kind but as actually subsisting in Particulars which are distinguished from each other by their distinct Subsistence or by such other Properties and characteristical Marks as are peculiar to each of them and not common to the whole kind as the persons of Peter and Iames and Iohn though they have the same common Nature are yet distinguished from each other Now if the One Divine Nature be in this sense a common Nature that it is really and actually communicated by the Father to the Son and Holy Spirit and does distinctly subsist whole and entire and perfect in all Three Divine Persons it cannot be One singular solitary Nature which cannot subsist distinctly in Three for in perfect singularity there can be no distinction nor can One singular Nature be Three Subsistences when there is but One which subsists Athanasius or whoever was the Author of that Treatise of the common Essence of Father Son and Holy Ghost proves that all Three Persons have the same common Nature from the same Names and Attributes and Works Dominion and Power ascribed distinctly to them all and gives this account why though the Father be God and the Son God and the Holy Ghost God yet we must not say that there are Three Gods but One God in Three Persons because a common Nature has a common Name as he shews that all Mankind in Scripture are called one Man upon account of their common Nature and if this be allowable among men to unite all Mankind in one Name and to speak of them as one Man notwithstanding all that diversity which is between them in external form strength will affections opinions c. how much more reasonable is it to call the Three Divine Persons One God who are distinguished and separated from the whole Creation by One undivided Dignity One Kingdom One Power One Will and Energy And that we may not suspect that by One common Nature they meant One singular Substance and Nature common to Father and Son which it is impossible to form any Notion of St. Basil tells us what he meant by a common Nature such a Nature as has the same Notion and Definition that is which is common as a Genus or Species is common As for example If the Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as to his Suppositum or Substance be Light we must acknowledge 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Essence and Substance of the Son to be Light also and whatever other Notion we form of the Being and Essence of the Father the same we must apply to the Son And herein he places the Unity of the Godhead or the One Divinity that though the Divine Persons differ in Number and in their peculiar Characters yet that Divine Nature which subsists distinctly in each of them has but one and the same Notion and Definition and therefore is but one and the same in all If this be not a specifick Sameness and Unity all our Logicks deceive us I 'm sure the Unity of an Individuum or singular Nature was never thought to consist in a common Notion or Definition of its Nature and yet this is the account which the Fathers unanimously give of the One common Divinity of Father Son and Holy Ghost No man who understands any thing of this Controversy can be ignorant of that famous Dispute de Ingenito Genito concerning the Vnbegotten and the begotten Nature By this Sophism the Arians endeavoured to prove That the Son could not be Homoousios consubstantial or of the same Nature with the Father because an Unbegotten Nature cannot be the same with a Begotten Nature Now had the Catholick Fathers believed the singularity of the Divine Nature in the modern Notion of it this Objection had been unanswerable for it is absolutely impossible that the same singular Nature should be both begotten and unbegotten as much as it is that the same single Person should be both begotten and unbegotten I desire to know how any Sabellianist who acknowledges but One singular solitary Substance of the Deity would answer this Objection I know no possible way they have but to deny that the Divine Nature of the Son is begotten that though the Son be begotten his Divine Nature is not begotten but only his Personality or Mode of Subsistence without a begotten subsisting Nature And this indeed would effectually answer the Objection for if there be not a begotten and unbegotten Nature the foundation of the Objection is lost And this is so obvious an Answer upon the Hypothesis of Singularity that it is sufficient to satisfy any thinking man that the Câ—tholick Fathers did not believe this Singularity of the Divine Essence since none of them ever gave this Answer to the Objection But we need not guess at their meaning for they themselves expresly reject this Answer which is the only proper and pertinent Answer upon this Hypothesis and give such other Answers as contradict the Notion of the Singularity of the Divine Essence As strange as some think it the Catholick Fathers from the very beginning of Christianity owned the Divine Nature and Substance of the Son to be begotten nothing is more familiar in all their Writings than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Natura genita Deus genitus unigenitus Deus St. Gregory Nyssen agrees this matter with Eunomius that the Divine Nature of the Son is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Begotten Substance so does St. Basil so do the other Fathers When Eunomius objected That God being unbegotten cannot admit of Generation St. Basil allows this to be true in one sense viz. That he who is unbegotten cannot in his own proper Nature be begotten because it is impossible that an unbegotten Nature should it self be begotten But the other sense of the words That he who is unbegotten himself can't beget so as to communicate by a substantial Generation his own Nature to the Son he rejects as Blasphemy both against Father and Son which is a plain demonstration what St. Basil's Judgment was about an unbegotten and begotten Nature Eunomius urged That unbegotten and begotten are both Names of Nature and therefore must signify two Natures as different from each other as unbegotten and begotten are Now to prove that begotten is not the Name of Nature and Substance St. Basil uses this Argument That if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be the same if begotten and substance signify the same thing then as he who is begotten is the begotten of him who begets so we may in like manner say that he who is begotten is the Substance of him who begets and then the Name begotten will not signify the Substance of the only begotten Son but the Substance of the God of all that as the Son is the begotten of God so he is the Substance of God and thus the begotten is the Substance of the unbegotten which he says is ridiculous And yet as ridiculous as St. Basil thought this those must of necessity
diversifying Properties make them Three Men. Could Human Nature subsist as perfectly and indivisibly the same in Three as the perfect Idea of Humanity their Persons might be distinguished but their Nature would be as perfectly One as the Idea of Humanity is one and the same in distinct Minds and in this Case as far as this perfect Sameness of Nature can make them one which as I have observed is not the compleat Notion of the Divine Unity though it be essential to it they might be called Three Human Persons but not Three Men But such peculiar Properties as diversify and thereby distinguish the same common Nature into Particulars make the Number Which is one reason why we must not say Three Gods as we do Three Men though the same Divinity be common to Father Son and Holy Ghost because this same One Divinity subsists whole and perfect without the least Change Diversity or Alteration in Three That though their Persons are distinct the Divinity is perfectly One and the Same in All and therefore they are but One God So that these Fathers do not insist on a mere Specifick Unity but on the Sameness and Identity of the Divine Nature in Three as the reason why we must not say that there are Three Gods for the same One undiversified Divinity can be but One God And therefore having answered that Popular Objection That Peter Iames and Iohn are allowed to be called Three Men upon account of the same common Nature by shewing that it is a great Popular Mistake that merely the same One Common Nature makes them Three Men or will justify their being called so this Father proceeds to shew That there is such an Unity between Father Son and Holy Ghost as is not and cannot be between any Three Creatures though they partake of the same Common Nature Such an Unity as makes Father Son and Holy Ghost essentially One God though Peter Iames and Iohn are Three Men. Nay such an Unity as even a perfect Sameness and Identity of Nature cannot make between Creatures who have an absolute and separate Subsistence This gives a reasonable Account of this whole Argument and vindicates it from those Absurdities which are charged on it It was necessary to lay the Foundation of the Divine Unity in the perfect and invariable Sameness and Identity of Nature For if the Divine Nature in Three is not perfectly the same it cannot be One for Diversity and Alterity makes a Number But if it subsist as perfectly the same in Three as its Idea is the same it must be as perfectly one as its Idea is one No say these Arians the same Nature subsisting in Three becomes Three Individual Natures of the same Species and the name of Nature must be multiplied with the Individuals as all allow it must be as to Men who partake of the same Common Nature For Peter Iames and Iohn are acknowledged to be Three Men though they have but one common Humanity and by the same reason Father Son and Holy Ghost must be Three Gods if they have the same common Divinity To which St. Gregory Nyssen answers That it is not the common Humanity which makes them Three Men for that which is but one and the same in all can't distinguish or multiply them and therefore in strict and accurate speaking as Man signifies pure and abstracted Humanity we cannot properly say Three Men because there are not Three Humanities and accordingly the name Man does not and cannot distinguish one Man from another nor is ever used to that purpose but that which multiplies Nature and the name of Nature are those peculiar Properties which distinguish and diversify Nature as well as Persons and thus the common Nature with diversifying Properties 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is distinguish'd and multiplied by a kind of Composition for the same Nature with one peculiar diversifying Property is distinguish'd from the same Nature with other Properties and thus the same Nature divided and distinguish'd with these Properties makes a Number and gives the name of Nature to each Individual Person and thus it is in all Creatures But where the same Nature subsists in Three without any thing to distinguish or diversify Nature as it is in the Blessed Trinity though the Persons may be distinguish'd the Nature and the name of Nature can be but One Which is the reason why Father Son and Holy Ghost are but One God because they have but One undistinguish'd undiversified Nature though their Persons are distinct This is the true Account of this Matter which is so far from such a mere Specifick Unity of Nature as is between Three Men that it is that very Sameness and Identity of Nature which the Catholick Fathers make essential to the Unity of the Godhead And the better to understand this we must consider their Philosophy about Numbers for according to them nothing properly but Alterity and Diversity makes a Number What is perfectly the same is but One as Boetius tells us not by a Singularity but by a perfect Sameness and Identity of Nature In this sense it is that Greg. Nazianzen St. Basil and others teach That God is One 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not in Number but Nature whereby they do not mean that there are more Gods in Number than One but that the Unity of the Godhead does not consist in the Unity of Number but of Nature and that the Unity of Nature consists in the invariable Sameness and Identity of it and therefore where the Divinity is perfectly the same there is but One God Thus Greg. Nyssen tells us That the same Divinity may be numbred and yet rejects all Number that is the Divinity may be numbred with the Persons as when we say the Father is God the Son God and the Holy Ghost God but the Divine Nature being perfectly the same in all that can't be numbred that we must not say there are Three Gods or Three Divinities Boetius has given the best Account of this according to the Philosophy of the Ancients by distinguishing between Numbers for he says Number is twofold that by which we number and that which is in the things numbred As to the first the repetition of Units makes a Number for One and One and One are Three and both the Catholick Fathers and Schools reject this kind of Number which is a Species of Quantity from the Divinity for God is under no Predicament and therefore the Unity of God not reducible to the Predicament of Quantity for God is before and above all Unity as he is above Substance above Essence above every thing which we have any Notion or Conception of as Dionysius the Areopagite speaks But as to the things numbred the Repetition of Units does not multiply or make a Number in things where the Nature is perfectly the same for it is not a Repetition of Units but Alterity and Diversity which multiplies Natures To say God and God and God does not
there should be Three such distinct incommunicable Persons in the same undivided undistinguished Divinity Why we may not call Three Divine Persons who have each of them the whole Divine Nature distinctly and incommunicably Three Divinities as well as Three Divine Persons when a Divine Person is nothing else but the Divinity And then Three distinct Persons must be Three distinct Divinities This Unity and Distinction in the Godhead has always been acknowledged by the Catholick Fathers to be a Great and Inexplicable Mystery a wonderful Union and wonderful Distinction Damascen as I observed above tells us That the Divine Nature though subsisting in Three Persons is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 really and actually One not merely notionally One as Human Nature is which subsists only in Individuals and has a particular distinct separate Subsistence in every particular Man and therefore can be One in its Individuals in no other sense but only as the same common Notion and Definition of Humanity belongs to them all that is Human Nature is One in all the Men in the World not by a Real Subsisting but by a Specifick Notional Unity But the Divine Nature is One with a Real Subsisting Unity being perfectly the same in Three without any Division or Separation And an indivisible inseparable undiversified Same is really and actually One according to the most simple Notions we can form of Unity But what room then does this leave for a Real Trinity of Persons in this One Simple Uncompounded Indivisible Inseparable Nature To this he answers That this Real Distinction of Persons in the perfect Unity and Simplicity of Nature may be known and understood by Reason though there be nothing in Nature to distinguish them Father Son and Holy Ghost are upon all accounts perfectly One excepting this That one is Unbegotten the other Begotten and the third Proceeds We acknowledge One God distinguished only by these Personal Properties of Paternity Filiation and Procession as a Cause and that which is caused and as each of them has a compleat perfect Hypostasis distinguish'd only by these different Modes of Subsistence This proves a Real Distinction without any Diversity Division or Separation and therefore a Real Distinction in perfect Unity The Divine Nature is Infinite and Uncircumscribed and therefore the Divine Persons cannot be divided and separated from each other but are perfectly in each other without Confusion The Divine Nature is perfectly One in Three by the Unity of Sameness and Identity and therefore there can be no diversity or division of Will or Counsel or Operation or Power Now a Nature which is perfectly the same and undivided must be perfectly One. But then Father Son and Holy Ghost are certainly Three for He who begets is not He who is begotten for nothing begets it self To beget and to be begotten and to proceed are the Characters of Persons and can belong only to True Real Substantial Persons He who begets must be a Person and so must He who is begotten and He who proceeds they have each of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whatever makes a compleat and perfect Person but then these Three can never meet in the same Person and consequently must distinguish Persons for the same Person can't be unbegotten begotten and proceed can 't be the Cause and that which is caused This is demonstratively certain That a begotten and unbegotten Person and consequently a begotten and unbegotten Nature a Divine Person being nothing else but the Divine Nature are and must be Two and never can be each other and therefore this distinguishes Persons though it makes no distinction or diversity in the Divine Essence as the Catholick Fathers proved against the Arians that to be unbegotten and to be begotten does not But to be unbegotten to be begotten and to proceed whatever you will call them whether Personal Properties or Modes of Subsistence though they do not make the Persons that is are not the formal Notion of a Person yet they certainly distinguish them or prove them to be as distinct and incommunicable as Unbegotten Begotten and Proceeding for if these Terms or Characters can never signify each other then the Persons characterized by them can never be each other And this is all the distinction that can be in an undistinguished undiversified undivided Essence Well but still the difficulty remains how to distinguish between Essence and Person in God for if Person be Nature and Essence and each Person distinctly in himself be the whole Divine Essence or the whole Divinity how can we avoid acknowledging Three Essences and Three Divinities as well as Three Persons in the Trinity Now the account of this must be taken from the nature of that Distinction and Unity which is in God for such a Distinction as does not destroy the Unity can't multiply Natures though it distinguishes Persons Each Person is the Divine Nature but without any diversity division or separation of the Divinity and what is Identically and Indivisibly the same is but One. The Divine Nature as self-originated and unbegotten is the Person of the Father as communicated by Generation is the Person of the Son as proceeding is the Person of the Holy Ghost and these are Three but the Son is begotten of the Substance of his Father and the Holy Ghost proceeds from Father and Son without any diversity division or separation of Substance and therefore the Divinity is but One. The Divine Nature subsists distinctly and incommunicably in Three according to their distinct Characters of Unbegotten Begotten and Proceeding and these we call Persons because they bear some Analogy to Individuals in created Beings which in an Intelligent Nature are called Persons but they are not Three Divinities because the Divine Nature though it be distinct yet is undiversified and undivided in Three and therefore is but One in Three This seems to me a very intelligible Account of a Trinity in Unity and the difference between Person and Essence though a Divine Person is the Divine Essence When we distinguish between Person and Essence and say there are Three Persons and One Essence by Essence we mean an undistinguished undivided Divinity which is but One by Three Persons we mean the Divine Essence unbegotten and communicated by Generation and Procession which are really distinct Persons and subsist distinctly but i◠the Unity of an undistinguished and undivided Divinity which makes them really and actually Three and One the same without diversity and distinct without division And this seems to be the reason why the Catholick Fathers tho they called the Divine Persons Tres Res and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Tres Subsistentes Three Things and Three that subsist yet were more cautious in calling them Three Natures or Essences or Substances though there are some Examples of this kind because though the Divine Essence subsists distinctly in Father Son and Holy Ghost which makes them Three Distinct Real Subsisting Persons yet the Divine Nature is not
since I find some Learned Men boggle very much at the Notion of Relative Substances which are not merely the Subjects of Relations but the Relations themselves What their Objection is against this I can't tell unless they think that a Relative Substance is not True and Perfect Substance which is very far from the Notion of the Schools who attribute compleat and perfect Subsistence to these Divine Relations or Persons not as Accidents in their Subjects nor as Parts in a Whole which is their Notion of Substance and compleat Subsistence but a Relative Substance only signifies such a Substance as is not the Original but is all that it is from another which they call the Relatio Originis not merely such a Relation as is between the Cause and the Effect which is seldom a substantial subsisting Relation but the Relation between Substance and Substance when one Substance in the notion of Suppositum is wholly and perfectly derived and expressed from the other The easiest Representation of this is the relation between the Prototype or Original and its Image which is not a mere Relation of Likeness and Similitude but of Origination that the Image is taken from the Original which is the foundation of the Relation Though Two Eggs were never so perfectly alike yet One is not the Image of the Other because it is not of the Other nor its natural Representation though perfectly like it but the Image is that which results from the Object like a Face in the Glass or the Impression of a Seal and the whole Essence of such an Image as an Image is relative And it is the same case as to a living substantial Image of that Life and Substance from whence it proceeds it is as perfect Life and Substance it self as its Original or else it could not be a natural Image of Life and Substance but yet it is Relative Life and Substance Life of Life the Prototype begetting its own Image in a perfect Identity and Sameness of Nature Whole of Whole And this is the Notion of the Schools concerning Relative Substances which is intelligible enough And that this is what they mean by Relations in the Godhead or Divine Nature is as plain The Master of the Sentences tells us That these Names Father Son and Holy Ghost signify the Properties of Paternity Filiation and Procession for they are Relatives which speak a mutual respect and denote Relations which are not Accidents in God but immutably in the Persons themselves so that they are not mere relative Appellations but are Relations or Notions in the things themselves that is in the Persons And by this Argument Tho. Aquinas proves That these are real Relations and are really in God because the Father is so called from the Relation of Paternity and the Son from Filiation that were not Paternity and Filiation realiter in Deo real subsisting Relations in the Divinity it would follow That God is not really Father or Son but only according to different Conceptions which is the Sabellian Heresy And proves That these Relations in God are real because they are Divine Processions in the Identity of Nature that is the Son who proceeds from the Father in the Identity of the same Nature and the Holy Spirit who proceeds from Father and Son in the Identity of the same Nature For they called both the Generation of the Son and the Spiration of the Holy Ghost Processions as the Greeks did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the one processio intellectus the other amoris Now these real Processions are Respects in the nature of things and such Respects are real Relations for when any thing proceeds from a Principle of the same Nature both that which proceeds and that from which it proceeds must necessarily be of the same Order and therefore have a real respect to each other Divine Processions in the Identity of Nature must be related to each other in the Unity of the same Nature and must be substantial subsisting Relations for they are no other than the Persons themselves who thus proceed It is a received Conclusion in the Schools That a Relation in God is the same with the Divine Essence That Personal Relations are not reipsa distinguished either from the Persons or the Essence And Gilbertus Porretanus who taught the contrary was forced to recant in the Council of Rhemes The real Distinction of these Relations in the Unity of the Divine Nature is another avowed Doctrine of the Schools and by a real Distinction they mean a Distinction in re in the Subject and Suppositum And this they prove from the real Distinction of Persons which are distinguished only by Relations From a real Trinity which is One in Substance but multiplied by Relations relatio multiplicat Trinitatem and therefore unless these Relations be really distinguished from each other there can't be a Real but only a Notional Trinity which is Sabellianism That these Relations which constitute the Trinity are opposite Relations which require distinct Subjects as Paternity and Filiation for no man can be Father and Son to himself That these Divine Relations are real Relations and therefore must be really distinct or else they are not all real unless they be really opposed to each other which makes a real distinction and therefore there must be a real distinction in God not as to any thing absolute secundum rem absolutam which is the Divine Essence which has the most perfect and simple Unity but secundum rem relativam with respect to a Relative Being and Subsistence So that these Relations are Relative Beings Relative Subsistences and as they are sometimes called Relative Substances which are really distinct though not in Nature yet in their Suppositums not as Tâ—ree Absolute Beings which makes a distinction in Nature but as Three Real Subsisting Relations in the Unity of the same Nature But not â—o multiply words in so plain a Case I shall observe buâ— one thing more to this purpose and that concerns the Dispute concâ—â—ning the Number of the Divine Persons The Catholick Faith owns a Trinity or only Three Divine Persons in the Unity of the Godhead Father Son and Holy 〈◊〉 and it is the known Doctrine of the Schools That the Relation is the Person How comes it to pass then that when there are Four Relations in the Godhead Paternity Filiation Active Spiration and Procession there should be but Three Persons Now the Answer which Aquinas and others give to this Difficulty is this That it is not every Relation but only opposite Relations which constitute and distinguish Persons for more Persâ—ns are more subsisting Relations really distinct from each other but there can be no real distinction between the Divine Relations but upon account of their relative opposition And therefore two opposite Relations must belong to two Persons but such Relations as are not opposite to each other must belong to the same Person and therefore Paternity and
Father Son and Holy Ghost in these Modes of Subsistence but only distinguish and characterize their Persons by them and from thence prove the real distinction of Persons in the Individual Unity of the Divine Essence But then I do not remember that they so much as distinguish all Created Persons by their peculiar Modes of Subsistence I know very well that both Damascen and others give an Example of this in Adam Eve and Seth that Adam was immediately formed by God of the Dust of the Earth Eve formed of one of Adam's Ribs and Seth begotten of Adam and Eve which they call their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which in this Example can signify nothing else but their different manner of Production not different Modes of Subsistence but then they do not alledge this as the formal Reason of Personality nay not as necessary to the distinction of Persons though such Peculiarities whenever they are will always distinguish Persons but all they designed by it was to prove that such different ways of coming into being made no change or alteration in Nature for Adam Eve and Seth had all the same Human Nature though formed after such a different manner in answer to the Arian Objection against the Homoousion that an Unbegotten and Begotten Nature cannot be the same and therefore Father and Son not Consubstantial Indeed this would have been a very ill Example of the Distinction of Persons by these different Modes of Subsistence because it could only distinguish Adam and Eve from all the rest of Mankind for all Mankind ever since excepting our Saviour have come into the World the same way that Seth did and therefore are not distinguished by a peculiar manner of Subsistence for they have all the same and consequently either are not distinct Persons or else such peculiar Modes of Subsistence coalescing with common Nature do not constitute the Person And yet I can meet with no other Account of any Modes of Subsistence necessary to the constitution of a Created Person excepting their Personal Properties and Characters which do not make but only distinguish Persons which are not properly Modes of Subsistence but Modes Affections and Properties of the Subsisting Nature but only a separate Subsistence that every Created Hypostasis or Person subsists by it self and separately from all others And herein both Fathers and Philosophers notwithstanding some difference in words seem well enough agreed and this is all that I need say concerning the Distinction between Nature and Person in Created Beings But now every one who understands the True Catholick Faith of the Trinity must needs be sensible how improper all this is to explain that Venerable Mystery of One Nature and Three Persons in the Unity of the Godhead if we apply these Terms strictly and properly The Catholick Fathers would not allow Aristotle's Definition of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nature Essence and Substance that it is that which subsists by it self because this leaves no possible distinction between Essence and Hypostasis without which we can never defend the Faith of One Nature in Three Persons for what in his Sense thus subsists by it self is an Individual and Singular Nature which is the same with Hypostasis and then it is impossible there should be Three Hypostases in One Singular Nature which is but One Hypostasis But after all Do these Fathers deny that the Divine Nature is One Individual Nature Do they not as I have largely shewn make this the Fundamental Reason of the Divine Unity That there is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Divinity in Three Perfect Hypstases and that this One Divinity is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Perfect Indivisible Vnit and Monad and that in a very different Sense from what they own in Creatures So that in some Sense these Fathers own That the Divine Nature is as True an Individuum and infinitely a more Perfect Vnit and Monad than Aristotle's First Substance though his First Substance is and can be but One Hypostasis and the Divine Nature subsists perfectly in Three And therefore to qualify this they tell us That Nature signifies the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that which is common to all the Hypostases of the same Nature but the Hypostasis is the common Nature with some peculiar and distinguishing Properties subsisting separately by it self and this seems to give us a better image and resemblance of One Nature in Three Hypostases for here is one common Nature not only in Three but in all the distinct Hypostases of that Nature that ever were or ever shall be But I 'm sure this needs greater qualification when applied to the Mystery of the Trinity than Aristotle's â—irst Substance or it will unavoidably introduce not merely Tritheism but Polytheism without end for God can limit the Numbers of Created Hypostases but the number of Hypostases in an Infinite necessary Nature can never be limited if the Divine Nature be common to the Divine Hypostases only as Humane Nature is common to Human Hypostases They teach as I have already observed That Human Nature for instance is a common Nature and that every Hypostasis or every particular Man has this same common Nature but then it is a common Nature not as it is numerically One in all for it subsists separately in every Hypostasis and therefore in this sense is not One common Numerical Individual Nature but it is common only as it is perfectly the same in all Which they will not allow to be a meer common Notion but a common Specifick Nature for the Nature is the Species which is the foundation of the common Predication For therefore all Men have the common Name and Definition of a Man because they have the same common Human Nature And thus though every Hypostasis has not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a particular Nature as that signifies a distinction in the Nature it self yet it has the common Specifick Individual Nature that is that Nature which makes the Species and is common as it is the same in all but yet subsists individually 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and separately in each Hypostasis But now will any Catholick Christian say that thus it is in the Ever Blessed Trinity That the One Common Divinity is One and Common only as One Common Humanity is that is that it is perfectly the same in all not One Individual but One Specifick Nature Or will he say That each Divine Person has one whole intire Specifick Divinity as every Human Person has a whole Specifick Humanity As far as I can see this would as unavoidably make Father Son and Holy Ghost Three Gods as Peter Iames and Iohn are three Men and a common Nature and personal Properties and different Modes of Subsistence would no more prevent a Trinity of Gods than a Trinity of Men. This I think plainly shews how vain an Attempt it is to find out any Notions of Unity and Distinction of Nature and Person or any words to express those
Notions by common to God and Creatures These Creature-Ideas and Creature Terms can be applied to God only by way of Analogy and Accommodation and that a very imperfect one too 2. Let us then consider how the Catholick Fathers accommodated these Names of Essence and Person to the explication of this Mystery and what they intended to represent by them I shall do this in as few words as possibly I can that what I have to say may be the more easily understood They tell us That all Nature is common that Human Nature is common to all Mankind and the Divine Nature common to all the Three Divine Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost not that they thought the Divinity or Godhead a common Nature merely as Human Nature is common but there is this Analogy between them that the Divine Nature is not singular or does not subsist in Singularity but in Three Hypostases as Human Nature is common because it is not confined to one but is in all Human Hypostases and that the Divine Nature is perfectly and invariably the same in each Hypostasis as the Human Nature is which for this Reason is called a common not a particular Nature which is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness Identity not Singularity of Nature in the Blessed Trinity Thus far the Analogy holds which is a direct opposition both to Sabellianism and Arianism but it reaches no farther for the Divine Nature is not a common Specifick Nature as all Created Nature is common for the Godhead is no Species that is there is and can be but One God Which I have already at large shewn to be the Sense of the Fathers They expresly teach That the Divine Nature is an Individual Nature but not Singular it is common as being whole and perfect in more Hypostases than One which excludes Singularity but it is one whole Entire Individual Nature so one Individual as Human Nature is one in one Man For though Individual and Singular is the same in Creatures it is not so in the Divine Nature nor can it be if the Catholick Faith be One Nature One Divinity in Three Perfect Hypostases And if we can form any sensible Notion of this it will silence all the pretences of Jargon Nonsense Contradiction Tritheism which are so constantly objected against this Venerable Mystery And therefore I shall briefly inquire 1. What that One Divinity is which is common to Father Son and Holy Ghost and how it is common 2. How this common Nature is in a strict and proper Sense One Individual Nature And I think this is easily accounted for from the Doctrine of the Fathers 1. As for the first This 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Divinity is the Divinity of the Father the Natura Patris the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Nature of the Father and the Divinity of the Father who is the Eternal Self-originated Mind which has no Second and therefore there can be no other no Second or Third Divinity Now this One Divine Nature One Divinity of the Father is common to the Son and to the Holy Spirit Common I say not merely as Human Nature is common to all Men because it is the same in all perfectly the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though it be not the same Individual Nature in all which is singular and incommunicable in Creatures but it is common by a perfect communication whole of whole that it is no New Divinity but the Divinity of the Father which is in the Son who is therefore so often as I observed above called the Nature and Divinity and Mind of the Father his Image and Character and that which is signified by all this his Eternal Living Omnipotent Word I do not intend to prove all this over again which I have abundantly proved already but only to put every thing into its proper place that we may view the Whole in a true light This Divine Nature then of the Father which is but One is that One Divinity which is by an Eternal Ineffable Generation communicated whole and perfect to the Son and by a like Eternal and Ineffable Procession to the Holy Spirit But still the difficulty is How this is One Nature which is not Singular nor subsists in Singularity but in Three Proper Distinct Compleat Hypostases or Persons 2. And therefore rightly to apprehend this we must inquire into the Notion of One Individual Nature Now that which is most obvious and which the Fathers perpetually alledge in justification of the Divine Unity is That an Individual is an undivided Nature and therefore the One Divinity of the Father though actually communicated to the Son and Holy Spirit is One Individual Divinity because it is communicated whole and perfect without Division or Separation and that which is undivided is One. But though to be undivided be essential to the Notion of an Individual Nature yet there must be something else to compleat this Notion or at least to give us a more distinct conception of it Could Human Nature propagate it self whole and compleat to Two or Three without any division or separation of Substance this could not make it One Individual Nature though they were undivided for One Individual Nature is One whole Compleat Nature without division which is all that is essential to such a Being and is this all but once and that without division But how will this agree with the Notion of One Divinity or One Individual Divine Nature For does not the One Divine Nature which is the Divinity of the Father subsist compleatly and distinctly though without division and separation in the Son and Holy Ghost and will you call this One Individual Nature which is not singularly in One but subsists distinctly in Three Yes I will because all these Three Father Son and Holy Ghost are essential to the Notion of One Divinity and therefore are One Individual Divinity in Three for an Individual Nature is that which without division has all that is essential to such a Nature Well But is not the Father then in his own Person True and Perfect God and the Son True and Perfect God and the Holy Ghost True and Perfect God that is Have not each of these Divine Persons all the Divine Perfections included in the Notion and Idea of God And are they not Three who have all the Perfections of the Divine Nature and how then is this One Individual Nature I answer When I say That One Individual Nature is that which has all that is essential to such a Nature by Essential I mean not only Essential Properties Qualities Powers and Perfections which are commonly called Nature there being no other notion of Nature in Created Beings but Essential Productions too which when there is any such thing are as essential to Nature as any other Properties or Perfections In the first Sense of Essential the Divine Nature is not singular but communicated by the Eternal Father to the Eternal Son and by Father
foundation of this Sameness and Consubstantiality of Nature in the Eternal Generation of the Son of the Substance of the Father 184 To which they added That the Son receives his whole Substance from the whole Substance of the Father totus ex toto 186 Concerning this mysterious and ineffable Generation Whole of Whole 187 St. Austin teaches That the Divine Nature and Essence must not be considered either as a Genus or Species nor the Divine Persons as Individuals 194 What Medium there is between the Vnity of Singularity and a specifick Vnity of Nature 195 The difference between Three Divine Persons and Three Individual Human Persons 199 SECT VI. A more particular Inquiry what the Catholick Fathers meant by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness and Identity of Substance in the Holy Trinity 207 Petavius's attempt to prove that both the Greek and Latin Fathers taught the Singularity of the Divine Nature Ibid. His Notion of Singularity Considered 208 His Apology for the Fathers who as he says taught a specifick Vnity rejected 211 His Authorities for the Singularity of the Divine Nature Examined 213 By the Sameness and Identity of Nature the Fathers did not mean Singularity but such a Sameness as is between Three real subsisting Persons without the least Change and Variation 217 That the Fathers resolved the Vnity of God into this Sameness and Identity of Nature 221 Some Examples in Nature of the distinction betweeen alius and aliud 227 How the Fathers proved the Vnity of God in opposition to Polytheism from the Sameness and Identity of Nature 230 That these Arguments do not conclude against a Trinity of Divine Persons 232 Gregory Nyssen vindicated from Tritheism and his Answer to Ablabius Explained 236 The Philosophy of the Ancients about Numbers 243 The distinction between the Vnity of Number and the Vnity of Nature opposed to the Charge of Tritheism and a Confutation of a Sabellian Singularity 246 In what sense the Schools asserted the Singularity of the Divine Substanâ—e 248 SECT VII Concerning the Distinction of Persons in the Vnity and Identity of the Divâ—ne Essence The general Account of this 254 That both the Fathers and Schools by a Divine Person understood the Divine Essence and Substance and nothing else 260 This proved from that Ambiguity with which the Fathers are charged in the use of these Terms Essence Nature Substance Hypostasis c. 261 That these Terms Essence c. are distinctly applied to each Person of the Holy Trinity 264 And all those Terms which are more peculiarly appropriated to signify the Divine Persons were always used by Catholick Writers in the Notion of Substance and never thought Catholick in any other sense as Person Hypostasis Suppositum c. 265 That a Divine Person is nothing else but the Divine Nature proved from the Absolute Simplicity of the Divine Nature which admits of no Composition as both Fathers and Schoolmen own 272 According to the Doctrine both of Fathers and Schools the Divine Essence and Substance as subsisting distinctly in Three is proper and peculiar to each and incommunicable to one another 273 Whether the Divine Essence either begets or is begotten and how the Fathers and Schools may be reconciled 274 SECT VIII Concerning the Divine Relations 281 The true Notion of Relative Substances or Subsisting Relations explained from the Doctrine of the Schools Ibid. These Divine Relations secure the perfect Vnity of the Divine Essence 287 What is meant by an Absolute Substance and what by Relative Substance Ibid. This applied to the Doctrine of the Trinity 288 Three Absolute Substances are always distinctly and separately Three Three Relative Substances may be essentially One in the same One Individual Nature 289 This account the Fathers give of the Vnity of the Divine Essence 290 Concerning the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that they do not signify Personal Relative Substances but singular Absolute Substances 293 The Divine Relations prove the Sameness and Identity of Nature in Three 298 These Divine Relations give us an intelligible Notion of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the inseparable Vnion of the Divine Persons and their mutual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inexistence in each other 300 This mutual inbeing can be understood only between the Relatives of the same Individual Essence and Substance 305 And this gives an Account of the Vnity of Operation 308 Concerning the Mutual Consciousness of the Divine Persons 313 The Doctrine of Relations necessary to give us a sensible Notion of a Trinity in Vnity 326 SECT IX A more particular Inquiry into the difference between 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Nature and Person with an Account of some Catholick Forms of Speech relating to the ever Blessed Trinity 334 The Faith and the Philosophy of the Ancients of a different Consideration Ibid. All the Heresies relating to the Doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation attributed to this one mistake that Essence and Hypostasis are the same 336 This by some charg'd upon Aristotle's Notion of a first Substance Ibid. The Distinction of Nature and Person in Creatures considered 338 Aristotle's first Substance and what the Fathers call Hypostasis is in Creatures the same thing 339 What the Fathers mean by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in every Hypostasis 340 No real difference between Aristotle and the Fathers in this Matter Ibid. The Fathers by a Common Nature did not mean One Numerical Subsisting Nature common to all the Individuals 341 For what reason they reject 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a particular singular Nature 343 Hypostasis is Nature with its peculiar Accidents subsisting by it self that these Accidents and Personal Properties do not make but only distinguish Persons 345 The Hypostasis or Person is the common Nature subsisting by it self This proved from the Humanity of our Saviour 346 How improper all these Terms are to explain the Trinity in Vnity 350 How the Catholick Fathers accommodated these Names of Essence and Person to the Explication of this Mystery 352 The Common Nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Divinity is the Divinity of the Father common to the Son and Spirit by a perfect Communication whole of whole 354 The true Notion of One Individual Nature Ibid. Essential Internal Productions are in the Individual Vnity of Nature 356 The Distinction between Nature and Persons for that is the true State of the Question not how Nature and Person is distinguished in each Single Divine Person but how One Individual Nature is distinguished from Three Persons in the Individual Vnity of Nature 360 The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 explained 362 This applied at large for the Explication and Vindication of several Catholick Forms of Speech concerning the Trinity in Vnity 365 c. The Conclusion with a short Application to the Socinians 385 ERRATA PAge 6. l. 31. d. all p. 9. marg r. quae p. 15. l. 3. r. enow p 86. l. 8 9. r expressions p. 180. l.
but yet that Jesus Christ was a Divine and Human Person though Christ was one Person and Jesus another And therefore as the Nicene Creed which we find also in the Ancient Oriental Creeds teaches us to believe in One God the Father Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth and of all things visible and invisible not to exclude Christ from being the Maker of the World but in opposition to those Hereticks who would not allow the Supreme God who is the Father of Christ to be the Maker of the World but attributed the Creation of this World to one or more Inferior Angels So they add And in One Lord Iesus Christ the only begotten Son of God in opposition to those who made Christ and Jesus Two Persons And yet in this very Heresy we may see what the Ancient Catholick Faith was That Jesus Christ was God and Man as Cerinthus himself owned though he would not unite Christ and Jesus into One Person nor make the Union inseparable The Valentinian Heresy though dressed up after the mode of the Pagan Theology was a manifest Corruption of the Christian Faith under a Pretence of a more perfect knowledge of Divine Mysteries and we may still see the broken Remains of the Catholick Tradition of the Trinity among them Their Pleroma by which they seem to understand the Fulness of the Deity as St. Paul uses that Phrase 2 Col. 9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Christ bodily I say this Pleroma consisted of several Aeons or Divine Persons which were propagated from the Unknown and Incomprehensible Father in gradual Descents and all together made up the Compleat and Perfect Deity which were more or fewer according to the various Fancies of Hereticks Now from these wild Conceits we may in some measure learn what the Catholick Faith was That the Godhead was not confined to one Single and Solitary Person but that there is such a Foecundity in the Divine Nature as communicates it self to more Persons than one For had it been the known and received Faith of the Christian Church That there is but One Person in the Godhead as well as but One God there had been no pretence for these Hereticks who called themselves Christians and boasted of a more perfect knowledge of the Christian Faith to have invented such a number of Aeons which they included within their Pleroma as the several Emanations of their Deity And we may observe that most of the Names which they gave to their several Aeons are Scripture-Names and Titles which the Pagan Theology knew nothing of and which they could learn no where but from the Christian Church Basilides I think was one of the first who gave us any distinct account of these Aeons which was new modell'd by Valentinus and other succeeding Hereticks and his first and Supreme Aeon as Epiphanius tells us was 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Unbegotten One who only is the Father of all and by others is called the Propater and the Unknown Invisible Incomprehensible Father Now though the Heathens very familiarly call their Supreme God the Father of Gods and Men with respect to his Creating Power yet as the Notion of Father is founded in a substantial Generation as these Hereticks plainly understood it so it is the peculiar Character of God under the Gospel who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ his only begotten Son It is certain the first Person in the Godhead was never called the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the One that is unbegotten but to distinguish him from One who is begotten the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the only begotten who is God also but God oâ— God And it is observable what Tertullian tells us of Heracleon That he made his first Aeâ—n to be illud quod pronunciat which some Criticks not understanding think to be a defect in the Copy but the sense is plain that his first Aeon is he that pronounceth or speaketh by which he represented the Eternal Generation of the Word So that his first Aeon is the Pronouncer or Speaker that is the Father of the Eternal Word which St. Iohn tells us was in the beginning was with God and was God Which shews that this is nothing else but a disguized Corruption of the Catholick Faith concerning the Eternal Generation of the Word from the Eternal Unbegotten Father To confirm this I observe farther That most of the Names which they give to their other Aeons are such Names Titles or Characters as the Scripture gives to Christ or the Holy Spirit which they have multiplied into so many distinct Persons or Aeons such as the Mind Word Prudence Power and Wisdom Truth Life Light the Only begotten the Paraclete and the like Valentinus indeed as Epiphanius observes did model his Thirty Aeons according to Hesiod's Genealogy and Number of Gods and with some manifest allusions to them but yet he retained as many Scripture-Names as he could the better to reconcile unwary people to his fabulous Genealogiâ—s as the hidden and mysterious sense of Scripture And it is impossible such Fables should ever have obtained any Credit had they not been grafted on the Catholick Faith and pretended to improve it with new degrees of Light and Knowledge When these Heresies were pretty well silenced up start Noetus and Sabellius who ran into the other Extreme The Valentinians had corrupted the Doctrine of the Trinity by multiplying Three Divine Persons into Thirty Aeons besides all their other Pagan and Fabulous Conceits about them This offended these men as downright Polytheism as indeed it was no better and to avoid this they reject a Trinity of Real and Substantial Persons for a Trinity of Names that Father Son and Holy Ghost are but Three Names of the same Person who is sometimes called the Father at other times the Son or the Holy Ghost with respect to his different Appearances or Operations Or they made the Son and Holy Ghost not Two Persons but Two Personal Attributes in God his Wisdom or Power Or they made the Trinity but Three Parts of One Compounded God as a Man consists of Body Soul and Spirit which of late have been revived among us under different Names After these men arose Arius and his Followers who out of great Zeal also for the Unity of God framed a New and more Subtile Heresy They were sensible that Father and Son were not Two Names but Two Real Distinct Persons and therefore they attributed the whole entire Divinity to the Father and made the Son not to be God by Nature but the most Perfect and Excellent Creature as Perfect an Image of God as any Creature can be but not Consubstantial with God nor Coequal and Coeternal with him All these Heresies were rejected and condemned by the Catholick Church in their several Ages as soon as they appeared and were taken notice of And this is one very good way to learn what the Catholick Faith was from its Opposition to
this Ancient Signification of the Word he slily wrested and applied to the Article concerning the Three Persons of the Godhead But let us fly from and abhor such wicked Artifices and know That the Church speaks after another manner and that Person signifies an Individual Intelligent Incommunicable Substance And it will be of great use to form and fix this Notion in our minds to contemplate the Baptism of Christ where all Three Persons were most evidently represented and distinguished The Father spoke in an audible Voice This is my beloved Son the Son is seen standing in the River and the Holy Spirit descends on him in a visible Appearance But since the Considerer makes a great Flourish with his Ideas and clear and distinct Conceptions and fetches his Proofs from the most intimate knowledge of Nature he may take it ill if no notice or regard be had of them We see very well where he has been trading and I doubt the Ingenious Author of Human Vnderstanding will have more Disciples of different kinds than he was well aware of in whom he will have no great reason to glory For it requires more Skill than every man is Master of to form simple and distinct Notions and Ideas and to apply them dexterously to their proper Subjects And to refer all men to Natural Ideas and Perceptions when so very few know how to distinguish between Natural Notions and the Prejudices and Prepossessions of Education the Delusions of Fancy and the Byass of Inclination is like the Quakers appeal to the Light within which is just what every man will have it to be Our Considerer reduces all the Notions he can find of Vnity and Distinction to Three Heads The Unity or Distinction of Ideas of Principle and of Position and undertakes to prove from them all That it is impossible or absolutely unconceivable that there should be more than One Intelligent Person in the proper Notion of a Person in the Godhead Now in the first place I would be glad to hear a good reason why the Considerer takes no notice of that old received definition of One that Vnum est Indivisum that is One which is Undivided The most perfect One is that which neither is nor can be divided an absolute perfect Monad which is absolutely and perfectly Simple without any Parts to be divided into And this is the Unity of the Divine Nature as Scripture Fathers Schoolmen and all men of improved and exercised Reason teach and it is strange he should not find this Notion of Unity among all his Natural Ideas which is the only Natural Notion of the Divine Unity and belongs to no other Being And this would have given him a true Catholick Notion of the Unity of God in a Trinity of Persons for all agree That the Divine Nature is indivisibly and inseparably One. And this is another thing I would be glad to know the reason of Why in such an Enquiry concerning the Unity and Distinction of the Trinity he takes no notice of that Old Catholick distinction That God is One in Nature and Three in Persons which would have been a good direction to him what kind of Unity and what distinction to have enquired after What Unity belongs to Nature and what it is which distinguishes Persons But our Considerer has no regard to the different Notions of Nature and Person but applies all his Notions of Unity to a Person which as far as they are true belong to Nature and from the Unity of Nature proves against the Catholick Faith that there can be but One proper Divine Person And there is one thing I am sorry for That having mentioned a very good Notion he let it slip between his fingers without making any use of it He tells us That Identity is nothing else but a repetition of Vnity as Number is of difference This is very Catholick and it is great pity we hear no more of it Upon this Principle the Fathers justify the Unity of the Godhead in a Trinity of Persons For the Divine Nature is but One a perfect Monad and is communicated whole and entire without the least Division or Separation to the Son and Holy Spirit and therefore is perfectly and identically one and the same in all Three for the perfect repetition of a Monad and Unit makes no Number God and God and God are not Three Gods but One God because the same Divine Nature without the least difference or diversity is distinctly in them all and the repetition of what is perfectly the same makes no Number but Father Son and Holy Ghost are three for they are really distinguished from each other not by any difference of Nature but only by Personal differences or the different manner of having the same Nature That the Father has the Whole Divine Nature originally in himself is God of himself The Son receives the same Divine Nature by an Eternal Generation and is God of God And the Holy Ghost in like manner by an Eternal Procession from Father and Son This incommunicably distinguishes Persons that one can never be another and this is difference enough to make a Number not to make Three Gods of them because the Divine Nature is perfectly One and the same in Three but to distinguish them into Three Persons each of whom is True and Perfect God and all but One God Why the Considerer should wave such a Notion as this of Unity and Distinction which any one would have thought his own Notions of Identity and Number must unavoidably have led him into I cannot guess but I hope this may satisfy him that there are other Notions of Unity and Distinction than what he insists on and such as may be as easily understood and which fairly reconcile the belief of Three proper Divine Intelligent Persons with the Unity of the Godhead But let us now briefly consider his Ideas of Unity and Dâ—stinction 1. The first is The Vnity of Idea This he discourses of very confusedly and does not seem well pleased with it himself The Unity of the Idea he places in being perceivable at one view and having one uniform appearance Which makes it one Idea indeed right or wrong but proves no other kind of Unity This he grew sensible of that the reality of things may not answer our Ideas or Appearances and I know not how they shâ—uld unless our Ideas answer the Reality of Things for Things are to be the Patterns for our Ideas not our Ideas for Things But the Considerer by forsaking his good old Rules for new Methods of Thinking has quite mistaken the Question When we enquire into the general Notion of Unity the meaning is not When we conceive of any thing as One but what it is that makes any thing One. The Unity of Idea whether simple or compounded may be Answer enough to the first Question Thaâ— aâ—l that is comprized in one Idea if our Idea be right belongs to one thing but as he
Person signifies an Intelligent Being but he has secured himself against this Imputation by an artificial addition some Intelligent Being acting in such or such a manner He will not allow Person to signify absolutely an Intelligent Being but an Intelligent Being with respect to some peculiar manner of acting and thus One single Person in the proper Notion of Person for an Intelligent Being may sustain Three Persons or Personal Characters with reâ—pect to extrinsecal Relations and the different manner of acting The whole Mystery and Sophistry of this is That God who is One single Person is upon different accounts sometimes called the Father sometimes the Sâ—n and sometimes the Holy Ghost and therefore Father Son and Holy Ghost have a Personal signification each of these Names signify Person in a proper sense that is the Person of God but all of them separately and together signify but One and the same single Person for they are all of them attributed to God and God is but One or One Person though this One proper Person may sustain Three figurative Persons or Personal Characters This is plain dealing and this is his Answer to his first Hard Saying That God is One and Three the same God but Three different Hypostases or Persons That God is One and the same single Person under Three Personal Characters which may be called Three Persons because each of them signifies the True and Proper Person of God And here we see in what sense these Gentlemen allow That each Person is Substance is Mind and Spirit and yet that God is but One Substance One Mind and Spirit viz. in the very same sense that this Author affirms that God is but One single Person and yet that the Father is a Person the Son a Person and the Holy Ghost a Person and for the same reason that they decry and abhor Three Substances Three distinct Minds and Spirits in the Godhead though affirmed to be indivisibly and inseparably One Infinite Substance Mind and Spirit for the same reason they reject Three Intelligent Substantial Persons though our Modern Sabellians have been more cautious generally than this Considerer not to own it in express words Now as for these Terms of Three Substances and Three Minds there may be good reason to let them alone tho when rightly explained no reason to condemn them of Heresy but we must insist on Three Distinct Infinite Intelligent Substantial Persons Each of which is Mind and Substance and One is not the Other If they disown this as the Considerer does they are downright Sabellians if they own it we have no farther Dispute about this matter Let us now consider his other Hard Saying That One of these Three Hypâ—stases or Persâ—ns should be both God and Man Now the Hardness of this Saying is not That it is hard to prove from Scripture that so it is or that it is hard to conceive how God and Man can be united which is all that he touches on But it is and always will be a Hard Saying to the Considerer upon another account that is To reconcile it with a Trinity of One proper single Person and Three Personal Characters The Doctrine of the Incarnation is this That the Eternal Son of God became True and Perfect Man by taking the Human Nature into a Personal Union to himself That the Son only became Man not the Father nor the Holy Ghost That two perfect distinct Natures the Divine and Human Nature were without Confusion united in the One Person of Christ and that this One Person is the Eternal Word and Son of God Now if there be but One single Person in the Godhead and Father Son and Holy Ghost are but Three Names or Personal Characters of this One single Person How can the Son be Incarnate and not the Father nor the Holy Ghost It is only a Person that can be Incarnate for a Personal Character can't be Incarnate without the Person and if there be but One single Person and this same One Person is Father Son and Holy Ghost it is impossible that that Person who is the Son should be Incarnate but the Person who is the Father and the Holy Ghost must be Incarnate also because the same Person who is the Son is the Father and the Holy Ghost The short Question is this Whether a True Proper Divine Person was Incarnate in the Incarnation of Christ If not then Christ was not a Divine Person how Divine soever he might be upon other accounts the Divine Nature did not persâ—nally subsist in him he was not personally True and Perfect God and then the Person of Christ was no more than a Man whatever Divine Influences he might receive from God But if the Divine Nature were truly and properly Incarnate in the Person of Christ then if there be but One single Divine Person in the Godhead but One Divine Nature in the sense of One single Person then the whole Godhead Father Son and Holy Ghost which are but One True and Proper Person was Incarnate in Christ. This is the true difficulty and he is so wise as to take no notice of it It does not appear to me that he believes one word concerning the Incarnation of God or of a True Divine Person he says He that is in Scripture called the Son of God did appear in the likeness of men He certainly was a True Man but that is not our present dispute Was he in his own Person True and Perfect God Was he a Human Person or the Person of the Son of God appearing in Human Nature He was he says in the Form of God before he took the Nature of Man upon him This sounds well but why does he not speak out and tell us what this Form of God is Whether the True Divine Nature subsisting in him a True Divine Person Well But God did suffer himself to be worshipped and adored in and by the Man Christ Iesus the least that can be inferred from which is That God was more immediately and peculiarly present in Christ than ever he was said to have been any where else as in the Heavens the Jewish Temple between the Cherubims in Prophets and Holy Men who spake as they were moved by the Spirit Now all this might have been spared would he but have said That the Person Iesus Christ was worshipped with Divine Honours as being in his own Person True and Perfect God as well as Man and without saying this he says nothing to prove that Christ is the Son of God Incarnate To say That God did suffer himself to be worshipped in and by the Man Christ Iesus as he was worshipped in the Heavens in the Jewish Temple between the Cherubims for that must be the force of the Comparison does no more prove Christ to be God than it proves the Heavens the Iewish Temple and the Cherubims to be God It may prove a more perfect symbolical Presence of God in Christ which he calls the Fulness
Father is though not the same Person as truly a Person as God would be were there but One Person in the Godhead as these Hereticks affirmed For according to all the Rules of Disputation we must take Words in the sense of those whom we oppose for otherwise it is a mere wrangle about Words without opposing one another And therefore since the Sabellians by Person understood such a Person as every single Person is for they made Father Son and Holy Ghost but Three different Names of the same single individual Person nothing could oppose or confute them but to prove That Father and Son and Holy Ghost are Three distinct Persons in the same Notion of a Person which belongs to every single individual Person as far as mere Personality is concerned For to prove them Three in any other sense whether Three Modes or Three Powers or Three Parts of the same One single Person is what they would have and allow them to be but One Person and they will dispute no further nay will give you leave to call Three Modes or Three Names or Three Parts of the same One Person Three Persons if you please But for the clearer understanding of this matter we must consider by what Arguments the Ancient Writers opposed this Heresy Tertullian in opposition to Praxeas reduces this to a short Question Whether God have any Son and who he is and how he is his Son For if God have a Son the Son must be as true and real a Person as the Father and Father and Son must be Two distinct Persons for the same Person can't be both Father and Son to himself the very Names of Father and Son signify that one is of the other and we must understand things to be what they are called whether Father or Son which can no more be the same than Night and Day with respect to these different Relations The Father makes the Son and the Son makes the Father and those who receive these Relations from each other can never be these Relations to themselves that the Father should make himself a Son to himself or the Son make himself a Father to himself This Order God has instituted in all other Beings and he observes it himself A Father must of necessity have a Son to be a Father and a Son must have a Father that he may be a Son but to have and to be are two things as for instance for a man to be a Husband signifies that he has a Wife not that he is a Wife to himself and thus to be a Father signifies to have a Son not to be a Son to himself in such Relations we must be one and have another that to be both is to be neither because we can have neither If I be Father and Son to my self I am no Father because I have no Son who makes a Father but am Son my self and I am no Son because I have no Father who makes the Son but am Son my self and thus while they make Father and Son one and the same Person they destroy the Notion both of Father and Son Now would any man have argued at this rate who did not believe Father and Son to be real and Substantial Persons and as distinct from each other as a human Father and Son are for if they be not all this reasoning from the distinct Relations of Father and Son which require a real distinction of Persons is quite lost And whether this Argument be good or no which is not the present Enquiry it is certain that whoever uses it if he understands himself must believe That Father and Son signify as true and real Relations and as real and distinct Persons in the Godhead as they do in human Nature The like may be said of that other Argument against the Father and the Son being One and the same Person That then the same Person must in order of Nature be both before and after himself for he who begets must always in order of Nature though not of Time in an Eternal Generation be before him who is begotten by him That as Father he is before himself as Son as Son he is after himself as Father which had been Iudicrous trifling if they had not believed a real substantial Generation of the Person and consequently that the Son is a real substantial Person For this Argument will not hold in the Generation of Modes and Postures or in one part of the Deity generating another Thus to prove the distinction of Persons between Father and Son they urge all those Texts in which the Father speaks to or of the Son and the Son speaks to or of the Father which are so many and so well known that I need not transcribe them And Tertullian lays it down as a certain Rule That he who speaks and he to whom he speaks and he who is spoken of cannot be one and the same Person for this is such perverseness and deceit as does not become God that when he himself is the Person to whom he speaks he should speak in such a manner as if he directed his speech to another and did not speak to himself And therefore when the Father says Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased When Christ tells us That God is his Father That he came forth from the Father and came into the world and again leaves the world and goes to the Father When he says I and my Father and I will pray the Father and he shall send you Another Comforter I and He and Another must signify Three as Real and Distinct Persons as these words signify in common speech Thus they prove the distinction of Persons between Father and Son from those Texts which tell us That the Father sends the Son and the Son is sent That the Father anoints and the Son is anointed That the Father gives Commands and the Son receives them and doth the Will of his Father That the Father knows the Son and the Son the Father That he sees all that the Father doth and can do all that he sees the Father do For there must be distinct Subjects for such different Acts the same Person with respect to himself can't with any propriety of speech be said to send and to be sent to anoint and to be anointed to command and to obey to come forth from himself and to come into the world and to leave the world and go to himself And therefore he who sends and he who is sent c. must be Two Nay it is well observed by these Fathers That Christ himself expresly teaches us that He and his Father with respect to the distinction of Persons are Two so Two as to make a Legal Testimony of Two Witnesses 8. Iohn 13 18. When the Pharisees objected against him That he bore Record of himself and therefore his Record was not true He answers And
distinct Persons for if they be Two Persons then the Son is as True and Real a Person as the Father is This I have already taken notice of and need not now repeat it only I cannot but observe what Athanasius tells us of these Hereticks That when they were convinced by the plain Evidence of Scripture that God the Father and Christ who called himself the Son of God were Two Persons they then took Courage and owned Christ to be a Person but not a Divine Person as the Eternal Word of God but only a Human Person as he was Man But Athanasius tells them That this was neither better nor worse than the Heresy of Paulus Samosatenus or what we now call Socinianism to make Christ a mere Man for he can be no more if the Divine Word which St. Iohn tells us was Incarnate be not the Person If the Word Incarnate be the Person then Christ is God-Man if the Man be the Person he can be no more than a Man This Athanasius confutes at large and proves That what Christ says of himself cannot belong to a mere Man But that which I would observe is this That both these Hereticks who denied the Divine Word to be a Person and Athanasius and the other Catholick Fathers who affirmed him to be a Person agreed very well in the Notion of a Person viz. That a Person is a distinct intelligent Being who does really and actually subsist and subsists distinctly from all other intelligent Beings That the Divine Word in the Godhead is such a Person as a Man is in Human Nature Such a Person these Hereticks would allow Christ to be considered as a Man and such a Person Athanasius affirms Christ to be considered as God or the Divine Word for otherwise they wrangle about words and do not oppose each other The Fathers proved That Christ was a Person and a distinct Person from the Father by those Texts which represent him as speaking to and of his Father and which attribute many Personal Acts to him The Sabellians could not deny but that these were Personal Acts and did prove Christ to be a real subsisting Person but then would not allow the Word to be the Person but only the Man Christ Jesus to be the Person The Fathers on the other hand allow their Notion of a Person which is the only true intelligible Notion but prove That the Divine Word which was Incarnate not merely the Man Christ Jesus was this Person and therefore that this Divine Word is a real substantial subsisting Word not like the Word of a man which is a transient Act but has no subsistence of its own The Sabellians would have allowed a Trinity of Persons in any other Notion of a Person than as a Person signifies a real subsisting intelligent Being but the Catholick Fathers would own no other Notion of Person but this and taught that there were Three Persons in the Trinity in the same sense in which the Sabellians denied there were Three Persons Three such Persons as they affirmed there was but One that the Son and Holy Ghost were Divine Persons in the same sense that the Sabellians owned the Father to be a Person that is Three such Persons as they called Three Gods The reason of this I 'm sure is not to be answered That if the Catholick Fathers understood what they did when they opposed the Sabellians who made the Divine Word only to be the Word of a Divine Person but not a Divine Person himself they must assert the Divine Word in a strict and proper sense to be a Divine Person and not merely the transient Word of a Person which has no subsistence which is a more sensible Argument than all the Criticisms about Persona and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And yet they express themselves so fully and clearly in this matter that there is no need of guâ—ssing at their meaning Tertullian reduces this Dispute to this one single Question which is the true state of it whether the Son and Word of God considered as distinct from God the Father be a Substance and has a Subsistence of his own Which he expresly affirms and offers his reasons for the Proof of it This he tells us is necessary to make the Word a real Being and Person Res Persona that he have a real Substance and a Substance of his own proper to himself per Substantioe proprietatem without which he cannot be Second to God nor the Father and the Son God and his Word be Two Now for the Son and the Word to be a substantial Being per proprietatem Substantioe by a Substance proper to himself as distinguished from God the Father must signify That the Personal Substance of the Son is not the same but a distinct Substance from the Personal Substance of God the Father so distinct that the Father and Son are Two Persons in the same sense and notion that the Father is One Person In answer to their Objection That the Word of God was but like the Word of a Man which was nothing else but a Voice and Sound a Vibration of the Air which conveyed some Notions to the Mind but was it self Emptiness and Nothing without any Substance of its own he answers That God himself is the most real and perfect Substance and therefore whatever proceeds from or is begotten of his Substance must be a real substantial Being much less can the Son and Word who gave Being to all other Substances be an insubstantial Nothing himself For tho there may be equivocal Causes which may produce things of a different nature from themselves yet nothing can produce nothing He argues farther That this Word is called the Son of God and God The Word was with God and the Word was God And that Word which is the Son of God and himself God can't be an insubstantial Nothing unless God himself be Nothing If God begets a Son he must be a substantial Person as all Creature-Sons are much more the Son of God And such a Son who is himself God must have all the Reality and Perfections which belong to the Notion of God But he argues farther from what St. Paul tells us That he was in the form of God and thought it not robbery to be equal with God In Effigie in the Image of God Now says he in what Image of God was he Certainly in another but not in none The meaning of which is That every Person as a Person has his own Personal Image but thus he was not the Personal Image of the Father because he was not the same Person with the Father but yet if he was the Image of God he must be his True Substantial though not his Personal Image the true living Image of his Father's Person but not his Person He seems indeed in what follows to have entertained too gross and corporeal imaginations of the Substance and Image of God but this was his own Mistake and
ask for or to conceive what is the Place of God of the Word or of the Holy Spirit And if a man will deny that the Son is or was begotten because he cannot conceive nor find out the place of his Essence or Substance for the same reason he may deny that there is a Father or that there is a God So that Athanasius acknowledges the Son to be as true and substantial a Son as the Father is a substantial Father and that he does as perfectly and compleatly subsist by himself as the Father does but denies that it hence follows as the Sabellians objected That the Son if he be a distinct substantial Person himself must be divided and parted from the Substance of his Father and that if he subsist distinctly by himself he must subsist in a separate place from his Father that this distinction of Persons and Subsistence cannot be conceived without a Local Separation For he tells them All these Mistakes are owing to Corporeal Imaginations that they conceive of God after the manner of Bodies that because Body cannot generate another without parting and dividing of Substance nor subsist without being in some place nor subsist distinctly without being in distinct and separate places therefore if God beget a Son and this Son subsist distinctly by himself this Son must go out of the Divine Substance and be locally separated from God the Father as a human Son is from his Father whereas the Divine Nature and Substance cannot be divided nor does God subsist in a place and therefore the Son may be substantially begotten of the Father and subsist distinctly by himself without any division of the Divine Substance or separation of place Let us now proceed to a Third sort of these Hereticks who did allow a real and substantial difference between Father Son and Holy Ghost but made God a compound Being but one Person as well as one God and that Father Son and Holy Ghost were the Three Parts of this One God This St. Austin calls Triformis Deus and tells us That these Hereticks did not allow the Father to be Perfect in himself nor the Son Perfect in himself nor the Holy Ghost Perfect in himself that neither of these considered by themselves were Perfect God but that all Three together made one Compleat and Perfect God This all the Catholick Fathers unanimously reject and for the same reasons because there can be no composition in the pure and simple Nature of God and it was the received Doctrine of the Catholick Church That each Person is by himself True and Perfect God not an incompleat Part of the Deity Thus Athanasius warns us against this Heresy which conceives the Trinity like Three Bodily Parts inseparably united to each other which he says is an ungodly reasoning contrary to the Nature of Perfect Unbodied Beings and therefore attributes the Perfection of the Godhead to each Person who are a real Trinity inseparably united in the same Form and Nature That the Father is Perfect Essence and Being without any defect the Root and Fountain of the Son and Spirit That the Son in the Fulness of the Deity is the Living Word and Perfect Offspring of the Father That the Spirit is the Fulness of the Son not Part of another Being but Whole and Entire in himself That we must conceive them inseparably united to each other but yet Three real subsisting Persons in the same Form and Species which is originally in the Father shines in the Son and is manifested by the Holy Spirit And therefore he adds That he did not compound the Trinity nor force it into a Monad or Unit that is One single Person to preserve the Unity of the Godhead nor conceive of God as of a Man who is compounded of Three Parts Spirit Soul and Body for such a composition cannot belong to a simple Nature This is the constant language of the ancient Writers That the Divine Nature is not compounded of Parts nor is God a compound Being that each Person in the Trinity is a complete and perfect Person and Three complete and perfect Persons cannot be One by Composition as Three incomplete Parts are that each Person by himself is perfect God and perfect Essence though when we unite them and number Three we acknowledge but One perfect God for the Deity is not compounded but in Three each of which is complete and perfect there is One perfect Being without Composition and without Parts that is the same One Divine Nature subsisting distinctly not by Parts or Composition but Whole and Entire in Three Let us now then consider the true state of the Question between these Sabellians and the Catholick Fathers These Hereticks owned at last Father Son and Holy Ghost to be Three distinct Substances but not Three substantial Wholes but Three substantial Parts which by their Union and Composition made up One whole intire God The Catholick Fathers join with them so far as to own these Divine Persons to be Three substantial subsisting Persons but reject their Notion of a compounded God or Three Parts of the Deity with the utmost abhorrence and affirm that each Person is by himself entire and perfect God perfect and complete Divine Essence or Substance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Damascen speaks and that they are not One God by Composition or as One Person is One God but as Three complete and perfect Persons each of which is perfect God can be One God Now I think after this we need not dispute what the Metaphysical Notions of Person and Personality are for a Person in this Sacred Mystery signifies One who is true and perfect God and therefore is whatever God is for the true and perfect definition of God must belong to every Person who is true and perfect God If then we acknowledge God to be Infinite Substance Mind Life Knowledge Power every Person who is God must be all this and if each Person be true and perfect God and yet no One Person is the other nor the Motion Affection or personal Power nor part of the other then each Person is distinctly and by himself complete and perfect God and therefore has distinctly in himself all those Attributes and Perfections which belong to the perfect Notion and Idea of God and to make any Person less than what God is is to make him no God But Athanasius has another Argument against the Sabellian compounded Deity which must put all Compositions of the Deity for ever out of countenance The Scripture assures us that God sends his Son and that the Son sends the Holy Ghost whereas were the Father Son and Holy Ghost Three inseparable Parts of one compounded Deity how could this One God Father Son and Holy Ghost send part of himself and one part of the same One God send another To send and to be sent necessarily supposes Persons really and substantially distinct such as can give and receive and execute Commands who
one Singular and Solitary Substance And if this be all that Petavius means as he seems to own we are agreed in this Point But because some think that he means more and sometimes he says what seems to imply more I shall shew that he has proved no more He begins with Athanasius who tells us That the Father gives all to the Son and yet that the Father hath the same All himself for the Godhead of the Son is the Godhead of the Father Which only proves That the Father communicates his own Whole Nature to the Son that he gives the Whole to the Son and has the whole himself which is the Same but not One Singular Solitary Godhead for it is the Whole in Two But yet it is the Godhead of the Son and the Godhead of the Father And the Father and Son are Two but yet the Godhead an inseparable indivisible Monad And therefore this Wonderful Divine Monad must not be divided into Three Godheads And having quoted some other Passages of that Father to the same purpose he concludes with a very remarkable one out of his Exposition of Faith That we must not conceive Three Divided and Separate Hypostates in the Godhead after the manner of Bodies as it is among men which like the Pagans would introduce a plurality of Gods But as the River which proceeds from the Fountain is not divided from it though they have Two Forms and Two Names for the Father is not the Son nor the Son the Father but the Father is the Father of the Son and the Son the Son of the Father For as the Fountain is not the River nor the River the Fountain but both are One and the self-same Water 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 flows out of the Fountain into the River and so is the very same in both so is that Divinity which is communicated from the Father to the Son without any Efflux Emanation or Division This Petavius lays great Stress on and it is a most express Testimony against such a meer Specifick Unity in the Godhead as there is between Three Individuals of the same Species as between Three Men. But then it is as express and positive a Testimony against a Singular and Solitary Divinity and confirms the Notion of the perfect Communication of the same Individual Nature and Godhead from the Father to the Son which is as perfectly One and the Same in both as the Water is which flows out of the Fountain into the River But with this difference That the manner of Communication is not the same not by Efflux and Emanation after the manner of Bodies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which I wonder Petavius should translâ—te perenniter not as Waters flow out of the Fountain which the Catholick Fathers always disowned but by the Ineffable Mystery of the Eternal Generation as I have shewn above The next Father he appeals to is Gregory Nazianzen whom at other times he has much ado to excuse from Tritheism And he tells us That there is but One God because there is but One Divinity and those who are of him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of this One God that is the Son and Holy Spirit are reduced to One tho' we believe them to be Three viz. by that One Dâ—vinity which perfectly subsists in each of them And adds If we may express this in short it is One Vndivided Divinity in Three Distinct Persons for so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 must here signifie not Divided or Separate but Distinct like the Vnion of Three Sâ—ns which would give but One Vndistinguished Light One would wonder how this should prove One Singular Divinity which it expresly rejects unless Three Suns are One Single Solitary Sun and give but One Single Solitary Light Such Expressions as these prove no more than One Undivided Divinity in Three not One Singular Divinity But the same Father starts an Objection That since the wisest Philosophers owned but One Divinity in all their Gods as we acknowledge but One Humanity in all Mankind and yet they believed Many Gods as we acknowledge there are Many Men though but One Common Humanity Why must not we confess That Father Son and Holy Ghost are Three Gods also though they have but One Common Divinity This Petavius says Causoe jugulum petit and it is indeed an unanswerable Objection against a meer Specifick Unity of Nature which is Multiplied in Individuals and therefore must Multiply Gods as well as Men but the Perfect Communication of the Same Whole Individual Nature does not Multiply Natures or Divinities though it Multiplies Persons And this is the very Answer Greg. Naz. gives which I had observed before from Damascen the distinction between 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That there is not One Common Subsisting Human Nature in all Men and therefore Human Nature is One only in Notion not in Reality every Particular Man's having a Particular Human Nature of his own and therefore there are as many Men as there are Subsisting Human Natures but the Divine Nature is One and Common not in meer Notion and Idea but by an Actual Communication without Division or Separation This proves it to be One Individual but not a Singular Nature for it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and One Undivided Divinity though in a Wonderful and Ineffable manner it Actually Subsists in Three can be but One God His other Quotations out of the Greek Fathers are all to the same purpose and are resolved into the force of such words as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and their rejecting not only Three Gods but Three Natures Three Essences Three Divinities and that not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which specifically differ from each other but even 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those which are specifically the same as Sophronius speaks which are unanswerable Testimonies against a mere Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature but confirms what I have all along asserted That the same One Undivided Divinity subsists actually and inseparably but distinctly in Three and therefore is One common Individual but not a Singular Nature And the Latin Fathers to whom he appeals in Chap. 14 speak all to the same purpose and one Answer serves them all To give an Account of the Meaning and Reason of these Expressions which Petavius insists on to prove the Singularity of the Divine Essence will be much more instructing and satisfactory than to comment upon every particular Quotation And therefore I shall 1. Enquire what the Fathers meant by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sameness and Identity of Nature 2. How they proved the Unity of the Godhead from this Sameness of Nature 3. How they distinguish'd the Divine Persons in this Sameness of Nature 1. As for the first That the Fathers by this Sameness and Identity of Nature did not mean One singular solitary Personal Nature is abundantly
Thus St. Basil tells us That the Seal is seen in the Impression and the Prototype is known by its Image from that Sameness and Identity which is in both Which he calls also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This sufficiently proves what the Catholick Fathers meant by this Sameness and Identity of Nature not the Sameness of singularity which they always rejected as Sabellianism but such a Sameness as is between Two who have the same Individual Nature subsisting so distinctly in each of them as to make them Two but without the least conceivable or possible Change or Alteration such a Sameness as is a perfect likeness and similitude which cannot be in singularity But because Petavius lays great stress upon these Expressions it will not be amiss to give two or three direct and positive Proofs of this matter Athanasius expresly cautions us against this That when we hear that the Son hath all that the Father has this invariable likeness and sameness of what the Son has may not mislead us into Sabellianism to say That the Son is the Father himself And tells us That the Father gave all to the Son and that the Father hath all again in the Son and the Son having all the Father again has the same all for the Godhead of the Son is the Godhead of the Father Gregory Nyssen or St. Basil for the same Treatise is ascribed to them both proves both the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the nature of an Image That the Son is both the same with the Father and another for so an Image is both the same with its Prototype and yet another not the Prototype it self And adds that we may see the Father in the Son not considered as unbegotten for then he would be upon all accounts the same and not another which destroys the Nature and Character of an Image The same account St. Hilary gives of an Image That it signifies a perfect likeness and similitude of Nature between Two for no Man is his own Image but the Image represents the Prototype And therefore there is a Father and there is a Son if the Son be the Image of the Father and being an Image the Son must necessarily have in himself the Nature and Essence of his Father Which he urges as a direct Confutation of the Sabellian Singularity But there is no need of multiplying Authorities in this Case since it is so very obvious to every one who ever look'd into the Fathers That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness and Identity and the Community of Nature though they differ in their formal Notions yet both equally belong to the same Divine Nature and the same Identical Nature which is also a common Nature can't be One in the Notion of Singularity 2 dly Having thus shewn what the Catholick Fathers meant by the Sameness and Identity of Nature in Father and Son I proceed to shew That herein they placed the Unity of the Godhead the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the One Divinity and what account they give of this matter The Defence they generally make for the Unity of God in a Trinity of Divine Persons is reducible to two Heads this Sameness and Identity of Nature and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or inseparable Unity which Two make up the compleat Notion of the Divine Unity but I must now consider them apart That the Catholick Fathers did resolve the Unity of God into this Sameness and Identity of Nature That the Father Son and Holy Ghost though they are Three Real Proper Distinct Persons yet have the same One Divine Nature which subsists whole and perfect and distinct without any Change or Variation in all Three and that therefore they are not Three Gods but One God is so very plain that there is no need of multiplying words about it The One God in the Catholick Language is One Divine Nature in Three Persons and this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this One Essence and One Divinity is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which are often used as equivalent terms the Unity Identity Propriety and Sameness of Nature as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one and the same All those Passages quoted by Petavius though they do not prove the Singularity of the Divine Nature yet prove the Unity of the Godhead by the perfect and invariable Sameness of Nature in the sense now explained But the Testimony of St. Basil against the Sabellians is so full and express to this purpose that I shall represent this matter in his Words wherein he agrees with all the other Catholick Fathers Though Father and Son are Two in Number yet are they not divided in Nature nor does he who says Two Persons alienate them from each other There is One God because a Father but the Son also is One God not Two Gods because of the Sameness and Identity of the Son with the Father for there is not One Divinity in the Father and Another in the Son nor One Nature of the Father and another of the Son When therefore you would distinguish the Persons number them distinctly the Father by himself and the Son by himself but if you would avoid Polytheism confess but One Nature in them both which rejects both the Sabellian and Anomoean Heresy But when I say One Nature you must not imagine that Two Persons are made of One Nature as it were by a division of it into two Parts but only conceive the Son subsisting of the Father as his Principle and Original Nor must you conceive that Father and Son are so of One Nature as partaking of some One Same Nature and Substance antecedent to them both for we do not call them Brethren but Father and Son which signifies the Sameness and Identity of Nature For the Son is of the Father not made by his Command but begotten of his Nature not by Division of the Father's Substance but the Son shines forth whole and perfect from a perfect Father without any diminution of him And therefore as he proceeds do not charge us with Preaching Two Gods or Polytheism for we Preach not Two Fathers or Two Principles and therefore not Two Gods which was the Impiety of Marcion Nor do we make the Father and Son of a different Nature unlike to each other as the Anomoeans do But where there is but One Principle and One Begotten of it One Prototype and One Image the Unity is preserved Because the Son who is begotten of the Father and imprints his Father's Nature and Essence on himself as an Image he has an invariable Likeness as a Son he retains the same Nature and Substance Now as a man who calls the King's Image or Picture the King does not make Two Kings nor deny him whose Image it is to be the King much less reason is there for such an Imputation in
a Confutation of the Charge of Polytheism against the Faith of the Trinity Gregory Nyssen and Damascen and many others having confuted the Pagan Polytheism or plurality of Gods from the Sameness and Identity of the Divine Nature which can admit of no change or diversity and therefore not of number they immediately proceed to consider the distinction of Persons and Hypostases in the perfect Unity and Simplicity of the Divine Nature in opposition to the Iewish Notion of One God for One Single and Solitary Divine Person And here they undertake to prove by Natural Arguments of which possibly more hereafter that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Divinity must have an Eternal Subsisting Word which is Life Wisdom Power all the same in his own Person that God is but yet another Person For the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Divinity is not without its Coeternal Word and Coessential Reason and Wisdom and the same they teach and prove concerning the Eternal Spirit so that they make Father Son and Spirit to be essential to One Divinity not as parts but as perfectly whole and the same in Three distinct Hypostases which they think necessarily included in the Perfection of One Divinity as Reason and Word is essential to a Created Mind This is what they mean by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Divinity in Three Perfect Hypostases not that Three Hypostases are united as it were ex post facto into One Divinity but that One Divinity does subsist Eternally Essentially and Inseparably in Three Hypostases which are necessary to compleat the Notion and Definition of One Divinity Thus it is certain Melanchton understood it and therefore rejects the Definition which Plato gives of God That he is an Eternal Mind the Cause of all Good in the World for though he owns it to be True and Learned when rightly explained yet he says it is defective and must be supplied by the Gospel Revelation That God is a Spiritual Intelligent Essence Eternal True Good Iust Merciful most free of Infinite Power and Wisdom the Eternal Father who from Eternity begat a Son his own Image and the Son the Coeternal Image of the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeding from Father and Son So that the Holy and Ever Blessed Trinity is but One Eternal Coessential Divinity that were there more Divinities than One there must of necessity be more Trinities also according to the Doctrine of these Fathers which is evidence enough that this Argument against a plurality of Divinities from the perfect Sameness and Identity of the Divine Nature which can't be multiplied can't concern a Trinity of Real Subsisting Persons in the same One Eternal Undivided Divinity For the same One Divinity is not multiplied by a Trinity of Persons Coeternal and Coessential if this be the Nature and Unity of the Deity to subsist whole and perfectly in Three which was the constant Doctrine of the Fathers and which this Argument don't oppose nay so far from it that it as evidently proves the Unity of the Godhead in a Trinity of Persons as it confutes a Plurality of Godheads and Divinities for if the Sameness and Identity of Nature will not admit of a Plurality of Divinities then if Three are perfectly One and the same in Nature they are but One Divinity One God Thus the Incircumscriptibility or Omnipresence of the Divine Nature is a good Argument against a Plurality of God's or Divinities which must be separated if they be more than One and therefore circumscribed or of a limited and confined presence but it is no Argument against a Trinity of Persons in the Unity of Essence which are all mutually in each other and therefore equally Unconfined and Omnipresent and perfectly One by an Essential and Inseparable Union And are not these Fathers now like to prove very notable Tritheites who prove the impossibility that there should be more Divinities than One and the perfect Unity of the Godhead in a Trinity of Divine Persons from that perfect Sameness and Identity of Nature which is between them But yet for all this Tritheites they are and must be if they acknowledge Father Son and Holy Ghost to be One God in no other sense than Peter Iames and Iohn are one Man that is because they agree in the same common Nature which has the same notion and definition and is upon that account One and the same in all This is what they are charged with and I should not have wondred at it had only some Careless and Unskilful Readers charged them with it for they do say something which at first view may look like it but then such Sayings as manifestly contradict their avowed Doctrine not only in other places of their Writings but in those very Places where these Sayings are found ought in all Reason and Justice to be expounded only by way of Analogy and accommodation as containing some imperfect Image and Resemblance of that which Nature has no proper and adequate Example of This must be allowed in all the Natural Representations which are made by the Catholick Fathers of the Unity and Distinction of the Ever-blessed Trinity or there is not one of them but what literally and Philosophically applied would furnish out some new Heresy This I have already shewn in the Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature which the Nicene Fathers did teach in a qualified Sense though it appears from all I have said in the last and this present Section how far they were from thinking the Divine Nature to be a meer Species or Logical Notion though it has this resemblance to a Species that it is One and Common but not merely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not in meer Notion and Idea but by an actual Subsistence and Inexistence in all Three being as perfectly wholly indivisibly the same in all and in each of the Divine Persons as a Specifick Nature is Notionally and Ideally one and the same in every individual of the same kind which as I have made appear is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sameness and Identity of Nature wherein they place the Unity of the Godhead And yet this is the only foundation of the present Charge that they make Father Son and Holy Ghost to be One God only by a Specifick Unity as Three Individuals of the same kind and Species suppose Peter Iames and Iohn are one Man That all this is a mistake is evident because these Fathers do not resolve the Unity of the Godhead into a meer Specifick Unity of Nature and the occasion of this mistake is great Inadvertency as will appear in a very few words Gregory Nyssen is principally charged with this Paradox and in vindicating him I shall vindicate all the rest The Question which Ablabius desired him to resolve was this That since Peter Iames and Iohn though they have but one common Humanity are yet called three Men and no man denies
but that the name of Nature may be multiplied when there are more who are united in the same Nature how comes it to pass that we contradict this in the Mystery of the Trinity that we acknowledge Three Hypostases who have the very same Nature without the least difference or diversity and yet teach that the Divinity of Father Son and Holy Ghost is but One and forbid saying that there are Three Gods Now the better to understand the Father's Answer we muâ—t observe that this was an Arian Objection against the Homoousion or the perfect Sameness Indifference and Equality of Nature between Father and Son For the design of it was as St. Gregory himself observes to reduce them to this dangerous Dilemma either to assert Three Gods which is unlawful or to deny the Divinity of the Son and Holy Ghost which is impious and absurd If they denied the Sameness and Equality of Nature then the Son and Holy Ghost are not True and Perfect God consubstantial with the Father or if Father Son and Holy Ghost have the same One Common Nature and are perfectly consubstantial then they are Three Gods as Peter Iames and Iohn who have the same One Common Humanity are Three Men and there is the very same reason for calling Father Son and Holy Ghost Three Gods that there is for calling Peter Iames and Iohn Three Men that is the same Nature common to them all This was the Objection St. Gregory was to answer and therefore his business was to prove That Father Son and Holy Ghost are not and ought not to be called Three Gods as Peter Iames and Iohn are and may be called Three Men and therefore he must prove That they are neither Three nor One in the same sense that Three Men are Three and One for if they were they would be as truly and properly Three Gods as Peter Iames and Iohn are Three Men and no more One God than they are One Man which had been to give up the Cause to the Arians instead of answering their Objection This may satisfy any man that those Learned Persons are very much mistaken who charge such a sense upon this Father as is directly contrary to his design for he understood the Laws of Reasoning better Neither he nor any other Father I ever yet met with asserted that Peter Iames and Iohn were but One Man or that Father Son and Holy Ghost are One God no otherwise than Peter Iames and Iohn are One Man which yet is what has been charged upon them But does not Greg. Nyssen say That it is a catachrestical way of speaking tho become common and familiar to multiply the name of Nature with the Individuals of the same Nature As to say That there are many Men because there are many who have the same Human Nature But if we would speak accurately and properly we should say that there is but one Man how many soever have the same Nature And does not he apply this to the Unity of God And can this have any other sense than that the same Divine Nature makes Father Son and Holy Ghost but One God as the same Human Nature makes all the Men in the World but one Man The Interpretation of which seems to be That Father Son and Holy Ghost are as much Three Gods as Peter Iames and Iohn are Three Men but that it is very improper to call either the one or the other Three for they are but One by One Common Nature Now this Father does indeed say and so many others of them say That the name of Nature ought not to be multiplied with the Individuals but he was far enough either from saying or thinking what he is charged with That Peter Iames and Iohn are not Three Men but One Man or that Father Son and Holy Ghost are One God in no other sense but as Three Men are One And a due attendance to the Series of the Argument would have discovered the Falseness and Absurdity of this Imputation which therefore I shall briefly explain The Arian Objection which St. Gregory undertook to answer as I observed before was this That since the Catholick Church owned the Father Son and Holy Ghost to be consubstantial and to have the same undiversified Nature they must for that reason be Three Gods as Peter Iames and Iohn upon account of the same common Humanity are acknowledged to be Three Men That is that whether in God or Man the same Nature in Three must make Three Individuals of the same Kind and Species and therefore as the same Human Nature in Three makes Three Men so the same Divine Nature Three Gods In answer to this St. Gregory first observes That it is not the same common Nature which distinguishes and multiplies Individuals no not in Men Peter Iames and Iohn are not Three Individuals in the Species of Humanity merely by having the same Nature which is the force of the Arian Objection for what is perfectly the same in all can't distinguish or multiply them And this is plainly all that he means when he says That the name of Nature ought not to be used plurally and therefore Man being the name of Nature and signifying the same with Humanity we ought no more if we speak properly and Philosophically to say Three Men than Three Humanities or Three Human Natures for he proves that the name Man does not distinguish one Man from another nor can we single any particular Man out of a Crowd by that Compellation for there is but One Man or One Humamanity in them all that name not belonging primarily and immediately to the Individuals as such but to the common Nature Well but are there not Individual Men then as well as a Common Nature Yes without doubt but they are distinguished and multiplied not by the Common Nature which is the same in all but by such peculiar Properties as diversify and distinguish Common Nature as it subsists separately in particular Persons and that makes the Number though Nature be one and the same a perfect indivisible Monad This is not merely to criticize upon Words or to dispute against the common Forms of Speech but to give a true Philosophical Reason of their different Use when applied to God and Creatures We commonly call Peter Iames and Iohn Three Men and right enough but then they are not Three Men merely upon account of the same Common Humanity in them all which was the Arian Objection for Humanity is but One in all and what is perfectly One can't be numbred To say there are Three Humanities all Men grant to be absurd and yet it is to the full as absurd to say that Peter Iames and Iohn are Three Men merely upon account of the same Humanity strictly and precisely taken as to say that there are Three Humanities So that though Peter Iames and Iohn could not be nor be called Three Men without the same Common Nature yet some peculiar distinguishing
distinguished nor separated but is perfectly One Same Undivided Essence and therefore Vna Substantia though not Vnus Subsistens One Substance though not One but Three that subsist What I have thus briefly represented I hope I have proved in the First Chapter from the Authority of Scripture and Reason founded on Scripture And from what I have already discoursed of the Doctrine of the Fathers it may appear to careful and intelligent Readers who use such Application as this Argument deserves and requires that this is their Unanimous Sense also But yet as far as it is possible to clear this Matter more fully and vindicate the Fathers and Schools from those Obscurities Inconsistences and Contradictions which are generally charged on them in so concerning an Article I shall reassume this Matter and particularly shew 1. That what they call a Divine Person is the Divine Essence and Substance and nothing else 2. That this Divine Essence and Substance as constituting these Divine Persons is proper and peculiar to each and incommunicable to one another and therefore that this Divine Essence and Substance as subsisting distinctly in Three is no more numerically One than their Persons are One. 3. What difference they made between Nature and Essence and Hypostasis and Person 4. Whether the Catholick Faith of a Real and Substantial Trinity can be as reasonably and intelligibly explained by the Notion of One Singular Substance in the Divinity as by asserting Three Personal Substances or Suppositums And whether the Singularity of the Divine Essence in this Notion deliver the Asserters of it from any Inconveniences and Objections which the contrary Opinion is thought liable to 1. As for the first That a Divine Person is the Divine Essence it is and must be in some sense acknowledged by all who profess the Faith of a Real Trinity for there cannot be a Real Trinity of Divine Persons if each Person be not True and Perfect God that is the whole Divinity or Divine Nature and Essence And therefore those who assert in the strictest sense the Singularity of the Divine Essence yet assert That this One Singular Essence subsists distinctly in each Divine Person which whether it be to be understood or not yet is an acknowledgment that there is no conceiving a Divine Person without the Divine Essence But we need not be beholden to any man for this Concession for the thing is plain and evident in all Catholick Writers Petavius has very critically observed the different use of Words in Catholick Writers relating to this Venerable Mystery such as Essence Nature Substance Hypostasis Subsistence Person c. which sometimes occasioned great Misunderstandings between them and is to this day made a pretence of charging the Fathers with great Uncertainty and Obscurity and with contradicting each other and themselves This of late has been much insisted on in order to disparage the Authority of â— as Zealous Contentious Bigots who neither understood one another nor themselves nor the Catholick Faith but so confounded Terms that we can never certainly know what they meant or used such dangerous Terms that if we rely too much upon them we mâ—y easily mâ—stake Hâ—resy for the Catholick Faith Were this true our Case would be very bad but two or three Observations will set this matter in a clear light 1. That very Ambiguity which the Fathers are charged with in the use of Words does certainly prove that by a Divine Person they meant the Divine Essence Nature and Substance The plain Case is this The Catholick Fathers did universally own and profess a Trinity in Unity Three Persons and One God So that there was no difference in their Faith how different soever their words were The most common Terms whereby they exprest the Unity of the Godhead were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vna Esseâ—â—â—â— Vna Natura Vna Substantia One Essâ—nce One Nâ—ture One Substance and a Trinity they called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three Hypostates and the Latins Three Persons but sometimes we meet in undoubted Catholick Writers wiâ—â— the direct contrary Expressions such a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tres Substantiae 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three Essences Three Natures Three Substances and One Hypostasis The usual way of reconciling this seeming Contradiction is by saying That when these Fathers use such Expressions as Three Essences Three Natures Three Substances they do not understand this of Three divers or specifically different Essences Natures Substances which is Arianism but of Three Persons and when they affirm that there is but One Hypostasis they do not by One Hypostasis mean One Person which is Sabellianism but One Nature Essence or Substance As we know this very Controversy about One or Three Hypostases was thus composed in the Alexandrian Synod where Athanasius presided And no doubt but this is the true Solution since those who were neither Arians nor Sabellians could not understand such Expressions in any other sense But then the Question still remains How this Ambiguity should happen or how it comes to pass that such contradictory Terms as One Essence and Three Essences One Substance and Three Substances One Hypostasis and Three Hypostases should both be Orthodox and Catholick Now the only Account I can give of this matter is this That these Terms Essence Nature Substance Hypostasis which originally signifies Substance of which more presently may signify as the Philosopher speaks either the First or Second Substance either the common Nature which has the same notion and definition common to the whole Kind as Humanity which is the same in all Men or a Singular Subsisting Nature and Substance which in Creatures we call Individuals and in reasonable Creatures Persons Now in analogy to this common Specifick Nature which is one and the same in all its Individuals the Catholick Fathers taught but One Essence Nature Substance and in this sense but One Hypostasis in the Godhead that is a Consubstantial Trinity in analogy to the several Individuals of the same Species in whom only this common Nature did really and actually subsist they ordinarily asserted Three Hypostases sometimes as we see Three Natures and Essences and Substances in the Trinity that is Three Real Substantial subsisting Persons and in this sense Three Essences Three Natures Three Substances was accounted Catholick Doctrine St. Hilary allows Tria in Substantia or Tres Subsâ—antias Three in Substance or Three Substances for Tres Subsistentium Personas Three Subsisting Persons And St. Greg. Nyssen in answer to Eunomius who asserted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three Essences or Substances says That if he understood this distinction of Substances only in opposition to Sabellius who gave three Names to one Suppositum or Substance that not only he but all Catholick Christians assented to it His only fault being in this Case that he uses improper words Three Essences for Three Hypostases Now that which I observe from hence is this That had they not believed each Divine Person to
a diversity and dissimilitude of Nature as Three Essences and Substances may signify and from a Sabellian Unity and Singularity they chose such words as signified a Real Perfect Subsisting Being but did not immediatly and formally signify Essence and Substance tho they did necessarily suppose and connote it Such among the Greeks are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the Latins subsistentia suppositum res ens Existence Subsistence Subject Suppositum Thing Being which every one sees must signify something as real as Essence and Substance and must necessarily include Essence and Substance in their very notion and that thus they were used by the Catholick Fathers Petavius proves by numerous Quotations which the Reader may consult at his leisure And though some of these words are sometimes used singularly of all Three Divine Persons in the notion of a Common Essence and Substance as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 res in which sense St. Austin called the Trinity unam summam rem yet both Fathers and Schoolmen did without any scruple use them in the plural number 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tres subsistentiae tres res tria supposita tria entia realia that the Divine Persons were Three Existences Three Subsistencies Three Suppositums Three Things Three Real Beings and why not then Three Essences and Three Substances since every suppositum every Thing every Real Being is Essence and Substance the reason of which is plainly this That Essence and Substance unless qualified with some limiting Adjuncts signify the formal Reasons of things and can't be multiplied without diversity whereas the other Terms signify nothing but Real and Actual Existence which does not diversify and therefore not multiply the Essence for Three Suppositums Three Subjects Three Things Three Real Beings may have One Essence Nature and Substance formally identically and invariably the same But there is some dispute about the use of those words Existence and Subsistence Petavius observes a great difference between the Ancient and Modern use of them That the Ancients used them in a Concrete Sense for Person and Substance that which does really exist and subsist as he proves by several Quotations but that the Schoolmen use them in an abstract Sense for the modifications of Substance which they call Modes which together with the Substance constitute what we call Persons of which more hereafter and this may be true as to some later Schoolmen but the more Ancient and many Modern Schoolmen retained the Old Catholick use of the words and Suarez could trace the Doctrine of Modes no higher than Durandus Peter Lombard is express in it That Three Persons are tres subsistentioe tres entes Three Subsistencies Three Beings and tres subsistentioe vel entes subsistentioe vel subsistentes Subsistencies or Beings Subsistencies or those that subsist Thus Tho. Aquinas tells us That Persons are res subsistentes subsisting things And in answer to that Objection against a plurality of Persons in the Godhead that a Person according to Boetius being rationalis naturoe individua substantia the Individual Substance of a Rational Nature if there be a plurality of Persons in the Godhead there must consequently be a plurality of Substances he tells us That Substance either signifies the Essence or the Suppositum that in this last sense it is used in the definition of a Person as appears by the addition of Individual which is what the Greeks call Hypostasis and therefore assert Three Hypostases Individual Substances as we do Three Persons but we don't use to say Three Substances by reason of the equivocal use of the word lest we should be thought to assert Three Essences in the Godhead From whence it is plain that by Three Subsistencies Tho. Aquinas understood Three that subsist Three Individual Substances in the Notion of Three distinct Suppâ—situms though not of Three different Essences for this is the true distinction he makes between Suppositum and Essence that they both signify Substance but the one signifies as Matter and the other as Form and therefore the Plurality of Suppositums of Subsistencies does not multiplâ—â—â—e Essence or Form for Three may be perfectly One in Nature and Essence but to multiply Essences to say there are Three Nâ—tures or Three Essences is to diversify them and to make Three Gods specifically and essentially different After this I need not add much concerning the Notion of Person The Ciceronian sense of this word too much in use of late wherein the same Man may be said to sustain several Persons according to his different Relations Offices and Quality has as I have observed before been rejected by all Catholick Writers as Sabellianism St. Austin generally speaking is the Text to the Master of the Sentences and He to the Schoolmen and that Father is express in it that Person is Essence and Substance that the Person of the Father is the Essence and Substance of the Father From whose Authority P. Lombard concludes That Person is used in the Notion of Substance That when we say the Father is a Person the sense is the Father is the Divine Essence He observes from the same Father that the Latins used Person in the same sense that the Greeks used Hypostasis which in Latin literally signifies Substance but yet they were very cautious of saying Three Substances as the Greeks did Three Hypostases because though the Greeks distinguished between Essence and Substance that Essence expressed the formal Nature of things Substance what in Creatures we call the Matter or Suppositum yet the Latins knew no such distinction and therefore Three Substances to them was the same with Three Essences which would assert a diversity in the Divine Nature And this he shews was the only Objection St. Hierom had against Three Substances or Three Hypostases which he allowed in the Notion of Tres Personas subsistentes Three subsisting Persons but not of Three Natures or Essences and this Solution he acquiesces in That Tres Personoe sunt Tres Substantioe scilicet Tres Entes pro quo Groeci dicunt Tres Hypostases That Three Persons are Three Substances that is Three Real Beings which the Greeks call Three Hypostases And though he observes that Person may sometimes signify that Personal Property whereby one Divine Person is distinguished from another yet he will not allow us to call Three Persons Three Properties but Three Subsistencies or Three Hypostases for the Property is not the Person but only distinguishes Persons of which more hereafter And he reduces the several acceptations of Person as used in the Doctrine of the Trinity to these three 1. That it sometimes signifies the Divine Essence as it does when we speak singularly of any One Person for the Person of the Father is the Divine Essence and so of the Son and of the Holy Ghost 2. Subsistencies and Hypostases as when we speak in the Plural Number Three Persons are Three Subsistencies Three Hypostases but unius Essentioe of one
Filiation must belong to two Persons as being relatively opposed and therefore a subsisting Paternity is the Person of the Father and a subsisting Filiation the Person of the Son Which can never be one Person as requiring distinct Suppositums for such opposite Relations But now the other two Relations Spiration and Procession are not opposed to either of these but only to each other And therefore Spiration does not constitute another Person as not being opposed either to Paternity or Filiation and therefore may and does belong both to Father and Son but Procession must constitute a Third Person as opposed to Spiration and so necessarily distinguished from Father and Son And therefore though there are Four Relations yet one of them Spiration is not separated from the Person of the Father and the Son but belongs to them both nor is it a Property as not being proper and peculiar to any one Person nor is it a Personal Relation or that which constitutes a Person and therefore there are but Three Relations Paternity Filiation and Procession which are Personal Properties which constitute Persons and therefore but Three Persons Now this Answer evidently proves That by Relations they did not mean meer Habitudes Respects and External Denominations for then every Relation must of necessity be a Person and there must be as many Persons as there are Relations but they mean relative Beings and Subsistencies and therefore allow no Relations to constitute distinct Persons but such as necessarily require distinct Subjects that is such opposite Relations as can never meet in the same Subject and therefore their Suppositums must be really distinct as Paternity and Filiation for no one can be Father and Son to himself There is no imaginable Account why only opposite Relations constitute Persons but because they distinguish their Subjects for when opposite Relations meet in the same Subject but not in opposition they do not distinguish and multiply Persons as the same man may be Father and Son and but One Person but when opposite Relations distinguish their Subjects as the Divine Relations necessarily do they multiply Persons too And no Relations Properties Notions according to the Doctrine of the Schools constitute a Person but such as distinguish their Subjects that Three Persons and Three Relations are not Three Respects and Denominations of the same Singular Subject but Three real distinct Relative Beings and Subsistencies 2. Let us now consider why they insist so much upon the notion of Relations that when they allow every Divine Relation to be the Divine Essence Substance an incommunicable Subsistence and Substance yet they will not allow us absolutely to say Three Substances but Three Relations or Three Relative Beings Subsistencies or Substances And the plain and short account of it is this That this is essential to the Unity of God and gives us the truest and most perfect conception of a Trinity in Unity As to shew this particularly 1. These Divine Relations though each of them be incommunicably in his own Person Essence and Substance secure the perfect Unity of the Divine Essence For Three Relative Substances are essentially but One Substance which Three Absolute Substances can never be though they never so perfectly agree in the same Specifick Notion and Idea By an absolute Substance I mean one intire perfect individual whole which is compleat in it self and subsists compleatly by it self without any Internal Essential Union to or necessary dependence on any Being of the same kind By Relative Substances I mean such Substances as are internal subsisting Relations in the same One whole individual Nature Of Absolute Substances we have as many Instances as there are particular Creatures in the World of Relative Substances we have no instance in Created Nature but some such Images and Resemblances as may help us to form an intelligible notion of them Now it is evident without any need to prove it that every compleat absolute Substance how many soever they are multiplies the Individuals of the same kind Three absolute Human Substances are Three Men and Three Absolute Dâ—vine Substances would for the same reason be Three Gods but it is â—therwise as to Relative Substances which are â—ubsisting Personal Relations in the same One individuâ—l Nature and it is demonstrable that the Relations of the same One individual Nature and Substance can't multiply Natures and Substances for then they would not be Relations in the same individual Substance but would be Abâ—olute not Relative Substances As to explain this by a familiar Example The Fathers and after them the Schoolmen find some Images of the Trinity in Human Souls as Memory Vnderstanding Will or which they think a nearer resemblance Mind Knowledge Love And a late Sâ—cinian is very fond of such a Trinity as Original Mind Reflex Wisdom and Love Peter Lombard explains this particularly from the Doctrine of St. Austin and it is evident that all these are very distinct and never can be each other but all have a mutual and necessary relation to each other are in each other and equal to each other but are but One One Mind One Life One Essence and One Substance because they substantially exist in the same Soul and Mind not as Accidents in their Subjects which may be parted but as Essential Properties and Powers This our Socinian Adversaries like well enough for these distinct Properties and Powers do not multiply Persons and therefore though they grant something like such distinct Powers in the Divine Nature yet still there is but One Divine Person and therefore according to their own Notion but One God But this is not the Question Whether such distinct Faculties Properties and Powers multiply Persons which we grant they do not because they do not multiply Natures and One Individual Human Natuâ—e is but One Man or One Human Person but the Qâ—estion is Whether if instead of these distinct Powers and Faculties there were real subsisting Persons as essentially related to each other in the same Individual Nature they would any more divide or multiply Nature than such distinct Powers and Faculties do And I am pretty confident no man can give me any good reason why Relative Subsistencies or Personal Relations should any more divide or multiply the Divine Nature than Relative Powers and Properties divide or multiply Human Nature For if these Divine Persons are as essentially related to each other in the Divine Nature as such distinct Powers and Faculties are in Human Nature a Trinity of Persons must be as essentially One in the same One Individual Divinity as a Trinity of Powers and Faculties are in the same single Human Nature It is certain Three such Divine Persons though each of them be by himself true and perfect God are not Three Absolute Divinities and therefore not Three Gods but Three Divine Relative Subsistencies in the same One Individual Godhead and therefore but One God as Memory Understanding and Will are all that a Mind is and each of them all
that the other is and yet not Three Minds but One Mind This shews the diffâ—rence between Absolute and Relative Substances Three Absolute Substances are always distinctly and separately Three and can never be any otherwise than specifically One but Relative Substances may be essentially One in the same One Individual Nature and this is the Account both the Fathers and Schools give of a Trinity in Unity Three Relations or Three Relative Substances or Subsistencies essentially related to each other in the Unity of the same One Individual Essence St. Gregory Nyssen has given the most particular Account of this matter in his Catechetical Oration To convince the Heathens of the Eternal Subsistence of the Divine Word in the Unity of the same Godhead he lays the foundation of all in that universally received Principle That the Divinity is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which I translate not irrational without Reason or Understanding but not without its Word which is not the Personal Wisdom of the Father whereby the Father is wise as I have already shewn Chap. 3. but a Personal Living Subsisting Word Which answers to that Word which we feel in our own Minds and which is essential to all Minds that no Mind can be without its Word but is not a vanishing Notion and Idea or a transient sound as Human words but answers to the perfection of the Divine Nature And therefore as our Mortal Nature has a Vanishing Perishing Word so the Incorruptible and Eternally Permanent Immutable Nature has an Eternal Subsisting Word And as he proceeds if this Divine Word subsists it lives for it does not subsist like stupid inanimate Stones but as Mind and Spirit which must live if it subsists and if it lives the absolute simplicity of the Divine Nature which admits of no composition proves that he lives not by a participation of Life but as Life it self And if the Word lives as being Life it self it must have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a power to do what it freely wills and chuses For that which cannot will and chuse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does not live and an Impotent Will is a contradiction to the Nature of God and therefore its Power must be equal to its Will But this Divine Word can will nothing but what is good and wills whatever is good and being able to effect whatever it wills is not unactive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without doing any thing but does the good it wills And since we must acknowledge the World and all things in it which are wisely and artificially made to be good all things are the Works of this Living Subsisting Word This is his Proof That God has a Subsisting Living Almighty Creating Word which is another distinct Person from him whose Word he is For the Word is a Relative Term and signifies a Relative Subsistence and necessarily supposes the Father for he is not the Word but with relation to him whose Word he is And by this means he tells us we may escape both the Polytheism of the Gentiles and the Singularity of the Iews by acknowledging the Living Energetical Operative Word which the Iews deny and the Unity and Identity of Nature between the Word and Him whose Word he is For as our Word proceeds out of our Mind and is neither every way the same with the Mind nor yet upon all accounts another For that it is of the Mind proves that is is another and not the Mind it self but as it perfectly expresses and represents the Mind it cannot be another Nature but one and the same Nature though a kind of different subsistence So the Word of God by a distinct subsistence of its own is distinguished from him from whom he receives his Subsistence and Hypostasis but inasmuch as he is all and the same that God is he is perfectly one and the same in Nature This is the Doctrine of all the other Catholick Fathers as well as of Gregory Nyssen who resolve the Unity of the Godhead in a Trinity of Persons into Relative Subsistencies in the same Individual Nature which no more multiplies Natures and Divinities to make Two or Three Gods than the Mind its Word and Love make Three Minds This is the true and compleat notion of the Homoousion which as I have already shewn does not signify a meer Specifick Unity but the Unity of One Individual not Singular Nature in Three that Three Real Distinct Subsisting Persons are as intimately and essentially related to each other in the same Individual Nature as a Human Mind and its Word are which are not and never can be two Minds but one Mind Two compleat and perfect Minds can never in a proper notion be Consubstantial or one Substance though they have the same specifick Nature for their Substance is not one and the same but naturally two and naturally separable how closely soever they may be united but Three Divine Persons who are essentially related to each other in the same Divinity as the Mind and its Word are are in the strictest notion Consubstantial or One Substance being essentially related to each other in the same One Individual Nature and Essence And here I must take notice of a great mistake which some Learned Men run into concerning the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 singular and particular Natures Substances and Essences by which they understand what some others call Personal Substances and conclude That since Philoponus and others who asserted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three particular Natures and Essences or Substances in the Godhead were charged with Tritheism as they deserved if their Opinions be truly represented those who assert Three Substantial Persons or Three distinct Personal Subsistencies or Substances are liable also to the same Charge This is a material Objection and a fair Answer to it will set this whole matter in a clear light Now the Answer in short is this That those who rejected the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and charged it with Tritheism did not thereby understand particular personal relative Subsistencies or Substances but compleat absolute particular Natures and Substances not Three Real Substantial Subsisting Relations in One Individual Nature as a Mind its Internal Essential Word and Spirit as Father Son and Holy Ghost are Three but Three absolute particular Natures as Three Men each of whom has a compleat absolute personal Nature of his own are Three Now if this be the true Account every one sees the difference between Three personal relative Substances or Subsistencies of the same Nature and Three absolute particular Natures the first is a real Substantial Trinity Three Subsisting Infinite Persons in the Unity of the same Godhead Three Persons and One God the other is down-right Tritheism And that this is all they meant by particular Individual Natures I have many Arguments to prove For 1st Had they herein condemned distinct personal relative Substances they had condemned the Faith of the Catholick Church and relapsed into Sabellianism as
Identity of Nature Nestorius who owned Two Natures in Christ asserted also Two Persons and Eutyches made Christ but One Nature as well as One Person and in consequence of this Philoponus if he was not mistaken taught Three Individual Natures as well as Three Persons in the Godhead So that to make Nature and Person in the true and proper notion of Person commensurate and convertible Terms that a Nature is a Person and a Person an Individual Nature that One Nature is but One Person and One Person but One Nature and that Individual Natures and Persons must always be multiplied with each other is the fundamental Principle of all the Heresies relating to the Trinity and Incarnation and then one would think that those Doctrines which expresly contradict this Principle and all these Heresies which result from it should be the true Catholick Faith And then Three Real Substantial Subsisting Persons or Three Relative Personal Subsistencies or Substances in the Unity of the same Individual Essence or one Godhead is the True Catholick Faith and to reject it upon pretence that this must multiply Natures with Persons and so make Three Divinities and Three Gods is to return to that condemned Heretical Principle That One Nature can be but One True and Proper Person which if Men understand the true Consequences of what they say must inevitably betray them to Sabellianism Arianism or Tritheism And thus much for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which I hope we shall hear no more of The Doctrine of Relations demonstrates the Individual Unity of the Divine Essence for if Father Son and Holy Ghost though each of them in his own Person be True and Perfect God yet are not Three Absolute Divinities but Three Eternal Subsisting Relations in the same One Divinity they must be One Individual Essence and Substance for else they cannot be the Relations of the same One Essence and Substance 2. As these Divine Relations prove the Individual Unity of Nature and Essence so they prove the Sameness and Identity of Nature wherein as I have shewn at large the Catholick Fathers place the Unity of the Godhead That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Divinity is One God A few words will serve to explain this after what I have already discoursed on this Argument The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as I have already shewn does not signify the Singularity but the perfect invariable Sameness and Identity of Nature not such a Sameness as every single Person is the same with himself but such a Sameness as is between distinct Persons of the same Nature Now the Doctrine of Relations necessarily infers this perfect Sameness and Identity and this Relative Sameness and Identy proves a perfect Unity As for the first there needs no other proof but barely to represent it for it is self-evident For is it possible that a Perfect Living Subsisting Word should not be perfectly the same with that Infinite Mind whose Word it is and from whom it proceeds That a Perfect Living Subsisting Image should not be perfectly the same with its Prototype from whom it receives its Being and Nature For if the Word be not perfectly the same with the Mind nor the Image with its Prototype it is not a true and perfect Word not a perfect Image By these Relations of Father and Son of a Mind and its Word a Prototype and its Image the Catholick Fathers as I have already shewn prove the perfect invariable Sameness and Identity of Nature for the thing proves it self The Relation indeed of Father and Son considered in general proves no more than a specifick Sameness of Nature which may admit of great changes and variety within the same Species but when God is the Father and begets a Son of his own Substance his Nature being absolutely and immutably perfect he must communicate the same perfect invariable Nature to his Son especially when this Son is his own perfect living Word and his perfect Image But this is not all A perfect Sameness between Two Absolute Natures without the least conceivable difference or variation would not be a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Sameness of Identity for though they could subsist as perfectly the same as their Idea is yet they would be Two Absolute Natures not One Nature But a perfect Sameness in Essential Relations or Relative Subsistencies proves a perfect Identity of Nature that they are perfectly the same in the same One Individual Nature As a living substantial Word must receive its substance and being whole of whole from that Mind whose Word it is for if it be not the same Substance it can't be the substantial Word of that Mind whose Substance it is not nor can a living substantial Image be any other Substance than that of the Prototype for if it were it might be its likeness but not its natural Image And thus this Sameness and Identity of Nature proves each Person by himself to be true and perfect God and all Three but One God for each Person according to this Doctrine has and must have the whole perfect Divinity in himself and all Three but one and the same Divinity 3. These Subsisting Relations in the Unity of Nature give us an intelligible Notion of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the inseparable Union of the Divine Persons and their mutual 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Inexistence Inbeing in each other That all the Catholick Fathers asserted the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or inseparable Union of the Divine Persons as essential to the Unity of the Godhead is so well known that I need not multiply Quotations to prove it after what I have already observed to that purpose But the Question is What they mean by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 wherein the Essential Unity of the Godhead consists Now it is certain this relates to the inseparable Union of the Persons for it is opposed to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 divided and separate Hypostases and Persons which the Fathers charge with Tritheism The Son is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inseparable from the Essence and Substance of the Father and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is inseparably in the Father that he is begotten of the Father without any division of Substance within the Father and inseparable from him so that this does not relate immediately to the Unity of Nature but the Union of Persons and therefore cannot signify the Singularity of the Divine Nature but the Inseparable Union of real distinct Persons in the Unity of Nature That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this Inseparable Union and Inbeing of Persons does as necessarily prove the real Distinction of Persons as the Unity of Nature as St. Hilary and Athanasius and the other Fathers frequently observe and that proves that the Unity of the Divine Nature which is the Inseparable Union of Three proper subsisting Persons is not the Unity of Singularity Which shews by the way how improperly the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is made use of to prove the
Operation necessarily proves the Distinction and Unity of Essence it being in our way of conceiving things a necessary effect of it there must be some real Distinction in the same Nature and Essence in which there are Three who Act distinctly and there must be an Individual Unity of Essence when in Three there is but One Individual Operation and though these things may be distinguished in Creatures where we distinguish the Suppositum and the Powers and give a priority of Nature to the Suppositum yet Essence and Energy being the same in God who is a pure simple Act there can be no priority nor posteriority between them but the Demonstration proceeds equally upon Nature or Operation but that is the best which is the most intelligible Representation of this Distinction and Unity For this reason the Fathers chose to explain the Distinction and Unity of the Godhead by the Distinction and Unity of Operation which I need not prove at large as being universally owned and therefore I shall only observe how St. Gregory Nyssen represents this matter In his Answer to Ablabius that there are not Three Gods he tells us That the best way to form the clearest and most perspicuous Notion of this is to examine what this Name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Godhead signifies Now whereas some think this a proper Name to signify the Divine Nature and Essence he asserts with the Scriptures 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that the Divine Nature and Essence is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without a Name and can't be signified by words and that every Name which is given to God signifies something essential to him but not his Nature and Essence it self This he shews particularly in some Names given to God and affirms That thus it is in all other Divine Names that either they remove all Imperfections or attribute all Divine Perfections to him but do not declare his Nature And thus he adds it is in the Name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is God is a Sâ—er an Inspector who beholds all things Now if God signifies him who sees and knows all things we must inquire whether this All-seeing Power belongs only to one of the Divine Persons of the Trinity or to all Three For if this be the true interpretation of the Name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it is an All-seeing Power and that He that sees all is God we cannot reasonably deny this to any Person in the Holy Trinity since the Scripture does equally attribute this Omniscience to Father Son and Holy Ghost Well! suppose this as he adds it does not remove but encrease the difficulty for though God be not a Name of Nature but of Energy and Power if the Name God signifies a Seer and Inspector and there be Three who thus see all things Three must be Three Gods as we number Persons of the same Profession who all do the very same things as well as those who have the same Nature as we say many Orators Mathematicians and the lâ—ke as well as many Mâ—n Now this he answers by the Unity of Energy and Power which is in each of them but is but One indivisible inseparable Power not as it is in Men who each of them acts separately by himself and though they do the same thing for kind yet what each of them does is properly his own doing and not anothers They act separately and produce distinct and separate Effects and therefore are many Agents But it is quite otherwise as to the Divine Nature The Father does nothing by himself without the Son nor the Son without the Holy Ghost but each Divine Operation proceeds originally from the Father is continued by the Son and perfected in the Holy Spirit and therefore the name of Energy is not divided into a number of Agents because neither of them acts separately by himself And this he proves from the Unity of the Effect that whatever good thing we receive from God as suppose Life is attributed to Father Son and Holy Ghost but though it be given by Three that which is given or done for us is not Three we do not receive three Lives one from each Person of the Trinity but we have but one Life which we receive from them all Now where there is but One Undivided Effect there can be but One Natural Agent for separate Agents will produce separate Effects and therefore there can be but one motion of the Divine Will from the Father by the Son to the Holy Spirit and that without distance and Succession Now it is plain that all this does not signify a mere Unity of Consent as may be between Three Distinct and Separate Minds but the Unity of Principle which acts distinctly but uniformly and inseparably in Three the same Divine Will which is originally in the Father acting in the same manner and with one indivisible motion as they speak in the Son and Holy Spirit which Unity of Operation though it admits of distinct Acts and consequently a real distinction of Persons yet proves the individual Unity of Essence for there can be no Unity of Principle or Operation but in the same Individual Essence where Three Persons are united in the same Individual Essence as the Mind its Word and Spirit are in Man And here had there not been enough already said about it is a proper Place to vindicate that late Representation which has been made of the Distinction and Unity of the Godhead by the self-consciousness and mutual consciousness of the Divine Persons I have met with no body yet so hardy as to deny that Self-consciousness is essential to the natural Unity of a Person and that Three Persons cannot be naturally and essentially One without mutual Consciousness But the great Objection against this Notion and which I am amazed to find some Learned Men insist on is the order of Nature which requires that a Person should be One by an Unity of Nature before it can be self-conscious and that Three Persons must be One by the Unity of Nature before they can be mutually conscious For the Unity of Nature and the Union of Persons in the same Nature must be before all Acts of Self-consciousness and mutual Consciousness And that which in the order of Nature comes after such a Distinction and Union cannot be the cause of it But who ever thought of causes of Distinction and Unity in an Eternal Nature which has no cause Did the Fathers philosophize thus concerning Priority and Posteriority in the Divine Nature when they placed the Unity of the Godhead in the Unity of Energy and Operation For does not the same Objection lie against the Unity of Energy and Operation that does â—gainst mutual consciousness which is essential to this Unity of Energy that the Divine Persons must first be One before they
can be One Energy and Power and therefore that One Energy does not cause their Unity because they must be One before they are One Agent And indeed such Men Gregory Nyssen intimates he had to deal with who would not allow the Deity to be Energy and Power but he thought it not worth the while to dispute that Point with them for the Divine Nature being Infinite and Incomprehensible the pure and simple Nature of God is not the immediate Object of our Knowledge can have no name and definition given it and therefore we can know nothing of it immediately and directly but by such Essential Attributes and Properties as we câ—n form some notion of The not considering this how perfectly unknown and incomprehensible the Divine Nature it self is occasioned a late Author to tell us That An Hypothesis in this Affair which leaves out the very Nexus the Natural and Eternal Vnion and insists upon mutual consciousness which at most is but the consequence thereof wants the principal thing requisite to the salving the Vnity of the Godhead But this is to philosophize about the abstracted Natures and Essences of Things even the Divine Substance and Essence which I dare not presume to do No doubt but God is the most real substantial Being in the World even Father Son and Holy Ghost and there is as little doubt but there is as real and substantial an Union between them But I know nothing of the Substance of God as distinguished from his Essential Attributes and Perfections nor of such a Distinction and Unity of Substance in the Deity as can help us to form any notion of a Trinity in Unity and defend it from the Charge of Contradiction and Impossibility when we have done For we must have a care of conceiving any Extension or Parts or Composition in God without which we can have no notion of a Distinction and Union of Substances considered purely under the notion of Substance And therefore we must be contented to be ignorant of the Substance and Substantial Unions of the Deity as we are of all other Substantial Unions We know not what the Substance of a Spirit is nor what the Substance of Matter is nor what their substantial Unity is And therefore when we inquire into their Distinction and Unity we never meddle with the Essential Reasons and Causes of Unity which are concealed from us but consider as far as Sense or Reason or Observation will reach wherein the Unity of any thing consists and when a thing may be said to be One As to instance at present only in the Unity of a Mind and in the Union of Soul and Body Is there any thing else in the World which can make a Mind one with it self and distinguish it from all other Minds but a self-conscious Sensation that it feels it self and its whole self and only it self I suppose these Men will grant that such a Mind is One and but One and distinct from all other Minds but Self-consciousness is not the formal reason of the Unity of a Mind or of a Person because in order of Nature the Unity of a Mind or Person must go before Self-consciousness that is Self-consciousness is owing to the Unity of Essence not the Unity of Essence to Self-consciousness Well but what is this Essence of a Mind and this Unity of Essence which makes a Mind One Truly that no body can tell and therefore to say a Mind is one by the Unity of its Essence is to say it is One because it is so for we know no more of the matter But Self-consciousness is a sensible Unity which we all feel in our selves and know our selves from other Men by it This Unity of Essence we know nothing of but by Self-consciousness and I desire to know whatever the Unity of Essence be whether any but a Self-conscious Unity would make a Mind One and distinguish it from all other Minds which shews that we have nothing to do with the naked Essences and Substances of Things but with their immediate and essential Properties and when we know them we know all that is to be known of Nature and therefore we can know no more of the Unity of a Mind than Self-consciousness The Substances of things are distinguished from each other by their Essential Properties and therefore from them we must learn their Unity or Distinction A Mind is a Substance and Matter is Substance and the essential difference between them as far as we can understand is that a Mind is a thinking Substance and Matter extended Substance and therefore we must judge of a Mind by the properties of Thinking and of Matter by extension The Unity of a Thinking Substance must consist in the Unity of Thoughts and Sensations that is in one Consciousness and the Unity of an Extended Substance in the continuity of its extension and to ask farther what is the cause or principle of Consciousness in a Mind or of One Consciousness in One Mind is to ask a reason of the natures of things why a Mind is a Thinking Being and why One Thinking Being has one Center of Thoughts Why do they not ask also how Extension comes to be essential to Matter and how Matter is extended I know no reason to be given of such matters but the Will of God who formed all things according to the Ideas of his own Infinite Wisdom This I hope is sufficient to be said concerning the order of Nature and the priority and posteriority of our Conceptions for if we do not stop in our Inquiries at immediate and essential Properties but demand an antecedent Reason for them this is to demand a Reason of Nature Why things are what God has made them Those who are not contented to contemplate Nature in its immediate and Essential Properties may philosophize by themselves for me for there is nothing more to be known without an intuitive knowledge of Nature it self which none can have but the Author of Nature Thus should you inquire of me concerning the Union of Soul and Body all that I know of it is That they are united in one Conscious Life That the Soul feels all the Impressions of the Body and directs and governs it No will such Philosophers say here wants the Nexus the natural Union between Soul and Body for they must be One by a Natural Union before there can be this Conscious Life and Sympathy between them which is not the Union but the effect and consequent of this Union Very true They must be vitally united to have One Life and to receive impressions from each other But can they give any other notion of this Vital Union than that the Body is animated by the Soul and lives with it Could these Philosophers tell you how a Soul which is an Immaterial Being could be fastened to a Body what Union of Substances there is between them which is the thing they want to know would they understand a Vital Union ever
he allows to be a good Argument against the Arians which he could not have done had he not allowed this Consciousness in the Trinity but then observes That the Arians did as effâ—ctually consute them as to the distinction of Persons and thus between them both the Catholick Faith of a real distinction of Persons in the Sameness and Conscious Unity of Nature was vindicated In short If the whole Divine Nature is conscious to it self as every Created Mind is conscious to all that is in it self and the Three Divine Persons subsist in the Individual Unity of the same Nature then these Divine Persons must be intimately and mutually conscious to each other as a Mind its Word and Spirit are and however Men please to philosophize about this as to the prius posterius whether they will make the Unity of Nature the cause of this mutual Consciousness and therefore in order of Nature prior to it or make mutual Consciousness not the cause of this Unity but the Essential Union of Three Distinct Subsisting Persons in the Unity of the same Individual Nature I will not contend with any Man which of these speak most properly Consciousness is the Unity of an Intelligent Nature and the mutual Consciousness of Persons in the same Nature and the Conscious Unity of Nature in Three Distinct Persons is the same thing We cannot conceive the Unity of a Mind without Consciousness nor any other kind of Unity of a Mind but a Conscious Unity nor can we conceive an Internal Essential Consciousness without an Essential Unity and if the mutual Consciousness of Persons in the same Nature is the Consciousness of Nature I cannot see why we may not say That it is at least One Notion of the Unity of Nature too But to return where I left off if this may be called a a Digression what I have now said is sufficient to shew how necessary this Doctrine of Relations is to give us a sensible notion of a Trinity in Unity To assert a Real Trinity we must assert Three Real Distinct Subsisting Substantial Intelligent Persons neither of which is each other and each of which is by himself in his own proper Person True and Perfect God But this say Sabellians Arians and Socinians is to assert Three Gods which the Catholick Church always abhorred the thoughts of Now how the Fathers answered this Charge and vindicated the Divine Unity in a Trinity of Real Subsisting Persons I have already particularly shown as by the Consubstantiality the perfect Sameness and Identity of Nature whole of whole their Inseparability and Unity of Operation but we can form no distinct Idea of all this but only among Personal Subsisting Relatives of the same Individual Nature Whatever is not this is a meer Specifick Consubstantiality and Identity of Nature and an External Union how inseparable soever it be which must make a number of Individuals in the Divine as well as Human Nature but now it is plain to a Demonstration That if God hath an Eternal Subsisting Word and an Eternal Subsisting Spirit they can be but One Individual Essence as a Man's Mind and Word and Spirit are One and therefore all Three but One God as a Man with his Mind and Word and Spirit iâ— but One Man which is an Intelligible Notion of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Individual Essence and Godhead For though the Word of God be a Person which a Mâ—n's Word is not yet if his true Nature and Character is the Word he is the same to the Eternal Mind which a Man's Word is to his Created Mind and therefore God and his Living Subsisting Word must be One Individual Essence as a Man's Mind and his Word are One a Word must be conceived and begotten of the Mind and can have no other Substance if it be a Living Substantial Word but that of the Mind and if it be a perfect Word the perfect Image of the Mind it must be whole of whole all that the Mind is for the whole Mind is in its perfect Word and Image and lives and subsists in it and the whole Word in the Mind So that the Câ—eternity the Coequality the Consubstantiality the Identity the Inseparability the Unity of Operation between God and his Word is so far from being Jargon Contradiction Unintelligible Nonsense that iâ— God have an Eternal Word it is self-evident that thus it must be When we contemplate the Consubstantiality of Father and Son under the notion of Substance we can form no Idea of a whole which is of a whole that the Father should communicate his whole Essence and Substance to the Son and be the whole himself and this is no great wonder since we can form no Idea at all of the Divine Substance but we can very well understand That the Whole Mind must be in its Word that the Eternal Mind and its Word must be Consubstantial Coeternal Coequal Two but perfectly the same inseparably in each other for all this is included in the very Relation and Notion of a Mind and its Word I 'm sure a Living Subsisting Word which is not Consubstantial Coeternal Coequal with that Eternal Mind whose Word it is that a Mind should be without its Word that an Infinite Eternal Mind which is perfect Life and Being should have a vanishing perishing Word as Man has not a living subsisting Word that a Mind and its Word should ever be parted that the Word should not be and subsist in the Mind and the Mind in the Word I say all this contradicts all the Notions we have of a Mind and its Word We cannot immediately and directly contemplate the Divine Nature and Essence which is so infinitely above us and therefore we must contemplate it in such Ideas and Representations as God himself makes of it and if they are such as we can form an intelligible notion of we have no reason to complain of unintelligible Mysteries and Contradictions though when we reduce it into Terms of Art we find our Minds confounded and perplext and unable to form any distinct and easy Ideas The Arians to avoid the Consubstantiality of the Son with the Father would not allow the Term Substance to be used of God the Catholick Fathers proved that Substance is in Scripture used concerning God and that the Arians could not reasonably reject it because they used it themselves for though they would not own the Son to be of the same Substance with the Father they taught that he was of another Substance which still is to own Substance in God But though God be in the most true and absolute sense perfect Essence and Being the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or according to St. Ambrose his derivation of the Word which shews what he meant by it whether it shews his skill in Greek or not that Essence and Substance is that which always is and that which always is is God and therefore God is Essence and Substance and a
God and Creatures so there can be no words in the same sense common to them but then this only requires an accommodation of words to Divine Mysteries by way of analogy and resemblance but not to change the Language and Philosophy of Created Nature which after all our Attempts and all our Art of Expression will fall infinitely short of the Divine Nature and give us but a very imperfect Image of it And if by such Attempts we confound our Notions and Ideas of Nature too we shall so much the more confound and perplex our Ideas of God It may help to ease mens Minds of some Notions which lie cross and uneven Briefly to state this matter I confess I am not satisfied of that absolute necessity which some pretend of stating nicely and Philosophically this distinction between Nature and Person in order to understand the Doctrine of the Trinity This was the Catholick Faith long before this Distinction was universally received and Men who understand little of this Distinction may believe very orthodoxly in Father Son and Holy Ghost without it Nay the best the safest and easiest way to understand these and all other Philosophical Terms applied to the Explication of this Faith is to fit them to those Scripture Ideas we have of Father Son and Holy Ghost each of them True and Perfect God and all Three but One God as I have shewn at large in the First Chapter But since there is a very warm Dispute about Nature and â—erson and has been for many Ages and this Distinction is become necessary to secure the Catholick Faith against the Attempts of Hereticks on both sides as the Church has found by long Experience it will be necessary to set this matter in as clear a light as possible we can And the best way I can think of to do this is 1. To consider this distinction of Nature and Person in Creatures As for instance in a Man What the distinction between Nature and Person is in Man and to shew which way soever we state this matter how improper all these Notions are to represent this distinction between Nature and Person in the Blessed Trinity And 2. To shew how the Catholick Fathers accommodated these Names of Essence and Person to the Explication of this Mystery and what Unity and what Distinction they intended to represent by them 1. As for the first If the Infinite distance between God and Creatures will allow us to Philosophize freely about Created Nature without incurring the Suspicion of Heresy I must confess I never could form a distinct notion of the difference between a subsisting Nature and Hypostasis or Person in Man but do what I can I can conceive no otherwise of an Individual Subsisting Human Nature but as of an Individual Subsisting Human Hypostasis or Person nor of an Individual Human Person than as of an Individual Subsisting Human Nature And I have some reason to think that this is not peculiarly my Case for besides that I find other thinking Men blundered in this matter and could never yet meet with a clear and sensible Explication of it I observe that there is no word which in its original institution signifies this difference and it is reasonable to think as to Created Nature that Mankind have no notion of that which they have no word for It is sufficiently known that Hypostasis originally signifies Essence and Substance not Person as distinguisht from Nature which is a later and a mere Ecclesiastical use of it and it is confessed that Persona and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 were taken from the Stage and when they were applied to signify a true and real Man they signified only the Man himself not the Personality of a Man as distinguished from an Individual Subsisting Nature And which is much more considerable some of the Fathers as I observed before confess that Aristotle knew no such distinction but in his Philosophy Essence and Hypostasis signified the same thing for Nature and Essence which is his first Substance is an Individuum which subsists not as part of another but as whole and compleat which the Fathers call Hypostasis and therefore Aristotle's first Substance and what these Fathers call Hypostasis is in Creatures one and the same thing and yet all confess That no man ever more nicely distinguisht all the distinguishable Notions in Nature than Aristotle did that what escaped his observation must be very nice indeed And though St. Basil and St. Gregory Nyssen and the other Catholick Writers of that Age do distinguish between Essence and Hypostasis that they differ as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 what is common to all the Individuals of the same kind which is a common Nature and what is proper and peculiar to each Individual and distinguishes one man from another yet I do not remember that they quarrelled with the Greek Philosophers or apprehended that they themselves taught any new Philosophy in this Point as afterwards Theorianus and others did nor can I see any other difference there is between them if candidly interpreted but only in words The short account of the matter is this Aristotle's first Substance which subsists by it self these Fathers as they themselves own call Hypostasis not Nature Essence and Substance that is every subsisting Individuum is Aristotle's Nature Essence and Substance the Fathers Hypostasis now when they mean the same thing and own that they do so so far they are agreed in the thing and differ only in words But then these Fathers in every Hypostasis distinguished between the common Nature and such Personal Properties which distinguished common Nature into Individuals or were Characteristical Marks whereby to know one Person from another Now Aristotle indeed never made such a distinction as this but yet all that is material in it is included in his Notion and Definition of Substance For when these Fathers distinguish in every Hypostasis what is common to the whole Kind and what is proper and peculiar to each Individuum they mean no more by it but that Peter for instance considered as a Man is perfectly the same that Iames and Iohn are considered also as Men though there is something so peculiar to Peter as to make him a particular Human Person and to distinguish him from Iames and Iohn and all other Men in the World Now it is certain neither Aristotle nor any Man of sense would ever have denied any thing of all this for it is evident that there is something wherein all Men agree and something proper to every particular Man That which is the same in all Men the Fathers call a common Nature and so does Aristotle a common Specifick Nature but here is some appearance of difference between them which I think if rightly stated is none at all Aristotle makes Nature as actually subsisting by it self as suppose Human Nature in Peter or Iames to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Individuum a particular Singular
Nature and that it is common only in Notion as every particular Man has a Nature of the same kind or a true Human Nature These Fathers on the contrary affirm That Human Nature as considered in Peter or any other particular Man is a common Nature distinguished into Hypostases by something proper peculiar and particular to each That all Nature is common to all the Hypostases of the same kind and that it is impossible to find a particular and appropriated Nature Now as great an appearance as here is of a direct Contradiction a little consideration I believe will satisfy all thinking Men that Aristotle would have owned all that these Fathers say and then the only Dispute will be which of them speak most properly which is of no great moment in this Cause For what do these Fathers mean by a common Nature Do they mean that there is but one Numerical Subsisting Nature common to all the Individuals but one Universal Human Nature in all the particular men in the World By no means Damascen expresly teaches That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the common Nature in Creatures is only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be known by Reason but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the distinction of Hypostases 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is seeen in the things themselves in their separate Existence But what is this common Nature which is seen by Reason why every particular Man is a reasonable Mortal Creature each of them is Flesh animated by a reasonable Soul and Mind and this is the common Nature which is seen by Reason common because it is perfectly and invariably the same in all though each of these Hypostases in which this common Nature is subsist distincty and separately by themselves and therefore the common Nature too subsists distinctly and separately in these separate Hypostases Now would Aristotle or any one for him deny that his first Substance though it be an Individuum which subsists compleatly and separately by it self is in this sense a common Nature as being perfectly the same in all the Individuals or in the Language of the Fathers in all the Hypostases of the same Nature There can be no such thing as what Aristotle calls a Species if every Individual have not the common Nature for Nature subsists only in Individuals and if that be not a common Nature it cannot have a common Name and Definition if Human Nature be not perfectly the same in Peter Iames and Iohn the Name and Definition of a Man cannot equally and universally belong to them all And therefore Damascen was certainly in the right who from an Universal Predication infers that common Nature is the Species and that for this reason Nature is predicated of its Hypostases or Individuals because in every Hypostasis of the same kind there is the same perfect Nature Every Man has the perfect Nature of a Man and for that reason and no other the Name and Definition of a Man belongs to every Man Upon this account it is that they reject 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a particular singular Nature because then the same Hypostases must have both the same and a diverse Nature even the Persons of the Holy Trinity If Nature be perfectly the same in all the Hypostases it is a common Nature but if Human Nature in Peter have any thing peculiar and different from Human Nature in Paul it is then a particular Humanity and Peter and Paul are not perfectly of the same kind which is one Notion wherein they rejected a particular Nature which added to what I discoursed above that by a particular Nature they meant a whole absolute Individual Nature it includes I think all that they meant when they rejected as Heresy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three Individual Natures in the Trinity By Three particular Natures they always understood Three Absolute Whole Individual Natures and this alone is Trithâ—ism for Three such Absolute Divinities must be Three Gods but besides this they thought there could not be Three Individual Natures without some essential difference to distinguish and number Natures and this added a mixture of Arianism to Tritheism and made at least in part Three different Divinities that they were partly of the same and partly of a different Nature For as far as I can understand this matter the reason why they rejected Singular and Individual Natures was not that Human Nature for instance does not subsist singly and individually 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Damascen speaks in Peter and Paul and every individual Man in the World but because what is common to all without the least Alterity or Diversity can be but one in all for Alterity and Diversity is necessary â—o make a Number and therefore Nature which is perfectly the same in all though it subsists singly in Individuals is not an Individual it self as having no principle of Individuation in it self that is no Diversity For which reason it may be numbred with the Hypostases with the numbring Number but the res numerata that Nature which is numbred with the Hypostases is but one in all as I have shewn above In this sense also these Fathers rejected an Individual Nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in their Disputes with the Severians concerning the Personality of Christ's Human Nature These Hereticks taught That every Nature is an Individuum Hypostasis or Person and therefore the Human Nature of Christ if it were true Human Nature must be a Human Hypostasis or Person too In answer to which these Fathers absolutely denied that there is any such thing as an Individual Nature that pure Nature is no Hypostasis not that it can't subsist for the Human Nature of Christ does actually subsist but that meer Nature has no individuating Principle in it self to distinguish it into different Hypostases but is distinguished not by any Essential Diversity but by Personal Properties that Nature with Personal Properties is a Person and therefore if there be a Subsisting Nature which has no Personal Properties but is distinguished some other way from Human Nature in Human Persons it is certain it is Human Nature but no Human Person And thus it is with the Human Nature of Christ which is distinguished from Human Nature in all others by its Hypostatical Union to the Eternal Word which is no Personal Property and therefore does not make it a distinct Person though it be a perfect Subsisting Nature This is the best and easiest Account I can give of the Philosophy of these Fathers concerning a Common and Individual Nature which if it be thought a new way of speaking yet it is what may be understood and has a great deal of old Truth in it and will help us to understand the Fathers in these Disputes about the Trinity and Incarnation a little better than I find many men do Let us then in the next place inquire what these Fathers mean by Hypostasis and how they distinguish it from Nature in Created Beings
that there is but One Divinity the second shews the distinction of Persons in the Unity of the Divine Nature But then which is what I intended in all this this very distinction proves one individual Divinity because it is in the individual Unity of the same Numerical not Specifick Nature for all essential Processions as the Eternal Word and Spirit are which cannot so much as in Thought be separated from Original Mind must continue in the Unity of the same individual Nature This is what the Fathers meant by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the One common Divinity which is individually One in Three perfect Hypostases Father Son and Holy Ghost The Divinity of the Father of Eternal Self-originated Mind is the common Divinity communicated to the Eternal Word and Spirit in the individual Unity of Nature 2. Now this will give us some Notion of the distinction of Nature and Persons in the Eternal Godhead I say Persons not Person which I take to be the fundamental Mistake which has obscured and perplex'd this Mystery Men have rack'd their Inventions to find out some distinction between Nature and Person in every single Person in the Godhead which it is certain these Fathers never thought of though their Attempt to distinguish between Nature and Person in every Man gave some occasion to this Mistake But I have already proved both from Fathers and Schoolmen That when they spoke distinctly of each particular Person they made Person and Nature the same That the Person of the Father is the Nature of the Father and the Person of the Son the Nature of the Son Nor indeed had they any occasion to distinguish between Nature and Person in each single Person which could do no service in this Mystery For the true reason and occasion for this distinction was to reconcile the Individual Unity of the Divine Nature with a Trinity of real Hypostases or Persons how One Nature can subsist in Three distinct Hypostases and continue One Individual Nature Which had been no difficulty at all were not each Divine Person by himself the Divine Nature But how the Divine Nature should subsist whole and perfect in Three distinct Persons and not be Three distinct Natures but One Nature and One Divinity not specifically but individually and numerically One This was the difficulty they were concerned to answer which the distinction between Nature and Person in each single Person could not answer For let us suppose such a distinction as this whatever it be if the Divine Nature subsist whole and perfect in each distinct Person the difficulty still remains how the Persons are distinct and the Nature individually One As to put the Case in Human Nature whatever distinction we allow between Nature and Person in every particular Man if we allow that every Man has Human Nature as distinctly in himself as he is a distinct Person the distinction between Nature and Person can never prove the Individual Numerical Unity of Human Nature in Three Men. The Question then is Not how Nature and Person is distinguish'd in each single Person much less how Three Persons in One singular Nature are distinguished from that singular Nature which unavoidably reduces a Trinity of Persons to an unintelligible Trinity of Modes but How the Three Persons in the Ever-blessed Trinity which are Three in number and each of them the Divine Nature are distinguished from that One Individual Divinity which is in them all or rather which they all are Now what I have already said seems to me to give a very intelligible Notion of this viz. That the Divine Nature which is but One is the Eternal Self-originated Divinity with its Eternal Essential Processions or Productions which as I have already shewn are but One not Singular but Individual Nature and Individual Divinity But then this One Self-originated Divinity is most certainly an Infinite Eternal Self-originated Person if Infinite Eternal Self-originated Mind be a Person and these Eternal Essential Processions are Persons also if an Eternal Living Subsisting Word be a Person and an Eternal Living Subsisting Spirit be a Person and then it is evident that there are Three Eternal Subsisting Persons in the Individual Unity of Nature These Divine Processions do not multiply nor divide the Divine Nature because they are essential to an Infinite Mind and are Processions ad intra in the perfect Identity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Individual Unity of Nature but they are distinct Persons as being Eternal Subsisting Living Intelligent Processions which is all that we mean by Persons in this Mystery with reference to the Eternal Word and Spirit For these Three Divine Persons have their different Characters and Order whereby they are distinguished from each other which the Fathers call the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by which they meant their different manner of subsisting in the Individual Unity of the Divine Nature that though they have all the same Divinity as that signifies all Divine Perfections yet they have it after a different manner that is as they constantly explain it Vnbegotten Begotten and Proceeding as the Athanasian Creed teaches us to believe The Father is made of none neither created nor begotten The Son is of the Father alone not made nor created but begotten The Holy Ghost is of the Father and of the Son neither made nor created nor begotten but proceeding This is the only distinction which the Catholick Fathers allow between the Three Divine Persons and let us consider the nature of it Now 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies actual Existence and that which does actually exist and therefore the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signify that there are Three that do actually exist but after a different manner That is That the Father is Unbegotten Self-originated Divinity is God of himself without any other cause of his Being and this Self-originated Unbegotten Divinity is the Person of the Father and in the highest and most absolute sense the One God The Son is Eternally begotten of his Father's Substance and lives and subsists in him and so the Holy Ghost Eternally proceeds from Father and Son That is There is One Eternal Self-originated Divinity with its two Eternal Processions in the perfect Unity and Identity of the same Nature The Father's manner of subsistence is easily understood and secures to him the Prerogative of the One True God but we must shew this a little more plainly with reference to the Son and Holy Spirit each of which is by himself True and Perfect God but not a Second and Third God The right understanding of which depends upon the true stating of their different manners of subsistence And here I need only refer to what I have already discoursed concerning the difference between an Absolute Nature and Relative Subsistencies in the same Nature An Absolute Nature is a whole Compleat Nature with all that essentially belongs to such a Nature as every perfect Man has all that belongs essentially to the Nature of Man
the Son of this One God the Father and the Spirit of God be the Spirit of this same One God And though the Son of God be God and the Spirit of God be God that is the Name of their Nature not of their Persons and therefore can no more be multiplied with the Persons than the Divine Nature is The Son of God is God but it is Authoritate Paternae Naturae as St. Hilary speaks not by any Absolute Godhead of his own but in right of his Father's Nature and Divinity which he received by an Eternal Generation Thus it must be where there is but One Absolute Nature with its Internal Processions Let us put the Case in a Human Mind and suppose That its Word and Spirit were Distinct Living Intelligent Hypostases in the Mind Essential Processions in the Unity and Identity of Nature perfectly the same with the Mind but distinct Hypostases but would any one for this Reason call these Three Three Men or Three Minds And yet such a Living Subsisting Word and a Living Subsisting Spirit would as perfectly have the Nature of the Mind as the Mind it self but neither of them would be an absolute Mind but one the Word of the Mind and the other the Spirit of the Mind not Three Minds but One Mind with its Essential Word and Spirit This though an Imaginary Case gives us a sensible representation of the difference between the Eternal Mind and its Eternal Word and Spirit which I freely acknowledge cannot properly be called Three Infinite Minds and Spirits for though the Eternal Subsisting Word is an Infinite Mind and so the Eternal Subsisting Spirit yet Mind as well as God is the Name of their Nature not of their Persons which is Identically one and the same in all This as I take it is what some Learned and truly Catholick Writers mean in distinguishing the several Acceptations of this Name God That sometimes it signifies the Divine Nature and Essence in general as when we say The Trinity is One God that is One Divinity that there is but One Divine Nature and Essence in all the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity Sometimes it signifies Personally as when we say The Father is God the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God that is the Person of the Father the Person of the Son and the Person of the Holy Ghost is God But then they are still forced to acknowledge that the Name God is not predicated Vnivocally of all Three Persons but that the Father is God in a more excellent and eminent Sense than the Son is God or the Holy Ghost God as being God of himself an Unbegotten Self-originated God the Fountain of the Deity to the Son and Holy Spirit Upon which account he is so often by the Catholick Fathers called the One God and the only True God Now all this is very True and very Catholick but with all submission it seems to me to be an inconvenient way of speaking which perplexes the Article with different Senses and is liable to great Cavils and Misconstructions as the Examples of Dr. Payn and the Author of the 28 Propositions witness and when most dexterously managed will sooner silence than convince an Adversary The Divine Essence must be considered only as in the Divine Persons when we say That the Trinity is One God the true meaning is That Three Persons are One God and the general abstract Notion of the Unity of Essence does not account for this but the Unity of the Divine Essence in Three Thus to say That the Father is God in the highest sense of that Name God and that He alone strictly speaking is a Being absolutely perfect because he alone is Self-existent and all other Beings even the Son and Holy Ghost are from him may be expounded to a very Catholick Sense and was certainly so meant but is liable to great Cavils when Men take more pains to pick Quarrels with Words than to understand an Author An Absolutely Perfect God and a God that wants any Perfection sounds not only like Two Gods but like Gods of different Kinds for every diversity of Nature alters the Species All that is meant by this is certainly True and Catholick and taught in express words by the Primitive Fathers That the Father is not the Son nor the Son the Father that the Son is all that the Father is excepting his being the Father and unbegotten that is excepting Paternity and Self-existence or Self-origination and that upon this Account the Father is eminently called the One God the Son God of God that is God as the Son of God What I have now discoursed seems to me to give the fairest Account of this Matter I take the Name God always to signify a Person in whom the Divine Nature is not the Divinity in the Abstract and then the Name God must belong to any Person after the same manner as the Divine Nature is his that is he must be called God in no other sense than as he is God Now as I have already shewn there is but One Absolute Divinity with Two Internal Processions in the Unity and Identity of Nature And if we make this our Rule of Speaking as we must do if this be the Catholick Faith of the Trinity and we will fit our words to the nature of things then it is very plain That the Name God absolutely belongs only to him who is this Absolute Divinity that is the Person of the Father that no other Person is God in recto absolutely and simply God but only he that he is the One God the only True God as both the Scripture and Fathers own But what becomes then of the Son and Holy Ghost Is not the Son God and the Spirit God Yes the Name and Title of God belongs to them as the Divine Nature does that is not absolutely as to the Absolute Divinity but as to Divine Processions to Divine Subsisting Relations in the Unity of the Godhead that is the Second Person in the Trinity is God but not in recto as God signifies that Person who is the Divinity but as the Son of God as habens Deitatem having the Divinity not absolutely and originally but by Communication by Eternal Generation And so the Holy Spirit is not absolutely God but the Spirit of God and God only as the Spirit of God as an Internal Procession in the Divine Nature But in what sense then can we say That the Trinity is One God or that Three Persons are One God Must we not necessarily own that God in these Propositions is taken Essentially for the Deity in the abstract and not as considered in any One Person For will we say That the Trinity or Three Persons are but One Person No! and yet in this Proposition The Trinity is One God by One God I understand One who is absolutely God One Absolute Divinity which is the Father who has indeed a Son and Spirit in the Unity of his
late warm Dispute about One Substance and Three Substances in the Unity of the Godhead for the Dispute is the very same in other words with One Nature and Three Persons The Nicene Fathers who asserted the Homoousion the One Nature and Substance of Father and Son did not by this mean One Singular Substance as I have abundantly shewn and those who assert Three Substances in opposition to Sabellianism do not mean Three Absolute nor Three divided and separated Substances but One Individual Substance as there is One Individual Nature in Three Substantial Subsisting Persons That is There is but One Absolute Substance with Two Relative Substantial Procefsions in the Individual Unity of the same One Substance Which the Schools make no scruple to call Three Relative Substances All Catholick Writers both Ancient and Modern own that the Father is Substance the Son Substance and the Holy Ghost Substance but yet are cautious of saying Three Substances nor will they say ter Vna thrice One Substance because Number does not belong to the Nature but to the Persons though at the same time they own that Deus trinus signifies tria supposita Deitatis These seem to be great Niceties and Arbitrary Distinctions without any reason and foundation in Nature for what difference is there between Three Substances and Three Relative Substances For Relative Substances are Substances What difference between Three Substances and tria supposita when suppositum is only another name for Substance and so St. Hilary as I have observed called them tres substantias tria in substantia Three Substances and Three in Substance When there are Three each of which is in his own Person Substance and neither of them each other what difference is there between saying Tres in una substantia ter una substantia Three in One Substance and thrice Once Substance Marius Victorinus as I observed before ventures to say ter ipsa Substantia not ter una as it is mistaken in a late Treatise by trusting too much to memory thrice the very same Substance now thrice the same One Substance is thrice One Substance where the Number belongs to the Essence and Substance which is Aquinas's Objection against it But the whole Account of this must be resolved into the Distinction between Absolute and Relative Substance when it stands by it self signifies Absolutely and so Three Substances are Three Absolute Substances Three Human Substances Three Humanities and Three Divine Substances Three Divinities and therefore we must not without great caution say Three Substances in the Trinity for fear of asserting Three Gods but yet we must own that each Person is True and Perfect Substance and both the Fathers and Schools own this and Three in Substance are Three Substances but not Three Absolute but Relative Substances Three Subsisting Relations in the Unity of the Divine Essence and Substance Though as I have more than once observed in proper speaking we cannot say Three Relative Substances for though the Father speaks a Relation to the Son and Holy Spirit it is as he is the Fountain of the Deity Original Absolute Divinity Essence Substance in his own Person not a Relative Subsistence and therefore in the Blessed Trinity there is One Absolute Substance Absolute Divinity and Two Relative Substances as there are Two Internal Substantial Relations in the Unity of the same Substance And to prevent Mistakes I must here observe That by Absolute we do not mean Compleat and Perfect for so the Son is Absolute Substance and the Holy Spirit Absolute Substance Compleat and Perfect Substance as each of them in his own Person is True and Perfect God in which Sense St. Austin tells us that persona ad se dicitur that Person is predicated absolutely that every Person as considered in himself is a Person and not merely as related to another but when we say that there is but One Absolute Substance in the Godhead by Absolute we mean Original as I have already explained it as distinguished from Relative Processions as the Original is distinguished from the Image though the Image if a Living Subsisting Image is as Compleat and Perfect Nature and Substance as the Original is And this is the only difference I know between Substance Nature Essence and Suppositum Subject 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Res 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thing Being 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Subsistence and the like That the first signify Absolutely or as the Schools speak the Form that is an Original Substance Nature and Essence and therefore these must not be multiplied in the Divinity by saying Three Substances Natures or Essences for fear of a Diversity or Number of Divinities and Gods The other Terms though they do not in common use signify Relatively as Subject Suppositum Thing Being Subsistence do not yet they signify any thing that really is that has a Compleat Actual Subsistence of its own and therefore are applicable to all substantial relative Processions which are compleat Subsistencies Things Beings as well as to original Nature and Substance And both the Fathers and Schools for this reason owned the Three Divine Persons to be Three Things Three Beings Tres Entes Tria Entia Tres Res 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and scruple not the use of any such transcendental Terms as do not necessarily multiply the absolute and original Form Thus the One Substance of the Godhead either signifies the absolute Divinity of the Father and this is but One and can never be Ter Vna Thrice One or it signifies the One individual undivided Divinity of Father Son and Holy Ghost that is the absolute Divinity of the Father with his internal essential Processions in the perfect Unity and Identity of Nature and this it is but One Substance for there is but One Individual Nature not Ter Vna but Tres in Vna not Thrice One Substance but Three in One Undivided Nature and Substance 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which I have sometimes not so properly translated a Thrice subsisting Monad but it is a Monad with Three Hypostases which in other words is One Nature and Three Persons not One singular Nature Thrice subsisting which I cannot understand but One individual Nature and Three subsisting Hypostases Vna Substantia non Vnus Subsistens One Substance not One that subsists This Individual Nature subsists but once but in the Individual Unity of the Father's Essence and Godhead are those Eternal Substantial Subsisting Processions the Hypostases of the Son and Holy Spirit And in this sense the One Individual Substance of the Divinity may properly enough be stiled Ter ipsa or Ter Vna Substantia Thrice the same One Substance not Thrice One Absolute Substance in which sense Aquinas rejected it but Tria Supposita Vnius Substantiae or Deitatis which is One Substance by the individual Unity and invariable Sameness and Identity of Nature as I have shewn above Thus that warm Dispute among the Schoolmen about one Absolute Subsistence and Existence in the
often enough already to the satisfaction of all sober Enquirers who pay a just Veneration to Scripture and shall be done again when a fair occasion offers But the Question under Debate now is Whether we cannot explain and defend the Doctrine of the Trinity without the use of Ecclesiastical or Scholastick Terms and whether the Disputes of Divines about the Use and Signification of such Terms proves any Dâ—sagreement in the Faith when they all consent to the Scripture Explications of it The great Dispute is about the Distinction and Unity of the Godhead and by what Terms to express this Wonderful Distinction and Wonderful Vnion as some of the Fathers call it All sincere Trinitarians do agree That God is Vnus Trinus One and Three but we having nothing in Nature like this we know not by what Names to call it Those who have most critically examined the force of words find them all upon some account or other defective or improper for this purpose That St. Austin well said That in these Sublime Mysteries we can no more express what we conceive of them in Words than we can conceive of them as they are When we profess to believe that there are Three in the Unity of the Godhead the next question is What Three they are That is By what common Name to call them which may be multiplied with them or spoken of them in the Plural Number which St. Austin thinks not easily found The Greeks called them Three Hypostases which signifies Three Individual Substances This seemed hard to the Latins who acknowledged but One Substance in the Godhead and therefore they called them Three Persons though this did not satisfy St. Austin who looked upon Person as an Absolute not a Relative Term and therefore the Plural Predications would not agree with his Rule quae ad se dicuntur that what is predicated absolutely must be predicated only in the Singular Number And in truth if this be a good Rule it is a demonstration that there can be no common Name for these Three for whatever is a common Name for them all must be absolutely predicated of each of them And therefore St. Austin could give no other reason why we say Three Persons and not Three Essences or Three Gods but only this That since we acknowledge there are Three it is fitting to agree upon some common Name to denote the Trinity by and Ecclesiastical Use had given this Signification to the word Person But then besides this the great Dispute is What is meant by a Person when applied to the Three in the Blessed Trinity Some adhere to the old approved Definition of a Person That it is the Individual Substance of a Rational Nature which is the very definition of the Greek Hypostasis as Boetius owns Others are afraid of this for if every Person be an Individual Substance and there are Three Persons they know not how to avoid the Consequence That then there are Three Individual Substances in the Trinity And consequently since we can have no other Notion of the Divine Substance but Infinite Mind and Spirit there must be Three Infinite Minds and Spirits in the Godhead which they think infers Three Gods And therefore they will not allow a Person to be a Substance at least not an Individual Substance but a Mode or at most a Mode of Subsistence or Relation or Property or a Person in the Tragedian or Comedian sense of a Person as one represents and personates another or to signify an Office or Magistracy and so one man may be as many several Persons as he has Offices I can't answer for all these different significations of the word Person as applied to this Sacred Mystery especially as they are used by some Modern Writers for I believe there is no such material difference between the Fathers and the Schools as some men imagine of which more hereafter But as to my present purpose I must profess I can see no necessity why we must find out a Common Name for the Three in the Blessed Trinity when the Scripture has given us no Common Name for them much less why we should dispute eternally about the propriety and use of such words to hazard the Catholick Faith at least the Honour and Reputation of it together with the Peace of the Church If I am asked not only Who but What the Three in the Ever-blessed Trinity are I know no better Answer to make than what the Scripture has taught me That they are God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost which signifies all that can be express'd by any Artificial and Unscriptural words is an Answer liable to no Exceptions or Misrepresentations and in which all must agree who believe a Trinity and it shames and silences all those Disputes which are often occasioned by other words though never so wisely and reasonably chosen This Answer shews us what their Nature is what their Distinction is and what Relation they stand in to each other which is the most perfect knowledge we can have of the Ever-blessed Trinity in this world SECT III. That the Title of GOD attributed in Scripture distinctly to Father Son and Holy Ghost gives us the best Account of their Nature and must determine the Signification of Ecclesiastical Words 1. AS for the first the design of some common Name for these Three is to form some common Notion and Idea of them in which they all agree And is any thing else so common to them Is there any thing else which is common to them but the Name and Nature of God Can any thing else give us so true and perfect a Character and Idea of each of them as this does When we say the Father is God the Son is God the Holy Ghost is God we attribute every thing to each of them which signifies any Perfection for the Idea of God comprehends all possible Perfections And we reject every thing which has the least signification of Imperfection we abstract our minds from all Material and Creature-Images which Names common to Creatures are apt to impose upon us and when we are forced to apply any such Names to God we learn from hence in what Notion to understand such Words when applied to God Men may very subtilly distinguish between the formal Conceptions of Nature Essence Substance Hypostasis Existence Subsistence Person Personality Suppositality and the like and neither understand God nor Creatures much the better for it But let them but tell us what they mean by these Terms and then every Child can tell whether they belong to Father Son and Holy Ghost or not For as far as they are included in the Notion of God and signify true Divine Perfections so far they belong to all Three For if the Father be God the Son God and the Holy Ghost God then Father Son and Holy Ghost each of them by themselves are whatever is included in the Notion and Idea of
Latin Fathers nay to the Schoolmen themselves and must be owned by all Men of Sense that esse vivere intelligere sapere velle bonum esse magnum esse c. to be to live to understand to be wise to will to be good and to be great or whatever else we can attribute to the Divine Nature is but unum omnia all one and the same in God I say if it be Objected that the consequence of this is That to say that in this sense of Is the Father Is the Son Is the Holy Ghost Is is equivalent to asserting Three Distinct Substances Minds Spirits Lives Understandings Wills c. in the Trinity I cannot help it St. Austin was never yet charged with Tritheism Let them either deny what St. Austin and the rest of the Fathers teach about this matter and try if they can defend the absolute Sâ—mplicity of the Divine Nature without it or let them deny if they think good that the Father Is the Son Is and the Holy Ghost Is in this Notion of Perfect and Absolute Being or try if they can find such a medium between Perfect Is and is not as can belong to any Being which is True and Perfect God or allow which is the true solution of it that Is and Is and Is Essence and Essence and Essence are but One Eternal Is One Eternal Essence as they are but One God Of which more presently I always was of opinion that these Terms in the plural number ought not to be familiarly used because few Men can conceive of them as they are worthy of God and therefore the Fathers were vâ—ry cautious in using them which they very rarely did but when they were extorted from them by the perverse importunity of Hereticks but I cannot see how it is possible to deny three Selfs or three Is's in the Uâ—ity of the Godhead without denying a Trinity and if each of these Three be himself and not another and each of them Is and Is by himself this is the least we can say of the Ever Blessed Trinity and this is all with respect to their Distinction that we need say of them So that if Father Son and Holy Ghost be so in a true and proper Notion are in truth and reality what these Names of Father Son and Spirit signify That the Father is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a true proper natural Father the Son 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a true proper genuine Son and the Holy Ghost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in a true proper sense the Spirit of the Father and the Son as the Catholick Fathers always Professed they must be as truly and perfectly Distinct as Father and Son are The only Question then is Whether these Names Father Son and Holy Ghost signify naturally and properly when spoken of the Holy Trinity or are only metaphorical and allusive Names though what they should be Metaphors of is not easy to conceive and as absurd to conceive that there should be any Metaphors in God who is all Perfect Essence and Being The Divine Nature and Perfections which we cannot conceive of as they are may be expressed by Metaphors taken from some thing which is analogous in Creatures upon which account we read of the Hands and Eyes and Ears and Bowels and Mouth of God Creatures may serve for Metaphors for Shadows and Images to represent something of God to us but the reality of all is in God So that we may allow Father and Son in some sense to be Metaphorical Names when applied to God not that God the Father is not in the highest and most perfect sense a Father and his Son a most proper natural genuine Son but because the Divine Generation is so perfect a Communication of the Divine Nature and Being from Father to Son that Human Generations Creature-Fathers and Sons are but obscure imperfect images and resemblances of it When any thing is spoken Metaphorically of God the Metaphor and Image is always in the Creatures the Truth Perfection and Reality of all in God And if this be a certain and universal rule then if God be a Father if he have a Son an only Bâ—gotten Son Begotten Eternally of himself not Made nor Created but Begotten though this Eternal Generation be infinitely above what we can conceive yet it is evident that God the Father is more Properly and Perfectly a Father and his Son more Properly and Perfectly a Son than any Creature-Fathers or Sons are But I think this will admit of no Dispute if we own that God has a Son who is himself True and Perfect God For a Son who is Perfect God is God of God That he is a Son proves that he receives his Nature from his Father for this is Essential to the Notion of a Son That he is Perfect God proves the Perfection of his Generation from the Perfection of his Nature For to be Perfect God of Perfect God is to receive the Whole Perfect Undivided Nature of his Father which is the most perfect Generation that is possible for a Whole to beget a Whole And if God the Father and his Son be Truly and Perfectly Father and Son they must be Truly and Perfectly Distinct That is they are in a proper sense Two and by the same reason Father Son and Holy Ghost are Three And we need no other proof of this but the very Names of Father Son and Holy Ghost if we understand them in a proper and natural Sense SECT V. These Names Father Son and Holy Ghost prove the Unity Sameness Identity of Nature and Godhead III. THESE Names of Father Son and Holy Ghost as they signify and prove a real Distinction between these Three so they also signify and prove the Unity Sameness Identity of Nature and Godhead Which reconciles the Faith of the Trinity with the Faith of one God The same One Divine Essence and Godhead being and subsisting Whole Perfect and Entire in each of these Divine Three I shall Explain and Confirm this matter more at large hereafter and therefore at present shall only briefly represent this Notion and the reason of it One Eternal Self-Originated Divine Nature is One Divinity and One God and nothing can destroy the Unity of God but what destroys the Unity of the Divine Nature by Division or Multiplication And if this be the true Notion of the Unity of God and if it be not I would desire to know why this is not and what is then the Unity of God may be preserved in Three each of whom is True and Perfect God if the same One Divine Nature or Divinity subsists distinctly in them all And the very Characters and Relations of Father Son and Holy Ghost do necessarily infer and prove the same One Divinity in them all And therefore the Christian Trinity is so far from contradicting that it establishes the Faith of one God As to explain this in a few words All Christians agree That God whom we call the Father is an
Whole must be the same Whole and in this Unity of Nature consists the Unity of the Godhead I grant a Whole of a Whole is very unconceivable to us and so is the Notion of an Eternal self-originated Being and of Creation to the full as unconceivable as the Eternal Generation of a Whole from a Whole But this is a difficulty in the Notion of an Eternal Generation not of a Trinity in Unity If God begets a Son as the Scripture assures us he has an only begotten Son he must communicate his own Nature to him and besides the Testimony of Scripture That all the Father has is the Son 's his whole Nature and Divinity Reason assures us that God being a pure simple Being without composition or parts if he communicate his Nature to his Son he must communicate it whole and entire without division or separation and if this be so it is certain that Father and Son he who begets and he who is begotten are Two and it is as certain that the same whole Divinity communicated by the Father to the Son is but the same One Divinity and One Divinity though actually subsisting in Three can be but One God not Three Gods It is certain this is the most perfect Unity that can be between Three who are truly and really the same and yet distinct for they can nâ—ver be more One than to be Three Same 's and Three Wholes for the Communication of a Whole may make a Number but cannot distinguish or multiply Nature SECT VI. Concerning the Unity of God BUT our Socinian Adversaries and some who would not be thought Socinians have espoused such a Notion of One God as makes the Faith of a Trinity absolutely irreconcilable with the Faith of One God By One God they mean One who is God but the Faith of the Trinity owns Three each of whom is by himself True and Perfect God and I grant it is as absolutely impossible to reconcile these two as it is to reconcile Contradictions for to say that there is but One who is God and to say that there are Three each of whom is God is a manifest Contradiction and yet without saying this last we must deny a Trinity It is in vain to think to solve this with Words without Sense If there is but One who is God we must either make Father Son and Holy Ghost Three Names or Modes or Manifestations of the same One Numerical Divine Person which was the ancient exploded anathematized Heresy of Noetus and Sabellius or we must make the Son and Holy Spirit to be mere Creatures if we allow any Personality to them as Arius Macedonius Paulus Samosatenus and such like Hereticks and our Modern Socinians do But we with the Scriptures and the Catholick Church reject this Notion of the Unity of God which is to assert the Unity but to deny a Trinity And because this seems to be so prevailing a Notion at this time I shall shelter my self as well as I can under the Authority of the Catholick Fathers and the Catholick Church That there is but One God was always the Faith of the Catholick Church as appears from all the Ancient Creeds but then they did not believe in One God as One God signifies One Divine Separate Person which is never expressed in any Christian Creed but in One God the Father who has an only begotten Son and an Eternal Spirit in the Unity of the same Godhead There is no Christian Creed which teaches the Belief of One God who is not a Father and if the One God be a Father he must have a Son of his own Nature and Substance and the Son of God consubstantial with God the Father must be God the Son This is what Tertullian tells us That there is One God with his Oeconomy that is with his only begotten Son and Eternal Spirit The Catholick Church so believed in One God as to acknowledge Three Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost each of which is truly and really God as they must necessarily do if they believed a Trinity And upon this account they were charged with Tritheism or with asserting Three Gods because they owned a Trinity of Divine Substantial Persons really distinct from each other each of which is truly and perfectly God So that this is no new Charge against the Asserters of a Real and Substantial Trinity and the Ancient Christians had no regard to it for Tritheism in this Objection signified no more than the Bâ—lief of the Trinity or of Three Divine Persons in the Unity of the Godhead which is the true Christian Faith As to shew this briefly In answer to this Objection against the belief of a Real Substantial Trinity from the Unity of God they tell us it is Judaism and Heresy to place the Unity of the Godhead in the Unity of a Person to teach that there is but One Divine Person as there is but One God We may find enough to this purpose in Tertullian against Praxeas and Athanasius against the Sabellians in St. Hilary St. Austin and many others Athanasius commends the Iews for opposing the Polytheism and Idolatry of the Gentiles But then he charges them with as great Impiety themselves in denying the Son of God by whom all things were made and in accusing those of Polytheism who worship the Father by the Son And he exhorts his Readers to separate themselves from those Iudaizers who corrupt Christianity with Iudaism who deny God of God and teach One God in the Iewish Notion of it In which he taxes the Sabellians who taught that the Word of God is like the Word and Wisdom of a Man within him in his Heart and Soul and therefore that God and his Word are but One Person St. Hilary frequently takes notice of this Corruption of the Evangelical Faith as he calls it under the Pious Profession of One God to deny the Only begotten God to deny Christ to be born God or to be True God but only a Powerful Creature thereby to preserve the Faith of One God which they think the Birth of God does overthrow In which he distinctly charges the Sabellians and Arians the first for making God but One Person for fear of introducing a Trinity of Gods with a Trinity of Persons the other for making Christ a mere Creature though the first and most powerful Creature for fear of making a Second God should they have owned him to be God of God of the same Substance with the Father In opposition to this he tells us what the true Faith is which they have learned from Divine Revelation Neither to preach Two Gods nor One Solitary Divine Person for so solus must signify in this place and undertakes to prove both from the Evangelists and Prophets That when we profess our Faith in God the Father and God the Son we must neither own God the Father and God the Son to be One Person as the
not only the Name and Title of God but the Divine Nature and Perfections to more Persons than One. And this is the only Answer that need be given and the best Answer that can be given to this Objection of Tritheism for God knows his own Nature and his own Unity best And it is enough for us to acknowledge God to be One as the Scripture teaches him to be One that is that there is but One God but that this One God has an Eternal only begotten Son and an Eternal Spirit in the Unity of the same Godhead This is the account Tertullian gives us of those Expressions when the Scripture asserts that there is but One God and that there is none besides him For without denying the Son we may truly affirm That there is but One only God whose Son he is For though he has a Son he does not lose his Name of the One and only God when he is named without his Sâ—n and so he is when what is said is appropriated to him as the first persâ—n for in the order of Nature aâ—â— of ouâ— Conceptions the Father is befoâ—â—â—he Son and therefore must be named bâ—â—ore him So that there is but One God the Father and besides him there is no other which does not deny the Son but another God which rejects the multitude of False Gods which the Heathens worshipped but the Son as being inseparably united to him is included in the Unity of the Father's Godhead though not named which as he well observes he could not be without making another God of him Had the Father said There is no other God besides me excepting my Son this had made the Son another God a new separate Divinity and would have been as improper as if the Sun should say There is no other Sun besides me excepting my Rays The Sum of which is this That the Title of the One and only God and besides him there is no other God does in a peculiar manner belong to the Father who is the One only God with his Son and Spirit but this does not exclude the Son or Spirit from being true and perfect God for they are not other Gods from the Father but have the same Divinity and are inseparably â—mited to the Father and therefore are included in the â—â—ity of the Godhead without being named whereas thâ—â—r being named would have excepted them out of the Unity of the Godhead and made other Gods of them And though the Son when he is named alâ—ne is called God this does not make Two Gods because he is God only by his Unity with his Father St. Hilary gives much the same account of it That when the Scripture teaches that there is One God and no other God besides him this does not exclude the Son of God from being true and perfect God because the Son is not another God He being of the same Substance with God the Father God of God and inseparably united to him Another God does not signify another Divine Person but another Divinity another separate and independent Principle and Fountain of Deity And besides this St. Hilary endeavours to prove at large from several Texts of the Old Testament that this very expression of one God and no other besides him is applied not only to the Father but to the Son and is very justly applicable to each of them because each of them have a Personal and Incommunicable Unity The Father is the One God and there is none besides him for he is the only Deus Innascibilis the only God who is God of himself without any Communication of the Divine Nature to him from any other Divine Person The Son is the One God and there is none besides him that is the Deus Vnigenitus the only begotten God and there is no other begotten God but he So that each of them is the One God For between One and One that is One of One there is no Second Nature of the Eternal Dâ—ity I shall not dispute these matters now which will be more proper in another place it is enough at present that we learn from them what Sense these Fathers had concerning the Unity of God viz. That it is not the Unity of a Sâ—ngle Person so as to exclude all other Persons from the Name and Nature of God but a Unity of Nature and Principle That there are not Two different Divinities nor Two Principles of Divinity which have no Communication with each other but that there is One Self-originated Being who communicates his own Nature without Division and Separation to his Eternal Son and by and with his Son to his Eternal Spirit Thus St. Hilary concludes this Dispute That to confess One God but not a solitary God that is not one single solitary Person is the Faith of the Church which confesses the Father in the Son But if out of ignorance of this Heavenly Mystery we pretend that One God signifies One single Divine Person we know not God as not owning the Faith of God in God This is plain sense which every Christian may understand and what every one must believe who wiâ—l be a Christian We must believe in Father Son and Holy Ghost that the Father is not the Son nor the Son the Father nor the Holy Ghost either Father or Son and that each of these Three is in himself as distinguished from the other Two true and perfect God but though they are Three and each of them true and perfect God yet they are not Three Gods because there is but One and the same Divinity in them The same individual numerical Divine Nature being whole perfect undivided in them all originally in the Father by Generation in the Son and by Procession in the Holy Ghost as I have already explained it which is the most perfect Unity we can conceive between Three Wholes or Three each of which have the same whole undivided Nature distinctly in themselves If this will not be allowed to be such a Unity as is included in the Notion of One God that the natural Notion of One God is of One only who is God which is contradictory to the belief of Three each of whom is in himself true and perfect God the answer the Catholick Fathers give to this as I have now shewn ought to satisfy all Christians that this is not the Scripture-notion of One God That there is but One who is God because the same Holy Scriptures which teach us that there is but One God do also teach us that there are Three in the Unity of the Godhead That not only the Father is God as an Infinite Eternal Self-originated Being and upon this account in a peculiar manner called the One and only true God but the Son also is true God and the Holy Ghost true God by the Communication of the same Divine Nature to them Now God knows his own Nature and Unity best and if he declares himself to
Father Son and Holy Ghost are but Three Names of that One single Person who is God But as he proceeds if we allow that these terms Father Son and Holy Ghost are all applied to God in Scripture 't is not thought sufficient to say That these are Three several Names which signify God but we are further required to believe That God is One and Three the same God not the same single Person but Three different Hypostases or Persons and that one of these Three Hypostases or Persons is both God and Man These are the Hard Sayings which puzzle some mens understandings This is the Faith of the Catholick Church and will always be Hard Sayings to Sabellian Understandings which they will never be able to reconcile with their Hypothesis of One single Person in the Godhead But let us hear how he clears himself of these difficulties He observes in the first place That these Names Father Son and Holy Ghost are applied to God in Scripture in a different way from what any of his other Names are So far he is in the right but what is this different way In short it is this That the other Names of God signify only partial Conceptions of the Divine Nature such as Self-existence Power c. and are all contained within the same Idea of God and therefore cannot be the foundation of any distinction in the Godhead Let this pass But each of these Names Father Son and Holy Ghost includes the whole Idea we have of God and something more as being extrinsecal and accessory to the Divine Nature and the whole Idea of God full and compleat before the application of these terms Let us examine this first He says Each of these Names includes the whole Idea of God I beseech you how can that be when they signify something extrinsecal and accessory to the Divine Nature and the whole Idea of God may be conceived full and compleat without them For if these Names are not included in the Idea of God which is full and compleat without them which Assertion by the way overthrows the whole Christian Faith of the Trinity how can they include the Idea of God in them which they are not so much as any part of much less the whole and something more I grant the Names of Father Son and Holy Ghost may connote the Idea of God as the Name of a King and a Father connote the Idea of a Man who is King and Father which I suppose is all he intends by it but then the King must be a Man and the Father must be a Man to connote the Idea of Man And thus in the Blessed Trinity if these Names Father Son and Holy Ghost connote the Idea of God the Father must be True and Perfect God and the Son must be True and Perfect God and the Holy Ghost must be True and Perfect God for neither Father Son or Holy Ghost connote the Idea of God upon any other account than as the Whole and Perfect Divine Nature subsists in each of them and that makes the whole Idea of God belong to each of them To proceed He tells us That though all these Names are separately and together affirmed of God yet each of them in so peculiar a manner that there are several occasions where when one of these terms is used with relation to God 't would be improper to use either of the other That is when it is proper to call God Father it is improper to call him Son or Holy Ghost and so on the contrary But the reason of this in his Hypothesis is not that their Persons are distinct and incommunicable but that there are several occasions which make such change of Names improper As a Man who is a King a Husband and a Father all these Names do separately and together belong to him but you must have a care of speaking improperly by applying these Names to improper Relations Well however From hence he says it follows that these Three Names of God Father Son and Holy Ghost must denote a Threefold difference of distinction belonging to God I grant it makes a distinction of Names and external Offices and Relations in God but no distinction of Hypostases and Persons which was the distinction to be shewn but this he absolutely rejects for it must be no other difference or distinction but such as is consistent with the Vnity and Simplicity of the Divine Nature This we would all subscribe to did he mean honestly but his Vnity and Simplicity of the Divine Nature is nothing else but the Unity and Simplicity of One single Person and all the distinction he will allow these different Names to make is no more than what One single Person is capable of For each of these Names includes the whole Idea we have of God and something more Very right if we allow these Names Father Son and Holy Ghost to be the Names of true and proper Divine Persons for then each of them is true and perfect God and the whole Idea of God is included in each of them because the whole Divine Nature is in each of them otherwise neither of these Names include the Idea of God but only connote it as I have already observed And what he adds That as far as these Names express the Nature of God they all adequately and exactly signify the same is very true also if by the same he means the same Nature not the same One single Person And then what he adds 'T is the additional signification which makes all the distinction between them is very true also but he ought to have told us what this additional signification this something more than the whole Idea of God is which is included in these Names Father Son and Holy Ghost and then we might have known what this distinction is All the additional signification that I know of is this That Father signifies God includes the whole Idea of God but besides this Father when it signifies God signifies a Self-originated Unbegotten God who is God of himself and begets a Son of his own Nature and Coeternal with himself Son signifies God but begotten God God of God the living and perfect Image of his Father Holy Ghost signifies God but God proceeding eternally from Father and Son in the Unity and Perfection of the same Divine Nature And this is all the difference between them not a difference of Nature but a distinction of True Real Proper Persons The Considerer seems to allow this That Person is a proper Name for this distinction For Father Son and Holy Ghost have plainly a Personal significatiâ—n each of them without any figure of speech being determined to signify some Intelligent Being acting in such a manner as is there related These Words would betray an Unwary Reader to believe the Considerer as Orthodox as the Nicene Fathers and that he did acknowledge Father Son and Holy Ghost to be Three Persons without a Figure as a
his Passion and Intercession to impart such Gifts Graces and Spiritual Assistances as would be sufficient to render this Redemption effectual to the saving of much people So that God decreed from Eternity upon his Foreknowledge of Man's Fall that in order to redeem Man he would take upon himself the Distinctions and Offices of Father Son and Holy Ghost Saviour Mediator and Comforter in time and this is all the Eternal Distinction in the Godhead Well But it seems God did not decree from Eternity to redeem Man by his own Son but by a Man chosen and enabled for this Work by the Fulness of the Godhead dwelling in him that is as we have already heard by an Inspired and Deified Man not by a God Incarnate It is the Man who is the Saviour and Redeemer though he be enabled to this work by the Fulness of the Godhead or a constant regular Inspiration This is downright Socinianism the Catholick Faith is That it is the Son of God who redeems us though he redeems us in Human Nature But if God redeems us by a Man however he be enabled by a Divine Power Why is he said to give his Son for us For this Divine Power is not a Person and therefore no Son nor is the Man his own and only begotten Son Now this would be a difficulty indeed were we to understand God's giving his own Son for us in a proper literal sense but this is nothing but Figure and Representation if we believe the Considerer His words are these Thus when God is pleased to represent his Love to Mankind in the highest Image of Nature that of a Father sacrificing an only-begotten Son the exact Transcript and Resemblance of himself perfectly innocent and obedient to his Will in all things we are to believe that God did thus sacrifice his Son as he assures us he did No but that by the Sufferings and Death of Christ God has given greater Proof of his Love towards us than any man is capable of doing to another and that such an action of an Earthly Parent suggests the nearest and likest Conception we can possibly frame of what our Heavenly Father hath done for us though at the same time we must acknowledge it comes infinitely short of expressing the Riches and Fulness of his Mercy and Loving kindness It does so indeed To believe that God has actually given his own Eternal and Only-begotten Son for us as the Scripture assures us he has is a much nearer and truer Conception of what God has done for us and infinitely exceeds all earthly comparisons Abraham's offering his Son Isaac at God's Command was an Image and Figure but a Typical Figure of it but it was a Type without an Antitype if Christ was not as truly and properly the Son of God as Isaac was the Son of Abraham But if we will believe the Considerer the Scripture does not oblige us to believe this if we do but believe That God is as good to us as if he had sacrificed his only Son for us we need not believe That he did sacrifice his Son I have no Patience to proceed any further if this be true there is an end of the Faith and Hope of Christians CHAP. III. A Brief Account of the Sabellian Heresy and by what Arguments the Catholick Fathers opposed it THE Considerer has given us the most Compleat and Artificial Scheme of Sabellianism that I have yet met with aâ—d has very fairly and openly confessed his Design to prove That One God must signify that there is but One who is God but One single Divine Person in the proper Notion of a Person as it signifies an Intelligent Being I have endeavoured to shew him his Mistake and what it is that has mis-led him and how hopeless an Attempt it is to reconcile his Hypothesis with the Catholick Faith of the Trinity and Incarnation This is so bold an Attempt openly to assert and defend a Heresy which has been constantly condemned by the Catholick Church since its first appearance that I am apt to hope he does not believe his Hypothesis to be Sabellianism or that Heresy which now is best known by that name though Sabellius was not the first Author of it And therefore I will shew him what Sabellianism is and how the Fathers opposed it There were Two Points in dispute between them and the Catholick Christians First Concerning the Personality of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Secondly Concerning the Unity of God Whether it were the Unity of One Person as they pretended That we may rightly understand this matter we must distinguish between the several kinds of Sabellianism because the Arguments and Answers of the Fathers are sometimes adapted to one and sometimes to another Notion of it That Father Son and Holy Ghost were but One Person was asserted by them all but explained very differently and that altered the state of the Question and required different Answers 1. As first They made Father Son and Holy Ghost to be only Three Names Appearances or Offices of the same Person as I observed before And then the state of the Question was not Whether the Son was a Person and the Holy Ghost a Person in as true and proper a sense as the Father was a Person For this they owned by making Father Son and Holy Ghost Three Names of the same Person whereas it is impossible they should be the same Person if the Son were not a Person nor the Holy Ghost a Person If the Son be the same Person with the Father the Son must be a Person for no Person can't be the same Person Which is the same Argument to prove that these Hereticks owned Christ to be a True and Real Person that Novatianus used as I observed before to prove that they owned Christ to be true and perfect God because they made him the same with the Father who is true and perfect God and a true and real and substantial Person And if he be the very same with the Father he must be the same we acknowledge the Father to be viz. a true and real Person and perfect God The Dispute then which the Catholick Fathers had with these Hereticks with respect to this Notion That Father Son and Holy Ghost were the very same Person was not Whether the Son was a Person and the Holy Ghost a Person but Whether the Son and Holy Ghost were truly and really distinct Persons from the Father as the Catholick Church always believed or Whether they were the same Person distinguished only by Three Names Now when the Fathers asserted not only the Personality of the Son and of the Holy Ghost which this Notion did not oppose but the real distinction of Persons That the Son was a Person but not the same Person with the Father they must ascribe the same kind of Personality to the Son which they do to the Father That the Son is as truly and really a Person as the
the number of Creatures and deny him to be a Creature 5. When they ascribe such things to the Son as are proper and peculiar only to the True God 6. When they affirm the Son of God not only to be God but expresly own him to be true God God by Nature and One God with the Father This is the true Notion of the Homoousion and now let any man judge Whether a Consubstantial Trinity be a Trinity of Personal Characters Relations or Names or of Real Substantial Subsisting Persons If we will allow either the Nicene Fathers or the Arian Bishops to be well in their wits can we think that there would have been any such Disputes between them as whether the Son be Coeternal with the Father or had a Beginning whether there were any time the least conceivable moment before the Son was whether he was made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 created out of nothing as all other Creatures are or begotten of the Substance of the Father and is the true genuine natural Son of God or a Son only by Adoption whether he be true perfect God in opposition to the most perfect created Nature or be only a made and Creature-God whether he be Consubstantial with the Father or have only a Nature like the Fathers but not the same and whether he be like his Father in all things in Substance and Essence or only in Will and Affection I say Could any men in their wits dispute such matters as these unless both sides were agreed that the Son is a Real Substantial Son as human Sons are who are begotten of the Substance of their Parents that he has a Subsistence of his own distinct from his Father's Subsistence that he has a Substance of his own eternally begotten of his Father's Substance and therefore the same but proper and peculiar to his own Person which makes him the Son and not the Father For till these things are agreed there is no foundation for the other Disputes for if the Son have no real Subsistence of his own who would dispute whether he began to subsist in time or did subsist from all Eternity If he have no Substance of his own is it not ludicrous to dispute whether he be of the Father that is have his Substance of his Father's Substance or be a new created Substance as like his Father's Substance as a created Substance can be but not the same For if he have no distinct Substance of his own neither of these can be true To what purpose is it to dispute whether he be a begotten or created God if he be not as true and perfect a Person and as true and perfect God upon the Catholick Hypothesis in his own Person as the Father himself is In short to conclude this Argument If the Homoousion signifies that the Son of God who is Consubstantial to his Father is no Creature was not made out of Nothing had no Beginning of Being is of his Father's Substance begotten of his Substance from all Eternity a true and perfect Son of a true and perfect Father and upon all accounts the very same that the Father is excepting that he is the Son and not the Father it is impossible the Nicene Fathers should have been either Sabellians or Modalists SECT IV. A more particular Inquiry into the full Signification of the Homoousion with respect to the Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature THAT the Nicene Fathers did by the Homoousion or One Substance of the Godhead understand something like what we call a Specifick Sameness and Vnity of Nature might be proved by numerous Quotations had it not been sufficiently done already by Petavius Curcelloeus Dr. Cudworth and others whoever will be pleased to read the Testimonies they produce in this Cause will never be able to make any other tolerable Sense of them They apply this word Homoousion to things which are specifically One or which have the same Specifick Nature as a Tree and its Branches a Fountain and River as they call God the Father the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Root and Fountain of the Son and Holy Spirit the Sun and its Rays and Splendor as Christ is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the brightness and refulgency of his Father's Glory They prove that Christ has the same Nature with his Father because all true natural genuine Sons have so and therefore if he be as truly and properly the Son of God as Isaac was the son of Abraham he must be Consubstantial to God the Father as Isaac was to Abraham which we know is a Specifick Vnity of Nature And the Council of Chalcedon expresly affirms That Christ is Consubstantial to his Father as to his Godhead or Divine Nature and Consubstantial to us as to his Manhood or Human Nature and if the Homoousion signifies the same or something analogous in both we know what this sameness of Nature means for it is impossible to reconcile this to one singular Nature and Unity Christ is not Consubstantial to us upon account of the same singular human Nature in him and in all Mankind for every Man has a particular human Nature of his own and so had Christ but the Nature is specifically the same in Christ and in us that is it is a true human Nature and this makes Christ and us Consubstantial And if there be any thing like this though in a more perfect degree in the Consubstantiality of Father and Son it must signify not one singular Nature which cannot be said to be Consubstantial to it self but the Consubstantiality of Two Persons really and substantially distinct but united in the same common Nature or the same Divinity And therefore nothing is more common than to render the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unius generis and by such like words as every one knows signify a Specifick Vnity That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the One Divinity and One Divine Essence is a common Nature the same in all Three Persons communicated by the Father to the Son and by Father and Son to the Holy Spirit is so universally acknowledged that it needs no proof the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 frequently occur in the writings of the Nicene Fathers which signify the One Divinity to be a common Nature to the Three Divine Persons This is the very account St. Basil gives of the difference between 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Essence and Person that Essence signifies a common Nature which is in more than One and may be spoken of more than One as a species is predicated of its Individuals Man is a common Name for all Men because Humanity is a common Nature which is alike in Peter and Iohn and Iames and all the Men in the World But Hypostasis or Person though it signifies the Nature also yet not in that general Notion as common to all of the same
same whole And yet if he be so of the Father as not to be the Father but the Son he must be distinct in substance from the Father He is true and perfect God but he receives his Divinity by his Birth he is God of God not God who begets but God who is begotten not of nothing but of his Father's substance who is unbegotten And therefore though St. Hilary and all the Catholick Fathers with him reject all Corporeal Passions in the Divine Generation all Corporeal Desection Division Efflux or Emanation of the Divine Substance which is incorporeal and indivisible yet they all assert a true and proper generation of the Son and an impassible production and prolation of him whole of whole And St. Hilary tells us that for this reason the Arians under a specious Pretence of condemning Valentinus his Emanations and Aeons denied the prolation of the Son from the Father only to deny his generation whereas some kind of prolation is essential to the very Notion of a Birth which cannot be conceived without it and therefore we must not wholly reject all Prolation and Production of the Son from the Father but only reject all Corporeal Emanations which are very imperfect Images of Divine Mysteries and have nothing like the eternal generation of the Son but only that the Son is truly begotten of his Father's Substance This is that adorable and unsearchable Mystery of the Divine Generation The Son is truly and properly begotten receives his whole Being and Nature from his Father is substance of his Father's substance whole of whole and therefore one and the same substance with the Father not that substance which is the Person of the Father nor a new or another separate substance as it is in human generations but the nature and substance of the Father born and repeated in the Nativity of the Son as St. Hilary speaks The Father Son and Holy Ghost are but One Divinity One Infinite Eternal nature and substance but they are thrice this One substance and as perfectly and distinctly Three in this One substance as any other Three are Three substances St. Austin was certainly in the right when he asserted That the Divine Nature and Essence must not be considered either as a Genus or Species nor the Divine Persons as Individuals and shews particularly the impropriety of each though he knows not under what Notion to conceive them but inclines most to some common matter or substance which is the same in all as carrying the nearest resemblance and analogy in it though this he does not very well like neither of which more presently It will be of great use briefly to consider this matter for the difficulty consists more in want of words to express this Unity and Distinction by than in the Notion it self The singularity of the Divine Essence and Substance in the Sabellian Notion of One Substance the Nicene Fathers universally rejected as irreconcilable with a real distinction of Persons which destroys the Faith of a Real Trinity A mere specifick Unity of Nature and Substance which is a meer Logical Notion falls short of the Natural and Essential Unity of the Godhead and yet we have no word to serve as a middle Term between the Unity of singularity and a Specifick Unity of Nature For there is no such Unity as this in Created Nature and therefore no name for it and yet the Unity of the Divine Nature in a Trinity of Persons is neither of these but bears some resemblance and Analogy to both As to shew this briefly The Unity of the Divine Nature is not a meer Specifick Unity A Species is only an Idea or Pattern of Nature according to which particular Creatures are formed and such Creatures as are made according to the same Pattern are specifically the same and as far as we can observe this Correspondence and Ideal Sameness of Nature so we rank them under the same Species So that there can be no Species but among created Beings for they must be all made and made according to the same Original Pattern But an Eternal and Necessary Nature was not made and therefore not made according to any Pattern nor can any other be made according to its Pattern for what is made cannot be Necessary and Eternal So that the Divine Nature can be but One and One Numerical Nature is no Species it can communicate its own Substance by an Eternal Generation and Procession but it can't be a Pattern and Idea for any other Beings of the same kind which are not its own Substance For this reason St. Austin rejects this specifick Unity he distinguishes between saying That the Divine Persons are Vna Essentia Vnius Essentiae One Essence or Substance and that they are ex Vna Essentia of One Essence The first may signify a natural Unity and must do so when applied to the Trinity The second signifies only a common specifick Nature and Unity When we speak of men we may use either expression that they are One Essence or that they are of One Essence because in both Cases when applied to Creatures One Essence signifies specifically as a common pattern of Nature according to which not only Three but many Threes may be made But the whole Divine Essence is in the Trinity and cannot subsist in any other Person and therefore is not a common specifick Nature But then there is something in the Divine Nature as substantially communicated to the Son and to the Holy Spirit which bears some analogy to a Species and to a Specifick Unity and for this reason the Catholick Fathers in their Disputes both with the Sabellians and Arians frequently express the Unity of the Nature as subsisting in Three Distinct Persons by a Specifick Unity The Notion and Idea of a Common Nature which subsists in many Individuals is called a Species the same common notion and definition belonging to all the Individuals of the same kind Now if we believe the Doctrine of a Real Trinity we must acknowledge That the same One Divine Nature which is originally in the Father is communicated to the Son and Holy Spirit and does subsist distinctly and substantially in all Three and therefore has this resemblance to a Species that it is a common Nature which has the same Notion and Definition and is the same in Three but not meerly by a Notional Identity and Sameness but by the Real Identity of Substance there being but One Divine Substance unmade uncreated unbegotten but communicated whole and entire to the Son by an eternal generation and to the Holy Spirit by an eternal Procession so that the Divine Nature is so far a Species as by its actual communication to the Son and Holy Spirit and its distinct subsistence in Father Son and Holy Ghost it is in truth and reality a common Nature and Substance which a Species is only in Notion and Idea The Notion and Definition of human Nature in
be Three Gods but when there is but One Eternal Father though he have an Eternal Son and an Eternal Spirit there can be but One God Now what is the meaning of this Is it because none is or can be God True and Perfect God but he who is God of himself Self-originated and Unbegotten This would destroy the Perfect Godhead of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and answer the Objection of Tritheism by denying the Trinity And it is certain this could not be their meaning because they owned the Sameness and Equality of Nature of Majesty and Glory of Wisdom and Power in Father Son and Holy Ghost only allowed the Prerogative of the Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the name and relation of Father And when the Arians woul◠prove the diversity of Nature between Father and Son by this Argument That the Father is unbegotten and the Son begotten they denied that this inferred the least difference or inequality of Nature Now if the Divine Essence be God and there be a perfect equality of Nature between Father Son and Holy Ghost though the Father be unbegotten the Son begotten and the Holy Ghost proceeds from both I desire to know Why Three Persons each of which is True and Perfect God though one be unbegotten another begotten and a third proceeds be not as much Three Gods as Three that are unbegotten are Three Gods The natural Notion of God is an Eternal Unmade Uncreated Essence which gives being to all Creatures but neither Begotten nor Unbegotten belongs to the natural Notion of God but is matter of pure Revelation and therefore Three that are Eternal as to the natural Notion of God are as much Three Gods as Three that are Unbegotten The true Account of it then is this That One Father who is unbegotten himself but begets a Son is but One eternal Divine Essence which he eternally communicates whole and undivided to the Son and therefore is but One Divine Essence still and therefore but One God whereas Three Unbegottens who do not communicate in each other and neither give to nor receive from any other must be Three absolute independent Divine Essences and therefore Three Gods And therefore they do not call the Father the One God merely because he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unbegotten but as he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Fountain of the Deity who communicates his own whole Divine Nature and Essence to the Son and Holy Spirit For this reason Athanasius condemns Sabellius for saying that there is but One only God in the Iewish Notion of One God not meaning thereby that there is but One only who is unbegotten and who only is the Fountain of the Deity but that there is but One God as having no Son nor living Word or true Wisdom It were easy to enlarge here and to improve this Observation for the Explication of several difficult Passages in the Fathers but this may satisfy us that the Catholick Fathers by One Substance did not mean a meer specifick but a natural and essential Unity SECT VI. A more particular Inquiry what the Catholick Fathers meant by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness and Identity of Substance in the Holy Trinity WHat I have discoursed in the last Section concerning the Homoousion and One Substance of the Godhead will receive a new Light if we consider what the Catholick Fathers meant by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness Identity and Inseparability of Essence and Substance whereby they explain the Unity of the Divine Substance and the Unity of the Godhead The Learned Jesuit Petavius has two large Chapters to prove that both the Greek and Latin Fathers did assert the Singularity and Numerical Unity of the Divine Nature and Substance And I freely grant That as Singularity is opposed to a mere specifick Unity he has unanswerably proved it but why he or the Schools should chuse a word to represent the Sense of the Catholick Fathers by concerning the Unity of the Divine Substance which they themselves rejected as Sabellianism I can't account for for singularis solitarius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is the Singularity of Nature and Substance were rejected as suspected terms at least though they allowed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness and Identity of Nature the Vnitas but not Vnio the Unity but not Union which St. Hilary so often calls impia Vnio a wicked Union as destroying the real distinction of Persons and consequently the true Faith of Father Son and Holy Ghost And to do Petavius right he rejects such a notion of singularity as denies the Divinity to be a Common Nature as if it could subsist only in One Person or Hypostasis which he owns to be Sabellianism and that for this reason some of the Fathers he might have said most if not all the Ancient Fathers did reject the use of such words and taught That the Divine Nature is One as any other Nature is which is common to more than one And acknowledges that St. Hilary St. Ambrose St. Austin and others do expresly deny that God is a singular Being and reject the Notion of singularity from the Divine Essence Now such a singularity as this as admits of a real and substantial Communication of the Divine Nature whole of whole to the Son and Holy Spirit is certainly the Doctrine of the Catholick Fathers and what they meant by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness or Identity of Nature in Father Son and Holy Ghost in which they placed the Unity of the Godhead That there must be this Sameness and Identy of Nature in all Three Divine Persons is evident from the last Section for a whole of a whole must be identically the same Whole not so the same as one singular Whole is the same with it self but as the same Whole which thrice subsists without the least conceivable difference is the same with it self in Three And that this is what the Fathers meant by that Sameness of Nature wherein they placed the Unity of the Godhead it were easy to prove by numerous Authorities but some few may serve in so plain a Case One St. Hilary will furnish us with Testimonies enow of this nature He places the Sameness of Nature between Father and Son in this That the Son has by his Eternal Nativity the Nature of the Father without the least dissimilitude or diversity indifferens indissimilis indiscreta Natura and this makes the Father and Son One God But then at the same time he carefully and expresly rejects the Notion of Singularity Solitude and Union Petavius quotes several Passages out of St. Hilary to prove this Singularity of the Divine Essence but all that they amount to and all that he pretends to prove by them is That the Unity between Father and Son is greater than a Specifick Unity or a Communion in the same Specifick Nature
evident from what I have already discours'd The Fathers in opposition to Sabellius universally rejected One singular solitary Nature and Substance as destroying a Trinity of Real Persons for in their Philosophy One singular Substance is but One Person and therefore Three Persons each of which is by himself True and Perfect Substance can't be One singular Substance which is Proof enough that when they explain the Unity of the Divine Substance by its Sameness and Identity they could not by this Sameness and Identity mean Singularity but such a Sameness as is between Real Distinct Subsisting Substantial Persons who are every way alike without the least Change or Variation Which the Greek Fathers commonly call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Latin Fathers as St. Hilary especially Indifferens Indissimilis Natura That this is the True Notion of this Sameness and Identity of Nature appears from those Representations which the Catholick Fathers make of it viz. That it is such a Sameness and Identity as there is between a Perfect Living Subsisting Word and that Perfect Mind whose Word it is such a Sameness as is between Father and Son between the Prototype and the Image between the Seal and the Impression between Life of Life Wisdom of Wisdom Power of Power c. neither of which is the other and yet both are the same That God hath an Eternal Word which was in the Beginning was with God and was God that this Eternal Word was the Son of God and this Son the Perfect Likeness and Image of his Father the Brightness of his Glory and the Express Character of his Substance is the known Doctrine of the Scripture and Fathers That this Word is not like the Word of a Man but the Substantial Essential Living Subsisting Omnipotent Word and this Son a True Natural Genuine Son and this Image a Substantial Living Image and a Living Substantial Character of the Father that this Word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Distinct Person from him whose Word he is that the Son is not the Father nor the Father the Son but that they are alius alius that the Image is not the Prototype nor the Prototype the Image nor the Chararacter and Impression that whose Character it is I have already proved to be the Received Doctrine of the Catholick Fathers against the Sabellians and were there any occasion for it I could confirm it with innumerable Testimonies The only Question then is What this Sameness and Identity of Nature is And if we will allow for that difference there is between God and Creatures we may learn as the Fathers teach us what this Sameness of Nature between the Divine Persons is from the Sameness and Identity between a Mind and its Word between Father and Son between the Prototype and the Image the Seal and its Character and Impression Now what this Sameness and Identity is is so visible that a few words will explain it It is not the Sameness of Singularity for the Mind and its Word a Father and Son the Prototype and its Image the Seal and its Impression are visibly Two Nor is it the Sameness of meer Likeness and Similitude how Exact and Perfect soever we conceive that Likeness to be for every one must confess that there is a vast difference between the Perfect Likeness of Two Minds Two Men Two Originals and Two Seals and that Sameness which is between a Mind and its own Word a Father and his own Son a Prototype and its own Natural Image and the Seal and the Impression which is made by it just as much difference as there is between Similitude and Nature or between a perfect Likeness of Nature and Identity And therefore the complete and adequate Notion of Sâ—meness and Identity between Two who are really distinct in Subsistence and Personality and are not each other must be this That an Eternal Unproduced Person produces another in his own Nature Whole Perfect Entire without the least Conceivable or Possible Difference or Diversity excepting this That One Produces and the Other is Produced For Two such who distinctly subsist are really Two Persons in One and the Same Individual Nature Thus it is with a Perfect Mind and its Perfect Living Subsisting Word which is perfectly it self as its own Perfect Natural Image Two in Number but One in Re in Nature Thus it is with a Father and such a Son as is Whole of Whole they are Two and the Same the Son the Natural Living Image of the Father in whom the Father sees Himself and is seen in Him as Christ tells us He that hath seen me hath seen the Father Which is agreeable to the common Forms of Speech to call the King's Picture or Image the King as the Catholick Writers frequently observe which would be exactly and philosophically true were it a Perfect Natural Living Inseparable Image And this is what the Catholick Fathers call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness or Identity of Nature as might easily be proved by numerous Citations But I will content my self with a few The Nicene Fathers taught That the Father and the Son were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the same Nature and Substance This as I observed before they explain by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Perfect Invariable Likeness and Similitude without the least Difference and Diversity and this is what they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sameness and Identity of Nature which cannot be the Sameness of Singularity but the Sameness of Indifference and Indiversity such a Sameness as is between Two which are perfectly alike and differ in nothing from each other Athanasius gives this account why the Nicene Fathers taught That the Son was Homoousios of the same Substance with the Father that they might signifie that the Son was not only like the Father but so of the Father as to be the same in Likeness Now the Sameness and Identity of Likeness cannot be the Sameness of Singularity and yet this he calls the Sameness and Identity with his Father That the Son is the Natural Genuine Son of the Father and the Word God's own proper Word and the invariable Likeness between the Light and it's Splendor the Unity of Nature and the Identity of Light With several Expressions noted in the Margin which signifie the most perfect Sameness in Nature Thus the Son is the Image of God the Character of his Substance Nature and Essence which is the Language of Scripture and the constant Doctrine of the Fathers And from hence they conclude the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the perfect Sameness and Identity of Nature between Father and Son or a perfect Likeness and Similitude By which Argument they prove That he is no Creature but that he is Eternal and Omnipotent and all that his Father is because this is the Nature of a Perfect Living Image to be perfectly all and the same that the Prototype is
this Case For here when we hear of the Image of God we must conceive nothing less than the Brightness of his Glory But what is this Brightness and what is this Glory That the Apostle adds The perfect Impression or Character of his Substance And therefore Substance is the same with Glory and Character with Brightness So that the Divine Glory remaining perfect and undiminished emits a perfect Splendor and Brightness And thus the very Nature of an Image expounded as it becomes God confirms the Faith of One Divinity For the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father because such as the Father is such is the Son and such as the Son is such is the Father And thus Two are One because the Son in nothing differs as receiving no other Form or Character but that of his Father And therefore I say again One and One but an undivided Nature and never-failing Perfection And therefore there is One God because by both the same perfect Divine Form and Nature is seen wholly and perfectly subsisting in both This I think is as plain as words can make it both what St. Basil meant by the Sameness and Identity of Nature and that herein he placed the Unity of the Godhead and were there any occasion for it it were easy to confirm this by the concurrent Suffrages of Athanasius Gregory Nyssen and Gregory Nazianzen St. Cyril and other Greek Fathers almost in the same words St. Hilary and St. Ambrose to name no more of the Latin Fathers are so express in placing the Unity of the Godhead in this perfect Sameness Indifference Indiversity of Nature between Father Son and Holy Ghost that there is no need of any other Art but barely to represent their Words and therefore I shall only refer my Readers to some few Quotations in the Margin It cannot be denied but that all the Fathers unanimously agree in this Account of the Unity of the Divine Nature in Three Distinct Persons Which should make modest men very cautious of charging it with a direct Contradiction to all Reason and Philosophy But Modesty and Reverence to the Catholick Fathers are none of the prevailing Virtues of this Age. But is it indeed such a Contradiction to say That the same Nature which is perfectly and in every thing the same in Three is but One Nature in Three and that such Three have not Three Natures but One Nature Is it such a direct Contradiction to Sense and Reason to say That there is alius alius alius in the Trinity but not aliud That there is Another and Another and Another Person in the Holy Trinity but that there is nothing in any One of these Persons which can be called Another thing from what is in the other Two This is so far from a Contradiction that it seems plain Sense nay plain Demonstration to me That Three Persons who have nothing in themselves but what each of them have without the least conceivable Variation are in Nature but one and the same and though each of them be Another Person yet not Another Thing or Another Nature There are several Examples in Nature which justify this distinction between alius aliud and must make all thinking men confess that they cannot speak properly without it I would not be mistaken in this matter and therefore desire the Reader carefully to observe That I do not alledge these Instances which follow as Resemblances of the Trinity but only as Examples of a perfect Sameness and Unity in Nature where we must confess That the thing is but One and the same and yet that there is Another and Another And if there be any Images of this in Nature there is no reason to call this a Contradiction in the Faith of the Trinity Let me then ask this plain Question When Five hundred Men hear the same Man speak do they all hear one and the same Voice or Five hundred Voices It will I think be granted that it is but one and the same Voice which they all hear and yet it is heard five hundred times and is distinctly in five hundred Ears The Voice is essentially one and the same in all and yet no man dares deny that the Voice in Peter's Ear is another from that Voice which is in Iohn's Ear and therefore is Another and Another but not Another Thing And were a Voice Essence and Substance there would be One Nature Essence and Substance in a Plurality of Hypostases Thus Sight furnishes us with as many Examples of this as Hearing When five hundred Men see the same thing the Object is one and the same and yet is Another and Another according to the number of the Persons who see it Is one and the same in Nature and subsists the same and yet distinctly in each eye Sight and Hearing approach nearest to an Incorporeal Nature and therefore give us the nearest Resemblances of a Spiritual Sameness Unity and Distinction But we have still more perfect Images of this in what is more perfectly Spiritual The same Notion and Idea though it subsist in Ten thousand Minds is perfectly the same in all A perfect true Idea of any thing is and can be but One and therefore how many Minds soever it subsist in it must be one and the same in all but yet the Idea in the Mind of Peter is not the same in Subsistence with the Idea in the Mind of Paul It is Another and Another and yet the same Idea in Nature and Essence As suppose the perfect Idea of Humanity or Human Nature and the perfect Idea of the Divine Nature if they be true and perfect they are perfectly the same in all the Minds in the World and nothing but the different Notions men have of things can multiply such Ideas Now if we advance but one step higher we shall plainly see what this Unity of Sameness is what the true Notion of it is and how far it reaches For though this be absolutely essential to the Divine Unity yet as I have already noted and will appear more hereafter this is not the compleat and adequate Notion of it Let us suppose then that Human Nature for instance did subsist as perfectly the same in Peter Iames and Iâ—hn as the true and perfect Idea of Human Nature is one and the same in all that a Man were nothing else but the living subsisting Idea of Human Nature without the least change or variation in Nature to distinguish one from another I say in such a Case as this would not Three such Persons be perfectly one and the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Sameness and Identity of Nature which would be as perfectly and invariably the same as the common Notion and Idea of Nature Would not Human Nature be as perfectly the same in Three Persons or Subsistences as the Idea of Human Nature is one and the same in Three Minds Or could we in
He and the Father are One as he himself says The Word is always in the Father and the Father in the Word as it is with Light and its Splendor and this is what the Homoousion signifies and in like manner he resolves the Sameness Identity and Unity of Nature into this Internal Inseparable Union and Inbeing of Three essentially related to each other in One Individual Divinity 4 thly That Mutual Inbeing of the Divine Persons which is their Inseparable and Essential Union that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father which the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Latins Circumincessio can be understood only between the Relatives of the same Individual Essence and Substance The true compleat Notion of this Inbeing or Perichoresis is not merely a Mutual Presence or the same Vbi that where-ever one is there the other is or a kind of Immeation and Penetration of each other which is a Corporeal Notion and rejected as such by the Catholick Fathers when they speak of this Divine Inbeing as St. Hilary expressly does inesse autem non aliud in alio ut corpus in corpore that they are not in each other as one Body is in another Body And when the Arians objected against our Saviour's saying I am in the Father and the Father in me How can this be in that and that in this Or how can the Father who is greater be at all in the Son who is less Or what wonder is it that the Son should be in the Father when it is written of us all That in him we live and move and have our being Athanasius answers That this is all owing to Corporeal Conceits as if they apprehended God to be a Body not considering the Nature of the True Father and true Son the Invisible and Eternal Light and its Invisible Splendor an Invisible Substance and its unbodied Character and Image But the true Notion of this Inbeing and Pericharesis is the Perfect Unity of the same Individual Nature in Three That the Nature and Essence of the Father is in the Son that the Son is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Character Image Mind Divinity of the Father Here as Athanasius observes our Saviour himself lays the Reason and Foundation of this Mutual Inbeing He first tells us I and my Father are One and then adds I am in the Father and the Father in me that he might shew the Sameness and Identity of the Godhead and the Unity of Essence For they are One not One divided into two Parts and nothing more than One for they are Two the Father is the Father and not the Son and the Son is the Son and not the Father but there is but One Nature for he that is begotten is not unlike in Nature to him that begets but is his Image and all that the Father hath is the Sons There is no need to multiply Quotations to this purpose which may be met with every where The Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father as the Nature of the Father is lives and subsists in the Son not a Nature like the Fathers but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Father 's own proper Nature and Essence they are in each other as being essentially One not One merely as being in each other as it is possible Three may be and yet not be essentially One but Three as Three compleat absolute Minds would be Three still though they should perfectly penetrate each other Or as Three Candles in the same Room are Three Lights though they are perfectly united in One But Original Mind its Word and Spirit are and must be in each other as being Three in One Individual Essence for the same undivided Essence can't be whole and entire in Three but those Three must be in each other If the Divinity of the Father is in the Son the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father the Mind is in its Word and the Word in the Mind The Son is in the Father as eternally begotten in the Substance of the Father whole of whole and essentially one and the same as the Word is in the Mind not by such an Union and Penetration as we may suppose between two Minds but as conceived in the Mind and essentially one and the same with it Now according to this Representation which all the Catholick Fathers make of this Mystery we must of necessity acknowledge Number without Multiplication Distinction without Division or Separation a perfect Trinity in perfect Unity Three Persons each of which is by himself True and Perfect God but not Three Gods but One God A Mind and its Word are two and a living subsisting Word is true and perfect Mind Mind of Mind and yet not two Minds but one Mind for the Mind and its Word are essentially One as all Men must confess the Word is in the Mind and the Mind in the Word and therefore identically one and the same for which reason the Fathers acknowledge that the Father is Spirit the Son Spirit and the Holy Ghost Spirit and these are Three but not Three Spirits as essentially related to each other in the same individual Essence essentially the same and essentially in each other And thus Will of Will Wisdom of Wisdom Life of Life Power of Power though they multiply and distinguish Persons do not multiply Wills Wisdoms Lives Powers which are essentially One as the Mind its Word and Spirit are One They are not One Life One Will One Understanding One Power in the Sense of but One who Lives who Wills who Understands and has Power but as the same identically the same Life and Will c. is in each of them and indivisibly and inseparably in them all And this gives an account of the Unity of Operation wherein the Catholick Fathers unanimously place the Unity of God for One Almighty Agent is but One God and One Essential Will Wisdom and Power can be but One Agent and Infinite Original Mind and its Eternal subsisting Word can have but One Will and Wisdom and Power for the Will and Wisdom of the Mind is in its Word the same not merely specifically the same or the same by consent as it may be between Two Minds which Will perfectly the same thing but the same One Individual Will the Father Wills and the Son Wills and they both Will distinctly but with one Individual Will as it is impossible that the Word should Will with any other Will but the Will of that Mind whose Word it is And therefore Father Son and Holy Ghost though Three Eternal Infinite Living Intelligent Willing Persons which Subsist and Act distinctly yet being that to each other in a more perfect and excellent manner that Mind its Word and Spirit are in Men they must be as perfectly One Almighty Agent as a created Mind is which Wills and Acts in its Word and Spirit The Distinction and Unity of
Terms can belong for there is no such thing in created Nature and therefore we can have no Idea of it It is abundantly sufficient in this Case that we have a clear and distinct Notion of One Substance and Three Hypostases in the Essential Unity and Distinction of Father Son and Holy Ghost Three subsisting Relations in One Individual Essence and Substance though when we abstractedly consider these Terms of One Substance and Three Hypostases we can form no consistent Notion or Idea of it And now let our Socinian Adversaries who talk so loud of Absurdities Contradictions Nonsense false Counting and Tritheism try their skill to make good these Charges against the Divine subsisting Relations in the Unity of the same Individual Essence SECT IX A more particular Inquiry into the Difference between 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Nature and Person with an Account of some Catholick Forms of Speech relating to the ever Blessed Trinity BUT since one Nature and Essence and Three Hypostases or Persons is the Catholick Language and necessary to guard the Faith from those Two Extremes of Sabellianism and Arianism it will be necessary to consider how to apply these Ecclesiastical Terms to the Three and One in the ever Blessed Trinity And here were I so disposed I might enter into a very large and perplext Dispute but my design as far as possibly I can attain it is only to explain what the Catholick Fathers meant by these Terms and to give a plain and sensible Notion of them And after what I have already so largely discoursed concerning Nature and Hypostasis I have little more to do than to compare them together and to shew in what the Catholick Fathers placed this Distinction And as nothing is of greater consequence than rightly to understand this matter so nothing requires greater Caution nor greater Application of Mind Whosoever is conversant in the Writings of the Ancient Fathers must acknowledge it not only reasonable but necessary to distinguish between their Faith and their Philosophy Their Faith which they received srom the Scriptures and the Universal Tradition of the Catholick Church is plain and simple and the same in all That there is but One God who has an Eternal Son and an Eternal Spirit that Father Son and Holy Ghost are each of them by himself True and Perfect God and all but One God which is a Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity that they are in a true and proper Sense Three and One This is the Catholick Faith wherein they all agree but then those Philosophical Terms which the importunities of Hereticks who corrupted either the Faith of the Unity or Trinity forced them to use in the Explication of this Mystery are of a different Consideration These have not always been the same nor have all agreed in them and the wisest Men have owned great Improprieties in them all when applied to this Sacred Mystery and indeed it is impossible to be otherwise for that infinite Difference and Diversity there is between the Divine and Humane Nature nay all created Nature can never admit of any Common Terms proper to express both The most perfect Creatures bear only some imperfect Analogy and Resemblance to what we conceive of God and therefore when we apply such Words and Terms to the Divine Naturâ— as are borrowed from Creatures and we have no other we must understand them only by way of Analogy and Accommodation and when we expound such Terms as are used by the Catholick Fathers in such an accommodated Sense we must apply them no further than that particular Matter they intended to represent by them I have already shâ—wn this in several particular Passages relating to the Homoousion but now I am more particularly to consider the difference between Essence and Hypostasis and I shall only shew how the matter of fact stands what has occasioned this difficulty what the true state of the Controversy is and how we may form some sensible notion of this Distinction and if I should mistake in so nice a Point as this I hope it will be a pardonable Mistake while I make no change in the Catholick Faith and intend it only as an Essay if it be possible to silence or qualify the Dispute about words The Greek Fathers attribute all the Heresies relating to the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation to this one Mistake that Essence and Hypostasis are the same for then if there be but One Essence in the Blessed Trinity there must consequently be but One Hypostasis which is Sabellianism or if there be Three Hypostases there must be Three Natures and Essences either in the Arian or Tritheistick Notion Thus with reference to the Incarnation two Natures must be two Persons or Hypostases as Nestorius taught or One Person must be but One mixt and compounded Nature too which was the Heresy of Eutyches This some Fathers thought a fundamental Error in Philosophy introduced by Aristotle who makes the first Substance which is the only true and proper Substance to be that which is predicated of no Subject nor is in any Subject that is what we call a Subsisting Individual as this Man or this Horse And therefore Theorianus observes That the Catholick Fathers understood Essence and Hypostasis in a very different sense from the Greek Philosophers that is by Essence and Substance they did not mean one singular Individuum or singular Nature and Substance as Aristotle did but a common Nature not a common Notion as Genus or Species which are Aristotle's second Substances but a common Subsisting Nature which is one and the same whole and perfect in every Individual of the same kind And what Aristotle call'd his first Substance a singular Subsisting Nature that they called Hypostasis a common Subsisting Nature with its individuating Characters and Properties It is evident some Ages past before these words Essence and Hypostasis were thus nicely distinguished or at least before this Distinction was so unanimously received for as I have already observed these Words were used very promiscuously which occasioned the Alexandrian Schism and it does not appear to me that this Distinction was setled by Athanasius and the Bishops with him in that Synod as some seem to think though soon after it generally prevailed as we may learn from St. Basil Gregory Nyssen St. Cyril of Alexandria Damascen Leontius Theorianus Theodorus Abucara Ignatius Sinaita and generally all the Catholick Writers of the Eutychian and Severian Age who universally agree in this That Essence and Hypostasis differ as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as that which is Universal differs from what is Proper and Singular Now so far these Fathers were certainly in the right That if they must apply Philosophical Terms to Divine Mysteries which the Cavilling Objections of Hereticks made necessary there was an absolute necessity for them to change their signification for as there is nothing common to
and thus a Man begets a Man in his own Nature and Likeness and the Son which is begotten is upon all accounts as much a Man as he who begets and Father and Son are two Men And to beget and to be begotten tho they prove their Persons to be distinct yet are but External Relations not different manners of subsistence in the same Nature And thus God does not beget a Son which would be to beget a Second God For to beget and to be begotten when he who begets begets in an absolute sense all the same that he is himself makes two of the same kind And therefore we must observe That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the Personal Character and Property of the Father does not only signify that he has no cause of his Being and Nature but that what he is he is absolutely in himself has an Absolute not a Relative Nature and Subsistence and so consequently the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the Personal Property of the Son signifies that his Being and Nature is Relative not only that he receives his Being and Nature from his Father but that he so receives it as to be a Relative Subsistence in his Father's Nature and the like may be said of the Procession of the Holy Ghost As to shew this more particularly God begets a Son his own perfect Image and Likeness but he does not beget his own Absolute Nature in his Son as Man does though he begets his Son of his own Nature and Substance as for instance God is Perfect Absolute Original Mind not only as Original is opposed to what has a Cause and a Beginning but as opposed to an Image but God does not beget an Absolute Original Mind in his Son but only his own Eternal Essential Word which is the Perfect Living Image of Eternal Self-originated Mind and is it self Eternal Infinite Mind in the Eternal Word but is in its own proper Character the Eternal Word of the Eternal Mind not originally an Eternal Mind it self It has all the Perfections of an Eternal Mind as a Perfect Word must of necessity have which is the perfect Sameness and Identity of Nature but it has all these Perfections not as Original Mind but as a Begotten Word which is a different Mode of Subsistence and a sensible distinction between the Eternal Mind and its Word in the perfect Identity of Nature This I take to be a True and Intelligible Account of these different manners of Subsistence which distinguish the Divine Persons in the perfect Unity of Nature that they have all the same Nature and same Perfections but after a different manner which can never be understood in Absolute Natures and Persons for three Men though Father Son and Grandson have all of them Human Nature after the very same manner but in an Absolute Nature and Relative Essential Processions this is to be understood and proves a real distinction and perfect Unity It is evident to all Men that the Mind and its Word are Two and it is as evident that Life Wisdom Knowledge are in Absolute Original Mind after another manner than they are in its Word and yet the very Notion of a Mind and its Word and that Essential Relation that is between them makes it a contradiction to say that any other Life Wisdom Knowledge can be in the Word than what is in the Mind which would be to say That the Word is not the Word of the Mind if it have any thing that is not in the Mind For a Natural Word can have nothing but what is in the Mind and is no farther a Word than it is the Natural Image of the Mind And the like may be said concerning the Holy Spirit which hath all the same Divine Perfections but in a different manner from Original Mind and its Word as eternally proceeding from both This is the Account which the Catholick Fathers give of the Unity of Nature and Distinction of Persons in the Ever Blessed Trinity which answers the Objections of our Sabellian Arian and Socinian Adversaries and vindicates those Catholick Forms of Speech which they charge with Tritheism Contradiction and Nonsense As to shew this briefly in one view for each part of it has been sufficiently confirmed already The Catholick Faith teaches us That there is but One God and this is demonstrable from the Doctrine of these Fathers For in this Account I have now given there is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Absolute Divinity One Divine Nature and therefore but One God But say our Adversaries One God in Natural Religion and according to the general Sense of Mankind signifies One Person who is God And this also in some sense has always been owned by the Catholick Church That as there is but One Absolute Divinity so the Person of the Father who is this One Absolute Divinity is this One God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is but One Person who is God in this Absolute Sense because there is but One Father who as they often speak is the Fountain of the Deity that is of the Divine Processions of the Son and Holy Spirit He is the Whole Absolute Divinity himself and whatever is Divine Eternally and Essentially proceeds from him in the Unity of his own Nature But at this rate what Divinity do we leave for the Son and the Holy Spirit Truly the very same by Eternal Generation and Procession which is originally and absolutely in the Father For it is the Nature of the Father and the Divinity of the Father which is in the Son and Holy Spirit as the Fathers constantly own and as of necessity it must be because there is no other This Eternal Generation and Procession has always been owned as an ineffable Mystery which we must believe upon the Authority of the Scriptures without pretending to know how God begets an Eternal Son or how the Eternal Spirit proceeds from Father and Son which we confess we have no Notion of but we know likewise That this is no reason to reject this Faith no more than it is a reason to reject the belief of an Eternal Self-originated Being because though it be demonstrable That there must be an Eternal First Cause of all things which has no Cause of its own Being but an Eternal necessary Nature yet we can no more conceive this than we can an Eternal Generation and Procession Supposing therefore without disputing that matter at present that God has an Eternal Son that Eternal Self-originated Mind has an Eternal Subsisting Word and an Eternal Spirit it is evident that this Eternal Word and Eternal Spirit must have all the same Perfections of the Eternal Mind must be all that the Eternal Mind is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 excepting its being an Absolute Self-originated Mind Now if he be God who has the whole Divine Nature and Perfections then the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God who by Eternal Generation and Procession have that same
own Nature and Godhead each of which is True and Perfect God but not a Second and Third God but the Son of God and the Spirit of God Divine Subsisting Relations in the One Absolute Godhead of the Father which does not multiply the Name nor Nature of God This is the Account the Catholick Fathers give of the Unity of God in a Trinity of Persons and therefore this must be the Catholick Sense of this Proposition And here it will be proper to observe That in the Account they give of the Unity of God that is the Unity in Trinity they indifferently assign One Divinity and One Father as the Reason of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is One God because there is One Divinity and there is One God because there is One Father which are not two different Reasons but one and the same from whence it necessarily follows That this One Divinity is the Divinity of the Father and that this One God in Trinity is the Father for One God must necessarily signify One Person when the Father is the One God So that the Father who is the One Absolute Divinity is the One God who ceases not to be the One God as St. Hilary and others constantly teach by having a Son and Holy Spirit who receive all from him live and subsist in him and are eternally and inseparably One with him Thus we are taught in the Athanasian Creed to worship One God in Trinity that is the Eternal Father who is the One God with his Son and Holy Spirit and the Trinity in Vnity that is Father Son and Holy Ghost not Three Gods but One in the Unity of the Father's Godhead For the Godhead of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost is all one the Glory equal the Majesty Coeternal There is but One Godhead One Glory One Majesty and that is the Godhead Glory and Majesty of the Father and the Son and Spirit are in the Godhead Glory Majesty of the Father as Internal Processions Living Subsisting Relations in the Father's Godhead This Account which I confess is the only Account of this Matter that I can understand whatever other Faults it may have which I do not yet see I 'm sure is perfectly Orthodox is neither Tritheism Sabellianism Arianism nor Socinianism but the True Catholick Faith of a Trinity in Unity Here is but One Absolute Divinity but One Father with his Eternal Son and Spirit in the Unity of his own Nature and Godhead and therefore but One God For Three Gods must be Three Absolute Divinities without any Internal Relation or dependence on each other Internal Relations though Real Subsisting Relations can't multiply Nature and therefore can't multiply Gods Here are Three Real Proper Living Intelligent Substantial Divine Persons and therefore no Sabellianism not One Personal God with three Names Offices Manifestations Modes Powers Parts Here are Three truly Divine Persons each of which is by himself or in his own Person True and Perfect God The Father God of himself Unbegottan Self-originated God the Fountain of the Deity to the Son and Holy Spirit The Son the Son of God and True and Perfect God as the Son of God The Spirit the Spirit of the Father and the Son and True and Perfect God as the Spirit of God So that here is neither Arianism Macedonianism nor Socinianism no Made or Created Nature no Creature in the Ever Blessed Trinity No say our Arian and Socinian Adversaries neither the Son nor the Holy Ghost according to this Hypothesis are True and Perfect God as the Father is Neither of them have Self-existence or a Fecundity of Nature which are thought great Perfections in the Father but the Son is not of himself but begotten of his Father nor is the Spirit of himself but proceeds from Father and Son and neither of them have a Son or Spirit of their own as the Father has All this I readily grant for it is the Catholick Faith that the Father is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so a Father that he never was a Son and the Son 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so a Son that he never was nor can be a Father and so of the Holy Spirit That there is but One Father not Three Fathers One Son not Three Sons One Holy Ghost not Three Holy Ghosts as the Athanasian Creed teaches This proves indeed as we all own that neither the Son nor Spirit are absolutely God an Absolute Divinity as the Father is but only Divine Processions an Absolute Divinity has a Fecundity of Nature Absolute Original Mind according to this Hypothesis must have its Word and Spirit in the Unity of its Nature but the Word being no Absolute Nature can't beget another Word nor the Spirit another Spirit So that this Objection only delivers us from the Charge of Tritheism by proving Father Son and Holy Ghost to be but One Divinity One God For if the Son were as absolutely God as the Father is there is no account to be given why he should not beget a Son as his Father did him as we see it is among Men where the Son begets a Son and becomes a Father and thus there could be no possible end of Divine Generations but these are Generations ad extra which give as compleat and absolute a Nature and absolute Subsistence to the Son as the Father has but Internal Essential Relations are in the Individual Unity of Nature and therefore cannot multiply when Nature has all that is essential to it So that Self-existence and Generation do not belong to the Character of a Son and with the Catholick Church we teach That the Son of God is God only as the Son and it would be Heresy to ascribe the peculiar Prerogatives of the Father to him And then it can be no Objection against the Divinity of the Son that he has not what is peculiar and proper only to the Person of the Father as Self-existence and Generation is Self-existence Self-origination to have no cause of his Being I grant is essential to the Idea of a God And Eternal and Necessary Existence to the Notion of any Person who is in any sense God for he who ever began to be and subsists precariously can in no sense be God But then though Self-existence be essential to the Notion of an Absolute Divinity yet a Person who is a Son and therefore not Self-originated but eternally begotten of a Self-originated Father and subsists eternally and necessarily as an Essential Procession and Relation in a Self-originated Nature must be the Son of God and God the Son True and Perfect God as the Eternal Necessary Essential Procession of a Self-originated Divinity For what is internally and essentially related to a Self-existent Nature can be no Creature and therefore must be True and Perfect God Thus to proceed The same Rule of speaking if Men be peaceably and charitably disposed to understand one another will easily reconcile that
Trinity and Three Relative Subsistencies and Existences which is managed with so much perplexing Subtilty as far as I can understand any thing by it may easily be composed after the same manner For there is but One Absolute Being and Nature in the Divinity and therefore there can be but One Absolute Subsistence and Existence as Absolute signifies not Compleat and Perfect but to subsist and exist as an Original which in the Godhead signifies a self-originated Subsistence and Existence But then to deny all relative Subsistencies and Existencies is to deny the compleat Subsistence and Existence of the Son and Spirit who are essential Relations in the Unity of the Father's Godhead and therefore subsist not as Originals but as Relatives which is the meaning of a Relative Subsistence There is but One Absolute Divinity and Two Relative Processions and therefore in this sense but One Absolute and Two not Three Relative Subsistencies which seems fairly to divide the Question between them Thus once more It is a known Rule of speaking in this Mystery That Substantives must be predicated in the Singular Number Adjectives will admit a Plural Predication and the same difference is made between Abstract and Concrete Terms There are not Three Gods but Tres Deit atem habentes there are Three who have the Divinity not Three Omnipotencies or Three Omnisciencies but Three who are Omnipotent and Omniscient And the approved reason for this is That Substantives and Abstract Terms signify the Nature Essence and Form and to multiply them is to multiply Natures but Adjectives immediately signify the Subjects Suppositums and Persons and only connote the Nature and Form which multiplies the Persons but not the Nature Now though I understand what is meant by this when applied to the Divinity yet I never could understand this Reason for it for there is no such difference between Substantive and Adjective Predications in any other Case Three men and Three who have Human Nature signify the very same thing and multiply the Form as well as the Persons Three who have Human Nature are truly and properly Three men and then the meer difference between Substantives and Adjectives cannot be a good Reason why Three who have the Divine Nature are not Three Gods But the difference between an Absolute and Relative Predication does give an account of this Substantives and Abstract Terms always signify the Form as the Schools speak that is an Absolute and Original Nature and in this Sense Number multiplies Nature as well as Persons and Three Gods are Three Absolute Original Divinities as wellas Three Divine Persons and thus it is as to Adjective Predications in all Creatures as I observed before because there is no such distinction in Creatures between an Absolute Nature and Internal Subsisting Processions in the Unity and Identity of Nature and when Nature always signifies the Original Form a Substantive or Adjective Predication can make no difference but where there is such a distinction as there is in the Divinity Substantives and Adjectives do most aptly represent it because Adjectives admit of a Relative Predication and may signify a Person who has the Divine Nature as an Internal Subsisting Procession in the Divinity but is not the Absolute Divinity nor in an Absolute Sense God but the Son of God and the Spirit of God Indeed in such Forms of Speech we must have more regard to the Absolute or Relative Signification than to the Substantive or Adjective Form of the Words Adjectives in an Absolute Sense must no more be multiplied than Substantives which I take to be an easier Account of the tres aeterni and unus aeternus in the Athanasian Creed than to turn it with Aquinas into tria aeterna and unum aeternum For Three Eternals whether Substantives or Adjectives in an Absolute Sense are Three Gods Three Eternal Three Intelligent Three Omniscient Persons in an Absolute Sense are Three Eternities Three Omnisciences and in this Sense there is but unus aeternus One Eternal Self Originated Person as there is but One God and on the other hand Deus or God though a Substantive may signify Relatively as it does in the Nicene Creed God of God and in this Sense some of the Schoolmen thought it very Orthodox to say Three Gods if we explained in what Sense we meant it as I observed above Tertullian did Ecce duos deos though at the same time he rejects the use of such Forms for their ambiguous Signification which might betray men into Polytheism And if God may have a Relative Signification so may Mind and Spirit too and then Three Minds and Spirits is as Orthodox as Three that have an Intelligent and Spiritual Nature In short as far as I can hitherto observe all the Catholick Rules of Speaking relating to this Mystery must be resolved into this distinction of Absolute and Relative This is the only distinction we know of in the Godhead and this we as certainly know there is as we know that there is an Eternal Father who has an Eternal Son and an Eternal Spirit One Absolute Self-Originated Divinity with its Internal Essential Processions in the Individual Unity and Identity of Nature and if this be the Unity and Distinction of the Divinity this must be our Rule of Speaking also to have a due regard to the One Absolute Nature and the Relative Processions of the Godhead which will secure us both from a Sabellian Singularity and a Tritheistick Trinity of Absolute Divinities The CONCLUSION With a short Application to the Socinians I Proposed one thing more to be considered in relation to this Subject viz. Whether the Catholick Faith of a Real aâ—d Substantial Trinity can be as reasonably and intelligibly explained by the Notion of One Singular Substance in the Divinity as by asserting Three Personal Substances or Suppositums And whether the Singularity of the Divine Essence in this Notion delivers the Asserters of it from any Inconveniences and Objections which the contrary Opinion is thought liable to But I hope after what I have already said there is no occasion for this and I will not needlesly revive old Quarrels Let but Men sincerely and heartily believe in Father Son and Holy Ghost Three Eternal Infinite Substantial Living Intelligent Omnipotent All-wise Persons each of which is in his own Person True and Perfect God and all Three but One Divinity and One God and I will dispute with no such Orthodox Christians concerning the Philosophy of the Divine Nature which is so infinitely above our comprehension There may be a necessity for such Disputes when we have to do with Hereticks who ridicule the Catholick Faith as contradictions and absurd but when Men agree in the Faith such Disputes are of no use to them and may prove of dangerous consequence for there are too many who will be sooner disputed out of their Faith than out of their Philosophy which should teach all Catholick Christians as much as it is possible to silence all
abundantly appears from what I have already proved at large 2 Those very Persons who charge Philoponus with Tritheism for asserting Three Individual Natures and Essences do themselves own a Personal Substance Leontius as Nicâ—ph rus tells us wrote a large Book against Philoponus and yet he tells us That the Fathers by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Essence or Substance and Nature understood the same thing and so they did by Hypostasis and Person That by Essence and Substance they meant what the Philosophers call a Species by Hypostasis and Person what they call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Individual Substance And in this sense he tells us They acknowledged One Divinity in Three Hypostases or Three Personal Subsistencies That there is One Hypostasis that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Father One Hypostasis of the Son and One Hypostasis of the Holy Ghost that these Three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in nothing differ from each other but only in their Personal Properties 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that one is the Father the other the Son the other the Holy Ghost So that Leontius owns Three true proper Persons each of which is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Individual Substance which he asserts to be the true Catholick Ecclesiastical Notion of a Person and each Person as distinct from each other as he that begets is from him who is begotten and therefore when he condemned Philoponus for his Individual Natures and Essences he could not by that mean relative Personal Subsistencies or Substances Theodorus Abucara if he be the Author of that Tract against the Severians Explanatio vocum quibus Philosophi utuntur which I have sometimes suspected to belong to Theodorus Presbyter Raithensis who promises such an Explication of Philosophical Terms at the end of his Treatise de Incarnatione I say this Theodorus whoever he is expresly charges these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Individual Natures and Essences with Tritheism and yet throughout that Treatise teaches That Hypostasis is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a singular Individual Nature and so does Anastasius Sinaita in his Hodegos and indeed all the Writers of that Age who asserted against the Severians the Union of Two Natures in One Person in Christ. 3 dly But we shall soon be satisfied in this matter if we consider the occasion of this Dispute The Severians as they had learnt from their Master Severus and he from Eutyches taught that there was but One Nature as well as One Person in Christ and that for this reason That to assert Two Natures is consequently to assert Two Persons in Christ which is Nestorianism for every Nature is a Person that it is impossible there should be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Nature without a Personality of its own for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nature and Person or Hypostasis are the same In opposition to this the Catholicks urged That if Nature and Hypostasis were so the same that One Hypostasis is One Nature and One Nature but One Hypostasiâ— then as we assert Three Hypostasis in the Trinity we must also allow 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three Individual Natures and Essences in the Trinity Philoponus saw that this was an unavoidable Consequence and therefore rather than own Two Natures in One Person in Christ he chose to assert Three Individual Natures in the Trinity And for this he and his Followers were very justly charged with Tritheism And this shews us what these Individual Natures were not Three Relative Personal Subsistencies and Substances in the same One Individual Nature which is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One Divinity but Three Compleat Absolute Divinities 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Three such Divine Natures as there are Three Individual Human Natures in Three Men Each of which is by himself and alone without communication with any other in the same Individual Nature One compleat intire Humane Nature and One Human Person For this was the rise of the Dispute concerning the Humanity of Christ. The Catholicks owned the Personality of the Word but taught that Christ's Humane Nature was so united to his Divinity as not to be a distinct Human Person but to subsist in the Person of the Word which is the true Faith of the Word 's being Incarnate or made Flesh which could not be true if the Person of the Word were not Incarnate and that could not be true if the Human Nature in Christ were a distinct Human Person as other Men are On the other hand the Severians denied the Union of Two Natures in the One Person of Christ because an Individual Human Nature must be a Person and then Christ must be two Persons as well as two Natures So that this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a compleat absolute Individual Nature such as an Individual Human Nature is and three such Individual Natures make three Men or Three Gods and to assert Three such Absolute Divinities is Tritheism but this concerns not Personal Relative Subsistencies or Substances in the same Individual Nature and Essence and therefore the Condemnation of Philoponus or Valentinus Gentilis and such kind of Hereticks if they did really teach what they are charged with cannot affâ—ct those who assert Three real distinct substantial Persons each of whom is by himself in his own Person the whole Divine Nature Essence Substance but are essentially and inseparably related to each other in the Unity of the same Individual Essence The very asserting three relative personal Subsistencies or Substances in One Individual Nature is a direct opposition to the Doctrine of Philoponus and the Severians that Nature and Person is the same so the same that One Nature can be but One Person and One Person but One Nature which necessarily overthrows a Trinity of Persons in the Unity of the Divine Essence and the Union of the Divine and Humane Nature in the One Person of Christ but Three Relative Persons and Subsistencies in One Nature and One Nature and One Person are direct Contradictions as One Individual Substance and Three Individual Substances are Indeed those who deny Three Relative Personal Subsistencies that is Three Real Proper Substantial Persons in the Unity of the Divine Nature go upon the same Principle with Philoponus and the Severians that One Nature is but One True and Proper Person or Hypostasis and therefore there cannot be Three Proper Subsisting Persons in the Unity of One Individual Substance which as Anastatius Sinaita and the other Catholick Writers of that Age frequently observe is that fundamental Error which gave birth to Sabellianism Arianism Nestorianism and Eutychanism for as different as these Heresies are the fundamental Principle is the same that One Individual Nature is and can be but One Person and One Person but One Nature For this reason Sabellius who acknowledged the Unity of the Divine Nature rejected a Trinity of proper Subsisting Persons Arius who owned a Trinity of Persons denied their Consubstantiality or Sameness and