solve the difficulty that hath stalled the School-Doctors That if the Creature have no Entity distinct from God's it is either part of God or nothing But it is not nothing or no Substance though some call it a shadow And it is not a part of God for to be pars is to be imperfect and so to be no God And if it have a real Entity distinct from God's Entity then there would be more Entity in God and the Creature than GOD alone For two is numerally more than one and two Entia have more Entity than one how small soever the lesser be And then God should be put part of Universal Entity which is Imperfection To say that the Creature hath part of Created Entity but not of Divine Entity seemeth to yield that God is but part of Universal Entity To avoid which many Philosophers take up the Opinion that the whole being of all Worlds is GOD the material Part being his Body and the eternal Spirit the Soul What shall we say to this To silence it will not silence the Objectors And sure we must not grant them That the World is God or that it is part of God or that God is but a part of Real Substance or Entity or that to be so is no Imperfection Is there no other sounder way Though Divines say that Dei non sunt accidentiae and it 's true That God is all Essence and per essentiam operatur yet I dread to assert but humbly ask Whether rather than fall into any of the former Opinions it be not less dangerous to say That as God hath made his Works in his likeness and no Substance is without all Accidents so the World be not quasi accidens Dei And if so it is no Part of Him essential or integral And as its Substance is not univocally such as God's so such as it is it is so totally caused by and dependent on God's continual Creatingwill and Emanation that its Substance and Being is more GOD's though not GOD than its own and so is no Addition of Being to God's Being but contained in him and flowing from him A man's actual thought words or sensation is no Addition to a man's substance as such and yet they are not nothing A man's Hair and Nails that have no life but vegetative are substantial Accidents and yet no part of the man And yet are so wholly his own caused by his Soul as heat and moisture that we use not to call them any addition to the man's being § 5. Q. But wherein then lieth the Hypostatical Union if God be equally near to all things Ans. He doth not equally operate on all As the God of Nature he sustaineth and operateth on all his Creatures As the God of Grace he worketh Holiness on Believers Souls As the God of Glory he is present demonstratively and gloriously to the Blessed But he worketh on none as he did on the humane nature of Christ These three differences I conceive make this proper sort of Union 1. Some Works God doth though by essential Proximity yet not without the use and operation of second Causes But Christ's assuming the humane nature by the divine was by Conception by the Holy Ghost as the immediate Efficient without the Causality of Man or Angel the Mother affording Matter and Aliment to the foetus 2. Divine Operations being various the Divine Nature did that on the Humane Nature of Christ which it did not on any other Creature He having such Work to do as no other Creature was to do the divine nature fitted the humane for its part No Angel was to be Mediator between God and Man and to work Miracles as he did and in our nature to fulfill all Righteousness and be a Sacrifice for Sin and to rise from the Dead and to send down the Spirit and ascend to Glory and there to reign and to judge the World Therefore he was qualified for all this work 3. And so there is also a relative difference in that the Divine Nature by a fixed Decree and Will united it self for this work to this one humane nature even for all futurity It may be some that are wiser can better tell wherein the Hypostatical Union consisteth § 6. As to the Question Whether the divine and humane nature be two or one it is to ask Whether the nature of God and his Creatures be two or one They may be called one as we are one with Christ as conjunct related and consenting But not one and the same essential nature § 7. But the great difficulty is whether the two natures constitute one Person or two Nestorius is accused Derodon saith falsly citing his own plain words to have held That Christ was two Persons divine and humane But what is to be held the School-Doctors make a difficult question that is whether the humane nature be either a Person or any part of the Person of Christ. 1. They say that Christ was a divine Person from Eternity and therefore began not to be such at his Incarnation 2. That the divine nature cannot be pars personae for that would be to be imperfect and not divine Therefore that the humane nature is no part but an adjunct to the Person of Christ. And if the humane nature be an Accident to the divine in Christ why must we deny Creatures to be Accidents of God But most plain Christians would be starâ—lâ—d to hear a Preacher say that the Humanity is no part of the Person of Christ. § 8. I have no answer to the difficulty unless I may distinguish of the sence of the word PERSON and say that in the sence as it signifieth a Person in the Essence of God the humane nature is no part of it But as to a Relative Personality as a King a Priest a Prophet c. as a Husband a Father c. are Persons so there is one Mediator between GOD and Man the Man Christ Jesus And the humane is not here excluded But is the Divine a part of the Person of a Mediator I handle such things with fear The Lord pardon our weakness But we are called to handle them by men's Presumptions 1. As God is not a part of the World or universal Substance and yet is eminenter more than a part what if it be so answered here 2. But if as great Doctors now maintain Relations may be ascribed to God without any Composition because they have no proper reality but a meer objective comparability why may not the divine nature have a relative part in the Relation of Mediator as assuming and advancing the humane and operating in it without composition And as according to this ambiguity Christ may have two persons not univocally divine and mediatorial so the divine and humane may make one Mediator And in the one Person of a Mediator are contained many Relative Persons of Christ as King Priest Prophet Son of Mary c. The Lord pardon what is amiss in these
Transubstantiation and Mr. Tho. Beverley's drew me to write some Animadversions on this Doctrine as moderating between Extreams but on further consideration I am very Ioth to be so venturous in a Case of such tremendous Mystery as to meddle for or against them left etiam vera dicere de Deo si incerta sit periculosum Though I doubt not but their exposition of Ioh. 6. is unsound while they make the Flesh and Blood of Christ which is Transubstantiated and eaten and drunk to be the eternal Flesh and Blood of Christ a Man from Eternity § 29. The difficulty of the Controversie which this leadeth to Whether the World be an eternal Effect of an eternal Cause or God from all Eternity till the forming of this lower World and Adam had no Being but Himself Doth deterr me from meddling with it lest I be blinded by presuming too nearly to gaze on the Light that should guide me and God that is Love should for my boldness be to me a Consuming Fire Things revealed only as for our search § 30. But the Conclusion which all this prepareth for is this That whatever else besides the Trinity of Primalities before described doth constitute the Trinity of Persons it is rendred altogether credible to an implicit Faith by the full Evidence and Certainty of the aforesaid Trinity of Faculties or Primalities which are God's Image on Man's Soul and the like imprinted on the whole Creation which certainly is not done in vain § 31. I pass by the rest because I have so largely handled it in Method Theolog. And among the numerous Authors there cited I desire the Reader especially to peruse the words of Guitmundus A. B. Aversanus Edmund Cantuariensis Richardi ad Bernard Pothonis Prumensis with whose words I will conclude cited pag. 103. There are three invisibles of God Power Wisdom and Benignity of which all things proceed in which all things subsist by which all things are ruled The Father is Power the Son is Wisdom the Holy Ghost is Benignity Power createth Wisdom governeth Benignity conserveth Power by Benignity wisely createth Wisdom by Power benignly governeth Benignity by Wisdom powerfully conserveth As the Image is seen in the Glass so in the state of the Soul by Humane Nature c. To this Similitude of God against Man approacheth nearly to whom God's Power giveth Power to Good and his Wisdom to Know and his Benignity â—iveth to Will This is the threefold Force of the Rational Soul posse scire velle to be able to know to will which co-operate to Faith Hope and Love or Charity § 32. Among all the Attempts that are published for our Conceptions of the Deity and Trinity I know of none that give us their Notions with greater Confidence and Pretence of Revelation than I. P. M. D. Dr. Pordage and his Leader Iacob Behmen Many other of the German Prophets going near the same way as C. Beckman describeth them I. P. his Mystica Theologia pretendeth to far greater discovery of the Deity and Trinity and the World than ever Christ Prophets or Apostles gave us First In his Globe of Eternity or the Divine Essential World pictured by 1. An Eye the Father 2. A Heart the Son 3. And the Effluvia or breathed Beams the Holy Ghost with the innumerable Progeny of such Eyes flowing from that pregnant Essence differing from it only as lesser from greater each an Individual yet making no Composition but Unity in the Deity Secondly In his Abyssal Nothing or World of Potentialities Thirdly In his Eternal Nature and the septenary included Worlds c. But 1. I consess there are many things in him and in Peter Sterry which Reason left to its conjectures would think plausible but short of Aristotle and Plato 2. And he is so high in his Description and Defence of Trine-Unity that even where I consent not I dare not call him therein unsound 3. But many Passages in his Description of Eternal Nature are apparently the effects of Ignorance and erroneous 4. And he goeth further in his making this Nature eternal and a World that is the Body of God than I dare do 5. And though I would not be too forward to contemn men that pretend to know such Mysteries by Vision and Revelation yet I resolve to take Christ for my sufficient and infallible Teacher and to pretend to know no more of the Deity and unseen World than he hath thought meet to reveal For no man hath seen the Father at any time but the only begotten Son nor doth any else know him but he and those to whom he revealeth him And what Christ hath not revealed of God I think it is because it is fittest for us to be yet ignorant of it as a necessary difference between our present and our future state To search for more will but confound and lose us and resting practically in what Christ hath revealed and for the rest trusting our selves fully in his Knowing for us his Love to us and his Promise for us may safely and sufficiently quiet the Mind that can be well quieted no other way CHAP. 3. Of the Incarnation and Hypostatical Union § 1. NO wonder that it seemeth hard to Man to understand how the Divine Nature assumeth the Humane into Union when it is so far beyond our reach to conceive how God is near to all his Works and how he operateth on every man Christ hath told us That we know not how a man is born of the Spirit no more than we know whence the Wind cometh and whither it goeth And can we easilier know how God became Man § 2. It is certain that God being infinite is as near to us as is possible our Souls can be no nearer to our Bodies nor perhaps to themselves And though Philosophers dispute Whether Spirits be in loco and whether God be in us or we in him and whether he be quasi locus spatium to the World yet it is past question that he is omnipresent and intimately proximus to all things § 3. It is not therefore his meer Presence or Proximity of being that is this Hypostatical Union else it would extend to all the World It is harder therefore to prove that God is not as nearly united to all than to prove that he is not so united to the Humane Nature of Christ. Which caused Peter Sterry and such others to hold That Christ hath three Natures that is That the Divine Nature first produced the prime superangelical emanant Nature by which he seemeth to mean an universal Soul to the Matter of the World and that this superangelical Nature did unite it self to all but eminently to the humane Nature of Christ which he calleth One top-Branch in the Tree of Beings Some say the superangelical Nature being Christ's only Soul assuming but a Body others that it assumed a Body and Soul § 4. The grand difficulty about God's Unity with the World and the World with God is how to
Word of God And I think that I have elsewhere proved that Generative Traduction of Souls and yet God's present yea immediate Causation of their Essence which may be called Creation are here Consistent Which here I must not now repeat Vid. Meth. Theol. and Reasons of Christian Religion CHAP. XI Of our Redemption by Christ. § 1. SIN having made Man guilty and depraved unfit for duty and felicity odious to the most Holy Righteous God and lyable to his Justice the eternal Wisdom and Word of God did interpose and by Mercy did save Man from the deserved rigour of Justice promising Actual Redemption in the fulness of time and on that supposition giving fallen Man a pardoning and saving Law or Covenant of Grace with answerable help of his Spirit and Means and outward Mercies fitted to his Recovery and Salvation § 2. But God would not have this Recovery and Salvation to be perfect at the first but gave Man a certain proportion of Common Deliverance and Mercy binding him to a Course of Duty in the performance of which he should receive more by degrees till he were perfected As Phisicians cure their Patients § 3. Therefore God did enter into Judgment with fallen Man and did sentence him absolutely to some degree of Punishment even to Labour Pain the penalty of the Cursed Earth and finally to Death which Temporal Punishment God would not remit nor give him a Saviour to procure the pardon of it but only to the Faithful to turn all this unto their Benefit and to deliver them from the greater everlasting Sufferings § 4. And their own sinful pravity and privation of Holiness and communion with God which also was their greatest punishment by Consequence God would not at once nor in this Life perfectly save them from and therefore accordingly pardoned them their punishment but by the forementioned degrees For he is not perfectly pardoned or saved who is yet left under so much penalty § 5. Some thinking it hard that for 4000 Years the World should have no Existent Mediator and that an Existent Faith in the future Mediator should be more necessary than an Existent Mediator and his Work and thinking withal that it would solve many Textual Difficulties objected by the Arians and explain the Appearances of Christ to the Patriarchs have conceived that Christ hath a threefold Nature viz. The Divine Nature a created Super-Angelical Nature to which the Divine Nature was united before the Incarnation and the Humane Nature assumed at the Incarnation and that so we had an Existent Mediator from the time of the Fall But whatever conveniences this Opinion may seem to have I find no satisfactory proof of it in Scripture nor that the Christian Church did ever hold it And it is overmuch boldness to take up so great a Doctrine as a third Nature in Christ which the Church of Christ was never acquainted with And the Texts that seem to be for it are capable of the common Exposition § 6. If any think that this was the Judgment of abundance yea the most of the Antient Writers before the days of Arius because they have such unhappy expressions of Christ which the Reader may find truly Collected to his hand by Petavius de Trinitate and that it is fitter to Expound them as speaking only of Christ's second Nature than to account them all Arians or to honour the Arians by making them on their side I answer I leave every Man to his own judgment upon perusal of the Fathers words allowing all Charity that hath sufficient ground But I cannot perceive that these Writers talk of any more Natures in Christ than two and pious ends must be served by no Fictions and Untruths I think that we must rather gather with Petavius there that the Votes in the Nicene Council tell us that then the greater part of the Church were against Arius and therefore they were so before because they held in so great a point the Faith which they had received from their Fathers And that the greater part of Writers might differ from the greater part of the Church And withal these Writers having more than other men to do with the Heathen Philosophers and Orators who were prejudiced against the Doctrine of the Trinity did shun their Offence by too much stretching their speeches to that which they thought they could easilier digest which gave Arius his advantages The Conclusions either way are harsh and sad but I leave others better to avoid them § 7. The Deity it self may not unfitly be called our REDEEMER before the Incarnation though not so fitly a MEDIATOR and though Redemption by Christ's Death and Merits in the Flesh was not then wrought Because the word Redeeming is oft taken for a merciful Delivering though without a price and also because the Price was promised from the beginning But thus the word REDEEMER is equivocal signifying either the Deity as a promising undertaking Saviour or the Mediator who was promised and who performed the undertaken means § 8. The MEDIATOR himself being purely the Gift of the Divine Love and Mercy it was no inconvenience that God then had all the Glory and that Faith then acknowledged no other existent Saviour but God himself the infinite Good § 9. It troubleth men much to open how Christ was any true Cause of our Pardon and Salvation as a Mediator before his Incarnation And what his merits sacrifice and intercession could do before they did exist And the common Answer is That Moral though not Physical Causes may cause before they exist and so operate as foreseen foredecreed or willed But these Logical notions must not be used to put off the Question instead of satisfactorily answering it This tells us not whether by a Moral Cause they mean a True Cause of some moral Being or something morally called a Cause which indeed is not so but quasi causa Nor yet whether they mean a Cause efficient final or constitutive Nor yet whether they mean a Cause of any thing in God or only of some following effect § 10. It must be concluded that Christ's merits sacrifice and Intercession make no real Change in God his Understanding or Will and therefore have no such Causality § 11. But God's Promise first and Christ's Merits and Sacrifice next make a Change in the state of things laying that Ground-work or necessary Antecedent and Condition upon which it becometh meet right and just for God to give the rest of his mercy which this is the Condition of and the true meritorious Cause And so the Change was neither on GOD nor immediately on Man but for Man on the state of things which God and man were both concerned in It is a causa ordinis while that is done first which is prerequisite to what is to follow And it is a causa rei benefici◠while it not only removeth moral Impediments of our Pardon and Salvation but also setteth matters in such a state in which it becometh congruous
abundant in goodness and truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin and that will by no means clear the guilty by false judging and that the World have no cause to despair of forgiveness as if they were under the remediless or unremedied Sentence of Damnation § 10. There are no People on Earth that are not obliged to the use of some means appointed them to be used for their full Pardon and Salvation else Despair would be their Duty and they should not be judged Sinners for neglecting any such means And were they not bound to do any thing for their own Salvation their Sin and Misery that neglect so to do would be far less than it is § 11. Therefore all People have some such Means that have a tendency to Recovery and Salvation afforded them by God § 12. They that say That all the Mercies of the Non-elect are no Mercies because through mens Sin they end in their Misery do perversely extenuate Gods Mercies and Man's Sin and teach Sinners falsely to plead in Judgment That they never abused or sinned against Mercy which God and their own Consciences will easily confute § 13. In the Controversie Whether Christ died for the Elect only or for all Mankind it seemeth to me that we little differ about the matter but only strive about ambiguous Words even about one Syllable for If to die for signifie for their sins under the reason of a Cause of Christ's Death so as Paraeus doth we must all grant that Christ died for all 2. If for signifie eorum loco in their stead so the Phrase hath yet great Ambiguity and will require a great deal of distinguishing for its due Explication The various kinds and degrees of Benefits to which the Intention is limitted do leave the word liable to various Sences Christ died so far in the stead of all Mankind as to suffer Death by his voluntary sponsion as a punishment deserved to themselves by sin to free them all from it on condition of their suitable acceptance of his Grace But if by for be meant in the civil person of all men as representing them the Word is still among Lawyers and all Writers ambiguous In a large sence he may be said to persenate or represent another who doth it but secundum quid and not simpliciter in parte aliqua vel in tantum ad hoc and not in omni vel ad omne And if any will so far stretch the Phrase and because Christ suffered in the common Nature of man will say that he suffered in every man's Person or because he had a special purpose of saving his Elect will thence say He died in the person of Peter Iohn and every elect Sinner I will not strive against mens Phrases if they will explain them soundly But in strict Sence as Representing a man or doing it in his Person signifieth that Christ so died and merited in several mens Persons as that the Law or Lawgiver doth take it to have been in sensu civili their own suffering and doing and meriting or to all intents purposes and uses all one to them as if they had so died and merited themselves thus Christ neither died nor obeyed for any man as shall be hereafter proved But if by for is meant for mens benefit or good so it is yet ambiguous and liable to a threefold sence viz. 1. Intentionally 2. Aptitudinally 3. Eventually for their good And 1. Intentionally the Controversie either speaketh of Christ's Divine Nature and Will or of the Humane Concerning the former the Question is the same with that about Election or Gods Decrees which is before spoken to viz. How far God decreed good to all men by Christ's Death As to Christ's Humane Nature and Will it will prove but an arrogant unprofitable Question Whether Christ as Man knâ—w the Names of every individual person in the World or of every one of the Elect and had a distinct Intent to save every one of those by Name that are saved It 's better let such Questions alone 2. And Aptitudinally there is no question but there is that in Christ's Sufferings and Obedience Sacrifice and Merit which is in its moral Nature adapted to the Good and Salvation of all and hath that sufficiency thereto which would accomplish it if it were duly accepted and improved 3. And as to the Event we are agreed viz. That some and not all are saved by Christ's Death and Merits but that all have great Mercies which are the fruits of these though many wilfully turn them to their Sin and Misery § 14. By all this it appeareth that it is a most unfavoury thing for men called Divines to dispute hotly That Christ did or did not die and merit for all and bitterly revile their Adversaries in the Controversie without ever explaining that one ambiguous syllable FOR or telling men what they mean And when it is well explained we scarce know how to differ § 15. For few will deny but that Christ suffered not immediately because Man sinned as if Suffering were due to him meerly because we sinned but because he undertook so to do and was obliged so to do by the Law of Mediation But remotely he suffered not only because the Elect had sinned but because all Mankind had sinned That is The Conditional Pardon and Mercies given to all Mankind are such as Christ's Sacrifice and Merits must be congruously the Causes of as well as the actual Pardon of Believers § 16. But if the stress of the Controversie be laid on Christ's personating or representing this man or that by that time this humane invented ambiguous unscriptural Phrase is explained either we shall be â—ound to be all of a mind or else some will run into an intolerable errour about Christ's dying and meriting in our civil person and our dying and meriting by his natural person or else they will dispute themselves into a Wood of Uncertainties and be lost about the sence of a word that cannot be sufficiently explained § 17. And they that will lay the stress of the Controversie on the Aptitude or the Event must be men of some singular Conceits and not of the common judgment of the Reformed Churches the Lutherans the Iesuites or the Dominicans if they will disagree for here we are commonly agreed § 18. But as far as I can discern most Contenders lay the Controversie upon the point of Divine Intention Purpose or Decree viz. Whether Christ as God did purpose to justifie and save all men by his death or else Whether he purposed to do good to all men by his death Which Purpose is nothing but God's eternal Will or Decree And why then do they make two Controversies of Election and Redemption when they mean the same in both And here methinks there cannot easily be a difference For in a few plain words whatever good Christ giveth to any that he from Eternity decreed to give them But we are agreed