it is no less than Sacrilege and Blasphemy to attribute a title so peculiar to the Sovereign to any one who really and in his own Nature is not the Sovereign God Others of the Socinian Tribe cannot see or take no notice of this peculiar usage of the expression as if it belong'd only to God the Father they acknowledge that Christ as Made God is above all Men and Angels above all Principalities and Powers nay above all things whatsoever only 1 Cor. 15.27 He 's not above him who put all things under him This the Apostle asserts This we own but withal we assert that our Saviour as Man in that body in which he humbled himself to the Death of the Cross for Man is thus exalted above all things and thus as Man he is the head of his Church as God we say not that he 's superiour to his Father but that he is equal to him he is of the same Nature with his Father and therefore is God over all blessed for ever as his Father is Now that He who is thus God over all blessed for ever should condescend to take our Nature upon him was an effect of infinite Love and pity to all mankind that he should condescend to take this humane Nature of any one of the Jewish Nation was the greatest Honour that could possibly be done to that Nation We see how Towns and Countreys strive for the Honour of being the birth-places of great Men and they have been frequently not a little jealous of one another on that account nay Scripture it self makes such a thing a considerable advantage in that of the Prophet concerning the Messias as alledged by the Chief Priests and Scribes to Herod And thou Bethlehem in the land of Judah art not the least among the Princes of Judah Matt. 2.6 for out of thee shall come a Governour who shall rule my people Israel the present Hebrew reads it tho' thou be little among the thousands of Judah The birth of such a one was enough to make the most inconsiderable place glorious miserable people then were they who had so great an honour confer'd on them and yet at last deny'd him who conferr'd it on them S. Paul gives this advice to the Philippians Phil 2 5-1â— Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of Man and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient to Death even to the Death of the Cross wherefore God also hath mightily exalted him and given him a name which is above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow of things in Heaven and things in earth and things under the earth and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father We might refer the matter to any who had no acquaintance with Christianity or with Scripture before and such a Man on reading these words would certainly conclude that he who carries here the name of Christ Jesus was described as every way equal with God the Father whosoever that might be and that we may understand such a conclusion would be just and rational we may look into the occasion of the words The Apostle is perswading the Philippians here to Unity Love and Peace and particularly to a mutual care and sollicitude for the good and happiness of one another urging them not altogether to employ themselves upon their own private or publick inward or outward Interests but to allow some charitable thoughts towards the Salvation of others Gal. 6.2 to snatch them as firebrands out of the fire agreeably to what he elsewhere advises them to i. e. that they should bear one anothers burdens this kind care he urges them to from the example of him in whom they believed and whose servants they profest themselves to be Who tho' eternally and immutably blest in himself yet out of that infinite love he had to perishing mankind was pleased to take humane nature upon him that in that humane nature he might suffer to atone his Father's displeasure against Sin and Sinners and procure everlasting Salvation for as many as should believe on him that to be of this charitable temper would be much to our advantage he proves by this consideration That God the Father was so highly pleas'd with this action of his Son that he raised even that humane nature in which he suffered to the highest glories and sanctified that very name which his Son assumed as Man and as the Messias to be above every name to be admired reverenced adored by all created beings whatsoever which adorations could only be rendered just and reasonable by that intimate and indissâ—luble union between that humane natuâ—◠〈…〉 eternal God-head If God then so exalâ—â—â—â—â—sus Christ on account of his compassion and tenderness for us he likewise will exalt us if we be kind and tender hearted
one towards another if we endeavour to promote one anothers Salvation by all those means which by Providence are put into our hands In this argument the Apostle makes use of such expressions as stumble the enemies of the Divinity of the Son of God very much and give them a great deal of pains to shift off and to evade so the form of God they determine to be nothing but a resemblance or representation of God in his Works Christ was in the form of God when he did those many wonderful works during his converse upon earth those Miracles importing somewhat of a divine power but what is there in this peculiar to our Saviour Moses might as well have been said to have been in the form of God since he too did a great many prodigious things and the Skies the Air the Waters the Earth seemed all as obedient to him as to our Saviour afterwards Elijah and Elisha might have receiv'd the same Character and the Apostles much more since Christ himself had promised them that they should not only do the same but greater miracles than he himself did yet Scripture never talks of these at any such rate as their being in the form of God If it be objected that Moses the Prophets mention'd and the Disciples after our Lord's Resurrection did indeed many and great Miracles but they were not done in their own names we acknowledge it but if our adversaries may be believed our Saviour was in the same circumstances for his Miracles were only done in the name of God and so were the Mosaic and Prophetic Miracles done If they 'l own that our Saviour did his Miracles in His own name they grant what they take so much pains to disprove for none can do a Miracle in his own name but he who has an inherent power in himself commanding all the parts of the Creation having no need of leave or assistance from any superiour Being but such a power is and only can be inherent in the most high God therefore if our Saviour had that power he was and is the most high God if he had not he 's in the same rank with other holy and good Men and any of them might have been instanced in as patterns of as great condescension and love to Souls as himself They criticise upon the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the form of God as if it signified only an outward shadow and appearance and therefore not the real divine essence and therefore whereas the Apostle makes mention afterwards of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the form of a Servant they are under a necessity of denying that that signifies his assuming humane nature tho' the words following are indeed an explication of these being in the form of a servant and being found in likeness of men are but explicatory one of another and so Schlicktingius owns it but upon what reason we know not upon that last phrase of being found in likeness of men he writes thus Figurâ i. e. non reipsâ sed apparenter externâ specie tantum in the form or figure of a Man that is not a Man indeed but only to outward appearance and to common view a Commentary to me unintelligible since they own Christ to have been a real man and nothing else the reason of their niceness here is only this They fear that if they own the form of a Servant signifies the humane nature of Christ then the form of God must signifie the divine nature of the same person which they cannot endure to hear of but the Fathers with one current interpret it so that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the essence of God so Theodoret on the place Gregory Nyssen Athanasius Chrysostome Theophylact c. and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the nature of a servant in the same sence so Theodoret Athanasius Paedagog l. 3. c. 1. Theophylact and Clemens Alexandrinus who cannot well be suspected of partiality in the case and this authority is much better than theirs who only assert the contrary arbitrarily and without reason That Christ thought it no robbery to be equal with God they would have to signifie only this That he thought it not so great an advantage to be in the form of God or like him as to be obstinate in the retention of that likeness but would humbly quit it to be used and suffer like a servant and for this Enjedine runs to some phrases in Heliodorus his Aethiopic Romance where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rapina signifies as much if he interpret it rightly but that 's too modern an authority to interpret Scripture by and too slight a work to teach us how to understand the dictates of God's Holy Spirit After several Cavils they yield that to be like to God is to be equal to God but equality must be between distinct beings for none can be equal to himself We own it and say the Father and the Son are distinct persons but of one nature as Father and Son must be if their relation be real but if God the Father and God the Son be of one and the same Nature they must have one and the same Essence because two infinite Essences are a contradiction our Saviour being in the form of his Father and equal to his Father could not look on it as a crime or think it any Sacrilege or robbery to own that equality as he did by his expressions of himself and by those adorations he permitted to be paid to himself Here then was Love and Condescention indeed that He who was God equal with his father should assume to himself poor infirm servile flesh and blood and in that humble himself and be obedient to death even that scandalous and painful death on the Cross for our sakes This Passion and this Obedience was truly meritorious it intrinsically and in its own real value merited the redemption of all mankind it effectually and in its outward operation merited and procured the Salvation of all those that believe in him As a reward for this Humility and Obedience God has highly exalted the Humane Nature of his Son that 's enclosed in or substantially united to the Divine Nature and consequently partakes of all that bliss that eternal glory and happiness which the Deity it self enjoys by which means it comes to be lawful for Christians to worship Christ as Man tho' not as meer Man as well as as he is God a practice which could never be excused from being the greatest Idolatry in the World if there were no such union as will hereafter be proved in course For that exception to this Text that Jesus is the name of Man not of God and Christ the name of an Office it signifies the Anointed One the Messias and therefore cannot belong to the most high God it 's extremely impertinent they are not our Saviour's names as he is God but as he
thing of that glory belonging to the supreme God to himself Yet if he were a meer Man we find him strangely guilty in this point for as before his Passion he requires of his Disciples that they should believe in him as after his Passion he joyns himself with the Father and with the Holy Ghost in the institution of Baptism without any difference at all so after his Ascension into heaven he seems to take all care possible to confirm such an opinion in his Apostles and followers as according to which they must treat him as the Supreme God for when our Saviour bids his Disciples have Faith in God Mat. 11.22 doubtless he would not lay that injunction upon them if Faith so placed had not a sanctifying power for such Faith is sufficient to make men Holy and acceptable in the sight of that God with whom they have to do But when the same Jesus appears to S. Paul in his journey to Damascus he tells him He had appear'd to make him a Minister and Witness of what he had seen Acts 26.16 17 18. Delivering him from the people and from the Gentiles to whom he designed to send him that he might open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God that they might receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among them which were sanctified by Faith which was in Him Here then besides Christ's assuming to himself a sovereign and universal power of delivering his servants from all dangers of Commissioning them for the most weighty Work in the World of enabling them to open the Eyes of those that heard them and to turn them from darkness to light all which are the effects of a power truely Divine only He in plain terms asserts that that Faith which is in him sanctifies those that have it exclusively of all other Faith whatsoever for by his words it appears that forgiveness of sins and an everlasting inheritance are only attainable by that Faith and again the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews reckons Faith in God Heb. 6.1 among the fundamentals of our Religion these things laid together will oblige us to conclude either that there are two kinds of justifying Faith or such as may render men holy and acceptable in the sight of God or else which is true that Faith in the most high God and in Jesus Christ is one and the same thing fixt upon one and the same inseparable Object and so saving and sanctifying to all them that have it and S. Paul in the fore-cited Chapter of the Acts having shew'd what help Christ promised him in prosecution of his discourse declares he received his help from God whereby he was enabled to bear that witness Christ had assured him He would help him in therefore God and Christ were all One or the Son of God and his Father were one Supreme God That there was this Identity of nature between the Son of God and his Father will appear farther from that account S. Peter gives to the People of the Cure wrought upon the poor Criple at the beautiful gate of the Temple where reproving them and telling them they had killed the Prince of life a very strange title by the way to be given to a meer Man and such as can be parallel'd in no Author Sacred or Profane He adds And his Name Acts 3.15 16. through Faith in his Name has made this Man strong whom ye see and know yea the Faith which is by him has given him this perfect soundness in the presence of you all here again the Name of Christ and Faith in his Name are both set in the highest rank and whatsoever was before profest to be done in the Name of the True God was now done in the Name of Christ Moses and the Prophets appeal'd still in all things to the name of the most high God and I doubt if Gehazi when he laid his staff upon the Shunamite's child's face had commanded it in the name of his Master to arise or if his Master afterwards had done as much in his own name they would both have lost their labours the case was otherwise here S. Peter's word to the Criple was ver 6. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk the Cure was immediately effected the people wondered They assert the glory of the Miracle only to the Name of Christ Acts 4.9 â—â— and they repeat their assertion to the High Priest and the rest of the Members of the Jewish Council Had not the name of Christ been powerful enough to effect the greatest miracles it had been a foolish presumption in them to have appeal'd to it the Priests of Baal would not have appear'd more silly in their violent addresses to their paltry Idol nor the Sons of Sceva in calling over those possest with evil Spirits the name of Jesus whom Paul preached Had their invocation fail'd it would have exposed all that Religion they pretended to advance to the common scorn and contempt of all mankind but that Sacred Name prevail'd those Miracles which had formerly been perform'd in the name of the most high God were now perform'd in the name of the Son of God God did not and could not give his glory to another for he had before declared he would not therefore that Jesus the Son of God in whose name this astonishing Cure was wrought was really the most high God It may perhaps be objected that All power was given to Christ after his Resurrection by virtue of which he could give his own name that virtue and authority by which such mighty Miracles as these might be performed We answer to this it 's true our Lord did tell his Apostles that all Power was given to him in heaven and in earth Mat. 28.18 and He told them so after his Resurrection but it does not therefore follow that he was not possest of such an universal power before his body was rais'd from the grave he adds no word intimating that this power was now invested in him and not sooner for He might very well forbear to inform his Disciples of it till he came to his state of exaltation commencing from his being raised from the dead But allowing what such Objectors would have that there was no such Power given him or that He never had such Power till his Resurrection They and All know the Philosophical Axiome is of universal truth Quicquid recipitur recipitur ad modum recipientis Whatsoever is received is received according to the capacity of the receiver and Volkelius tells us in plain terms De verâ Relig. l. 3. c. 20. p 106. that after his Resurrection the body of Christ was of mortal nature and no otherwise partaker of immortality than by the will of his Father Now if this be true tho' God Almighty be able of and from himself to give an universal Power as having it inherent
originally in himself yet it implyes an absolute contradiction that he should be able to confer such an infinite Power upon a finite or a mortal Subject for that would be to setle a double Almightiness in the world of which one should not be Almighty or whereas Omnipotence is such an attribute as where-ever it resides it must constitute a True and Supreme God and whereas its such an attribute as cannot stand alone without a concurrent-infinity in every respect yet it may rest in a Subject neither God nor yet Supreme but in such a one as is still tho' highly exalted mortal in its own nature and capable of destruction or annihilation For if it depends only on God's Will that Christ's Body now exalted to the right hand of his Father is no more lyable to Death then had it pleased God he might have invested Moses or Elias or Enoch with this same Omnipotence as well as our Saviour and our Saviour is no more secure of the continuation of that Omnipotence he is at present possest of in himself than the good Angels are of continuing in their present state of bliss i.e. so long as the supreme God upholds them they are safe if He withdraw but for one moment they are as miserable as their fallen companions But the very thought of these things are absurd and blasphemous however not to be avoided without acknowledging the eternal Divinity of the Son of God For the farther evidence of this Truth we must look into the Faith of the Antient Church and see how this Doctrine that God was manifest in the flesh or that He who was manifest in the flesh was God the True the Supreme the most High God is asserted in it This inquiry we make not because we think Antiquity infallible nor because we imagine every opinion maintained by any Father of the Church ought to be an authentick prescription to us Where any of them have in any particular deviated from the sence of God's holy Word we value not their opinions a-whit the more for their being antient But this we must own that those who lived nearest the times of our Saviour and his Apostles had the best opportunities of knowing what they meant or how those who personally converst with them understood them as it 's easier for me who have seen and known my Father to learn from him what were the thoughts of my Grandfather or great Grandfather both which it may be my Father may have seen and converst with than to find out what particular Opinions were entertained by my Predecessors before the Conquest and so upwards Again where Scripture and Reason improved from thence give us a full evidence of any truth the concurrence and harmony of Antiquity with these evidences is of great weight and gives us a fair deduction of divine and necessary Truths thro' all ages and shews us how in spite of all the oppositions and artifices made use of by the enemies of Truth yet God has been pleased to preserve it entire and to derive it by various chanels down to us that we embracing and asserting the same Holy Faith may be partakers of the same eternal happiness with our predecessors Prophets Apostles Martyrs Confessors who have all dyed in the True Faith and fear of God on this consideration we shall by God's assistance give you a short account of the Primitive Faith in this particular Here then in due order of time We begin with that Clement remembred with Honour by S. Paul Phil. 4.3 as one of those fellow labourers of his whose names are in the book of life This Clement was afterwards Bishop of the Church of God in Rome on which account and by reason of his great eminence in the Church of God some of the Factors of that See have endeavoured to fasten several spurious writings upon him but the abuse was too gross to impose upon a learned world However of his we have one Authentick Epistle written in the name of the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth Conc. Gen. Lab. Cossart T. 1. p. 133. B. upon account of a violent Schism broken out in that Church to the great scandal of the Christian Religion and to the obstruction of the progress of the Gospel In this Epistle tho' nothing were purposely written on the subject we are now treating on yet there are some not obscure evidences of what opinion He and the Church of Rome in whose name he wrote had in those early days of our blessed Lord He calls him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a name very great and such as is no where given to any meer Man it 's designed here to illustrate the extraordinary dignity of our Saviour for by so setting him off the Apostolical writer enforces his argument upon the Corinthians to perswade them to Humility which would be an excellent foundation for Charity for tho' our Lord Jesus Christ were so great tho' he were the Scepter of the greatness of God yet he came not as he might in an assuming and lofty manner but with the greatest Humility and this argument S. Hierome in his commentary on the 52 of Isaiah and the three last verses according to our translation makes use of to the same purpose owning Clement for his Author but now if the Argument of these great Men was good it must necessarily follow that our Saviour had a Being and a glorious Being too before he was born of the blessed Virgin which Birth of his into a calamitous World has always been accounted one part of his Humiliation this Humiliation could not have been thought so considerable had he not been very great and happy before Christ could not have been so great and glorious antecedently to his Birth but He must have been God and therefore the True the most high God for there could be even in a Socinians account no more but One True God before the Incarnation of our Saviour You see my beloved people says the good Man what an example is set before you and if our Lord so humbled himself viz. if he descended from Heaven to earth for our sakes how humble should those be who take upon them the yoke of his Gospel Twice afterwards this same Holy Man concluding his period with Jesus Christ p. 137. C. adds To whom be glory and Majesty for ever and ever Amen The same expressions of praise he gives to God the Father several times p. 156. B. p. 144. B. p. 148. C. p. 160. C. D and what can we conclude from using such a Doxology indifferently to God the Father and to Jesus Christ his Son But that He understood them to be of one and the same nature both Infinitely Glorious both one proper object of praise and adoration And the same venerable Author speaking of the Patriarchs Abraham Isaac and Jacob adds particularly of the last that from him descended all those Priests and Levites who serve at God's altar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
whom we believe is the Son and Messenger of God who being the Word before had sometime appear'd in the resemblance of fire sometimes in the form of Angels now at last by the Will of God was made Man for the sake of mankind and for their sakes suffered whatsoever Jewish cruelty and malice could inflict upon him who while they own'd it was God the Creator and maker of all things who spake to Moses in the bush and yet He that there spoke was the Son the Angel the Messenger of God indeed they laid themselves open to that just reproof of our Lord that they neither knew the Father nor the Son We argue too from hence that if it were our Christ who appear'd to Moses in the Bush as Justine affirms and Scripture sufficiently evidences if it were our Christ what name soever he might be call'd by he then was pre-existent or had a real being before he was conceived in the womb of the blessed Virgin therefore he could be no meer Man unless the Socinians can find out the way to satisfie the question of Nicodemus by asserting positively that a Man a meer Man may be born when he is old that he may literally enter again into his mothers womb and be born a-new and can prove it when they have asserted it He could be no Angel that 's denyed in Scripture the Apostle assures us Heb. 2.16 He took not upon him the nature of Angels a speech very idle if he had been an Angel originally if therefore he neither was a meer Man nor a created Angel he was and must be the supreme God Again the same Justine in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew Dial. cum Tryph. Jud. p. 267. l. B. C. when Trypho urges him with his absurd assertion That Christ was God before all ages and yet had condescended to become Man Justine answers him The truth would not therefore be lost if he should fail in his proofs that Christ was the Son of the world's Creator and that he was God because however it had been foretold by the Prophets that he should be so but if I do not prove that He had a being before and then condescended to become Man and took flesh according to his Father's design and determination p. 275. dcinceps it 's only proper to conclude that I am a weak disputant not that he who bore that Character is not the Christ When Trypho afterwards bids him prove that there was or could be another God besides the maker of the Universe the Martyr stumbles not at the proposition but proceeds to prove the thing by that instance of the Lord before whom Abraham stood when the two Angels went forwards towards Sodom and falls again upon the forementioned instance of Christ speaking to Moses in the Bush by both which he proves that the Son is God as well as the Father is God and yet he asserts not two Gods but one God because if two or three Beings are partakers of one divine Nature they must of consequence be one God the divine Nature being indivisible and incapable of degrees or diminution After a large discourse with the Jew he tells him that in the several arguments he had brought he had sufficiently proved that Christ was Lord and God and the Son of God who had appear'd both as a Man p. 357. D. and as an Angel in the burning Bush and at the destruction of Sodom And Trypho all along looks upon him as engag'd in that design of proving Christ to be God not by a figure but in reality He concludes the Scriptures were very express in their evidence that that Christ who had suffered so much at the Jews hands was to be worshipped and was God had he not prov'd the last well that He was God to have asserted the first that he ought to be worshipped would have sounded very harshly in the ears of a Jew But even Trypho himself who thought it prodigious and incredible that God should be born and should condescend to become Man tho' none of the most tractable persons in the world was brought to Agrippa's condition by the zealous Martyr and almost perswaded to be a Christian About the same time lived S. Irenaeus Bishop of Lyons in France one who had been a Hearer of blessed Polycarp who had been himself an Hearer of the Apostles He had certainly the advantage of knowing what was sound and true Doctrine with relation to our Saviour and that from very authentick hands his writings were originally Greek as himself was by Birth tho' employed to preach the Gospel in the parts of France but those Originals are almost all lost and we must necessarily content our selves with their Translation This excellent Father then tells us first what the general Faith of the Church is That the Church believes in one God Iren. adv Haer. l. 1. c. 2. the Father Almighty maker of Heaven and Earth c. and in one Jesus Christ the Son of God incarnate for our Salvation and in the Holy Ghost who among other things has taught us that according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father every knee of things in Heaven and of things on Earth and of things under the Earth should bow to Jesus Christ our Lord our God our Saviour and our King and that every tongue should confess to him and this passage we have in the genuine original and it seems satisfactory enough as to the Faith of the French Church in those days and doubtless was look'd upon by him as the Faith generally embraced by all the true professors of Christianity C. 3. and indeed so he assures us in the following chapter of the same book That the Church spread through the whole world diligently maintains this Faith and observes it as exactly as if they all inhabited in one house they believe it as if they had all one heart and one soul and with a wonderful consent preach it as it were with one mouth We then are safe enough while we believe Jesus Christ to be God since holy Martyrs nay the whole Church of God believed the same truth so long since and making it a part of their publick Creed declared their judgment that so to believe was necessary to eternal Salvation Having afterwards told us what the Apostles have preached and how they have prov'd Him true and that there was no falshood in him he proceeds in the next chapter thus Therefore neither our Lord himself nor the Holy Ghost nor the Apostles would have called any one God absolutely and definitively unless he had really been true God nor would they have called any one Lord in his own person l. 3. c. 6. but only Him who is Lord of all things God the Father and his Son and so he proceeds to enumerate several Texts wherein the name of God and Lord is indifferently given to both the Father and the Son and elsewhere he teaches us c. 18.
Doctrine S. Cyprian himself is mighty frequent in such passages so in his Epistle to Rogatianus he calls out Lord Jesus Christ our King and Judge and our God Ep. 3. p. 6. Ep. 11. p. 23. and what higher characters could be given him In his Epistle to his Presbyters and Deacons he encourages them to assiduity in Prayer by the consideration of having Jesus Christ our Lord and God our Advocate and Mediator Plebi Thibaeri p 123 125. p. 146 148. so again in his fifty first Epistle to Cornelius Bishop of Rome in his fifty eighth Epistle twice in h s sixty second to Januarius and others Christ is our Judge our Lord and our God so in his sixty third in his Epistle to Jubaianus concerning the invalidity of the Baptism of Hereticks He argues against that Baptism thus If any one says he can be truly baptis'd by Hereticks he may then by that Baptism obtain remission of sins if He obtain remission of his sins he is sanctified and is made the temple of God I ask then of what God if of the Creator he cannot be his temple because he believed not in him if you say of Christ neither can he be his temple Epist 73. p. 203. who denyes Christ to be God if you say he 's the temple of the Holy Ghost seeing the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost are all One how can the Holy Spirit be pleas'd with him who is an enemy to both the Father and the Son Here the force of the Martyrs argument lyes only in the Identity of nature in â—he Father the Son and the Holy Ghost and the poyson of Heresie consists effectually in denying the Lord Jesus Christ to be God but he would not have argued thus had not the Divinity of Christ been the general and well known Doctrine of the Church p. 212. He uses the same argument again in his 74. Epistle to Pompey to name no more Now â—n conclusion who can imagine that a holy Martyr so great an enemy to Idolatry so careful to refute the vulgar Error of a â—lurality of Gods should yet so very frequently use such suspicious expressions as must needs make the World believe he â—wned Christ for God and consequently multiplied those Gods himself which he expos'd others so much for if the whole objection were not to be removed by that assertion that the Father was God and the Son God yet they were not two but one God an Identity of their nature necessarily inferring the Vnity of the God-head The same Africa affords us yet another Writer of great antiquity and learning Arnobius in his several books against the Pagan Religion in his first book reflecting upon several of their Gods he takes notice how much they were grieved that Christ should be worshipped by Christians and received for and esteemed as a God And whereas Pagans derided Christians Arnobius adver gentes l. 1. p. 21. Edit Leidensis for accounting him a God whom they owned to have been born a Man he retorts upon them that They were guilty of that crime but says He supposing all you object in that respect were true would not Christ on account meerly of those benefits he confers upon us deserve to be call'd and to be thought a God He argues from their own principles who thought every considerable Invention of any Man was enough to procure his being Deified as Bacchus for finding out the use of Wine Ceres for Bread Minerva for Oyl c. But in the mean time Arnobius openly enough acknowledges that Christians did receive Christ as God He speaks yet more plainly soon after Christ for his benefits ought to be called God Nay He really is God without any scruple or ambiguity and would you have us deny him Worship or disown his Government But will some angry Pagan cry out is Christ a God We answer he is God and a God of infinite Power too and which will more exasperate an infidel he was sent from the supreme King to us upon the greatest errand in the World Perhaps the Pagan being more enraged at this will demand a Proof of what we say there needs certainly no greater proof of Christ's Divinity than an exact examination of his actions If it be objected that He was a Magician and performed his mighty works only by unlawful arts Let them who object this shew us any of their Magicians who ever did any thing like what was done by Christ or if they have done any thing of a prodigious nature it has still been by invoking some other Being but Christ without any Helps without any Magick Rites or Observations did all he did by the power of his own Name and what was proper and agreeable to and worthy of a True God nothing he did was hurtful or mischievous but helpful saving and the kind effects of divine Bounty And was he Mortal was he only one of us at whose ordinary commands Weaknesses Sicknesses Fevers and all bodily Pains were gone at once Was he one of us l. 1. p. 27. c. whose very Look the Devils could not endure Was he a meer Man whose slightest touch could cure the bloody Issue whose hand could make Hydropick humours vanish who could make the Lame run the Wither'd Hand recover its motion the Blind to see nay those who were born without eyes to see the light Was He a meer Man at whose word the angry Seas laid down their rage the rugged Storms and Tempests sunk while He with a dry foot walkt upon the swelling billows and trod upon the Oceans back the waves themselves standing amazed at the prodigious action and humble nature submitting to her Founder And so he proceeds in a florid and pathetick stile by an induction of particulars and a relating of circumstances to prove that Christ must be True God and that all the Idols of the Heathen were none Again a little after he tells the Pagans Christ was the high God the God from the beginning a God sent from unknown kingdoms God sent by the Prince of all things to be the universal Saviour whom neither the Sun nor Stars if they have any sence nor the Governours nor Princes of this World nor those mighty Gods who assuming that terrible name affright poor mortal creatures were able to find out or so much as to guess what He was or whence He came at whose very look then when he was clothed with flesh p. 32. the universal fabrick trembled and fell into a sudden disorder Again Arnobius brings in the Pagans objecting If Christ was God why was He seen in the form of a Man Why was He put to Death as Men are to this he answers Was there any other way whereby that invisible power which had no Corporeal Substance could suit it self to the World or be visibly present in the assemblies of mortal Men than by assuming a covering of solid matter which might be a proper object whereon Men might fix
Catechism asserts there 's no plain command in the whole Old Testament for our praying to God the Father tho' the position be notoriously false only this we 'l joyn with them in That we have no command to pray to Christ as he is a meer Creature but we are forbidden it in the first and second Commandments But we are bound to pray to him as He and his Father are One not by agreement of Will or by the Son 's entire submission to the Father but by agreement or Identity of Nature Otherwise the Will of all deceas'd Saints the Will of all holy Angels is wholly submissive to and the same with the Will of God therefore they might as lawfully be prayed to as our Saviour if a meer sameness of Will and not of Nature were enough to found Divine Worship as offered to any other Being but the Supreme God upon But when Socinus comes to speak of the necessity â—f Praying to Christ he runs off from the matter in hand to that of acknowledging hat Kingdom and Power and Government given to him by his Father which acknowâ—edgment as he concludes infers a necessiâ—y of Praying to Him But this is an Argument far fetch'd and very impertinent â—oth the foundation and superstructure is â—alse Christ in his Humane Nature is the head of the Church in his Humane Nature he has the Government of it in his hands in his Humane Nature all power in Heaven and in Earth is his own but none of these things are his meerly as he is Man or as he is a Creature but that Humane or Created Nature of Christ is made capable of those things of which in its own Nature it was absolutely incapable by its entire Union with and subsistenee in the Godhead Without owning this our Prayers to Christ as those offer'd by the Church of Rome to Saints or Angels are meer mock devotion For if Christ before his Ascension into Heaven had no Existence but in a Body in meer flesh and blood then after his Ascension he likewise had no existence but in the same Body if he existed in the same Body he could be partaker of no other qualifications but such as are incident to a Body for if his natural Body could be partaker of such qualifications as a natural body was not capable of it could be no longer the same body he was rais'd with but another and that no natural body If he still existed in Heaven in that same body he rose and ascended with and it was not changed to or for another no attributes wholly or essentially Divine could be truely or properly ascribed to him therefore Christ could not be Almighty which Infinite Power or Almightiness yet is absolutely necessary in him who has all Power given to him both in heaven and earth and who is able to do every thing that can tend to their good or to God's glory for them that ask him Christ in his Natural Body cannot know all things without which Universal Knowledge yet it 's impossible he should suit all grants to the necessities of Petitioners or be assistant to those who lie under a natural incapacity to address themselves to him otherwise than in their thoughts and inward wishes Christ in his Natural Body cannot be Omnipresent he cannot be in more places than one for natural bodies are and must be circumscribed by Time and Place otherwise they lose their natures and become God for only God can exist without those circumscriptions of Time and Place which Omnipresence yet is indispensably necessary to every one who can receive Petitions offered to him in several quarters of the World at once If now the Socinians will deny these things to be inconsistent with a Natural Body if they 'l assert that a Created body may be Almighty that it may know all things that it may be every where present they must introduce a new and yet unheard of Philosophick and Theologick Scheme and to little purpose If they 'l say these things are needless to our Saviour's natural body for that he may read all the wants of Petitioners in all parts of the World at one view in the Essential glory of his Father that 's the Roman plea and every whit as rational on behalf of their Saint and Angel-worship They can see all the wants of their humble supplicants in the glasse of the Trinity as they tell us They say too that God reveals to Saints and Angels to whom Papists make their Prayers all those things their Devotoes pray to them for If the Socinians joyn with them and say God so reveals every thing to Christ We answer them both that this is to set God upon a needless work and indeed to make the Supreme Being in effect inferior to his Servants and to his Son for those are the greatest Persons to whom the last Appeal is made those inferiour who are imployed in carrying or presenting Petitions to another if then the Supreme God make it his business to present the Supplications of Petitioners to his own Son he takes upon him that inferiour Office If he present them to his Son that his Son may grant and perform them it argues a natural Impotency in himself to answer such Petitioners and consequently a superiority in the Son whereby he 's able to grant and to do for his servants what God the Father could not If the Socinians will have us believe in respect of Omnipotence that Christ only represents our wants to his Father and that it 's his Fathers Power alone which answers and acts for us it will follow then that God has not given him all Power in Heaven and in Earth whosoever has that Power can do all things in and of himself if Christ cannot do all things in and of himself he has not that Power if He want that Power for what reason should we pray to him and not rather immediately to Almighty God especially since this Man Christ Jesus died for us that in his own blood he might open to us a new and a living way whereby we might have access with boldness to the throne of Grace If we may go directly thither what should we trouble our selves with applications to a subordinate Power as for the Mediatory Office of our Saviour so far as He 's concern'd in it according to Socinian Principles he 'l mediate continually for Us and all Believers in general terms whether we make any supplications to Him or not The result of all then is this ether Christ is not Almighty nor All-knowing nor Present every where and consequently cannot be the proper Object of our Adorations and Prayers and therefore all such Adorations offered to Him must be scandalous and Idolatrous or else our Lord must be present every where Know and be able to Do all and every thing and so their Catechism teaches us in the chapter before quoted for it says All Power is given him as before that his Power and Efficacy is great
so he must have Graces of his own and Strength of his own to employ for the use of his own Devotoes for so Saint Paul tells us that Christ referred him not to the Grace of God or to the strength of God for security from the violence of Satan but tells him My Grace and my Strength are sufficient for thee therefore there could be no need of applying himself to any other Now if Saint Paul were in this case guilty of Idolatry all those who follow the pattern of Saint Paul must incur the same guilt but he was not guilty therefore neither were his Imitators guilty of it The Socinians in proof of the lawfulness of Praying to Christ allege farther Saint Paul's joyning him with God the Father in his own Prayer with respect to the Thessalonians to whom he 's there writing â— Thess 3.11 Now God himself and our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ direct our way unto You where he takes for granted that the Father and the Son are both Co-partners in the same directing power and therefore he equally Petitions them both for guidance in his design of visiting the Thessalonians What the Apostle himself did in a Letter sent to Believers for their instruction in matters concerning their Salvation we need not doubt but they 'd be very apt to follow him in so that either this Praying to Christ was lawful and reasonable in it self or else the Apostle must be concluded to have it in his mind only to abuse those he wrote to and to draw them by his extraordinary influence upon them into Sin for a sin it must be to make any meer Creature the Vltimate Object of our Prayers and Devotions That the Apostle in this passage does so is indisputable if at least it's own'd that He makes God the Father such an Object for he joyns them together puts no mark of Inferiority or Subordinacy upon Jesus Christ but what he begs of the Father the same He begs of the Son in one continued expression And the Apostle frequently does the same thing in those Salutations he sends to the several Churches where He wishes them Grace Mercy and Peace equally from God the Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ Grace Mercy and Peace are all divine and spiritual Gifts as in possession of the Father so in possession of the Son else it would be very impertinent to Petition them equally for it and of very ill consequence for it would easily bring such a notion into Mens heads as that some created Being might have a power of giving Gifts of a Spiritual nature as well as the Supreme God and that it might be lawful in our most serious Devotions to joyn him who alone is God with one who is no more than a Creature to set them in a rank as equal as words would allow and to conclude a Prayer to the great Creator of all things insufficient to procure any good from him unless it were backt and strengthned by the joyned formality of an Address to a dependent Creature But we need not so much insist on this particular since the same Socinians as a vindication of Prayers addrest to our Saviour take notice of that piece of Religious Worship as being made the very Characteristick or distinguishing note of Christians So Ananias answers the Command of Going to visit and baptize the newly converted Saul Acts 9.14.21 He hath authority from the chief Priests to bind all that call on thy Name And when Saul first began to preach Christ at Damascus all Men ask'd with amazement if it was not He who had lately destroyed all that called upon the name of Christ that is all who believed in him So that it seems from hence that to believe in Christ and to call upon him were used as reciprocal terms every one who believed in Christ would call upon him or Pray to him every one who pray'd to him must believe on him for as the Apostle elsewhere argues How shall they call on him or pray to him in whom they have not believ'd So again St. Paul inscribes his first Epistle to the Corinthians 1 Cor. 1. â— to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus called to be Saints with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ i. e. to all Christians for whose general use and instruction he wrote that Epistle as well as for the Corinthians And the same Christians are described as such 2 Tim. 2.22 who call upon the name of the Lord with a pure Heart These are the evidences drawn by the Socinians themselves out of Scripture to prove the practice of Christians in the very infancy of the Church and they are sufficient for that purpose Now that Those who accompanied with our Lord himself during his converse upon Earth or that those Apostles who were guided by the extraordinary influences of the Holy Ghost or that those first Christians who took the â—oke of Christ upon them when the Gospel was certainly preached to them in its original simplicity that all these should be guilty of abominable Idolatries and that when the Apostles themselves were originally Jews who had an irreconcileable aâ—ersion to any thing that look'd in the least â—ike Idolatry and that our Saviour himâ—elf should have so little regard for his Disâ—iples as to let them commit a gross sin â—f a damning nature without any check or â—eproof that that Holy Spirit which was â—romised to believers on purpose that He might guide them into all truth that both these should so very early not only permit but encourage and perswade men to commit Idolatry and all this at a time when they pretended to promote the Salvation of Souls and when it was notoriously known to all Mankind that Idolatry was a Sin irrational in it self and detestable in the sight of God that the one part should commit and the other promote Idolatry under such circumstances is absolutely incredible They had the Pagan World at that time to reform The Apostles were all willing to spend and be spent to carry on that glorious and merciful work at the utmost hazard of their lives the great and crying sin of the Gentile world was their Idolatry that of which St. Paul particularly took notice with grief and anger among the Athenians but it had been a strange method of reforming an Idolatrous World by advancing the same practice without any other correction but only a variation of the Object as if Praying to a Man had not been as great an Error as Praying to a Genius or the Sun or some other bright Star or an Ox or any other Creature Such things would have rendred the Gospel foolishness with a witness among the Gentiles and none would have wondered that Christ should have culled out poor ignorant Fishermen and other illiterate persons to be the first Preachers since such a senceless Method of procedure was only fit for such dull and unthinking Creatures to prosecute But
for our comfort the first Christians are free from any such folly and all the several sorts of Hereticks through all ages have freed them from any such Imputation They did nothing but what was agreeable to the Will of God They took care not to provoke him whom they knew to be a consuming fire to jealousie by setting up a meer Creature in competition with him The Christians in that time shew'd their extreme hatred of Idolatry in that all the allurements and terrors in the world could not possibly draw them to it in other instances If they would but have thrown a little Incense into the Fire burning on an Idols Altar If they would but have made the smallest condescension to some admired Heathen Deity they might have been blest both with Impunity and Rewards And sure it could be imputed to nothing but a ridiculously perverse humour to refuse all kinds of submission to Creature-Gods meerly because they were Creatures and yet at the same time themselves to Worship or Pray to a Creature of their own setting up We find not but that the Jews were more tractable and so more reasonable in the point when they had once gotten the gusto of Idolatry in the Golden Calf and had the fetters of religious Elders and Governors knock'd off their heels they stood out at nothing but were ready to worship any little Idol any of their neighbours recommended to them And other Idolatrous Nations the Romans in particular thought it but reasonable that when they had set up some Gods for themselves according to their own humours they should compile all the Divinities they could and secure themselves if not by the quality at least by the multiplicity of their Gods But when the Jews were once truly purged from their Idolatrous humours by severe and terrible Judgments they would never more at their utmost peril admit of the least umbrage of it And the converted Gentiles would have dyed a thousand deaths rather than have brought such a scandal upon Christianity as to have retained or advanced any thing that might have laid them open to the reproaches of the Jews or have seduced or perverted their Brethren We no where find the Apostles or any Apostolick men ever vindicating that Worship they offered to our Lord with that pretence that they went to him only as â— Mediator of Intercession as the Roman distinction is or that they might not press too rudely upon God without addressing in the first place to some Favourite servant We never find them arguing that they only Pray to Christ that He might pray for them tho' he always does so as being the sole Mediator between God and Man nor do they ever defend their Practice by that Allegation that they do not terminate their adorations upon Christ but upon his Father the contrary would easily have been prov'd against them from their own Writings Yet after all they were not Idolaters they did not give that Honour to a meer Creature which belonged only to the Creator therefore that Christ to whom they made their addresses was not a meer Creature Yet as he was Man He could be no more than a meer Creature therefore He was more than Man therefore He was God the true and Almighty God the great Creator of all things and thus have we made good our Argument that Jesus Christ was true God equal with his Father from that otherwise indefensible practice of Worshipping him or Praying determinately to him as the Giver of all good Gifts equally with his Father If he be own'd to be the One true God we can have no scruples no fears of offending upon us in Praying to him and expressing all the Signs of external religious adorations towards him If he be not own'd to be the One true God then there 's no argument which either a Socinian or any Other can bring to prove the lawfulness of Praying to him as God but it will equally serve either Papists in their praying to Images Saints or Angels or Pagans in Praying to their confest Idols and therefore the Socinians themselves fairly confess with respect to those Texts before-cited where Christians are known by that character of calling on the name of Christ That those Words do so comprehend all that divine Worship which is exhibited to Christ by his faithful people that they describe it by that one the most considerable part of it namely beging assistance from him in our Prayers Cum necesse sit eum cujus nomen invoces pro Deo competente sensu colere Since it 's necessary to Worship him as God in some fit sence whose name you call upon in Prayer but there is no other fit sence in which we can call upon him as God but that which makes him the true the eternal God Therefore if he may be called upon as God without Idolatry He must be that true that eternal God We have at last by God's assistance gone through these several heads of Discourse from which we propounded at first to prove That Jesus Christ the Son of God was God equal with his Father or the true the eternal God We have prov'd this from those several accounts of his Appearance and his Nature laid down in the Old Testament namely that it was He who appeared to and convers'd with Abraham before the fatal destruction of Sodom and that He there bore the name Jehovah the name of God incommunicable to any other That it was He whose Throne the Psalmist declared to be for ever and ever That it was He who laid the Foundations of the Earth and that the Heavens were the work of his hands after whose decay and perishing He yet should continue beyond the reach of time That Christ our Lord should be that Child that Son given us in time on whose shoulders the Government should be laid that He should be the wonderful Counsellor the mighty God the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace That He should be the Righteous Branch springing up to David whose name should be the Lord our Righteousness And finally that He the blessed Jesus should be that Ruler of Israel who should be born in Bethlehem Ephrata whose goings forth have been of old from everlasting We have proved the same assertion from those several Declarations our Saviour has made concerning himself and his Disciples afterwards concerning him in the New Testament as namely that of Saint Matthew of the Angel's prediction to Joseph to which the Evangelist applies the Prophecy that our Saviour Incarnate should be called Immanuel or God with us That of our Lord joyning himself in equal rank with his Father in the Institution of Baptism ordering it to be performed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost We have proved that our Saviour was that Word which was in the beginning which was with God which was God by whom all things were made visible and invisible in Heaven and upon Earth that according to
our Saviour himself He and his Father were One that it was He whom Saint Thomas upon a sufficient Conviction declared to be his Lord and his God that according to Saint Paul He is God over all blessed for ever and that according to the same Apostle He being in the Form of God thought it no Robbery to be equal with God yet took upon himself the Form of a Servant for our sakes These proofs I explain'd enlarged upon and vindicated them from their Sophistry who would have them look'd upon as proofs insufficient of the Divinity of the Son of God We prov'd the same thing then by those Actions done by himself and in his own Name during his converse upon Earth and done by his Apostles in His Name after his Ascension into Heaven For instance from his passing insensibly through the multitude who led him to the brow of an Hill designing to cast him headlong down from thence From his making the Souldiers who came with Judas to seize him to fall down with barely answering them what they desired and in the kindest and most satisfactory manner From his commanding Lazarous in his own Name to come forth of his Grave after four days burying From his Apprehension of virtue going out of him to heal the Woman with the bloody Issue tho' only touching the Hem of his Garment From his calling those that were weary and heavy laden with their sins to come to him and promising them rest for their Souls upon so doing From his Forgiving sins in an authoritative manner his searching the Heart trying the Reins and according to Saint Peter Knowing all things From his Promising and sending the Holy Ghost and giving it first of all with his Breath opening the Understanding of the Disciples and sending them abroad with a Commission equivalent to that which himself had received from his Father and in conclusion from his Disciples Baptising Preaching and doing Miracles wholly in his Name and by Faith in him From this Head we proceeded to prove our Doctrine that Christ was God equal with his Father from the Faith of the Primitive Church where we confin'd our selves in our Disquisition principally to those Fathers who wrote before the starting of the Arrian Controversie So for the Greek Church we gave you an account of what Clemens the Roman Bishop in his Epistles to the Corinthians of what Saint Ignatius Bishop of Antioch in his several Epistles of what Justine Martyr in his two Apologies and in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew and Irenaeus in his books against Heresies and Clemens Alexandrinus in his Admonition to the Gentiles and in his Stromata and what Origen in his books against Celsus furnishes us with in evidence of our Saviour's Divine Nature Then for the Latin Church we gave you the sence of what Tertullian St. Cyprian Bishop of Carthage Arnobius and Lactantius have written from whence we descended to Creeds framed by Gregory Thaumaturgus by Felix the first of that name Bishop of Rome by the First and Second Councils at Antioch summoned on the account of Paulus Samosatenus and the Circular Epistle of the Latter from the circular Letters of Alexander Bishop of Alexandria and so from the Epistle and Creed of the Nicene and Constantinopolitane general Councils with the remarkable suffrages of Constantine the Great the first Christian Emperor and Eusebius of Caesarea one much suspected of Arrianism himself but a famous Writer of Church-History Having done with this we prov'd last of all that no true Divine Worship was due to any meer Creature or could be paid to any such without Idolatry That true Divine Worship yet was paid to our blessed Lord by his Apostles and first Followers without Idolatry therefore that our Saviour in consequence could be no meer Creature Thus far we had proceeded and concluded all our works of that nature at an end and our selves at liberty to prosecute our intended discourse farther But Ill Men taking advantage of that Liberty now indulged them a Liberty always fruitful of Errors and Innovations give us yet more Work and a necessary care to prevent that Poyson they scatter from spreading too far amongst those who profess Christianity in these Nations And here we have two mighty Pretenders to Piety and Reason One of which undertakes the Patronage of long exploded Arrianism the Other of the more refined Socinianism and both with old Arguments and it may be some new Finenesses attack the Divinity of our Saviour It 's no small happiness that such Men take up such different Opinions to maintain for by that means One is somewhat of an Antidote against the Other and by these differences between themselves in so weighty a matter Wise and Considerate Christians will learn to believe neither of them As for what our Socinian pleads considering what we asserted in the beginning of our Discourse viz. That Jesus Christ our Saviour is the Son of God which We with all sound Christians understood in a natural sence and that that very Notice inferr'd a co-essentiality of the Son with the Father as it does among Men where the Son is of the same Nature with the Father which begets him we thought we had reason but the Socinians have found us out a way of Filiation or Sonship of being the begotten nay the Only begotten Son of God without any such Essential Relation thus the Racovian Catechism speaking concerning the Original of Christ's being called or being the Son of God tells us He is so First Because He was conceived of the Holy Ghost and being born of a Virgin without the concurrence of a man he had no other Father but God and this Wissowatius in his note upon that passage tells us ought to be observed as the first reason mentioned in Scripture why Christ is the Son of God in opposition to those who found that relation upon his eternal Generation of his Father Secondly Christ says the Catechism is the Son of God because as He himself teaches us He was sanctified by the Father i. e. He was separated from the rest of mankind in a singular manner and besides the perfect holiness of his Life furnished with Divine Wisdom and Power Cat. Raco sect 4. c. 1. p. 24. He was employed by the Father to execute the Office of an Ambassadour with a supreme Authority among Men Thirdly Christ was the Son of God because He was rais'd from the Dead by God and so begotten of him again by this means becoming like God in Immortality and Fourthly Christ is the Son of God because He is invested by God with supreme Authority and Command over all things Our Country man Lushington a great Patron of Socinianism in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews On the Hebrews c. 1. p. 23. reckons up the grounds of Christ's being the Son of God to the same number He 's the Son of God says He First by his Conception Secondly by his Function Thirdly by his Institution being
by God appointed the Heir of all things Fourthly by his Resurrection thus He but our New Undertaker to render these things the more plausible has given us a new set or Division of the reasons why Christ is called the Son of God The title of the Son of God says he is in Scripture founded upon these Five things Two that are taken from his two-fold birth the one out of the Womb of the Virgin by the Operation of the Holy Ghost the other out of the Womb of the Earth by his Resurrection which makes him undoubtedly the Natural Son of God his only begotten Son Thoughts on Sherlock's vindication of the Trinity p. 4 5. his own or his proper Son Three other which are drawn from his Offices the First Because he is that Prophet whom his Father has sanctified and sent into the World with an extraordinary Commission Secondly Because he is the great High-Priest immediately called to that Office by God himself the Third Because He is the King whom God has exalted to a Supreme Power both in Heaven and in Earth Now these Reasons thus multiplied tho' we should allow them all True yet they come not up to the matter in hand It 's true Christ really is the Son of God by reason of his Conception by the Power of the Holy Ghost in the Womb of the Virgin but supposing with the Socinians that the Holy Ghost is not a Person but only the influence of Almighty God there is not enough in that Birth so miraculous as it is to give our Saviour the title of the Son of God distinctly and exclusively of all others Dr. Heylin tho' far enough from denying the eternal Deity of Christ yet seems very willing to rest in this Reason that He is called the only begotten Son of God purely upon it or because He 's the beloved Son in whom He is well pleased or his loved Son or the Son of his Love and approves of Maldonat's opinion that the beloved Son and the only begotten Son are terms Reciprocal but the mistake is apparent for tho' Isaac be called the only begotten Son of Abraham it does not argue that He was the sole engrosser of his love the contrary is apparent from Abraham's carriage in the case of Ishmael when he took the necessity of turning Him and his Mother out of doors so grievously Gen. 21.11 and when upon God's promising him a Son by Sarah who should be heir of his blessings the tender Father yet beg'd that Ishmael might also live in his sight Gen. 17.18 i. e. be partaker of God's Favours and extraordinary Blessings too Besides that Isaac is called Abraham's only begotten Son in contradistinction to Ishmael Isaac was the only begotten Son with respect to God's Promise and as being the only Son of the free Woman and properly enough yet we see by course of Nature Abraham had more Sons than Isaac therefore Isaac was not Abraham's only begotten Son in a sence so eminent as our Lord is called the Only begotten of the Father Heylin on the Creed p. 168. the Father having no other Son begotten by himself but Christ But tho' sometimes Men do love an Only Child at an extraordinary rate yet it 's not â—lways nor necessarily so for Love beâ—ng sometimes guided by Reason and Obeâ—ience being the only rational ground of â—aternal Affection several Children may â—e as obedient as One and therefore several may as rationally be loved as One in an exâ—raordinary manner But farther Neither is our Saviour's Conception by the Holy Ghost in the Womb of the Virgin so very great a Miracle as to set our Saviour on that account so far above every Creature for as Doctor Pearson well observes Pearson on the Creed p. 107. Adam the first Man was made immediately by the hand of God no humane faculty concurring at all and Adam is therefore called the Son of God by the Evangelist now there cannot be a Power so much greater requir'd to give a Man a being in the Womb of a Virgin than to frame him at first out of a Piece of Earth as to make so great a distance necessary as is between the First and the Second Adam for Jesus Christ our Second Adam must be the Son of God in so peculiar a manner as must make him infinitely Superiour to any other Creature he being design'd to exercise such a Power as no other Creature could possibly be capable of We allow then our Lord's Birth and Conception to have been one ground of his being the Son of God but not the first it 's no where called so in Scripture nor is it sufficient to fix him in that supereminent station wherein our Faith is fix'd upon him The second reason of his Filiation is yet much more Deficient viz. his Resurrection or raising from the Womb of the Earth for we find none called the Son of God in Scripture on that Reason that our Saviour was rais'd from the dead we know if we look upon him as rais'd from the Dead by his own Power as indeed He Joh. 2.19 John 10.17 18. and He only was as himself asserts that affords us a great difference between Him and all other Persons but utterly destroys the Socinian ground of his being called the Son of God But for such troublesom passages as these I find a remarkable saying of Smalcius which shews us the whole mystery of their avoiding the force of plain Scripture and it 's this speaking of Christ's being called God he proceeds When we find it declared in Scripture not only once or twice but very often and very plainly that God was made Man considering that this is a Proposition absurd wholly contrary to right Reason and full of Blasphemy against God we believe it must be a great deal better to find out some mode of speaking according to which one may say this concerning God than to interpret things simply and according to the Letter that is to say the Socinians have resolved not to regulate their Opinions by the Scripture but to reduce the Scripture to their Opinions this however is plain dealing and a sufficient warning to read their Discourses with the greater Caution and Intention of mind But if the Socinians make use of this Art by their own Confessions in matters of the clearest nature and so often repeated we cannot doubt but they 'l rather pitch on some unknown Figure to elude those Texts which imply our Saviour's raising himself from the Dead than own his Vnity with his Father in the same Essence or Nature whereby both the assertion that Christ rais'd himself and that He was rais'd by his Father from the dead are so easily reconcil'd But allowing them their own fancy if our Saviour was not rais'd from the Dead by any Power of his Own but only by that of his Father and yet was called the Son of God on account of his Resurrection then all those who shall rise from the
Dead before that great day must be called the Sons of God in the same sence as our Saviour is and consequently our Savour cannot on account of such Resurrection be so the Son of God as to be his only begotten Son exclusively of all others tho' that title be so exclusive in it's own nature As for the three Reasons of his being called the Son of God derived from his Offices it 's true in the first place that God has sanctifyed our Saviour and sent him into the World but so he sanctified Jeremy and so he sanctified John the Baptist and the last in particular he sent into the World with an extraordinary Commission i. e. to Preach the glad tidings of Salvation and to prepare the way of the Lord against his publick appearance which Employs were both wholly extraordinary but as for that descent of the Holy Ghost upon him whereby say they he was anointed to his Office without measure there was no particularity eminently distinguishing Him in that from his own Apostles upon whom the Spirit descended in a visible manner at the feast of Pentecost and fitted them so for the same Office of Preaching and every way promoting the Salvation of Mankind Indeed we no where find the Apostles called the Sons of God on account of their being baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire but we see our Saviour is declared the Son of God in whom he is well pleased on that occasion but he was own'd by the same title at his Transfiguration too when there was no effusion of the Holy Ghost therefore there was some peculiarly eminent reason for giving our Lord this Title which could not be applied on any account to any other Person If we reflect on the second ground of Christ's being called the Son of God which is because He is our Great High-Priest and so constituted by God himself our Author's proof of it is very strange viz. from that passage of the Psalmist Thou art my Son Heb. 5.5 this day have I begotten thee quoted by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews for tho' those Words are there repeated as well as in the first Chapter of that Epistle yet it 's not in a different Sence or to a new purpose but the Apostle there speaking of our Saviour's Priesthood and the greatness and excellency of that Office undertaken by him tells us no Man takes this Honour to himself but He that is called of God as was Aaron Now the Apostle shews that our Saviour had such a Call as well as Aaron for his Father who said to him Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee shewed his Propriety in his Son and his Love to him by those words so that it could not be strange that his Father should lay so great an Honour upon him But then his title to the Priesthood it self is founded on that Thou art a Priest for ever ver 6. after the order of Melchisedec so then the Son-ship of Christ is antecedent to his Priestly Office and He was made a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec because He was the Son of God and not called the Son of God because He was our High-Priest As for the last reason why our Saviour is called the Son of God viz. Because he is exalted to the Supreme Power over all things and so is our King Hab. 1.5 which he proves again from the same words as quoted in the same Epistle to the Hebrews There yet again the same truth occurs that Christ was the Son of God before He entred upon his Kingly Office for by Him God made the worlds and our Saviour never had a being but that at the same time he was the Son of God but if God by Him made the Worlds ver 2. as the Apostle says and he could not be our King before the Worlds were made We who are a part of these Worlds being those Creatures over whom he was to be King then he was the Son of God before he was our King and therefore could not be his Son on that account Besides if we should allow all these things the whole grant would be useless for Christ is called as before we observed the only begotten Son of God in an eminent and distinguishing manner above all others but if upon account of his Offices Prophetical Priestly or Regal Christ be called the Son of God then all those who exercise the same Functions in the world may upon the same reason lay claim to the same title for of some of them we know the Psalmist says They are Gods and they are all the children of the most high but if they can all justly lay claim to the same Title then there 's nothing peculiar to our Saviour included in that being the Son the only begotten Son of God which yet the very Title it self imports All these Reasons then not being sufficient to give our Saviour the Title of the only begotten Son of God in a manner so super-eminent to all other Creatures and their Originals particularly to Angels who are of a Spiritual Nature and are called the Sons of God There must remain some other ground for our Saviour's being so called and that is his eternal generation of the Father which puts him into such a Relation to his Father as no other creature can possibly pretend to We have prov'd that the whole of his Five Precedent Reasons do not fill up the Idea or make good the full meaning of those terms wherein Christ is called the only Begotten Son of God his Beloved Son or his own Son for if I am Born of my Mother but not Begotten in his own Image by my reputed Father tho' my reputed Father were able after Death to raise me to Life again tho' he were able to confer upon me all the Authority in the Universe yet all this will be so far from giving Me justly the Title of my Father's only-begotten Son tho' perhaps he never had any other that by all these Reasons together I should be a putative Son but really no more related to my supposed Father than our Saviour was to Joseph the Husband of the blessed Virgin when before her Espousals he was begotten in her by the Power of the Holy Ghost Nay should we admit of the very unphilosophical Hypothesis of Ruarus Quid in eo absurdi si spiritum Dei venas in virginis uterum descendentes emulsisse atque ex sanguine coagulato Embryonem formasse dicam non aliter atque id fit spiritu in masculo semine latente Ruarus ad Mersennum Epistola Centur. 1. Num. 56. p. 262. the most modest of the Socinian tribe all would be too little to make good this glorious Idea of the only begotten Son of God But his eternal Generation answers all and makes our Saviour as properly the Only Begotten Son of his Heavenly Father as I or any other Lawful Son is the only begotten of his
Father when he has no more and the Union yet between the eternal Father and the eternal Son is of a closer and more levelling kind than any thing inferiour nature can afford Our New Author indeed challenges us Cum Scriptoribus de generatione animaelium haec comparentur Nos Dei virtutem in Virginis uterum aliquam substantiam creatam vel immisisse aut ibi creasse affirmamus ex quā juncto eo quod ex ipsius Virginis substantiâ accessit verus homo generatus fuit Aliàs enim homo ille Dei filius à conceptione nativitate propriè non fuisset Sic Smalcius de vero naturali Dei filio c. 3. Ruarus ab ipso uterque à veritate quantum distat if we believe this eternal Generation to prove it expresly contain'd in Scripture and then to prove this Eternal Generation the true Basis or Foundation of his glorious Title of the Only Begotten Son of God As if clear Consequences from plain Premises were not a demonstrative proof of any thing to Men who pretend to Reason and a capacity of discoursing Rationally which is indeed nothing but drawing Consequences plain or obscure from agreeable Premises Or for an instance as if when I find God call'd a Spirit and I know a Spirit is Invisible I might not conclude God tho' a Spirit to be invisible unless I found Invisibility it self distinctly and separated from the Notion of a Spirit attributed to him somewhere in Scripture Now if all these Proofs I have laid down before have proved that our Saviour had a Being before he was Conceived in the Womb of the Virgin which we think to be proved beyond contradiction and if our Adversaries will but allow that Dictate of Common sence that He who really is my Son is my Son as soon as he has a Being or if He be not my Son then He never can be my Son otherwise than by Adoption and so Christ can never be the only begotten Son of his Father because all those who Believe in and Obey God are his Sons by Adoption too if they 'l but allow this then Christ must have been the Son of his Father before such time as he was Conceived in the Virgins Womb because he had a Being before that Conception If Christ had a Being before his Conception it must have been as a Spirit but Spirits do not generate one another therefore he must have had a Being from the beginning of the World If then we fall in with the Arrians and say God created his Son the Word first out of nothing and then created all other things by Him we contradict Scripture which positively assures us that in six days the Lord made Heaven and Earth and all that in them is and therefore rested the seventh day but God could not rest the Seventh Day nor do all he had to do in Six Days if he wrought more than Six Days but He must have worked before the beginning of the Six Days if he made the Word before he made any thing else and we have the Six Days Work summ'd up authentically by Moses but no account there of the Creation of the Word before the Creation of Matter If he were not Created before Matter then he could not Create all things as the Arrians pretend If therefore He had a Being it must have been from all eternity but he was not Created from eternity for whatsoever is Created must have a Beginning but he was begotten of his Father as the Scriptures assure us if therefore he were Begotten and not Made and Begotten before the beginnings of the World He could be Begotten of nothing but of the Substance of his Father there being no other Substance for him to be originated from and therefore must be eternal because the Substance of his Father is and cannot be otherwise than eternal This being true it would be meer folly not to fix his Sonship more peculiarly in this eternal Generation for He that is Begotten by a Father must be his Son and he that is Begotten from eternity must be a Son from eternity Therefore Christ who was Begotten of his Father from eternity must be the Son of his Father from eternity which was the thing to be demonstrated If yet a Socinian will stumble at the Vnion of the Humane with the Divine Nature as if it were an impossibility or against reason let Him resolve us fairly how the Vnion is made between a rational and immortal Soul of a Spiritual and an heavy and unactive Body of an Earthly Nature We are all convinced they are so joyned together but those subtle Springs whereby an Immaterial Soul actuates a Material Body are hitherto indiscernible by the sharpest Eye of impair'd Reason why then should we conclude it impossible for the Divine and Humane Nature to be united together unless it be united in a way more intelligible than our Souls and Bodies For tho' our Souls are of a Spiritual Nature they are infinitely inferiour to the Nature of Almighty God and being that Constitutive part of Humane Nature by which Man is a Rational Creature it might seem an easie task for us to find out how that Soul we reason by should be united to that Body we reason in But since we are so far to seek in this matter may we not reasonably conclude God has hidden this from our Eyes to moderate and humble our unruly Fancies to keep us from prying into things that are too high for us and to convince us that many things wherein we are more immediately concerned not being a whit the less True tho' we understand them not we ought to believe that some things may be True with respect to God of which yet we are able to give our selves no considerable account And so we may satisfie our selves that our Saviour spoke plain truth when he said I and my Father are One meaning thereby an Essential Vnity between his Father and Him because tho' he were at the time of his speaking so a true Man invested with real flesh and blood yet He was God before he was Man the Word of God before he was made flesh and dwelt among us and was God when He was Man his Divine Nature not being prejudiced by his assuming Flesh and Blood by that Divine Nature he was One essentially with his Father and his Humane assumed Nature being in his Divine Nature as a finite is contained in an infinite there could be but One Person at last 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ God-Man our Saviour and Redeemer I take the more notice of this particular which I had insisted on before because our new Assertor of Socinianism would perswade us that if we duely examin'd these Words of our Saviour on this occasion spoken to the Jews when they charged him with Blasphemy because in his former expressions He had made himself God tho' indeed he were but a Man we should quit all arguments drawn from thence the words are these
Jesus answered them John 10.34 35 36. Is it not written in your Law I 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 This says our Adversary Thoughts on Sh. p. 2. agreeably to those he follows proves That our Saviour calls himself God or the Son of God upon the same grounds on which others are called Gods in Scripture to wit because the Father has sanctified him i. e. Christ is God or the Son of God in the same sence that Magistrates Good or Bad are called so which certainly is a very great Honour to our Saviour But if we examine these Words with that Care we ought we shall find that our Saviour by alleging that God had sanctified him and sent him into the world does two things First he distinguishes himself from those called Gods by that Sanctification and Mission which He had and They had not for he affirms no such thing of them unless our Author will infer it from that of the Word of God coming to them but all those to whom the Word of God comes are not sanctified presently by that nor are all those sanctified to whom God imparts any thing of his Power for the management of the World some sufficiently proving the contrary Nor will it be easie to prove Sanctification and Anointing to be one and the same thing upon that reason Nay if we admit of Heinsius's Criticism Heinsius in Aristarcho sac in locum the case will be yet worse for he would have those words to whom the Word of the Lord came be translated Against whom the Prophetick Burden or the threatning Word of God was denounced and indeed the Original will bear it well enough now we may fairly conclude that Divine Menaces against sinners do not sanctifie them so that the comparison between our Saviour and those Gods mentioned in the text does not lye in their being both sanctified But secondly our Saviour teaches us that He was First Sanctified and then Sent into the World now He could not be sanctified before he had a being but he was sanctified before he was sent into the World He was sent into the world as soon as he was Conceived in the Womb of his Mother so Every one is sent into the World as soon as he has a Being in the World but he has a Being in the World as soon as he 's Conceiv'd therefore our Saviour was Sanctified before his Conception and therefore he had a Being before his Conception in the Womb of the Virgin this is what the Socinians deny but the answer to this evidence is not so easie After this tho' our new Writer would have our Saviour to argue as indeed he does from the Less to the Greater that if They were Gods much more He yet he has not observ'd that our Saviour gives himself the Title only of the Son of God but to be the Son of God is less than to be God absolute or without restriction but our Saviour should have given himself yet some Superiour Name if he intended to prove himself Superiour indeed to those whom the Psalmist calls Gods in the cited place and so indeed he did as the Jews understood him they knew well enough that those Gods were only call'd so by a Figure and had our Saviour plainly told them that he meant only Figuratively when by calling God his Father he made himself the Son of God and by saying He and his Father were One He made not himself God their anger against him would have very much abated since in that sence very Ill Men might have pretended to the Title but they understood that our Saviour made himself really equal with that One Supreme God whom they worshipped and according to their thoughts his Sanctification and Mission into the World by God if He were his Father set him infinitely above those Figurative Gods to whom the Father might have communicated some Authority or Power but had neither Sanctified them nor sent them with any extraordinary pretences into the World and our Saviour was so far from going about to elude their anger by a shifting or ambiguous answer as Smalcius a Socinian says he did when he told the Jews before Abraham was I am that he exasperates them the more by alledging the works he did as an evidence that the Father was in Him and He in Him Joh. 10 3â— upon which they go about to seize him but in vain From the whole we conclude directly contrary to what our Socinian Writer asserts that since our Lord declared nothing concerning Himself and his own nature to the Jews but what was necessary for them to know and yet did declare to them such things as made it evident to them that he ascribed a Nature truely and literally divine to Himself Therefore it was necessary the Jews and with them all the rest of Mankind should know that Christ was really and truly God not Metaphorically as Magistrates nor by participation of God's Holiness as Good Men are made Partakers of the divine Nature but essentially and eternally as his Father And thus have we in some measure made good our second Proposition that the blessed Jesus appearing in our Nature was God equal with his Father or really and truely God as well as real Man We proceed to shew How it came to be necessary that to effect our Salvation God and particularly God the Son should assume our nature to himself That God the Son did really take our Nature upon him we have largely proved That God especially in such extraordinary cases does nothing but what 's necessary we may conclude for tho' God be a Free and uncontrouled Agent yet infinite Wisdom can act nothing that 's unnecessary or indifferent whether it be done or no Our business therefore will be to enquire into the Ends and Designs of our Saviour's appearing in the flesh from whence we shall be the better able to apprehend the necessity of such his appearance Sermon of the Nat. p. 247. Our Church in her Homily upon the Nativity of our Saviour teaches us That the end of our Saviour's coming in the flesh was to save and deliver his people to fulfil the Law for us to bear witness unto the truth to teach and preach the Word of his Father to give light unto the World to call sinners to repentance to refresh them that labour and be heavy laden to cast out the Prince of this World to reconcile us in the body of his flesh to dissolve the works of the Devil and last of all to become a propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole World What 's contain'd in these and what other Ends may be assigned for our Saviour's Incarnation I shall lay down
habitual Obedience yet he stopt upon none of these Considerations but was for ought we can find by the Sacred Story as ready to be offered as his Parent was to offer him now such a kind of Obedience cannot reasonably be expected from any but a Son nor from any but the best of Sons such was Isaac but as the Burden the Son of God undertook was infinitely greater than what Isaac was concerned in the Eternal Determination of Heaven in respect of Man infinitely harder to comply with so it required a Son more Powerful more Obedient more united with his Father than any Earthly Son could be with the most obliging Earthly Parent therefore there being that Eternal Unity of Will between God the Father and God the Son it was impossible there should be the least Reluctance in the Son against what was resolv'd on for the rescue of Sinners from the Wrath to come and therefore that declining the terrible Hour which appears in his Prayer before his being seiz'd on by the Jews was purely the Effect of Humane Nature necessarily infirm but clearly understanding the Terror of the approaching Conflict and therefore shewing the result of the purest Flesh and Blood yet without Sin Again when we reflect on the Relation between a Father and a Son as it 's very close so their mutual Loves and Affections must needs be very extraordinary and tender this is observ'd and expected among earthly Parents and Children and it's what Nature commands and Religion so far as true obliges to this then must be much more eminent between God the Father and the Son and so our Lord himself teaches us The Father loveth the Son and as the greatest evidence of that intense Love John 3.35 he has given him all things into his hand he asserts the same again The Father loveth the Son and sheweth him all things that he doth 5.20 which is an Expression of the greatest Intimacy and Unity the same Jesus declares that his Father hears him always 11.42 and the Palmist in the Person of the Father speaking to the Son says Psal 2.8 Ask of me and I will give thee the Heathen for thine Inheritance and the uttermost parts of the Earth for thy Possession and on assurance of this Christ when he reproves St. Peter for using his Sword against those who came to take him tells him he could pray to his Father and he should presently send him more than twelve Legions of Angels from all which Circumstances we may be assured that the Interests of an infinitely Obedient Son with an infinitely Loving Father must be infinite therefore whereas Mens Sins were infinitely odious and that Vengeance infinite which was by consequence to fall upon Men for those Sins there was nothing but an infinite Interest that could possibly by any means whatsoever divert that Vengeance and this infinite Interest was proper to God the Son that is to such a Son as was at Unity nay was One with his Father from whence it is that we are taught by the Rules of Christianity and a Socinian himself will scarce contradict it to present all our Prayers to God in the Name of his Son Jesus Christ so whereas our Lord teaches his Disciples Whatsoever ye shall ask in my Name John 14.13 14. that will I do that the Father may be glorified in the Son if ye shall ask any thing in my Name I will do it 16.23 26. he afterwards varies thus In that day ye shall ask me nothing Verily verily I I say unto you whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my Name he will give it you Hitherto ye have askt nothing in my Name ask and ye shall receive that your Joy may be full which two Texts compared together shew the absolute Prevalency of the Name of the Son of God with our Heavenly Father and the absolute and indissoluble Union of the Father and the Son so that it may properly and without any thing like a Contradiction be asserted that what One does the Other does and what the Father grants for the Son's sake that the Son grants nor can any thing of an Heavenly Nature be granted to Mankind but by the Deity so united in it self by which Consideration all inferiour Intercessors between God and Man are excluded from being in themselves the Objects of our Religious Adorations because there can be no such adequate Unions of Persons between them nor any such absolute Power or immediate Interest in such inferiour Beings as there can be no reasonable Competition of Interests between a Son adopted out of Commiseration and an onely begotten and universally loving and obedient Heir as then the Interest of a Son with the Father was necessary for Humane Redemption so it was necessary that God the Son particularly should assume our Nature to do and suffer for us in such a measure as we might be redeem'd upon acceptance of the proper Conditions from Eternal Destruction Finally the Tenderness of the Son oft-times shews it self when the Gravity and just Severity of a Father seems inexorable to an Offender yet even then when the Father seems of himself and otherwise would be inflexible to the Criminal he is pleas'd to see the Tenderness of his Son and will frequently encourage and accept of his Intercession so if we may compare small things with great our Heavenly Father deals with us in respect of the Intercession of his Son and though Justice cry'd out for Vengeance against Sinners he was particularly well pleased when he saw Him cloth'd with Flesh for accomplishing that great Work of Mercy and Goodness he was pleas'd at his Interposition between the Criminals and impendent Punishment and since the Divine Nature was wholly incapable of flexible Affections nothing but unbounded Love Mercy Justice c. concentring in it the Apostle teaches us that our incarnate Lord our great High-priest was such an One as could be affected with our Infirmities Heb. 5.7 8 9. could have compassion on the Ignorant and of them that are out of the way who in the days of his flesh when he offer'd up Prayers and Supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death and was heard in that he feared Though he were a Son yet he learned Obedience by the things which he suffer'd and being made perfect he became the Author of eternal Salvation to all them that believe the Assumption of our Nature created in him a sympathetic Tenderness of Humane Infirmities as appear'd by his Tears over Jerusalem and at the Grave of Lazarus yet he was free from all Sin in those condescending Tears of his now he that had such extraordinary Compassion for miserable Sinners could not but exert the utmost of his sacred Interests on their behalf and make a free access for them to the Throne of Grace where such Obedience Interest and Compassion being indispensibly necessary for our Good and those Qualifications being naturally
most incident to the Person who stands in the Relation of a Son therefore it was necessary that the Son of God should take upon him our Nature and pity us and plead for us that how deplorable soever our Condition might be in it self we might be in a Capacity of Eternal Salvation It was proper that He who first gave a Being to all things by his Power should when the Work of his hands was decay'd if he design'd Mercy for them rectifie their Disorders and resettle them in such a state as might in some measure answer the original Design of the Creation that our Saviour the Eternal Word of God was the Maker of all things we have formerly prov'd at large from the beginning of St. John's Gospel and several other Scripture Passages and it 's a Truth which even Arians themselves acknowledge In that first Creation as the wise Man observes Man was made upright Eccles 7.29 but he has now sought out to himself many Inventions were he but left a little to himself he would need no other Vengeance to be poured upon him but what he 'd soon draw down on his own Head but God in pity to him was pleased to determine otherwise but as we observ'd before though an inferiour Creature was able to bring one in a happy state before into a ruinous Condition as any little mischievous Agent may yet those Ruines so easily procured could not be so easily repair'd again We are taught in the History of the Creation that Man was created at first in the Image of God that was his Glory and Excellence beyond the other Members of the visible Creation but that Image of his Maker was miserably defaced in him by Sin the Blessed Jesus the Eradiation of God's Glory Heb. 1.3 and the express Image of his Person therefore the most proper to renew in Obedient Man the blotted Image he had at first created him in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 says Athanasius whom we may justly alledge now in a matter little controverted Athan. de Incar T. 1. p. 72. It was not in the power of any other but him who was the Image of the Father to create again or resettle that Image in Men. It 's true the Socinians would persuade us the original Image of God consisted in nothing but Dominion over his Fellow-Creatures but that Dominion over the Creatures could not answer that Perfection the Wise Man adverts to in Man's first Creation no more than we can prove Kings and Princes the more Perfect because of that Dominion God entrusts them with or that among Princes those who command the largest Empires should be the best and most compleat Men but the original Image of God in Man consisted in that Purity and Holiness which Man was adorned with in his first Creation and in that vast Wisdom and capacious Understanding whereby he knew every thing that was necessary to his own Happiness this Purity and Wisdom was ruined by his Fall and this our Saviour came effectually to restore by making such as believe in him new Creatures by which they are again renewed in Knowledge and in Righteousness Col. 3.10 Eph. 4.24 and true Holiness after the Image of that God who created them now when we speak of an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a Renewal of any thing we refer to somewhat that was before for that cannot be renewed now that never was formerly but if the Knowledge and Righteousness and Holiness in the new Man be the Image of God at present and there was such Knowledge and Righteousness and Holiness in Man before his Fall without which it could not be renewed by him who came to repair the ruines of that Fall then that Knowledge and Righteousness and Holiness was originally the Image of God in which Man was created and we need not fly to Dominion as the sole Instance of God's Image in Man especially since his Dominion was no more an Image of God's Soveraignty than the Government of all Princes since has been an Image of that for God was Lord of all things Man was not and yet Princes as well as others have had their shares in the Mischiefs arising from Man's Fall though their Governments be as absolute as ever To this we may add that Regenerate Persons being ordain'd to that Title of the Sons of God it was most proper that he who was the Son of God by Nature should be their great Guide and Conducter to that Honour this we learn from St. Paul who laying down that mysterious Doctrine of God's Prescience and Predetermination as to the future state of Men Rom 8.29 tells us that whom God did foreknow he did also determine beforehand that they should be conform'd to the Image of his Son that he might be the First-born of many Brethren where by the way we may observe that those Persons who by this very Apostle are elsewhere said to be renewed according to the Image of God are here said to be conformed to the Image of his Son therefore the Image of God the Father and of God the Son are the same thing and those whose Image is the same must be One not metaphorically but really One our Lord became our Brother by assuming our Nature by submitting to all the Infirmities of Humanity Sin onely excepted and he was the kindest and the tenderest Brother who laid down his own sacred Life to restore a crue of wretched Prodigals to the embraces of their Father he envied not that where there were many Mansions repenting Sinners should be admitted to them but after his Death and Resurrection he ascended to his Father and our Father to his God and our God that he might prepare those very Mansions for those who believe in him Behold what manner of Love the Father hath bestowed on us that we through the Mediation of his onely begotten Son should be called the Sons of God that I insert that on good reason will appear to any one who considers with the Apostle That Gal. 4.4 5. when the fulness of time was come God sent forth his Son made of a Woman made under the Law to redeem them that were in Bondage in general and that they might receive the Adoption of Sons this then was the reason of the incarnation of God the Son and the reason of his Sufferings we have from an equally authentic hand the Blessed Jesus by the grace of God Heb. 2.9 18. tasted death for every Man He was the Captain of our Salvation being made perfect thro' Sufferings is not ashamed to call us Brethren Forasmuch then as the Children are Partakers of flesh and blood he also himself took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the Devil And deliver them who through fear of death were all their life subject to Bondage wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his Brethren that he might be a
Actions prove to the World they were in quest of a better Countrey and yet We who have seen the Performance of those Promises they depended on their Obscurities all cleared their Certainty vindicated We who are beset with such a Cloud of Witnesses cannot cast aside every Sin and the Weight that does so easily oppress us and run with Joy the Race that 's set before us Were we Bond-slaves to Hell and has the Son of God struck off our Chains and Fetters and do we love them still is Light come into the World and can we love Darkness rather than Light were we all liable to eternal Vengeance and has our Lord redeemed us with his own most precious Blood from the dismal strokes of that Vengeance and shall we not believe in him that has alone trod the Wine-press of his Father's Wrath for us We were Sinners we were Enemies we were foolish and obstinate Enemies yet the Son of God that great Shepherd of the Sheep came to seek and to save that which was lost and can we be his Enemies still who was so much our Friend I 'm sure whatever corrupt Nature may tempt us to it would be wretched Policy in us to reject what he has done for us the wicked Husbandmen kill'd their Lord's Son indeed but it was to their own Confusion the rebellious Citizens refus'd to have their rightful King reign over them but it was to their Destruction the First or Primary End of our Saviour's Coming was that Men might be saved but if Men foolishly neglect that End there is a Secondary Design in it that those who still continue in Sin may be without Excuse that they may have nothing to plead for themselves at the great Day but that the Justice of his Wrath against Sin and Sinners may appear to Men and Angels Where an Ambassadour of Peace is sent and slighted the Dignity of the Ambassadour aggravates the Contempt the Apostle therefore having in the first Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews demonstrated the Dignity of Christ and proved his pre-eminence to Men and Angels who yet after the several Methods God had formerly taken to reveal himself had in those latter days spoken himself to the World makes this rational Deduction from all Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we hear in the name of Christ Heb. 2.1 2 3. for if the word spoken by Angels was stedfast and every Transgression and Disobedience receiv'd a just Recompence of reward how shall we escape if we neglect so great Salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirm'd to us by them that heard him If we repent not at his Call if we submit not to his Admonitions nor lay hold on his Grace we must not please our selves with empty Dreams of entring into his Rest there remains now no more Sacrifice for Sins His indeed is sufficient to those who believe in and obey him but for those who obey not the Truth there remains nothing but Indignation and Wrath Tribulation and Anguish to every Soul that doth Evil let his State and Condition be what it will this Wo I hope all those who profess Christianity will endeavour to avoid and that all those who name the Name of Christ that glorious saving Name will depart from Iniquity If our Saviour be the Son of God if he be God himself infinite and eternal and yet humbled himself and took upon him the Form of a Servant for our Redemption if it were absolutely necessary that he who undertook so great a Work should be real God as well as real Man or else must have sunk in that prodigious Attempt it behoves all those who expect Salvation by his Name to adhere to this Doctrine to believe in Christ as he is set forth to us in Sacred Writ that is as God co-equal and co-essential with his Father I would to God the Caution were needless There were some Hereticks in the Ancient Church who would needs maintain our Lord was not true Man had only a phantastical Body but not real Flesh and Blood as we have others as it were to ballance them would assert our Saviour was a meer Man and no more that he was not real God nor his Love to us nor his Undertakings for us so great as we are ready to conclude God's Blessing upon the Labours of the Governours of the Church in those days crusht the growing Heresies and they bequeath'd to us a Faith undeprav'd unchanged nor had the Trent-Conventicle an Opportunity to propound their additional Articles of Faith till besides the Eastern Churches God was pleased to raise up Men in these Western parts of the World of extraordinary Piety and Learning and Industry who had rescued the genuine Christian Faith from Fraud and Obscurity to give it us so as the Ancient Christians had left it without Additions or Alterations by which Cares they prevented the malignant Designs of the Roman Church but as the Devil will always be sowing his Tares of Heresies and Falshoods among the good Wheat of Divine Truths so with the Reformation of Religion besides the bloody Severities of Romish Bigots several of the ancient Heresies were reviv'd and particularly that which denied the Eternal Divinity of the Son of God which as it walk'd about formerly under several Names so it has of late though as the Presbyterians and Independents the other day in spite of former Feuds are pleased to give themselves the painted Title of Vnited Brethren so those wretched Hereticks however at odds among themselves agreed in the gay Name of Vnitarians under which Name Turks and Jews come as well and properly as they if they could be true to their own Principles They unite indeed all in that one impious Error in denying the Divinity of our Saviour a Heresie detestable to every sober and intelligent Christian a Heresie proper only to introduce Deism and Sadducism and to thrust true Evangelical Christianity out of doors This all those who love their Religion ought to oppose and declare against with as much Zeal and Care and more than they would against the foulest Errors of the Roman See for though there are so many Falsities and Absurdities propounded to us in that Communion yet there 's nothing flies so directly in the face of Almighty God as this it 's Folly enough to believe the Bishop of Rome Christ's universal Vicar upon Earth but it 's a greater Stupidity to believe that Christ himself is no more truly and originally God than that pretended Vicar it 's Idolatry to pray to Saints or Angels and to make them the ultimate Object of our Adorations it 's greater yet to make a meer Man the Object of the same Devotions and to suppose him a made God and capable of doing every thing for us we beg at his hands though he were no more but a Creature as others at his first existence it 's Madness to believe that
managed that Subject as He uses to do All with the greatest Clearness and Learning this Author too had endeavoured to prove Mysteries not unreasonable in Religious Matters and it being done before the preaching of that Great Man's Sermon He was unwilling to Expunge it The Author thinks He too has proved in some Measure that there may be a God tho' We cannot comprehend Him that there may be such a thing as Religion tho' God should be somewhat Wiser than Men and that though Ignorance be no Mother of true Devotion yet Men of improved Vnderstanding may meet with some Religious Matters above their reach and that it is possible the more a modest Man knows the more truly sensible He may be of his own Ignorance He has proved Jesus Christ to be the Son of God the manner of his Filiation is debated out of its proper place and indeed was not designed at all had not some Anonymous Pamphleteers given occasion for it who coming to his Hand after the former part was finished He was obliged either to croud it in elsewhere or else to omit it altogether The Argument inserted to prove Scripture the Word of God to those who acknowledge such a Being is indeed a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet He hopes not wholly useless We have too many pretended Christians who doubt it and He justly questions whether Socinus's Discourses De Authoritate SS Scripturae or such like are sufficient Proof that He thought the Books of the Old and New Testament were written by Inspiration Whatever He did his Atheistical Confederates own their suspitions but veil their madness under a more plausible Name and this Author can scarce distinguish between an Unitarian and a Deist if our sparkish Wits or Gentile Haberdashers of Paradoxies or Fop Despisers of the Tribe of Levi will but stand to that Deism they Profess the following Discourse may afford them somewhat of Reason to believe the Book known by that Name is really the Word of God From that Disquisition the Author enters more directly on the proof of our Saviour's Divinity and shews what He ought to have been and therefore what He was He 's apt to think several Writers Antient and Modern have drawn some Texts into the Service impertinent enough and quite beside their Original sence but believes He has named some and could have added more which unless we renounce understanding mens Minds by their Expressions must prove that our Redeemer was true was perfect God Those of the Roman Communion have not more tricks and wretched subterfuges from clear Texts and rational Arguments urged against Transubstantiation or Idolatry than our Unitarians make use of to elude plain Assertions and the common Notions of the Antient Jewish and Christian Churches If the Old Testament afford good Evidence in the case the New does so much more And the Evangelists and Apostles were a company of Trapans and ill designing Men to tell us stories of Christ's Words and Actions which should make us believe Wonders of Him and conclude Him a partaker Essentially of the divine Nature when He was really no more than a meer Man moved but in a common sphere lived Innocent by the infused activity of Divine Grace and without that Influence ab Extra might have sinned and incurred Damnation as well as others What He himself did in his Own and what his Apostles did in His Name was of so transcendent a Nature that should the same things be done now by any other Person or in his Name the World would in spite of all the Unitarian Arguments conclude such a Person True and Real God We see the Lycaonians for one Miracles sake were so possest with the Divinity of Paul and Barnabas that a Socinus or a Crellius with all their pretty Pleas to that purpose might have met with Pentheus's fate among them and have dyed the Martyrs of unplausible Sophistry The Author has given a short account of the Primitive Faith in the Point under debate and nothing but extreme Ignorance could make any of our Unitarians pretend to true Antiquity for his fancy Our late Putney Convert indeed could find Transubstantiation among the Rabbins and our great Rationalists have sometimes dream'd of proving our Saviour's meer Humanity by the suffrages of the glorious Anti-Nicene Fathers It was not his Happiness to have read Mr. Bull when he wrote this nor indeed had He living in an obscure quarter of the World at that time heard of that learned work Dr. Whitby's came out since it was finished if this weak Attempt give any farther Light to any thing or has touched on what was praetermitted by their greater Industry it may add somewhat to the Tale and Socinian ill-grounded Confidence may begin to shine with the more notorious Lustre He has insisted more largely on the General Practice of Praying to our Saviour and makeing Him the Ultimate Object of our Religious Adorations and thinks he has demonstrated the impossibility of defending that practice on the supposition that our Saviour is no more than a meer Man the Notion of a made God ridicules it self and no Contest fairer or more diverting can be set on foot than between an honest zealous Papist and a Socinian Reason-Monger concerning the Obligation of the first and second Commandment That particular end of our Saviour's Incarnation viz. That He might destroy the works of the Devil is perhaps no inconsiderable Evidence of his Superiority both to Angels and Men The debate concerning the Abrogation of the Jewish Law evinces the same Truth and by the common tracks of Sence and Reason which the Socinians pretend to appeal to leads us to understand the necessity of our Saviour's being True and Eternal God as well as True Man an inferiour Person could not have consummated the Types nor could a meer Man however alledging a Divine Commission have repealed what Almighty God himself had setled and commanded under the most terrible Penalties in the World In conclusion the Author proves the Necessity of our Lord 's giving satisfaction to his Father's Justice for the sins of mankind and is Himself so fully convinced of it that He takes it for granted Those who reject it either take Salvation in general for a fond Chimerical Whimsey or would obtrude upon us some new and uncouth Idea of the Divine Nature or think Mankind capable of Perfection in this Life and meriting Salvation for themselves by their own supererogatory Sanctity He generally turns their own Evidences against themselves and imagines He has no where misrepresented their Sentiments in the things under debate between Christians and Vnitarians He has as Occasion offered touch'd upon some Anonymous Pamphlets of the late Asserters of Socinian and Arian Paradoxes it was not worth his while to pursue them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is little in them but the twice boil'd Crambe of the Racovian Club commonly worse drest than in the Originals nothing but Sophistry and Confidence runs through them the Conscience of
the latter part of the verse for let us with Grotius by the mystery of godliness understand the Gospel as we commonly understand it and which we own does contain the mystery of godliness That the Gospel was preach'd by weak Men we own nay that our Saviour himself in his state of exinanition or in his humane nature appear'd weak and contemptible enough we own too but that the Gospel appear'd in the flesh or cloath'd with flesh which is the proper import of the Apostles phrase we deny as absurd That the Gospel was justified in or by the Spirit the miraculous effusions of that confirming the truth of the Gospel preach'd we may own well enough but that the Gospel was seen of Angels is scarce sence that it was never known before it had been declar'd by Men is false for the Angels could not be unacquainted with the several Prophecies of the old Testament concerning the Messias to come nor could they be so far to seek in the meaning of those Prophecies many of which they had been instrumental in delivering and the Angels themselves were indeed the first preachers of the Gospel So the Angel Gabriel tells Zacharias concerning the Son that should be born to him Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children Luke 1.16 17. and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. The same Gabriel afterwards tells the blessed Virgin Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and shalt bring forth a Son and shalt call his name Jesus v. 31 32 33. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the highest and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever and of his kingdom there shall be no end It was an Angel that appear'd to Joseph in a dream Matth. 1.20 21. and told him that his espoused wife was with child of the Holy Ghost And she shall bring forth a Son says he and thou shalt call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins Again an Angel of the Lord tells the Shepherds who were watching their flocks by night Luke 2.10 11 13 14. Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. To which Gospel a whole Choir of Angels subjoyned their Eucharistical Hymn Glory be to God on high in earth peace good will towards men These instances are enough to prove that Angels knew the Gospel before men preacht it not to mention their administring to our Saviour in the wilderness when entring on his prophetical Office and their publishing his resurrection the great confirmation of the Gospel before his Apostles had any apprehensions of it The Gospel was indeed preach'd unto the Gentiles and believ'd on in the World but it was far from being receiv'd in glory for it was scorn'd and derided and cruelly persecuted both by Jews and Gentiles the Devil raising all the powers in the world as far as possible for the extirpation of what was so great an enemy to his Tyranny the Gospel then will not answer all those particular marks set down in the Text. Neither yet are they applicable to God the Father as several of the Socinians would have them for to say God the Father was manifest in the flesh because his will was preach'd by Men who were but flesh and blood besides that such an assertion quits the Suppositum or Subject which was God the Father unless God and Gods will be one and the same thing which cannot be asserted It 's so uncouth an expression as is no where to be parallel'd either in Scripture or any Ecclesiastical Writer We read not any where that God the Father ever appear'd in the flesh or assum'd Humane nature nor did ever any dream of such a thing unless we recur to the ancient Patropassians so call'd because they believ'd it was really God the Father who being Incarnate suffer'd death on the Cross for the sins of Mankind but of that we have no foot-steps in holy Writ nor was the Deity it self ever made manifest in the flesh but in the flesh of the blessed Jesus Col. 2.9 in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily not in his doctrine as the Socinians would have it but in himself Vid. Schlicktin in loc and according to their own demands on the like occasion we would have them shew us some other clear place of Scripture wherein God the Father is said to be manifest in the flesh or to be manifest in Christ and the Apostles and then we may the better consent to their interpretation Again it 's as odd and unusual to say God the Father was justified in the Spirit for what need was there of any such justification his Eternal Power and Godhead were visible in the Universal fabrick of nature and all the Miracles done by our Saviour which Socinians refer to the influence of the Spirit were done that Men might know he was the promis'd Messias and those done by the Apostles after his ascent into Heaven carry'd along with them the same respect but we never heard of any publick declaration made by the Spirit for a more peculiar conviction of the World that the most High God was God indeed or the true God we may understand things thus as the Socinians say but we may a great deal better let it alone and not run into such interpretations of God's Word as we can neither reconcile to truth nor sense If we go farther the matter is not mended at all when we say God the Father was seen of Angels for what novelty was there in that had not they stood continually before his face from the instant of their first Creation or should we flie to God's will was not that known to his peculiar Ministers till such time as they came to learn it by the preaching of mortal men who can imagine so short a Text of Scripture and design'd to make known the greatest mystery in the world should lash out into such absolute impertinencies but to proceed God the Father was preach'd to the Gentiles but where he 's mention'd often doubtless as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in those Epistles written by the Apostles to their Gentile Converts but the Gospel it self is stil'd the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles pretend to preach nay to know nothing among their Converts but Jesus Christ 1 Cor. 2.2 and him crucified as St. Paul expresses himself if we must say God the Father was preach'd he was certainly preach'd most to the Antediluvian World by Noah and the elder Patriarchs or he was preach'd
on the Apostles and their companions enabled them to prove that Christ was the Son of God and to confirm their rational arguments and deductions from the Old Testament by a thousand signs and miracles such as made the most stubborn of mankind bow their necks to the yoke of Christ and own that He was truly what he call'd himself the Son of God and the Saviour of the World If we proceed according to the Apostles method Jesus Christ God Incarnate was seen of Angels seen with the greatest admiration since even Angelic intellectuals could never have reach'd so far as to imagine God's love to mankind which yet they knew to be extraordinary should shew it self in so prodigious a condescension Yet when he was pleas'd to stoop so low the Angels saw and knew and prais'd him tho' wrapt in swadling clothes and lying in a manger they ador'd him and administred to him tho' tempted forty days and forty nights by the Devil in the wilderness they attended him with their ministerial comforts when in that bitter agony in the garden when praying more earnestly his sweat was as it had been great drops of blood falling down to the ground Luke 22.43 44. They attended his sepulchre when he shook off the fetters of Death Matt. 28.2 3 4. Acts 1.10 and broke through the confinement of the grave striking terror on the trembling Watch but bringing comfort to the women whose early zeal brought them first to the sacred Sepulchre and they waited as diligently on his ascent into Heaven so that they saw him and admired that immense love which appeared so glorious in his humble and so powerful in his exalted state This Saviour of the world that he might really be so was preach'd unto the Gentiles the Word of God was now confin'd no longer to the Jewish nation that vail of the Temple rent in twain when he gave up the ghost upon the Cross took away that wall of separation which was between those Jews and the rest of mankind and through him both Jews and Gentiles have access by one Spirit unto Eph. 2.28 the father Now of himself in this case He taught his disciples after his resurrection That thus it behoved Christ to suffer Luke 24.46 47. and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem Thus Philip preached Christ in Samaria Paul preached him every where in the Synagogues Paul declares to the Corinthians We preach Christ crucified 1 Cor. 1.23 24. to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness but unto them which are call'd both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God And many Texts we meet with declaring the same thing and teaching us that it 's the great incumbent duty on all those who call themselves Pastors of the flock of Christ to preach him and him only to the world For he who was so preach'd to the Gentiles was indeed believed on in the world The three Eastern Sages who adored our Saviour in his infant age were the first fruits of the Gentile world and even Samaritans were profelyted to his Doctrine while he converst with the world to believe in him was that condition without which Salvation could not be attained So he teaches Nicodemus John 3.16 God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life v. 18. He that believeth on him is not condemned but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God It was a just sense of the indispensible nature of this condition that made men submit so readily to the first preaching of the Apostles and fly out so eagerly and so early into that Question What shall we do to be saved 'T was that which in Judaea brought multitudes daily into the Church of such as should be saved and enabled S. Paul to preach the Gospel fully from Jerusalem and round about unto Illyricum and that with extraordinary success and gave Tertullian in the Second Century a just ground to boast of the vast multitudes of Christians in every quarter of the Roman Empire And to this day the same blessed Jesus is the only rational hope of all that dwell on the earth and of those that remain on the broad Sea To conclude this explication of the Text this same Jesus after he had done and suffered so much for our sakes while he converst with and blest his Disciples Luke 24.51 he was parted from them and carried up into heaven He had at last that Petition answered which in the days of his flesh he put up to his Father Now O Father glorifie thou me with thine own self John 17.5 with the glory which I had with thee before the world was And if it was glorious for Elijah to be carried up to Heaven in his fiery chariot while Elisha was a spectator of his translation how much more glorious was it when our Saviour in the open view of all his followers had the clouds themselves humbly bowing to his feet to raise him thither where he sits continually at the right hand of his Father making intercession for us miserable sinners Having thus given the true interpretation of the Text take its full meaning together in this Paraphrase S. Paul still speaking to and instructing Timothy as in this Verse he does It 's not without great Reason that I have given thee who art thy self a Bishop in it such directions about those whom thou art to admit as Ministers in the Church of God That Religion our blessed Master has bequeathed to us has nothing in it but what is Holy and Pure too pure to be touch'd with unclean hands and not fit for every unlearned and presuming Novice to meddle with The whole Body of our Faith is founded upon such things as are infinitely true but of so sublime and surprising a Nature that the strongest Humane Reason can never wholly comprehend them all let me but name them as reveal'd and all mankind will soon agree that the most soaring and capacious Soul must falter in its enquiries after them The eternal Son of God God equal with his Father the great Creator of all things rather than perishing man should be eternally lost resolv'd to atone divine vengeance with his own sufferings and since without blood there could be no remission and the immense Divinity could not suffer so He took flesh and blood our weak and passible nature upon himself and in our nature offered himself a sacrifice to his Father for us This glorious Sacrifice produc'd the great effect and reconciled our angry Judge but that undertaking was too great for man tho' so deeply concern'd to believe the chasm between an holy God and polluted man too wide and hideous
deep ever to be made up It 's true when God himself was mention'd as the undertaker of so great a work even despairing man might entertain some dawning hopes but when they saw a poor Carpenter's Son one who had not so much as where to lay his head assume yet the glorious title of the world's Redeemer and Saviour their hopes slagg'd their almost grasped joys seem'd just vanishing into empty air When the Holy Ghost God too infinitely good and powerful and wise interpos'd and attended that humble Man with so much vigour and constancy that He by a thousand glorious actions and by a close and perpetual correspondence with Heaven visible even to vulgar eyes prov'd the entire Union that was between himself and his Father and that Sacred Spirit and justified himself in the thoughts of very aliens themselves who could not but acknowledge of a truth that for all his mean appearance and his scandalous Passion on the Cross He was the Son of God But could men have doubted still the happy Angels those purer and more discerning Spirits saw him too they saw him and knew him and ador'd him they saw their mighty Lord tho' veil'd in all the rags of poor mortality And tho' sin might have made a former breach between those blessed Spirits and polluted man yet now where their Lord loved they lov'd too and always look'd and always waited on him while he wrought the worlds redemption while he was so justified and so attended on divers gave up themselves absolutely to his service whom he lov'd and taught and protected and endued with miraculous knowledge eloquence and courage and sent them on that blessed errand to preach to the Gentiles the glad tydings of Salvation in his name They boldly undertook the work and tho' they had ignorance and prejudice and malice and cunning to contend with meer men contemn'd before but then inspired broke through all opposition and the forsaken Gentiles heard the gladsome sounds of peace and tho' there were too many enemies to their own good yet those laborious messengers of Heaven preached with that power and efficacy that men began every where to call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ Nay the more men of perverse minds cross'd the designs of that Gospel preach'd in the name of the Son of God the more those who believed in him were multiplied As for himself when he had finished that stupendous work and by his own Death had conquered Hell and Death He broke those fatal chains and rose again no more lyable to humane rage His Almighty Father who had viewed all the prodigious efforts of his Love to mankind with an ineffable complacency reach'd out his holy arm to receive that very humane Nature in which his beloved Son had done and suffered so much from him the chearful clouds were sent for a Chariot and he went upwards flying upon the wings of the wind while jâ—cund Angels those ministerial flames waited on his triumphs and taught his wondring followers what they were afterwards to expect from their Redeemer These are those mighty mysteries on which our most holy faith is built their truth however unintelligible to us is our security and the sincerity of our faith will necessarily show it self in an holy conversation and godliness The Verse I have explain'd then imports That without Controversie the Mystery of Godliness is great or in more words That the Basis or foundation of that Religion introduced into the World by the Doctrine of Christ's Gospel is indisputably and agreeably to the nature of Religion to Humane reason extremely profound and unintelligible To prove this we shall enquire Into the Vniversal agreement of all persons of what Religion soever That Mysteries are essential to Religion Whether our Saviour intended the entire abolition of all other Religions for the settlement of his own or rather to unite what was good in every distinct Religion into one and to sublime or perfect that so as it might tend most to God's glory and Man's happiness and whether that could be effected Men standing in their present corrupt state without the retaining of old or instituting of new Mysteries in his Religion What considerable advantages can accrue to Religion from those Mysteries it 's founded upon Then we must enquire into that Vniversal agreement of all persons whatsoever that Mysteries or some principles or circumstances of a more secret and abstruse nature are essential to all Religion But here to prevent all mistakes it must be remember'd That so much as concerns the practical part of Religion as contain'd in the Word of God is so clear and evident that the words of St. Paul are justly apply'd to them If they be hid they are hid to those that are lost whose eyes the God of this World hath blinded that the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ should not shine upon them 2 Cor. 4.3 4. The words whereby all things necessary to be done toward the attainment of eternal life are exprest are such and so plain that the simplest Christian may understand them And that person who goes about to involve the practical duty of a Christian whether in respect of his communication with God or man in obscure and mysterious terms crosses the end of the Gospel which is to instruct the weakest understanding in an easie and intelligible way how to live godly righteously and soberly in this present evil world yet it must be acknowledged that even in relation to practice there are some apparent difficulties and notwithstanding all that plainness apparent in God's word a Man has a very hard task sometimes to distinguish between what 's lawful and what 's unlawful such cases are commonly known by the name of Cases of Conscience or such matters wherein so many arguments seemingly strong and plausible appear on both sides to the understanding that it knows not which way to act and all that hesitancy or doubtfulness arises onely from a fear of offending God These generally respecting Christian practice create a great deal of trouble frequently to very good Men for others are seldom troubled with such religious fears and these are sometimes by various and unusual circumstances rendred so very intricate that the wisest and most discerning Men are often at a loss to clear and resolve them to the Querent's satisfaction Here the Jews were order'd to have recourse to their Priests whose lips were suppos'd to preserve knowledge and the Priests when there was any thing of a more inextricable nature had the Vrim and Thummim to appeal to The Heathens had some emergent doubts as to matter of publick management of themselves which sometimes perplex'd them too and they had their imaginary wise Men the Priests attending their desecrated altars who would assume as if they had the art of resolving doubts those who profess Christianity have still a severer task in these matters as having no Oracle immediately to consult and having doubts more numerous and
wise and good man And if Greece which seems to be the world's glory for the learning and valour and the yet greater reputation of it's inhabitants could afford no better store of men who liv'd virtuously how meanly must we conclude the rest of the world was stock'd with them therefore Lucian that impious but witty scoffer at Christianity could not forbear lashing the Philosophers themselves who knew so much and exposing them to the world's contempt so in his Icaro-Menippus Menippus tells his friend a story of his being in heaven where among other considerables a Council of the Gods was call'd by Jupiter their supreme to discourse with them concerning the Philosophers and Jupiter tells the rest that the Philosopers were a race of Men lazie quarrelsome vain-glorious cholerick gluttonous silly proud abusive and in a word according to Homer 's phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an unprofitable burden to the Earth some of these call themselves Stoicks some Academicks some Epicureans some Peripateticks and by several other more ridiculous names these assuming to themselves the venerable character of Virtue they walk about with a supercilious and disdainful look a long reverend beard a starch'd habit but under all the most detestable manners in the World yet these wretches forsooth despise all the World beside themselves they talk lewdly and sillily of the Gods and getting a company of unexperienced youths about 'em they make a mighty noise of virtue and always commend sobriety and modesty among their followers and rail against wealth and pleasure but when they get once by themselves they gorge themselves without measure they indulge themselves in all manner of lust and are base enough to rake a kennel for a leaden farthing and what 's worse in them than all the rest when they themselves do nothing towards the good of mankind either privately or publickly when they are neither fit for the Wars abroad nor for consultations in private they are always accusing others and with bitter expressions and studied abuses Luciani ◠2. p. 208. c. they reproach and rail upon their neighbours and he 's the greatest man among them who is most noisy impudent and has the foulest tongue Had St. Paul and Lucian liv'd together though one were so holy the other so much an Atheist a Man would have thought they had agreed together in their accounts of the degeneracy of those who were accounted the wisest part of the World to these I may add Philostratus who giving us an account of a discourse between Apollonius Thyanaeus and Phraotes an Indian Prince he introduces the Prince reflecting upon Apollonius and his Companions thus I hear says he there are many among you who make Philosophy their trade to get by and putting it on like a Garment which they can as easily throw aside they bear themselves high upon an habit that belongs not to them and most certainly as common thieves who look upon themselves as sure of hanging whensoever they are catcht Philostrati vita Apollon l. 1. c. 12. are for a short life and a merry so these Philosophical rogues among you indulge their lusts and their guts and are the tenderest and most effeminate Creatures in the World and this I take to proceed from the defect of your Laws He that counterfeits the publick Coine dyes for it and so does he that cheats an Orphan or any thing of the like nature among you but as I am told there 's no Law among you that punishes Quacks in Philosophy who onely abuse and corrupt it nor is there any Magistrate appointed to take cognizance of them Thus far he By which we learn that as to the Divine Law where there is no Law there can be no transgression so in respect of worldly matters where there 's no Law there 's nothing but transgression and by the concurrence of all these so very plain testimonies we find that the ends of true Devotion in that part of the World which was without the pale of the Jewish Church was not onely perverted about the time of our Lord's appearance on Earth but it was worn out of memory and God so represented by Men that there seem'd to be no better way of approaching his nature than by an irresistible ingenuity in all manner of bruitish violence and extravagant wickedness Thus have we at large consider'd the ancient Maximes of Religion and seen wherein the World in general believ'd it to subsist and we have seen how far both Jews and Gentiles had declined from their own principles by the whole it will appear that the fulness of time was come in every respect that humane wickedness was grown to that height and consequently that great God whose eyes are purer than to behold sin so infinitely provoked that had not the blessed Jesus the Son of God interpos'd as great and universal a deluge of vengeance must have overspread the World as that of Water heretofore but withal it will appear as plain that notwithstanding all these abuses and depravations of Religion the foundation of it still stood good the Laws of God were as really believ'd to be holy just and reasonable and obedience to them as necessary among the Jews and Virtue and solid Honesty was as much commended tho' perfectly starv'd among the Gentiles as ever before it was the practice of what they so commended that so miserably fail'd among Men so that there was indeed no kind of necessity to extirpate the whole of all former Religions for the setling that of Christ but onely of a reformation of abuses and clearing the old foundation from all that rubbish from all those bryers and thorns that had overgrown it and there was need of reinforcing those duties appertaining to Religious converse whether with God or Men upon all sorts of persons with new and more forcible arguments than former Ages had offer'd that Men might re-entertain their first Love and do their first works so bringing forth fruits agreeable to repentance Therefore our Saviour professes of himself with respect to the whole Mosaic Law that he came not to destroy but to fulfil it i.e. to shew its whole design and intention to perform every part in his own Person Mat. 3.15 upon which reason he offer'd himself to John's Baptism though in its own nature but a deduction from or an appendix to the Law and when John made a modest refusal Jesus said to him Suffer it to be so now for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness He came to fulfil it farther in suffering upon the Cross by which Sacrifice of his it being the end of the Law all Jewish Sacrifices were vacated the substance being once come the shadow could have no longer place in the World and consequently all those Ceremonies conducing to their Sacrifices had an end too So he fulfill'd whatsoever the Mosaic Law had prefigured to the Jewish people He came to teach Men the very comprehensive nature of the Law to show his
son of our sacred Mother the English Church says of this manifestation of God in the flesh How it was effected Vid. Montacut Norvic in Act. Mon. Eccles c. 1. par 39. p. 27. 1 Pet. 1.12 by what means made possible heaven and earth cannot understand nor deliver 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It was a mystery from the beginning the Angels understood it not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it will be a mystery to eternity the Angels as yet can go no farther than their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to receive a glimmering of it as it were by the crany of a window or by the chink of a door and how shall we dare to enquire how it was done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this question is indissoluble that inextricable Faith alone has power to resolve them both this we submissively agree to and therefore we enquire not how or in what manner God was made flesh any farther than some particulars relating to that Incarnation are plainly laid down in Scripture far be any such presuming curiosity from us only since the Apostle in the consequent parts of the Text has asserted that God was made flesh which according to the natural sound and common acceptation of such words in all languages and writers is that he who was made flesh or appear'd in the flesh was God since the Apostle has asserted the positive truth and has made it the first part of the great mystery of godliness and such a part as all the other particulars do but serve to prove and confirm We must assert too that this particular point or article of Faith that He who was made flesh for the Salvation of mankind was really God God properly so call'd the most high the eternal God blessed for ever not any made or subordinate God but the maker of all things in a word the true God exclusive of all created Beings whatsoever We assert that this is an Article of our Faith so true and so important that upon a true embracing it in the sence so laid down the Salvation of all men depends as much as upon believing in Christ the Son of God at all or on being neither impious nor blasphemers nor idolaters And therefore we assert farther that how great a mystery soever this may appear and it never ought to appear otherwise to enquire into and seek for all such Scriptures as may render it indisputable is neither impertinent to our Lord's design in being so incarnate nor is it fruitless to those who make it their business to inquire into such proofs nor is it dangerous to any who make that enquiry with due humility and care But on the contrary it 's very dangerous nay fatal as before not to enquire into it or not to be fully satisfied about it I know we have in this point more enemies than the meer Socinians some capital asserters of the Arminian tenets being desirous to give such a latitude to Religion as may take in all their friends are very willing to perswade us that it 's not very material or necessary to believe that Jesus Christ the Son of God is God of the same substance or nature with his father So Episcopius a man of great learning and ingenuity in his fourth book of Theological Institutions c. 34. Traitè sur la Divin de J.C.S. 1. c. 1. p. 10. c. the sum of whose plea amounts to this That the essence of Christian Religion consists not in meer contemplative knowledge but in practice and that it consists much more in obedience than in abstracted speculations on the Deity which tho' it be true enough has really no place here for can we call those principles meer or simple speculations which are so important that we our selves are or are not Idolaters accordingly as they are true or false If Christ be of the same substance with his Father or if which comes to the same end Christ be the supreme or sovereign God he ought to be adored in that quality and Socinians themselves cannot without impiety refuse to acknowledge him as such and to honour him under that name but if he be not so we cannot confound him with the Sovereign God without Idolatry The great concern here then is to avoid impiety or idolatry and by consequence those inquiries must be of a practical nature which are of so very great and extraordinary an importance Episcopius makes several vain attempts to shew That it is not at all essential to Salvation to know if Jesus Christ be God by an eternal generation or that being but a simple creature or which is the same a meer man like one of us he is called God upon account of his ministry for when he goes about to make us see that these are no fundamental inquiries in shewing us that those who believe Jesus Christ is a meer Creature may worship him without being guilty of Idolatry because they adore him not as he is man but as he holds the place of God as his Ambassador or Substitute this proof is imperfect and insufficient For to prove that these questions are impertinent or unnecessary it 's not enough to shew that Socinians without being Idolaters may worship him whom they believe to be no more by nature than a meer Man which supposition yet we shall in due time prove God willing to be false But he ought to shew withal that we without Idolatry may worship Jesus Christ as the supreme God as we really are taught to do by the Church of England tho' at the same time he really be not the sovereign God which seems to be a very hard if not an impossible task as I question not but hereafter it will more plainly appear At present I shall only touch upon an argument urged by Episcopius from a Topick very easily found out the reason then given by him why it is not necessary that we should believe Jesus Christ to be perfect or the true God is Quia nuspiam in Scripturâ id necessarium creditu esse asseritur nec per bonam nedum necessariam consequentiam ex eâ elicitur Because it 's a doctrine of which the Scripture no where affirms that it 's necessary to be believed nor can it be drawn from thence by any good much less by any necessary consequence And he goes on to shew that this argument ought to be of very great force among those of the reformation because they profess there 's nothing necessary to be believed but what 's either directly or in plain terms contained in Scripture or drawn from thence by very clear consequence the last indeed the sixth Article of the Church of England agrees with but what she thinks of his first assertion may very well be gathered from the second wherein she propounds this Doctrine as necessary to be believed The Son which is the word of the Father begotten from everlasting of the Father the very and eternal God of one substance with the Father took man's
so to believe also in Him But now if without believing in Christ eternal life and happiness cannot be obtain'd and that be saving Faith which is fix'd on Him and if we be reasonably commanded to believe in him and yet true saving Faith cannot be fix'd in any but in God alone then it will follow that Christ must be God the true the Supreme God and it will follow too that it 's indispensibly necessary that all Men should know he is God that they may know in whom it is that they believe that he is the proper object of Divine Faith and able to answer all the expectations of Faith For otherwise as a proposition may in it self be true and yet I may be a lyer when I swear it is true because I know nothing of its being so So though Christ may be in himself the true God yet I am an Idolater for worshipping him as the true while I know not that he is indeed the true God And St. Paul acquits not the Athenians of Idolatry in consecrating an Altar to the unknown God tho' that God unknown to them was the same God whom he preach'd unto them Nor will that of the Apostle St. John be easily avoided where having before told us We know that the Son of God is come 1 John 5.20 and hath given us an understanding to know him that is true and we are in him that is true even in Jesus Christ he subjoyns This is the true God and Eternal Life These words if we interpret them as they lie and they seem to have no figure or Hyperbole or foreign relation in them may pass for a very plain Text to prove that it concerns no less than our Eternal Salvation to know that Jesus Christ is the true God and this Interpretation gives the clearer reason and stronger Emphasis to his following rule v. 21. Little Children keep your selves from Idols If then our Lord's design was to procure Man's everlasting Salvation a right and certain knowledge of that on which Eternal Life depends cannot be impertinent to our Lord's design And if to worship God according to his declared Will be the purpose of every one that embraces Christianity exclusively of all other Religions he that thinks it necessary in his worship to distinguish between these respects due to a meer Creature and those Honours belonging to the Creator cannot miss his purpose or lose his labour and He who by solid proofs drawn from clear and pertinent places of Scripture makes his Faith in this particular rational cannot easily incur any extraordinary danger though without so doing he may incur a fatal hazard and thus we come to a direct discourse on that Particular where these things will be more fully considered Having concluded the first words of this Verse Without Controversie great is the Mystery of Godliness to signifie to us the concurrence of the Christian Faith with the Worlds general vogue in relation to Religion and that Mysteries great and obscure are very necessary to the perpetuation of that Faith and rend'ring it venerable among conceited and presuming disputants it cannot be unuseful to discourse on the first instance the Apostle makes use of to illustrate the Mystery of Godliness or of the Christian Faith viz. God's manifesting himself in the flesh or appearing and showing himself to humane eyes cloth'd in humane nature for though God manifests himself a thousand several ways in his works of Creation and Providence where his Truth Justice Mercy Power Wisdom c. are notoriously evident to diligent observers yet all these manifestations of himself are at a distance and such as though they give us a very fair Idea of divine Goodness as in himself yet conduce little to Humane happiness while Men reflect upon themselves as miserably degenerate from that original excellency they were created in and as such who have extremely abus'd all those evidences of God's power and influence upon the World which have been given for restraining them within due bounds and making them submissive to a superiour Law such reflections teach Men to look upon themselves as in a ruinous state fit subjects for eternal displeasure and of themselves wholly incapable of satisfying divine justice or retrieving forfeited happiness and upon God onely as a severe Judge and powerful revenger of whom they could onely conclude that he would vindicate his own honour upon those that injured it and punish those to extremity who had not duly improved those overtures of himself which he had made in his visible works What Man in such a case might wish for is easie enough to conjecture He that 's falling down a precipice would bless the Hand that would save him from death and he that 's going immediately to execution would be overjoy'd to hear of a pardon so would almost despairing wretched sinful Man do wish for some proportionable power to interpose between himself and vengeance But such a power onely could be in God and yet so great a benefit could be procur'd for Man onely by such an adequate satisfaction to God's anger as could be given by a Man Here Humane conceptions were entirely at a loss the universal imperfection of their nature they plainly understood and so the impossibility of meer humane satisfaction they easily found it was no created being it was no mere man though strengthened by Divine assistance nay it was none of those pure and happy Spirits who attend on celestial Ministrations that could stem that prodigious tide of immense wrath therefore God himself must interpose but how Infinity should be confin'd how He who grasp'd the Universe in his hand should stoop from Heaven for the sake of those who had affronted his goodness before how He should condescend to assume Humanity the necessary Medium of peace were Mysteries too great for Man to fathom and Hopes too large for guilty souls to please themselves with but what was so very obscure to Man was plain and easie to the Almighty and when the time of his redeem'd was come when he look'd and there was none to help Isay 63.4 5. and wondred that there was none to uphold then his own arm brought salvation to the World It was then in that absolute fulness of time when sins and miseries and anger were at the height and all things seem'd inevitably running to eternal destruction that God sent forth his Son made of a Woman made under the Law to redeem them that were under the Law from those burdens and that death to which they were enslav'd to stop the fatal final sentence then ready to be past God himself was so made manifest in the flesh In relation to which great action we shall assert That Jesus Christ the Messias appearing in our Humane nature or cloth'd with flesh and blood was really the Son of God That the same blessed Jesus was God equal with his Father or really and truly God as well as real Man That it was necessary that
to effect our Salvation God and particularly God the Son should assume our nature to himself We shall make some deductions from these Considerations We assert then That that Man call'd Jesus Christ and reputed the Messias or the Saviour of the World who appear'd in our nature was really indeed the Son of God It 's he whose Genealogy we have in Scripture descended according to the flesh from the Royal Line of the House of Judah the true and legal Heir of David's sacred Family whose birth into the World as it was mean and despicable so it was very publick and unquestionable We find his actions set down at large in the Gospels and Him according to their history a Man of a blameless life and conversation and of inexpressible condescenscions and goodness we observe him going about and doing good the proper character of a great Person in the Country of Judaea healing Diseases casting out Devils forgiving Sins and that not by a precarious or surreptitious power but by a really supreme inherent Authority of his own We meet with him afterwards accus'd by Jews condemn'd by Romans and according to their Law crucified between two Thieves on Mount Calvary buried by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus rais'd again in a stupendious manner conversant among several Persons who were his Companions and admirers before talking eating and drinking with them forty days together and afterwards in publick view lifted up above the Clouds beyond the utmost reach of humane Eyes this Man call'd Jesus Christ by the Writers of all these things was really the Son of God He that would recommend a new discovery to the World gives a considerable advantage to its reputation by the extraordinary worth and merit of the Author and therefore whereas the Gospel or the glad tidings of salvation were the newest and most glorious discovery the World was capable of and though the most welcome to a declining Age yet with all the most incredible it was incumbent upon the first divulgers of it to recommend it upon the wisdom and power of its founder The reputed wise Men of old to render them more venerable to the multitude were wont to derive the first Originals of their great Benefactors from the Gods But never was any benefit conferr'd on any place or Person by the kindest Patron which could stand in competition with that which the blessed Jesus conferr'd on the whole World therefore never could any such publick Benefactor be with equal reason deriv'd from Heaven with him From thence therefore the inspired Writers deduce his Pedigree too as well as from David and tell us boldly that that great Man whose praises they celebrate in their Writings was indeed the Son of God which they assert not in a Metaphorical sense as the Psalmist calls Rulers and Governours Psal 82.6 I have said ye are Gods and ye are all of you Children of the most high As the Angels are stil'd by God himself in his question to Job Whereupon are the foundations of the Earth fastened or who laid the corner stone thereof When the Morning stars sang together Job 38.6 7. and all the Sons of God shouted for joy as believers are stil'd by the Evangelist As many as received him to them gave he power to become the Sons of God even to them that believe on his name John 1.12 1 Joh. 3.2 And again Beloved we are now the Sons of God But the holy Writers make him the Son of God in a plain literal sense as Seth is call'd the Son of Adam being begotten of him as Isaac of Abraham as Solomon of David or as we generally understand the word in our common expressions of the nearest Relations declaring him so the Son of God begotten of his father before all worlds in contradistinction to creation But it would not have been enough to satisfie the world in the truth of that extraordinary original for them to assert it for tho' men value great discoveries according to the credit of their Authors yet the weight and greatness of the discoveries make them nice and curious in their disquisitions about them that they may not be impos'd on for how wretched a disappointment would it have been for a whole world to be big with the violent expectation of a Saviour to be throughly sensible of their own necessity to have a company of men boldly publish to them that the expected Saviour was really come and qualified suitably to those wonderful expectations they had of him and yet to find nothing but a sham or an imposture at last a Bar-cozbi the Son of a ly instead of a Barcochab the Star that should have risen in Jacob as the unhappy Jews were deluded at last In such a case Men are wont to look for clear and uncontroulable evidences of the authority of the discoverer and had not God himself afforded such to the world in relation to the descent and original of our Saviour it would scarce have been reconcileable to infinite justice to have condemn'd the world for not believing on him Nor would Almighty God have made use of those effectual means to satisfie humane doubts had he not himself judged it highly rational that those creatures of his for whom he intended so great a good should receive entire satisfaction in the truth and nature of that good bestow'd In the evidences of his being the Son of God lay all the strength and weight of his Doctrine and the validity and efficacy of that Repentance preach'd by the Apostles in his name had he after all those glorious pretences been one of an inferior rank there never had been so great an Impostor in the world as Christ nor such frontless cheats as his Apostles nor such abused besotted bewitched Creatures in Nature as the Christians in all ages have been Therefore to vindicate both their own Credit and that of their Master the Evangelists in their writings first appeal to the common knowledge of those who liv'd at the same time that Christ convers'd on earth at which time had what they published been false it would certainly have been quickly confuted by the interested Jews and Romans For the Jews who saw themselves expos'd under the characters of the most obstinate and ingrateful infidels in the world and the Romans who saw themselves traduced as tools in the hands of their own vassals to carry on the most barbarous and unreasonable cruelties would certainly have vindicated themselves to the utmost against their slanderers could they have found any flaws in those things they delivered yet the Jews never went about to deny the existence of Jesus the supposed Son of Joseph nor the reality of those mighty works perform'd by him but rather to shew the possibility of all those things tho' Jesus were not the Messias wherein they were easily baffled and the Gentiles endeavoured to confront his Miracles by the pretended wonders wrought by Simon Magus and Apollonius Thyanaeus and so to depretiate the Messiah's
not at all careful upon this matter He does them frequently too many to be registred but all in his own name He Wills this and He Commands the other thing to be done so the Winds the Waves the various Distempers afflicting Mankind the Devils themselves tremble at and obey his Word the Dead rise at the hearing of his Voice every thing he speaks is powerful and authentick yet no Praying before no making use of his Father's name no more notice taken of him in the operation than as if the Father and the Son had stood in no kind of relation to one another Nay even in the case of Lazarus which if any must carry the face of an exception We see our Saviour praising his Father indeed for his readiness to hear him yet expressing himself so only for their sakes that were by Joh. 11.43 but afterwards speaking to him in the Mandatory stile and only in his own name bidding him come forth Now from this carriage of our Saviour we must either conclude him to have been One with his Father and so whatsoever honour came to himself must also by so doing come to his Father or else we must conclude him a careless ambitious sacrilegious Person one ready to rob God of his Honour to take all opportunities of assuming that to himself which belong'd to God for that 's plain he did because he permitted those on whom he wrought Miracles to offer the same adorations to him which belong'd to the most high God which never any Man tho' never so holy had admitted of before Here then we are reduced to a necessity either of saying with the blaspheming Jews that He had a devil and only by his power wrought all his miracles and that Almighty God either for want of power to hinder him or out of design to have Mankind deluded and abus'd to their own ruine permitted him to do so many wonderful works Or else that the blessed Jesus was really that holy meek just eternal Son of the eternal God that he assumed no more to himself than what really belong'd to him therefore that he had really power in himself and originated from himself to do whatsoever he pleased therefore that he was God the true the most high God That we may be the better assured that his Power was so innate and inherent we may observe that whereas his Apostles after his ascent did many miracles and those of an extraordinary nature so that Aprons and Handkerchiefs brought from the body of S. Paul and the very shadow of S. Peter carried a healing power with them yet there was nothing in all that equal to what hapned to our Saviour upon the Woman's cure of her bloody Issue who had but touched the hem of his garment The Apostles utterly disown'd the working any cures by any power of their own therein they acted modestly and piously but on the contrary our Saviour ascribes the miraculous cure done upon the woman only to Himself he takes notice of his garment and by it of himself being touch'd and that at such a time as a croud of people thronged him and he says not that his Father's power or the hand of God or any thing of that nature was gone out to cure her But says he Luk. 8.46 somebody hath touch'd Me for I perceive that virtue is gone out of Me and it 's recorded of him before that the whole multitude sought to touch him Luk. 6.19 for there went virtue out of him and healed them all Now tho' we know well enough that nothing but his humane nature and the accidents attending that were the objects of common sense yet we know withal that meer flesh and blood tho' it be never so pure and innocent has no inherent power by a distant or a mediate touch to cure any distempers or to be sensible of such a cure wrought by any Passion in themselves The Kings and Queens of England have often cured that disease from thence sencelesly named the Kings Evil by a touch the effect is wonderful indeed but we never heard of those Kings or Queens pretending they were sensible of any virtue passing out from them for the cure of the Patient nor have any that have pretended to the sanative faculty yet dream'd of any such thing as a self-originated power in themselves to that purpose the King the Prophet the Physician touches but God only heals this inherent Power then in Christ was derived from that Union betwixt his divine and humane Nature that enabled him in every respect to bear our sins and to carry our infirmities so that from him as from an inexhaustible fountain all the health both of our bodies and souls is derived but such a fountain can nothing but God be therefore He is God We said the Health of Souls is derived from Him as from its fountain or original a meer Man may be an instrument in God's hand to help forward the salvation of a Soul his Prudence Learning Industry Charity may by God's assistance conduce in a great measure to that excellent end but Man of himself can do nothing in the case Our Saviour here makes that just Invitation to Mankind Matt â—1 28 as from himself Come to me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest it 's not come to God or come to my Father but come to Me but it would be intolerable Presumption not to say Blasphemy to use such an invitation if coming to Christ were not an equivalent to coming to God and the Father He that sees me sees my Father says our Lord for I and my Father are one he that comes to me comes to my Father for my Father gives rest to Souls weary and heavy laden with sin and so do I My Father does so not by any adventitious or precarious but by his own inherent and essential Power and so do I. No Apostle no Prophet ever used such language only the Son of God and his blessed Father and the Holy Ghost can say as of himself Come to me I will give you rest And well may He pretend to give rest to the labouring Soul who can authoritatively from himself forgive sins a thing which our Saviour frequently does in the Gospel The mentioning of that action gives us a strange representation of the stubborn senceless obstinacy of the Jewish nation our Saviour when the Man sick of the Palsie was brought to him for cure says to him Matt. 9.2 Son be of good cheer thy sins are forgiven thee and to Mary Magdalen when at His feet Luk 7.48 thy Sins are forgiven thee We cannot doubt but this was spoken as for the good of the persons to whom they were applyed so for the good of those who stood by for these things were not spoken in a corner Now the Pharisees stumbled upon a question proper enough on the occasion v. 49. who is this that forgiveth sins also So the Scribes on
That our Lord is called Immanuel by the Prophet as cited by S. Matthew or God with us that we might not think he was Man only but that we might know he was God too If then Christ was God as well as Man his Divine Nature being mentioned in contradistinction to his humane Nature Irenaeus cannot mean that He who was really a Man was only metaphorically God but that he was as really and essentially God as He was Man which is what we believe With Irenaeus agrees Clemens of Alexandria who thus teaches the Gentiles in his Admonition to them We are the rational Creatures of God the Word so he calls our Saviour after the Evangelist S. John Admon ad Gent. p. 5. l. D. by whom we pretend to Antiquity because God the Word was in the beginning but because the Word was from above He was and is the divine original of all things but since He has now taken upon him the name of Christ a name suitable to his power and which was sanctified of old I call him a new song This refers to his former Allegorical discourse wherein he endeavours to describe every thing under terms proper to Harmony or Musick This Word then this Christ who was at first in God was both the cause of our original existence and of our well-being But now this Word himself has made himself manifest to men who alone is both God and Man the cause of all our good by whom we being taught to live well are sent from hence to eternal life for according to that inspired Apostle of our Lord the Grace of God hath appear'd to all men teaching them that denying all ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live godly righteously and soberly in this present world looking for the glorious coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ This is the new song that manifestation of God the Word who was in the beginning and before all things and now shines brightly out to us He appear'd but lately who was our Saviour before He who is appear'd in him who is because the Word was with God and that Word by which all things were made makes his appearance as a Master that Word which as a Creator gave us life in our first formation appearing now as a Master or Teacher has taught us to live well that hereafter as God he may bestow upon us eternal life Thus far that very learned Father and his whole discourse does so plainly teach us the Pre-existence of our Saviour before his Conception in the Womb of the blessed Virgin and consequently his Divine Nature in his eternal being with the Father that the most ignorant person in the World may plainly understand what the Faith of this Writer was Thus afterwards speaking of John Baptist the forerunner of our Saviour he tells them John taught men to be prepared for the presence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of God the Christ Afterwards speaking of that care our Saviour took to have the Gospel preached he adds The Lord did not effect so great work in so short a time without a sacred care He was despised in appearance but adored indeed being a Purifyer a Saviour and extremely kind The Divine Word being really most manifest God and put into an equal rank with the Lord of all things for as much as he was his Son and the Word was in God Ibid. p. 68. l. D. he was neither disbelieved when he was first preached nor was he unknown or unacknowledged when assuming the presence of a Man and being made flesh he managed the saving design of his assumed Humanity Again speaking to those who are blind with sin and folly under the person of Tiresias that blind Thebane Wizzard and inviting such to believe in Christ he speaks thus If thou wilt thou too shalt be initiated into these Mysteries and join in the Choir of blessed Angels about the unbegotten the never to be destroyed the only true God God the Word assisting in the same Hymn with us He is eternal the only Jesus or Saviour the great High-priest of God who is the Father p. 70. L D. he intercedes for Men and he perswades them to goodness I shall instance but in one passage more in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where having cited that of the Psalmist Who shall ascend into the Hill of the Lord or who shall stand in his holy place c. at large He thus descants upon it The Prophet says He in my opinion here briefly describes the true Gnostick or the man of true knowledge to us and by the bye David shews us that our Saviour is God for he calls him the face of the God of Jacob who brought us glad tidings and taught us of or concerning the Spirit therefore the Apostle calls the Son the Character of the glory of God Him who taught the truth concerning God and who represented to us that God and the Father was one only and Almighty whom none could know but the Son Stromat l. 7. p. 733. C. and He to whom the Son shall reveal him That God is but one appears by those who seek the face of the God of Jacob whom our God and our Saviour characterises as the only God and father of Good Here then we have the Father true and real God the Son true and real God and yet but one God and this is that Faith which we preach To Clemens I shall only add his Scholar Origen for the Greek Church a man of extraordinary eminence in his time who in his third Book against Celsus that great adversary of the Christian Religion reflecting upon the vanity of Heathen Gods and their incapacity to help those that depend on them he tells Celsus that upon this very reason because there is no help in false gods it 's a sure Rule among Christians that no man should trust in any being as God except only in Jesus Christ and a little after whereas Celsus objects against us so often that we believe Jesus consisting of a mortal body to be God and imagine our selves very pious in so thinking he answers Let those who accuse us know that He whom we know and believe to be God of old and to be the Son of God he is of himself the Word the Wisdom and the Truth and that even that mortal body and reasonable Soul which he assumed by its Communication and Unity and Mixture with the Word or with his divine nature arose to so great a height as to be God i.e. his humane and his divine nature make by a substantial or essential union one God and that I give no false interpretation to his words here will appear by what I shall allege afterwards It 's all along the humour of Celsus then when he speaks in the Person of a Jew and when he speaks in his own Name and Person to reproach the Christians with the irrationality of their Religion on that particular account that they owned Christ as
Trinity where among other things quoting the words of the Prophet Hosea I will not save them by my bow nor by horses Hos 1.7 nor by horsemen but I will save them by the Lord their God He infers from thence If God promises them Salvation in their God or by him and yet saves them only by Christ why should any Man be afraid to call Christ God since he is called so by his Father in Scripture Nay if the Father saves none but by God no man can be sav'd by God the Father who does not confess Christ to be God in and by whom God promises to give salvation whosoever acknowledges him to be God shall obtain Salvation in Christ De Trinit fol. 236. who is God whosoever acknowledges him not to be God shall not be sav'd by him With a great deal more to the same purpose In conclusion he takes notice of some who in those days argued at the Socinian rate That if Christ were God and Christ suffered Death then the Deity suffered death to which he answers appositely enough That if Christ had been only God and had dyed their conclusion had been true but Christ being man as well as God his Humanity suffer'd indeed but his Divine Nature was unprejudiced untouch'd Thus have we largely and impartially examined this Father about this Doctrine of Christ's being God and his assertions are so plain and direct and the Heresies he impeach'd in his writings of such a nature that they both concur exactly in the confirmation of the same that our Saviour was truly and really God equal with his Father and the most high God We have another glorious luminary of the same Church S. Cyprian that holy Martyr of Jesus Christ and the laborious Bishop of Carthage who as he was a great admirer of the writings of Tertullian so concurred with him in the same Doctrine of the Divinity of Jesus Christ S. Cyprian then in his book of the vanity of Idols having setled that fundamental truth That there is only one God presently shews that our Saviour is God too this he would not have done had he judged the inference good that to believe Jesus Christ was God was to make two Gods He would not so soon contradict himself nor go about to set up a new Idol when he was endeavouring to exterminate the old Thus then He tells us That whereas the Jews a stubborn and rebellious people had long abus'd the Goodness of God God was resolved to call to himself from among the Gentiles a People that should shew forth better effects of his mercy than they did the Manager of this Goodness Cyprian de Idolor vanit Edit Ox. p. 15. Grace and Method was He who is the Word and Son of God who had been foretold by all the Prophets the enlightner and teacher of all Mankind This Son is the Power the Fulness the Wisdom the Glory of God He enter'd into the Virgin assumed flesh by the co-operation of the Holy Ghost God united with Man He is our God He is Christ who put on the nature of those Men whom He leads to his Father Christ would be what Man is that Man might be what Christ is In his second book of Testimonies against the Jews p. 34 35. he spends one whole chapter in heaping up such Scripture texts as before Socinian Commentaries were thought on were judg'd sufficient proofs that Christ was God In particular he insists on those passages of the 45 Psalm which are applied to our Saviour so directly by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 1 Joh. 5.7 That famous place There are three that bear record in heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one has been much controverted it seems to be a very plain text for the Trinity and consubstantiality or equality or sameness of nature in the Father Son and Holy Ghost but Criticks observe that this verse is wanting in several Copies of considerable Antiquity and Dr. Burnet in his account of the Library in Swisserland See his Lett. takes notice of its being wanting in several Manuscripts he had purposely examined yet after all our S. Cyprian much more antient than the eldest Manuscript he or any other Critical Writerâ— have yet given us an account of in his book of Church-unity quotes it as we read it iâ— our Bibles Socinus takes it for granted thâ— passage was inserted into the Bible by somâ— zealous Trinitarian who made use of anâ— fraud to advance their own Error S. Hiâ—rome who had found it wanting in somâ— Copies in his time which was about 400 years after Christ imputes the want of it more rationally to Arrian transcribers who finding themselves pinch'd with so plain a text when they could not answer it resolved to take it quite away This he signifies in a short Epistle to Eustochium printed formerly frequently in the Latin Bibles of late omitted as is observed by the learned Dr. Fell late Bishop of Oxford in his notes on S. Cyprian S. Cyprian by quoting the verse as we have it confirms S. Jerome's opinion and renders that of Socinus ridiculous for he quoted it before the Arrian Heresie was founded and that twice in his Works therefore could he have no such design as Socinus insinuates Yet S. Cyprian's opinion is that whosoever does not believe this Unity of the Father and the Son De Vnit Ec. p. 10â— as laid down in that Text does not believe the Law of God nor hold the Faith and Truth of the Father and the Son to his Salvation The â—ame S. Cyprian recommending Patience to Christians and that in a time when the â—aging Persecution made it extremely neâ—essary he advances it by the example of Christ for says He Jesus Christ Deus Dominus noster Our God and our Lord â—as taught us this virtue not only in his Words De bono Patientiae p. 213. â—ut in his Actions which he clears as Tertullian before him by his Descent from Heaven to earth assuming our nature and â—iffering in it Again in his account of â—he Council of Carthage held about those â—ho had been baptised by Hereticks among the suffrages of the Bishops there present Fortunatus Bishop of Thuchabore declares Jesus Christus Dominus Deus noster p. 233. c. 17 Dei Patris Creatoris filius Jesus Christ our Lord and God the Son of God the Father and Creator has founded his Church not upon Heresies c. 29.235 but upon a Rock The same title is given him by Euchratius Bishop of Thenâ— the same by Venantius Bishop of Tinisa a Confessor had not this been agreeable to the common sentiments of the Church in those days it would certainly have been the occasion of some contests and others would have observed and reflected on the incautiousness of their Collegues but we meet with no differences on this occasion therefore we rightly conclude they spoke agreeably to the Catholick
Father had made the World it self and all other things by him and that by him He had made known to Men whatsoever he desired should be known by them Thus we have Socinus his own confirmation of what we had before produced as the sense of the Ante-Nicene Fathers After this he touches slightly upon some pieces written by those first Fathers which are of suspected credit but we have nothing to do with them having quoted nothing from any of them but what among Learned Men at present is of undoubted reputation As for the Fathers who writ after the Council of Nice he fairly owns that the Socinian's business is to oppose those Errors which they gave credit to by their Authority in the Church of God The Fathers then are on our side whether those of the eldest or those of an inferior date nor can we desire a greater advantage to our cause since we can neither find out any means by which these Hereticks should know God's Will and Meaning in his Word better than these Antient and Heroick Assertors of the Christian Religion We have no account of any new Visions or Revelations any of them have had Nor have we heard of any Miracles perform'd by them in confirmation of their Heterodoxies therefore when we believe that Jesus Christ the Son of God our Saviour is God equal with his Father we follow that truth which to our apprehension is very plain in Scripture which holy Saints and Martyrs have from the very beginning of Christianity embrac'd and which really is That Faith which was once delivered to the Saints as God willing will yet more plainly appear hereafter I observe here by the way what Socinus touches upon and what others of his Disciples allege farther that tho' the Fathers do thus make Jesus Christ to be God yet they always put a great difference between Him and his Father and insist particularly on his own Words in the case where He tells the Jews That his Father is greater than He that his Father orders commands directs and enables Him to do every thing c. It 's true they do sometimes speak suspitiously in this matter but what solves the Objection from such Texts of Scripture solves those Objections which may be drawn from such expressions in those antient Writers viz. That where they urge such things their meaning is only to assert that difference there is between Christ's Divine and his Humane Nature as He is Man we doubt not but he is inferior to his Father that he received power from Him and acted here upon earth in subordinacy to hi◠as He was God he was equal with his Father always united with him having the same Will Power Knowledge and Wisdom which his Father had by which means whereas meer flesh and blood would have had a strange reluctance against such sufferings as were necessarily prepar'd for him his Divinity in concurrence with that of his Father supported and enabled meer Humanity to effect and make good the work he had undertaken Thus we find the same Scriptures asserting of Christ Acts 2.32 that his Father raised him from the dead and that he rose from the dead of himself he asserting to himself only that power of laying down his life Joh. 10.18 and of taking it up again and both true as He was God as well as Man none could have taken his life from him without his own consent as He was Man as well as God none could have brought that flesh and blood to life again which was now a carcase by the reparation of the rational Soul without the concurrence of Almighty God but as such He and his Father were one They both Will'd and both Acted as they both were able to effect the same thing But besides this which answers those before-named seeming difficulties it 's enough to say that whereas the first Fathers of the Christian Church were irreconcileable enemies to Idolatry or to worshipping a Multiplicity of Gods which is the same thing whereas in all their Writings they took care to vindicate the Honour of the one true God in opposition to all false Gods when they assert Jesus Christ to be God they mean not that He is a false God for they prove themselves to be the only true Worshippers and they make it their boast that they worship Jesus Christ therefore they look'd upon him as true and real God and worship'd him only as such If then these Fathers did think Christ to be a God of an inferior or subordinate Nature or to be a Created God as the Socinians would have him be they directly contradicted their own Principles and brought in again that multiplicity or at least plurality of Gods they had before exploded As for the notion of a made or created God or a God à parte post as Socinus calls him it 's a dream so senceless and full of contradiction that it 's only to be wondered at that Men pretending to any sharpness of Reason should ever stumble upon so absurd a conceit For Scripture no where makes a distinction between God self-originated and God made by another and both true but it lays us down a plain difference between the true God the Creator and the Creature or any thing that is created by that true God and therefore tho' there be in Nature such things as Spiritual and Corporeal Beings yet the allowance of that difference makes or introduces no intermediate Beings between the Creator and the Creature every thing that is not God is made by God every thing that 's made by God is not God and so it must follow that if the Son be made by God he is not God but a Creature if the Son be in all particulars equal with God he is not made by God but is God himself Again The notion of a true and real God is infinity in every respect Heathens Jews Mahumetans Christians all agree in that if this be a true notion of a real God it must be such a notion as must sufficiently distinguish him from all other Beings infinite Attributes being wholly and only proper to and inseparable from Him If then these infinite attributes do agree to our Lord and Saviour He is and must therefore be the true God in contradistinction to all created Beings if they do not agree to him then He cannot be the true God therefore he must be a false God therefore he must be an Idol therefore he must be no God at all and this is the true and inevitable consequence of the Socinian notion of a made or a Created God For that the Supreme God should make another supreme as himself and yet at the same time continue supreme himself is nonsense and a contradiction that the Supreme God should make another God who yet is no God because the attributes belonging to a real God are not applicable to Him is a contradiction too therefore the Socinians and their Adherents must either declare in plain
them nor worship them he excluded every Creature from a capacity of receiving divine Honours whatsoever was capable of being represented by any figure or image if it was worshipped was an Idol the Creature represented was so as well as the representation and invisibility as well as any other attribute is ascribed to the true God as a peculiarity whereby we might know him to be the only proper object of our Worship by both these precepts our Saviour is perfectly shut out from being the subject of Divine Honours as he is suppos'd by the Socinians to be a God in subordinacy to his Father and as he is a Creature and capable as other Creatures be of being represented by a material Image which is wholly inconsistent with a true Divinity For tho' the Socinians allow our Saviour to be the Son of God in a peculiar manner by reason of his being begotten in the Womb of the Virgin by the Holy Ghost or as they call it by the influence of Almighty God this does not at all put him out of the rank of the Creatures nor does that Glory and Honour and Immortality which they suppose his Father to have adorned him with after his resurrection make him a God who was before a Man for all these things are reserved too in a just proportion for all such as die in the true Faith of Christ by which they too in their turns must necessarily be Gods tho' because their proportion of honour is suppos'd inferiour to that of Christ they must be Gods of an inferiour rank and quality but this Collation of dignity effects nothing at all and the Socinian distinction between a God made by the supreme God and a God made by Men comes to nothing at all The Poets Divinity in that point is better and more rational than theirs Qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus Non facit ille Deos Qui rogat ille facit He who represents a Divine face in gold or marble makes it not a God but he who prays to it makes it such So if God render the body of our Lord never so illustrious that makes him not a God but the presenting of Humane supplications to him makes him one so that Christ by that means comes to be a God made so by Man as well as any other Idol whatsoever is therefore according to the Socinians own principle Christ being a meer Man if he be prayed to must be an Idol There can be no true God but He who is the Creator of all things nor does it lye within the reach of omnipotence it self to make a Creature a Creator therefore either Christ must be the Creator of all things or else he cannot be true God He remains a meer Creature still and all those adorations presented to him by the Christian World are notorious and damnable Idolatry The common notion of Idolatry confirms this so S. Cyprian tells us according to the notion he had of it Idololatria committitur cum Divinus honor alteri datur Idolatry is then committed when that Honour which belongs to God is given to another Gregory Nazianzen gives us this definition of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idolatry is a transposition of divine worship from the maker to the thing made from God the Creator of all things to the Creature Therefore so long as our Saviour is really but a Creature which he must be if he be not the eternal God so long all that Worship paid to him according to this antient notion is Idolatry Now let a Socinian if he please impeach those of the Roman Communion as Idolaters we 'l agree with him and we really believe them to be so but there 's no Argument which can properly be made use of against that Church to convince them of Idolatry by reason of their praying to Angels or departed Saints from which practice they have been sufficiently and undeniably proved to be Idolaters but the same will hold good against these The strength of all Arguments against Rome lying in that That they transfer the Honour only due to the Creator to a Creature which is as true of all those who pay divine Worship to our Saviour if he be no more than a Creature The Gods who have not Created all things who have not Created Heaven and Earth shall perish from the earth and from under the Heaven as we alledged from the Prophet before but according to the Socinians our Lord did not make the Heaven and the Earth Therefore tho' they say he is True God at the same time they say He is not The true God He must be one of those Gods which must so perish A conclusion which our Adversaries either must deny or fairly renounce all their pretences which indeed are but weak at best to Christianity Divine Honours cannot be lawfully offered or Prayers lawfully presented to any created Being but upon supposition of some defect in the Creator for a positive Command from him to that purpose could it be suppos'd would not be enough for a Divine Command open and plain cannot make that which in its own nature is Evil to be good things morally good or evil are eternally so and that from that consideration that their moral goodness or illness flows from their agreement with or contradiction to the Divine Nature Now what was once contradictory to the divine Nature God himself cannot make agreeable to it because He cannot change his own Nature which yet must be if that which being abstractedly considered was a sin against him should now under the same abstracted consideration 1 Tim. 3.16 be no longer so therefore we are sure God himself cannot command any thing that is morally evil but diverting that â—orship which belongs to the Creator of all things from him to his own Creature let that Creature be what it will is morally evil it 's Idolatry therefore God cannot command it therefore he cannot give or have given Christians any positive or open Command to Worship our Saviour if he be a meer Creature because that 's translating that Worship due only to the true God to the Creature To suppose any defect in the Creator is blasphemous if there can be yet any just reason or apparent necessity of Mens addressing themselves to any Being which is but their fellow Creature for the attainment of that for which they were wont to apply themselves only to the supreme Being or Creator before it must be asserted but where there is all Perfection concluded to reside in that Sovereign Being to whom it 's granted on all hands that Divine Worship is due there 's no kind of necessity that we should apply our selves to any Intermedial Power or go round about when we may have a direct access to the throne of grace While we own Christ to be the True God as his Father is of the same eternal Nature whatsoever obliges us in our necessities to call upon the True God obliges to call upon
the bringing the Son of God to Death who had so terribly over-aw'd and baffled him before were the utmost reach of Hell's impetuous Malice yet that very Death of his gave the infernal Tyrant that fatal Blow which he strove by that very Prosecution to put off that mighty Wound which Hell with all its Stratagems and Strugglings can never recover and this great Event the vanishing of that thick Darkness at that very Instant of his Expiration which before when Nature's Lord was in his Agonies cover'd the Face of the whole Earth the terrible Convulsions of the Earth the Dissolution of mighty Rocks the Rending of the Temples Vail and long buried Saints starting from their Graves as if at that very Instant of their Saviour's Death all the Chains of that King of Terrors had been broke at once with that great Event all these mighty Wonders seem'd to sympathize Now if with these greater and more inexpressible Sufferings we consider all the rest which our Saviour's Life was obnoxious to from his Cradle to his Tomb and withal reflect with due reverence upon the dignity of the Sufferer the distance may not seem so immoderately great as the Socinians would have us believe between the Satisfaction given and the Necessities of those it was given for But further we are to consider that the Eternity of that Death Adam's Sin had laid him open to did not proceed from the nature of the Sin it self for no Crime infinite in its own Nature can proceed from a finite Being but the Eternity of that Penalty annex'd to Sin in Man arises from the absolute Infinity of that God against whom he sinn'd and whose Anger when irreversible must be eternal from a respect to that infinite Goodness and Justice essential to him whereby he had conferred such mighty Benefits upon Man and laid so very reasonable Duties upon him which yet Man had ingratefully slighted and abused Now if the greatness of the Penalty arise from the greatness or immensity of the Being offended then the Greatness and Value of the Satisfaction tender'd in lieu of that Penalty arises from the same Consideration viz. the greatness of that God it 's offer'd to and accepted by and as we believe God to be infinitely Wise and therefore not to be impos'd upon so as with Glaucus in the Poet to exchange 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things of the greatest consideration for Trifles Gold for Brass so we reasonably conclude That God understands the true Value of that Satisfaction offer'd to Justice in the Sufferings of his Son we are assured that he has accepted of what his Son has done on our behalf therefore we are assured too that what he has so acted for us was and is equivalent to those Punishments we ought as Sinners to have undergone for the Satisfaction of eternal Justice Our Adversaries indeed would persuade us That if we insist so much on the Dignity of the Person suffering we must suppose that Christ suffer'd for our Sins as he was God or in his divine Nature which Supposition would be blasphemous and the Conclusion impossible but by their leave we neither mean nor pretend to any such thing We know and assert that Immortality cannot die and that the Deity cannot suffer yet we believe that He who was and is true God did both suffer and die but we know He that was God took upon him the Nature of Man and therefore though he could not nor did die as God yet that Humane Nature which he assum'd both could and did suffer and die and by that Suffering and Death among other Proofs evidenc'd the Reality of his being Man as well as he demonstrated his Divinity by his continual Words and Actions But now let us consider God condescending to take upon him our Nature that very Condescension alone is of infinite weight we look upon it as a very meritorious piece of Humility for a Soveraign Prince to take upon him the Habit of a Beggar only to procure good for some miserable undeserving Wretches the Athenians therefore long celebrated the glorious Memory of their last Monarch Codrus who put on the ignoble Arms of a private Centinel meerly that he might die by the hands of those Enemies who had been forewarn'd by an Oracle not to kill him by which private Habit assum'd he procur'd the safety of his Country but we never admire much the Humility or Condescension of that Beggar who wears Rags because he has no richer Habits to put on Now had the Son of God taken upon him a Royal Grandeur had he been wrapt in purple ador'd by all Mankind in his Cradle worn the Imperial Crown even in his Infancy or had he taken any other Methods we could fancy to our selves which might have render'd him considerable to the World yet this had been an infinitely greater Humiliation than for a Cyrus or an Alexander or a Trajan or a Constantine or a Tamerlane to have taken upon him the Person of the most contemptible Wretch in the World and for the noblest End It cannot well be questioned whether it was possible for God to take into his Own an Humane Nature or not Humanity it self being the product of his own Eternal Power was as all other parts of the Creation wholly at his command and though God's assuming a Body might be suppos'd enough of it self to render that Body immortal yet we may reasonably be assured that he could make it according to his own good Pleasure liable to Death as well as other Humane Bodies were but the Union between the Divine and Humane Nature being so close and absolute the Humane Nature howsoever submitted to Mortality must contract an infinite Honour and Dignity from thence but after all the Condescension is not a whit the less that he who is God should assume that mortal Nature nor is his Love less admirable who should assume it for our sake or who should stoop so low purely to make up that breach that was between his Father and Mankind but if to this Condescension we add a due consideration of those many Calamities or extreme Sufferings this Humane Nature was all along obnoxious to if we consider the Son of God as he was Man always in a state of Persecution and that carried on by various Degrees to the utmost Extremity and then recollect again that Honour it had contracted from that close and inseparable Union there was between the Divine and Humane Nature in Christ such Sufferings in such a Person must be acknowledg'd infinitely meritorious and consequently capable of atoning or satisfying for infinite Guilt though such Sufferings were not Eternal as those of sinful Men are or ought to have been for it 's not necessary that the Satisfaction given for Humane Sins should be of the same kind as if Divine Anger could have been averted by no Method but that of the Lex talionis or like for like but that the Redemption-Price paid for the guilty Prisoner should be of
offered both Gifts and Sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect as concerning the Conscience but Christ being come an High-Priest of good things to come not by the Blood of Goats and Calves but by his own Blood he enter'd in once into the Holy Place having obtained eternal Redemption for us that eternal Redemption is an absolute Freedom from the Punishment of Sin effected by Christ but only signified by Jewish Institutions the utmost of the virtue of those Symbolical Rites The same Author presently subjoins the Blood of Bulls and of Goats and the ashes of an Heifer sprinkling the Vnclean sanctified to the purifying of the Flesh i. e. God having for the use of the Jews ordained those Rites and Sacrifices and promised to receive them as Clean who punctually observed his Institutions they were consequently Legally clean who so observed them but otherwise than in the Sense of the Law no cleaner than the rest of Mankind who never heard of those Institutions but the Argument follows à fortiori How much more shall the Blood of Christ v. 13 14. who through the eternal Spirit offer'd himself without spot to God purge our Consciences from dead works to serve the Living God The Difference then between the Sacrifices is apparent enough those could only give a Legal Purity to Jews and that only to their Flesh without which Ceremonial Purity Men may be saved but the Sacrifice of Christ reaches the Pollutions of the Soul takes away the Defilements of the Mind and opens a free passage for us to the throne of Grace without which means Remission of Sins and eternal Salvation are never to be obtained Again the Apostle speaking of that Blood which according to the Levital Law was to be sprinkled upon several things adds It was necessary that the Patterns of things in the Heavens should be purified with these or rather the Patterns of Heavenly things for so the following Words explain the Phrase but that the Heavenly things themselves should be purified with better Sacrifices than these for Christ is not entred into the Holy places made with hands which are the Figures of the true but into Heaven it self now to appear in the presence of God for us i. e. as a Mediatour on our behalf but he enter'd not there that he might offer himself often as the High-Priest entred into the Holy place every year with the Blood of others for then must he often have suffered since the foundations of the World v. 22. ad 27. but now once 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the perfection or completion of Ages i. e. in the fulness of time hath he appear'd to put away sin by the Sacrifice of himself The same Divine Author urges the matter further in the following Chapter and directly confirms what I before asserted That the Law having a Shadow of good things to come and not the very Image of the things can never with those Sacrifices which they offered year by year continually make the comers thereunto perfect for then they would not have ceas'd to be offered because that the Worshippers once purged should have had no more Conscience of Sins and if the Worshippers could have been so purged at once by those Legal Sacrifices the successive continuance of them would in the same manner have purged all those concerned in them and then another and a better and greater Sacrifice would have been altogether needless but alas in those Legal Sacrifices there was every year made a Remembrance of the same Sins and of the Guilt of the same Sinners Heb. 10.1 2 3 4 10 11 12 14. for it was not possible that the Blood of Bulls and of Goats should take away Sin But now by the will of God we are sanctified through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all Every Jewish High-Priest stood daily ministring and offering the same Sacrifices which can never take away sin but this Man after he had offered one sacrifice for sin for ever sat down on the right-hand of God nor did he need to offer oftener for by one Offering he has perfected for ever them that are sanctified The Difference then between the Sacrifice of our Saviour and those of the Law is notorious but now if Remission of Sins could be granted to the Offerer of a Legal Sacrifice and yet a Legal Sacrifice could not take away the Sins of the Offerers and if the single Sacrifice of Christ did really take away Sins both which things are asserted in the Texts now cited then a great deal more must be meant by Christ's Sacrifice taking away sin than the bare Remission of Sins amounts to It must signifie taking away that Guilt of sin by which Men are render'd obnoxious to Punishment which considering that Justice inherent in Almighty God cannot be removed but by substituting somewhat so innocent in the Sinner's room that the Sufferings of that Innocent may satisfie for the Impunity of the Sinner but it being inconsistent with Justice to punish the Innocent for the Sinner if the Innocent be unwilling or depend upon his Innocence as his Security from Punishment therefore our Saviour for the acquittal of Divine Justice offer'd himself voluntarily to die for us and that when no Power on Earth could have taken away his Life from him which Offer of his being the effect of his eternal Will and his eternal Will the same with that of his Father Eternal Justice required his Sufferings and accepted those Sufferings though to be undergone in time as really and in their own intrinsic Nature equivalent to those Punishments otherwise due to a sinful World Upon the whole Christ died for or in the room of Sinners not to prevent their temporal but their eternal Death and by his Humiliation and his Death who was so Innocent and so Great gave eternal Justice as absolute Satisfaction as the eternal Punishment of all those who are now saved through Him would have done and therefore when Socinians seek for a reason for their denying Christ's Death to have been in our stead and fly to that of St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that Christ died for our Sins 1 Cor. 15.3 and plead from thence that since it cannot be said that Christ died in the room of our Sins no more can it be said that he died in the room of Sinners this is meer Stuff and Cavil for if Christ died on account of our Sins which is the direct English of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it 's then the more probable He died in the room and stead of those Sinners or suffer'd a vicarious Punishment for them for or on account of whose Sins he resign'd himself to the Death upon the Cross Or they know it 's no uncommon thing in Scripture to put Sin for Sinners and they 'll confess though not in that sense which we do that He who died for Sin died for Sinners they being inseparable from one another But
Righteousness that he might be just and the Justifier of him which believeth in Jesus the last Verse teaches us that Care taken to vindicate Divine Justice in the World's Eye by the Death of Christ which could scarce have been done had not Christ laid down his Life for us and in our room so satisfying the Justice of his Father and so the Justice of accepting as righteous every Believer in Christ is apparent too for if he have paid an entire Satisfaction a full Redemption-Price to his Father for our Sins on that Condition that those who believe on him should be Partakers of the Advantages flowing from thence God then could not be just should he refuse to justifie such Believers so that God's Justice is as deeply concerned in the Pardon of Believers as in the Punishment of Infidels Again St. Paul tells the Elders at Miletum Acts 20.28 that God had made them Overseers of that Church which he had redeemed with his own most precious Blood Now whereas God is said to have redeem'd his People Israel from their Aegyptian Bondage that Redemption being really effected by Jesus Christ who was that great and powerful Agent in that mighty Work what was done for Israel then was but the pre-signification of what he intended in due time for all Mankind so that he is called their Redeemer especially with respect to that future Design though the rescue of them from the Power of their Enemies be a Metaphorical Redemption and applicable in such a figurative sense to all those who even by an unjust Violence set open the Prison-doors and make a way for the escape of the most notorious Criminals Again Acts 7.35 it 's true Moses is stiled a Redeemer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and a Leader to Israel God making use of him as his Instrument to execute Vengeance upon rebellious Aegypt and to lead out Israel from thence with a mighty Hand and a stretched out Arm but we no where find that the Israelites were redeem'd by the Blood of Moses from their Slavery We find not that the Sins of the Israelites were forgiven on account of that deliverance God indeed sometimes heard the Intercessions of Moses for those ingrateful Wanderers and for his own Name 's sake was pleased to pass by their Offences and to glorifie his own Name in that constant protection he afforded them among their observing Enemies but the deliverance it self was no cause of God's remitting the Punishment due to their Trespasses nay their Ingratitude for that Mercy was a frequent reason of their Sufferings and amongst the rest of the total Destruction of that Generation of People who came out of Aegypt it 's further observable that that God who convers'd with Israel in their passage to Canaan calls them his Son his First-born and threatens Pharaoh that if he would not let them go He would destroy his Son his First-born Exod. 4.22 besides He required the Sanctification of the First-born of all Israel to himself which requiry of his obey'd together with the exact execution of his former Menace was a kind of Redemption-Price accepted by God on account of which he gave them deliverance from their Enemies Nor was the Blood of the Paschal Lamb insignificant in the case that Blood prefiguring the Blood of the Lamb of God which did really atone for the Sins of the World Upon the whole howsoever we may allow others besides our Saviour to be called Redeemers yet so long as there is no Parallelism between the Circumstances of those Redemptions they have wrought and the Circumstances of Christ's we must of necessity conclude that Scripture means a great deal more by naming Christ a Redeemer than by giving Moses or any other eminent Person the same Character that Name is figurative as applied to all others it is proper as applied to Christ we may illustrate the Case by such an Instance as this A Soveraign Prince blest with One onely and infinitely beloved Son having in his power a Capital Offender against his Laws in concert with that Son determines that such Punishment as is proportionable to his Crimes ought to be inflicted on him yet pitying the Weakness and deplorable Condition of the Criminal and designing to make his Clemency towards the Offender evident He in concert with his own Son orders it to be proclaim'd every where that if any Person not obnoxious to the same Punishment by reason of personal Guilt loves the Condemn'd so well as to offer himself freely to undergo proportionable Penalties to what the Law would have inflicted upon him the Criminal acknowledging the Kindness offer'd and his mighty engagements to his Deliverer shall be free this Condition once propos'd the Prince's Son lays hold on the Opportunity to express his Love to the Offender offers himself to die for him and since the Law requires it and must be satisfi'd really does so the Prince according to his Proclamation accepts of his Son 's vicarious Punishment the Law and Justice have their Course and the grateful Criminal obtains his Freedom thus are Believing Sinners redeemed from that Punishment they are obnoxious to with respect to infinite Justice The Socinians tell us indeed That Christ's Obedience to his Father even to Death was no more than was due on his own account and that though it was perfect and blameless yet he received Rewards for it infinitely beyond what he could merit by such Obedience This is to put our Saviour into the State and Condition of the common World for all those Glories promis'd to repenting Sinners are infinitely greater than they by any personal merit can pretend to but it seems very unreasonable that he should take upon him as a Mediator between God and man or that his Name should be so powerfully influential for the advantage of others who had just cause to be wholly employ'd in expressions of Gratitude for his Father's Kindness to himself or to be wholly ecstasi'd with Admirations of that unbounded Goodness which had confer'd such mighty Blessings on him beyond his deserts this we rationally suppose will be the Employ of beatified Souls and ought to be Christ's too upon the Socinian Hypothesis we own Christ's Obedience as he was Man to his Father's Will to have been most perfect and absolute his Original Divine Nature never knew any thing of dissent with his Eternal Father therefore that Humane Nature he assum'd could not be liable to Disobedience 2 Cor. 5.21 It 's observed of him that He knew no sin he neither had nor could have so much as a deprav'd Inclination he had no strugglings within himself between the Law of his Members and the Law of his Mind which yet he could not have been without had he been a meer Man a Partaker of Flesh and Blood at the same rate as the rest of Mankind were but the Deity assuming Humanity and so being naturally incapable of Sin we are not wont to assign Merit to his Life and Conversation any
by those particular Sufferings upon the Cross for his Father accepting that Price so paid down Christ as Man Heb. 7.25 acquired that Power as to be able to save to the utmost all those that come to God by him and therefore his humane Nature is immortal that he may always be capable of exerting such a Power But the Socinians would prove their position by that Heb. 8.4 That if Christ were on Earth he should not be a Priest seeing that there are Priests which offer Gifts according to the Law but here they are vastly wide from the Apostle's meaning for the Apostle writing there to Jews and arguing the matter with them concerning the Messiahship of Christ shows them that though he asserted Christ's High-priesthood yet he pretended not that he was any Successor of Aaron or the Legal High-priests for says he 7. 13. 14. it is evident that our Lord sprang out of Judah of which Moses spake nothing concerning the Priesthood therefore our Saviour was a Priest according to Prophecy after the order of Melchisedech and not only after that Order but for ever so a High-priest never to die never to be succeeded in that sacred Office by any other now being after that Order and under a necessity of having somewhat to offer as a Priest for so we are taught and 8.3 as a Priest having no right to offer any Jewish Sacrifices or Gifts the Order of Melchisedech not having any relation to them Christ offered himself the greatest the noblest Offering in the World having made that glorious Offering he soon left Earth having there no further immediate concern for could he have made his Title to Priesthood never so plain and offered himself never so freely among the Jews to execute the Priestly Office it had been to no purpose they having Priests of their own of the Aaronical Line of whom by Divine prescription they were to make use in things pertaining to God those Priests properly officiating so long as Sacrifices were legally necessary and when they were render'd unnecessary by the perfection of our Saviour's Sacrifice there being no need of any Priests at all to offer such external Sacrifices or Gifts the Apostles of Christ and their Followers succeeding their Master onely in the Instructing Governing and Interceding Parts of his Sacerdotal Function As for some part of their Argument to prove that Christ was not a compleat High-priest till his Entrance into Heaven it 's more dark and unintelligible to me than all those Mysteries in Religion which they pretend to explode for say they since the Apostle asserts that he ought in all things to be like his Brethren that he might be a compassionate and faithful High-priest in things pertaining to God and for expiating the Sins of the People it 's plain that so long as he was not like to his Brethren in all things i. e. in Afflictions and in Death so long he was not a compleat High-priest well is the Consequence from all this therefore he was not a compleat High-priest till he appeared in Heaven before his Father nothing less It will only follow on their own Principles that upon his Death without that Consequence the expiatory Sacrifice was compleated for there was no need of sanctifying the highest Heavens with his own Blood nor does this at all abate the necessity of Christ's Resurrection or Ascension into Heaven since without these that Faith fixt in one who had been false to his own Promises concerning himself who could neither have rais'd himself nor others who could neither have possest those eternal Mansions in his own Person nor have prepared them for his Followers who could neither have protected nor assisted them to the end of the World could have been no way justifiable but Christ's assimilation to his Brethren could proceed no further than to the end of his Sufferings which ended with his Death upon the Cross since none of his Brethren had been so glorified or had so risen as he did or so ascended into the presence of God to make Intercession for Sinners but indeed Death it self was not so essential to that Resemblance as they imagine for whosoever is liable to common Infirmities and obnoxious to Sufferings must of necessity be obnoxious to Death on the same reason though he should actually be translated with Enoch or carried up into Heaven with Elijah for though those holy Men after such a Translation were no more in a mortal state yet all that was no greater Privilege than all are Partakers of who after their final Resurrection die no more or than those who shall be found alive at the day of judgment for though such shall only be subjected to a change and not really die as others yet that hinders not but that in their own Natures they shall be mortal and as liable to Distempers so to Death as well as others To say truth our Saviour during the whose course of his Life and in all its particulars liv'd as Men do and being a Partaker of real and not fantastical Flesh and Blood it was not probable he should live otherwise only in his exemption from Sin he was beyond that general Rule the Deity not being capable of an Union with any thing imperfect or impure But having liv'd as real Man and suffer'd as such and having by himself throughly purged our Sins Heb. 1.3 he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high the Socinians indeed seem to point at somewhat of an Interstice between his Ascension and his Session at the right hand of God that 's not at all grounded upon Scripture for though we know he convers'd some time with his Disciples before he left them that was not the time of presenting himself before his Father and for any thing of a formal presenting himself before his Father as a Suppliant with his own Blood it 's an irrational Dream neither becoming Men pretending to Scriptural nor to Philosophical Reason for since we must to please their Fancies make an exact Parallelism between the Annual Sacrifice and that of Christ we must consider that the High-priest entring into the Holy of Holies had really with him the Blood of the Victim already dead and in that state of Death to continue till consumed by fire without the Camp and so never capable of a Resurrection but our Saviour rose again from the dead and though those of Rome would persuade us some of his Blood was gathered from under the Cross and preserv'd as a venerable Relick by some very Pious and Devout Persons and may be seen at this day by those who have Faith enough yet we doubt not but that Blood so shed was re-united to his Body being easily gathered by Almighty Power from that Diffusion it had suffer'd at his Crucifixion so that though our Lord had died yet his Blood after his Resurrection existed only as in a living Body therefore it could be presented before God only as in such a
as well as Man all the difficulty vanishes at once his Person was more august his Power and Authority greater his Will uncontroulable his Holiness and Dignity incomparable Moses was but the Servant he the Lord and therefore without any Impeachment to the Fidelity and Honour of Moses he might reverse every Institution of his as he pleas'd since he as God was able of himself without any circumstantial Delay to give the World a more compleat and perfect Rule whereby humane Happiness and God's Glory the great ends of all divine Institutions might be more directly promoted the great work he undertook was proper to the Deity it self but superiour to any humbler Being this requiring so much the Satisfaction of God's Anger rais'd against a stupid sinful World cannot be suppos'd more easily brought about for the weight of God's Anger against Sin being insupportable to meer Flesh and Blood Help must of necessity be laid upon One mighty to save or else Mankind who had so long subsisted upon the lively Hope of a glorious Deliverance must have perish'd without Remedy at last and finally the Justification of our Faith Pardoning of our Sins and the bestowing upon us Everlasting Life are things compatible only with God yet really and properly ascribed to our Saviour therefore He must be God therefore He that was incarnate or made Flesh for our Salvation must be God But now if we observe the Nature of this great Work for which God was manifested in the Flesh we shall find it was wholly the effect of Immense Love and Pity to Mankind and of extraordinary Interest and Power with the great Father of all things therefore an Undertaking more peculiarly proper to God the Son than to any other Person in the Trinity Man's Redemption was an Effect of the Father's Love the Deity it self is Love the Design of saving such Sinners as should make use of Means to be offer'd in due time to that purpose was an Effect of Love the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost were all consenting in the Design from the Father as the beginning of Order must the first motions of Eternal Love and Goodness and Will take its Original not as if there were any Interstice of time between the Actions of Eternal Minds for Time can have no place or consideration in Eternity but we must speak of such things suitably to Humane Apprehensions by which kind of Expressions tho' our Idea's of God's Acts cannot be adequate or proportionable yet they may be true and safe so we speak of God the Father as propounding of God the Son as declaring his readiness to execute what 's propounded of God the Holy Ghost as consenting so to influence the Objects of Love and Mercy that neither the Proposal nor its Prosecution should be frustrated all these though the distinct Acts of Three distinct Substances are yet all one uninterrupted Act and Determination of one Infinite and Eternal God for where Infinity or Eternity or any other Attributes peculiar only to God are given to Three distinct Substances yet those Substances which are infinite howsoever really distinct must of necessity be inseparable therefore they must of necessity be One for be the Substances never so much distinct and never so perfect in themselves yet Vnity must follow upon Inseparability But according to our common way of speaking God the Father designing the greatest Goodness to Men could shew that Love and Pity to them by no other effectual Means than by giving them his onely Son the very relative Term of Father and Son implies the greatest Nearness and Love in the World and the kinder and more loving a Father is to his Son the greater of necessity must that Favour and Love be which can be content to part with a Relation so dear for the Advantage or Satisfaction of another hence God accepted it as an Effort of compleat Love and Obedience in Abraham that he had not with-held his Son his onely Son from him but was ready without any murmuring to sacrifice him at his Creator's Command and if our blessed Redeemer was the Son of God the Son of his Love the Son in whom he was well pleased the Apostle urges it home and excellently He that spared not his own Son but deliver'd him up for us all Rom. 8.32 how shall he not with him give us all things the Gift of his Son was the greatest Effort of Tenderness that was possible therefore when Men had receiv'd that Gift from the Father's hand there could be no reason of doubting whether they should receive any thing else that was fit for God to bestow or for Man to receive Indeed when the Father had determined to express the greatest Love and Pity to his Creatures there did remain nothing else to be done but to send his Son into the World upon that Occasion for he was still to move so as not to impeach his Justice Justice could not be free and universal without Satisfaction in every respect Man was so soon as fallen a continual Criminal therefore Man was the Object of that irresistable Justice the acquitting him from the stroke of Justice was the effect of the greatest Love yet Justice not being perverted must be and was satisfied on that particular account therefore it must be and was satisfied by the grant of God the Son to put himself into a passible state and to suffer a Punishment equivalent to that due to Sinners and this could be effectually performed by none other but the only Son of God for The Redemption of trespassing Mankind from the stroke of Justice according to the Father's Intention required the most absolute Obedience the greatest Interest and the most extraordinary Compassion and Tenderness towards Mankind Now these things were all most naturally to be expected from the Son for Identity or Sameness of Will in God the Father is Command and Determination in God the Son is Submission and Obedience in God the Holy Ghost is Concurrence and Assistance Now if we consider the Severity of the Condition on which Man was to be redeem'd from sinking under Wrath to the utmost and without which it was impossible Man should be redeem'd at all if we reflect upon the weight of God's Displeasure due to Sin the infinite Power of the Being displeas'd the extream Provocations whereby it 's continually exasperated these Considerations must convince us that it required the greatest Obedience possible in the Undertaker such an Obedience as could be startled by no Difficulty diverted by no Temptation nor conquered by any Extremity it could engage with Of such an Obedience Isaac was a considerable Type who though so dear to his Father so vigorous and strong as he might have been able enough to have secured himself from the violent Zeal of his Aged Father though Nature must have had some Reluctance against Death against Death by the hand of his own Father by his hand from whom he had deserv'd all Kindness and Love by his
nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin of her substance so that two whole and perfect natures that is to say the Godhead and manhood were joyn'd together in one person never to be divided whereof is one Christ very God and very man c. With the Church of England agrees the Helvetic Confession Vid. Harmoniam Confessionum in notatis c. 3. that of the French Churches Artic. 6. the Scotch Confession Artic. 1. the Synod of Dort Artic. 8. the Synod of Czenger in Hungary in their own Argument against the Socinians and in Artic. 2. the Confession of Augsburg c. 1. of Strasbourg c. 2. the Saxon Confession exhibited to the Synod of Trent c. 1. that of Wittemberg Art 2. the Confession of the Prince Palatine Art 2. that of Bohemia Art 3. and 6. of Basil Art 1. and finally the Orthodox consent of all the Fathers with holy Scripture Artic. 2. c. 1. and it's observable that the authors and subscribers of all these Confessions imagine that they ground this particular Doctrine of the eternal Godhead of our Lord Jesus Christ upon Scripture so that they declare they either find it there in express terms or at least thought they drew it very naturally from thence and certainly they were not mistaken for let us reflect a little on the Commandments of the Old Testament there Israel received this charge Hear O Israel Deut. 6.4 Exod. 20.2 3. the Lord our God is one Lord I am the Lord thy God thou shalt have no other God before my face Observe what the Prophet adds to these precepts Remember says he to the same Israelites the former things of old Isai 46 9. for I am God and there is none else I am God and there is none like me the same Prophet introduces Almighty God speaking thus I am the Lord Isai 42.8 that is my name and my glory will I not give to another neither my praise to graven Images and this particularly in such a place where God is comforting his people with a description of the office power excellency of the Messiah and teaching all to rejoyce upon the certainty of his coming Our Saviour himself when he contested with the most subtle and powerful adversary in the world alledges this against him Matth. 4.10 get thee hence Satan when he had endeavoured to hire him to worship himself for it is written Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve This then of the Vnity of the supreme being and the incommunicability of divine worship to any other Being whatsoever seems very Authentick Doctrine and to be very well attested yet after all this to prevent that damning sin of Idolatry whereas S. Peter refus'd the adoration of Cornelius with that reason Acts 10.26 Stand up for I my self also am a man And the Angel who had shewn S. John all those wonderful Prophetick schemes refus'd the worship of that Apostle with those words Rev. 22.9 See thou do it not for I am thy fellow servant and of thy brethren the Prophets worship thou God yet the blessed Jesus He who being the Son of God at least in some sence should have been of all others the most careful for securing his fathers honour yet He tells the Jews that his father had committed all judgment to him Joh. 5.23 that all men should honour the Son even as they honour the father i.e. with the same kind of or with equal honour now every one will own that the Father is to be worshipped as the supreme Being or as the most high God therefore Christ there assumes to himself the glory honour or worship belonging to the most high God nor could this be strange in him who being in the form of God thought it no robbery to be equal with God Phil. 2.6 The same Jesus suffer'd himself to be worshipped without any reluctancy or prohibition of the worshippers He forbad not the wise men from the East Matt. 2.11 when they fell down and worshipped him and made their offerings to him nor did the blessed Virgin who doubtless knew what it was to be an Idolater reprove them for their misapplied adorations nor did the Angel Matt. 8.2 c. 9.18 who was their guide and director in their journey inform them of this error No more did Christ forbid the Leper who worshipp'd him nor the Jewish Ruler who beg'd his goodness for the healing of his daughter Nor his Disciples when by his power delivered from the storm Nor yet all the Disciples when after his resurrection they all came and held him by the feet and worshipp'd him c. 14.33 c. 28.9 now Scripture in all these places puts no difference between that worship that is given to Christ and that which the same persons generally render'd to the supreme God therefore they knew nothing but that he really was of the same nature with God nor could he be so kind or good or wise as he is character'd to us who could see so many guilty of so damning a sin as Idolatry which they must have been guilty of if they gave to him a meer Creature that sovereign worship which belong'd to the Creator without any reproof or check for it Now tho' this danger may seem to infer a great deal of necessity of knowing Christ to be the true God yet we may press it farther For S. Paul tells us in plain terms Rom. 10.13 Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved where he is speaking of no other but our Lord Jesus Christ now this laid together with that other text Acts 4.12 that there is no salvation in any other for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved joyning these together as they assert the positive so they include the negative of equal truth that Without calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Salvation can never be attained but then it follows How shall they call on him in whom they have not believ'd v. 14. or in whom they have not had faith but Faith may not be fixt on any but on him who is the true God true Faith is only towards God Heb. 6.1 as the Apostle's phrase teaches us and the Socinians themselves in the very Text we are now upon would perswade us to believe that it was onely God the Father who was believed on in the World Heb. 11.6 because he onely was the proper object of Faith and we are told that without Faith it is impossible to please God but to imagine that any Faith can please God which is placed in any Being beside himself is foolish and absurd Yet whereas God declared by his Prophet of old Cursed be the Man that trusteth in Man and maketh flesh his arm and in his heart departeth from the Lord Jer. 17.5 Christ a little before his Passion bids his Disciples as they believed in God John 14.1