and to dwell within us The Scripture often calleth Christ the Wisdom of God and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is both the Ratio Oratio the Internal and Expressed or Incarnate Word And he that understandeth that by the holy Ghost which is said in Scripture to be given to believers is meant the habitual or prevalent LOVE to GOD will better understand how the holy Ghost is said to be given to them that already have so much of it as to cause them to believe Abundance of Hereticks have troubled the Church with their self-devised opinions about the Trinity and the Person and Natures of Christ and I am loth to say how much many of the Orthodox have troubled it also with their self-conceited misguided uncharitable zeal against those whom they judged Hereticks The present divisions between the Roman Church the Greeks the Armenians Syrians Copties and Ethiopians is too sad a proof of this and the long contention between the Greeks and Latins about the terms Hypostasis and Persona 5. And I would advise the Reader to be none of those that shall charge with Heresie all those School-men and late Divines both Papists and Protestants who say that the Three Persons are Deus seipsum intelligens Deus à seipso intellectus Deus à seipso amatus though I am not one that say as they nor yet those holy men whom I have here cited Potho Prumensis Edmundus Archiepisc Cantuariensis Parisiensis and many others who expresly say that Potentia Sapientia Amor are the Father Son and holy Ghost 6. But for my own part as I unfeignedly account the doctrine of the Trinity the very summ and kernel of the Christian Religion as exprest in our Baptism and Athanasius his Creed the best explication of it that ever I read so I think it very unmeet in these tremendous mysteries to go further than we have God's own light to guide us And it is none of my purpose at all to joyn with either of the two fore-mentioned parties nor to assert that the mysterie of the blessed Trinity of Hypostases or Persons is no other than this uncontroverted Trinity of Essential Principles All that I endeavour is but as aforesaid to shew that this Doctrine is neither contradictory incredible nor unlikely by shewing the vestigia or Image of it and that which is as liable to exception and yet of unquestionable truth And if the three Hypostases be not the same with the Trinity of Principles aforesaid yet no man can give a sufficient reason why Three in One should not be truly credible and probable in the one instance when common natural reason is fully satisfied of it in the other He must better understand the difference between a Person and such an Essential Principle in Divinis than any mortal man doth who will undertake to prove from the Title of a Person that one is incredible or unlikely when the other is so clear and sure or rather he understandeth it not at all that so imagineth For my part I again from my heart profess that the Image or Vestigia of Trinity in Unity through the most notable parts of Nature and Morality do increase my estimation of the Christian Religion because of the admirable congruity and harmony Object II. But who is able to believe the Incarnation and Hypostatical Vnion If you should read that a Kings Son in compassion to poor flies or fleas or lice had himself become a flie or flea or louse had it been in his power to save their lives would you have thought it credible And yet the condescension had been nothing to this as being but of a creature to a creature Answ This is indeed the greatest difficulty of faith but if you do not mistake the matter you will find it also the greatest excellency of faith 1. Therefore you must take heed of making it difficult by your own errour think not that the Godhead was turned into man as you talk of a man becoming a flie nor yet that there was the least real change upon the Deity by this incarnation nor the least real abasement dishonour loss injury or suffering to it thereby For all these are not to be called difficulties but impossibilities and blasphemies There is no abatement of any of the Divine Perfections by it nor no confinement of the Essence but as the soul of man doth animate the body so the Eternal Word doth as it were animate the whole humane Nature of Christ As Athanasius saith As the reasonable soul and humane flesh do make one man so God and Man are one Christ and that without any coarctation limitation or restriction of the Deity 2. And this should be no strange Doctrine nor incredible to most of the Philosophers of the world who have one part of them taught that God is the Soul of the world and that the whole Universe is thus animated by him and another part that he is the Soul of Souls or Intelligences animating them as they do bodies That therefore which they affirm of all cannot by them be thought incredible of one And it is little less if any thing at all which the Peripateticks themselves have taught of the assistant Forms Intelligences which move the Orbs and of the Agent Intellect in man and some of them of the universal soul in all men And what all their vulgar people have thought of the Deifying of Heroes and other men it is needless to recite Julian himself believed the like of Aesculapius None of these Philosophers then have any reason to stumble at this which is but agreeable to their own opinions And indeed the opinion that God is the Soul of souls or of the Intellectual world hath that in it which may be a strong temptation to the wisest to imagine it Though indeed he is no constitutive form of any of those creatures but to be their Creator and total efficient is much more What Union it is which we call Hypostatical we do not fully understand our selves but we are sure that it is such as no more abaseth the Deity than its concourse with the Sun in its efficiencies Object But what kin are these assertions of Philosophers to yours of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word and Wisdom of God Answ What was it but an Incarnation of a Deity which they affirmed of Aesculapius and such others And they that thought God to be the Soul of the world thought that the world was as much animated with the Deity as we affirm the humane Nature of Christ to have been yea for ought I see whilst they thought that this soul was parcelled out to every individual and that Matter only did pro tempore individuate they made every man to be God incarnate And can they believe that it is so with every man and yet think it incredible in Christianity that our humane Nature is personally united to the Divine I think in this they contradict themselves 3. And it is
A Sellius his milkie Veines and Pecquets Receptacle of the Chyle and Bartholines Glandules and the Vasa Lymphatica are of late discovery Galilaeus his Glasses and his four Medicaean Planets and the Lunary mutations of Venus and the strange either opacous parts and shape of Saturn or the proximity of two other Stars which mishape it to our sight the shadowy parts of the Moon c. with the innumerable Stars in the Via Lactea c. were all unknown to former ages Gilberts magnetical discoveries I speak not of those questionable Inferences which Campanella and others contradict the nature of many Minerals and Plants the chief operations and effects of Chymistry abundance of secrets for the cure of many diseases even the most excellent medicaments are all of very late invention Almost all Arts and Sciences are encreasing neerer towards Perfection Ocular demonstrations by the Telescope and sensible experiments are daily multiplyed Yea the World it self is not all discovered to any one part but a great part of it was but lately made known even to the Europeans whose knowledge is greatest by Columbus and Americus Vesputianus and it is not long since it was first measured by a Circumnavigation If the World had been eternall or of much longer duration than the Scripture speaketh it is not credible that multiplyed experiences would not have brought it above that Infancy of knowledge in which it so long continued Obj. Cursed Warrs by Fire and Depopulation consume all Antiquities and put the World still to begin anew Answ It doth indeed do much this way but it is not so much that Warre could do For when it is in one Countrey others are free and some would fly or lie hid or survive who would preserve Arts and Sciences and be teachers of the rest Who can think now that any Wars are like to make America or Galilaeus's Stars unknown again or any of the forenamed Inventions to be lost 2. Moreover it is strange if the World were eternall or much elder than Scripture speaketh that no part of the World should shew us any elder Monument of Antiquity no engraven Stones or Plates no Mausolus Pyramids or Pillars no Books no Chronological Tables no Histories or Genealogies or other Memorials and Records I know to this also cursed Warrs may contribute much But not so much as to leave nothing to inquisitive Successors § 2. II. It greatly confirmeth my belief of the Holy Scriptures to finde by certain experience the Original and Vniversal pravity of mans nature how great it is and wherein it doth consist exactly agreeing with this Sacred Word when no others have made such a full discovery of it This I have opened and proved before and he is a stranger to the World and to himself that seeth it not Were it not lest I weary the Reader with length how fully and plainly could I manifest it § 3. III. The certain observation of the universal Spiritual Warre which hath been carryed on according to the first Gospel between the Woman's and the Serpent's seed doth much confirm me of the truth of the Scriptures Such a contrariety there is even between Cain and Abel Children of the same Father such an implacable enmity throughout all the World in almost all wicked men against Godliness it self and those that sincerely love and follow it such a hatred in those that are Orthodoxly bred against the true power use and practice of the Religion which they themselves profess such a resolute resistance of all that is seriously good and holy and tendeth but to the saving of the resisters that it is but a publick visible acting of all those things which the Scripture speaketh of and a fulfilling them in all ages and places in the sight of all the World Of which having treated largely in my Treatise against Infidelity of the sin against the Holy Ghost I referre you thither § 4. IV. It much confirmeth me to finde that there is no other Religion professed in the World that an impartial rational man can rest in That man is made for another life the light of Nature proveth to all men And some way or other there must be opened to us to attain it Mahometanisme I think not worthy a confutation Judaisme must be much beholden to Christianity for its proofs and is but the introduction to it inclusively considered The Heathens or meer Naturalists are so blinde so idolatrous so divided into innumerable sects so lost and bewildred in uncertainties and shew us so little holy fruit of their Theology that I can incline to no more than to take those natural Verities which they confess and which they cast among the rubbish of their fopperies and wickedness and to wipe them clean and take them for some part of my Religion Christianity or nothing is the way § 5. V. It much confirmeth me to observe that commonly the most true and serious Christians are the holyest and most honest righteous men and that the worse men are the greater enemies they are to true Christianity And then to think how incredible it is that God should lead all the worst men into the truth and leave the best and godlyest in an error In small matters or common secular things this were no wonder But in the matter of Believing worshipping and pleasing God and saving of Souls it is not credible As for the belief of a Life to come no men are so far from it as the vilest Whoremongers Drunkards perjured persons Murderers Oppressors Tyrants Thieves Rebels or if any other name can denote the worst of men And none so much believe a Life to come as the most godly honest-hearted persons And can a man that knoweth that there is a God believe that he will leave all good men in so great an error and rightly inform and guide all these Beasts or living walking images of the Devil The same in a great measure is true of the friends and enemies of Christianity § 6. VI. It hath been a great convincing argument with me against both Atheisme and Infidelity to observe the marvelous Providences of God for divers of his servants and the strange answer of Prayers which I my self and ordinarily other Christians have had I have been and am as backward to ungrounded credulity about wonders as most men that will not strive against knowledge But I have been oft convinced by great experience and testimonies which I believed equally with my eye-sight of such actions of God as I think would have convinced most that should know as much of them as I did But few of them are fit to mention For some of them so much concern my self that strangers may be tempted to think that they savour of self-esteem and some of them the factions and parties in these times will by their interest be engaged to distaste And some of them have been done on persons whose after scandalous Crimes have made me think it unfit to mention them lest I should seem
To consider the innumerable number of the Orbs the multitude of the Fixed Stars which may be called so many Suns and to think of their distances magnitude powers orders influences communications effects c. and how many millions of these for ought we know there may be besides those which are within our sight even though helped by the most perfect Telescopes it striketh the Soul with unspeakable admiration at the Power that created and maintaineth all this When we think of the unconceivable rapid orderly perfect constant motions of all these Orbs or at least of the Planets and circumjacent bodies in every Vortex All these thoughts do make the Deity or first Being to be just to the mind as the Sun is to the eye the most Intelligible of Beings but so Incomprehensible that we cannot endure to gaze too much or near upon his glory § 27. Whether the whole world be animated or inanimate Whether the whole have one constitutive Soul or not Whether each Orb have its particular Soul or not are things unrevealed and beyond the Certain knowledge of the natural mind But it is certain that the first Being is not the proper constitutive Form or Soul of the world but yet that he is much more to it than such a Form or Soul even the total perfect first Cause of all that it is and hath and doth He is not the constitutive Form or Soul of the Universe as it seems Cicero with the Academicks and Stoicks thought because then the Creator and the Creature should be the same or else the Creature should be nothing but dead passive matter and then Man himself who knoweth that he hath a Soul would either be God which his experience and the conscience of his frailty forbiddeth him to imagin or else he should be a Creature more noble than the Universe of which he is so small a part which his reason forbiddeth him also to believe But yet that God is much more to the world than a constitutive Soul is undeniable because he is the creating Cause which is more than a constitutive Cause and his continued causation in its preservation is as a continued creation As in Man the Soul is a dependent cause which can give nothing to the Body but what it hath received nor act but as it is acted or impowered by the first efficient And therefore though we call not God the Soul of Man because we would not so dishonour him nor confound the Creator and the creature yet we all know that he is to us much more than the Soul of Souls for in him we live and move and have our being So also it is as to God's causation of the Being Motion and Order of all the world God is incomparably more to it than its Form as being the total first Cause of Form and Matter To be the Creator is more than to be the Soul § 28. The glory of all being action and order in the creatures is no less due to God when he worketh by means than when he worketh by none at all For when no Means is a Means nor hath being aptitude force or efficacy but from himself he onely communicateth praise to his creatures when he thus useth them but giveth not away the least degree of his own interest and honour for the creature is nothing hath nothing and can do nothing but by him It useth no strength or skill or bounty but what it first received from him therefore to use such means can be no dishonour to him unless it be a dishonour to be a communicative Good As it is no dishonour to a Watch-maker to make that Engine which sheweth his skill instead of performing all the motions without that little frame of means But yet no similitude will reach the case because all creatures themselves are but the continued productions of the Creator's will and the virtue which they put forth is nothing but what God putteth into them And he is as neer to the effect when he worketh by means as when without § 29. Those that call these three faculties or Principles in the Divine Essence by the name of three Hypostases or Persons do seem to me to speak less unaptly than the Schools who call Deum seipsum intelligentem the Father and Deum ut a se intellectum the Son and Deum a se amatum the Holy Ghost For that in God which is to be conceived of us by Analogy to our essential faculties is with less impropriety called an Hypostasis or Person than that which is to be conceived by us in Analogy to our actus secundi or receptions § 30. And those that say the first faculty Omnipotency as eminently appearing in the frame of Nature may therefore be said to be specially therein personated or denominated the Creating Person speak nothing which derogateth from the honour of the Deity § 31. Though we cannot trace the vestigia the adumbration or appearances of this Trinity in Vnity through the whole Body of Nature and Morality because of the great debility and narrowness of our Minds Yet is it so apparent on the first and most notable parts of both as may make it exceeding probable that it runneth in perfect method through them all if our understandings were but able to follow and comprehend that wonderfull method in the numerous minute and less discernable particulars I shall now give no other instance than in two of the most noble Creatures The Soul of Man which is made after Gods Image from whence we fetch our first knowledge of him hath in the unity of a living Spirit the three foresaid faculties of vital and executive Power Vnderstanding and Will which are neither three species nor three parts nor three accidents of the Soul But three faculties certainly so far distinct as that the Acts from whence they are denominated really differ and therefore the faculties differ at least in their Virtual Relation to those acts and so in a well-grounded denomination To understand is not to will for I understand that which I have no will to even against my will for the Intellect may be forced Therefore the same Soul hath in it the virtue or power both of understanding and willing and so of executing which are denominated from the different acts which they relate to There is some Reason in the powers virtues or faculties of the real difference in the acts So in the Sun and all the superior Luminaries there is in the unity of their Essence a Trinity of Faculties or Powers 1. Motiva 2 Illuminativa 3. Calefactiva causing motion light and heat The doctrine of Motion is much improved by our late Philosophers when the doctrine of Light and Heat are so also and vindicated from the rank of common accidents and qualities the nature of the Luminaries and of Fire will be also better cleared The Sun is not to these Powers or Acts either a Genus a Totum or a Subjectum
apprehend or is apprehended by another § 47. 12. Most men think it the wisest way because it is the easiest to be at a venture of the Religion of the King and the Countrey where they live and to do as the most about them do which is seldom best § 48. 13. Men are grown strangers to themselves and know not what man is nor what is a reasonable Soul but have so abused their higher faculties that they are grown ignorant of their dignity and use and know not that in themselves which should help their Faith § 49. 14. Men are grown so bad and false and prone to lying themselves that it maketh them the more incredulous of God and man as judging of others by themselves § 50. 15. The cares of the Body and World do so take up the mindes of men that they cannot afford the matters of God and their salvation such retired serious thoughts as they do necessarily require § 51. 16. Too few have the happiness of judicious Guides who rightly discern the Methods and Evidences of the Gospel and tempt not men to unbelief by their mistaken grounds and unsound reasonings These are the Impediments and difficulties of Faith in the Persons themselves who should believe CHAP. X. The Intrinsecal Difficulties in the Christian Faith resolved Object I. THe Doctrine of the Trinity is not intelligible or credible Answ 1. Nothing at all in God can be comprehended or fully known by any creatures God were not God that is Perfect and Infinite if he were comprehensible by such Worms as we Nothing is so certainly known as God and yet nothing so imperfectly 2. The doctrine of the Trinity in Unity is so intelligible and credible and is so admirably apparent in its products in the methods of Nature and Morality that to a wise Observer it maketh Christianity much the more credible because it openeth more fully these excellent mysteries and methods It is intelligible and certain that MAN is made in the Image of God And that the noblest Creatures bear most of the impress of their Makers excellency And that the invisible Deity is here to be known by us as in the Glass of his visible works Of which the Rational or Intellectual Nature is the highest with which we are acquainted And it is most certain that in the Unity of mans Minde or Soul there is a Trinity of Essentialities or Primalities as Campanella calleth them that is such faculties as are so little distinct from the Essence of the Soul as such that Philosophers are not yet agreed whether they shall say it is realiter formaliter relativè vel denominatione extrinseca To pass by the three faculties of Vegetation sensation and intellection In the Soul as Intellectual there are the Essential faculties of Power executive or communicative ad extra Intellect and Will Posse Scire Velle And accordingly in morality or virtue there is in one New-creature or holy Nature wisdom goodness and ability or fortitude and promptitude to act according to them And in our Relation to things below us in the unity of our Dominion or superiority there is a Trinity of Relations viz. we are their Owners their Rulers according to their capacity and their End and Benefactors so that in the Unity of Gods Image upon man there is this natural moral and dominative Image and in the Natural the Trinity of Essential faculties and in the Moral the Trinity of holy Virtues and in the Dominative a Trinity of superiour Relations And though the further we go from the root the more darkness and dissimilitude appeareth to us yet it is strange to see even in the Body what Analogies there are to the Faculties of the Soul In the superior middle and inferior Regions And in them the natural vital and animal parts with the three sorts of Humours three sorts of Concoctions and three sorts of Spirits answerable thereto and admirably united with much more which a just Scheme would open to you And therefore seeing God is known to us by this his Image and in this Glass though we must not think that any thing in God is formally the same as it is in Man yet certainly we must judge that all this is eminently in God and that we have no fitter notions and names concerning his incomprehensible Perfections than what are borrowed from the Minde of man Therefore it is thus undenyable that GOD is in the Unity of his Eternal Infinite Essence a Trinity of Essentialities or Active Principles viz. POWER INTELLECT and WILL And in their HOLY Perfections they are Omnipotency Omniscience or Wisdom and Goodness And in his Relative Supremacy is contained this Trinity of Relations He is our OWNER our RECTOR and our CHIEF GOOD that is Our Benefactor and our end And as in Mans Soul the Posse Scire Velle are not three parts of the Soul it being the whole Soul quae potest quae intelligit quae vult and yet these three are not formaliter or how you will otherwise call the distinction the same Even so in GOD it is not one Part of God that hath POWER and another that hath UNDERSTANDING and another that hath WILL but the whole Deity is POWER the whole is UNDERSTANDING and the whole is WILL The whole is Omnipotency the whole is Wisdom and the whole is Goodness the Fountain of that which in man is called Holiness or Moral Goodness And yet formally to understand is not to will and to will is not to be able to execute If you say what is all this to the Trinity of Hypostases or persons I answer Either the three Subsistences in the Trinity are the same with the Potentia Intellectus and Voluntas in the Divine Essence or not If they are the same there is nothing at all intelligible incredible or uncertain in it For natural Reason knoweth that there is all these eminently in God And whoever will think that any humane language can speak of him must confess that his Omnipotence Wisdom and Goodness his Power Intellect and Will must be thus to mans apprehension distinguished Otherwise we must say nothing at all of God or say that his power is his willing and his willing is his knowing and that he willeth all the sin which he knoweth and all that he can do which language will at best signifie nothing to any man And it is to be noted that our Saviour in his Eternal subsistence is called in Scripture The WISDOM of God or his internal Word and in his Operations in the Creation he is called The Word of God as operative or efficient and in his Incarnation he is called The Son of God Though these terms be not alwayes and only thus used yet usually they are The Words of an ancient godly Writer before cited are considerable Potho Prumensis de statu domus Dei lib. 1. p. 567. in Biblioth Patr. T. 9. Tria sunt invisibilia Dei h. e. Potentia Sapientia
Benignitas a quibus omnia procedunt in quibus omnia subsistunt per quae omnia reguntur Pater est Potentia Filius Sapientia Sparitus sanctus Benignitas Potentia creat Sapientia gubernat â— Benignitas conservat Potentia per Benignitatem sapienter creat Sapientia per potentiam benignè gubernat Benignitas per sapientiam potenter conservat Sicut Imago in speculo cernitur sic in ratione animae Huic similitudini Dei approximat homo cui Potentia Dei dat Bonum posse sapientia tribuit scire Benignitas praeâ—tat velle Haec triplex Animae rationalis vis est scil Posse Scire Velle quae supradictis tribus fidei spei charitati cooperantur c. Read more in the Author and in Raimundus Lullius and among latter Writers in Campanella Raymundus de sabundis c. as I said before He that will give you a scheme of Divinity in the true method will but shew you how all God's Works and Laws flow from these Three Essentialities or Principles and the three great Relations founded in them His being our Owner Ruler and Chief Good And how all our duty is branch'd out accordingly in our correlations He will shew you the Trinity of Graces Faith Hope and Love and the three summary Rules the Creed Lord's Prayer and Decalogue and in a word would shew you that the Trinity revealeth it self through the whole frame of true Theology or Morality But who is able to discern it in the smaller and innumerable branches Yea if ever it were to be hoped that our Physicks should be brought into the light of certainty and true method you would see Vnity in Trinity in all things in the world You would see that in the Sun and the other Celestial Luminaries which are the glorious Images of the Intellectual world in the Vnity of their Essence there is a Moving Illuminating and Heating Power and that no one of these is formally the other nor is any one of them a Part of the Sun or other Luminary much less a meer accident of quality but an Essential Active Principle or Power the whole Luminary being essentially a Principle of Motion Light and Heat which are not accidents in them but Acts flowing immediately from their Essential Powers as Intellection and Volition from the Soul I shall now say no more of this but profess that the discovery of the emanations or products of the Trinity and the Image and Vestigia of it in the course of Nature and Method of Morality doth much increase my reverence to the Christian Doctrine so far is the Trinity from being to me a stumbling-block Object But what are such Trinities in Vnity as these to the Trinity of Persons in the Deity such weak arguments will but increase incredulity Will you pretend to prove the Trinity by natural reason or would you perswade us that it is but three of God's Attributes or our inadequate conceptions of him Opera Trinitatis ad extra sunt indivisa Ergo No creature can reveal to us the Trinity Answ 1. It is one thing to prove the Sacred Trinity of Persons by such reason or to undertake fully to open the mystery and it is another thing to prove that the Doctrine is neither incredible nor unlikely to be true and that it implieth no contradiction or discordancy but rather seemeth very congruous both to the frame of nature and of certain moral verities This only is my task against the Infidel 2. It is one thing to shew in the creatures a clear demonstration of this Trinity of Persons by shewing an effect that fully answereth it and another thing to shew such vestigia adumbration or image of it as hath those dissimilitudes which must be allowed in any created image of God This is it which I am to do 3. He that confoundeth the Attributes of God and distinguisheth not those which express these three Essential Primalities or Active Principles to which our faculties are analogous from the rest or that thinketh that we should cast by this distinction under the name of an inadequate conception so far as we can imagine these Principles to be the same and that there is not truly in the Deity a sufficient ground for this distinction is not the man that I am willing now to debate this cause with I have done that sufficiently before Whether the distinction be real formal or denominative the Thomists Scotists and Nominals have disputed more than enough But even the Nominals say that there is a sufficient ground for the denomination which some call Virtual and some Relative And they that dispute of the distinction of Persons do accordingly differ calling it either Relative Virtual Formal or Modal or ratione ratiocinata as they imagine best And they that differ about these do accordingly differ about the difference of the faculties of our souls For my part I see not the least reason to doubt but that the Trinity of Divine Primalities Principles and Perfections hath made its impress on man's soul in its three parts viz. the Natural the Moral and the Dominative parts in the first we have an Active Power an Intellect and Free-will In the second Fortitude or holy promptitude and strength Wisdom and Goodness or Love In the third we are to the inferiour creatures their Owners Rulers and Benefactors or End and what ever you will call our faculties and their moral perfections it is undoubted that in God his Omnipotency Wisdom and Goodness are his Essence and yet as much distinct as is aforesaid And what mortal man is able to say whether the distinction of Persons be either greater or less than this And remember that as I speak of Motion Light and Heat both as in the faculties of the Sun as I may call them and in the Acts or Emanations and of the Power Intellect and Will of man both as in the Faculties and Acts so do I here of the Divine Primalities yet so as supposing that in God who is called a Pure Act there is not such a difference between Power and Act as there is in man or other creatures 4. No man I think is able to prove that the works of the Trinity ad extra are any more undivided than the works of the three Essential Active Principles they are so undivided as that yet the work of Creation is eminently or most notably ascribed to the Father as is also the sending of the Son into the world the forgiving of sin for his sake c. and the work of Redemption to the Son and the work of Sanctification to the holy Ghost We shall be as loth to say that the Father or holy Ghost was incarnate for us or died for us or mediates for us as that the Power or Love of God doth the works which belong to his Wisdom And the Essential Wisdom and Love of God are no more communicable to man than the Son and holy Spirit who are said to be given to us