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A70687
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Doctor Wallis's letter touching the doctrine of the blessed Trinity answer'd by his friend.
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Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719.
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1691
(1691)
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Wing N1506A; ESTC R211864
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15,046
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People at least if the Athanasian Doctrine be true Divinity Hear O Israel the Lord our God is One Lord And Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all Thine Heart with all thy Soul and with all thy Might Deut. 6.4 5. But how shall we do to love each of Three Persons that are equal with all our Hearts All the poor Labourers with their Wives in the Country and all the Tankard-bearers of London must go to School to Dr. Wallis and he will teach them Metaphysicks and Mathematicks and read a Lecture to them upon the Three Dimensions Long Broad and Tall of One Cube They must love God the Father who is the Length of the Cube with all their Hearts and then God the Son who is the Breadth with all their Hearts too and God the Holy Ghost in the same manner too And if we measure this Cube with the Infallible Rule of Scripture we find that this Long Cube the Father sent this Broad Cube the Son on a Message as far as from Heaven to Earth John 6.38 and anon after sent this tall or deep Cube the Holy Ghost after him Matth. 3.16 in the mean time he abode in Heaven himself Moreover this broad Cube the Son is not commensurable with this long Cube the Father neither Northward nor Southward in Knowledg Mark 13.32 or Power John 14.28 In like manner this tall Cube the Holy Ghost receives of this long and broad Cube to make him taller and deeper John 16.14 I fancy the poor People would apprehend it better by such a Resemblance as this Suppose one Woman Mary to be married to Three Men at once Peter James and John I Mary take thee Peter James and John to be my wedded Husband c. Here are indeed Three Persons but only One Husband the Husbandhood is but One though the Persons are Three each of which is Husband to Mary and Mary is obliged by the Contract of Marriage to pay Conjugal Affection and Duty to each of them Methinks this is a more familiar parallel than that of a Cube I do the rather make use of this Similitude because the Learned and Famous Dr. Sherlock in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity tells us We must allow the Divine Persons to be real substantial Beings Pag. 47. And in Pag. 67. he saith The Father feels himself to be the Father and not the Son nor the Holy Ghost The Son in like manner feels himself to be the Son and not the Father nor Holy Ghost and so the Holy Ghost As James feels himself to be James and not Peter nor John which proves them to be distinst Persons Thus Dr. Wallis may see that his Notions concerning the Trinity are old fashion'd Dr. Sherlock's are of the new Mode But if he desires to hare his Resemblances further displayed I am told he may find them sufficiently expos'd in a Book written in French titled Le Nouveau Visionaire against M. Jurieu Here I did confess indeed that Dr. Sherlock's Explanation of the Distinction of Persons was far more clear and full than yours But I had thought the Orthodox would not hare granted so much and so it seems did you too By this time we came near the end of your Letter in which he said there were still the same Calumnies over and over Only he took notice of one Text of Scripture you insert which you had not before namely John 1.1 14. The Word was God and The Word was made Flesh This saith he I confess were to the purpose if by the term The Word could be meant nothing else but a Pre-existing Person and by the term God nothing but God Almighty the Creator of Heaven and Earth and if taking those terms in those Senses did not make St. John write Nonsense and if by Flesh could be meant nothing but a Man how excellent soever and not a Mortal Man subject to Infirmities But all these things are otherwise For 1. The Ancient Orthodox Sense at the Council of Nice and afterwards for some Centuries was this In the beginning of the World or before all Worlds the Son of God did exist and that Son was with God his Father and that Son was very God of very God not numerically but specifically as Peter and Paul are of the same Substance Now this Opinion was rejected by the Schoolmen as introducing two Gods And the Modern Orthodox understand it thus In the beginning before all Worlds or from Eternity the Son a distinct Person did exist and that Son was with God his Father and the Son was that God with whom he was But if they be tied to take the terms in the sense of their Opinion they must expound thus The Son was with God that is with the Father himself and the Holy Ghost and the Son was the Father Son and Holy Ghost Or according to Dr. Wallis the Breadth of the Cube was with the Length Breadth and Depth of the same Cube and the Breadth was the Cube And for the fourteenth Verse they say not the Word or Son was made Flesh but God the Son by the Holy Ghost coming upon the blessed Virgin and the Power of the most High overshadowing her was united to a Human Body and Soul The Arian Sense you may see in a late Tract entituled A Vindication of the Vnitarians That God first made a Super-Angelical Being call'd the Son and through that Son and by the Holy Ghost fram'd this World and Man within it This Being was with God and was an Angelical God and this Son call'd The Word became Incarnate The Socinian Sense was thus In the beginning of the Gospel Mark 1.1 was Jesus called the Word because he was the prime and chief Expounder and Minister of the Gospel and this Word was with God ascended into Heaven John 3.13 and descended thence and being anointed with the Holy Ghost and Power being thus sanctified and sew into the World was far more deservedly called the Son of God and God then those among the Jews to whom the Word of God came who yet were called Gods John 10.35 36. or than that Angel who appeared to Manoch Judg. 13.22 And the Evangelist having said in Vers 12. that this true Light as well as Word or Light-Bringer gave Power to those that believed in him to be the Sons of God he says in Vers 14. that He the Word was himself as well as they a Mortal and Frail Man The Sense of Paul Bishop of Antioch An. 262. as I have read somewhere in Melancthon and the Sense of some in our Days was That this term Beginning must be taken for the beginning of the World and the term The Word being the Subject of the History in the very Front of it must be taken properly and by way of eminence for the Gospel Word But a Word according to Aristotle being twofold Internal in the Mind and External in the Speech the Word here spoken of must mean the Internal Word of God by way
of excellence that is the Gospel Decree as it is taken also in Titus 1.3 where the Apostle Paul having mentioned the Truth which is after Godliness in hope of Eternal Life goes on and says which God that cannot lye promised decreed to promise or in purpose promised before the World began hath in due time manifested his Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 through preaching This Word was with or in God not yet manifested and the Word was God here God being the Predicate must have such a Sense as can agree to the Subject Word either most Divine as Spirit for Spiritual John 6.63 and the very term God Gal. 1.10 for the Doctrine of the Gospel and in the 18th Verse of this Chapter John 1. in the same Sense or as Grotius would have it for the Word of God but die former Sense seems far better All things were made by it to wit as a Rule or chief Design According to this Exposition the Word must not be taken for a Person in the first five Verses nor till the Evangelist had said in the sixth and seventh Verses That the Baptist being a Man sent of God was not the Light which was in the Word mention'd that is was not the Bringer or Preacher of the Light for that must be the Sense when a Man is said to be or not to be the Light But that which is denied of John is affirmed of another to whom he bare Witness and that was Jesus as appears afterwards He was the true Light that is Light-Bringer which coming into the World enlightneth every Man And now having laid a sufficient Ground for taking the Light in an improper Sense for Light-Bringer his meaning cannot easily be mistaken when in the fourteenth Verse he calls the same Man The Word that is the personal Word or Great Gospel-Prophet and says That The Word was was made or was born Flesh that is a Frail and Mortal Man not barely a Man for so the Word Flesh does always signify when it 's applied to Man and Christ is now a Man but not Flesh The Word wets made Flesh does not imply that this great Word Prophet or Messenger of that Word did exist before he was born no more than that Phrase in 1 Cor. 15.45 The first Man Adam was made a living Soul proves or implies that Adam did pre-exist before he was made a living Soul Here Sir I interposed and told my Gentleman That this Exposition seem'd very uncouth and strange I had never heard of it before and therefore it was not easy for me to apprehend it much more to receive it He readily consented to what I said and added That it 's a thing which makes Unitarian Interpretations seem forc'd and unnatural namely because we have imbib'd from our Youth and even from our Catechisms contrary Expositions But if they were both propos'd to one that had never heard of either of 'em before he was perswaded the Trinitarian Expositions would seem far more harsh and forc'd nay contradictious and absurd For to instance in this very Text of John what un-prejudiced Man could ever imagine that this Text should be the Ground of the Doctrine of Two Persons in God when nothing is more clear in Scripture and Reason than the Unity of God which necessarily implies the Unity of his Person I have been the larger in setting out this Exposition saith he because I knew it would be difficult for you to apprehend it There is yet another Exposition of this Scripture which is derived from the Great Grotius and may be found in the Brief History of the Vnitarians which I spoke of But I think I have said enough to convince any Man that is not extreamly prejudic'd that this is an obscure Scripture For as every one of these Senses finds some specious Grounds in the Text so never a one of them can clearly answer all the Objections that are levied against them and that of the Trinitarians least of all Therefore your Doctor writes either unlike a Divine or like a Censorious I will not say Malicious Person when he says If God say The Word was God and The Word was made Flesh shall we say not so only because we cannot tell How As if these Sayings were so clear that they admitted no Sense but his which understands by The Word an Eternally pre-existing Person whereas the term Ho Logos in Greek which we translate The Word Speech or Saying is found I suppose forty times in the New Testament taken impersonally for the Gospel or some Speech It 's Three and twenty times so used in this One Evangelist of St. John and for the most part oppos'd to the Person of Christ and on the other hand there is not one Text except this in 1 John 1.14 where it can reasonably signify a Person except we reckon that in 1 John 5.7 for one which I have shew'd to be uncertain and not to have the Authority of other Sacred Scripture As for that in Rev. 19.13 his Name is called The Word of God that is not the same with The Word simply and though it denote a Person yet it 's one whose Vesture was dipt in Blood which shews him to be a Man a glorious Captain Let all rational Men judge Whether it 's more reasonable to take a term in such Sense as it 's almost always to be found in in the same Divine Author than in the Sense of Philo a Jew or Plato a Heathen So that the Vnitarians have far the most reason to cry out of forc'd Interpretations whereby to deprive God of an incommunicable Attribute even his Unity And they defend these Interpretations with such Distinctions as are either not intelligible or which infer absurd Consequences Such are the Distinctions between the Essence and the Divine Persons of the threefold manner of Existence of God of Circumincession or the mutual Penetration or mutual Inexistence of the Divine Persons among themselves of God taken personally and essentially in Scripture of the Name Father sometimes signifying the Father alone sometimes the Father Son and Holy Ghost of the Eternal Generation or God's Eternal begetting a Son equal to himself and yet not another God of the Divine Operations within and without the Essence whence it is that the Internal are attributed to the Persons distinctly the External to them all Three though One only be named of the Incarnation or God the Son not being made a Man but joyning himself to a Man in an Hypostatical Union hence of two Natures in One Person of the Communication of Properties whereby that which is spoken of Christ's Divine Nature is understood to agree to him according to his Humane Nature and vice versâ and many more confounding Distinctions they use without which the Holy Scriptures cannot be understood in the Sense of Trinitarians but I am weary with reciting them Here he broke off and I rose to take my leave of him I told him as the truth is That I had long