Design of Sacred Writers c. what is the true and proper signification of the Words which we read what sense arises from them Contradictions to natural Reason cannot be the true sense of the words Difficulties may such is the Doctrine of the Resurrection if we submit our Judgments in any case but this where we are sure of a Divine Revelation and where we are sure of the sense of the sacred Penman's words we pay an excessive Reverence to the Authority of Men but I believe that those Gentlemen who profess to submit their Judgments to the Church have no other aim but to court the Church her favour or cheat her inspection with a Complement There 's no avoiding such a thought as this when the solemn and publick Judgment and Declaration of a Vice-chancellor and Heads of one of our Universities condemning the Doctrine of three infinite distinct Minds and Substances in the Trinity as False Impious and Heretical contrary to the Doctrine of the Catholick Church and of the Church of England is made a Jest of and rejected with bold contemptuous and angry Railery All that the Church of England requires of us is I humbly conceive such a Reverence and Esteem as I first describ'd a wise Submission a Reverence join'd with Honesty and a good Understanding a Submission according as may be gather'd from the 20th of her 39 Articles because she does not as she ought not ordain any thing contrary to God's Word written because she expounds Scripture one place consonant to another because she is a faithful Keeper of Holy Writ decrees nothing against the same and besides the same enforces nothing as necessary to Salvation The Church does not pretend to Infallibility the most eminent Sons shall I say or Fathers of the Church look upon her Articles as Forms in a comprehensive Latitude drawn up for Peace sake and very conscious are they that the Church of the last Age was Calvinist the Church of the present Age Arminian and all the while it was Church of England but when bold Opiniators shall not be content to keep themselves within the accountable bounds of prudential Latitude but start odd Notions not at all distinguishable from Heathenish Polytheism then they who dispute against them enter into Religious Controversy mov'd thereunto by a very just Motive But perhaps it may be urg'd that the Polytheists did not begin the Quarrel Well suppose it what will they gain by that Plea if still their Doctrine is no other than Polytheism And what if it should appear that the Unitarians gave the first occasion of Dispute this will create no Prejudice against them in the Minds of considering Men for as far as I can perceive they took Exceptions not against the Articles but the Scholastical Terms of the Church and drove at nothing farther than that those difficult Propositions which are called Mysteries might be express'd as far as the Subject would admit in words plain and intelligible and when that could not be in the very Phrase of Scripture The Unitarians if I take them right cannot yet submit their Judgment so as not to prefer Scripture-Phrase before Scholastick Terms tho they are such lovers of Peace that it has been again and again declar'd that when nothing is meant by all those Terms of Art which is contrary to Reason or not consonant to Scripture they will not contentiously decline the use of them They have said as much in some of their Prints and I should not do them justice if I did not take notice of it They are also ready to pay due reverence to the Church because of her great Candour and Moderation in not exacting from good Christians a submission of Judgment as to the use of Religious Rites and Ceremonies something more hardly once she treated them but now God be thanked she is come to a true Christian Temper so that I reckon the Toleration which Parliamentary Authority has indulg'd is enjoy'd by conscientious Separatists with the consent of the Church for it were uncharitable to suspect that she is not the same now as a while ago in the time of her danger And therefore I think that those warmer Zealots who entertain their Auditories with Invectives against the Toleration do not only slight the Authority of King and Parliament but also bring a Scandal upon the Church It is but just to believe that the Church is pleas'd with the Toleration for this other reason because she gets more by that than ever she did by violence for it is visible that our Parochial Churches are fuller now than when we compell'd Men to come in But enough of this tho it is not altogether out of the way for this also tends to declare on what accounts a reverential esteem is due to the Church and on what respects the vindication of her Honour is a just Motive of entring into Religious Controversy but a blind submission of Judgment to all that the Church already has decreed or may decree hereafter is a sensless slavish Stupidity An implicit Faith in all her Articles is more than she does require a taking up always with the first obvious literal Grammatical Sense is more than the most and the most learned Deacons Priests and Bishops themselves do 2. The Persons of whom I have been speaking were prompted as may be gather'd from their Prints to enter into Religious Controversy by an indignation against all Innovations in Religion As specious a look as this Motive has it must be very well circumstanc'd before it can be allow'd for a just and reasonable one for it happens many times that the Innovation is but surmis'd and suspected and perhaps there would not be half the Differences which there are in the Church if words which have not all of them determinate and distinct Ideas if terms of Art and equivocal Phrases were expounded and sixt by exact and plain Definitions Foreign Protestants are apt to suspect that the Church of England favours the Doctrine of Transubstantiation because she expresses her self by that ambiguous Phrase Real Presence they are afraid lest Real Presence should signify Corporeal Presence But when the Church avows that she does not use the word Real in that sense but means only a Spiritual Presence apprehended and enjoy'd by Faith the occasion of dispute is remov'd and all that can be said against the Church is that her Language is not so proper as her Faith is pure Therefore that celebrated Hugonot Jurieu was more angry than the Cause deserv'd when he join'd Transubstantiation and Real Presence together and call'd 'em both Monsters which harsh Censure cannot be return'd upon his Accomplishment of Prophecies for that 's an ingenious learned pretty thing the Events of History have an agreeable resemblance to the Apocalyptick Emblems to which he applies them but for all that I believe there 's not one word of truth in his interpretative Accomplishment By the Form of Absolution in the Visitation of the Sick one might
Vindic. of the Trin. p. 14 15 16. The Bishop will not say that there are three Individual Intelligent Essences in the Godhead The Racovians never did say that the Godhead might not be consider'd as subsisting under divers Modes Now as for the Unitarians in this Particular their Case is this While they follow'd the Definiture of the Racovians which was accommodated to the common Acception of the word Person their Doctrine was But One Person in the One God But when the Nominals unanimously declar'd that they meant by Person not a compleat Intelligent Being but only Relations Properties or Modes of Subsistence then the Unitarians made no scruple to own three Persons in one Godhead As to the Particular before us then all that I would beg of my Lord of Worcester in behalf of the Unitarians is that they may have leave to be as much Socinian as his Lordship more they will not desire and if his Lordship hath any Arguments to refute the Trinity of the Realists consisting of three distinct Minds Intelligent Beings Essences which the Socinians have not us'd before him let him be pleas'd to communicate them and the Unitarians will promise for the future to oppose the Tritheism of the Realists only by his Lordship's Arguments and not by any borrow'd from the Socinians farther the Unitarians will be content that his Lordship shall only declare himself against the Doctrine of the Realists who are by reason of their equal Learning Eminence and not contemptible Numbers too considerable to be otherwise griev'd but far from every Orthodox Father be that Injustice common among Boys who when the Person that gives the Offence is out of their reach strike him that stands next It is not much out of place here to commend the good temper of the Unitarians who for conserving brotherly Love and Peace among Christians will not litigate about Terms and Words on which the Authority that imposes them puts an honest Sense and Meaning there are it must not be denied no small Inconveniences in altering the common signification of words but that 's so well remedied by a new Definition of the words that are alter'd that I would sooner envy our Church the Power of declaring Articles of Faith than this Liberty of making words signify in spite of common Sense what they please The greatest Mischief is when words that must be us'd in Theological Controversies must not signify as they have commonly done nor yet be determin'd anew to any other express Particular but this is the Fault of some Realists One of the Unitarians in his Book call'd The Agreement c. p. 36. has examin'd the Sense of the Bishop of Sarum concerning the Incarnation and Divinity of our Lord Christ and grants that the Sense of his Lordship may pass for Orthodox but undeniably evinces that the Sentiments of the Unitarians are a degree or two more Orthodox I shall not repeat but refer the Reader to the place chusing rather in pursuit of my chief purpose to insist wholly on this that there is not so wide a Difference between his Lordship's Explanations and the Racovian Catechism as might be imagin'd and that his Lordship is at least as much Racovian as the Unitarians I do not aim to vindicate all that 's in the Racovian Catechism but only so much of it as the Unitarians are concern'd with The Racovian Catechism teaches that Jesus Christ was a true Man by Nature but had not truly a Divine Nature that Jesus Christ was not so constituted of a Divine and Human Nature as a Man is of a Body and Soul The Bishop of Sarum teaches in the 2d of his four Treatises p. 96. That the Godhead by the Eternal Word the 2d in the blessed Three dwelt in and was so inwardly united to the human Nature of Jesus Christ that by virtue of it God and Man were truly one Person as our Soul and Body make one Man It must be confess'd that here is Contradiction in Terms direct and plain as can be but let the Exposition of the Terms which is given on either side be duly weigh'd and it will evidently appear that the Racovians and the Bishop agree very well as to the Substance of the Article except in one small respect wherein his Lordship is at some small variance with himself When the Racovians teach that our Lord Christ who was a true Man had not a true Divine Nature they do not mean that he was not constantly illuminated conducted and actuated by the Godhead but only that the Godhead did not become commensurate to a finite Man so as to produce a real Communication of Idioms and thereby make the great things which are spoken of Christ in respect of the Illuminating Conducting Indwelling Godhead to be equally applicable to his Humanity this is plain from the Reasons they give why they deny Christ to have a Divine Nature The first is this two Substances endued with opposite Properties cannot combine into one Person i. e. according to their Sense of the word Person into one individual Intelligent Essence Nothing occurs throughout the Bishop's whole Discourse contrary to this Negative but to establish it more sure several Expressions of the Bishop's as Mr. Hill of Kilmington has observ'd upon him intimate that the Manhood of Christ is a Person distinct from the Eternal Word that dwelt in him 2. The Racovians deny the Divine Nature of Christ because say they two Natures each whereof is apt to constitute a several Person i. e. a several individual Intelligent Essence cannot be huddled into one Person or one individual Intelligent Essence One would think that this Reason should not down with the Bishop and indeed the Language does not for p. 102. he says that from the Divine and Human Nature united there did result the Person of the Messias but then what does he mean by the Divine and Human Nature united Why no more than The Human Nature always actuated illuminated and conducted by the Divine This is very agreeable to Scripture yes and the Racovian Catechism also But to make this look more like an unintelligible Union that the Realists might not charge him with betraying the Cause to the Unitarians he calls it in lofty Phrase an assuming the Man into an inward and immediate Oeconomy p. 108. In short the Bishop makes no more of the Divine Nature than this Christ was God by virtue of the indwelling of the Eternal Word in him p. 127. The Racovians scruple the Phrase Divine Nature but admit all that the Bishop makes of it The Bishop places the Divine Nature in that thing which the Racovians do not deny and the Racovians deny the Divine Nature for Reasons which the Bishop allows to be Truths so then the difference between them is purely Nominal a meer Logomachy But to do his Lordship justice he is in the right for using the Terms Divine Nature and God-man because they are Terms authoriz'd by the Church on which both his
from the Church of England that is if the Bishops and chief Doctors of the Church know what the Church means I do confess that I much fear the Unitarians may have private Opinions about Articles commonly held necessary to Salvation different from the Opinions of the Compilers of the 39 Articles and from the Grammatical literal Sense of those Articles for through them as also through our Homilies there runs a Vein of that Scheme which at this day is call'd Calvinism But the Grammatical literal Sense of our Articles and Homilies are fall'n into the hands of Governing Bishops Deans and Doctors and Governed inferiour Priests and Deacons of whom a vast Majority as appears by their Prints and daily Sermons expound them very widely different from the Grammatical literal Sense intended by the first Compilers Words and Phrases have nothing in their own nature which can fix them to this or that particular Sense it is common Consent and way of speaking which appropriates them and therefore our Articles and Homilies which once held forth some of the Predestinarian Rigors for the Doctrine of the Church are not to be suppos'd to teach the same still now that the Consent of our Church runs so strongly another way Possibly the Unitarians have not Cranmer Latimer and Ridly on their side in the Points now controverted but in them and all other necessary Articles they have the Reverend Bishops of Worcester and Sarum Dr. South and Mr. Edwards with them indeed if those Bishops and Doctors should neither be the Church nor conjoin'd with enough to make a Majority which must be the Church the Lord have mercy upon the Unitarians for who is it that indulges his Brother a due liberty of Conscience but when he needs it himself but the Bishops and Doctors aforesaid being conjoin'd with an uncontestable Majority the Unitarians have nothing more to do to prove that they have no particular private Opinions about Matters commonly held necessary to Salvation but to shew their Agreement with those Bishops and Doctors or which is much the same thing the Agreement of those Bishops and Doctors with them now this has been amply and fairly done by an Unitarian I know not whom he being a perfect Stranger to me but it matters not much who he is whether a Transmarine or Cismarine Divine or no Divine at all 't is nothing to the Cause that Mr. Edwards by drawing up a Creed from Socinian Writers mostly Foreigners and publishing it as the Creed of the Unitarians gave this Unitarian an occasion to declare the Sense of himself and his Friends upon all those Points which he has done in a Paper call'd The Agreement of the Vnitarians with the Catholick Church Mr. Edwards takes no notice of this ingenuous Declaration but because the Author has not also defended every unstudied doubtful or extravagant Saying which this or that Socinian may have publish'd therefore he triumphs rubs his Forehead and proclaims That the Unitarian has not one Syllable to say for himself or against him Now in my Judgment the Unitarian might as well expect that Mr. Edwards should defend all the Pagan Tritheism which might be quoted from Dr. Cudworth Dr. Bull and Dr. Sherlock for what has the Unitarian more to do with the foreign Socinians than Mr. Edwards has with these learned and real Trinitarians and Tritheists For the Unitarian does not blindly follow the Socinians but while he takes up with some of their critical Interpretations of difficult Texts he forsakes them in others even Mr. Edwards himself agreeing perhaps in most points with the aforesaid Realists accepts them for Orthodox Brethren while he lets them keep their Tritheism to themselves it were a very unfair thing in me if I should publish the religious Frenzies of Mr. Gailhard which have been so well chastis'd by two honest Gentlemen as part of Mr. Edwards's Faith nay I much doubt whether he would be content to own all that I could quote him out of the Origines Eccles and the Irenicum of that Patron of his whose Name he says is not so much the Name of a Person or a Family as it is the Name of profound Learning and solid Religion I mention not those Books as if I thought them full of Errors for I have a greater esteem for them than perhaps the Author himself may have now or Mr. Edwards either but my meaning is that neither should Mr. Edwards be put to answer for the Tritheism of the Realists nor the Unitarians censur'd for Socinian Mistakes By the way were I a great Man and my Fame wanted some specious Decoration I would bestow my encouraging Bounty on an Ecclesiastick rather than a meer Heathenish Poet not but that the meer Heathenish Poet might have the most Wit the noblest Fancy and as little Conscience as any grave Panegyrist whatsoever but because an Ecclesiastick for a small matter will say all that he can to make a God of his Patron while the other measures his Encomiums by the Number of the Guineas that are paid him To return the Socinian Perswasion is to be seen in the Racovian Catechism The English Unitarian Sentiments in the Agreement c. those their Sentiments there set down no one that I know of has undertaken to refute or charge with Heresy But farther from several Tracts of the Unitarians it appears that those their Adversaries who have been distinguish'd by the Name of Nominals and who are a considerable Majority of the Church do yet explain the controverted Articles to the very same Sense as do the Unitarians I refer the Reader chiefly to the Discourse concerning the Nominal and Real Trinitarians to which I can add but little yet some Instances I shall produce which make it plain that the Leaders of the Nominalists in the controverted Points differ as little from the Socinians as the Unitarians do The Racovian Catechism affirms that the Essence of God is but one in number and that in the Essence of God there is but one Person The first of the 39 Articles of the Church of England teaches That in the Unity of the Godhead there are three Persons this Doctrine the Learned Bishop of Worcester undertakes to defend supposing it gainsay'd by the Socinians and by the Unitarians But if it be gainsay'd by neither his Lordship has thrown away a great deal of Learning to little purpose 'T is true a Man has not the less Learning for this sort of Expence but then if he spends much Labour in it 't is an undervaluing of his Judgment The different Explications which the Racovian Catechism and his Lordship give of this ambiguous homonymous word Person being consider'd it is plain that they differ about the meaning of a word and that 's all while their Doctrine is one and the same The Racovian Catechism defines a Person to be an Individual Intelligent Essence but according to the Bp of Worcester a Person is one and the same Nature under different Modes of Subsistence
Lordship and the Church puts an honest Sense and the Racovians were too stiff in refusing them especially considering that in their very Catechism they speak in other Phrase as honourably of Christ as his Lordship for they say that Christ is by no means to be reputed a meer Man they give their Reasons for it and therefore call him a Man truly Divine and for my part I think a Man truly Divine must have a Nature truly Divine and therefore the Racovians whose Doctrine is taught by the Bishop would have done better had they taught it in the Terms of Art which the Bishop uses tho perhaps he is not fond of the Terms which one may partly guess by his declining to consider all or any Speculations concerning the Eternal Generation Whereas the Unitarians fully to demonstrate their Orthodoxy allow the Eternal Generation of the Logos Son or Wisdom Let me not forget that I observ'd the Bishop did not so well agree in one small respect with the Unitarians which respect was such that therein he was at some small variance with himself the thing is this He has affirm'd that God and Man make one Person as the Soul and Body make one Man it was proper for him to take up with this Expression in conformity to the Athanasian Creed but his Philosophical Reasonings look quite another way for p. 102. he has these Words It has been thought that the Human Nature in Christ had no special Subsistence tho it was not easy to explain this Notion since if Subsistence belong'd to the Human Nature it might seem that it the Human Nature was not perfect if it had not a proper Subsistence An Hypostatical Union was proposed as a Term fit to explain this by i. e. the Human Nature in Christ was believ'd to subsist by the Subsistence of the Word but it was not easy to make this the more intelligible by offering a Notion full as unintelligible as it self to explain it by Now tho the Bishop is a cautious Man and will have a care of offending a Brother as appears by those soft ways of expressing his dislike of an Opinion It has been thought It is not easy It might seem Yet here he sufficiently discovers to any considering Reader that he believes the Human Nature of Christ had a proper Subsistence and if it had a proper Subsistence then say I by it self it constituted Christ a Person and then God and Man did not make one Person as the Soul and Body make a Man For the Bishop explains Subsistence thus We may conceive the Subsistence of an intelligent Being P. 107. to be its acting intirely in it self or upon Matter united to it without any other Spirit 's being constantly present to it actuating it or having it under any immediate vital and inseparable Influence It may seem strange tho that the Bishop should intimate that the Human Nature of Christ had a proper Subsistence a Subsistence of its own and afterwards define the Subsistence of an Intelligent Being to be its acting intirely in it self without any other Spirit 's being constantly present to it c. It is a Mercy that Self-contradiction is not Heresy I hope the Bishop is not of Rhetorius's Mind who thought that the Teachers of contrary Doctrines were all in the right St. Austin could not perswade himself that any one could be so whimsical but upon the Supposition he puts down the Name of Rhetorius in his black Catalogue of Hereticks I design'd to have spoke at large with the Bp of Sarum concerning the Satisfaction of Christ on which Article he can have no difference with the Unitarians and has as little as may be with the Racovians but the Author of The Agreement c. having been before me I shall be the shorter There is not a more artful controversial piece of Writing than some few Pages of the second of the four Treatises His Lordship's Learning and piercing Judgment are such that he clearly sees through the whole Article and no Man were better able to state it plainly to disintangle it from the Philosophy of the Schools to decide it accurately and firmly establish the certain Truth but then his Wisdom is such that while he gives forth his Lectures which may be very profitable to them that know how to use them he retreats from the envy of the Calvinists in a set of Ecclesiastical Phrases whose strict Grammatical Sense has been long laid aside he distinguishes himself from the Racovians by labour'd Metaphorical Flourishes frowns upon the Unitarians to hide his Agreement with them and amuses the Writers of positive Divinity which Character he can tell any Party was not meant of them to dissemble his aversion from their unreasonable and odious Scheme I will convince the Reader of the Justness of my Observation The Racovians dispute against their Doctrine who determine that there is such a Mercy in God as must forgive and such a Justice as must punish and cannot be satisfied without it that because God would have both his Mercy and his Justice take place therefore he found out that way to forgive Sins by sending his Son to suffer Death in that Nature which had offended These Racovians acknowledg God to be wonderfully merciful and just but they contend that he freely forgiveth that he punisheth Sins when he pleaseth when his Wisdom thinks fit Now let 's hear the Bishop he sets his Face against the Writers of Positive Divinity and censures these their Doctrines That God cannot freely forgive Sins that punishing as well as remunerative Justice P. 135. are essential to him that God being infinite every Offence against him has an infinite Guilt and must be expiated either by Acts of infinite Value or of infinite Duration and that a Person of an infinite Nature was only capable of Acts of an infinite Value that such a one was necessary for the expiating Sin And are not these the very Errors oppos'd by the Racovians more fully and elegantly stated by his Lordship that 's true for nothing loses under his hand nor do the Racovians overthrow these Errors with that irresistible force of Argument as his Lordship For says he In all this Gradation there is one main Defect the Scripture sets none of these Speculations before us nor is it easy to apprehend that a Right of punishing which is in the Legislator and a Right to reward which passes from him to the Person that acquires it should be equally essential to God in the one his Fidelity and Justice are bound because of the Right that accrues to another but the other of punishing seems to be a Right that is vested in himself which he may either use or not as he pleases Agreeing thus in the main one would wonder what Nicety should divide the Racovians and his Lordship there must be but a Nicety between them but 't is not the first time a Nicety has made a great Breach between Friends The Bishop speaking of his