gathered directly from the Soripture is in substance this that the God who is always one and the same was the Person represented by Moses the Person represented by his Son incarnate and the Person represented by the Apostles As represented by the Apostles the holy Spirit by which they spake is God As represented by his Son that was God and Man the Son is that God As represented by Moses and the High Priests the Father that is to say the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is that God From whence we may gather the reason why those Names Father Son and Holy Ghost in the signification of the Godhead are never used in the Old Testament For they are Persons that is they have their Names from representing which could not be till divers Persons had represented God in ruling or in directing under him Who is so bold as blind Bayard The Emblem of a little Boy attempting to lade all the Water out of the Sea with a Cockle-shell doth sit T. H. as exactly as if it had been shaped for him who thinketh to measure the profound and inscrutable Mysteries of Religion by his own silly shallow conceits What is now become of the great adorable Mystery of the blessed undivided Trinity It is shrunk into nothing Upon his grounds there was a time when there was no Trinity And we must blot these words out of our Creed The Father eternal the Son eternal and the Holy Ghost eternal And these other words out of our Bibles Let us make man after our Image Unless we mean that this was a consultation of God with Moses and the Apostles What is now become of the eternal generation of the Son of God if this Sonship did not begin until about 4000 years after the Creation were expired Upon these grounds every King hath as many Persons as there be Justices of Peace and petty Constables in his Kingdom Upon this account God Almighty hath as many Persons as there have been Soveraign Princes in the World since Adam According to this reckoning each one of us like so many Geryons may have as many Persons as we please to make Procurations Such bold presumption requireth another manner of confutation T. H. As for the words recited I confess there is a fault in the Ratiocination which nevertheless his Lordship hath not discovered but no Impiety All that he objecteth is That it followeth hereupon that there be as many Persons of a King as there be petty Constables in his Kingdom And so there are or else he cannot be obeyed But I never said that a King and every one of his Persons are the same Substance The fault I here made and saw not was this I was to prove That it is no contradiction as Lucian and Heathen Scoffers would have it to say of God he was One and Three I saw the true definition of the word Person would serve my turn in this manner God in his own Person both created the World and instituted a Church in Israel using therein the Ministry of Moses the same God in the Person of his Son God and Man redeemed the same World and the same Church the same God in the Person of the Holy Ghost sanctified the same Church and all the faithful men in the World Is not this a clear proof that it is no contradiction to say that God is three Persons and one Substance And doth not the Church distinguish the Persons in the same manner See the words of our Catechism Quest What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of the Belief Answ First I learn to believe in God the Father that hath made me and all the World Secondly In God the Son who hath redeemed me and all Mankind Thirdly In God the Holy Ghost that hath sanctified me and all the elect people of God But at what time was the Church sanctified Was it not on the day of Pentecost in the descending of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles His Lordship all this while hath catched nothing 'T is I that catched my self for saying instead of By the Ministry of Moses in the Person of Moses But this Error I no sooner saw then I no less publickly corrected then I had committed it in my Leviathan converted into Latin which by this time I think is printed beyond the Seas with this alteration and also with the omission of some such passages as Strangers are not concerned in And I had corrected this Error sooner if I had sooner found it For though I was told by Dr. Cosins now Bishop of Duresme that the place above-cited was not applicable enough to the Doctrine of the Trinity yet I could not in reviewing the same espy the defect till of late when being sollicited from beyond Sea to translate the Book into Latin and fearing some other man might do it not to my liking I examined this passage and others of the like sence more narrowly But how concludes his Lordship out of this that I put out of the Creed these words The Father eternal the Son eternal the Holy Ghost eternal Or these words Let us make man after our Image out of the Bible Which last words neither I nor Bellarmine put out of the Bible but we both put them out of the number of good Arguments to prove the Trinity for it is no unusual thing in the Hebrew as may be seen by Bellarmine's quotations to joyn a Noun of the plural Number with a Verb of the singular And we may say also of many other Texts of Scripture alledged to prove the Trinity that they are not so firm as that high Article requireth But mark his Lordship's Scholastick charity in the last words of this period Such bold presumption requireth another manner of confutation This Bishop and others of his opinion had been in their Element if they had been Bishops in Queen Maries time J. D. Concerning God the Son forgetting what he had said elsewhere where he calleth him God and Man and the Son of God incarnate he doubteth not to say that the word Hypostatical is canting As if the same Person could be both God and Man without a Personal that is an Hypostatical Union of the two Natures of God and Man T. H. If Christian Profession be as certainly it is in England a Law and if it be of the nature of a Law to be made known to all men that are to obey it in such manner as they may have no excuse for disobedience from their ignorance then without doubt all words unknown to the people and as to them insignificant are Canting The word Substance is understood by the Vulgar well enough when it is said of a Body but in other sence not at all except for their Riches But the word Hypostatical is understood only by those and but few of those that are learned in the Greek Tongue and is properly used as I have said before of the Union of the two Natures of Christ in one Person So
Soveraign is the Judge of Prophesie he deduces That then Samuel and other Prophets were false Prophets that contested with their Soveraigns As for Samuel he was at that time the Judge that is to say the Soveraign Prince in Israel and so acknowledged by Saul For Saul received the Kingdom from God himself who had right to give and take it by the hands of Samuel And God gave it him to himself only and not to his Seed though if he had obeyed God he would have setled it also upon his Seed The Commandement of God was that he should not spare Agag Saul obeyed not God therefore sent Samuel to tell him that he was rejected For all this Samuel went not about to resist Saul That he caused Agag to be slain was with Sauls consent Lastly Saul confesses his sin Where is this contesting with Saul After this God sent Samuel to anoint David not that he should depose Saul but succeed him the Sons of Saul having never had a right of Succession Nor did ever David make War on Saul or so much as resist him but fled from his persecution But when Saul was dead then indeed he claimed his right against the House of Saul What Rebellion or Resistance could his Lordship find here either in Samùel or in David Besides all these Transactions are supernatural and oblige not to imitation Is there any Prophet or Priest now that can set up in England Scotland or Ireland another King by pretence of Prophesie or Religion What did Jeroboam to the man of God 1 Kings 13 that prophesied against the Altar in Bethel without first doing a Miracle but offer to seize him for speaking as he thought rashly of the Kings Act and after the miraculous withering of his Hand desire the Prophet to pray for him The sin of Jeroboam was not his distrust of the Prophet but his Idolatry He was the sole Judge of the truth which the man of God uttered against the Altar and the process agreeable to equity What is the story of Eliah and Ahab 1 Kings 18. but a confirmation of the Right even of Ahab to be the Judge of Prophesie Eliah told Ahab he had transgressed the Commandement of God So may any Minister now tell his Soveraign so he do it with sincerity and discretion Ahab told Eliah he troubled Israel Upon this controversie Eliah desired tryal Send saith he and assemble all Israel Assemble also the Prophets of Baal four hundred and fifty Ahab did so The Question is stated before the People thus If the Lord be God follow him but if Baal follow him Then upon the Altars of God and Baal were laid the Wood and the Bullocks and the cause was to be judged by Fire from Heaven to burn the Sacrifices which Eliah procured the Prophets of Baal could not procure Was not this cause here Pleaded before Ahab The Sentence of Ahab is not required for Eliah from that time forward was no more persecuted by Ahab but only by his Wife Jezabel The story of Micaiah 2 Cron. 18. is this Ahab King of Israel consulted the Prophets four hundred in number whether he should prosper or not in case he went with Jehosaphat King of Judah to fight against the Syrians at Ramoth-gilead The Prophet Micaiah was also called and both the Kings Ahab and Jehosaphat sat together to hear what they should prophecy There was no Miracle done The 400 pronounced Victory Micaiah alone the contrary The King was Judge and most concern'd in the event nor had he received any Revelation in the business What could he do more discreetly than to follow the Counsel of 400 rather than of one Man But the event was contrary for he was slain but not for following the Counsel of the 400 but for his Murder of Naboth and his Idolatry It was also a sin in him that he afflicted Micaiah in Prison but an unjust Judgment does not take away from any King his right of Judicature Besides what 's all this or that of Jeremiah which he cites last to the Question of who is Judge of Christian Doctrine J. D. Neither doth he use God the Holy Ghost more favourably than God the Son Where St. Peter saith Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit He saith By the Spirit is meant the Voice of God in a Dream or Vision Supernatural which Dreams or Visions he maketh to be no more than imaginations which they had in their sleep or in an extasie which in every true Prophet were Supernatural but in false Prophets were either natural or feigned and more likely to be false than true To say God hath spoken to him in a Dream is no more than to say he dreamed that God spake to him c. To say he hath seen a Vision or heard a Voice is to say That he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking So St. Peter's Holy Ghost is come to be their own imaginations which might be either feigned or mistaken or true As if the Holy Ghost did enter only at their eyes and at their ears not into their understandings nor into their minds Or as if the Holy Ghost did not seal unto their hearts the truth and assurance of their Prophesies Whether a new light be infused into their understandings or new graces be inspired into their heart they are wrought or caused or created immediately by the Holy Ghost And so are his imaginations if they be Supernatural T. H. For the places of my Leviathan he cites they are all as they stand both true and clearly proved the setting of them down by Fragments is no Refutation nor offers he any Argument against them His consequences are not deduced I never said that the Holy Ghost was an Imagination or a Dream or a Vision but that the Holy Ghost spake most often in the Scripture by Dreams and Visions supernatural The next words of his As if the Holy Ghost did enter only at their eyes and at their ears not into their understandings nor into their minds I let pass because I cannot understand them His last words Whether new light c. I understand and approve J. D. But he must needs fall into these absurdities who maketh but a jest of inspiration They who pretend Divine inspiration to be a supernatural entring of the Holy Ghost into a Man are as he thinks in a very dangerous Dilemma for if they worship not the Men whom they conceive to be inspired they fall into impiety and if they worship them they commit Idolatry So mistaking the Holy Ghost to be corporeal some thing that is blown into a Man and the Graces of the Holy Ghost to be corporeal Graces And the words inpoured or infused virtue and inblown or inspired virtue are as absurd and insignificant as a round Quadrangle He reckons it as a common error That faith and sanctity are not attained by study and reason but by supernatural inspiration or infusion And layeth this for a firm ground Faith
Deus we make two Gods of one This was well understood by Damascene in his Treatise De Fide Orthodoxa which is an Exposition of the Nicene Creed where he denies absolutely that Deitas is Deus lest seeing God was made man it should follow the Deity was made man which is contrary to the Doctrine of all the Nicene Fathers The Attributes therefore of God in the Abstract when they are put for God are put Metonymically which is a common thing in Scripture for Example Prov. 8.28 where it is said Before the mountains were setled before the Hills was I brought forth the Wisdom there spoken of being the Wisdom of God signifies the same with the wise God This kind of speaking is also ordinary in all Languages This considered such abstracted words ought not to be used in Arguing and especially in the deducing the Articles of our Faith though in the Language of God's eternal Worship and in all Godly Discourses they cannot be avoided And the Creed it self is less difficult to be assented to in its own words than in all such Expositions of the Fathers Who for us men and our Salvation came down from Heaven and was uncarnate by the holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary and was made Man I have not read of any exception to this For where Athanasius in his Creed says of the Son He was not made but begotten it is to be understood of the Son as he was God Eternal whereas here it is spoken of the Son as he is man And of the Son also as he was man it may be said he was begotten of the Holy Ghost for a Woman conceiveth not but of him that begetteth which is also confirmed Mat. 1 20. That which is begotten in her 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is of the Holy Ghost And was also Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate he suffered and was buried And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures and ascended into Heaven and fitteth on the right hand of the Father And he shall come again with Glory to judge both the Quick and the Dead Whose Kingdom shall have no end Of this part of the Creed I have not met with any doubt made by any Christian Hither the Council of Nice proceedeth in their general Confession of Faith and no further This finished some of the Bishops present at the Council seventeen or eighteen whereof Eusebius Bishop of Caesarea was one not sufficiently satisfied refused to subscribe till this Doctrine of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 should be better explained Thereupon the Council Decreed that whosoever shall say that God hath parts shall be Anathematized to which the said Bishops subscribed And Eusebius by Order of the Council wrote a Letter the Copies whereof were sent to every absent Bishop that being satisfied with the reason of their subscribing they also should subscribe The reason they gave of their Subscription was this That they had now a form of words prescribed by which as a Rule they might guide themselves so as not to violate the Peace of the Church By this it is manifest that no man was an Heretick but he that in plain and direct words contradicted that Form by the Church prescribed and that no man could be made an Heretick by Consequence And because the said Form was not put into the body of the Creed but directed only to the Bishops there was no reason to punish any Lay-person that should speak to the contrary But what was the meaning of this Doctrine That God has no Parts Was it made Heresie to say that God who is a real substance cannot be considered or spoken of as here or there or any where which are parts of places Or that there is any real thing without length every way that is to say which hath no Magnitude at all finite nor infinite Or is there any whole substance whose two halves or three thirds are not the same with that whole Or did they mean to condemn the Argument of Tertullian by which he confuted Apelles and other Hereticks of his time namely Whatsoever was not Corporeal was nothing but Fantasm and not Corporeal for Heretical No certainly no Divines say that They went to establish the Doctrine of One individual God in Trinity to abolish the diversity of species in God not the distinction of here and there in substance When St. Paul asked the Corinthians Is Christ divided He did not think they thought him impossible to be considered as having hands and feet but that they might think him according to the manner of the Gentiles one of the Sons of God as Arius did but not the only begotten Son of God And thus also it is expounded in the Creed of Athanasius who was present in that Council by these words Not confounding the Persons nor dividing the Substances that is to say that God is not divided into three Persons as man is divided into Peter James and John nor are the three persons one and the same person But Aristotle and from him all the Greek Fathers and other Learned Men when they distinguish the general Latitude of a word they call it Division as when they divide Animal into Man and Beast they call these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Species and when they again divide the Species Man into Peter and John they call these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 partes individuae And by this confounding the division of the substance with the distinction of words divers men have been led into the Error of attributing to God a Name which is not the name of any substance at all viz. Incorporeal By these words God has no parts thus explained together with the part of the Creed which was at that time agreed on many of those Heresies which were antecedent to that first General Council were condemned as that of Manes who appeared about thirty years before the Reign of Constantine by the first Article I believe in one God though in other words it seems to me to remain still in the Doctrine of the Church of Rome which so ascribeth a Liberty of the Will to Men as that their Will and Purpose to commit sin should not proceed from the Cause of all things God but originally from themselves or from the Devil It may seem perhaps to some that by the same words the Anthropomorphites also were then Condemned And certainly if by Parts were meant not persons Individual but Pieces they were Condemned For Face Arms Feet and the like are pieces But this cannot be for the Anthropomorphites appeared not till the time of Valens the Emperor which was after the Council of Nice between forty and fifty years and was not condemned till the second General Council at Constantinople Now for the Punishment of Hereticks ordained by Constantine we read of none but that Ecclesiastical Officers Bishops and other Preachers if they refused to subscribe to this Faith or taught the contrary Doctrine were for the first Fault Deprived of their Offices
and for the second Banished And thus did Heresie which at first was the name of private Opinion and no Crime by vertue of a Law of the Emperor made only for the Peace of the Church become a Crime in a Pastor and punishable with Deprivation first and next with Banishment After this part of the Creed was thus established there arose presently many new Heresies partly about the Interpretation of it and partly about the Holy Ghost of which the Nicene Council had not determined Concerning the part established there arose Disputes about the Nature of Christ and the word Hypostasis id est Substance for of Persons there was yet no mention made the Creed being written in Greek in which Language there is no word that answereth to the Latine word Persona And the Union as the Fathers called it of the Humane and Divine Nature in Christ Hypostatical caused Eutyches and after him Dioscorus to affirm there was but one Nature in Christ thinking that whensoever two things are united they are one And this was condemned as Arianism in the Councils of Constantinople and Ephesus Others because they thought two living and rational Substances such as are God and Man must needs be also two Hypostases maintained that Christ had two Hypostases But these were two Heresies condemned together Then concerning the Holy Ghost Nestorius Bishop of Constantinople and some others denied the Divinity thereof And whereas about seventy years before the Nicene Council there had been holden a Provincial Council at Carthage wherein it was Decreed that those Christians which in the Persecutions had denyed the Faith of Christ should not be received again into the Church unless they were again baptized This also was condemned though the President in that Council were that most sincere and pious Christian Cyprian And at last the Creed was made up entire as we have it in the Calcedonian Council by addition of these words And I believe in the Holy Ghost the Lord and Giver of Life who proceedeth from the Father and the Son Who with the Father the Son together is Worshipped and Glorified Who spake by the Prophets And I believe one Catholick Apostolick Church I acknowledge one Baptism for the Remission of Sins And I look for the Resurrection of the Dead and the Life of the World to come In this addition are condemned first the Nestorians and others in these words Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified And secondly the Doctrine of the Council of Carthage in these words I believe one Baptism for the Remission of Sins For one Baptism is not there put as opposite to several sorts or manners of Baptism but to the iteration of it St. Cyprian was a better Christian than to allow any Baptism that was not in the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost In the General Confession of Faith contained in the Creed called the Nicene Creed there is no mention of Hypostasis nor of Hypostatical Union nor of Corporeal nor of Incorporeal nor of Parts the understanding of which words being not required of the Vulgar but only of the Pastors whose disagreement else might trouble the Church nor were such Points necessary to Salvation but set abroach for ostentation of Learning or else to dazle men with design to lead them towards some ends of their own The Changes of prevalence in the Empire between the Catholicks and the Arians and how the great Athanasius the most fierce of the Catholicks was banished by Constantine and afterwards restored and again banished I let pass only it is to be remembred that Athanasius is suppos'd to have made his Creed then when banished he was in Rome Liberius being Pope by whom as is most likely the word Hypostasis as it was in Athanasius's Creed was disliked For the Roman Church could never be brought to receive it but instead thereof used their own word Persona But the first and last words of that Creed the Church of Rome refused not For they make every Article not only those of the body of the Creed but all the Definitions of the Nicene Fathers to be such as a man cannot be saved unless he believe them all stedfastly though made only for Peace sake and to unite the minds of the Clergy whose Disputes were like to trouble the Peace of the Empire After these four first General Councils the Power of the Roman Church grew up a pace and either by the negligence or weakness of the succeeding Emperors the Pope did what he pleased in Religion There was no Doctrine which tended to the Power Ecclesiastical or to the Reverence of the Clergy the contradiction whereof was not by one Council or another made Heresie and punished arbitrarily by the Emperors with Banishment or Death And at last Kings themselves and Commonwealths unless they purged their Dominions of Hereticks were Excommunicated Interdicted and their Subjects let loose upon them by the Pope insomuch as to an ingenuous and serious Christian there was nothing so dangerous as to enquire concerning his own Salvation of the Holy Scripture the careless cold Christian was safe and the skilful Hypocrite a Saint But this is a Story so well known as I need not insist upon it any longer but proceed to the Hereticks here in England and what Punishments were ordained for them by Acts of Parliament All this while the Penal Laws against Hereticks were such as the several Princes and States in their own Dominions thought fit to enact The Edicts of the Emperors made their Punishments Capital but for the manner of the Execution left it to the Prefects of Provinces And when other Kings and States intended according to the Laws of the Roman Church to extirpate Hereticks they ordained such Punishment as they pleased The first Law that was here made for the punishments of Hereticks called Lollards and mentioned in the Statutes was in the fifth year of the Reign of Richard the Second occasioned by the Doctrine of John Wickliff and his Followers which Wickliff because no Law was yet ordained for his punishment in Parliament by the favour of John of Gaunt the King's Son during the Reign of Edward the third had escaped But in the fifth year of the next King which was Richard the Second there passed an Act of Parliament to this effect That Sheriffs and some others should have Commissions to apprehend such as were certified by the Prelates to be Preachers of Heresie their Fautors Maintainers and Abettors and to hold them in strong Prison till they should justifie themselves according to the Law of Holy Church So that hitherto there was no Law in England by which a Heretick could be put to Death or otherways punished than by imprisoning him till he was reconciled to the Church After this in the next King's Reign which was Henry the Fourth Son of John of Gaunt by whom Wickliffe had been favoured and who in his aspiring to the Crown had needed the good