REMARKS On Several Late Writings Publish'd in English by the SOCINIANS Wherein Is show'd the insufficiency and weakness of their Answers to the Texts brought against them by the Orthodox IN FOUR LETTERS Written at the Request of a Socinian Gentleman By H. DE LVZANCY B. D. Vic. of Doverc and Harwich LONDON Printed by Tho. Warren for Thomas Bennet at the Half-Moon in St. Paul's Church-Yard 1696. THE PREFACE THE design of the following Letters was to instruct a private Gentleman who by reading Socinian Books had got a mighty prejudice against the Sacred Doctrines of the Holy Trinity and Incarnation He desir'd that he might have the liberty to communicate my Papers to some of his Friends of that perswasion But this being lyable to many inconveniences it was thought much fitter at once to expose them to publick view Whether he will be convinc'd by these Writings must be left to God who best knows the ways of working upon the minds of men Whether there is matter enough to convince him is left to the judgment of the World The general means to clear a Controversy are Reason and Authority I humbly conceive that the first has nothing to do in this dispute For how can we argue from the Principles of natural reason in a point wholly Divine and Supernatural and how can the Philosopher of this World conclude with any certainty in that which is above all the inquiries and decisions of Philosophy I ever thought the Socinians extreamly in the wrong with their pretended contradictions in the belief of our Holy Mysteries and the Letter to both the Vniversities much the worst of all their Writings It being certainly neither just nor candid to use Topicks though never so ingeniously turn'd altogether foreign to the matter in dispute and to give an air of probability to that which when truly stated and consider'd is of another nature than the thing propos'd to us I take it for granted even by these Gentlemen themselves that Faith and Reason are two different things and consequently that that which is the object of Faith cannot be the object of Reason Of what use then can those Arguments be which are call'd Demonstrations against the Doctrines of the Holy Trinity and Incarnation Those perpetual descants upon the impossibility of Three being One and One Three of the same substance unbegotten begotten and proceeding of a part of God being incarnate and another not incarnate All this and ten thousand Objections more are a fallacy and an imposition on Mankind The case here being of another nature not tryable at the Bar of our corrupt Reason but call'd to another and a more infallible Tribunal On the other side though it looks much like Charity and Condescension yet it is certainly an Inadvertency to have pretended to answer these Gentlemen in their own way and to run with them upon the same false scent of reasoning on those things which we ought only to believe and adore The Socinians may write till Doomsday to prove the Vnrâ—asonableness and their charitable and learned Answerers may do the same to prove the Reasonableness of our Christian Doctrine I mean keeping still within the compass of natural reason and yet this great truth will never be clear'd because indeed neither of them embrace the true Method to clear it The way then of Authority is both the plainest and the safest It has that advantage that the other is even resolv'd into it For there is nothing so highly rational as a submission of our Reason to an Authority which all sides own to be infallible We all agree that the Divine Scriptures are the rule of our Faith We all acknowledge them to be the word of God and this very name commands naturally and of it self a veneration which no human Writings though of never so much strength and clearness can force from us It is then from thence and only from thence that we ought to reason and conclude in this Sacred Controversy The consent of the whole Christian World must be a strong inducement to a modest Socinian to mistrust all his Arguments To oppose all that has been and is Great and Good in the Church of God in a point of Faith is too much for the most presuming Disputant But when the Authority of God speaking in those Scriptures which we all contend to be the Revelation which he has made of himself to us is superadded to the universal consent of the Church all the reasons which we can pretend to oppose to this ought to be no more to men of sence than talk and noise The Church asserts the Vnity of the Divine Nature in which three distinct and equally adorable Persons subsist The Father The Son and the Holy Ghost of which the second was Incarnate and in the fullness of time became Man To say that this is false because incomprehensible is a lamentable consequence Nor is it sufferable to reject the belief of these Mysteries because our poor narrow and corrupt Reason is pleas'd to state contradictions in a subject so far above our capacity and to say as those Gentlemen urge vehemently that we cannot believe that of which we can have no notion or Idea is much worse since besides that we have little or no knowledge at all of the ways operations and manner of Existence of an Infinite Being to suppose a notion or an Idea of the thing propos'd is to destroy Faith which Heb. 11.1 is the evidence of things not seen that is an assurance and certainty of that which is imperceptible to us because above the reach of our understanding supplying by the Authority of the Revelation that notion or Idea of which these Gentlemen argue an absolute necessity The only way then to satisfy our selves is to hear what the Scripture teaches concerning this For if the Church speaks the language of the Scripture it speaks as God has taught us and to speak after God is the most certain and excellent way of speaking in the World The Challenge of the great Athanasius to the Arrians and of St. Austin to the Hereticks of his time was the most reasonable Proposition in nature to a people who own'd Christianity and that is that laying aside human reasoning and relying upon the veracity of the Divine Oracles they should inquire not what man propos'd but what God has say'd in the matter If the Scripture is positive that God is one and yet asserts the Father to be God the Son to be God and the Holy Ghost to be God If it says that the Son has taken our nature upon him The Church speaks as the Scripture has taught and the Doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation is the Doctrine of the Church because it is first that of the Scripture Being perswaded then that the dispute must at last be put upon that Issue and sensible that any thing else that is propos'd of both sides though it shews the great parts and abilities of the Disputants can yet give
no solid satisfaction I have endeavour'd to walk in the old way and aim'd at these two things First To prove the Divinity of our Blessed Saviour and of the Holy Spirit which proof really implies all the rest For if the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God The great objection is answer'd that Three Divine Persons destroy the Vnity of God which is the state of the question Since if it does appear that it is so there is a Trinity of Persons without a destruction of that Vnity which is inseparable from the Divine Nature Secondly I have attempted to shew the insufficiency of these Gentlemen's Answers to those substantial Texts on which our Belief rests For I must beg leave to say that it is almost incredible that such thin ill-built unwary Answers should drop from Persons undoubtedly of great Learning and it is a strong confirmation of those very proofs when mighty Adversaries have so little to say to them If the whole is not mannag'd as it should be I hope that the Sacred Cause which I maintain will not suffer for it and if the Person for whose sake these Letters are written is not satisfy'd by what I have done It is his and my Misfortune that I can do no better Whatsoever is in these Papers is with the humblest submission offer'd to the Judgment and Censure of the Church of England THE First LETTER SIR I Have read the Books which you were pleas'd to lend me with as much application as I could and am now to discharge my promise of giving you my sence of them I confess it is somewhat a hard Province and in particular to me who ever was an Enemy to disputes in Religion and fully perswaded that the only way to unite dissenting Christians is not so much to dispute as to live up to the duties of a Religion which we all confess to be as the God who gave it holy and just This would have oblig'd me to be silent But since it has pleas'd God to make you a part of my Care and that you desire me to resolve your Doubts against the Catholick Doctrine which you say you are most willing to embrace if you can be satisfied that it is true I will endeavour to give you the best information I can leaving all to the candor of your nature and to that solid judgment which I have observ'd in you I design'd once to have follow'd every tract which you put in my hands But I was disswaded from it First By the length and tediousness of the work Secondly By observing that your Friends say almost the same things over and over again These Gentlemen having the way to turn the same Argument into several shapes and put their thoughts every day in a new dress As to their abilities their greatest Enemies must confess that they are not ordinary They are Men of learning Their stile is correct exact and florid They have the misfortune of Origen of whom an Ancient said that Vbi bene nemo melius ubi male nemo pejus None can do better where they are in the right none worse where they are in the wrong I find also that sometimes those fine Pens are dipt in Gall that they are not sparing of the sharpest invectives and that laying aside their fine and Gentlemen-like way of writing they become Mortals again and grow acquainted with all sorts of Sarcasms The Preface to Mr. Milbourn is sharp and scurrilous The Reflexion on both the Universities and the skill of the Bottle do not much grace the Dispute The Trinity of Marcus Tullius Cicero by reason of an illustration of the word person by Dr. Wallis The Trinity of the Mobile of ignorant and lazy Doctors The Sabellian Targonry of Dr. South Consider on the Explic of the Doctr. of the Holy Trin. pag. 11. might have been laid aside and the pretended Wit that it amounts to reserv'd for a better use Give me leave also to admire how men who are willing to be thought pious as well as learned can turn solid Reasonings into Railleries and disprove an Argument by ridiculing it Indeed Tertullian in his Apologetick asks whether he shall laugh at the vanity of the Heathen and their Rites or whether he shall reproach them with their blindness Rideam vanitatem qut exprobrem caecitatem But it is quite another thing when a Writer pretends to answer men of Reason and Learning and when the Objections are really strong and solid Not to multiply instances I will only point at that in a Letter of Resolution pag. 3 4 5. The Author had objected to himself that the Trinity and Incarnation are incomprehensible Mysteries and that when the matter is of meer Revelation it is not to be judg'd by either Reason or Sence He proposes several things which are really above both This is answer'd by making a Mystery of that which is none the assertion of Christ Joh. 15.1 I am the true Vine and the notion of God-Man is ridicul'd by that of Christ-Vine or Vine-man or Viney man Dr. Wallis having asserted That the three Persons of the Holy Trinity are more than three divine Attributes and that though perhaps their Personality may not so exactly be understood by the notion of Personality which we are acquainted with in created Beings yet there is certainly somewhat more than Attributes They make a perpetual descant upon three Somewhats or three I know not what 's the Vnreason of the Doctr. of the Trin. pag. 5 6. Dr. South in his Animadversions Chap. 8. pag. 241. having explain'd the Modes of Being and having told us That a Mode is properly a certain habitude of some Being Essence or Thing whereby the said Essence or Being is determin'd to some particular state or condition which barely of it self it should not be determin'd to That a Mode in things spiritual and immaterial seems to have much the like reference to such kinds of Beings as a posture has to a body to which it gives some difference or distinction without adding any new Entity or Being to it and having told us also pag. 242. lin 4. that no one thing can agree both to God and the Creature by a perfect Vnivocation which the Answerer has I hope not wilfully overlookt and which is enough to prevent any just exception against it Then Consider on the Explic. pag. 21. we have a story of Don Quixot and of Dulcinea del Toboso pag. 22. He makes the grave and learned Doctor to answer That the three Divine Persons are the Substance of God in three Gambols or postures A little below he thinks it should seem that the Faithful must put their trust in there postures Thus the Declamation goes on Posture A begets Posture B Posture A and B breathe Posture C. I appeal to these Gentlemen themselves whether this is the way to vindicate Religion and keep men from Atheism Whether they seek to instruct or divert their Reader Whether such petulant Sallies of Wit are
Consent of the learned World made venerable Essence Substance Hypostasis Generation Spiration Procession And yet these Gentlemen not only pretend to Reason but would so monopolize it to themselves as to make their Adversaries the most unreasonable people in the World Reason in all their Writings is the Word To it the most express Revelation must be made to stoop and God must not be Judge of what he commands man to believe But man assumes to himself to know whether what God commands is agreeable to the Principles of his Reason I know that they would seem to exclaim against this and that in the Letter of Resolution concerning the Doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation pag. 1. they complain that they are charg'd with exalting Reason above Revelation They apologize for it in the Observations of Dr. Wallis's Letters pag. 16. But how can this be reconcil'd with this Assertion Considerat on the Explicat of the Doctr. of the Trin. pag. 5. If Heaven and Earth were miraculously destroy'd to confirm an Interpretation which disagrees with the natural and Grammatical sense of the words it will for all that remain a false Interpretation Which in plain English amounts to this that though Heaven contradicts an Interpretation by the most forcible sort of Argument which is a real Miracle and such as the Destruction of the whole World yet if it does not agree with that natural or Grammatical sense which our Reason makes of these words The Miracle will be true but the Interpretation false I am willing to give to Reason all the weight and admiration that it deserves it being the distinguishing Character of man and that by which he ought to be guided in his spiritual and temporal Concerns But there is a rational way of using our Reason which when strain'd beyond its bounds is no more Reason but extravagance and obstinacy When the greatest Authority in the World imposes on us the belief of that which our Reason cannot penetrate or understand It is not the work of Reason to reject it because the Notion is unintelligible and in our imperfect way of Reasoning offers seeming Contradictions But the truest and noblest Exercise of our Reason is to submit to that Authority and when we are satisfy'd that God speaks man is never so rational as when he yields without any inquiry into what he is pleas'd to reveal I say seeming Contradictions for admitting the Divine Revelation no Contradiction can be real We may imagine that indeed it is so because we are men who know very little and in the state of sin and weakness that we are in meet with a thousand obstacles to our perceptions But supposing that God has deliver'd it there can be no such thing as a Contradiction because howsoever I apprehend it it still comes from him who cannot contradict himself The Question once more is not of the Unity of the Divine Nature The Orthodox are as stiff as they in the point The Question is Whether the Trinity of Persons destroys or no the Unity of that Divine Nature The Orthodox must carry it if they can prove that the same God who has reveal'd the one has also reveal'd the other For if he has done this our duty is to adore in an humble silence what we cannot understand and those very Contradictions which we fansie in the thing reveal'd ought only to be to us sensible proofs of our ignorance and deep arguments of humiliation The Socinians then are in a great mistake and instead of writing Books after Books to shew the pretended inconsistencies and contradictions in the Revelation they ought to prove plainly that it is not reveal'd at all For if it clearly appears that it is so the pretended Contradictions must lye at their door but the Revelation will still be safe and certain It is strange that ingenious men who meet with so many things unintelligible in Nature will have nothing to be so in Religion They will submit to Philosophical proofs and Mathematical demonstrations which are at most but natural Evidences and will reject the greatest and most certain Evidence which is Faith Nothing can take them from reasoning and nothing will bring them to believe Whether the thing is is the Question How it is does not at all belong to us How the Father communicates his Essence to the Son How the Holy Ghost proceeds from both How three Persons subsist in the same Divine Nature can be no part of our inquiry If we can but be satisfy'd that God has so reveal'd himself to us that he is God that in that Deity which is one there are three equally adorable Persons we have nothing to do with the How Let us adore and believe the thing and reserve the manner to a better and a happier life where we shall know even as we are also known 1 Cor. 13.12 Those Reverend Persons who out of condescension to querulous men have undertaken to give Explications of the Trinity in Unity never pretended to go further They never thought that this could be Geometrically prov'd They built upon the Revelation and endeavour'd to find every one that way which seem'd to them the aptest to reconcile what these Gentlemen call Contradictions But left the thing it self as incomprehensible and relying on his Authority who reveal'd it The Socinians are not candid in the matter They endeavour to disprove the Athanasian Creed They pretend to answer the late Archbishop the Bishops of Worcester and Sarum They ridicule Dr. Wallis They insult the Dean of Paul's They are rude to Dr. South but still are clamorous about the How can it be and are not serious in proving that it is not These Gentlemen have pretended that by denying the Divinity of Jesus Christ and of the Holy Ghost they make the Scripture plain intelligible and obvious to the meanest capacities They think after this to have remov'd all those difficulties which the Clergy call Mysteries but are not so in themselves In the impartial account of the word Mystery pag. 3. By the means of Mystery Divines have made Religion a very difficult thing that is an Art which Christians are not able to understand and thereby they raise themselves above the common Christians and are made necessary to the People improving that Art to their own benefit Passing by the incivility of the reflexion I dare affirm that denying the Divinity of Christ and of the Holy Spirit nothing is easie nothing is plain in Religion That the Scripture is the darkest Book that ever was written and that no Christian can find the satisfaction of his mind and the peace of his conscience It may be said with a great deal of truth that the stream of the Scriptures runs that way that the belief of the Holy Trinity and the union of the two natures in Christ is the Key to all difficulties and that distinction so much laught at by these Gentlemen of one thing said of him as God and of another as Man which
are not pleas'd to observe that there is in the Text an actual comparison of two natures of Christ as Man and of Christ who is God blessed over all of Christ who in the first capacity is descended from the Jews and is a Jew according to the Flesh and of Christ who in the other has a communication of the Divine Nature and is God blessed over all It is easy to see says the Author of the Answer to Mr Milbourn that these expressions in the places cited by him are only as much as to say according to the Body I grant it But I affirm that it is easy to see that the Apostle speaks in those places Absolutely and without relation to any thing else and that here he speaks relatively to another being which Christ has This appears not only from the thing it self where there is an obvious comparison but from the very way of expressing of the Greek which our language cannot reach In all the places cited by these Gentlemen according to the Flesh is express'd without any Article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to determine it to any sence than what really it has But when this is say'd of Christ There the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which it is compar'd to somewhat else The Apostle has it clearly Rom. 1.2 and 3. made according to the Flesh where the Flesh does not signify the body as the places which they have cited to elude the force of this Text but the humane nature of Christ in opposition to these words according to the Spirit of Holiness by which the Divine is express'd This explication is of St. Chrysostom on this place Theodoret and long before of Tertullian adv Prax. Made of the seed of David according to the Flesh says that Father Here is the man and the Son of man And declar'd to be the Son of God according to the Holy Spirit Hic est Deus sermo Dei filius This is the God and the word the Son of God This was the Divinity of Tertullian's time before the Council of Nice Having done with this Text I pass to Act. 20.28 St. Paul taking his leave of the Asian Bishops exhorts them pathetically to that diligence and care which is the source of all Pastoral Vertues He urges it on these two Motives 1st That they have receiv'd their power from the Holy Ghost 2ly That the Church which he exhorts them to feed is the Church for which God has been pleas'd to dye Feed the Church of God which he has purchas'd with his own blood This is spoken of a God by nature since according to the Socinian Rule God is nam'd here with an Article It is not only a God but the God He has purchas'd to himself a Church he has bought us with a price and because without remission of Sin there is no redemption and there is no remission without blood he has purchas'd us with blood But the blood of Goats and Calves the blood of others being of it self ineffectual and only Figurative he has shed his own blood for us This cannot be say'd of the Father who these Gentlemen deny and with a great deal of reason to have suffer'd Nor can it be asserted of the Holy Spirit since they assure him to be only a power and an energy and it is ridiculous to say that an energy shed his own blood In can be say'd of none but the Son who having taken our nature upon him became our Mediator and High-Priest and by his own blood that blood which he shed for the Church obtain'd eternal redemption for us But that High-Priest that Mediator that Christ is say'd to be the God therefore he must be partaker of the Divine Nature and since the Father is the God and he is also the God there must be more persons than one subsisting in the Deity This is deciding and conclusive Yet the Author of the Brief Hist pag. 34. makes these exceptions 1st That in the Armenian Syriack and the most ancient of the Greek Bibles the reading is not the Church of God but of Christ 2ly That admitting the reading God in the vulgar Editions of the Greek yet some great Masters of the Greek Tongue have render'd the Greek words thus Feed the Church of God which he has purchas'd with his own Son's blood 3ly That admitting the Translation in our English Bibles some learned men particularly Erasmus have noted that the blood of Christ is here call'd the blood of God because it was the blood which God gave for the redemption of the World so Joh 1.36 This is the lamb of God that is the lamb of Sacrifice which God gives for the sins of the world These Gentlemen have the misfortune to call every thing an Answer 1st It is true that in some Copies these words have been read with some alteration but nothing at all to their purpose some few have read the Churc◠of the Lord others the Church of the Lord and God but none the Church of Christ They will much oblige the Common-wealth of Learning if they will produce any of these best and most ancient Copies A very learned Man of this Age has pretended to prove that the Church of Christ is not the language of the Scripture and that when the Church is spoken of by way of eminence as it is in this Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Church it is often say'd to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Church of God but never the Church of Christ And this Criticism they will find true if they give themselves the trouble to examine it The Syriack Interpreter is rather an Expositor than a Translator The Latin who is wholly a Translator and not an Expositor reads Ecclesiam Dei The Church of God The second part of their Answer that some great Masters of the Greek Tongue have render'd his own Son's blood instead of his own blood is a crying notorious and unpardonable falsification of a Text. What will be the end of our disputes if when we are press'd with the undenyable evidence of a Scripture we presume to add words to it and usher in that Sacrilegious attempt upon the word of God with saying some great Masters of the Greek Tongue When these Gentlemen talk of Syriack Arabick Coptick Armenian they may easily impose upon the simple but for Greek which is common to all professions in this Kingdom to tell us that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with his own proper blood is with his Son's blood to make the falsification Authentick by Attributing it to the great Masters of the Greek Tongue and call this an Answer to a solid Objection is a piece of an Incomprehensible Confidence 3ly Socinus and Chrellius were more dexterous who being press'd by this Text very fairly lay'd aside the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 own wherein lyes the stress of the Argument but call'd it as Erasmus has done the blood of God the Father that is the blood which God gave for the