to the Papists themselves as to us of the Reformation their Memory is glorious and ought to be precious also among us But we say also that the Augéan Stable was too foul to be absolutely cleansed at once even by Hercules and his Companions Dr. Luther did a great deal the Labours of his Companions and Seconds were very laudable but much Filth is still left behind We desire to be fairly and candidly heard concerning some corruptions in the Faith and some abuses in the Morality still taught and particularly which is the Subject of these present Papers concerning the Object of our Faith and Worship Almighty GOD. We see we own that the Doctrine of the Church meaning by the Church the Nominal Trinitarians is sound as to the Sense and Intention of it but we humbly offer that the Terms in which 't is expressed are Vnscriptural and very Dangerous The words Trinity Incarnation Hypostatical Vnion are never used in Scripture nor is God ever there called Persons but Person And 't is evident that by occasion of these Terms the Vulgar have such a conception of the Trinity as is certain Tritheism When the People hear of God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost they know not that thereby are meant only so many Relations of God either internal Relations to himself or external Relations to the Creature but they conceive in their Minds such a Father Son and Spirit distinct from both as are so many several subsisting Spirits so many distinct All-perfect Beings in very Deed so many Living Gods and not one God under three several Conceptions For tho they are taught to say three Divine Persons and but one God and that God the Father God his Son and God the Holy Ghost tho each of them is God yet all of them are but one God this last all of them but one God because they know not how 't is to be conceived with the other namely that each of them is God and one of them is God the Father another God the Son they utterly lose the Conception of one God and retain only what is intelligible to them namely three Divine Persons each of them a God We think that the Church having gained her Point against the Fathers and Realists in the Lateran Council and having been in Possession of the Truth for near 500 Years together she may now fling off the Disguise hitherto used the dangerous Tritheistick terms Trinity Persons and the rest she may now begin to declare the Truth she owns in Terms and Words that are proper for it Why does she frown upon those nay persecute them that believe the Unity of God in the Sense that she holds it only because they would cast out the Terms that so plainly favour the Tritheists that is the Realists What has the Church to fear has not the Lateran Council and all Writers ever since declared the Realists to be Hereticks therefore what need is there to retain their Terms when we have discharged the Notions intended by them 'T is true we can say as the Church does three Divine Persons the Father is God the Son is God the Holy Ghost is God taking these words in the Church's Sense not for subsisting Persons that is to say Living Spirits but for Relations Properties Modes or such like We can say God was Incarnate meaning he did inhabit the Lord Christ after an ineffable manner and without Measure which is really as much as the Church intends by the word Incarnation We own the eternal Generation of the Son or Word and Procession of the Spirit by and from the Father explaining our selves with the School-Divines the Church and divers Fathers thus that God or the Father or original Wisdom conceived a most perfect Image of himself by understanding and considering his own Perfections and that he loveth or willeth as well as understandeth himself We can even say three Divine subsisting Persons intending with Dr. S th the Schools the Lateran Council and the Church Relative Subsistences whose Subsistence is nothing else but their Relation Which are Dr. S th's express words Tritheism charged p. 156. I cannot but ask it again why does the Church keep or impose on us such Words and Terms as in their present Signification destroy the Faith we both imbrace the Faith of the real Vnity of God We can say as the Church says we can use her Terms because we know her meaning but we cannot but say of them as Mr. Calvin did when ask'd his Opinion of the English Common-Prayers Tolerabiles Ineptiae For in very Deed 't is meer Trifling and something worse when the signification of these Terms and Words is wholly altered from what it antiently was yet still to retain them while the Church knows at the same Time that they give wrong Notions to the Vulgar making all our People Tritheists and serve also to animate and harden the Realists in their Heresy But I must do the Church this right to confess that most of her greatest Men particularly the first Reformers have publish'd to all the World their hearty desire that all these terms of the Realists were abolish'd and all were obliged to use the Scripture-Language and Words only which would heal all our Breaches and perfectly restore our Peace not only in this but in almost all other Questions and Strifes Let us hear of so many as might be alledged Dr. M. Luther and Mr. J. Calvin M. Luther complains The word Trinity sounds odly it were better to call Almighty God God than Trinity Postil major Dominic Mr. Calvin is yet less pleased with these kind of Terms he says I like not this Prayer O Holy Blessed and Glorious Trinity It savours of Barbarity the word Trinity is barbarous insipid profane an human Invention grounded on no Testimony of God's Word the Popish God unknown to the Prophets and Apostles Admon 1. ad Polon Decemb. 17. 1695. FINIS
or of any others But then say I the Realists would cover such flat Impossibilities such gross Contradictions to common Sense in a Word such Monstrosities under the cloak of Mystery that they have infinitely more need of that wretched Blind than the Nominals who only by explaining their Terms which Custom and Law have imposed on them go a great way in fairly satissying all Difficulties and when they cannot perfectly account for them they make some small use of Mystery To understand this we must take a short view of the polite happy Things said by them both The Nominals teach there is but one numerical God or one God in Number who yet is three Persons That the Father is God the Son is God the H. Ghost is God yet all three are but one God one God in Number one self-same God They are perfectly aware this were equally Impossible and Ridiculous if 't were not dextrously interpreted and explained it would not be Mystery or Mysterious Truth but notorious Falshood and Absurdity they well know if wholly left in these Terms without an Explication Therefore they declare that by the term Persons and the words Father Son and Spirit they mean not with the Vulgar several subsisting Persons that is to say So many intellectual Substances with each his own particular Life Understanding Will and power of Action for they confess there is in God but one Substance Life Understanding Will Energy in number but three Persons in God are so many States or Respects or Properties or Relations or something equivalent to these of the same ore Divine intellectual Substance or Nature And in this Sense also according to the Nominals the words Father Son and Spirit when used of God are to be understood namely as Relations or States all of them sustained by one and the same subsisting Person or intellectual Substance not as in so many Subjects or as denominating variously three distinct Beings They show that so the Classical Authors both Greek and Latin spoke and as their Language was adopted by the Church in speaking of God with great Propriety so in process of Time the use of Words being much altered occasion was given to introduce the Heresy of the Realists who unlearnedly understanding the old Words in a novel Sense have brought into the Church three Gods instead of one Again they the Nominals say the second Person of the Trinity or of God was Incarnate in the Man Christ Jesus in such manner that thereby the Lord Christ is God as well as Man This also is called by that Mystical Name the Hypostatical or personal Union But they mean no more by it than this that God was as much and truly united to the Humanity as the Human Nature is capable of that is to say in a most extraordinary marvellous and to us unaccountable Manner When they say O God the Father have Mercy on us O God the Son O God the Holy Ghost have Mercy on us they intend not hereby three Objects of Worship or so many several Patrons and Helpers but only as these are so many Relations and Respects of the Deity either to himself or to us so they invocate him by these Distinctions or in these several Properties and Relations In short the whole Mystery consists in the Terms they use and scarce at all if at all in the Sense or things intended by those Terms which things or sense are received and imbraced by us the Unitarians for we admit the whole Doctrine as here declared and explained But 't is quite otherwise with the Realists their Non-sense is in the thing meant not in the Words or Terms They say there are three Divine subsisting Persons three infinite Spirits three omniscient Minds three distinct Almighties as distinct as so many Angels or Men each of them as truly properly adequately and perfectly God as each Man is a Man and each Angel an Angel and yet all of them are but one God This we confess is Mystery with a Witness the Mystery every one sees lies not in the Words and Terms but the thing it self is absurd and impossible to cry Mystery here is to profess that by Mystery we mean Contradiction and Impossibilities The Excuses they make for this Mystery are as mysterious or more mysterious than the Mystery for which they would apologize For to say these three most perfect Gods become one God by their mutual Accord and Love is as if you should pretend that by Love and Accord three Men are one Man And when they say they are one God by likeness or sameness of Nature and Properties and by being in one another they might equally say that two or more Angels because they have the same Nature and Properties and being Spiritual do immeate or are in one another are thereby one Angel These Explications of their Mystery are assuredly as great Mysteries as direct Contradictions to Reason and common Experience as the Doctrine it self of one God and three Divine subsisting Persons But why do the Realists expect that Mankind will be perswaded to accept such palpable abnegations of all consistent Sense for Mystery words that are hardly Sense or of either ambiguous or obscure meaning may be put off with some or other who care not for the Trouble of considering for Mystery but gross Contradictions obvious and notorious Non-sense will never be mistaken for Mystery 'T is true People may be constrained to profess it or to subscribe to it but they never believe it no not when through a long habit of Submission to the Commands of others they seem to themselves to believe it I doubt not that the Doctors of the Church of Rome seem to themselves to believe the Transubstantiation because having accustom'd themselves to submit to the Declarations of the Church they have never suffered any reluctance to arise in their Minds against any of those Declarations notwithstanding I am perswaded not a Man of them truly believes that Mystery were all Fears and Hopes and other blassing Interests removed they would presently perceive that in very Deed they believe it not their Reasons never assented to an impossible Proportion nor could assent but only as I said through a long habit of Submission they did not discern that they assented not to the Church's Declarations And this I believe is true also of all who pretend or seem to believe any other inconsistent or impossible Doctrines The Tritheism of the Realists not grounded on the H. Scripture BUT this once more 't is not on a probable or prudent Ground that the Realists sometimes pretend that the Tritheism they impose has such a Foundation in Holy Scripture that as on the one side to believe the Trinity in their Notion of it is a violence done to Reason so not to own and profess it would oblige them to as great a Violence and Disobedience to Holy Scripture I confess I have often wondred that Men so Learned and Discerning as very many of the Realists are
should maintain such an Opinion and after having made such Concessions to the Nominals and to the Unitarians as the Realists do They grant it to be certain and incontestable not only in Reason but in Holy Scripture that there is but one God but one Creator they allow this to be so true and evident that the Scripture ought never to be so interpreted as in any degree to contradict this first Article of all revealed Religion because to interpret Holy Scripture at any Time or in any part of it inconsistently with that Article were to make it contradict it self and that too where it speaks most plainly and expresly I say this Foundation being laid and agreed on all Hands I have often wondred at the pretence of the Realists for their Doctrine being a manifest Tritheism as explained by them in saying 'tis what the Holy Scriptures teach they say that the Sacred Scriptures contradict themselves They would have it understood as a great deference on their Parts towards the Holy Scriptures that they imbrace and profess the Doctrine therein contained though such Doctrine very flatly contradicts all Reason and common Sense and withal other parts of the same Scriptures but it were far more becoming such as they are to express their Reverence for the Scripture by interpreting it consistently with it self and with Reason as the Nominals and Unitarians do than to expose it to the contempt and unbelief of all others by such a Reverence of it as this Book needs not that is to say by pretending to believe it indeed but believe it as manifestly inconsistent with it self as well as with that Reason which God has infused into the Human Nature for a Guide and Judg in all either obscure or doubtful Matters It is the Church and the Unitarians that truly reverence the Scriptures by rescuing them from senseless and contradictory which is to say impossible Senses But supposing it were true that the meer Words of some few suspected or ambiguous Texts did seem very much to favour the Doctrine of the Realists yet seeing those Texts as interpreted by the Realists too plainly contradict evident Reason and the Nature of things why will not these Gentlemen see that in such a Clash as this We must interpret the Scripture consistently with Reason and the nature of things because words will bear to be somewhat strained much rather than things The nature of Things and the dictates of Reason are Eternal and Immutable they will not admit or bear the least Stretch Strain or Violence done to them but Words are of a very desultory and vagrant Meaning they are sometimes to be taken Literally or as they Sound sometimes in a metaphorical or figurative Sense sometimes in an Hyperbolical that is excessive nay sometimes in an Ironical which is to say contrary Sense which being the Case of all Books and Writings whatsoever there can never be a real Necessity of so interpreting the Scripture that it should contradict the known Nature of things plain Reason or it self Whereas some say here and are willing always to repeat it that the current of Scripture is so much and so clearly for such a Trinity as the Realists profess that it would be manifest Violence done to the Divine Word to interpret it as the Socinians do I answer Cedò locum name me the Text or Context alledged for the Doctrine of the Trinity that is not interpreted by some of the most Learned Criticks and Interpreters of the Trinitarian Party in the same manner as 't is understood by the Unitarians Why do they pretend that they are constrained and by the clearness and the current of Scripture to profess a Trinity of Divine subsisting Persons when all Learned Men know that the Texts they have to alledg are so far from being the current of Scripture that they are few in Number and also of very suspected Authority that is they are justly doubted of whether they are genuine original Parts of Scripture or have been added to it and so far from being clear that they are extreamly Ambiguous and accordingly not only some but even the generality of Trinitarian Criticks interpret most of them as we do and not only most of them but the Principal of them more particularly the objected Texts that seem to impute the Creation of Things to our Saviour As I said but now Cedò locum I demand that Text or Context which I will not show is interpreted by the most sufficient of their own Party as we take it but if so as 't is not the first Time this Challenge has been made to them why do they so untruly pretend that they are carried away by the Current of Scripture and by the clearness of it both on their sides May they call a few single Texts or rather shreds of Texts the Current of Scripture or talk of the clearness of their Texts when they cannot alledg so much as one but is interpreted to an Unitarian Sense by some of their own best Writers on the Scriptures and of Controversy With how much more Reason and Sincerity may the Unitarians claim the current of Scripture and that 't is clear also on their Side For there is not a Page there but speaks of God in the singular Number there God is never called Persons but Person he is always spoken of and to by singular Pronouns such as I Thou Thee He Him Me which are never used in any Language but only of one single Person never of three subsisting Persons When the Realists say the Scriptures are clear of their side they mean it chiefly of those Texts wherein Christ is called God and of those in which the Creation of the World and of all things is or seems to be attributed to him But how often is the name God given in Holy Scripture to those that either represent God as Kings and Magistrates or that are like to him in some very distinguishing Respect or in whom he dwells after a peculiar manner as Prophets and Heroical Persons is not Moses for one Instance on all these accounts called God and by God himself And is it a Marvel then that the Mediator also of the New Testament as well as he of the Old is dignified with this Name And yet as I have said elsewhere I am well assured that the Realists will never prove against the Author of the Brief History of the Socinians that the name God is really given to the Lord Christ in any Text that is a genuine Part of Scripture that is to say that hath not been corrupted by the Zeal of Catholicks to make it more conformable to their Sentiments As to the Texts that impute the Creation of things to the Son that is to the Lord Christ do not all Learned Men know that the best of the Trinitarian Interpreters some of the zealousest Men of the Party understand all those Texts of the New Creation that is of the Renovation of things on Earth by the Ministry of
Christ and in Heaven by his Exaltation above the Angels And secondly That neither is there any need of this for those Texts may be thus translated all things were made for him and without regard to him was nothing made that was made Were made for him that is to say they were originally made by God for the Messiah namely to subject them in fulness of Time to him and to his Law Which is the Interpretation of St. John Chrysostom a most Learned Trinitarian in the Opus Imperfectum on St. Matthew In short I would not have it said that the current of Scripture is much less is clearly on their side who contend for a Trinity of Divine subsisting Persons because 't is so well known that this senseless extravagant boast of some small Writers of Controversy is the Jest and Sport of their own Criticks and Interpreters of Note who have far more scorn for such Sciolists than they have Enmity to the Socinians Of the Unitarians their Agreement with the Church THE Unitarians called also Socinians are a Sect or Party or Denomination of Christians who have indeavoured to perfect that Reformation that was so happily begun by Dr. M. Luther Mr. J. Calvin and here in England by Archbishop Cranmer Dr. Luther subverted the Infallibility and Supremacy of the Pope the Worship and Invocation of Angels and Saints the superstitious monastick Vows the Merchandize of Indulgencies by which poor Sinners had been long cozen'd into a Belief that they could buy the Pardon of their Sins from the Pope and his Factors and this not only without Restitution Amendment or Repentance but without Confession for that also was sometimes a Clause in their Bulls of Indulgence that the Purchaser should be absolved of all his Sins whether Confessed or not Confessed The forms of Indulgences were so ample that is so General and Comprehensive that Men of any Wealth never cared what Sins they were guilty of because they knew they could at any time whether Dead or Alive purchase their Pardon if they had neglected it in their Life Time 't was but leaving so much Money by Will for Masses and Indulgences and they were sure all should be forgiven The Story of the French Gentleman is well known who being admonished by his Friend of his horrible Cursing and Blaspheming answered Man there is no fear cannot I buy my Pardon of the Friars Austins I would be forgiven for an Ounce of Gold though I had ravish'd the Mother of God and cut off both her Breasts This was the state of Things when Dr. Luther appeared and opposed himself so successfully to these Corruptions as I said he intirely ruin'd the Market of Indulgences Monastick Vows Invocation of Saints and Angels the Supremacy and Infallibility of the Chair of Rome Mr. J. Calvin besides that he greatly strengthned and confirmed what Dr. Luther had begun by his extraordinary Erudition fine Wit and indefatigable Diligence in all which Mr. Calvin excelled the very greatest of the first Reformers he carried the Reformation somewhat farther than Luther had done He took away the use of Images which can serve only for a snare to the Weak and for an Avocation and Amusement to the Discerning His Doctrine concerning the Sacraments has fewer Follies than not only that of Rome but than Luthers he rejected the Consubstantiation as well as the Transubstantiation and was not imposed on by the Doctrine of Ubiquity I need say nothing of Arch-bishop Cranmer because his Reformation is known to every Englishman his Doctrine and Discipline being expressed in the 39 Articles the Books of Homilies of Canons and the Common-Prayer All Protestants have a great Reverence for these famous and excellent Men even those of us who think that their Reformation is yet very incompleat I may add that as much as these Reformers are detested by the Papists the very Papists all Orders of them from the highest to the lowest from the Pope to the Begging and discalceate Friar are greatly in their Debt For now they have Learned Priests Holy Popes and the Kings and States of the Roman Communion are no longer the Slaves of the Pope all which was otherways when there were no Protestants of whom the Pope and Conclave and the rest of their Hierarchy might stand in some awe The Popes consider now that they must act Soberly live Exemplarily and inspect the Conduct and Sufficiency of the Clergy else the Princes and People now in their Communion will desert to the Protestants It was Dr. Luther as odious as his Name among them is who took off the Yoke and filed the Chains from the Necks and Hands of Emperours of Kings and Nations From laying prostrate under the Feet of the Pope from holding his Bridle and his Stirrup from expecting after their Election by the Princes of the Empire till the Pope should please to crown them and thereby give them the Name and Power of Emperours from Trembling every time that a crouching Friar was turned into a boisterous Pope I say from this miserable Vassalage the German Emperors and other Catholick Kings and States are delivered and care now just so much and no more for his Holiness's Love or Anger as the Example of his Life or the actual Assistance he can lend to 'em shall merit Since Luther the Clergy also of the Roman Communion are Learned and exemplary Men in their own Defence and for their own Security they must be so And they dare now withstand any new Incroachments on their Privileges or their Revenues by the Court of Rome Nay they have retrieved in some Degree their antient Rights and Authority for Rome dreads and ever will dread another Luther in case she should unjustly or rashly either oppress or offend the inferior Clergy Those of the Lay-Communion of that Church are now led with a Pastoral-Staff not hared with the Church's Thunder Excommunications and deliverings up to Satan They are sent of no more Errands to Syria and Asia in pretence to rescue the Holy Sepulchre in Deed to inlarge the Papal Bounds and Authority They are fed now with much sounder Doctrine and led by a better Example For now the necessity of Repentance and Amendment are taught Indulgences are now owned to be only Prudential and Charitable relaxations of Penance Images are now used only as Memorials of departed Saints and Incentives to imitate their Example the Sacrifice of the Mass is now only a commemorative Sacrifice which even Protestants believe it to be the Virgin Mary and the Saints are prayed to only to pray with us and for us and the like abatement is made in other Articles And whereas with reference to the Example of their Priests it has been a Proverb in some Places He that will give his Child to the Devil let him make him a Priest now and for almost two Ages last past their danger from the Protestants as was said before has reformed their Manners These are the Services done by the first Reformers as well