true and proper Personality of the Son and Holy Spirit were very absurd and guilty of Heinous Nonsense in saying That the Son is Eternally generated and the Spirit Eternally proceeds These are Nice Speculations which the Arian Controversy engaged them in but the Nicene Fathers contented themselves to affirm no more concerning the Eternal Generation than that the Son was begotten of his Father before all Worlds God of God Light of Light Very God of Very God And this Notion of an Eternal Generation our Author has no Objection against and we do not think our selves bound to answer for all the Subtilties either of the Fathers or Schools nor to determine every Curious Question which Perverse and Heretical Wits can start concerning the Divine Generation and Procession which is above the Comprehension of Angelical Minds and which we know no more of but that the Son is begotten and the Spirit proceeds And yet this Reasoning is very absurd when applied to an Eternal and immutable Nature Things which have a beginning which are made which are successively and gradually perfected by Art are incompleat and unfinish'd while they are a-making and if they are always a-making or always incompleat but a Generation or Procession without a Beginning and without Succession must always be perfect and always the same if it be at all here is no new Production no making any thing no transient Action in which sence the Catholick Fathers denied the Divine Generation to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Action but only an Essential 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 habitude relation between Father and Son who both perfectly and eternally subsist and co-exist with each other but so that the Son is of the Father and the Holy Spirit of Father and Son Thus they were without any Beginning and thus they always are and this is all they meant by an Eternal Generation and Procession and this the Immutability of the Divine Nature forc'd them to own for though external Acts and Relations make no Change in the Divine Nature yet what is ad intrà does and therefore could we conceive any distinguishable moments in Eternal Duration when God was no Father when he begot a Son and when he ceased to beget this would make an internal Change in the Divine Nature it self which is inconsistent with perfect Immutability But the Son always was and is of the Father and this is his Eternal Generation and the Holy Spirit always was and is of Father and Son and this is his Eternal Procession and thus the Divine Essence always was and is the same a Trinity in Unity and this is the perfect Immutability of God And yet his Philosophy is very absurd when he argues from an Eternal Generation and Procession that therefore the Son and Holy Spirit must be incompleat and unfinish'd for this will not be granted him even in created Nature much less in the Divinity They are no mean Philosophers who tell us that the World may very properly be said to be perpetually created that what we call Preservation or upholding all things in being is the very same Act and Power which at first gave Being to them and such a permanent Act is Creation still though no new Production of any thing But these Men would scorn any one who should hence conclude that there is no compleat or finish'd Substance no really subsisting substantial World Much more absurd is it to conclude this of an Eternal Generation which produces nothing new nothing that ever began to be and is the same that ever it was without any Succession And he defends the Nominalists just as wisely and philosophically as he opposes the Realists as if his only design were to expose both He says this Eternal Generation proves the Son and Holy Spirit to be only immanent Acts in God reflex Wisdom or the Wisdom that resulteth from Original Minds Eternal Contemplation and Knowledge of the Divine Nature and Perfections and the everlasting Spiration of Love that must proceed from the Original and reflex Wisdom of the Deity And here we have just such a Trinity in the God-head as there is in every particular Man his Mind and the immanent Acts of Wisdom or Reason and Love which all Learned Men know to be one kind of Sabellianism That the Son is the Wisdom and Power of God and that the peculiar Character of the Holy Spirit is Love is the language both of Scripture and Fathers but not as immanent Acts but the living subsisting Wisdom of the Father and living subsisting Love eternal and infinite Persons co-eternal and co-equal with the Father But it is a new Language unknown to Scriptures and Fathers to call an immanent Act of Wisdom a Son and the Minds producing such an Act its generating or begetting a Son and to call such an immanent Act in God the Son of God and God by which Rule every Thought or Act of Reason in any Man is Man and the Son of that Man whose Thought and Act it is And it as new Philosophy to talk of immanent Acts in God for there can be no immanent Acts but where there are Powers and Faculties which is the Imperfection of the Creature-State not incident to the perfect Simplicity of the Divine Nature But besides this what does he mean by the Eternal Generation and Spiration of an immanent Act an immanent Act according to all the Accounts I ever met with of it and as every Man may feel in himself is not an abiding as he calls it but a transient Act it has no permanent stable Nature no Subsistence of its own but vanishes and dies assoon as generated to speak in his language which is a necessary Reason to remove all such immanent Acts from God in whom there is nothing vanishing nothing successive but if Men will attribute immanent Acts to God reflex Wisdom as opposed to a living subsisting personal Wisdom they must speak of them according to the known Nature of such Acts and then an Eternal Generation of such an immanent Act which vanishes assoon as generated can signifie no more than an eternal successive Repetition which is a Contradiction of the Acts of reflex Wisdom that as one vanishes another succeeds that though God has always this reflex Wisdom yet he has not always the same Act of reflex Wisdom but produces it a-new every moment which he calls an Eternal Generation just as it is with Men who may have the same Thought for kind some time together but yet every moment it is new produced To talk of such an Eternal Son as this and such an Eternal Generation is Heresie in Philosophy and in common sense as well as in Christianity and it would be loss of time to expose it I must no more omit than he another surprizing Argument whereby he proves that the Catholick Church did believe that the second Person is the reflex Wisdom of God and the Third Divine Love because for this reason as he tells us this
their Senses where their Reason and Philosophy is at a loss nay in such Matters as if they did not see them they think they could demonstrate absolutely contradictious and impossible and did Men heartily believe the Scriptures why should they not as absolutely submit their Reason to the Authority of God as to the Evidence of Sense But let them answer for this But the whole Strength of this Argument which he manages with great Triumph and Scorn dwindles into the old Socinian Sophism that one God signifies but one only Person who is God and that whatever other Unity you ascribe to three Persons each of which is by himself true and perfect God still they are three Gods for since each of these Spirits or Persons each of which is an infinite Mind or Spirit are said to be infinite all-perfect they must be said to be Gods mutually Conscious mutually inexisting and the rest but no more one God than they are one Spirit and therefore the Realists may as well pretend that by these Devices of theirs they have contrived three infinite Spirits into one Person or into one Spirit as into one God And that a disinterested Person I suppose he means such as himself and Philosophers and Jews and Pagans he might have added Sabellians and Socinians and Mahumatans will call these three Gods Now it is no wonder that this disinterested Person thinks all our Explications of the Unity of God insufficient when we so vastly differ about the Notion of one God That we are so far from proving three Divine Persons to be one God in his Sense that we reject his Notion of one God as Judaism and Heresie and herein we have the Authority of the Catholick Church on our side And here I would desire the Reader to observe that this Argument is not meerly against that Phrase of three Minds and Spirits and Substances but against three Persons each of which is in his own proper Person Mind and Spirit and Substance for three such Persons by this Authors Argument are three Gods and can no more be contrived as he prophanely speaks into one God than into one Personal Spirit But yet since he graciously owns that one infinite Almighty Spirit is one God what if we should prove these three Infinite Persons each of which is Mind and Spirit to be one and the same Infinite Eternal Spirit And yet this has always been the Faith of the Catholick Church St. Austin is express in it The Father is Spirit and the Son Spirit and the Holy Ghost Spirit but not three Spirits but one Spirit that is not Personally but Essentially One they are three Persons but one Essence essentially one Spirit And if God be perfect pure simple Essence the Unity of Essence is the Unity of God This was the Doctrine of all the Catholick Fathers and this we must insist on till our Modern Demonstrators speak more home to this Point that one Divine Essence one Self-originated Divinity though subsisting in three distinct Persons is but one God I can't discourse this at large now that may be done if there be Occasion for it another time but at present I shall only give a brief Account of the Doctrine of the Fathers as to this Point They tell us that there is but one self-originated Divinity but one Father and therefore but one God that this Eternal Unbegotten Father begets an Eternal Son of his own Nature and Substance and in like Manner that is in the same Nature and Substance the Holy Spirit Eternally proceeds from Father and Son So that there being but one Nature one Divinity communicated whole and entire and perfectly the same without Division of Substance there is but one Divine Nature but one Divinity distinctly in three not one meerly as a Species is one though they often allude also to a Specific Unity but one as one Individual though not one Singular Nature is one as one which subsists wholly indivisibly and perfectly in three is one which is one and one and one by a perfect Sameness and Identity of Nature and Substance but not three That these three are inseparable from each other never did subsist a part never can but are in each other which they call the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Circumincession which makes the Divinity one simple indivisible Monad And here we may allow a Place and he never intended any other Place for it to what Dr. Sherlock calls mutual Consciousness which is the proper and natural In-being of three each of which is Mind and Spirit which is not barely a knowing each other by an external Communication of Thoughts and Counsels which is far from being an essential natural Unity but such an inward vital Sensation as each Person has of himself which after all the Noise and Clamour about it seems to be a very sensible Representation of the natural In-being and Circumincession of the Divine Persons and as natural a Demonstration of the Unity of the Divine Essence as self-consciousness must be acknowledged to be of the Unity of a Person It is certain without this they cannot be one Energy and Power wherein the Fathers also place the Unity of the God-Head one Agent one Creator and Governour But where there is such an inseparable Union such a mutual conscious Sensation there can be but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Greg. Nyssen speaks One Motion of the Divine Will though distinctly and without Confusion in three And this makes them one Agent one Essential Will one Essential Wisdom one Essential Power so that here is in the properest Sence but one Omniscience one Omnipotence one Will c. and therefore but one God though Father Son and Holy Ghost are each of them in their own Persons Omnipotent Omniscient and whatever belongs to the Idea of God All this indeed does not make these three Divine Persons one Person and therefore not one God in the Socinian Sense of one God which is the only Deficiency this Author charges this Account of the Divine Unity with and is wisely done of him because he knows we reject this Notion of the Divine Unity and therefore here he is safe we assert that the Unity of God is not the Unity of a Person but the Unity of Nature and Essence and to confute this he gravely proves that three Persons are not and cannot be one Person But if he would have opposed us he should either have shewn First That the Account the Catholick Fathers give for for we pretend to give no other of the Unity of God does not prove the perfect Unity of the Divine Essence in three Persons or Secondly that one undivided Divinity is not one God or Thirdly that the same Eternal Essence cannot subsist whole and perfect distinctly and indivisibly in Three that is that God cannot communicate his own Nature and Substance without Division and Separation to his Son and Spirit or that God cannot have an Eternal Son and an Eternal Spirit if
he has both imperfectly and falsly represented the Opinion of the Realists 1. He tells us They say that the Holy Trinity or the Three Divine Persons are Three distinct infinite Substances Three Minds Three Spirits Now any one would hence conclude That this is the Universal Doctrine of all the Realists and that this Phrase of Three Substances Minds and Spirits is the Parting point between the Realists and Nominals That all who believe a Real Trinity own Three Infinite Minds and Spirits and that no man can believe a Real Trinity who does not own this Now this is manifestly false as our late Experience proves The greatest number of Realists as far as I can guess who believe a Real Trinity a Real subsisting Father a Real subsisting Son and a Real Subsisting Holy Spirit do yet reject those Expressions of Three Infinite Minds and Spirits which are liable to a very Heretical Sense either Arianism or Tritheism and therefore were very sparingly and with great Caution used by the Catholick Fathers tho' they used Three Hypostases in the very same Sense and did not condemn Three Natures and Substances when personally used as we have seen above And therefore the late Dispute about Three Minds does not in it self divide the contending Parties into Realists and Nominals as the Socinians too hastily conclude and think to carry their Cause by it Very good Catholicks may dispute such expressions as we know they did the Homoousion it self for One Substance is as liable to an Heretical Sense as Three Substances for that may be Sabellianism and the other may be Arianism or Tritheism and both of them rightly understood may be very Orthodox but whether they are or no must be judged by the Sense in which they are used and the Catholick Fathers like good Christians have easily yielded to each other in a dispute of words when it has appeared that the difference has been only in words not in the Faith What Athanasius says upon a like occasion is a very good Rule to maintain Christian Peace and Unity To corrupt the Faith is always unlawful tho' we palliate it with the most popular and orthodox forms of speech but a true and holy Faith does not degenerate into Impiety and Heresy by some new improper expressions while he who uses such words has a Pious and Orthodox sense But to proceed Tho' all Realists do not agree about the use of those words Three Minds or Substances yet they all do and all must agree in what follows viz. They are Three such Persons that is as distinct and as really subsisting and living as three Angels or three Men. They are so without doubt if they be real proper Persons for a Person lives and subsists and Three Persons must be really distinct or they can't be Three that is the Father's Person is no more the Person of the Son nor the Person of the Son the Person of the Father than Peter is John or John is Peter but then they do not subsist dividely or separately as Peter and John do He adds Each Person has his own peculiar individual Substance his own personal and proper Vnderstanding Will and Power of Action an Omnipotence Omniscience and all other Divine Attributes divers in number from the Personal Omnipotence Omniscience c. of the other Two Persons Now I except against nothing in this but the Phrases of peculiar and individual substance and divers in number for peculiar and individual I would say a singular substance for tho' a singular substance in created Natures is a peculiar and individual substance also it is not so in the Divinity The Catholick Fathers always distinguish'd between One Substance and One singular Substance of the Godhead To deny One Substance or the Homoousion was Arianism To assert One singular Substance was Sabellianism for One singular Substance is but One Person which denies a Trinity of Persons But the Divine Nature and Substance is both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One and Common and therefore not One singular Substance which can never be common and by the same Reason a Personal Substance though it be singular and appropriate to such a particular Person and therefore as incommunicable as the Person is yet it is not peculiar and individual in the common acceptation of those words but the same One common undivided inseparable Essence of the Divinity subsisting distinctly and singularly in each Person Thus for the same Reason I will not say that the Personal Omnipotence c. of the Father is divers in number from the Personal Omnipotence of the Son because it is the same One Omnipotence as it is the same One Divinity which subsists distinctly in each Person but we may and must say That the Personal Omnipotence of the Father is not the Personal Omnipotence of the Son no more than the Person of the Father is the Person of the Son But this disguised Socinian has taken great care in representing the Doctrine of the Realists to conceal their Faith of the perfect undivided Unity and Identity of the Divine Nature in Three distinct subsisting Persons which yet he knows they as Sacredly profess as they do the real distinction of Persons and is owned in as high terms by Dr. Sherlock himself as by any of his Adversaries and is almost the only Pretence of those many Contradictions he is charged with by such as will not understand a perfect distinction in perfect Unity which yet is essential to the Catholick Faith of a Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity But as for this Author whether he had thought such a Distinction and Unity reconcileable or not yet when he undertook to represent the Doctrine of the Realists he ought to have represented it whole and entire and to have left it to the judgment of the Reader whereas he is very careful to observe that they say the Three Persons in the Trinity are Three Substances Three Minds and Spirits which yet only some of them say but takes no notice that these Three distinct Persons have One undivided Nature and Essence which they all agree in For this would have spoiled his Objections of Tritheism and what he immediately adds about Three Creators and Governors of the World which they never owned any more than Three Gods for tho' there are Three who are Omnipotent and Three who create yet they are so inseparably united in Nature that they are but One Agent One Omnipotent and produce but One Effect As the Catholick Fathers concluded for this Reason that as the Scripture teaches us That there is but One God and yet that the Father is God the Son God and the Holy Ghost God so it attributes the making and government of the world both to Father Son and Holy Ghost and yet there is but one and the same world which is made and governed which proves that though they act as distinctly as their Persons are distinct yet there is such an essential
Unity of Will and Power and Operation from the indivisible Unity of Nature that they are but one Agent and produce but one and the same effect But still as for the main of the Charge That every distinct Person in the Trinity has a personal Substance Life Will Understanding Power of his own which is not the personal Substance Life Will Understanding Power of either of the other Persons is what all who believe a Real Trinity do and must agree in whether they will agree to call these Three Substances Wills Understandings c. or not Nay this is all that those very Persons who assert Three Substances Three Minds and Spirits in the Trinity ever meant by it Own but each Person in his own proper Person to be infinite Substance Mind Spirit and that neither Person is each other and they will consent to any other form of words and not dispute the reason or propriety of them all that they contend for is a real Trinity of true real proper Persons and that they are certain cannot be unless each Person by himself as distinct from the other Persons be Substance Mind Spirit Will Understanding Power This is the only Trinity which Socinus Crellius Slichtingius and others of that Party have hitherto disputed against and therefore certainly they did apprehend that the Christians in their days even all the Divinity-Chairs of Europe did assert such a Trinity and those Learned Men who opposed them did believe so too or there must be very wise doings amongst them tho' our Modern Socinians have now made a discovery that these Realists are not the true Catholick Trinitarians but that the Nominalists are the Church and now they are grown Friends with the Church and Orthodox beyond their own hopes and their business is only to defend the Church against this new Sect of Real Trinitarians Let it be so but still they maintain the same Doctrine that Socinus did and dispute against the same Trinity which he disputed against and therefore these Real Trinitarians are no new upstart Sect but their old Adversaries who will never be cheated by new Names into an accommodation or comprehension with Socinians The plain state of the Case is this Father Son and Holy Ghost are the Christian Trinity now the question is whether this be a Real Trinity or not that is whether the Father be an Eternal Infinite Living Omniscient Omnipotent subsisting Person and did truly beget of his own Nature and Substance a True Living Omnipotent Omniscient subsisting Son and in like manner whether the Holy Ghost proceeds from Father and Son a True Living Omnipotent Omniscient subsisting Spirit This is the Doctrine of those whom our Modern Socinians call Realists that is of True and Orthodox Trinitarians and without asserting this whatever they teach besides a Trinity is nothing but a name and therefore such men may properly be called Nominalists so that the Realists only are Trinitarians the meer Nominalists whatever they are else are no Trinitarians and this new contrivance of opposing these Real Trinitarians is neither better nor worse than opposing the Doctrine of the Trinity And let but our People understand this and we are where we were and then the Socinians may call themselves Nominalists or what they please To proceed He is as artificial and unsincere in his account of the Nominalists as of the Realists We must not conceive of the Divine Persons say the Nominalists as we do of created Persons Very right there is an unconceivable difference between them as all Realists acknowledge they are perfectly distinct but yet inseparably One they never did never can subsist apart the same One undivided Divinity subsists whole and perfect and yet distinctly in each of them and is as perfectly One in Three as any one thing is one with it self And thus we allow what he adds to be a very great Truth and wish he himself would consider better of it That the conception we ought to have of their Personalities or what they are as they are Persons is as different from the Personalities of any created Beings as the Perfections of the Divinity are paramount to Human or Angelical Perfections This we are sensible of and therefore do not presently cry out of Nonsense and Contradiction when we are forced by Scripture and Reason to attribute such things to the Divine Nature and Persons as we can find no Images or Idea's of in Created Nature for we know that Creatures cannot be perfectly like to God and consequently we ought not to oppose the Idea's of Nature to Revelation But the present question is not Whether Father Son and Holy Ghost are such Persons as created Persons as Angels or men are for it is certain there is an unconceivable difference between them but whether they may be called Persons in the true and proper Notion of the word Person for one who does really and substantially subsist live will understand act according to his Natural Powers And whether there be Three such subsisting living willing understanding Persons in the Godhead or only One Whether as the Father hath life in himself so the Son hath life in himself and as the Father knows the Son so the Son knows the Father and whether the Spirit of life and the Spirit of Holiness and Power and the Spirit that searcheth the deep things of God be not a subsisting living knowing working Spirit and this is the reason why the Church calls them Three Persons which the Scripture does not call them because the Holy Scripture distinctly Attributes life will knowledge power to these Three Father Son and Holy Ghost which is the Notion all men have of a Person when applied to Creatures and to talk of Three Divine Persons who are not subsisting living knowing Persons destroys the only Reason for calling them Persons But he adds as the Doctrine of the Nominalists That God is but One Being but One Substance Mind or Spirit with One only will understanding energy or power of action But is not this in a true Catholick Sense the Doctrine of the Realists also as I observed before But this is what this disinterested Person would be at to distinguish the Realists and Nominalists by Three Substances and One Substance of the Divinity And were this the whole Truth the Realists would certainly be Hereticks and the Nominalists might be the Orthodox Church Whereas the Realists as they own Three real subsisting living Persons so they as constantly profess the Homoousion or One undivided Substance and Nature subsisting and acting distinctly but indivisibly and inseparably in Three which is a real perfect subsisting Trinity in perfect Unity But the Nominalists truly so called as they own but One Substance in the Divinity so but One single Person which is their One God and can find a Trinity only in a Trinity of Names or Properties or meer immanent Acts. That there are many such Nominalists among us I fear is too true but I must say again that the
Person Substance Mind Spirit true and perfect God Yes most certainly but it is not the Definition of the One God but only of a Divine Person and the Christian Faith teaches us That Three such Divine Persons are but One God The Catholick Fathers have given us another Notion of One God That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 One God is One Divinity that is an Eternal Immutable Indivisible Omnipotent Omniscient Life Being Essence Nature and the Essential Undivided Unity Sameness Identity of the Godhead in Father Son and Holy Ghost is the Unity of God For I take it to be more like a Demonstration than any I expect to meet with in this Author That where there is but One Essential undivided Divinity there is but One God Now this I think may vindicate those obnoxious Expressions as some think them of Three infinite Substances Minds and Spirits from the Charge of Tritheism for since infinite Substance Mind and Spirit is not the definition of One God but only of a Divine Person to say Three infinite Substances Minds and Spirits does not multiply Gods but only Divine Persons 2. His second Argument is against Three Wills Three Vnderstandings Three Energies or Principles or Powers of Action in One God This he represents as monstrously absurd when as in truth if it be absurd the only absurdity is That there should be Three Divine Persons that is Three who have a Personal Will Understanding Power of their own in the Unity of the same Godhead Now the absurdity of this I cannot see nor has he made the least offer to prove it But the secret of all these monstrous Absurdities is this He represents One God to signifie only One single Person who is God and then indeed Three Wills Three Understandings Three Lives of one single Person is as Absurd and Monstrous as one would wish but before he had charged the Doctrine of a Real Trinity with such Absurdities he should first have proved That One God signifies but One single Person and have exposed the monstrous Absurdities of Three Persons and One God and then we would have given him leave to have represented Three Personal Wills Understandings and Lives as absurd as he pleases but if it be not absurd to own Three Persons I 'm sure it is very absurd to deny that there are Three who Live and Will and Understand that is in his Language Three Wills Understandings and Lives in One God 3. His Third Argument comes nearer the Business for he undertakes to prove That the Second and Third Persons in the Trinity the Son and the Holy Ghost are not Substance and Spirit but only Properties or immanent Acts or relative Subsistences in the Notion of the Nominals And his Argument is made up partly of Authority and partly of his own Reasoning upon it His Authority is the Council of Lyons in the year 1274. which Condemns those who presume to deny That the Holy Spirit does eternally proceed from the Father and the Son He adds 'T is evident at first sight to any Learned man who is conversant in these Questions and in the Writers who in several Ages have managed 'em what the Fathers of this Council meant and what they aimed at in this Decree or Canon For because they believed that the Divine Persons are not Minds and Spirits but relative Subsistences or what is the same immanent Acts Therefore they could not but believe and define That the Second Person is eternally generated and therefore called the Son That the Third is an Eternal Spiration and therefore called Spirit I can't think what to call this and therefore shall say nothing of it but only beg my Reader 's Pardon for giving it an Answer In the first place this Council says nothing of the Eternal Generation of the Son and therefore this could not be what they aimed at as he pretends In the next place The Eternal Procession of the Holy Ghost was not the thing in question but his Eternal Procession from Father and Son which the Latin Church professed and therefore added the Filioque to their Creed but the Greek Church had disputed and condemned it and that was one great design of this Council to bring the Greeks to consent to this addition so that it was not the Aeternaliter but the Filioque which the Council had principal regard to in this Decree not the Eternal Procession but the Procession from the Father and the Son so little did they think of what our Author makes their chief design But there is another Clause in this Decree which he has concealed which proves that they thought quite otherwise for they do not only condemn those who deny that the Holy Spirit proceeds Eternally from Father and Son but those also who teach that he proceeds from Father and Son as from two Principles and by two Spirations and not as from one Principle by one Spiration Now had they believed the Son to be a meer immanent Act such an unsubsisting Reason and Wisdom as is in Man had not this been a very wise Dispute Whether this immanent Act were a Principle of Spiration either together with the Father or distinct from him But nothing is to be wondered at in an Author who will venture to say That Eternal Generation and Eternal Procession is not reconcileable with the real personal subsistence of the Son and Holy Spirit but proves them to be meer immanent Acts and that those who own such an Eternal Generation and Procession must consequently believe so for this is the only Argument he has to prove the Fathers of this Council to have believ'd the Son and Spirit to be meer immanent Acts because they assert the Eternal Generation and Procession whereas on the contrary it is evident that all the Catholick Fathers who asserted the Eternal Generation and Procession did as strenuously assert against the Noetians and Sabellians the true and proper Personality of the Son and Spirit But let us hear how he proves That if the Son and Spirit The Second and Third Persons be distinct Substances and Spirits from the First that is if the Son in his own Person as distinct from the Person of the Father be Substance and Spirit and so of the Holy Ghost it were heinous Nonsense to say they were Eternally generated or Eternally proceed His Argument is this If the Persons are Substances and Spirits it must be said that the Second was compleatly and finally generated from all Eternity the like also of the Third Person else they should be incompleat Substances unfinisht Spirits If they are Spirits or Substances it can never be said that one is Eternally generated the other does Eternally proceed but the former was generated from all Eternity and the other actually and compleatly proceeded from all Eternity Now supposing the Reason of this to be unanswerable All that it amounts to is no more but this That the Catholick Fathers who attested the
Three in Father Son and Holy Ghost each of which is an all-perfect and all-sufficient Spirit and yet but one whole undivided Divinity one all-perfect all-sufficient Being these Three are not more than enough not redundant and superfluous in the Divinity and therefore he should have proved that by the same Reason that three absolute independent self-originated Divinities are superfluous and needless three Divine Persons of the same one undivided Divinity are superfluous too Three Divinities three separate self-originated Divine Essences and Natures are superfluous but I hope one Divinity one Divine Nature and Essence is not and if three Divine Persons are Essential to one undivided and inseparable Divinity I hope they are not superfluous neither and this is the Catholick Faith not three Gods or three Divinities but three Persons in one infinite undivided Nature and Essence Three which never did subsist never did never can act a-part and therefore though three are but one all-wise omnipotent Agent and one omnipotent is not more than enough But none of these Imperfections which are the Reasons why Beings of the same Kind are multiplied are found in any one of these all-perfect all-sufficient Spirits Very true but the same one whole perfect Divinity is found in them all and therefore though they are three the Divinity is not multiplied but they are One God and this is all we are to account for those who believe but one God I hope need not give a Reason whether final or declaratory why there are more but if he expects a Reason why there are three living subsisting omniscient omnipotent Persons in this one undivided God-head a final Reason I can give none for I have learnt to give no such Reasons of a necessary and eternal Nature a declaratory Reason as he aclls it I can give because our Saviour has assured us that so it is and has given Command to his Ministers to baptize in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Thirdly And this answers his third Argument that the Works of Creation though they prove the Being of a God yet give us not the least Intimation of more Gods than One We own the Argument against a Plurality of Gods but now for the Application He says this is as direct a Proof against our professing more Infinite and Almighty mighty Spirits Of one such Mind or Spirit the Works of Creation are a clear Demonstration but they shew us not the least Foot-steps or Track of more such Spirits and Minds Or of three such Divine Almighty Person and I know not how they should when as the Realists themselves profess these three are but one essential Wisdom Power and Goodness and therefore but one Maker and Governour of the World But he thinks that if there were more than One such Mind or Spirit or as we say infinite Person who is an infinite and all-mighty Mind that also would have been made known to us either by the Works of Creation or Providence that are visible to all because all are concerned to know it But though there were as we profess to believe three such Divine Persons in the Unity of the God-head yet he knows according to our Principles the Works of Creation could give no such Notice of any distinction of Persons in the God-head because the Father makes all Things by his Word and Spirit by an undivided and undistinguished Wisdom and Power and when these Divine Persons have not distinct and separate Parts in the Creation it is impossible that this visible Frame of Nature should distinguish them and therefore this Distinction cannot be learnt but by Revelation Nor consequently were all Men concerned to know this till God thought fit to reveal it It was sufficient in a meer State of Nature to worship the Maker of the World with an undistinguisht Devotion but the Redemption of Mankind by the Incarnation and Death of the Son of God and by the Sanctification of the Spirit made the Revelation of this Mystery necessary and though the Works of Creation did not visibly distinguish the Divine Persons yet the Work of Redemption does Father Son and Holy Ghost have their distinct Parts and Offices in this Glorious Work and such as prove each of them to be a distinct Person and each Person to be true and perfect God but this Author will not stand the Trial of Revelation for he tells us plainly that the Doctrine of the Trinity for that is all he means by three Minds and Spirits is a Point of so much Importance and so general Concernment that were it true it must have been found where all other necessary Parts of Religion are registered in the Works of Creation or the Methods of Providence or the congenit Notions which are inseparable from our rational Natures Here he speakes out and we thank him for it he hath done with all Revelation excepting where there is the least need of it viz. such Matters as may be known without a Revelation and now he has pulled off his Disguise it is time for all Christians to have done with him He has hitherto concealed himself under the Character of a Nominalist and according to his own Rule he ought to shew us this nominal Trinity registered in the Works of Creation or the Methods of Providence or those congenite Notions which are inseparable from our rational Natures and when he has done this we will shew him a Trinity of real proper subsisting Persons As for what he adds that our Saviour tells us God is not three Spirits but a Spirit it is like all the rest Spirit there as in many other Places signifies the Nature not the Person and therefore these are not contradictory Propositions God is a Spirit and there are Three in the Unity of the God-head each of which is infinite Mind and Spirit SECT VI. The Defence this Author makes for the Nominalists against the Objections of the Realists THis Author having as he thinks sufficiently exposed the Tritheistick Trinity of the Realists proceeds to vindicate the Nominalists from those Exceptions which are made against them I need say little more to this than to explain that Defence he makes for them and leave the Persons concerned to vindicate themselves from his Vindication which seems to me a very scandalous one 1. The first Objection is That the Explication of the Nominalists is a bare-fac'd yielding the long-controverted Question of the Trinity to the Sabellians and Samosatenians and consequently to the Socinians who differ in nothing from Noetus Sabellius and Paul of Samosata they are near of Kin indeed but there is some difference between them The God of the Sabellians and Socinians and the God or pretended Verbal Trinity of the Nominals is perfectly the same the latter have explained away the Trinity to the former The three Divine Persons of the Nominals do all make but one Divine Person of the Socinians and Sabellians This is certainly true as he explains the
or rather he himself in some former Pamphlets has observed very material differences between the Dean's Hypothesis and some of these Learned Men He neither owns the Platonick Inequality of Dr. Cudworth nor the Sabellian Composition and Union of others but asserts Three Real Distinct Coequal Coeternal Persons not in one singular and solitary but in one numerical Nature and Essence But I believe the Dean will heartily thank him for giving him the late Archbishop and Dr. Bull two such Names as will command Reverence and shelter him from the Imputation either of Novelty or Heresy at least as to this Point And it is worth observing from the example of these two great Men at what rate some Persons judge of Men and Doctrines The good Archbishop by his Trinitarian Adversaries is charged with Socinianism and by his Socinian Adversaries with Tritheism and yet he must have very ill luck if he could stumble upon two such Extremes As for Dr. Bull his Learned and Elaborate Defence of the Nicene Faith was printed at Oxford and received with Universal Applause as it highly deserved None of them to this day have charged him with the least Heresy and I believe will not yet venture to do it And yet as this Writer confesses and as every unprejudiced Reader must own the Doctrine of the Defence as to this Point is the very same with the Dean's Hypothesis which these very Persons have condemned as Impious and Heretical So true is it Duo cùm faciunt idem non est idem All that this Socinian intended by bringing Dr. Bull into the Fray was to follow the Blow which the Animadverter and the Oxford Decree had given to a Trinity of distinct proper subsisting living intelligent Persons which is all that Dr. Bull or the Dean assert by their Charge of Tritheism which he hoped would be a sufficient Answer to that otherwise unanswerable Book and together with Dr. Bull would confute all the Fathers at once on whose Authority he so much relies and to whom he perpetually appeals for no Christian must hearken to those men whatever their Authority be did they really as they are unjustly charged preach Three Gods and thus he thinks he has got rid of all Antiquity and of the Tritheistick Trinity with it But still this makes well for the Dean who will be contended to stand and fall with the Catholick Fathers and will never desire to be thought more Orthodox than they That Dr. Bull asserts a Real Substantial Trinity in as high and express Terms as ever the Dean did is so plain throughout his Book that it is needless to prove it All his Arguments suppose this Hypothesis and are unintelligible without it and therefore I shall take notice but of one or two particular Passages whereon as we shall presently see this whole heavy Charge of Tritheism rests He tells us That Hypostasis both before and in and after the Nicene Council was used by the Catholick Fathers for Subsistence or a particular thing which subsists by it self which in intelligent Beings is the same with Person That in this sense they taught Father and Son 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be two Hypostases and Father Son and Holy Ghost to be three Hypostases And that upon this account Tertullian to assert the Subsistence of the Son against those who denied him to be a distinct Person from the Father affirms him to be Substantiam rem Substantivam Substance and a substantial Being And having by many irrefragable Instances proved this use of the word to be very Catholick he adds That probably this word Hypostasis would still have been used in this sense had not the Arians abused it to countenance their Heresy expounding it to a more general Notion of Essence Nature and Substance and teaching as the Catholick Fathers did That the Father and Son were two Hypostases but thereby meaning that they were of a different Nature and Substance unlike to each other And that in opposition to them it was that the Sardican Council taught Father and Son to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one Hypostasis that is as they themselves expresly affirm in the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or one Nature and Essence We may find a great deal more to this purpose in the same place in his Vindication of Origen from the Objections of Huetius who charges him with denying the Father and Son to be of the same Essence and Substance or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because he opposes those who denied the Holy Ghost to have 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Substance of his own distinct from the Father and the Son whereas that learned man shews that Origen by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 meant no more than Hypostasis in which sense that word is often used among the Ancients and therefore in opposition to those Noetian Hereticks asserts Father Son and Holy Ghost to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 three Hypostases as Hypostasis signifies Rem singularem individuam per se subsistentem quae in iis quae vita intellectu gaudent idem est quod persona A singular and individual thing which subsists by it self which in Beings that have Life and Understanding signifies a Person so that Three Hypostases are Three substantial self-subsisting living intelligent Persons And tho' the Phrase of Three Minds Three Spirits Three Substances ought to be used very cautiously and not without great necessity when applied to the Holy Trinity for fear of the Arian Notion of Three Substances yet it is evident how far this learned man is from thinking such Expressions to be Impious and Heretical He expounds Three Hypostases to the very same Sense and elsewhere quotes that passage of St. Hilary concerning the Synod at Antioch as truly Catholick where in opposition to the Sabellians they assert the Divine Persons in the Trinity to be tria in substantia or tres substantias three in Substance or three Substances Thus when Petavius accuses Methodius for calling Father and Son 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 two Creating and Operative Powers he answers That Father and Son might with less offence and better reason be called Two Powers by Methodius than Two Natures and Substances 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 five 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as they are called by other Fathers who yet were always accounted Catholick but such expressions as these must be understood only personally and then they are Orthodox So that according to this learned man Two Personal Natures Substances and Powers are Catholick Expressions and this is the very account which Dr. Sherlock in his Defence if he were the Author of it gives of Three Minds and Spirits that he understood it personally for Three Divine intelligent Persons and therefore is as Orthodox in these very Expressions as Dr. Bull and those Catholick Fathers to whom he appeals In another place speaking of some Modern Divines who allow the Son to be of the Father considered as a Son
he can do either of these we will very tamely and humbly follow his Chariot in the mean time for I believe this will take up some time I will shew him the Difference between three Divine Persons each of which is true and perfect God and three Gods 1. First then one God in the Socinian Notion is one infinite Mind and Spirit one Eternal Divinity in one only Person So one Person and one Divinity that no other Person communicates with it in the same Divinity in the same one eternal Essence and Substance Now according to this Notion of one God three Gods are three such eternal Minds Substances Divinities each of which in his own Person has a whole perfect undivided Essence and Divinity which is not common to any other Person So that three Gods are three absolute Substances Essences Divinities which have no Essential Relation to or Communication with each other There can be no other Notion of three Gods if as this Author and all the Anti-Trinitarians assert One God is One absolute Divinity in One Person for then three Gods must be three absolute Divinities in three Persons Now every one sees what a vast difference there is between three such Gods and the Catholick Faith of a Trinity of Person in the Unity of the Divine Essence Why you 'll say is not every Person in the Trinity by himself in his own Person true and perfect God Yes most certainly but he is not one absolute separate Divinity he has not a Divinity so peculiarly his own that no other Person communicates in it there is but One undivided Divinity in all Three and therefore there is a Trinity in Unity But is not each Person in the Trinity infinite Mind Spirit Substance Nay do not some Realists venture to call them three Minds Spirits Substances and what are such Three but three Gods if One infinite Mind and Spirit be one God I answer An infinite Mind and Spirit is certainly true and perfect God but one Personal infinite Mind and Spirit is not the One God so as to exclude all other Persons unless he have one absolute separate Divinity also so proper and peculiar to himself that no other Person does or can communicate in it for if more Persons than One can perfectly communicate in the same One Divinity there must be more Divine Persons than One and each of them perfect God but neither of them the One God in Exclusion of the other Persons but all of them the One God as the One Divinity This I think the Socinians will grant That One Divinity is but One God and that One God is One absolute Divinity and the Reason why they assert the One God to be but One Person is because they think it impossible that the same undivided Divinity should subsist distinctly and perfectly in Three but then before they had charged the Faith of the Trinity with Tritheism they should have remembred that the Persons of the Trinity are not three such Persons as their One Person is whom they call the One God and therefore though three such Persons three such Minds and Substances as their One Person and One Spirit is who is the whole Divinity confined to One single Person would be Three Gods this does not prove that Three such Persons as the Catholick Church owns in the Ever-blessed Trinity who are all of the same One Substance and but One Divinity must therefore be three Gods also 2. Three such Persons as these who are three Gods our Author and every one else who understands any thing of these Matters must acknowledge to be three self-originated Persons for God in the full and adequate Notion of one God is a self-originated Being and those who assert that the One God is but One Person make him a self-originated Person now it is evident that in this Sense the three Persons in the Christian Trinity are not three God's for they are not three self-originated Persons The Father alone is un-begotten or self-originated but the Son is begotten of his Father's Substance and the Holy Ghost eternally proceeds from Father and Son so that here is but one self-originated Person with his Eternal Son and Eternal Spirit And let this Author try to make three Gods of three two of which are not self-originated Persons They might more plausibly dispute against the Divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit from this Topick that they are not self-originated Persons than prove them to be a second and third God by their perfect Communication in a self-originated Nature which is the Person of the Father For though a perfect Communication of the Divine Nature makes a true Divine Person who is true and perfect God yet no Person can be the One God who is not self-originated and a self-originated Person who is a Father cannot be the One God so as to exclude his Son who is of the same Nature and Substance with him nor the Holy Spirit who by an Eternal Procession from Father and Son perfectly communicates in the same Eternal Nature 3. Three such Persons as in a strict and proper Notion are three Gods must be three separate Persons who have not only distinct but separate Natures and Substances and have no internal Union or Communication with each other and therefore are in a proper Notion three Principles three Agents three Wills three Lives three Omnipotents c. who always act a-part and can never concur as one Agent in any one Action cannot make and govern the same World have no Relation to each other no Order no Union as it is impossible three absolute independent Divinities should But the Catholick Faith concerning the three Divine Persons in the Trinity is directly contrary to this that as Father Son and Holy Ghost are but One Substance One Divinity so they are so perfectly in each other that they have but one Essential Will Omnipotence Omniscience are but one Agent one Creatour and Governour of the World Let this Author or any other Adversaries talk what they please of the Absurdity Nonsence Contradiction of all this which is not our present dispute I stand to it that they can never make Tritheism of it for the three Divine Persons in the Trinity though each of them be by himself true and perfect God yet as they are owned by the Catholick Church and as we have now explain'd it are not three such Persons as they themselves must confess three Persons must be who are three Gods What I have now discoursed will help us to give a plain and short Answer to those Fallacies whereby such disinterested Persons as this Authour charge the Catholick Faith of the Trinity with Tritheism for they manifestly equivocate both in the Notion of one God and of one Person By One God they understand one who is true and perfect God and every one who is true and perfect God is one and now instead of all other Demonstrations they only desire you to number the Persons of
Nature has nothing needless or in vain is not a self-evident Proposition but must be proved by an induction of Particulars and is very hard to be prov'd in this way because we understand so little of the Designs and Contrivance and Wisdom of Nature that many who begin at this end of the Question reject a wise Cause and Maker of the World because they think they discover many Defects or many superfluities in Nature that is many things which are needless or in vain and this looks like an unfortunate Beginning thus to mistake his Maxim But to allow him this What Philosopher ever pretended to prove by this Argument that such things either were or were not as they apprehended to be either defective needless or superfluous Whether such things are or are not is pure Matter of Fact and must be proved by such Ways as the Nature of the Thing admits Matters of Sense by Sense Matters of Revelation by Revelation and when Men know that such things are and what they are then they judge of them whether they be vain and needless defective or superfluous or wisely made as they begin at the right or wrong End of this Question Those who are perswaded that the World was made by a wise Cause hence conclude that all things are wisely made though there are many things which they do not understand the Reason and Philosophy of Others presuming upon their own Skill in Nature pick many Quarrels with it and find few things which thoroughly please them and thence conclude that the World was not made by a wise Cause because they do not see the Wisdom of it But whatever Truth or Force there be in this Argument it can relate only to created Nature to such things as are made and are made to serve some particular End for then only a thing is vain and needless when it is made so in whole or in Part as to serve no wise End but surely we must not dispute at this Rate concerning an eternal uncreated self-originated Nature which was not made by any Cause and therefore has no end but it self and yet this his Argument to prove two or three Gods superfluous needless in vain because one God is sufficient sufficient for what why to make and govern the World Well! Is God then only for the Sake of Creatures Can a Being who was never made who has no Cause no Beginning have any End but it self Was one God a superfluous needless Being before he made the World or was the World from Eternity as well as God And does not an Athiest who can make and govern a World without a God conclude from this very Argument that there is none because he is a superfluous and needless Being which shews what a dangerous Argument this is when proposed in such loose general Terms God is indeed the Maker and Governour of the World and we can prove that the World could not be made and governed but by God and that one God can make and govern the World and there needs no more for this Purpose and the Unity and Harmony of the World that is made proves that there is but one Maker and Governour of it and therefore but one God Such Arguments as these together with the Notion of an absolute perfect Being which can be but one were urged by the antient Apologists against the Pagan Politheism but to make God a superfluous or needless Being any farther than he has a Respect and Relation to Creatures which this Argument against the plurality of Gods supposes is very irreverent to God and liable to very ill Consequences It was never used in this Sense by any of the antient Fathers and the first time Petavius observes it is in Abaelardus and Edmundus Cantuariensis and that more cautiously expressed and better qualified Secondly His Second Argument is much of the same Nature The multiplicity of Beings of any sort arises only from the weakness imperfection and unsufficiency in some regard or other of those Beings which is such a wise Reason for the multiplicity of Beings as I never in my Life before met with The Reason why any imperfect Beings are is because they are made for what is imperfect can't be without a Cause and what ever is made must be imperfect because it must have a finite and limited Nature for an infinite Nature is self-existent and can't be made and what is finite and limited may be multiplied for there is nothing in its Nature and Idea to hinder it if it find a Maker and the Wise Maker of the World thought fit to make many Creatures of the same Kind and now he may bring in his Reasons if he pleases why God made so many Creatures of the same kind to supply Mortality or for mutual Help or Comfort c. but all these Reasons relate only to such Beings as are made and have a wise Cause and I perfectly agree with him that God has none of these Defects and therefore none of these Reasons can make it necessary that there should be more Gods than one but then he should have remembred that God was not made and therefore not made for any End and this would have made him thought twice before he had added To suppose more Gods without assigning a final Cause for such a Supposition is to imploy our Fancy and Invention to assign no Cause not to exercise our Reason 't is to amuse our selves with Conceits and Chimera's not to Philosophize You imagine more Gods without giving a Reason whether final or declaratory You ought to know that the proper Name for this is Whimsie But I want a Name for this Argument only I think it is neither Reason nor Philosophy to talk of assigning a final Cause why there is a God either one or more A final Cause is the Reason and End for which any thing was made but that which was not made could be made for no end and therefore it is absurd to talk of the final Cause of a necessary and eternal Being But though he has managed these two Arguments at such a rate that no Man has any reason to reverence him as an infallible Dictator either in Philosophy or Religion yet we allow him what he would have that two Gods are more than we have any need of and that there is not the same Reason for more Gods than One that there is for a Number of Creatures of each kind and what then What then sure that is very evident that there can no more be three all-perfect all-sufficient Spirits than three Gods Right not three such all-perfect all-sufficient Spirits as are three Gods but what does he think of Three each of which is an all-perfect and all-sufficient Spirit and all Three but one Divinity one God But one Spirit who is really all-sufficient and all-perfect is enough to all Purposes and Intents whatsoever I grant One Divinity is so but if this One Divinity essentially and necessarily subsists in