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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52608	Considerations on the explications of the doctrine of the Trinity by Dr. Wallis, Dr. Sherlock, Dr. S-th, Dr. Cudworth, and Mr. Hooker as also on the account given by those that say the Trinity is an unconceivable and inexplicable mystery / written to a person of quality.	Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719.; Wallis, John, 1616-1703.; Sherlock, William, 1641?-1707.	1693 (1693)	Wing N1505B; ESTC R32239	45,913	35

Philosopher Des Cartes but the Discoverer of which is Dr. Sherlock When Dr. Sherlock came out with his Vindication in Answer to the Brief History of the Unitarians and the Brief Notes on the Creed of Athanasius the more ignorant of the Doctors and Rectors and all the young Fry of Lecturers and Readers about Town were his Hawkers to cry it about and cry it up They questioned not what such a Master in Polemicks had delivered especially with so much Assurance and Confidence and with so much Keenness and Contempt of the poor kick'd Note-maker and Epistler But the more learned among them said from the very first that indeed Dr. Sherlock meant honestly and he might have propounded this Explication to his private Friends to be considered and debated but it was liable to too many obvious Exceptions to be published to all the World without great Corrections in the manner of Expression But the Socinians presently saw their Advantage and resolved to make use of it accordingly in about four or five Weeks time out came their Observations on the Vindication of Dr. Sherlock which in some Editions of them are prefaced with the Acts or Gests of Athanasius Here they tell the Doctor that he hath published a worse Heresy than even ours is held to be by our bitterest Opposers in one word that he hath revived Paganism by such an Explication of the Trinity as undeniably introduces Tritheism or three Gods They show him that his Error was condemned by the Antients in the Person of Philoponus and in the middle Ages in the Person and Writings of Abbat Joachim but more severely since the Reformation in the Person of Valentinus Gentilis who was condemned at Geneva and beheaded at Bern for this very Doctrine They demonstrate to him by a great many unexceptionable Arguments that a Mutual Consciousness of three supposed Divine Spirits and Minds having each of them his own peculiar and Personal Understanding Will and Power of Action is so far from making three such Spirits to be one God in number that 't is the clearest and the certainest Demonstration that they are three Gods Mutual-Consciousness maketh them to be a Consult or Council a Cabal or Senate of Gods if you will but by no means one Numerical God or one God in Number The Observations of the Socinians opened all Mens Eyes to see and acknowledg that Dr. Sherlock had greatly overshot the Mark and that it was necessary he should yield his Place to some new Opponent who in these Disputes with the Socinians would speak more cautiously All Endeavours therefore were used by his Friends to perswade Dr. Sherlock to be quiet and because such an Example had been made of him they stopped a while all Sermons and other Tracts that were going to the Press against the Socinians The Politicians among them feared the Success of a War that in its Beginnings had been so unsuccessful they said to one another we need not trouble our selves with the Socinians because being Masters of all the Pulpits we can sufficiently dispose the People to the Orthodox Belief without the help of printed Answers and Replies 'T is about three Years since these Observations on Dr. Sherlock's Vindication were made publick and all this time he hath very peaceably taken the Imputations of Heresy and Paganism tho he had said in the Preface to his Vindication That having dipped his Pen in the Vindication of so glorious a Cause by the Grace of God he would never desert it while be could hold a Pen in his Hand The Socinians did not design to give him any farther Trouble but Dr. S th not able to endure that such Aspersions should lie at the Door of the Church could not refrain from declaring to all the World that the Church had suffered nothing in the Defeat of Dr. Sherlock He professeth that the Charge drawn up against Dr. Sherlock by the Socinians is true for he hath in very deed advanced an Explication of the Trinity saith Dr. S th which immediately and unavoidably inferreth three Gods Pref. p. 2. It not being the Design of Dr. S th in his Animadversions to prove the Truth of the Doctrine of the Trinity but only to explain or declare it that is to notify in what Sense and manner 't is held by the Church we must say that his Performance is an accurate and learned Work He concerneth not himself with the Socinians but only rescues the received Doctrines of the Church from the Misrepresentations of them by Dr. Sherlock who either understood them not or ventur'd to depart from them Nor do we concern our selves with Dr. S th but whereas he is the only Writer since the Revival of these Controversies who has indeed understood what the Church means by a Trinity in Unity therefore we must take leave to say and will also prove it that this his true Explication of the Trinity is for all that a great Untruth or rather a great piece of Nonsense Dr. Sherlock's was a Rational and Intelligible Explication tho not a true one 't is not Orthodox as Orthodoxy is reckoned since the Lateran Council Dr. S th's is a true and Orthodox Explication of what the Church intends to say but 't is neither Rational nor Intelligible nor Possible But of that in its proper place for I must next examine the Trinity according to Plato defended by Dr. Cudworth Of the Explication by Dr. Cudworth IT will be necessary in the first place to declare Dr. Cudworth's Explication more largely and clearly than hath been yet done In accounting for the Doctrine of the Trinity he professeth to follow the Platonick Philosophers with whom saith he not the Arians as some suppose but the Orthodox Fathers perfectly agree These held a Trinity of Divine Persons Co-eternal indeed but not Co-equal for the Son and Spirit are inferior to the first Person or the Father in Dignity in Authority and in Power They are so many distinct Substances not one numerical Substance as hath been taught by the School-Doctors and the Lateran Council For tho the Fathers said that the three Persons have but one and the same Substance Essence or Nature they did not mean thereby one and the self-same Substance or Essence in Number but the same Essence or Substance for Kind or Nature Because each Person of the three is Spiritual Eternal Infinite a Creator and necessarily existent therefore they were said by the Fathers and Platonists to have the same Nature Essence or Substance and not because their Essences or Substances Physically or Properly so called are one and the same Physical Substance in Number In few words saith he this famous Term Consubstantial or of the same Substance was never intended by the Platonists or by the Fathers to deny as the Schools do three distinct individual Essences or to denote one Numerical Substance or Essence but only to signify that the Trinity believed by the Orthodox is not made up of contrary or unlike Natures as

Socinians by some of the most Learned Interpreters and Criticks of his own Party as indeed no Proof of the Trinity the Incarnation or the Divinity of the Son or Spirit What avails it for a Man to talk of the great number of Texts which he can alledg when the ablest Persons of his own Party do in the mean time ow● the Unsufficiency of every one of them in particular If he thinks he has cause to deny that the Socinians have this great Advantage on their side whenever he shall do it publickly I will bear the Reproach if I do not justify what I have said by Citation of particular Authors of the first Note and Rank among our Opposers 3. Our Opposers urge that there are and the Soci●●●●s themselves believe a great many Mys●●●●●s in Nature of which no Human Reason can give an Account nay Reason objects against them and professedly contradicts them as that a pure Spirit can move a Body In which it meets no Resistance that Bodies or Matter consist of indiuisible Parts and such like Well suppose the Socinians should grant these or other unaccountable Mysteries which not only are not comprehended but are contradicted by Reason What then Why then they are very inconsiderate to deny as they do the Trinity and Incarnation on this account that 't is contrary to Reason or implies Contradictions and Absurdities But our Opposers should have thought better of this Objection before they laid so great a Weight on it even the Weight of their whole Cause For tho we should grant that we believe some Mysteries of Nature or Art against which Reason objects and many ways contradicts them yet is this no Plea for the Trinity or the Incarnation For if we believe Natural or Artificial Mysteries 't is because we plainly see that so the thing is we see or we feel or have some other undeniable Proof of the thing some such Proof as no rational Man will or can resist Doth any Man believe Misteries or wonderful Tales contrary to his Reason and the Reason of all other Men without a most manifest and uncontestable Proof of them without some such Proof or Proofs as undeniably evince the thing so to be But will our Opposers pretend they have any such Proofs for the Incarnation or Trinity such manifest such evident such uncontestable Proofs that no sober Man or no reasonable Man can except against them or refuse to admit of them I do not think they will pretend to it if it be but for this only Reason because the Socinians are confest to be a Rational and Learned Party Are those Evidence or Proofs uncontestable which are rejected not without some Scorn by some of the learnedest and most unsuspected of their own Party Are they uncontestable that not only may be interpreted to another Sense but also are either otherways read in the best Copies of the Hebrew and Greek or may be otherways translated from those Languages and all this by confession of the more ingenious of our Opposers themselves Briefly we say Mysteries there are and it may be such Mysteries as are even contradicted by Reason that is are in some respects Contradictions to our present short-sighted and frail Reason but when we believe there are some such Mysteries it is because they appear to our Senses or are proved to us by some such either Reason or Authority as no reasonable Man much less any Number of such Men does or can deny to be uncontestable And otherways all the unwarrantable Nonsense in the World may be imposed on us under the Pretence and Cloak of Mystery But now the Doctrine of the Trinity hath not only no uncontestable Proofs but the Pretences for it are so feeble that none of them can be named but is not only rejected but despised by some of the learnedest of our Opposers themselves They would perswade us to acknowledg a Mistery full of Contradictions to the clearest Reason and to indisputable Texts of Holy Scripture and supported in the mean time only by some Texts that may be interpreted to a Rational Sense that is to a Sense that hath nothing contrary either to Reason or to the unquestionable Parts or Texts of the Holy Scripture For Peace sake we would do so if it were some light matter that they urged on us but when the Question is about one or more Gods one or more Divine Persons we judg it adviseable not to be too facile in admitting such dangerous Mysteries Mysteries that would destroy the Allegiance and Homage that we all owe to the one true God I have done Sir with the Explications of our Opposers You see what they are Dr. S th's Explication is only an absurd Socinianism or Unitarianism disguised in a Metaphysical and Logical Cant. Dr. Wallis his Explication is an ingenious Sabellianism and in very deed differs from Unitarianism no more than Dr. S th's that is to say only in the wording Dr. Sherlock's is such a flat Tritheism that all the Learned of his own Party confess it to be so and Dr. S th hath written a very accurate Book to prove it so Dr. Cudworth's is a moderate Arianism the Ariani molles ascribed as much to the Son as this Doctor doth and he denies as much to the Son as they did even an Equality of Power and Authority with the Father Mr. Hooker's is a Trinity not of Persons but of Contradictions and he hath advanced such a Son as of necessity destroys his Father What the Mystical Divines teach cannot be called an Explication they deny all Explications we must say therefore 't is Samaritanism for what our Saviour says of the Samaritans by way of Reproof and Blame that these Gentlemen profess concerning themselves that they worship they know not what These Sir are the Doctrines that we oppose I shall leave it with you whether it be without cause Before I conclude I beg your Leave to say two words to Mr. Basset who hath answer'd or thinks he has answered to the Brief History of the Unitarians and to Dr. Fulwood and Dr. Edwards Men of Dignity in the Church but who have not thought it below them to use the very vilest Language and the basest and most ungrounded Scandals that their Malice to our Persons and their Ignorance of the Points in question between us and the Church could suggest to them These two Doctors tell their Readers that the Unitarians deny the Omniscience of God or that he fore-knoweth contingent Events that they deny his Omnipresence making him to be present in all Places only by his Knowledg and his Power that they ascribe the same degree of Power and Knowledg and pay the self-same Worship to the Lord Christ whom they affirm to be a meer Man which they ascribe or pay to Almighty God and hereby say these Doctors they are guilty of an Idolatry that is equally evident and abominable They pretend to prove this Charge out of the Writings of Socinus Smalcius and some others

the Arian Trinity is but of Persons all of them Homogenial all of them Eternal Spiritual and Uncreated They that shall deny this to be the Doctrine of the Fathers will find themselves obliged to answer to two things which are indeed fairly and truly unanswerable The first is Why those Fathers who contend for the Homo-ousios consubstantial or of the same Substance do yet expresly reject the Tauto-ousios and Mono-ousios or of the self-same Substance and Essence in Number The Tauto-ousios and Mono-ousios or of the self-same Essence or Substance in Number is the very Doctrine of the Schools and Moderns but is denied by the Fathers as meer Sabellianism which invincibly proves that by one and the same Substance and Essence they meant not one and the self-same or one in Number but one for Kind Nature or Properties Secondly They must also satisfy the Citations of D. Petavius and S. Curcellaeus and these in the Intellectual System which do all of them severally and much more conjunctly clearly show what the Sense of the Fathers was about Homo-ousios and consubstantial It appears by this and abundance more the like that Dr. Cudworth had the same Apprehensions concerning the three Divine Persons with Dr. Sherlock they both apprehend the three Persons to be as distinct and different and as really three several Intelligent Beings and Substances as three Angels are or as Peter James and John are Dr. Sherlock saith they are however called one God because they are internally conscious to all one anothers Thoughts and Actions but I do not believe that Dr. Cudworth would have allowed so much to the Son and Spirit as to be internally conscious to all the Thoughts and Actions of the first Person he always speaketh of them as every way inferior to the Father he will not allow them to be Omnipotent in any other respect but only externally that is to say because the Father concurreth Omnipotently to all their external Actions whether of Creation or Providence Dr. Cudworth desires to distinguish his Explication from all others of the Moderns by this Mark that it alloweth not the three Persons to be in any respect but Duration Co-equal for saith he three distinct Intelligent Natures or Essences each of them Pre-eternal Self-existent and equally Omnipotent ad intra are of necessity three Gods nor can we have any other Notion of three Gods but if only the first Person be indeed internally Omnipotent and the other two subordinate in Authority and Power to him you leave then but one God only in three Divine Persons This is Dr. Cudworth's Explication Every one will readily make this Exception he thinketh either that there is one Great God and two Lesser Ones or else only the first is true God and the other two in Name only The Doctor foresaw without doubt this Objection therefore see how he hath endeavour'd to prevent it First he reports some Answers of the Fathers to this Difficulty which Answers he expresly rejecteth For some of them said that the three Persons are one God by their Unity of Will and Affection Others said they are one God as all Men or all Mankind are called Homo or MAN namely because they All have the same Specifick Nature or Essence or Substance even the Rational For as all Men have the same Specifick Essence or Nature which is the Rational so the Divine Persons also agree in one Nature namely the Eternal Spiritual and Self existent But Dr. Cudworth confesseth that an Union of Will and Affection is only a Moral Union not a Physical or real Unity and as three Human Persons would be three distinct Men notwithstanding the Moral Union in Affection and Will so also the three Divine Persons will be three distinct Gods notwithstanding such an Union in Will and Affection As to the other that the three Persons are but one God by their having the same Specifick Nature or Essence or as some call it Substance namely because they are all of them Spiritual Self-existent and Coeternal he calleth it an absurd Paradox contrary to common Sense and our common Notions of things for so all Men will be but one Man because they have the same Specifick Essence or Nature namely the Rational and all Epicurus his Extramundan Gods will be but one God Then he propoundeth divers other Explications which he neither approveth nor expresly rejecteth tho 't is plain that he disliked them for the Explication on which he insisteth and which appears to be his Sense of the matter is this that follows The three Divine Persons are one God because they are not three Principles but only one the Essence of the Father being the Root and Fountain of the Son and Spirit and because the three Persons are gathered together under one Head or Chief even the Father He adds here expresly that if the Persons were Co-ordinate i. e. equal in Authority Dignity or Power they should not be one but three Gods This is at large Dr. Cudworth's Opinion the short of it is that the three Persons are as really distinct Beings Essences or Substances as Dr. Sherlock hath imagined them to be And as their Substances or Natures are not one but three so also must their Understandings and other Personal Powers and Properties The Doctors differ only in this that Dr. Sherlock maketh the Unity of the three Persons in the Godhead to consist in the Mutual-Consciousness of the Persons But Dr. Cudworth in this that the Father is both the Principle Root or Fountain or Cause and also the Head of the other two Persons They neither of them believe one Numerical but one Collective God one God not who is really one God but is one God in certain Respects as of Mutual Consciousness or of being the Cause Principle and Head of all other Beings and of the second and third Persons Dr. Cudworth contends by a great number of very Pertinent and Home Quotations that his Explication I mean that part of it which makes the three Persons to be so many distinct Essences or Substances is the Doctrine of the Principal if not of all the Fathers as well as of the Platonists and I for my own part do grant it For I am perswaded that no Man hath read the Fathers with Judgment and Application but he must discern that tho they do not express themselves in the incautelous unwary and obnoxious Terms used by Dr. Sherlock as neither doth Dr. Cudworth yet the Fathers as much believed the three Persons are distinct Minds and Spirits as Dr. Sherlock doth all the Difference as I said is only this that they and Dr. Cudworth do not use his very Terms They do not say in express words three Minds or three Spirits but the Comparisons which they use and their Definitions or Descriptions of what they mean by Persons are such that it cannot be questioned by any that they apprehended the three Persons to be three distinct Spirits Minds and Beings having each of them his own

the first Inventors of it were Peter Lombard and the Schoolmen so it hath no other publick Authority but that of the Fourth Lateran Council held in the Year 1215. He saith 't is a gross piece of Nonsense that it falleth not under Human Conception neither saith he can it be in Nature This is the Judgment which this great Philosopher and Divine maketh of the Explication propounded and defended in Dr. S th's Animadversions on Dr. Sherlock And in very deed Dr. S th's Explication can fitly and properly be called by no other Name but an absurd Socinianism or Socinianism turn'd into Ridicule as we shall see when we come to consider it in particular Mr. Hooker the celebrated Author of the Ecclesiastical Polity giveth yet another Explication of the Trinity he descibeth it to be the Divine Essence distinguished by three Internal and Relative Properties this Explication differs as much from Dr. Wallis as any of the rest for Dr. Wallis's three Persons are all of them External Denominations or Predications But these Differences Sir among our Opposers will appear to you most clearly without my needing to point at them in the Accounts I am about to give of their several Explications of their Trinity and the Observations I shall make on them Therefore I pass on to the Explication given us by Dr. Sherlock Of the Explication by Dr. W. Sherlock FOR Memory and Method's sake and because the Division is so just we may distinguish the Accounts or Explications of the Trinity contrived by our Opposers after this manner There is first the Trinity according to Tully or the Ciceronian Trinity which maketh the three Divine Persons to be nothing else but three Conceptions of God or God conceived of as the Creator the Redeemer and Sanctifier of his Creatures Dr. Wallis after many others hath propounded and asserted this Trinity in his Letters and his Sermons to the Patris conscripti at Oxford He found in Tully Sustineo unus tres Personas of which he mistaketh the meaning to be I being but one Man yet AM three Persons saith the Doctor hereupon Why may not God be three Persons as well as one Man was three Persons The next is the Cartesian Trinity or the Trinity according to Des Cartes which maketh three Divine Persons and three Infinite Minds Spirits and Beings to be but one God because they are mutually and internally and universally conscious to each others Thoughts Mr. Des Cartes had made this Inventum to be the first Principle and Discovery in Philosophy Cogito ergo sum I think therefore I am and he will have the very Nature of a Mind or Spirit to consist in this that 't is a thinking Being Therefore says Dr. Sherlock three Persons can be no otherways one God but by Unity of Thought or what will amount to as much as internal and perfect Consciousness to one anothers Thoughts Any one may see that Dr. Sherlock's Mutual Consciousness by which he pretends to explain his Trinity in Unity was by him borrowed from the Meditations and Principles of Monsieur Des Cartes his System was hinted to him by that unhappy Philosopher who hath razed as much as in him lay the only Foundation of Religion by resolving so absurdly as well as impiously the Original of the World and of all Things not into the Contrivance and Power of an Almighty and All-wise Mind but into the Natural Tendencies of Bodies or as he calls them the Laws of Motion The Third is the Trinity of Plato or the Platonick Trinity maintained by Dr. Cudworth in his Intellectual System This Trinity is of three Divine Co-eternal Persons whereof the second and third are subordinate or inferior to the first in Dignity Power and all other Qualities except only Duration Yet they are but one God saith he because they are not three Principles but only one the Essence of the Father being the Root and Fountain of the Son and Spirit and because the three Persons are gathered together under one Head even the Father This saith Dr. Cudworth is the Trinity of Plato and the genuine Platonists and is the only true Trinity all other Trinitarians besides the Platonists are but Nominal Trinitarians and the Trinities they hold are not Trinities of subsisting Persons but either of Names and Denominations only or of partial and inadequate Conceptions The fourth is the Trinity according to Aristotle or the Aristotelian or Peripatetick Trinity which saith the Divine Persons are one God because they have the same Numerical Substance or one and the self-same Substance in Number and tho each of the three Persons is Almighty All-knowing and most Good yet 't is by one individual and self-same Power Knowledge and Goodness in Number This may be called also the Reformed Trinity and the Trinity of the Schools because the Divines of the middle Ages reformed the Tritheistick and Platonick Trinity of the Fathers into this Sabellian Jargonry as Dr. Cudworth often and deservedly calleth it This is the Trinity intended by Dr. S th in his Animadversions on Dr. Sherlock especially at chap. 8. The Author or first Contriver of it was Peter Lombard Master of the Sentences and Bishop of Paris who died in the Year 1164. It never had any other Publick Authority saith Dr. Cudworth but that of the fourth Lateran Council which is reckoned by the Papists among the General Councils and was convened in the Year 1215. He might have added that the Doctrine of P. Lombard was disliked and opposed by divers Learned Men and censured by Alexander the Third and other Popes till Pope Innocent the Third declared it to be Orthodox It may be not unprobably said that an Unitarian was the true Parent of it for 't is said that Peter Lombard took his four Books of Sentences for so much as concerneth the Trinity out of a Book of P. Abelardus concerning the same To this Trinity of Aristotle and the Schools we must reckon the Trinity of Properties which we shall see hereafter is so variously explained as to make even divers sorts of Trinities yet I refer all the Property-Trinities to this fourth Distinction of Trinities the Trinity according to Aristotle because they are all grounded on the abstracted or Metaphysical and Logical Notions of that Philosopher nor can they be understood without some Knowledge of his Philosophy We must add to all these the Trinity of the Mobile or the Trinity held by the common People and by those ignorant or lazy Doctors who in Compliance with their Laziness or their Ignorance tell you in short that the Trinity is an unconceivable and therefore an inexplicable Mystery and that those are as much in fault who presume to explain it as those who oppose it I have propounded to my self to discourse briefly on all these Trinities I have begun with the Trinity of Marcus Tullius Cicero or if he pleases of Dr. Wallis I have said of it as much as is necessary the next is the Trinity according to the

believed that the Son was created by the Father or God but a little before the Creation of the World and that the Spirit was the Work or Creature of the Son and further that their Substances or Essences were altogether unlike from whence they were also called Heterousians But the moderate Arians were content to say that there was no conceivable Duration or Time between the Being of God or the Father and the Generation or Creation for those are with them equivalent Terms of the Son the Father made or generated the Son so early that there was no conceivable Portion of Time before the Son was no more than was absolutely necessary for giving to the Father the Priority of Existence and his Title of Father and as to their Substances they are Consubstantial by which this sort of Arians meant and the Church then meant no more that their Substances or Essences are alike or the same for Kind and Properties tho not in Number that is the Essences of these three Persons are all of them Spiritual Eternal and Infinite tho only the Father is Infinite in Power These moderate Arians were received to Communion by the moderate Trinitarians and particularly by Pope Liberius Dr. Cudworth holdeth their very Doctrine he alloweth only the Father to be Omnipotent and tho he saith that the Son and Spirit are also Eternal yet he cannot deny that there must be some Priority of the Father as the Fountain Principle and Cause before the Son and Spirit as Effects In a word the moderate Arians ascribed as much to the Son as Dr. Cudworth doth Were Dr. Cudworth alive it would not be expedient to make this Judgment of his Explication but being dead it cannot hurt him He is retired to the true Mount Moriah or Land of Vision where he no longer guesses by prudent and wary Conjectures but he knows and even sees how these things are God and Nature after which he enquired with so much Application and Freedom are now known to him and he now rests from his excellent Labours out of all danger from the Malevolence of the present evil Generation with whom 't is a Crime not to take every thing upon Trust on the meer Credit of those who have been before us As if it were the way to Truth not to enquire but to believe not to examine try and judg but to pre-suppose and take for granted every thing that has been told us by Men in Power and Place This is the Spirit that now prevails in the Church and on the contrary an ingenuous Freedom in enquiring and examining tho it be nothing else indeed but an honest and necessary Sincerity is now called Heresy and Schism and is if you 'll believe them to be punish'd with certain Damnation We have however in the mean time this Satisfaction that it is God who shall at last judg us He that hath said to us Try all things hold fast that which is good But I pass to the Trinity according to Aristotle defended by Dr. S th Of the Explication by Dr. S th I Have already done Right to Dr. S th and his Book if he takes it amiss that I observe also some Defects in it he ought to show his Patent by which he is constituted the only Animadverter on the Books of others If he hath received any Personal Wrong or Affront from Dr. Sherlock he is the more excusable that his Book hath so much more Scurrility than Argument but the Injury must have been very great to excuse him wholly He has noted some Errors either of Inadvertency and Haste or of the Pen in some Expressions and Words used by Dr. Sherlock he imputes all these as faults of meer Ignorance or Dulness to the Doctor This was somewhat barbarous nay it was more Barbarity in Point of Morality or Manners than ever Dr. Sherlock was guilty of in Grammar or Speech Dr. S th will not at least has not yet been able to perswade many that Dr. Sherlock wants the Qualifications or the degree of the Qualifications for which Dr. S th hath deserved Esteem the World thinks there is a great deal more in Dr. Sherlock to be commended besides his Preferments it is only wished that both these Doctors had something more of the Tenderness and Catholick Charity of Genuine Christianity tho it were accompanied with lesser Abilities or Learning Dr. Sherlock hath publish'd an Essay towards vindicating and explaining the Difficulties of the Trinity and Incarnation the Method he hath taken is wholly new and is a Mistake but it was meant well and I do not think that setting aside some Authorities or Quotations Dr. S th hath said any thing against it which Dr. Sherlock will much value The Arguments used by Dr. S th are only Metaphysical Reasonings easily advanced and as easily destroyed Dr. S th's is the true Explication that is to say as Orthodoxy is reckoned since Peter Lombard and the Lateran Council but Dr. Sherlock knew it to be Nonsense and therefore adventur'd to propose another he put forth his Hand to save the tottering and falling Ark and 't is made an inexcusable Fault But I will pass from the too Cynical Doctor to his Book and Explication 'T is not till Chap. 8. that he begins to bless us with the Catholick and Orthodox Account of his Trinity in Unity but at length at Pag. 240. out comes the Secret with this Preface to it The Doctrine of the Church and of the Schools concerning the Blessed Trinity so far as I can judg but still with the humblest Submission to the Judgment of the Church of England in the Case is this Truly I am heartily sorry to hear it that Dr. S th at these Years has no fixed Religion of his own no not concerning the Trinity it self but is ready to turn with the Wind is prepared to renounce a Doctrine and Explication which he believes to be not only true but Fundamental if the Church commands him Mr. Milbourn makes the same Complement to his good Mother the Church in his late Book against the Socinians as I have noted in my Answer to him but Mr. Milbourn is somewhat excusable because he hath not yet received any of the Rewards due as he thinks to his Industry and Learning but Dr. S th is full and even overflows with the Blessings of the holy Mother It should seem Dr. S th thinketh he hath not yet enough else he would never be so over-mannerly as to put his Faith it self afloat and that too with the humblest Submission at the Command of his Reverend Mother We may infer however from these publick Professions of the Writers that could the Socinians get Mother Church of their side all her Champions would also come over to us for 't is not it seems the Cause that they defend 't is not the Trinity or Incarnation that they value but our Mother our Mother the Church If Dr. S th makes so light of his own Explication that he