the flesh which was his coming forth from God according to the flesh man according to his coming forth from God he was God And here I cannot pass by Mr. Biddles paradoxical exposition made on Rom. 1.3 4. compare Heb. 9.14 Who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God which he compares with the spirit of holiness and indeed are one but not as he makes them who by the eternal Spirit understands not the Spirit God but the body of Christ made a spirit 1. The whole Scriptures say not that the Body of Christ risen or any other is made a spirit but a spiritual body concretive not a spirit 1 Cor. 15.44 which is done in that mortal shall put on immortality corruptible incorruption 2. He offered himself to God which sure if Mr. Biddle dreams not himself was his Body Soul and Spirit all according to the flesh by an eternal spirit which was not by himself but by the Spirit as distinct from himself man which was offered up 3. By this spirit of holiness or divine being he was declared to be the Son of God to Thomas who seeing him was dead risen again saw that he was thereby declared to be the Son of God in power John 20.28 death not being able to hold him because stronger then it 4. This spirit was the divine nature or being in Christ and therefore not called the holy Spirit of which he saith John 2.19 Destroy this Temple and in three dayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I will raise it it is not said the holy Spirit or the Father or God will raise it but I will raise it And that these words made Thomas call him Lord and God appears from ver 22. therefore when he was risen from the dead his Disciples remembred that he said this unto them and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken who looked on him as raising himself And thus the high Priests and Pharisees Mat. 27.63 This deceiver said whilst he was yet living After three dayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I will raise it again and then ver 64. and his disciples steal him away and say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is risen from the dead and John 10.18 he saith I have power to lay down my life and I have power to take it again Now in that he saith No man taketh my soul from me shews the reason why the humanity cryes out to the divinity My God my God why hast thou forsaken me in that he left it to death which whilst it supported it it could not die nor be overcome of death This is notably illustrated in the healing the woman diseased with the bloody Issue who being secretly healed Christ said That he sound vertue went forth from him which proves that Christ was very sensible of the going forth of vertue and the desisting of vertue in it self Luke 8.46 how sensible must it then be when life must be laid down and given up by it self to death Mat. 27.46 Hence in the Greek it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eli not Jehovah nor Elohim without an Article signfying a diminitive and proper to God as came out from God properly owned of the humanity as its God who by its withdrawing vertue from him felt himself weakned and given up thereby to death compare Acts 2.24 and 4.10 and it proves Jesus to be God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Quest How came this divine nature into the humane Resp In the holy Spirits making him according to the flesh the Son is foretold Psalm 72.6 prophetically to come down like rain into a fleece of wool which was done in his being in the womb of the Virgin I come now to speak of that Mr. Biddle calls the third person of the holy Trinity viz. the holy Spirit which he sometimes takes to be that spirit in Scripture which is onely called the spirit and not the holy Spirit which distinguisheth them clearly thereby it being no other then the humane spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ But that the Spirit the holy or the holy Spirit is of the Elohims and in Jehovah and so indeed of the Trinity being one of one and the same nature having one and the same name with the Father and Son appears 1. Elohim is of the plural number not dual and so more then two are meant thereby 2. And no more then three because the old and new Testaments onely speak of three as one in Jehovah of the Father abiding in the excellent glory and the Son and the holy Spirit coming forth from thence and no more 1 John 5.7 3. So that to preach from the Gospel a Trinity consisting of a divine and infinite being and of a Man-God and an Angelical created spirit is a thing forbidden of God Exod. â—0 2 Thou shalt have no other Elohims before me that is no other but those that are in the one Jehovah which these are not being indeed feigned things and false not in Jehovah nor Jehovah he himself says the contrary of them And in this Scripture that Elohims in Jehovah are more then two is clear and that to render Elohims by God as now taken is not according to God And as for that supposed distinction of the Spirit of God and so he is thereby distinguished from God it is no more truth then if a man should say that the Scripture speaking of the spirit of man hath thereby distinguished it from man when man is not nor can be man without his spirit so nor is the true God God to any without his spirit 1 Cor. 2.11 As for the Spirit 's not staying within God as mans within him it is to shew the infinite being of the Spirit whose abode and being in God is not as mans spirit in his minde as confined to a place in God The Son in coming out from God the uncreated and incommunicable state of the Elohims in Jehovah came into the world uniting himself to the man Christ Jesus or to the created being of man in which he came into the world but as for the Spirit he came forth from the Father in the uncreated and incommunicable state of Elohims Joh. 16.27 28. and as the Son is distinctly said to come forth from the Father Joh. 15.26 But he is not said to come forth from God as the Son is nor to come into the world that is that he is become one with any created substance Hence it was the form of a dove not a dove he was said to descend in it being given for a signe to reveal Christ by that the Spirit must visibly descend on one man amongst many so that it may from all other set him out to John to know him by And then it must come from heaven lest men should take the likeness of the dove to be an ordinary dove indeed who is no more confined to heaven then Jehovah is where Jehovah is his Spirit is as he is The end being this as Joh. 1.32 33.
THE DIVINITY Of the TRINITY CLEARED By wiping off the false Glosses put upon several places of Scripture By Mr. John Biddle In his book intituled The Apostolical and true Opinion touching the holy Trinity c. Written by a very Learned man lately deceased Take heed how ye hear Luke 8.18 Take heed what ye hear Mark 4.24 Try all things hold fast that which is good 1 Thes 5.21 LONDON Printed by J.C. and are to be sold by Edw. Blackmore at the Angel in Paul's Church-yard 1654. To my noble and ever honored Friend Colonel William Sydenham a late member of Parliament Noble Sir COntentions have been great and high of old and still are so about the equality or inequality of the Son of God with the Father even to the Anathematizing one the other when both that is a truth that the Arrians and the Arminians hold viZ. That the Son is less then the Father and that which the Protestants hold is no less a truth viz. that the Sonne is equall with the Father which being understood and observed according to the mind of God is holy and good but men exceeding in diminishing the Sonne in his Essence and exalting him in his emanation the truth being hid is the cause of the controversie and men have thereby come to subvert the faith of many The greatest the grossest and yet the most subtil way thereto hath been laid of late by Mr. John Biddle in that book of his called The Apostolical and true Opinion concerning the holy Trinity revived which the sooner I have wrote against because from the year 1647. he gloryes no man of the many learned he hath contested with hath given an answer to one Argument satisfactorily yea and that he hath long waited on the learned for an answer and can receive none That he hopes some one will and that himself is in the case a doubting Spirit and so a man convinceable and not to be rejected from all which with the bond of the Gospel that tyeth me to contend for the faith I am induced to commend this insuing Treatise to the World and first to you to whom I acknowledge my self and mine to owe very much and to God for you who I believe will not fail to satisfie your laying out from the least Cup of water to the greatest good you do for his to whom I commend you to be kept for ever being as I am bound to be Yours in the service of the Gospel John Brayne September 20. 2653. I first viewed Mr. Biddles book about Sept. 3. 1653 SIR PRovidence directed to my hand that Novel piece of yours Intituled The Apostolical and True Opinion concerning the holy Trinity In which to the Reader you glory that you have contested with sundry learned men and that they all have not been able to produce a satisfactory answer to so much as one Argument And then in the preface to your faith you call the truth of God touching three Persons in one God by the term of Opinion and say that it is as the bottom corrupting all Religion which in a most blinde way of Nature you seek to demonstrate from the being of Creatures because Apostle an universal predicated of three makes three Apostles if a man will make use of reason in his Religion By which blinde rule being led you call it an ignorant refuge of distinguishing the Essence and Persons of God yea a wretched and an unheard-of distinction in Scripture But your comparing the way and being of God with that of man God a Spirit and infinite Man a Creature finite were good it had never been heard arguing thus in your second Article of Faith from Phil. 2.7 The Sonne cannot be equal to God then he must have the same essence in number or a different one not the same in number otherwise it 's not equality but identity as equality in stature must differ in number though the same in kinde You say in your fourth Article The Trinity cannot consist of three Persons in one God but God himself is one of the three Persons which is absurd and say it is not onely the source of almost all the errors among Christians c. But it will appear your declining the same doctrine is the source of multitudes of errors in your booke and the overthrow of the faith of many by your supposed Trinity of one God one Man one Angel But if men observed your reasoning about God how carnal it is they would avoid trusting you For the natural Man discerneth not the things of God nor can he Never man spake so of God from the Earth as you have done confining his being to ours proving and denying his by ours who have not seen him nor known him But in opposition to all your reasonings and Sophistry 1. Consider God Deut. 6.4 sayes Hear Israel preparing the People to attend to what he sayes of himself against whatever any deceiver of the World should say of him that men be not deceived by them 2. He sayes by Moses Johovah our Elohims is one Jehovah Whence note deny it if you can Jehovah and Elohims are the same as Jehovah Ehhad one and as Elohims more then one yea or two because in the plural not in the dual number 2. These many because three Elohims are one Jehovah a word derived from 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be and implyes relation to his essence 3. To say Jehovah is one so one as to deny the Elohims is to deny Jehovah this place of all others discovering God most clear to the people of that State and proves the Father Son and Spirit one God to us even in our State 4. This very text wipes away all the gross and vile aspersions you have asperst the most pure truth of the blessed God with 2 Scrip. Gen. 11. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the beginning Dii creavit the Gods hath created which according to your reasoning is non-sence which may make you rise and say How can three be one or one be three so how can this be sence but 1. In the Elohim a noun plural joyned to a verb singular is excellently declared the unity of these Elohims in essence 2. For that estate as equal not in essence onely but in name and nature they have one common name of Elohims after in the State of the Gospel set forth by names of the Father Sonne and holy Spirit 3. They are indefinitely said to create that common name and not the Father more then the Sonne or Sonne then the holy Spirit 4. So that God the Creator of Heaven and Earth Acts 17.24 is the Elohims and not God the Father onely which to say is Heresie as appears by these Scriptures compared nor is it proper to say Jehovah did it but the Elohim John 13. 5. It is not said Jehovah as one created but the Elohims because that the outgoings of God manifested themselves in the creation as Elohims as Father Sonne and Spirit in redemption Prov. 8.22
The Spirit of the Lord Jehovah Luke 4.18 Isai 61.1 That these three are intended vers 8. is set down in Holy holy holy as alluding to Father Son and Spirit as appears plainly in saying 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is Jehovah Elohim 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which word doth specifie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be alluded to Elohim because Gen. 1.1 In the beginning the Elohims create the heaven and the earth Again it is clearly exprest that glory honour and praise is given to him that is the Elohims the Father Son and Spirit equally 1. And the Son sits with the Father in his throne Rev. 3.21 which he doth not if not set out in the Sardine appearance the Lamb is dead 2. Several appearances are not properly applied to the blessed being of God who is without shadow of change but as they serve to set out the Elohims in God 3. As for the Lamb Rev. 5.6 he is as slain in the throne that is he is as dead to and not capable of the glory proper to the Divine being of Jehovah Elohim And as for the Holy Spirit it is called God Acts 5.3 4. as I have cleared in my exposition on that place Phil. 3.3 For we are the circumcision 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those that worship the Spirit God It is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Rom. 1.9 And those taught of the Spirit are said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taught of God And because the variety of Gods speech by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God may more clearly appear I conceive it necessary to instance the same more largely 1. 1 Pet. 1.1 2. is expressed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God the Father which is that which is called the first person in the Trinity 2 Cor. 1.2 2. Jam. 1.27 Pure religion and undefiled 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and distinguisheth between Jehovah God in which Son and Spirit gone forth and the Father abiding in Jehovah Col. 3.17 proves the distinction more clearly Whatever ye do in word or deed do all in the Name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Father by him If by God be one thing meant and the same with that of the Father or by Father the same with God 1. Why are they both exprest Frustra fit plura quod fieri potest per pauciora 2. Or why are they not always both exprest Col. 1.12 Giving thanks to the Father who hath made us meet c. 3. Or why are they thus dis-joyned by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 here and not elsewhere in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 4. Why is there an article to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 when Father and God are distinguisht and not an article when God the Father as of the same thing is spoken of as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so to Jehovah ha El Haggibbor to the Son distinct El Gibbor 5. To 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is an article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for emphasis as signifying Jehovah but not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because it is for diminution the Father being but one of the Elohims and having but his portion with the Son and Spirit in the essence of God And so speaking of God the Father he saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 between as a diminutive 6. Indeed he sets the article before 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 3.14 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Father because vers 15. all fatherhood in heaven and earth is named from him Matth. 23.9 One is your Father which is in heaven As Father he is most excellent 7. Clearly in this speech of God the mystery of God is revealed Col. 2.2 That their hearts might be comforted being knit together in love unto all riches of full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgement of the mystery 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the God and Father and the Christ So that as the Father and Christ are distinguished by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so God and the Father 1. And saith that the mystery is in God and the Father as well as in God and in Christ 2. In the word God is comprehended the Spirit and Son and the Father exprest as one in God because without an article added to the distinction as Christ hath 3. To understand by God the Father onely and by the Father God onely is to deny the Son and to unthrone the Spirit and to take their being God from them which thus understanding the Scriptures alone preserves to them And as for the Trinity that Mr. Biddle grounds from Ephes 4.4 5 6. One Spirit one Lord one God and Father of all c. 1. That Spirit is not said to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but spirit onely and indeed alludes to Christs humane spirit of which it is said If any have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his So 2 Cor. 13.5 2. For as that one body is Christs or Christ mystical so the Spirit of that body mystical is Christs by which they are of one faith one minde c. and the spirit by which men received Baptism which was not the holy Spirit as appears 1 Cor. 12.13 compared with Acts 8.12 15 16. 3. As the spirit and body respect the Church and are one made one by that one spirit as the Father and Son are one in that one essence of God 4. As there is one body and spirit in the Church so there is one Lord over it which Lord is not the Son of God but that made Lord that died and suffered death Acts 2.36 in whom men are to believe as that he is the Messiah of God and into whose name Jesus men are to be baptized and to have sins remitted therein There is one God that is Jehovah vers 6. in which the Trinity is comprehended of Father Son and Spirit as God is the Father of all and not as the Father of the Son Jesus Christ for here he is so the Father as he is the Father of all and not in a peculiar manner as Father of Jesus Christ by generation but by creation and generation In creation Father Son and Spirit are Father of all indefinitely Gen. 1.1 6. The Trinity must be three of one nature essence and being or they are not fit to be joyned together A God a Man an Angel nay a man meer man above an Angel is a very strange Trinity and no less then robbery to make equality in them 7. Indeed Matth. 3.16 hath the Father speaking as a Father to the Son as his Son not Jesus Christ as man and the Spirit of God which indeed is the Trinity or Elohims in Jehovah This one thing I desire may be considered that the holy Spirit is said to be Spirit of God as Jehovah and the Spirit of the Father and the Spirit of the Son Now as it is the Spirit