Infinite Persons and but one God Ask them How can these things be and what do you mean They answer our meaning only is God understands himself and willeth that is esteems and loves himself This is a very mean and despicable Sense to be couched in such mysterious and surprising Terms Why do they affect to speak fantastically when they might speak soberly and plainly But we would easily forgive them the Folly of their Mysteries if their Hieroglyphick Language were not as false and contradictory as 't is vain and trifling For after they have told us that by Son and Spirit they mean nothing but God's Knowledg and Love of himself that the Eternal Generation so much talk'd of is only God's conceiving understanding or apprehending his own Perfections and the Procession which we are so carefully to distinguish from the Eternal Generation is only the Love which proceeds from God towards himself after I say they have thus unriddled their Mystery and of a Mystery made it a very vulgar and ordinary piece of Knowledg how absurd and monstrous is it to tell us that this Reflex Knowledg which God hath of himself and his Love or Esteem of himself are Persons and Spirits really distinct from him One while the Second and Third Persons so called are only God's knowing himself and loving himself that is they are only two Acts of his Vnderstanding and Will At the next turn these two Acts God's Apprehending himself and Esteeming himself are metamorphosed into Two several Spirits and Persons whereof one you must call the Son and the other the Holy Ghost Of one you must say on pain of Damnation He was Conceived Generated or Begotten of the other you must believe and say under the same Penalty He proceeded I say now this is Egyptian all over 't is the very Genius and Spirit of the old Mystical Hieroglyphicks that is to say partly Foolish and partly False And to prove it I need go no farther than the Understandings and Consciences of all Reasonable Men or even of every Individual Man who hath not as much given up his Reason to Mother Church as the Good Man who would not believe his Eyes against his Dear Wife had given up to her his Senses To tell Men that to apprehend one's self is a Person and to love one's self is another Person and Spirit is in effect to ridicule Religion and to scare from it all Men of free Sense I know not why the prophane Wit was esteemed an Atheist for his saying God by his Almighty Power can turn a Tree into a Syllogism more than such may be justly suspected of Atheism who say an Action of the Divine Vnderstanding is an Infinite and Almighty Person whom under pain of Damnation we must call the Son of God And again an Action of the Divine Will is another such Person and him we must name the Holy Ghost For the Wit only turned a Substance into a Thought and Trinitarians turn Thoughts into Substances and Persons Did they alledg for these Mysteries but the least colour of Reason or Revelation we would hold our Tongues but to be obliged to believe such things without any pretence of Revelation and contrary to all Reason and common Sense this I think is what we owe to no sort of Men of what colour soever they dye their Coats For my part I never think of these whether Dotages or Impostures without such an Inclination as I very hardly resist of applying to our Athanasian Doctors what Cato said of the Roman Augures and Aurispices I wonder says Cato that an Augur or Aruspex can meet another of the same Profession without their Laughing in one another's Faces He knew their pretended Learning and Discipline was the Religion establish'd by Law warranted by Custom and Prescription and authorized by the Consent of Nations For all that 't was a Cheat so gross and palpable that he could not but admire that the Augurs were such stark Fools or such perfect Knaves that meeting they could carry a grave Look upon one another Of the Creation IN the Fulness of Time the before-described Trinity Created the World and all things therein Yet we are not to imagine that the Three Divine Persons divided the Work among them each of them taking a Part. Nor could every one of them Create the same things because a thing can be created but once But according to that Oeconomy as Divines speak that is the Domestick Order or Houshold-Government that is between the Three Persons it must be said and held that the Father is most properly the Creator the Son the Redeemer and the Spirit the Sanctifier of all Persons and Things So that when we say the Trinity Created Heaven and Earth and all Things this is thereby intended The Father Created all things by the Son through the Holy Ghost The Notes The Father created all things by the Son through the Holy Ghost I wish the Sages of the Party had thought fit plainly to tell us what they mean by such an odd way of expressing themselves But they have long since let the World know that all their care is to get Words and for Meaning they never think of it But the Father it seems is the Creator nay 't is he that is properly the Creator but then 't is by the Son and through the Holy Ghost That is to say the Father is not the Creator much less is He properly the Creator but the Son and Holy Ghost and these two are jointly Creators For if the Father created the World by the Son and through the Holy Ghost then the Father himself had no immediate Efficiency or Hand in the Work but only the Son and Holy Ghost these were the true Creators of the World and of all things And besides that the old Difficulty returns namely that the Son and Spirit divided the Work between them each taking his part or the same things must be created twice I know not how better to explain their Notion of the Father's being most properly the Creator than by saying he was just so according to them the Creator of the World as King Charles I. built the Royal Soveraign or was the Builder of the Royal Soveraign For we say that King built the Royal Soveraign by the Master-Builder through the Ship-Carpenter that is he built it not he only ordered it to be built the Master-Shipwright or Master-Builder and the Ship-Carpenters were the Builders But if this be so we are strangely misled by the Apostles Creed which instructs us to say that the Almighty Father is the Creator of Heaven and Earth and is wholly silent of the great Mystery that it was by the Son and through the Holy Ghost And the Scriptures do yet worse impose on us by an unheard-of Solecism and Impropriety while they speak of these two or three pretended creating Persons by the singular Pronouns I HE THOV HIM which in no Language are used but only of one singular and particular
THE Trinitarian Scheme OF RELIGION CONCERNING Almighty God And MANKIND Considered both before and after the pretended Fall With NOTES thereupon which Notes contain also the Vnitarian Scheme London Printed in the Year 1692. The Trinitarian Scheme of Religion concerning Almighty God and Mankind considered both before and after the pretended Fall with Notes thereupon which Notes contain also the Vnitarian Scheme Of the Blessed Trinity THERE are Three Divine Persons an Almighty Father an Almighty Son an Almighty Spirit distinct from both who are jointly Creators of all other both Persons and Things They are so many distinct Minds and Spirits indued each of them with his own Proper and Personal Understanding Will and Power of Action Each of them is an absolutely Perfect and All-sufficient Being and singly and by himself a God Yet all of them together are but one God The Notes There is a most Holy most Wise most Good and Almighty Person who is over all from everlasting to everlasting the Maker of the Universe the Fountain of Good to all other Beings every where present Who with respect to the Creation of the World and his Adoption of all Good Men is pleased to permit himself to be called the Father But with respect to his Soveraign Dominion and Power above all He is usually designed by the Name or Word GOD. There neither is nor can be more than one such Person Because He is All-sufficient for himself and for whatsoever He shall please to make He had thereby within himself a most Determining and Certain Cause why he should neither beget nor make another or others equal to Himself but only Subordinate and Dependent Beings for Objects and Exercises of his Goodness More such Persons or Beings as Himself He knew must be as needless and useless as himself is absolutely and indispensably necessary For if He is truly All-sufficient they must for that reason be altogether superfluous both to him and to his Creatures Nor can we suppose more than one such Person without supposing an Infinity of them For whatsoever either Rational Motive or Natural and Necessary Cause may be feigned why the Universal Father should beget or make another or others equal to Himself the same whether Motive or Cause must also dispose that other or those other Persons to beget or make their Equal or Equals and so onwards till there were an Infinity of Divine Persons The Nature therefore of the thing demonstratively shows that a stop is necessarily made at one Divine that is one Infinite and All-sufficient Person Of the Eternity of the Trinity AS to the Duration Eternity or Life of the Blessed Trinity the Trinity possesses Eternal Life all at once To all other Beings Time is a Flux or Succession that of it which was now is not and that which now is shall immediately give place to what is coming It was once true of all other Beings but the Trinity that they were are and shall be but to the Trinity there is neither past nor to come but whole Time or all Eternity is now To the Trinity from everlasting to everlasting is but one undivided Instant or Moment for the Trinity is we may not say it was or it shall be The Notes This Divinity is wholly borrowed from the Platonists from whom the Modern Doctrines of the Trinity and of the Mystical Properties and Attributes thereof have been learned by those who among themselves go by the Names of Orthodox and Catholick The Trinity or God say they possesses Eternal Life all at once He is we may not say He was or He shall be In direct opposition to this whimsical Paradox St. John has defined God to be Him which WAS which IS and which SHALL BE or is to come Rev. 1.4 We say therefore 't is one of the Divine Perfections not an Imperfection that God IS WAS and SHALL BE. He hath carried and shall carry all Perfections into all the Successions and Periods of Time when He WAS he was no less perfect than now that he IS nor is He now less perfect than he shall be when he SHALL BE. They tell us we must not say God WAS that is to please them we must turn Atheists by saying he WAS NOT for of necessity we must say one of the two either that He was or that He was not there being no middle between these two no more than there is between He is and He is not Of the Omnipresence and Infinity of the Trinity NOR are we to conceive of the Infinity Immensity or Omnipresence of the Trinity after a vulgar manner For tho the Trinity is truly Infinite and Omnipresent yet 't is whole and all in any the least Point of Space The Trinity has no Extension and yet it comprehends all Distances The Trinity is three such Persons as that each of them reaches over and through all the the World and yet all Three are laxly and largely accommodated on the Point of a Needle Not only so but the right Faith is the Trinity is no where and yet 't is every-where The Notes This is another Article of the new Platonick Divinity God or the Trinity say they is whole and all in the least point of Space and tho he is no where yet he is every-where We say on the contrary with St. Austin what is no where is nothing therefore to speak as they do of God is in words to affirm him and in sense to deny him That God is every-where we are ready to demonstrate to them from the Order and Conservation of his Works and from the Effects of his Providence and from an hundred Passages of Holy Scripture That he is no where is incumbent on them to prove which we are sure they can do by no Reason nor by any Authority but that of their Masters the Platonists Every-where and no-where are contradictory Terms therefore if God is every-where it must needs be false that he is no-where else we cannot distinguish between Affirming and Denying that is between express Contradictions Of the Simplicity of the Trinity THere is no less Mystery in the other Properties and Attributes of the Trinity For God is one most simple uncompounded Being yet He consists or is made up of Three really distinct Minds Beings or Spirits so really distinct and diverse that one of them is not the other nay one is the Father another his Son the third a Spirit as distinct from both as they are from each other The Notes There is no Mystery at all in any of the Properties or Attributes of God They are no less clear in themselves than they are evidently deduced from the Excellence of his Works and the Methods of his Providence The Mystery never lies in the Attribute or Property but in the Addition made to it by fanciful Men. As to that vulgar Aphorism that God is a most simple and uncompounded Being from whence they have hammered the Property or Attribute of God's Simplicity as they affect to speak
't is not only not true but self-contradictory in the sense they use it For how is God most simple and uncompounded if he consists or is made up which is the very English of the word compounded of distinct Beings and divers and several Persons none of which is the other They may with the same Exactness of Grammar and Propriety of Speech say a Common-Council or a Common-Hall is one most simple uncompounded Being one is no more ridiculous than the other for the Propriety of Speech and Exactness of Truth is as verily lost in three as in three hundred or three thousand What is in God is God FOR the other Properties 't is the Orthodox and true Belief that whatsoever is in God is God Not only the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God but whatsoever else is in God by way of Immanence that also is God So the Justice of God is God the Power of God is God the Wisdom of God is God and so too is the Goodness of God Yet we make not hereby so many several Gods because these and all other Properties of God are not only the same with him but the same also with one another The Justice for instance of God differs not really from his Power and Mercy and his Power and Mercy differ not or are not really distinguish'd from his Wisdom but are verily and identically the same with it their distinction is only in our Conceit The Notes See here another brace of Mysteries whatsoever is in God is God and the Divine Properties or Attributes differ not but are the same with one another The Reader may perhaps suspect that when they speak after this wild fashion they have some secret and reserved meaning contrary to the usual Import of the Words or a learned Sense contrary to the vulgar Signification of the Terms but 't is not so they mean as they speak and whole Volumes are written in Defence of these Follies But let us consider what they say Whatsoever is in God is God the Justice for instance of God is God and so also the other Properties and Attributes As who should say every Property of a Being or Nature is that very Being or Nature of which 't is only a Property This is more monstrous than to say a Part is the Whole that very Whole of which 't is only a Part. For a Property being somewhat less than an Integrating Part because it may be away or at least be dormant and unactive without destruction of the Specifick Nature or of the Person an Integrating Part cannot therefore 't is more absurd to say a Property or Attribute is that very Being or Nature to which it belongs than to say an Integrating Part is the Whole Thus Body and Soul are Integrating Parts of Man take away one of them and he is no longer a Man but a naked Spirit and Risibility is an acknowledg'd Property of the Human Nature and yet it may be dormant or wholly away and the Human Nature not be destroyed but remain But they add the Properties or Attributes of God are the same with one another they differ only in our Conceit But why do they not tell us too that God pardons Sinners by his Justice and punishes them by his Mercy that he made the World by his Eternity and will judg it by his Immensity For if Mercy and Justice if Wisdom and Power if Eternity and Omnipresence are the same and differ only in our Conceit then the Effects of any one of these Properties are not to be appropriated to that Attribute or Property but must be equally and indifferently ascribed to all or to any of the rest Thus unlucky are our Opposers both at dividing and compounding they divide what is most intimately the same and they compound unite and identify what are and ever must be diverse and different That Unity of God or that God is one which should have been as carefully guarded as the very Belief of a God they have divided by introducing a Trinity of three equally All-mighty and All-sufficient Persons And the Properties of the Divine Nature to whose Distinction and Variety we must heedfully attend if we will have any adequate Notion of God or right Understanding of his Works and Providences these they confound by affirming they are the same But let us go on to what remains What we are to understand by the Son and Holy Ghost GOD is one substantial and most simple Act yet we say also God is two substantial and really distinct Acts. The two substantial and immanent Acts in God are Vnderstanding and Will For God most perfectly understands himself and also willeth that is loveth himself in the most perfect manner But whatsoever understandeth doth understand by conceiving an Image of the thing understood Therefore God as hath been said understanding himself from all Eternity conceived within himself from all Eternity a most perfect Image of himself Which Image thus conceived and as it were generated or begotten by him is called the Son And this Image being in God and a perfect Image of God and Eternal is God no less than the Father by whom it was conceived or generated in the manner aforesaid namely by his understanding or apprehending himself and his own Perfections But God also willeth and that is another of the substantial immanent Acts that concur to the essentiating the Trinity He willeth or loveth himself and the most perfect Image of himself and the Image willeth or loveth him This Mutual Love of the Father and the Image or Son is what is named the Holy Ghost So that what things in Men are Faculties Actions and Properties in God we must understand them to be Persons and Spirits Which is also farther both cleared and proved by this Observation The second Person or Son is the Understanding or Wisdom of God not Original Wisdom or Understanding for that is the Father but a reflex Wisdom that is the Wisdom which resulteth from the Father's understanding himself and his own Perfections The Holy Spirit as hath been said is the mutual willing Love and Power of Original Wisdom and of the Reflex Wisdom The Notes This they pretend is that Mystery hid from Ages and Generations but now made manifest to the Disciples of Athanasius There is no Parallel for it in all either History or Nature but the Mysteries of the Egyptians For as the Egyptians were at prodigious Cost in making and setting up a great number of Images in and about their Temples by which Hieroglyphicks or sacred Images they pretended to teach Men the Secrets of Natural Philosophy and the Precepts of Morality but when they were ask'd to explain the meaning of these Hieroglyphicks they gave a very mean and trifling Sense or a Sense very absurd and false So after Trinitarians have long amused their Disciples with Terms as Mystical as the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks such as Trinity Eternal Generation Eternal Procession three
a Reprieve of about Eighty Years Our Opposers can show no Context of Holy Scripture in which their threefold Death for this Sin is contained or in which the Posterity of Adam are said to have his Sin imputed to them and that they are punish'd for it The only Offer they make is from Romans Chap. 5. the Apostle there at v. 19. saith As by one Man's Disobedience many are made Sinners so by the Obedience of one shall many be made Righteous By one Man's Disobedience say they that is by God's Imputation of one Man's Disobedience to them even Adam's in Paradise so many have been made Sinners How much more dexterously and agreeably to the Justice and Wisdom of God Pelagius and the Vnitarians By one Man's Disobedience that is saith Pelagius not as Austin has newly fancied by God's Imputation but by our Imitation of one Man's Disobedience so many have been made Sinners and on the other hand by the Obedience of one that is by Imitation not by Imputation of one Man's Obedience even the Lord Christ's many shall be made Righteous Trinitarians make the same Blunder at ver 18. As by the Offence of one Judgment came upon all Men to Condemnation even so by the Righteousness of one the free Gift came or shall come upon all Men to Justification and Life Here again they see not that by the Offence of one Man and again by the Righteousness of one Man are not as much as to say by the Imputation of one Man's Offence and of one Man's Righteousness but by Imitation of one Man's Righteousness and of another Man's Offence Justification and Condemnation have come upon all Men. We die for imitating the Disobedience of Adam and we shall be justified and saved for and by imitating the Righteousness of the Lord Christ And thus it is that St. Paul himself explains himself in this very Chapter v. 12. As by one Man Sin entred into the World and Death by Sin so also Death hath passed upon all Men for that or because all have sinned He saith not as Trinitarians do because Adam sinned but because all have sinned therefore Death hath passed on all that is all of us have deserved the Death we must undergo or have undergone by our own Sins But they say Infants die and what Sin have they unless you allow the Imputation of Adam's Sin to all his Descendents But why do they not consider too that Beasts die is Adam's Sin Imputed also to them They ought therefore to know that Holy Paul in that Context is speaking only of Adult and Grown Persons as for Infants Beasts and such like that have not Sin because they have not Vnderstanding of Good and Evil of Moral and Immoral such die because they have Mortal Bodies liable to Diseases and Accidents From which Accidents and Diseases to deliver and rescue them it does not please God to Interpose by an Extraordinary and Miraculous Power For which sort of Providence towards them divers Probable Reasons might be given but being not Necessary or Proper to be here inserted I omit them Of Partial Redemption THE Transgression of Adam in Paradise or his eating the Forbidden Fruit was in Him Actual Sin in his Descendents 'tis called Original Sin but the Effects of it are the same in Both namely the before-mentioned three-fold Death or three Deaths Death Temporal which is the separation of the Soul from the Body and all temporal Calamities and Evils Death Spiritual which is the Corruption of the Faculties that we are averse to all Good and inclined to all Evil. Death Eternal which is the everlasting Suffering of Body and Soul in Hell-fire These Deaths are the Consequences and Desert of Adam's Sin to himself as the Actual Offender to us as his Sin is Imputed to us by the Justice of God But the Mercy of God and his Wisdom have found out a most Gracious and Glorious Expedient by which to deliver Mankind though not from Temporal Death yet in part from Spiritual Death and wholly and altogether from Death Eternal But before we speak more particularly of the Expedient 't is necessary to caution Learners that they fall not into this Error that God designed the Benefit of the Expedient for All Men and Women For when we say Mankind or all Men have been Redeemed from the before-mentioned Deaths our meaning is that the Elect or as that most consider'd and weigh'd 17th Article of the English Church speaks Those whom God hath chosen out of Mankind are as that Article farther says brought to everlasting Salvation as Vessels of Honour These are called according to God's purpose in due Season his Spirit working in them And they through Grace obey that Calling These Elect are a definite certain and unalterable Number that can neither be increased nor diminished as is Expresly and in words declared by the Suffrage of the Divines of Great Britain at the Synod of Dort Suffrage p. 9. It is saith the same Suffrage at p. 43. for the Elect that Christ died that He might Effectually obtain for them and Infallibly bestow on them both Remission of Sins and Salvation If the Unskilful ask here How this Doctrine agreeth with those Declarations of Holy Scripture so often repeated which seem to say that Christ died for the Sins of the World or for All Men The Divines above said answer at p. 47. Here it is that the secret Decree of Election sheweth it self inasmuch as the Price was indeed payed for All yet is not Beneficial to All because All have not the Gist of fulfilling the Condition of the Covenant They mean All have not Saving Grace given to them whereby to Believe and to Obey the Gospel They rightly add at p. 55. We no where meet in Scripture any Promise by which God hath bound himself to impart his Grace to All and every One Farthermore the same excellent Suffrage teaches at p. 27. that 't is a Supposition without any good ground that all Infants are saved It saith that those Infants who are saved are saved by virtue of their Election which respecteth not the Age of Persons but only looketh upon the common heap of Fallen Mankind out of which it chooseth And concerning such Choosing or Election it teaches at p. 34. that Grace doth find some whom it Adopteth out of the most Wicked and at their last End while Many who seem less Guilty have no part in this Gift Therefore when All are said to be Redeemed or when 't is said Christ died for All or such like Expressions are used this is to be understood of All sorts or orders of Men and Women He died for High and Low for Old Men and Infants for Youth and Middle-age for Rich and Poor for Wise and Unwise for all these sorts for some particular Persons of all these for such of all these sorts as are Elected And those whoever they be who extend any farther than this the Redemption purchased by Christ are Arminians But