tho' it were an inward grace a strengthning of the Soul which they requir'd of him Again when the Disciples were with him on ship-board and during his quiet sleep just sinking by the violence of an angry tempest they in a fright wake their Master and cry out to him Lord save us we perish Mat. 8.25 If our Saviour was a meer Man the Disciples acted with much less sence than Jonah's Mariners who every one in the storm called upon their Gods for help and summoned sleeping Jonas not to save them by His Power but to joyn with them in calling upon his God For was it ever heard before that when a Ship was just sinking or running upon a rock the ship's Crew ran to some poor ignorant Passenger to beg their security from him The Mariners tho' convinced that he was an extraordinary Person made no such application to Saint Paul in a parallel danger it 's God alone who can command the Seas and Winds his permissive Word makes them ruffle the Universe and put Nature into a Consternation the same Word lays them still as in their first Originals ere uncorrupted Nature knew any thing terrible or dangerous In the case before us our Saviour answered them not as that King of Israel did the Woman If the Lord help thee not what can I do But He arose and rebuked the Winds and the Sea and there was a great calm Nature in its greatest hurry own'd his Divine Authority only his Disciples stumbled upon the Question ver 27. What manner of Man is this that even the Winds and the Sea obey him They talked like Men beside themselves with Fear they called upon him for Help as if they had believed him to be God they reflected upon that Deliverance he had given them as if he had been no more than Man but he takes no notice of any error they were in in their first Devotions but by his Mercy encouraged them to do the same again upon a like occasion What the Disciples did here in a storm at Sea that Saint Stephen the first Martyr for Christianity did in a more violent storm of Persecution on Land for when he came to his last Agonies when it was the proper season for a good Man to exert the utmost vigor of his Faith and Charity then for himself and with respect to his own Soul he prays Acts 7.59 Lord Jesus receive my Spirit The frequent expiring Ejaculation of Holy Saints and Martyrs after him Compare now this with that assertion of the wise Man concerning Death Eccles. 12 7. Then shall the Dust return to Earth as it was and the Spirit shall return to God who gave it and the consequence will be either that our Lord Jesus Christ was the great Author or Creator and Giver of the Rational Soul or else that this Holy Martyr then when filled in an extraordinary manner with the Holy Ghost in his extreme hours when commonly Mens apprehensions of futurity are most Clear and Rational talk'd in a very Impertinent and sinful manner to devote his Soul to him who could have no right to it if he were a meer Creature and to forget his God Franciscus Davidis would have us believe here that Stephen did not call upon Jesus Christ but upon God the Father and that we should translate the expression O thou Lord of Jesus receive my Spirit but this Socinus has strongly confuted tho' upon their common Principle of our Saviour's being a meer Creature Franciscus undertakes the much more rational part However here his subterfuge is nothing worth It was Jesus the Son of God He who bore that proper name of Jesus from his Circumcision for whose sake Stephen was now persecuted to Death by the malicious Jews it was the same Jesus whom he saw at the right hand of God when the Heavens opened to give him such a view of future Glory prepared for Martyrs as might support and encourage him under his sufferings it was to him therefore that Stephen applyed himself and sitted himself for a glorious and happy Exit by that admirable Resignation But neither did Saint Stephen stop there but as the utmost effort of a dying Martyr's Charity He adds this to his former ejaculation ver 60. Lord lay not this sin to their charge He certainly designed exemplary Charity in this and to imitate his dying Saviour who prayed his Father to forgive his Murderers for they knew not what they did But the Martyr's enemies would have had little reason to have admir'd his Charity had he presented his Prayers for them to one who had no power to forgive them and the Jews would be as ready now to make the Objection as heretofore Who can forgive sins but God only And if God to whom vengeance belongeth in whose sight the Death of his Saints is precious would certainly avenge the blood of his Saints and Martyrs upon their Persecutors to what purpose was it to pray to him to forgive them who not being the most high God himself could have no Power to forgive those who had sin'd against the most high God so as to give them any security but above all He could never have hoped for any acceptance at the hand of God in any Petition whatsoever had he now in his last extremity been guilty of Idolatry Saint Paul had been made partaker of extraordinary Revelations had been snatch'd up into the third heavens where he had seen and heard things not lawful for a Man to utter 2 Cor. 1â— 7 8 9. indeed things unspeakable lest He should have been exalted above measure thro' the abundance of those Revelations there was given to him a thorn in the flesh the messenger of Satan to buffet him This was a very severe humiliation and Saint Paul was sensible of it and at first as appears by the Text very uneasie under it Saint Paul knew well enough that the best remedy for all calamities was Prayer that Prayers presented to the true God with a sincere heart could not return unfruitful but Saint Paul presently applyes himself to Christ For this cause I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me says he and He said unto me my Grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in weakness By the Lord here the Socinians themselves understand our Lord Jesus and therefore alledge this Text as a proof of Pious Mens praying to Christ Now had Saint Paul prayed to Christ for Assistance and Relief in such a case where only the Supreme God could really help him if that Christ were a meer Creature then such a Prayer must be Idolatrous and such Service be called Idolatry wherein the Creature was rather worshipped than the Creator and Christ a Creature must as Lucifer of old have endeavoured to set himself up for a rival God and prosecute a separate Interest of his own and manage and assist his servants in a way of opposition to the most high God and
to the Jews of whom we acknowledge that they had no such distinct notions of the Trinity as we by the Gospels assistance have at present but yet both among Jews and Gentiles he was declar'd by other names than that of God the Father and if according to our common Logical notions Relatives do mutually suppose or remove one another if Jesus Christ was not really and actually the Son of God pre-existent to his incarnation the name of Father could not properly have been apply'd to the supreme God nor he be preach'd to the World under that character so that in fine we conclude that the preaching of God the Father to the World was no part of the Mystery of Godliness Nor is it properly so to say that God the Father was believ'd on in the World for that too was nothing newly effected by the appearance of our Saviour the World in general from its first original believ'd there was a God if there were any who from those apprehensions they had of the existence of a God set themselves to live virtuously as considering that God under the notion of a knowing and severe Judge and one capable of rewarding men according to their works such Persons believ'd in God according to our own sense when we repeat the Creed Now that some did thus believe before our Saviour's appearance in the flesh is unquestionable all those who liv'd religiously before the promulgation of the Mosaic Law did thus believe in God and are some of them remembred as the great Heroes of Faith in the beginning of the Eleventh Chapter to the Hebrews If then this were a Mystery it was of a very ancient standing and discovered long before the coming of Christ The application of the particulars thus far failing we have some reason to believe that neither will the last agree any better to that imposed sense He was received up in glory or into glory Here our adversaries flie to God's will again so confounding God and God's will as if they were not to be considered as distinct but this we have consider'd before where we observed that contradiction the Gospel met with in the World As to God the Father where or when or how or by whom was he receiv'd up in glory the holy Scriptures give us no intimation of his having descended at any time from Heaven to Earth and He that 's receiv'd up into glory ought to be so receiv'd by some Being superior to himself which a Socinian knows God the Father cannot have now as the Apostle teaches us He that descended Eph. 4.10 is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things but God the Father never that we hear of in Scripture descended therefore God the Father who ever of himself was surrounded with infinite glory never was by any receiv'd up into glory And thus have we shown the vanity of those glosses which the Socinians and others have fixt upon this Text we shall now show to whom the particulars in the Text do properly and unquestionably belong And here since Scripture makes it very plain that the whole method of serving God in an acceptable manner is laid down by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ That as himself tells us He is the Way the Truth John 14.6 and the Life and no man comes to the Father but by him The whole mystery of Godliness or of true Christian Religion can consist in nothing but what refers to him who is the author of it that is the blessed Jesus concerning whom and whose doings and sufferings for us there is nothing reveal'd in the Gospel or in the foregoing prophecies but what 's mysterious He was indeed God manifest in the flesh God blessed for ever yet for the sake of wretched Sinners descending to Earth and taking our Nature upon him being cloth'd with flesh and all those incumbrances and infirmities attending upon a mortal state sin onely excepted He is that eternal Word which was in the begining with God nay that Word that was God John 1.1.14 and that Word was made flesh and dwelt among us as we learn from St. John Now if Christ really was God the most opinionative of the Socinians would conclude the Text plain enough for that Christ was certainly and literally made flesh but if we cannot read this Text of the Apostle truly without inserting the word God And Smalcius one of the great promoters of the Socinian heresie declares Smalc de verbo incarnato c. 18. Nos Graecum textum Vulgatae longe esse anteponendum censemus is vero habet Deum in carne esse manifestatum We look upon the Greek Text as far to be preferr'd before the Vulgar Latine and the Greek reads it God was manifest in the flesh and if neither the Gospel nor the will of God nor God the Father can properly or truly be said to be made flesh and yet God was manifest in the flesh then that Jesus who was truly and literally cloth'd with our flesh must be that God the farther proof of Christ's real and eternal Divinity belongs to another place but his true and indisputable humanity is the first plain and most obvious assertion of the Apostle here This same blessed Jesus was as plainly justified in the Spirit since not onely the miracles he did justified him in the sight of all Mankind and prov'd that he could be no cheat or Impostor as the Jews were willing to have him thought but at the time of his Baptism by John in Jordan while he was praying the Heaven was open'd and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a Dove upon him and a voice came from Heaven which said Thou art my beloved Son Luke 3.21 22. in thee I am well pleas'd Now the Holy Spirit would not in so open a manner have descended on him who had pretended to that relation to Allmighty God which really never belong'd to him Therefore John the Baptist makes a right inference from that descent I saw says he Joh. 1.32 the Spirit descending from Heaven like a Dove and it abode upon him And I knew him not v. 33 34. but he that sent me to baptize with water the same said unto me Vpon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God Our Lord himself makes it one of his last instructions to his Disciples that when the Comforter that Holy Spirit whom he would send should come he should amongst other things convince the world of righteousness because He the blessed Jesus went to his Father and the world should see him no more c. 16. v. 8. 10 14. and that that Holy Spirit should glorifie him for he should receive of his and shew it to men And thus effectually that Sacred Spirit when he was so plentifully according to promise pour'd out
deep ever to be made up It 's true when God himself was mention'd as the undertaker of so great a work even despairing man might entertain some dawning hopes but when they saw a poor Carpenter's Son one who had not so much as where to lay his head assume yet the glorious title of the world's Redeemer and Saviour their hopes slagg'd their almost grasped joys seem'd just vanishing into empty air When the Holy Ghost God too infinitely good and powerful and wise interpos'd and attended that humble Man with so much vigour and constancy that He by a thousand glorious actions and by a close and perpetual correspondence with Heaven visible even to vulgar eyes prov'd the entire Union that was between himself and his Father and that Sacred Spirit and justified himself in the thoughts of very aliens themselves who could not but acknowledge of a truth that for all his mean appearance and his scandalous Passion on the Cross He was the Son of God But could men have doubted still the happy Angels those purer and more discerning Spirits saw him too they saw him and knew him and ador'd him they saw their mighty Lord tho' veil'd in all the rags of poor mortality And tho' sin might have made a former breach between those blessed Spirits and polluted man yet now where their Lord loved they lov'd too and always look'd and always waited on him while he wrought the worlds redemption while he was so justified and so attended on divers gave up themselves absolutely to his service whom he lov'd and taught and protected and endued with miraculous knowledge eloquence and courage and sent them on that blessed errand to preach to the Gentiles the glad tydings of Salvation in his name They boldly undertook the work and tho' they had ignorance and prejudice and malice and cunning to contend with meer men contemn'd before but then inspired broke through all opposition and the forsaken Gentiles heard the gladsome sounds of peace and tho' there were too many enemies to their own good yet those laborious messengers of Heaven preached with that power and efficacy that men began every where to call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ Nay the more men of perverse minds cross'd the designs of that Gospel preach'd in the name of the Son of God the more those who believed in him were multiplied As for himself when he had finished that stupendous work and by his own Death had conquered Hell and Death He broke those fatal chains and rose again no more lyable to humane rage His Almighty Father who had viewed all the prodigious efforts of his Love to mankind with an ineffable complacency reach'd out his holy arm to receive that very humane Nature in which his beloved Son had done and suffered so much from him the chearful clouds were sent for a Chariot and he went upwards flying upon the wings of the wind while jâ—cund Angels those ministerial flames waited on his triumphs and taught his wondring followers what they were afterwards to expect from their Redeemer These are those mighty mysteries on which our most holy faith is built their truth however unintelligible to us is our security and the sincerity of our faith will necessarily show it self in an holy conversation and godliness The Verse I have explain'd then imports That without Controversie the Mystery of Godliness is great or in more words That the Basis or foundation of that Religion introduced into the World by the Doctrine of Christ's Gospel is indisputably and agreeably to the nature of Religion to Humane reason extremely profound and unintelligible To prove this we shall enquire Into the Vniversal agreement of all persons of what Religion soever That Mysteries are essential to Religion Whether our Saviour intended the entire abolition of all other Religions for the settlement of his own or rather to unite what was good in every distinct Religion into one and to sublime or perfect that so as it might tend most to God's glory and Man's happiness and whether that could be effected Men standing in their present corrupt state without the retaining of old or instituting of new Mysteries in his Religion What considerable advantages can accrue to Religion from those Mysteries it 's founded upon Then we must enquire into that Vniversal agreement of all persons whatsoever that Mysteries or some principles or circumstances of a more secret and abstruse nature are essential to all Religion But here to prevent all mistakes it must be remember'd That so much as concerns the practical part of Religion as contain'd in the Word of God is so clear and evident that the words of St. Paul are justly apply'd to them If they be hid they are hid to those that are lost whose eyes the God of this World hath blinded that the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ should not shine upon them 2 Cor. 4.3 4. The words whereby all things necessary to be done toward the attainment of eternal life are exprest are such and so plain that the simplest Christian may understand them And that person who goes about to involve the practical duty of a Christian whether in respect of his communication with God or man in obscure and mysterious terms crosses the end of the Gospel which is to instruct the weakest understanding in an easie and intelligible way how to live godly righteously and soberly in this present evil world yet it must be acknowledged that even in relation to practice there are some apparent difficulties and notwithstanding all that plainness apparent in God's word a Man has a very hard task sometimes to distinguish between what 's lawful and what 's unlawful such cases are commonly known by the name of Cases of Conscience or such matters wherein so many arguments seemingly strong and plausible appear on both sides to the understanding that it knows not which way to act and all that hesitancy or doubtfulness arises onely from a fear of offending God These generally respecting Christian practice create a great deal of trouble frequently to very good Men for others are seldom troubled with such religious fears and these are sometimes by various and unusual circumstances rendred so very intricate that the wisest and most discerning Men are often at a loss to clear and resolve them to the Querent's satisfaction Here the Jews were order'd to have recourse to their Priests whose lips were suppos'd to preserve knowledge and the Priests when there was any thing of a more inextricable nature had the Vrim and Thummim to appeal to The Heathens had some emergent doubts as to matter of publick management of themselves which sometimes perplex'd them too and they had their imaginary wise Men the Priests attending their desecrated altars who would assume as if they had the art of resolving doubts those who profess Christianity have still a severer task in these matters as having no Oracle immediately to consult and having doubts more numerous and
consider His declarations of Himself and his Apostles declarations concerning Him in the New Testament which we shall find of such a nature as may sufficiently prove the Divinity of the Son of God and here we 'l begin as Enjedine a subtle and industrious Unitarian does with that of S. Matthew where having given us an account of the Angels charge to Joseph concerning his espoused wife then with child by the power of the Holy Ghost he tells us that in all this that of the Prophet was fulfilled Behold a Virgin shall be with child Matth. 1.23 and shall bring forth a Son and they shall call his name Immanuel which is being interpreted God with us this the Evangelist quotes from Isai 7.14 Here Enjedine makes the Evangelist a very impertinent Writer alledging Old Testaments-texts upon every little hint tho' never so far from the purpose which argues very little reverence for an inspired Writer He tells us The name Immanuel could not signifie that Christ was God because the Prophet where he names him says he was sometime to be born that he should eat butter and honey that he should sometime be ignorant of the difference between good and bad c. therefore he could not be God but all these things were and were necessarily true of him as he was Man since he assumed a real and not a fantastick body We know he was born in the fulness of time taking flesh of the Virgin Mary that what was the dyet of other infants in those parts of the world was his too that it might be evident to all the world he had assumed a real body like other men in every thing but sin We believe his Humane Body grew and increas'd as that of other men and that rational Soul joyned with his body by which he was a true Man had its advances in understanding tho' at a greater and more early rate than others all this we believe and yet Christ might be God and God with us for all this For the reality of his Humanity was not any prejudice to the truth of his Divinity he was perfect Man and no less perfect God Our adversary questions farther whether the name Immanuel be here given to Christ or not because he finds him no where else called by that name But neither was there any reason for that this prophetical name being chiefly designed to signifie his Nature Enjed. in locum as Christ was to signifie his Office and since 't is certain the name does belong to some body for it 's not put there for nothing either it belongs to Christ or that Author ought to have named some body to whom it did belong but he is silent in that matter therefore we conclude it belongs to the Son of God He alledges farther that supposing the name Immanuel be the name of Jesus in the Text it signifies no more than that God was in and with him as he was with other of his Prophets but that 's impertinent since the name doth not import that God was in or with him but that upon his Incarnation God was with us i. e. God did then assume flesh and appear to and come among us which could not be unless he were God He tells us Moses might as well have been called Emmanuel while he converst with the Israelites and the Ark of God especially since the Israelites expected to be saved by it and upon its being brought into the field the Philistines cryed out God is come into the Camp but was Moses conceived of the Holy Ghost was the Ark of God really a living Saviour God might have given them what names himself pleas'd but we no where find that he gave them this which shews that he designed to appropriate this name wholly to his own Son when he should send him into the world that under that very state of exinanition or humiliation we should see him we should know how great a Being converst with us What else he objects is absurd even to ridiculousness viz. That many since that time have born the name of Immanuel and yet we never took them for gods as several Emperours of Constantinople and many private men among the rest Immanuel Tremellius as he instances a learned Protestant of later years He might as well have proved that because several Jews and others have been called Moses and yet none of them were Lawgivers to Israel therefore Moses the Son of Amram was no such Legislator or that because there were several Jews who bore the name of Josua or Jesus who were not the Saviours of the world that therefore our Jesus was not so what signifies what name I or another fix upon my Son Or what 's more ordinary than for Men to baptize their children by Scripture-names without ever reflecting on or knowing the meaning of those names But where God gives a name and where the Spirit of God interprets it neither the Name nor the Interpretation can be insignificant nor is it so here but being by the Prophet of old assign'd to by the Evangelist here applyed to the Son of God it sufficiently teaches us that He was God eternal even God with us In the next place we may consider that Command of our Saviour himself to his Apostles when he gave them their Commission for executing their Apostolical Functions Matth. 28.19 Go ye and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Where the Son and the Holy Ghost being set equally with the Father as the objects of our Baptismal Faith either prove to us their certain equality or seem of a very dangerous import ready to impress upon us false notions of the Deity and to make us think those really equal whom we see by Christ himself joyned together without any particular mark of distinction or inequality when indeed they are not But this were to represent the Evangelist under a very ill Character I shall not insist upon that in this place that the Father Son and Holy Ghost are here named as three distinct Beings and one as much and really a person as the other Enjed. Wolzogenius in loc which the Socinians deny of the Holy Ghost but shall only take notice of those evasions they make use of for here they tell us That we may as well infer from that of the Apostle concerning the Israelites 1 Cor. 10.2 That they were all Baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea that Moses was the most high God as that Christ was God from this command of Mens being baptized in his name We know well enough that to be baptized into Moses is to be initiated into that Church which is governed by that Law given by God to Moses and that to be baptized into Christ is to be entred into that Church which receives God's Law as delivered by Christ but where in any divine precept do we find God the Father and
be the power of God a virtue flowing out of or from the Supreme Deity under this Notion we may rationally assert that this Holy Spirit can be commanded no way but by the Supreme God himself none else can promise it none can give it for if the Spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets much more certainly must the Spirit of God be subject to him it subsisting wholly in him and being according to our Adversaries one of those qualifications necessarily in the Supreme God Granting all this if our Saviour was a meer man as they say he could not possibly command this Sacred Spirit this Spirit so much superiour to mankind tho' considered as no more than a meer Appendage to the Almighty Yet our Saviour seems to employ this Spirit as he will that 's no wonder if the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost tho' three persons be all one God That exact concurrence in their eternal wills taking away all difficulties Thus when the Lord met with his Disciples and shew'd them the necessity of things happening with relation to himself as they did then He opened their understandings that they might understand the Scriptures Luk. 24.45 this opening their understandings did not consist barely in explaining some particular Texts to them they were yet but very dull and slow of understanding in themselves and tho' they had heard a thousand Texts authentically explain'd they might have continued very inapprehensive still Nor is it an usual manner of speech to say when a man explains any Author to others that he opens their understandings he may open the meaning of such or such Books or Passages very well yet those who hear him may not improve in their intellectuals this opening their understandings therefore argued some force upon their minds some extraordinary Energy of the Spirit within them whereby their natural and inveterate Dulness went off and they had more of spriteliness and vigour in their Souls than formerly they seem'd as Slaves with their fetters knockt off nimble and active and therefore more capable of apprehending any thing offered to them than formerly This was the first beginning to fit them for that great work they were in a few days to engage in it was to make them capable of satisfying themselves gradually in the Truth and Reason of those things which they were afterwards to preach to the world abroad and which they were compleatly fitted for by the following extraordinary effusions of that Holy Spirit upon them The first operations of it upon them then were gentle and easie but it was the operation of that Sacred Spirit only and of that Spirit as ordered by the blessed Jesus by which their understandings were thus opened We may agree to this the more easily if we consider that Promise Christ makes to his Disciples after this Behold I send the promise of my father upon you Luk 24.49 but tarry ye in the City of Jerusalem untill you be endued with power from on high The Father promises it but I send it Now this uses not to be a task for a man to make good the Promises of God it 's out of his power especially if the Promise be to be made good in some particular wherein God has a more peculiar interest Is my Spirit my breath none then can give it to another tho' my Spirit be not originally my own but breathed into me by an Almighty Creator Is the Holy Ghost the Breath the Spirit the Influence of God none then can dispose of it from him and the rather because it is originated in him and must be one with him it was then a strange presumption in our Lord to take upon him the making good Gods Promises to others since if he were no more than a Man He promised what was not in his power and pretended to make up some defects in his veracity who was the God of Truth and Truth it self But our Saviour went farther yet for making a visit once to his Disciples after his Resurrection His Blessing being bestowed he gives them a Commission of an extraordinary nature As my Father hath sent me even so send I you i. e. Job 20.21 As my Father sent me to reform the World so I send you to caâ—ry on that same work and as my Father's mission of me gave me a sufficient authority to do those things necessary to so great an end so my sending you gives you as great and unquestionable authority in proportion to those things which are laid on you this intimates that Christ had power to send men to govern and manage his Church as his Father had and in the same degree for if our Saviour was only his Father's Ambassador to them and so inferiour to him that sent him this had been an extravagant vanity it was never heard that an Ambassador from a King or Emperor pretended to send another Envoy from himself with such kind of expressions as these As my master the King has sent me so send I you nor are Princes wont to entrust their Agents with any such Power and the Credentials of such sub-ambassadors would appear very ridiculous to all those to whom they should be sent But from this Commission our Lord proceeds And when he had said this He breathed on them and said unto them ver 22. Receive ye the Holy Ghost Spiritus Sanctus est virtus seu efficacia à Deo in homines manans iisque communicata quâ eos ab aliis segregat suis usibus consecrat say the Socinians in the Racovian Catechism The Holy Spirit is a virtue or efficacy flowing from God upon men from the True the Supreme God they mean and communicated to them by which he separates such men from others and consecratâ— them to his own use If it be the efficacy or Power of the Supreme God how comes one whom they suppose to be a meer Man to confer it with his breath It was given afterwards by the laying on of the Apostles hands they gave it not by any virtue inherent in them but where they laid on their hands God sent it and that in different manners and proportions as he judged fit for the Receivers whose fitness the Apostles knew nothing of Our Saviour bestows it with his breath It must therefore be his own therefore he must be the Supreme God for in this action our Saviour did not mock his Disciples as Schlicktingius confesses CaetechismeÌ„ Rac. sect 6. c. 6. but he did certainly separate them by this action from the rest of the world and consecrated them peculiarly to his own service and this at the appointed time they engaged in according to his orders In the forementioned Catechism when they ask what the gift of the Holy Spirit is the answer is Est ejusmodi Dei afflatus quo animi nostri vel uberiore rerum divinarum notitiâ vel spe vitae eternae certiore atque adeo gaudio ac gustu quodam
Doctrine S. Cyprian himself is mighty frequent in such passages so in his Epistle to Rogatianus he calls out Lord Jesus Christ our King and Judge and our God Ep. 3. p. 6. Ep. 11. p. 23. and what higher characters could be given him In his Epistle to his Presbyters and Deacons he encourages them to assiduity in Prayer by the consideration of having Jesus Christ our Lord and God our Advocate and Mediator Plebi Thibaeri p 123 125. p. 146 148. so again in his fifty first Epistle to Cornelius Bishop of Rome in his fifty eighth Epistle twice in h s sixty second to Januarius and others Christ is our Judge our Lord and our God so in his sixty third in his Epistle to Jubaianus concerning the invalidity of the Baptism of Hereticks He argues against that Baptism thus If any one says he can be truly baptis'd by Hereticks he may then by that Baptism obtain remission of sins if He obtain remission of his sins he is sanctified and is made the temple of God I ask then of what God if of the Creator he cannot be his temple because he believed not in him if you say of Christ neither can he be his temple Epist 73. p. 203. who denyes Christ to be God if you say he 's the temple of the Holy Ghost seeing the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost are all One how can the Holy Spirit be pleas'd with him who is an enemy to both the Father and the Son Here the force of the Martyrs argument lyes only in the Identity of nature in â—he Father the Son and the Holy Ghost and the poyson of Heresie consists effectually in denying the Lord Jesus Christ to be God but he would not have argued thus had not the Divinity of Christ been the general and well known Doctrine of the Church p. 212. He uses the same argument again in his 74. Epistle to Pompey to name no more Now â—n conclusion who can imagine that a holy Martyr so great an enemy to Idolatry so careful to refute the vulgar Error of a â—lurality of Gods should yet so very frequently use such suspicious expressions as must needs make the World believe he â—wned Christ for God and consequently multiplied those Gods himself which he expos'd others so much for if the whole objection were not to be removed by that assertion that the Father was God and the Son God yet they were not two but one God an Identity of their nature necessarily inferring the Vnity of the God-head The same Africa affords us yet another Writer of great antiquity and learning Arnobius in his several books against the Pagan Religion in his first book reflecting upon several of their Gods he takes notice how much they were grieved that Christ should be worshipped by Christians and received for and esteemed as a God And whereas Pagans derided Christians Arnobius adver gentes l. 1. p. 21. Edit Leidensis for accounting him a God whom they owned to have been born a Man he retorts upon them that They were guilty of that crime but says He supposing all you object in that respect were true would not Christ on account meerly of those benefits he confers upon us deserve to be call'd and to be thought a God He argues from their own principles who thought every considerable Invention of any Man was enough to procure his being Deified as Bacchus for finding out the use of Wine Ceres for Bread Minerva for Oyl c. But in the mean time Arnobius openly enough acknowledges that Christians did receive Christ as God He speaks yet more plainly soon after Christ for his benefits ought to be called God Nay He really is God without any scruple or ambiguity and would you have us deny him Worship or disown his Government But will some angry Pagan cry out is Christ a God We answer he is God and a God of infinite Power too and which will more exasperate an infidel he was sent from the supreme King to us upon the greatest errand in the World Perhaps the Pagan being more enraged at this will demand a Proof of what we say there needs certainly no greater proof of Christ's Divinity than an exact examination of his actions If it be objected that He was a Magician and performed his mighty works only by unlawful arts Let them who object this shew us any of their Magicians who ever did any thing like what was done by Christ or if they have done any thing of a prodigious nature it has still been by invoking some other Being but Christ without any Helps without any Magick Rites or Observations did all he did by the power of his own Name and what was proper and agreeable to and worthy of a True God nothing he did was hurtful or mischievous but helpful saving and the kind effects of divine Bounty And was he Mortal was he only one of us at whose ordinary commands Weaknesses Sicknesses Fevers and all bodily Pains were gone at once Was he one of us l. 1. p. 27. c. whose very Look the Devils could not endure Was he a meer Man whose slightest touch could cure the bloody Issue whose hand could make Hydropick humours vanish who could make the Lame run the Wither'd Hand recover its motion the Blind to see nay those who were born without eyes to see the light Was He a meer Man at whose word the angry Seas laid down their rage the rugged Storms and Tempests sunk while He with a dry foot walkt upon the swelling billows and trod upon the Oceans back the waves themselves standing amazed at the prodigious action and humble nature submitting to her Founder And so he proceeds in a florid and pathetick stile by an induction of particulars and a relating of circumstances to prove that Christ must be True God and that all the Idols of the Heathen were none Again a little after he tells the Pagans Christ was the high God the God from the beginning a God sent from unknown kingdoms God sent by the Prince of all things to be the universal Saviour whom neither the Sun nor Stars if they have any sence nor the Governours nor Princes of this World nor those mighty Gods who assuming that terrible name affright poor mortal creatures were able to find out or so much as to guess what He was or whence He came at whose very look then when he was clothed with flesh p. 32. the universal fabrick trembled and fell into a sudden disorder Again Arnobius brings in the Pagans objecting If Christ was God why was He seen in the form of a Man Why was He put to Death as Men are to this he answers Was there any other way whereby that invisible power which had no Corporeal Substance could suit it self to the World or be visibly present in the assemblies of mortal Men than by assuming a covering of solid matter which might be a proper object whereon Men might fix
their eyes What mortal Creature could have seen or discover'd him if he had come down to earth in his own original Nature or such as he is in his Divinity Therefore he took upon him the form of a Man that he might be seen and look'd upon that he might speak and teach and perform all those things for which he was sent into the World And whereas He dyed as a Man p. 37. it 's true his Humane Body was fastned upon the Cross but his Divine Nature was incapable of suffering his Body only suffer'd and that for the Salvation of those very Wretches by whose cruelty he suffer'd The same Author reflecting upon the curiosity of the Heathens because they would not believe what they did not understand asks them a great many questions about the Originals or natural causes of several things in the World which puzled them in those and confound us their posterity in these days He wonders then that they should deride Christians because they cannot explain all the Mysteries of their Religion and own their inabilities in the case when They were so much to seek in those ordinary cases Our concerns are mysteries indeed Et ideo Christus licet nobis invitis Deus Deus inquam Christus hoc enim saepe dicendum est ut infidelium dissiliat dirumpatur auditus c. Therefore Christ who is God in spite of all your opposition that Christ I say who is God for that must be repeated often to scourge the ears of Infidels speaking by God's command in the form of a Man Adv. gent. l. 2. p. 85. knowing the blindness of humane understandings and the weakness of our apprehensions forbad us to be curious or inquisitive into matters so far removed only ordering us to direct our thoughts and souls to him who is the original of all these things What advice Arnobius gives his Pagans in pursuance of this discourse would be very proper for our Socinians among whom a modest opinion of their own Natural strength and an humble supposition of God's superior Wisdom would cure that Incredulity they are at present guilty of Arnobius soon after lays down this Truth That none can save Souls but an Almighty God nor is there any who can give them long life or perpetuity but only He who is himself immortal and perpetual and uncircumscribed by any boundaries of time Yet this work of saving souls he ascribes to the Son of God Adv. Gen. l. 2. p. 87. therefore according to his sentiments the Son of God is that immortal all powerful and unbounded God To all these evidences I shall only add one of Lactantius the Scholar of the forecited Arnobius who endeavouring to reconcile the worship which the Christians paid to the Father and the Son to those adorations which they acknowledg'd only to belong to one God writes thus Instit l. 4. c. 29. p. 445. Ed. Hack. Where we say the Father is God and the Son is God we do not say they are different Gods nor do we separate them one from another for neither can the Father be divided from the Son nor the Son from the Father for the Father in a relative sence cannot be named without the Son nor the Son be begotten without the Father Since then the Father makes the Son relatively and the Son the Father they have both one Mind one Spirit one substance only the Father is as an exuberant Spring the Son as a stream flowing from it the Father is as the Sun in the firmament the Son as the rays beaming from that Sun who because he is dear and faithful to his Father can no more be separated from him than the stream from the Spring or beams from the body of the Sun for the water of the fountain is in the stream and the light of the Sun in those rays which issue from it And this is plain and pertinent enough And thus have I gone thro' the Writings of those first Fathers who are of the greatest Name and Reputation for their learning and piety in the Churches of God I have examin'd on this account only such Men as lived before the Arrian controversie was on foot so that they cannot be suspected of partiality in the case and either we must believe these Men knew very well what was the General Belief of Christians in those earliest ages or they did not if they did not understand what the Catholick Faith really was we are all strangely in the dark and the Socinians are no more capable of giving an account of the Faith of the primo-primitive Church in contradiction to what we now assert than we are in agreeance to it nay there lye all the presumptions in the World against them in the point for all the Writers extant afterwards with an almost Vniversal consent are directly against them So that unless the true Christian Faith were entirely lost about the time of the great Nicene Council the Socinians must of necessity acknowledge that the Christian Church generally believ'd that Christ was true and real God Nor can they secure themselves even among the several Heretical Clans of those ages for though they own Artemon and Paulus Samosatenus and Photinus and Arrius and Aëtius c. for great and very Orthodox Men and the sole Pillars of truth in those times yet neither did Artemon agree with Paulus nor Paulus with Photinus nor Photinus with Arrius or he with Aëtius and the same Writers call our Socinians sometimes by the name of Samosatenians sometimes of Photinians sometimes of Arrians and Semi-Arrians yet really they agree exactly with none of them as might easily be prov'd by comparing their opinions together Now if Artemon and Paulus and Photinus and the rest were such very great Men in all respects and such careful preservers of the true Apostolical Faith in those things wherein they agree with the Socinian sentiments why should not we believe they used as exact a care and were as certainly in the right in those particulars wherein they differ'd from them for doubtless such Good Men would not admit of any Errors in any points of weighty and important concern Those Men certainly must presume very much upon their own infallibility who tho' they are at odds among themselves will admit of none to be in the right but such who and where they agree with them in the most singular and paradoxical opinions But if on the other side we admit that these Fathers I have quoted on this occasion had real opportunities of knowing the General Sentiments of the Christian Church in their days and that they really did know them the result of that acknowledgment will be this either they were honest and faithful deliverers of the same Catholick Faith down to us or they were not if they were not honest and faithful in delivering down the true Faith in their Writings then holy and zealous Martyrs and devout Confessors must have proved themselves a pack of impudent
Father when he has no more and the Union yet between the eternal Father and the eternal Son is of a closer and more levelling kind than any thing inferiour nature can afford Our New Author indeed challenges us Cum Scriptoribus de generatione animaelium haec comparentur Nos Dei virtutem in Virginis uterum aliquam substantiam creatam vel immisisse aut ibi creasse affirmamus ex quā juncto eo quod ex ipsius Virginis substantiâ accessit verus homo generatus fuit Aliàs enim homo ille Dei filius à conceptione nativitate propriè non fuisset Sic Smalcius de vero naturali Dei filio c. 3. Ruarus ab ipso uterque à veritate quantum distat if we believe this eternal Generation to prove it expresly contain'd in Scripture and then to prove this Eternal Generation the true Basis or Foundation of his glorious Title of the Only Begotten Son of God As if clear Consequences from plain Premises were not a demonstrative proof of any thing to Men who pretend to Reason and a capacity of discoursing Rationally which is indeed nothing but drawing Consequences plain or obscure from agreeable Premises Or for an instance as if when I find God call'd a Spirit and I know a Spirit is Invisible I might not conclude God tho' a Spirit to be invisible unless I found Invisibility it self distinctly and separated from the Notion of a Spirit attributed to him somewhere in Scripture Now if all these Proofs I have laid down before have proved that our Saviour had a Being before he was Conceived in the Womb of the Virgin which we think to be proved beyond contradiction and if our Adversaries will but allow that Dictate of Common sence that He who really is my Son is my Son as soon as he has a Being or if He be not my Son then He never can be my Son otherwise than by Adoption and so Christ can never be the only begotten Son of his Father because all those who Believe in and Obey God are his Sons by Adoption too if they 'l but allow this then Christ must have been the Son of his Father before such time as he was Conceived in the Virgins Womb because he had a Being before that Conception If Christ had a Being before his Conception it must have been as a Spirit but Spirits do not generate one another therefore he must have had a Being from the beginning of the World If then we fall in with the Arrians and say God created his Son the Word first out of nothing and then created all other things by Him we contradict Scripture which positively assures us that in six days the Lord made Heaven and Earth and all that in them is and therefore rested the seventh day but God could not rest the Seventh Day nor do all he had to do in Six Days if he wrought more than Six Days but He must have worked before the beginning of the Six Days if he made the Word before he made any thing else and we have the Six Days Work summ'd up authentically by Moses but no account there of the Creation of the Word before the Creation of Matter If he were not Created before Matter then he could not Create all things as the Arrians pretend If therefore He had a Being it must have been from all eternity but he was not Created from eternity for whatsoever is Created must have a Beginning but he was begotten of his Father as the Scriptures assure us if therefore he were Begotten and not Made and Begotten before the beginnings of the World He could be Begotten of nothing but of the Substance of his Father there being no other Substance for him to be originated from and therefore must be eternal because the Substance of his Father is and cannot be otherwise than eternal This being true it would be meer folly not to fix his Sonship more peculiarly in this eternal Generation for He that is Begotten by a Father must be his Son and he that is Begotten from eternity must be a Son from eternity Therefore Christ who was Begotten of his Father from eternity must be the Son of his Father from eternity which was the thing to be demonstrated If yet a Socinian will stumble at the Vnion of the Humane with the Divine Nature as if it were an impossibility or against reason let Him resolve us fairly how the Vnion is made between a rational and immortal Soul of a Spiritual and an heavy and unactive Body of an Earthly Nature We are all convinced they are so joyned together but those subtle Springs whereby an Immaterial Soul actuates a Material Body are hitherto indiscernible by the sharpest Eye of impair'd Reason why then should we conclude it impossible for the Divine and Humane Nature to be united together unless it be united in a way more intelligible than our Souls and Bodies For tho' our Souls are of a Spiritual Nature they are infinitely inferiour to the Nature of Almighty God and being that Constitutive part of Humane Nature by which Man is a Rational Creature it might seem an easie task for us to find out how that Soul we reason by should be united to that Body we reason in But since we are so far to seek in this matter may we not reasonably conclude God has hidden this from our Eyes to moderate and humble our unruly Fancies to keep us from prying into things that are too high for us and to convince us that many things wherein we are more immediately concerned not being a whit the less True tho' we understand them not we ought to believe that some things may be True with respect to God of which yet we are able to give our selves no considerable account And so we may satisfie our selves that our Saviour spoke plain truth when he said I and my Father are One meaning thereby an Essential Vnity between his Father and Him because tho' he were at the time of his speaking so a true Man invested with real flesh and blood yet He was God before he was Man the Word of God before he was made flesh and dwelt among us and was God when He was Man his Divine Nature not being prejudiced by his assuming Flesh and Blood by that Divine Nature he was One essentially with his Father and his Humane assumed Nature being in his Divine Nature as a finite is contained in an infinite there could be but One Person at last 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christ God-Man our Saviour and Redeemer I take the more notice of this particular which I had insisted on before because our new Assertor of Socinianism would perswade us that if we duely examin'd these Words of our Saviour on this occasion spoken to the Jews when they charged him with Blasphemy because in his former expressions He had made himself God tho' indeed he were but a Man we should quit all arguments drawn from thence the words are these
the latter part of the verse for let us with Grotius by the mystery of godliness understand the Gospel as we commonly understand it and which we own does contain the mystery of godliness That the Gospel was preach'd by weak Men we own nay that our Saviour himself in his state of exinanition or in his humane nature appear'd weak and contemptible enough we own too but that the Gospel appear'd in the flesh or cloath'd with flesh which is the proper import of the Apostles phrase we deny as absurd That the Gospel was justified in or by the Spirit the miraculous effusions of that confirming the truth of the Gospel preach'd we may own well enough but that the Gospel was seen of Angels is scarce sence that it was never known before it had been declar'd by Men is false for the Angels could not be unacquainted with the several Prophecies of the old Testament concerning the Messias to come nor could they be so far to seek in the meaning of those Prophecies many of which they had been instrumental in delivering and the Angels themselves were indeed the first preachers of the Gospel So the Angel Gabriel tells Zacharias concerning the Son that should be born to him Many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God And he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children Luke 1.16 17. and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. The same Gabriel afterwards tells the blessed Virgin Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and shalt bring forth a Son and shalt call his name Jesus v. 31 32 33. He shall be great and shall be called the Son of the highest and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever and of his kingdom there shall be no end It was an Angel that appear'd to Joseph in a dream Matth. 1.20 21. and told him that his espoused wife was with child of the Holy Ghost And she shall bring forth a Son says he and thou shalt call his name Jesus for he shall save his people from their sins Again an Angel of the Lord tells the Shepherds who were watching their flocks by night Luke 2.10 11 13 14. Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour which is Christ the Lord. To which Gospel a whole Choir of Angels subjoyned their Eucharistical Hymn Glory be to God on high in earth peace good will towards men These instances are enough to prove that Angels knew the Gospel before men preacht it not to mention their administring to our Saviour in the wilderness when entring on his prophetical Office and their publishing his resurrection the great confirmation of the Gospel before his Apostles had any apprehensions of it The Gospel was indeed preach'd unto the Gentiles and believ'd on in the World but it was far from being receiv'd in glory for it was scorn'd and derided and cruelly persecuted both by Jews and Gentiles the Devil raising all the powers in the world as far as possible for the extirpation of what was so great an enemy to his Tyranny the Gospel then will not answer all those particular marks set down in the Text. Neither yet are they applicable to God the Father as several of the Socinians would have them for to say God the Father was manifest in the flesh because his will was preach'd by Men who were but flesh and blood besides that such an assertion quits the Suppositum or Subject which was God the Father unless God and Gods will be one and the same thing which cannot be asserted It 's so uncouth an expression as is no where to be parallel'd either in Scripture or any Ecclesiastical Writer We read not any where that God the Father ever appear'd in the flesh or assum'd Humane nature nor did ever any dream of such a thing unless we recur to the ancient Patropassians so call'd because they believ'd it was really God the Father who being Incarnate suffer'd death on the Cross for the sins of Mankind but of that we have no foot-steps in holy Writ nor was the Deity it self ever made manifest in the flesh but in the flesh of the blessed Jesus Col. 2.9 in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily not in his doctrine as the Socinians would have it but in himself Vid. Schlicktin in loc and according to their own demands on the like occasion we would have them shew us some other clear place of Scripture wherein God the Father is said to be manifest in the flesh or to be manifest in Christ and the Apostles and then we may the better consent to their interpretation Again it 's as odd and unusual to say God the Father was justified in the Spirit for what need was there of any such justification his Eternal Power and Godhead were visible in the Universal fabrick of nature and all the Miracles done by our Saviour which Socinians refer to the influence of the Spirit were done that Men might know he was the promis'd Messias and those done by the Apostles after his ascent into Heaven carry'd along with them the same respect but we never heard of any publick declaration made by the Spirit for a more peculiar conviction of the World that the most High God was God indeed or the true God we may understand things thus as the Socinians say but we may a great deal better let it alone and not run into such interpretations of God's Word as we can neither reconcile to truth nor sense If we go farther the matter is not mended at all when we say God the Father was seen of Angels for what novelty was there in that had not they stood continually before his face from the instant of their first Creation or should we flie to God's will was not that known to his peculiar Ministers till such time as they came to learn it by the preaching of mortal men who can imagine so short a Text of Scripture and design'd to make known the greatest mystery in the world should lash out into such absolute impertinencies but to proceed God the Father was preach'd to the Gentiles but where he 's mention'd often doubtless as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ in those Epistles written by the Apostles to their Gentile Converts but the Gospel it self is stil'd the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Apostles pretend to preach nay to know nothing among their Converts but Jesus Christ 1 Cor. 2.2 and him crucified as St. Paul expresses himself if we must say God the Father was preach'd he was certainly preach'd most to the Antediluvian World by Noah and the elder Patriarchs or he was preach'd
vogue of the World and their Dictates have been valued by learned Men as the great standards of Philosophic reason Nay the acquists of some in these matters have puft them up with that ridiculous vanity and pride that they have dared to trample upon all Religion nay upon the Deity it self imagining themselves able to demonstrate how the World and all the parts of it might be constituted regulated and continued without any concurrence of a Divine and unbounded Providence but when these same mighty pretenders to wit and sense have come to look into the shallow Mystick rites of ancient Heathens they have but fool'd and disgraced themselves but when such fall upon the foundations of Christianity they prove like that Stone our Saviour speaks of which whosoever shall fall on shall be broken Matth. 21.44 but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder they onely show themselves egregious fools and endeavour to ridicule every thing which they find themselves unable to understand Thus Lucian or some of his Contemporaries in his Philopatris a Dialogue of that name makes it his business to scoff at several things reveal'd in Scripture and at several of the Mysteries of Christianity though neither he nor his followers not Celsus nor Porphyry nor Libanius nor Julian himself nor any other of that witty scoffing tribe were ever able to confute the Writings of the Prophets or the Apostles or to baffle their Christian Antagonists by any serious argument In the forenam'd Dialogue Critias offering to swear to Triepho or to give him an oath for his security from any danger having named several of their Heathen Gods Triepho derides them all with reason enough Critias at last breaks out thus By whom then shall I swear that I may be believ'd The other answers Thou shalt swear by that God who rules above Philopatris Oper. Luciani T. 2. p. 770. the great the immortal the Heavenly God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Son of the Father the Spirit proceeding from the Father one of three and three of one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reckon of these as of Jupiter esteem these God after this the same Buffoon proceeds to scoff at that great Apostle of the Gentiles St. Paul calling him that bald high-nos'd Galilaean who mounted upon the air into the third Heaven and there learnt wonderful matters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He regenerated or renewed us by water and gently guided us into the foot-steps of the blessed and redeem'd us out of the regions of the wicked and again he burlesques the original of all things where he tells his Companion that there was light incorruptible invisible incomprehensible which put an end to darkness and disorder 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely with speaking one word as that slow-tongu'd Man meaning Moses has written and more to the same purpose and of the same scurrilous stamp and this is the wit of Atheistical heads who think it 's enough to expose a Doctrine they understand not or cannot edifie by as some would express it meerly to name it and no more where as the true Sons of Religion though they are far enough from pretending to fathom the great objects of faith cannot yet but derive ineffable consolations from the positive truth of those Mysteries contain'd in Holy Writ but this overweening of their own extraordinary wit made many persons of excellent natural abilities of well exercised reason and inimitable diligence in the first ages of the Gospel stumble so foully at the Doctrine of a crucified Saviour for as a just punishment for that foolish pride and self conceit God destroy'd the wisdom of the wise 1 Cor. 1.19 and brought to nothing the understanding of the prudent so the Stoic and Epicuraean Philosophers were mightily puzled with those new Gods as they were pleas'd to call them Acts 17.18 viz. Jesus and the resurrection as if because they could not understand what the meaning of a resurrection was therefore the Apostles who preach'd it up must needs either make a God or a Goddess of it Thus the same doctrine of the resurrection and that of Christ's being the Son of God and several other mystick truths were cast in the teeth of suffering Christians as if they could be no better than mad men who would undergo so many hardships for assertions so very unintelligible as that they could deserve nothing less than derision and it was often urged as an evidence of a bad cause that it had so many strange and incomprehensible postulates attending on it The same is the plea of the Atheistical what if I should add of the Heretical wits of our age who labour hard to expose whatsoever they meet with beyond the reach of their debauch'd understandings and would therefore have all sound Religion banish'd out of the Commonwealth because forsooth they cannot comprehend How God should become Man should be born of a pure Virgin should converse with men should dye for their sins rise again for their justification and ascend up into glory with that humane body he had assumed unto himself from whence before the Worlds dissolution he should certainly come to be the Supreme determining Judge of all both Men and actions upon which Faith the whole Christian Oeconomy is built and without the certain truth of all which Christianity would be the most absurd and unreasonable religion in the World Thus Hereticks thus Atheists discourse as if it were indeed impossible there should exist a God of greater wisdom and power than themselves or however that he must dispose of all things just agreeably to their Capacities on pain of being dethroned for a default when yet every day they see men like themselves born into the World but can give no possible account of the reason of their acquiring such and such particular shapes or features in the World they see a man born naked into the World but cannot tell us why they are not all cover'd with hair or scaly armour like Beasts or with scales and fins as Fishes or with feathers as Birds they see and know they have naturally but two feet but cannot tell why they should not be born without any as Worms or Fishes or why they should not have four as the greater number of Beasts or why not greater numbers as most insects they see Man a Creature of a noble and Majestick frame endued with a discursive faculty ready to descant upon every visible object yet cannot tell why nature should have given man but two eyes wherewith to survey so vast and unaccountable a variety when at the same time she has studded the head of a contemptible Fly with several thousands they find themselves able to call to mind a mighty number of particulars seen heard read talkt of but cannot inform themselves certainly where the numerous Idaeas of sensible things past should be lodged when at the same time the mind is crouded with a World of present objects and roving too after the
For those rites continued will move the world to belive that the Messias is not yet come that the Faith so long profest in him as if he were come is vain that He who once pretended to that name only impos'd upon the world and was no better than a cheat and that therefore the Jewish Religion is and ought to be still in its full force Now this will appear very absurd and unreasonable to any one who has seriously weighed all those arguments brought to prove that Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God and therefore could be no Impostor and therefore must be that Messias he declar'd himself to be which being true it will follow that our Saviours coming must of necessity put an end to so much of the Jewish Law as was not co-incident with that of Nature and consequently not perpetually obliging That many of the Jews themselves ever look'd upon their Law as of a mutable nature in it self is proved sufficiently by Raymundus Martini in his Pugio fidei against the Jews and that it could never be more properly actually chang'd than by the Messias appears in him who proves from Jewish writers themselves that the Messias the King shall be greater than Moses nay greater than the ministring Angels and therefore the fittest for such a work and as he shews their own gloss in the Midrasch Koheleth upon that of Solomon Eccles 11.8 Pugionis fidei p. 3. dist 3. c. 20 tells us That every Law of all people whatsoever every Law that a man can learn in this world is all but vanity in comparison of the Law of the Messias Things of a less perfect and lasting nature must then vanish when that appears which is more perfect and eternal Whatsoever therefore crosses that end for which God sent his Son into the world and retains mysteries now altogether insignificant as being fully accomplished that cannot be pleasing to God and consequently the present Religion of the Jews cannot be the true Religion There are indeed some mysterious truths in which all Religions agree viz. The existence of a God his spirituality invisibility incomprehensibility c. they all agree That his Providence governs all things in the world however trifling and inconsiderable they may appear in the eyes of the world that He hears sees knows understands every thing tho' they know not how according to the objection of Atheists to reconcile such things to his want of eyes ears soul or any other parts which are all inconsistent with a spiritual being All agree together in granting the present state of Man very wretched and deplorable in looking upon him yet as capable of happiness provided a sutable mean for its procurement could be found out and in expectation of some proper help for that purpose These things being agreeable to the general sence of mankind and being the original reasons of mens putting themselves into a religious course must still be approved by every one and every one of these that Religion setled in the world by our Saviour and his Apostles does advance yet more plainly and confirm more strongly to the world And whatsoever mysterious truths it farther propounds they are all so far intelligible by every one as may serve sufficiently to confirm those first principles whatsoever is farther to be seen in them is what moves mankind to lay aside all brutish malicious and unmanly humour as the meditation upon that extraordinary love of God to mankind of God the Father in sending his only Son into the world to dy for it of God the Son in leaving the bosom of his blessed Father and in our nature and for our sake suffering that bitter and scandalous death upon the Cross of God the Holy Ghost in pursuing us continually with his influences and assistances and so working in us to will and to do according to God's good pleasure this meditation naturally runs into that Apostolical conclusion Joh. 4.11 if God thus loved us then ought we also to love one another If we contemplate our own monstrous demerits our aversion to every thing that is good our inclination to every thing that is evil and so offensive to God our ingratitude for mercies receiv'd our unfruitfulness under the means of grace and Salvation presented to us our natural enmity to God and goodness And if withal we seriously consider that all those forementioned favours are conferr'd on us in a state of obstinate enmity the inference is easie as our Lord has laid it down Matth. 5.44 That we should love our enemies bless them that curse us do good to them that hate us and pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us If again we think on that wonderful mercy of God whereby for the merits of the blessed Jesus he 's pleased to forgive us our sins those natural bars between us and heaven the consequence we must of course draw from thence is that of the Apostle That we should be kind Eph. 4.32 tender hearted forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us Thus we see what excellent influence these very truths the nature and reasons of which are above the reach of our groveling minds may have upon us If we proceed and reflect upon the purity and holiness of that God with whom we have to do that he 's a Being who cannot endure sin who punishes it for its odious nature even in his dearest children all those mysteries reveal'd to us in the Gospel are so far by any fair consequence from perverting our minds that they give us all the motives imaginable 1 Pet. 1.15 that as he who has called us is holy so should we be holy in all manner of conversation A man may be a good heathen and yet a filthy Sodomite a through-pac'd Jew and yet be blind hard-hearted carnal but a man cannot be a true Christian but he 'l endeavour to avoid all appearance of evil Jude 2â— and to keep himself unspotted from the world he 'l live in a continual abhorrence of whatsoever may prejudice his soul or pollute his body and knowing that he is not his own James â—â— but that he 's bought with a price he 'l follow that advice he 'l endeavour to glorifie God in his body and in his spirit which are gods 1 Cor. 6. â—â— and to go no farther than what I had instanced in before a man that meditates on that account the Apostles and Evangelists have given us of the appearance of the Son of God in the flesh and on the ends and designs of such his appearance he 'l never spend his time idly about types and shadows when he is invited to embrace the substance he 'l study to conform himself to the Doctrine of the Gospel to be so far as belongs to a meer man a perfect imitator of all those excellent virtues so apparent in our Saviour during his converse with the world he 'l carefully avoid all
reputation but with as little success And indeed it was almost inconceiveable that a company of mean men looked upon generally with an evil eye should resolve to publish a parcel of notorious falsehoods which every man upon his own knowledge could have confuted and thereby have exposed themselves to the just fury of a deluded multitude it was inconceivable that so many in their writings and preachings could at such different times and such distant places agree together to put a sham upon mankind and to do it so coherently in it self and so agreeably to one another as it was apparent these men did Now in writing a History of immediate transactions there can be nothing fairer in the world than for men who are eye and ear witnesses of the things in question to compile the story and to publish it in their times who knew the same things whether they were true or false as certainly as themselves and an History so written that passes through such an age without reproof may justly pass for authentick nor can any meer humane testimony attain a greater certainty And where the subject of such a History is Divine where many things are declared beyond the reach of humane capacities where they are yet laid down so exactly agreeable to those things obvious to humane understandings and where there appears nothing disagreeable to the common expectances of the world nor to those best and fairest Idea's we have of the Divine Nature there the History grows it self divine and proves it self dictated by a Being superiour to all terrene defects such a History is the History of the Gospel and such an appeal to humane sence and knowledge and carryes such demonstrations of inspiration with it where we find God himself declaring by a voice from Heaven the nature of which the Jews from their ancient records must necessarily apprehend at the Baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist Luke 3.22 This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased which voice as being design'd for the Introducing of our Saviour into the world was audible not only to John the Baptist but to others and when it was repeated at the transfiguration Matth. 17.5 it was audible to all those who accompanied him and John the Baptist himself of whose Commission the Jews seem'd very well satisfied declares John 1.33 34. He that sent me to baptize with water the same said unto me Vpon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost and I saw and bare record that this is that Son of God Now tho' the stubborn Jews seem not to have depended at all upon these declarations nor to have been by them convinced of the truth of what was asserted in them yet their acknowledging John the Baptist to have been a Prophet and their never denying the truth of these accounts as here set down are indeed very considerable proofs of their truth especially since nothing could represent them worse than relating such things as truth and describing them as incredulous and refractary still The Evangelical writers as they give us this account concerning voices from Heaven and the testimony of John the Baptist so they inform us of Christ himself that he owned and asserted his own original too so he tells Nicodemus a person of sence and curiosity as appears by his discourse with our Saviour God so loved the world John 3.16 that he sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believed on him should not perish but have everlasting life Which declaration refers to himself he mentioning that sending of the Son of God as a thing now accomplished which title none assumed nor was it given to any before himself They tell us how justly he rebuk'd the Jews for charging him with blasphemy because he called himself the Son of God John 10.36 for the nature of those works he did openly in the world's view was a sufficient proof of his being sent by God since nothing less than a divine power and assistance could possibly effect such things as the Jews if they had not been resolved upon ruine could not but know But God was not wont to send such on his errands who puff'd up with pride would usurp great and improper titles to themselves or who would impose on the world by daring falshoods the Jews were not wholly irrational in thinking he deserved death for calling himself the Son of God if really he were not John 19.7 No Politicks yet could fairly give a toleration to open blasphemy But the Jews tho' very angry with him for calling himself by so august a name railed at him indeed and accused him and persecuted him but never went about to disprove him nay when he challeng'd them if they could to convince him of sin John 8.46 to shew any crime whatsoever that he had been guilty of they answered him only with an acquitting silence they were excellent at generals but the worst in the world at particulars and yet to be without sin was so extraordinary a quality as could be compatible only with one descending from Heaven Vnclean Spirits terribly sensible of his power frequently howsoever unwillingly confest him to be the Son of God Matth. 8.29 Mar. 3.11 and they were too much his enemies to acknowledge a thing so very disadvantagious to their own designs had it not been truth Nathanael a prudent and a pious man upon discourse with him easily confest Thou art the Son of God Joh. 1.49 thou art the King of Israel The disciples when they saw how with one word Jesus laid that storm which had threatned their destruction confest Matt 14.33 of a truth thou art the Son of God Humane power could not quell the loud and violent storms but he that made them could easily allay their fury The Roman Centurion who was his guard at his Crucifixion when he saw how at his giving up the ghost the earth quaked Matth. 27.50 54. the rocks rent the veil of the Temple was split in twain from top to bottom and the graves opened and long buried bodies arose from their heavy sleep could not but submit his faith to such prodigious visions and profess that truly this was the Son of God Nature was not wont to undergo such dreadful convulsions for the death of an inferiour person but when its great Creator suffer'd it was time to own its sympathetick pangs after these things it was no wonder to hear the Apostles declare Acts 3.13 36. That the God of their fathers had glorified his Son Jesus Christ and again That unto us God having raised up his Son Jesus Christ sent him to bless us in turning away every one of us from our iniquities But after all had either Jews or Romans prov'd as well as call'd Christ a deceiver before it must have been a very unordinary confidence in the Apostles to act over the baffled farce again and
knew every thing past present and to come clearly and fully in himself His humane nature lived not onely in a strict friendship but in a close and compleat union with the God-head and therefore felt no Convulsions or ecstasies no violent emotions of his rational faculties nor was he confin'd to time or place or common rules and methods but as the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in him so he deliver'd Oracles to Mankind at all times as he himself pleas'd for God did not give the Spirit to him by measure Job 3.34 Thus inspir'd David publishes that Eternal Decree Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee ask of me and I shall give thee the Heathen for thine inheritance Ps â— 7 8. and the utmost part of the earth for thy possession which could never be true in respect of David who never acquir'd so vast an Empire as is there promised but it was really acquir'd by our Saviour who by his holy Gospel subdued the Vniverse and made all Mankind partakers of that redemption wrought for them by himself And so Saint Paul preaching Christ to the Jews at Antioch in Pisidia tells them That the promise made to their Fathers God had fulfilled to them their Children having rais'd up Jesus again as it is written in the second Psalm Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Acts 13.32 33. and the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews proves his Superiority to Angels by that Argument For to which of the Angels said God at any time Hebr. 1.5 Thou art my Son c. And again to prove the mission and authority of Christ having said before That no man takes the Priestly honour to himself but he that is call'd of God as was Aaron he pleads So Christ glorified not himself to be made an High-Priest Heb. 5.4 5. but he that said unto him Thou art my Son to day have I begotten thee and so we are certain of the due application of the Prophecy which we shall dilate on farther in another place Such again was that of David in the Person of Jesus afterwards to appear in the World Psal 40.6 7 8. Sacrifice and burnt-offering thou didst not desire mine ears hast thou open'd intimating by that the inefficacy of all those legal and typical Sacrifices which the Jews and in imitation of them others had been us'd to for if these Sacrifices could have avail'd for the taking away of Sin they had no longer been types and shadows but things of a real and substantial excellency which since they were not Burnt-offering and Sin-offering hast thou not requir'd Then said I Lo I come in the Volume of the Book it is written of me I delight to do thy will Hebr. 10 5-10 O my God yea thy Law is within my heart And thus this Prophecy is apply'd by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews onely with that difference that whereas the Psalm has it Mine ear hast thou open'd according to the Hebrew the Apostle follows the translation of the Septuagint and renders it a Body hast thou prepared for me the sense amounting still to the same for as the Hebrews according to the Law made a Servant their own for ever by opening their ears or boring them Exod 21 6. so God made his Son Jesus obedient as a Servant by preparing him a body which was open'd too and fastened to the cross as the Servants ear in boring to the posts of the door Nor was that less plain or considerable The Lord said unto my Lord Sit thou on my right hand untill I make thine enemies thy foot-stool The Lord hath sworn and will not repent Psal 110 1-4 Thou art a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedeck The first part of this our Saviour who undoubtedly knew its true meaning assumes to himself and confounds the Pharisees by asking them that Question That whereas it was expected the Messias should be the Son of David yet David calls him Lord Matth. 22 41-45 How could he be his Lord and his Son too which was a mystery inexplicable to those who had meer carnal and mean notions of the Messias but a difficulty which when they got over it would not be so very hard to believe him humble and despicable as he appear'd to be the very Messias they look'd for For if he who was David's Lord and indeed God blessed for ever could condescend so low as to be David's Son it could not be strange that he who was David's Son should stoop lower yet and appear in the form of a servant The latter part of this prediction relating to a Priest is by the Writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews apply'd to Jesus Hebr. 7 17-21 as a proof of the legitimacy and eternity of his Priesthood Of the same authority is that 〈◊〉 18 〈◊〉 â—â— The Stone which the builders refus'd is become the head of the corner this is the Lord 's doing and it is marvellous in our eyes which not to mention the Jewish fable of such a stone being reall met withall in the building of the second Temple which had by several been thrown aside as useless yet afterwards by miracle was found fit for the joyning of the corners of the building our Saviour makes use of to convince the Jews of their folly and obstinacy in refusing to own him in his great Mediatorian office and to let them see that their contempt of Him could be no prejudice to his sacred dignity and Honour but that he who was now thought too inconsiderable to be of any use to the Jews one of the smallest of the Nations Matth. 21.42 43 44. should afterwards appear great enough to joyn Men of all Countries and Nations together in one Sacred bond and to crush all his Enemies in dreadful ruines for so he adds on repetition of those before quoted words Therefore I say unto you the Kingdom of God shall be taken from you and given to a Nation bringing forth the fruits thereof and whosoever shall fall on this Stone shall be broken but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder And this advancement and dilatation of Christ's power St. Peter justly takes notice of from the same Psalm in the case of the Cripple newly cured Acts 4 9 10 11 12. If we be this day examin'd of the good deed done to the impotent man by what means he is made whole Be it known to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth whom ye crucified whom God raised from the dead even by Him does this Man stand before you whole This is the stone which was set at nought of you builders which is become the head of the Corner Neither is there salvation in any other for there is none other name under Heaven given among men whereby we must be saved That of Isaiah is wholly extraordinary and as I hinted
and the worlds everlasting head and governour with respect to the time to come to be a David a man after God's own heart who should do all his will after David's natural death to be infinitely happy just compassionate Anointed by the sacred Spirit of God to have the greatest of those born of a woman his harbinger and by him acknowledged for a God tho' shaded from vulgar eyes by a cloud of humane frailty the mighty God the everlasting Father the Prince of Peace yet a child a Son brought forth in the world and given to us To be born of a pure and spotless Virgin so Man yet the hopes of all the ends of the earth and of those that remain in the broad Sea and so God To be despis'd by the great and wise yet the great Center of Vnity for all the Nations in the World To be at once David's Son and David's Lord and seated at the right hand of God To terminate all material typical sacrifices in his own flesh and unlimited obedience yet to be own'd by God himself as his only begotten Son and heir to the government of all things To surpass their admir'd Moses as a Master his Servant in the Prophetick gift and an intimate familiarity with God To be the utter ruine of Idolatry that seed which should be the blessing and therefore the desire of all nations that seed which should break the head ruine the policy and Tyranny of that old Serpent the Devil To be a real and visible Man yet our Immanuel God with us which is the summ of all those Prophecies and Promises To be all these things is not consistent with a temporal Monarch whose breath is in his nostrils tho' all the nations in the World ador'd him The absolute conquest over prevailing wickedness the triumph over Death and Hell and all the obstacles of a blessed Immortality the redemption of a guilty world from impendent vengeance by a swift and entire obedience to the Almighty Will the making up that prodigious Chasme between an infinitely pure and holy Deity and a depraved and provoking world are thoughts and enterprises too vast and glorious to be undertaken by any child of Man therefore whosoever it was that all those mighty things should be accomplished in whosoever should be so infinitely beloved by Heaven and so prodigious a Benefactor to mankind must be according to those titles fixt upon him the Son of God his Son in a true literal sence and as such he may really be capable of doing more for us than we our selves can ask or think The blessed Jesus as I intimated before was not only the expectation of Israel but the desire of all nations and therefore promis'd to all nations in the forecited passages as well as them and tho' the Jews were not so good natur'd as to be very Communicative of their divine treasures yet the Gentiles who had their concerns in so just an hope had their predictions too and tho' not so clearly foresaw the approaching days of their Redeemer the elder Prophecies such as that to our first Parents in Paradise or that to Abraham might get abroad into the world the prophecies themselves being originally known to others as well as those whom they more immediately concern'd and that passage of Job I know that my redeemer liveth Job 19.25 26.27 and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth and tho' after my skin worms destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God whom I shall see for my self and mine eyes shall behold and not another tho' my reins be consumed within me is a sufficient evidence that those who lived without the pale of Jacob's family were sensible of what they wanted and that their hopes were reasonable that those wants should be supplied and Balaam's predictions being heard by Moabites strangers to Israel were without all question taken great notice of by the heathen nations Hence arose the fame of the Sibylline Oracles talked of so much by antient writers and by what we find spoken of 'em by Tully De Divinat l. 2. and transcribed from them by Virgil sufficient to raise mens expectations and desires for some very great and happy event hence grew those common discourses of the Gods descending in humane shapes to converse with and instruct men Which shewed mens general apprehensions of the love of the Deity to mankind of the possibility of an Incarnation and the useful consequences it might have for the reformation of corrupt nature Hence that prophetick advice of Confutius the famous Chinese Philosopher who liv'd 550. years before our Saviour's birth tâ—â— Prince to be virtuous Huetii Demonstr Evang. Prop. 7. c. 32. for says he The actions of a good Prince ought to be agreeable to the Laws of God and Nature and he should not doubt but that when that expected holy One shall come his virtue shall then be as much honour'd as it was before while he lived and reign'd And I cannot but think it reasonable to conclude that Balaam's prophecy might be known there and better preserved by their learning so antient among them than in other places and that excited by that the wise Men came from thence to worship our Saviour at his birth especially since the length of a journey from thence seems most agreeable to Herod's calculation when to be sure of reaching the new born King He killed all the children in Bethlehem and its coasts Matth. 2.1 2 9 10. from two years old and under according to the time that he had diligently enquired of the wise men About our Saviour's time and before and after for a while a rumour was spread abroad every where that One should be born in Judea who should be the Vniversal Monarch as Suetonius in the life of Augustus and in that of Vespasian and Tacitus in the fifth book of his Histories tells us which fame Josephus the Jewish Historian laid hold on to flatter with Vespasian and to get his own liberty by perswading him the prophetick rumour pointed him out for the Roman Empire Here again That ever-living Redeemer that glorious child who should reduce the frame of Nature to so happy a condition after all the disorders it had suffered who should banish sin and wickedness That look'd for Holy One who should give virtue its due reward that Jewish native who should command the humble world must of necessity be concluded somewhat more than Man by the longing Expectants He must be God to effect such wonders and yet must be a Man to be a native of Judaea he must have humane nature to be born with into the world and to converse with men and to take away the very smallest footsteps and tracks of Sin he must at least be partaker of Divinity thus all the Prophecies both among Jews and Gentiles conclude in a necessity that the worlds Redeemer from that misery and those dangers it lay under must at least be the
but never yet did any inspired Writer call Holy Men Men converted from the vanities of this World from all the Lusts and Follies attending it never did they call such by the name of Worldly Men But is not this a very hard shift to chop and change so often in so very short a sentence Whereas if we believe as we ought that this Habitable World and all things therein were created at first out of nothing by the Son of God the sence will be easie enough that God the Son was in this World this World the Universal fabrick of which his own hand had made and yet the World so far as capable of sence and knowledge understood it not or were not able to distinguish between the Creator and a meer Creature That we should believe the Son of God made all things at first the Scripture seems to take a great deal of care for so S. Paul teaches us that God created all things by Jesus Christ Ephes 3.9 but much more fully Coloss 1.15 16. Where giving thanks to God the Father who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son he describes that Son thus He is the image of the Invisible God the first-born of every Creature for by him were all things created that were in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers all things were created by him and for him and he is before all things and by him all things consist and the Author of the Epistle is acknowledged to apply that of the Psalmist to our Saviour Heb. 1.10 Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the Earth and the Heavens are the works of thy hands A man would be apt to think these Texts were very plain and positive yet here too they 'l make their impious attempts for All things in heaven and in earth must mean only Angels and Men be it so how come the Angels to be renewed by the Word They will not say the fallen Angels were reduced to a state of Salvation S. Jude will contradict them there who tells us Jude v. 6. The Angels which kept not their first state but left their own habitation God hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness to the judgment of the great day They cannot say the Good Angels were so restored or renewed for they were created absolutely happy and they had not lost that happiness and our Saviour himself asserts that He came not to call the Righteous but sinners to repentance that the Whole need not a Physician but those that are Sick The words then are as they sound to us they are general and whereas the Apostle particularises in Thrones and Dominions c. after those general words all things visible and invisible it 's only to supply us with an argument à Majori ad Minus that if even those superiour happy Beings who might seem almost to be above the rank of Creatures if they yet ow'd their first originals to the hand of the Son of God how much more may we conclude the visible or grosser parts of the Universe might owe their beginnings to his power Indeed the design of the Apostle is to set before our eyes in the beginning of his Gospel the wonderful Condescension of the Son of God on behalf of miserable sinners so to work in us a due fence of what we owe to so infinite a goodness and a forward readiness to accept Salvation from so all-sufficient a hand upon the terms propounded i. e. Faith and Obedience but what Topic could the Holy Pen-Man better begin his design with than from that of Christ's being God blessed for ever or from all eternity from his existing always in the glorious presence of his Almighty Father and being infinitely blest in himself as being One and equal with his Father for a compleat and every way perfect Vnion or Identity can only be between equals The Evangelist proves this eternal Greatness by that sufficient argument of his being the great and sole Creator of all things This God this Creator of all things appeared upon Earth where even those who were the Work of his hands were grown to that Blindness through the greatness of their Sins and the corruption of their natures that tho' the whole Creation long'd for the glorious day of his appearance Yet all the Worl'd seem'd utterly unable to discover him this glorious and eternal Word yet assumed Humane Nature that he might be Visible to the eye of the World and that he might be able to offer himself a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World that he might atone his Father's just anger and reconcile us to him by his own most precious blood To this end He underwent all the inconveniences ordinarily attending Mankind and it was a severe beginning of his debasement or humiliation for our sakes that whereas he honour'd the Nation of the Jews by being born among them and whereas out of particular commiseration for that poor lost people he made himself first known among them and Preach'd and did Miracles that they might the better understand him yet after all he came to his own but his own received him not i. e. the generality of that Nation rejected him but those who did receive him were empower'd by him to become the Sons of God they were so influenced assisted supported and dignified by his Sacred Spirit that they attained the Spirit of Adoption whereby they were able to cry Abba Father or to call upon God with that confidence and security which a dearly loved Son may have in an indulgent and well pleased Father He was such because that Holy Lamb to whom John the Baptist gave his testimony did really take away the Sins of the World and this Lamb whose nature and goodness was so little understood appear'd yet especially after his Resurrection when their minds were opened to his Disciples full of Grace and Truth they beholding his glory as the glory of the only Begotten Son of God such lustre would appear in him to the true believers eyes through the thick veil of his flesh and all the dismal clouds of his unparallel'd sufferings Now this glory which the Apostles saw in Christ must be somewhat capable of distinguishing him from others he might have appear'd as a Son of God at large in the same sense as all those who live piously are called the Sons of God but that would not at all have answer'd to what the Evangelist tells us his Glory made him appear i. e. the only begotten Son of God begotten of God in such a manner as never any meer Creature could be glorious in such a Manner as no meer Man was ever capable of but if he could be no Creature he could be nothing but God there being no Intermedial Essence between the Creator and the Creature If then it be the distinguishing Character of
one towards another if we endeavour to promote one anothers Salvation by all those means which by Providence are put into our hands In this argument the Apostle makes use of such expressions as stumble the enemies of the Divinity of the Son of God very much and give them a great deal of pains to shift off and to evade so the form of God they determine to be nothing but a resemblance or representation of God in his Works Christ was in the form of God when he did those many wonderful works during his converse upon earth those Miracles importing somewhat of a divine power but what is there in this peculiar to our Saviour Moses might as well have been said to have been in the form of God since he too did a great many prodigious things and the Skies the Air the Waters the Earth seemed all as obedient to him as to our Saviour afterwards Elijah and Elisha might have receiv'd the same Character and the Apostles much more since Christ himself had promised them that they should not only do the same but greater miracles than he himself did yet Scripture never talks of these at any such rate as their being in the form of God If it be objected that Moses the Prophets mention'd and the Disciples after our Lord's Resurrection did indeed many and great Miracles but they were not done in their own names we acknowledge it but if our adversaries may be believed our Saviour was in the same circumstances for his Miracles were only done in the name of God and so were the Mosaic and Prophetic Miracles done If they 'l own that our Saviour did his Miracles in His own name they grant what they take so much pains to disprove for none can do a Miracle in his own name but he who has an inherent power in himself commanding all the parts of the Creation having no need of leave or assistance from any superiour Being but such a power is and only can be inherent in the most high God therefore if our Saviour had that power he was and is the most high God if he had not he 's in the same rank with other holy and good Men and any of them might have been instanced in as patterns of as great condescension and love to Souls as himself They criticise upon the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the form of God as if it signified only an outward shadow and appearance and therefore not the real divine essence and therefore whereas the Apostle makes mention afterwards of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the form of a Servant they are under a necessity of denying that that signifies his assuming humane nature tho' the words following are indeed an explication of these being in the form of a servant and being found in likeness of men are but explicatory one of another and so Schlicktingius owns it but upon what reason we know not upon that last phrase of being found in likeness of men he writes thus Figurâ i. e. non reipsâ sed apparenter externâ specie tantum in the form or figure of a Man that is not a Man indeed but only to outward appearance and to common view a Commentary to me unintelligible since they own Christ to have been a real man and nothing else the reason of their niceness here is only this They fear that if they own the form of a Servant signifies the humane nature of Christ then the form of God must signifie the divine nature of the same person which they cannot endure to hear of but the Fathers with one current interpret it so that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the essence of God so Theodoret on the place Gregory Nyssen Athanasius Chrysostome Theophylact c. and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the nature of a servant in the same sence so Theodoret Athanasius Paedagog l. 3. c. 1. Theophylact and Clemens Alexandrinus who cannot well be suspected of partiality in the case and this authority is much better than theirs who only assert the contrary arbitrarily and without reason That Christ thought it no robbery to be equal with God they would have to signifie only this That he thought it not so great an advantage to be in the form of God or like him as to be obstinate in the retention of that likeness but would humbly quit it to be used and suffer like a servant and for this Enjedine runs to some phrases in Heliodorus his Aethiopic Romance where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rapina signifies as much if he interpret it rightly but that 's too modern an authority to interpret Scripture by and too slight a work to teach us how to understand the dictates of God's Holy Spirit After several Cavils they yield that to be like to God is to be equal to God but equality must be between distinct beings for none can be equal to himself We own it and say the Father and the Son are distinct persons but of one nature as Father and Son must be if their relation be real but if God the Father and God the Son be of one and the same Nature they must have one and the same Essence because two infinite Essences are a contradiction our Saviour being in the form of his Father and equal to his Father could not look on it as a crime or think it any Sacrilege or robbery to own that equality as he did by his expressions of himself and by those adorations he permitted to be paid to himself Here then was Love and Condescention indeed that He who was God equal with his father should assume to himself poor infirm servile flesh and blood and in that humble himself and be obedient to death even that scandalous and painful death on the Cross for our sakes This Passion and this Obedience was truly meritorious it intrinsically and in its own real value merited the redemption of all mankind it effectually and in its outward operation merited and procured the Salvation of all those that believe in him As a reward for this Humility and Obedience God has highly exalted the Humane Nature of his Son that 's enclosed in or substantially united to the Divine Nature and consequently partakes of all that bliss that eternal glory and happiness which the Deity it self enjoys by which means it comes to be lawful for Christians to worship Christ as Man tho' not as meer Man as well as as he is God a practice which could never be excused from being the greatest Idolatry in the World if there were no such union as will hereafter be proved in course For that exception to this Text that Jesus is the name of Man not of God and Christ the name of an Office it signifies the Anointed One the Messias and therefore cannot belong to the most high God it 's extremely impertinent they are not our Saviour's names as he is God but as he
〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 144. A. of him was Jesus Christ so far as concerned his flesh of him were the Kings Princes and Leaders of Judah where it 's observable that nameing our Saviour He says of him that He was of Jacob according to the flesh by a particular phrase 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 according to or so for as concerned in the flesh but of the Princes and Levites deduction from that Patriarch he speaks only in the common way now this particular way of expressing himself in relation to Christ must have been very impertinent had it not been designed to shew the difference there was between the manner of Christ's Descent and Theirs for never was such a thing said of any meer Man by any Writer in the world that He was born of such and such Parents according to the flesh as it would look ridiculously to say David was the Son of Jesse according to the flesh the very phrase intimates some different origination according to some other nature Rom. 1.3 4 whatever it be and the Apostle uses the same expression in the same distinguishing sence So elsewhere S. Clement calls our Lord 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the same word used by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and by us translated Heb. 1.3 the brightness of God's glory properly enough or it might be render'd a beam from the body of his glory from which expressions the Antients generally collected that Christ must be co-eternal with his Father so S. Chrysostome tells us the Son is call'd the brightness of the glory of his Father as always existing in the Father as brightness always is in Light for the light cannot be without brightness nor brightness without light so the Son cannot be without the Father nor the Father without the Son for he is begotten of his Essence before all time and is always with him to the same purpose but more largely speak Theodoret Gregory Nyssen Theophylact c. and S. Clement to shew his meaning to be the same with that of the Author to the Hebrews proceeds in a large citation out of that Chapter from whence we have before evidently prov'd the eternal Divinity of the Son of God Besides this unquestionable Epistle of Clement which we have almost entire there 's a Fragment of another written by the same excellent person to the same Corinthians not so generally own'd indeed but of very great antiquity being taken notice of by S. Hierome and before him by Eusebius Conc. T. 1. p. 181. the very first words of which give us a full proof of the doctrine we now assert Brethren says the Writer We ought to think concerning Jesus Christ as concerning God as concerning the Judge both of the quick and the dead If we must think of Christ as of God we must think and believe that he is God for so we think always of the Supreme Being But these passages are sufficient from an Author of so great antiquity From him we shall proceed to the next Greek Father Blessed Ignatius Bishop of Antioch One who had seen Christ himself in the flesh who is reported by some to have been that Child whom our Saviour took in his arms Mark 9.36 who conversed frequently with the Apostles He left several Epistles behind him to several Churches full of excellent advices and truly savouring of an Apostolical Spirit and temper In Him we meet with many evidences of his belief that Jesus Christ the Son of God was the real the True God So in the very first words of his first Epistle to the Church of Smyrna He begins Epist ad Smyrn Edit Voss 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I glorifie Jesus Christ who is God he is with him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the God with an article the want of which the Socinians so frequently cavil at in Scripture that Article is certainly exclusive of all other Gods The Son he is the only True God the Father is the same True God not two Gods but two persons and one God or one Deity this is a plain passage and needs no descant upon it In the conclusion of his Letter to Polycarp then Bishop of the Church of Smyrna the same who is called the Angel of the Church of Smyrna by S. John in the Revelations who dyed afterwards a Martyr for the truth he gives Polycarp this salutation I pray that Grace may be always with thee in Jesus Christ our God Ad Polyc. he neither prefixes nor subjoyns any thing to the words that might allay the sence or make it ambiguous it is an entire sentence and as clearly owns that He thought Jesus Christ was God and that he wrote to another who had the same Faith in that respect with himself So that the real Deity of the Son of God was no strange Doctrine in those days In the Inscription of his next Epistle to the Ephesians He stiles that Church predestinated from the beginning Ad Ephes or before all worlds to everlasting glory according to the will of the Father and Jesus Christ our God where he plainly makes the Father and Jesus Christ one God to which blessed Jesus he ascribes the same character of an absolute Deity with his Father So again in the beginning of the Epistle it self he tells the Ephesians they bore an honourable reputation and justly gained by their Faith and Love in Jesus Christ our Saviour being imitators of God and re-enflamed or revived by the blood of God An expression like that of S. Paul to the Elders of the same Church when he tells them God had made them overseers of that Church Act. 20.28 which he had purchased with his own blood Now we cannot with any propriety of speech call any blood the blood of God unless it be really his and it cannot be his as he is God therefore he must have assumed some such nature as wherein his blood might be shed which might and did come to pass by his taking our nature but our Nature being substantially united to that which was before eternal and Divine and so God and Man being but one Christ when Christ as Man shed his most precious blood for our sakes that blood was properly and truely called the blood of God or God's own blood But we meet with yet plainer evidence in the same Epistle so I take those words of his to belong to Christ Nothing lies hid from the Lord that is the common title of our Saviour in all Apostolical writings but even our most secret things are near to him Let us then do all things as if He lived in us that we may be his Temples and He may be God in us which also he is and will appear before our faces for which reasons we justly love him I the more readily apply this which argues Omniscience to Christ and is no more than what Scripture openly ascribes to him as I have formerly shew'd because soon
That our Lord is called Immanuel by the Prophet as cited by S. Matthew or God with us that we might not think he was Man only but that we might know he was God too If then Christ was God as well as Man his Divine Nature being mentioned in contradistinction to his humane Nature Irenaeus cannot mean that He who was really a Man was only metaphorically God but that he was as really and essentially God as He was Man which is what we believe With Irenaeus agrees Clemens of Alexandria who thus teaches the Gentiles in his Admonition to them We are the rational Creatures of God the Word so he calls our Saviour after the Evangelist S. John Admon ad Gent. p. 5. l. D. by whom we pretend to Antiquity because God the Word was in the beginning but because the Word was from above He was and is the divine original of all things but since He has now taken upon him the name of Christ a name suitable to his power and which was sanctified of old I call him a new song This refers to his former Allegorical discourse wherein he endeavours to describe every thing under terms proper to Harmony or Musick This Word then this Christ who was at first in God was both the cause of our original existence and of our well-being But now this Word himself has made himself manifest to men who alone is both God and Man the cause of all our good by whom we being taught to live well are sent from hence to eternal life for according to that inspired Apostle of our Lord the Grace of God hath appear'd to all men teaching them that denying all ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live godly righteously and soberly in this present world looking for the glorious coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ This is the new song that manifestation of God the Word who was in the beginning and before all things and now shines brightly out to us He appear'd but lately who was our Saviour before He who is appear'd in him who is because the Word was with God and that Word by which all things were made makes his appearance as a Master that Word which as a Creator gave us life in our first formation appearing now as a Master or Teacher has taught us to live well that hereafter as God he may bestow upon us eternal life Thus far that very learned Father and his whole discourse does so plainly teach us the Pre-existence of our Saviour before his Conception in the Womb of the blessed Virgin and consequently his Divine Nature in his eternal being with the Father that the most ignorant person in the World may plainly understand what the Faith of this Writer was Thus afterwards speaking of John Baptist the forerunner of our Saviour he tells them John taught men to be prepared for the presence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of God the Christ Afterwards speaking of that care our Saviour took to have the Gospel preached he adds The Lord did not effect so great work in so short a time without a sacred care He was despised in appearance but adored indeed being a Purifyer a Saviour and extremely kind The Divine Word being really most manifest God and put into an equal rank with the Lord of all things for as much as he was his Son and the Word was in God Ibid. p. 68. l. D. he was neither disbelieved when he was first preached nor was he unknown or unacknowledged when assuming the presence of a Man and being made flesh he managed the saving design of his assumed Humanity Again speaking to those who are blind with sin and folly under the person of Tiresias that blind Thebane Wizzard and inviting such to believe in Christ he speaks thus If thou wilt thou too shalt be initiated into these Mysteries and join in the Choir of blessed Angels about the unbegotten the never to be destroyed the only true God God the Word assisting in the same Hymn with us He is eternal the only Jesus or Saviour the great High-priest of God who is the Father p. 70. L D. he intercedes for Men and he perswades them to goodness I shall instance but in one passage more in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where having cited that of the Psalmist Who shall ascend into the Hill of the Lord or who shall stand in his holy place c. at large He thus descants upon it The Prophet says He in my opinion here briefly describes the true Gnostick or the man of true knowledge to us and by the bye David shews us that our Saviour is God for he calls him the face of the God of Jacob who brought us glad tidings and taught us of or concerning the Spirit therefore the Apostle calls the Son the Character of the glory of God Him who taught the truth concerning God and who represented to us that God and the Father was one only and Almighty whom none could know but the Son Stromat l. 7. p. 733. C. and He to whom the Son shall reveal him That God is but one appears by those who seek the face of the God of Jacob whom our God and our Saviour characterises as the only God and father of Good Here then we have the Father true and real God the Son true and real God and yet but one God and this is that Faith which we preach To Clemens I shall only add his Scholar Origen for the Greek Church a man of extraordinary eminence in his time who in his third Book against Celsus that great adversary of the Christian Religion reflecting upon the vanity of Heathen Gods and their incapacity to help those that depend on them he tells Celsus that upon this very reason because there is no help in false gods it 's a sure Rule among Christians that no man should trust in any being as God except only in Jesus Christ and a little after whereas Celsus objects against us so often that we believe Jesus consisting of a mortal body to be God and imagine our selves very pious in so thinking he answers Let those who accuse us know that He whom we know and believe to be God of old and to be the Son of God he is of himself the Word the Wisdom and the Truth and that even that mortal body and reasonable Soul which he assumed by its Communication and Unity and Mixture with the Word or with his divine nature arose to so great a height as to be God i.e. his humane and his divine nature make by a substantial or essential union one God and that I give no false interpretation to his words here will appear by what I shall allege afterwards It 's all along the humour of Celsus then when he speaks in the Person of a Jew and when he speaks in his own Name and Person to reproach the Christians with the irrationality of their Religion on that particular account that they owned Christ as
God Contra Celsum l. 1. p. 30 so he objects that Christ was educated in the dark was hired a servant in Aegypt that he there tryed their magick powers and returning from thence in confidence of his jugling tricks set up for a God Origen vindicates him from the malicious imputation of being a Magician but never pretends to deny that he was God or that he assumed that title nay he 's so far from that that he takes a great deal of pains to prove that He was God particularly from those passages of the 45 Psalm cited by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews in his first chapter which I have clear'd before and he adds that we must here consider the Prophet speaking to that God whose throne is everlasting l. 1. p. 43. and that he asserts that God was anointed by God who was His God with the oyl of gladness above his fellows which is the real sence of the words and which he tells us he had formerly silenc'd an obstinate Jew with In his second book Celsus introduces a Jew speaking against Christ and saying they could not own him for God who did not make good his word who endeavoured poorly to avoid Death and was at last betrayed by one of his own followers c. Origen answers Christians did neither believe the body of Christ nor his soul to be God but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word the Son of the God of all things was God that Christians justly condemn the Jews who acknowledge not him to be God whom their own Prophets so often give testimony to as a powerful Being and as God which he is by the witness of the great God and Father of all things himself That when God in the beginning of the world said Let us make Man in our Image the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word perform'd all that his Father commanded for if according to that of the Psalmist He said and they were made l. 2. p. 6â— he commanded and all things were created if at God's command all the Creatures were framed who according to the meaning of the prophetical Spirit was able to put in execution such his Father's command but He who was the living Word and Truth it self The Word then in the beginning of all things was with God and the Word was God and without him nothing was made that was made It 's the Doctrine of S. John and of Origen too So far then we may know how the beginning of S. John's Gospel was understood in his days and what they thought might conveniently be proved from thence When the Jew afterwards is brought in objecting that Men who are partakers of the same Table would not lye in wait for one another much less would any one have treacherous designs upon God p. 74. Origen might easily have answered that cavil by denying that He was God and then by giving instances of Men false and treacherous to those who have eaten with them at the same Table but He owns his Godhead and only performs the latter Celsus afterwards brings in his Jew objecting against the Divinity of Christ thus Who ever heard of God coming down from heaven to earth on purpose to perswade Men as they say Christ did and failing in his design especially when he was long expected and hoped for a denyal of his Divinity had put a full stop to this objection too but Origen on the contrary retorts upon them That the Jews themselves were instance enough of the possibility of such a thing since God had appear'd so remarkably to them in bringing them up out of the land of Aegypt and in giving them a Law from Sina and yet they nor their Fathers could by that means be perswaded to obedience or prevented from running presently into Idolatry p. 106. After all this Celsus in his own person makes use of this argument to prove that Christ could not be God God says He is good and pure and happy and in himself infinitely excellent and lovely if He should descend to be among Men He must necessarily undergo a change a change from good to bad from pure to impure from happiness to misery and from the most excellent to the most sinful state this God would never undergo To this the Father answers That it 's true God is in himselâ— Immutable nor did he suffer any change oâ— this account But that which descended down to Men was in the form of God but out of his Love to mankind he debased himself so far as that he might be born among them but He suffer'd no change from baâ— to good for that He was without Sin he never committed any He was not chang'd from pure or clean to foul or filthy for Hâ— did not so much as know Sin nor did he fall from happiness to misery He humbled himself indeed but was not a whit the less happy even when he stoop'd the lowest for the good of mankind nor did he fall from the best to the most sinful state because what he did proceeded from Love and Charity to us by being among whom He that was the great Physician of Souls could be no more altered for the worse than a Physician for the body is by conversing with those that are sick and full of diseases But says he if Celsus think that because the immortal God the Word assumed a mortal body and an humane Soul that therefore He suffered an alteration or a change Let him know that the Word essentially continuing the Word still suffers by none of those things which happen either to the body or the Soul but that He condescends to become flesh and to speak in a Body l. 4. p. 169 170. for the sake of those who are not able to behold the eradiations and brightness of his Divinity so long till He who receives him being in a short time rais'd to a greater understanding by the Word may be able to contemplate his original nature And finally in his sixth book against the same Celsus he speaks â—hus excellently If then Celsus enquire how we think to know God and to be saved with him We will answer him That He who is the word of God being in them who seek him or who wait for his appearance is sufficient to make known and to reveal the Father who was not to be seen before His appearance for who else can save the Soul of Man and guide us in every thing to God but only God the Word who being in the beginning with God for the sake of those who are confin'd to flesh became flesh that he might be comprehended by those who were not able to see him as He was the Word and as He was with God and as He was God l. 6. p. 322. and appearing in flesh and speaking in the body He calls those who are in the flesh to himself that first he might make them like to the Word which was made flesh and
When the Arrian Controversie was on foot Alexander Bishop of Alexandria condemned it in a Synod of almost an hundred Bishops who all concluded the Doctrine of Arius a perfect Innovation not at all consistent with the Faith of the Universal Church what Arius asserted we have in Alexander's circular Epistle viz. That God was not always a Father but that there was a time wherein he was not the Father that the Word of God was not always but had its original as other Creatures out of nothing for He that is God framed or made him who had no Being out of what had no Being Therefore there was a time when he was not c. Of these Heterodox assertions of Arius Alexander in that Epistle gives us a confutation and that strong and pithy and such as being drawn from plain texts of Scripture could never have been oppos'd had not there lived in elder ages some who were able to study out as perverse glosses for positive texts as the Socinians do now a-days But that 's not all what Alexander insists upon is the disagreement of these positions with the Churches antient Faith so he first stiles the Arian Heresie a fore-runner of Anti-Christ and properly enough After this He says they were Apostates such as had fallen off from the Faith of the Church and delivered such Doctrines as were no way consonant to Scriptures Whoever heard such things before says He or who is there who hearing them now Socratis Hist Eccl. l. 1. c. 6. Edit Val. would not be amazed and stop his ears that they might not be defiled with hearing such abominable stuff That there had been many Heresies before but this the worst of all the rest and making the nearest approaches to Anti-Christianism Thus Alexander in his circular Epistle But Alexander must have been equally silly and impudent to have written in this manner to all the Bishops of the Church when his business was to satisfie them of the reasons of his proceedings against Arius and his Accomplices and when he was to countermine the stratagems and interests of Eusebius of Nicomedia a subtle and powerful adversary If the Doctrine of the Son's co-eternity and co-essentiality with his Father had not been the receiv'd and well known Doctrine of the Church for the whole design of his elaborate Epistle had been blasted had but his Brethren the Bishops or any part of them retorted upon him that Arius taught no new Doctrine but what had been held even from our Saviour's time and generally taught in all Christian Congregations but we find nothing of this kind offer'd at and Alexander himself going off the stage of the world at last with the reputation of a very wise and a very good Man Eusebius of Nicomedia then makes a considerable party for his Client Arius and supports and encourages him to resolution in his Opinions this made the Controversie grow hot and obliged Constantine the Great who desired by all means to preserve the Peace of the Church to call that famous General Council at the City of Nice in Bithynia to determine at once the Arian and the Paschal Controversie the Emperor himself in his Letter to Alexander and Arius by Hosius of Corduba seems to be very indifferent in the Controversie his indifference was enough to give life and vigour to the Eusebian or Arian party yet all would not do for notwithstanding the Emperors indifferency and Eusebius his industry and activity upon fairly debating the matter of 318. Fathers which made up that Assembly there were only Five who refused to subcribe the condemnation of Arius Eusebius of Caesarea the Church Historian seem'd to hesitate a little at first but after mature deliberation subscribed and gave an account of his Subscription and the reasons of it to his own Diocese of Caesarea wherein he gives them a Copy of that Creed himself had drawn up wherein he declared He believed in God the Father Almighty Creator of all things visible and invisible and in one Lord Jesus Christ the Word of God God of God light of light life of life the only begotten Son the first-born of every Creature begotten of God the Father before all ages by whom all things were made who for our Salvation was made flesh and convers'd among Men Thus Eusebius Socratis l. 1. c. 8. this he declares to have been always his Faith and therefore he could safely subscribe to that Form propos'd in the Council it self and so he did and he declares that He willingly subscribed those Anathema's propounded against Arius because they particularly forbad the use of such words with which Scripture was unacquainted of which several which he there instances in were in the Arian Formulary or Confession The Nicene Council it self in their Synodical Epistle declares the opinions and expressions of Arius so uncouth and blasphemous c. 9. that the Council could scarce have patience to hear them that He had yet unhappily seduced two Bishops with his impious Heresie whom they therefore had excommunicated with Arius himself The Emperor Constantine in his Epistle to the Church of Alexandria on the conclusion of the Council tells them Ibidem that Arius and his Companions had blasphemously contradicted Scriptures and our Holy Faith that when three hundred and eighteen Bishops had setled the Faith according to God's Word only Arius seduced by the Devil refused to submit to it he advises them to embrace that Faith which God himself had delivered that all should return to their dear Brethren from whom that instrument of the Devil had separated them And thus the whole Controversie came at last to rest in the determinations of entire Councils These particular persons Alexander Eusebius and Constantine had called the Arrian opinion Apostasy a seduction from the true Faith a subserviency to the Devil disagreeable to God's Word c. the Councils gave their positive Determinations and Confessions of Faith suitably oppos'd to those encroachments men in those days made upon the true Catholick Faith Thus the second Council at Antioch before mentioned gives us this Confession of Faith with respect to our Saviour We confess our Lord Jesus Christ begotten of his Father according to the Spirit before the Worlds born in the last days of the Virgin according to the flesh one Person of the Heavenly Divinity and of humane flesh united whole God even with his body but not God according to his body whole Man even with his Divinity but not according to his Divinity wholly adorable even with his body but not adorable according to his body entirely adoring God himself even with his Divinity but not adoring him according to his Divinity wholly uncreated even with his body but not uncreated according to the body wholly created even with his Divinity but not created according to his Divinity wholly consubstantial with God even with his body but not consubstantial with God in his body and wholly consubstantial with Man even with his Divinity but
Dead before that great day must be called the Sons of God in the same sence as our Saviour is and consequently our Savour cannot on account of such Resurrection be so the Son of God as to be his only begotten Son exclusively of all others tho' that title be so exclusive in it's own nature As for the three Reasons of his being called the Son of God derived from his Offices it 's true in the first place that God has sanctifyed our Saviour and sent him into the World but so he sanctified Jeremy and so he sanctified John the Baptist and the last in particular he sent into the World with an extraordinary Commission i. e. to Preach the glad tidings of Salvation and to prepare the way of the Lord against his publick appearance which Employs were both wholly extraordinary but as for that descent of the Holy Ghost upon him whereby say they he was anointed to his Office without measure there was no particularity eminently distinguishing Him in that from his own Apostles upon whom the Spirit descended in a visible manner at the feast of Pentecost and fitted them so for the same Office of Preaching and every way promoting the Salvation of Mankind Indeed we no where find the Apostles called the Sons of God on account of their being baptised with the Holy Ghost and with fire but we see our Saviour is declared the Son of God in whom he is well pleased on that occasion but he was own'd by the same title at his Transfiguration too when there was no effusion of the Holy Ghost therefore there was some peculiarly eminent reason for giving our Lord this Title which could not be applied on any account to any other Person If we reflect on the second ground of Christ's being called the Son of God which is because He is our Great High-Priest and so constituted by God himself our Author's proof of it is very strange viz. from that passage of the Psalmist Thou art my Son Heb. 5.5 this day have I begotten thee quoted by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews for tho' those Words are there repeated as well as in the first Chapter of that Epistle yet it 's not in a different Sence or to a new purpose but the Apostle there speaking of our Saviour's Priesthood and the greatness and excellency of that Office undertaken by him tells us no Man takes this Honour to himself but He that is called of God as was Aaron Now the Apostle shews that our Saviour had such a Call as well as Aaron for his Father who said to him Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee shewed his Propriety in his Son and his Love to him by those words so that it could not be strange that his Father should lay so great an Honour upon him But then his title to the Priesthood it self is founded on that Thou art a Priest for ever ver 6. after the order of Melchisedec so then the Son-ship of Christ is antecedent to his Priestly Office and He was made a Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedec because He was the Son of God and not called the Son of God because He was our High-Priest As for the last reason why our Saviour is called the Son of God viz. Because he is exalted to the Supreme Power over all things and so is our King Hab. 1.5 which he proves again from the same words as quoted in the same Epistle to the Hebrews There yet again the same truth occurs that Christ was the Son of God before He entred upon his Kingly Office for by Him God made the worlds and our Saviour never had a being but that at the same time he was the Son of God but if God by Him made the Worlds ver 2. as the Apostle says and he could not be our King before the Worlds were made We who are a part of these Worlds being those Creatures over whom he was to be King then he was the Son of God before he was our King and therefore could not be his Son on that account Besides if we should allow all these things the whole grant would be useless for Christ is called as before we observed the only begotten Son of God in an eminent and distinguishing manner above all others but if upon account of his Offices Prophetical Priestly or Regal Christ be called the Son of God then all those who exercise the same Functions in the world may upon the same reason lay claim to the same title for of some of them we know the Psalmist says They are Gods and they are all the children of the most high but if they can all justly lay claim to the same Title then there 's nothing peculiar to our Saviour included in that being the Son the only begotten Son of God which yet the very Title it self imports All these Reasons then not being sufficient to give our Saviour the Title of the only begotten Son of God in a manner so super-eminent to all other Creatures and their Originals particularly to Angels who are of a Spiritual Nature and are called the Sons of God There must remain some other ground for our Saviour's being so called and that is his eternal generation of the Father which puts him into such a Relation to his Father as no other creature can possibly pretend to We have prov'd that the whole of his Five Precedent Reasons do not fill up the Idea or make good the full meaning of those terms wherein Christ is called the only Begotten Son of God his Beloved Son or his own Son for if I am Born of my Mother but not Begotten in his own Image by my reputed Father tho' my reputed Father were able after Death to raise me to Life again tho' he were able to confer upon me all the Authority in the Universe yet all this will be so far from giving Me justly the Title of my Father's only-begotten Son tho' perhaps he never had any other that by all these Reasons together I should be a putative Son but really no more related to my supposed Father than our Saviour was to Joseph the Husband of the blessed Virgin when before her Espousals he was begotten in her by the Power of the Holy Ghost Nay should we admit of the very unphilosophical Hypothesis of Ruarus Quid in eo absurdi si spiritum Dei venas in virginis uterum descendentes emulsisse atque ex sanguine coagulato Embryonem formasse dicam non aliter atque id fit spiritu in masculo semine latente Ruarus ad Mersennum Epistola Centur. 1. Num. 56. p. 262. the most modest of the Socinian tribe all would be too little to make good this glorious Idea of the only begotten Son of God But his eternal Generation answers all and makes our Saviour as properly the Only Begotten Son of his Heavenly Father as I or any other Lawful Son is the only begotten of his
hedge which God by his Providence had set about him he could not but be sensible of that restraint laid upon him by a superiour hand at last after all the expressions of Diabolical malice against him Job comes out from the furnace of his Affliction more Pure more Illustrious and Happy and every way infinitely more considerable than he was before Affliction taught him more particularly to depend upon the life of his Redeemer he saw his mighty Saviour at a distance but with so clear and strong a Faith as preserved him in all his bitter sufferings from sinking in Despair while he saw the expiring rage of his cruel Adversary ready to be swallowed up in Victory and himself among others like to be partaker of his Redeemer's eternal Triumphs he rose from the Dunghil he sate on in his misery more experienced in the uncertain and unsatisfactory nature of all sublunary things in the weakness of his own Temper and the malice of his Enemy so that he was admirably fitted on all hands to be a Teacher to the rest of the World both by his pious Lectures and his more instructive example What was the Case of Job so long before was the Case of those more numerous Wretches whom Satan was permitted to possess about the time of our Saviour's Incarnation tho' they were miserable enough in being the unhappy receptacles of Infernal Spirits yet there was a providential guard about them still which check'd the malicious designs of Hell and made those poor creatures tho' so terrible to others yet not to sink by themselves into Despair those strange effects of an unusual vigor apparent in the Persons Possest shewed the World plainly how strong the cursed Inmate was how little Natural strength was able to oppose him and how Dreadful the Prince of Darkness must have been to all had not strong and weighty chains been laid upon him Yet we cannot imagine those Persons thus possest were depriv'd so wholly of their Understandings that they had no lucid intervals at all the Man and the Rational heaven-born Soul acted sometimes and the poor Wretches were sensible of their own deplorable condition this made them long for a Deliverer and when they saw him not to punish themselves with ordinary Jewish Prejudices against him but in spite of Hell it self and all the reluctance of in-dwelling Devils to fly to his feet and to seek a remedy for their calamities at his hands they liv'd in Hope amidst all their former Torments and now they shewed it their eyes were not so thick but that they could see the Son of God through a veil of flesh and of an humble and inferior State nay those very Devils within them were instrumental against their design to confirm their Faith and Hope by that unwillingness they 'd certainly express to quit any Seat where they had engrossed a Power and to appear before an all-knowing and inexorable Judge and by those Confessions which they made who in that point as to our Saviour's being the Son of God when they confest it were more to be credited than all the Jewish Doctors and prejudiced Hypocrites put together We may yet be sure it was none of the Devil's motion that made the miserable Demoniac when he saw Jesus afar off run and fall down and worship him Mark 5.6 they were Devils who drove the unhappy Wretch to take up his habitation among the tombs they were Devils that drove him about the mountains day and night where he was continually crying and cutting himself with stones whatsoever could be mischievous to him that they urged him to but it was Reason divinely influenced and a deep sence of that slavery he then lay under that brought him to his Masters feet where only help and salvation could be found Certain misery generally opens the Eye of Reason and brings it to an exact weighing of all things and an impartial examination of their natures If it befall an Impenitent guilty Soul it gives him an irrefragable conviction of the eternity of those woes he 's engaged in this makes him desperate If it be the lot of One who tho' very guilty yet endeavours to expiate his crimes by a sincere Repentance it makes him find unanswerable reasons why he should still hope in the Mercy of God and that with some considerable assurance of being a partaker in it Those very Demoniacks in the Gospel were awakened to a sence of themselves by that heavy judgment they were laid under their lucid Intervals taught them to humble themselves under God's afflicting hand it made them long to see the strong Man armed cast out by one that was stronger than he and their Liberty asserted by one mighty to save and therefore they saw what stubborn fools would take no notice of and flew to that Saviour with an eager haste whom the rest of their more unhappily possest Country men contemn'd and persecuted Now this being one reason of God's permission that the Prince of Darkness should Tyrannize upon humane bodies it 's no wonder He should be more Active than ordinary when his Power was drawing towards an end and it 's as little to be wondred at that he should lose his aim and that his violence should make all long the more earnestly that He who was their much expected Saviour should come quickly Nor is it any wonder that tho' God permitted the Devil to afflict their bodies yet he himself should support their spirits from sinking under that calamity since his own Son's appearance was now at hand and Hells utmost fury would easily submit to his Almighty power God permitted this insolence of the Devil more particularly about the time of our Lord's Incarnation that as the malice and power of the Devil was by that means the more apparent so the glory of his Son and the evidence of his yet greater power might be the more illustrious So that tho' Men were under a present affliction and that far from being unmerited since they had sin'd to deserve more than temporal punishment should God have been extreme to mark what was done amiss as appears by Mary Magdalen's case to whom our Saviour observes much was forgiven yet they were much advantaged by that temporary affliction and that freedom they obtain'd taught them the more industriously to celebrate God's glory and to admire that goodness shew'd by him to the children of Men. For when they saw what they had suffer'd and how extreme a danger they had incur'd before by yielding to Sin Men with their Cure recovering their Reason would be afraid to sin any more lest a worse thing might come to them Hence we find the Man possest with a Legion of Devils when they were cast out desiring to be with his Deliverer which tho' it were refused him yet Christ bad him go home to his Friends Mark 5.18 19.20 and to tell them how great things the Lord had done for him and had had compassion upon him which accordingly he did
thine Altar Psal 26.6 therefore we find that during the whole force of the Ceremonial Law the outward Purifications might on an extraordinary Occasion as that of Hezekiah's Passover be dispensed with but the inward Purification of the Heart was a duty absolutely indispensible whence it was that when several of Ephraim and Manasseh and Issachar and Zabulun had not cleansed themselves Hezekiah put up that petition for them to God 2 Chron. 30.18 19 20. The good Lord pardon every one that prepareth his heart to seek God the Lord God of his fathers though he be not cleansed according to the purification of the Sanctuary and the Lord hearkened to Hezekiah and healed the people which additional Passage intimates that God inflicted some punishment on the People for participating of the Passover when legally unprepared so to teach them a Lesson of punctual Obedience but he healed them upon account of their inward and spiritual Preparation to satisfie them that he esteemed inward Holiness beyond all the ceremonial Purifications of the Sanctuary In the Law there were a great many Washings appointed and upon several occasions the Scribes and Pharisees by virtue of some Traditions of their own added more Mark 7.3 4. they would not eat except they washed their hands and when they came from their markets they wash'd and there were many other things which they had received to hold as the washing of Cups and Pots and of brazen Vessels and of Tables Now all these things might contribute to outward Purity and argued a great care of Cleanliness nor were the Jews to have been condemned for these practices if they had not laid too great a weight upon them and for the sake of such Purifications banish'd all thoughts of true inward Purity out of their minds and this our Saviour reproves them for not condemning their outward Neatness but their making void the Law of God by their Traditions and he carries the reproof yet further Matth. 23.25 Wo unto you Scribes Pharisees Hypocrites for you make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter but within they are full of extortion and excess c. But the Purity of the Soul was what God principally regarded and those outward Washings originally ordain'd in the Law were so many Types design'd to put Men in mind of that clean Hand and that pure Heart which every one was to endeavour after If we look into Circumcision it self that great initiating Ceremony in the Jewish Church it was really a preventive of natural Vncleanness yet though it were made by God the Seal of that Covenant between himself and the Seed of Abraham the Jews had a right notion of what that Ceremony was to put them in mind of given them by Moses himself Deut. 10.16 so he bids them to circumcise the fore-skin of their hearts and to be no more stiff-necked Stubbornness and Disobedience were the Vncleanness of the Heart therefore what care the Jews took to prevent that of Nature it was reasonable they should take to remove that accruing from Sin Moses therefore promises it as a great Blessing from Heaven on them in case of their sincere Repentance when under God's afflicting hand Deut. 30.6 the Lord thy God will circumcise thy heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul that thou mayst live where the stubborn Heart is once mollified the Love of God is easily settled in it Now that this Circumcision could effect nothing ex opere operato or that it could contribute nothing to the Obedience of the Soul we see demonstrated by the case of the Jews at present who are careful enough in performing the outward Rite of Circumcision and yet obdurate and unmalleable by all the Tendries of the Gospel therefore the Apostle has furnisht us with an easie Distinction between a Jew by Nature or one descended lineally from Abraham and a Jew by Grace or one ally'd to Abraham spiritually as he was the Father of the Faithful for says He He is not a Jew that is one outwardly Rom. 2.28 29. neither is that Circumcision which is outward in the flesh but he is a Jew which is one inwardly and Circumcision is that of the Heart in the spirit whose praise is not of men but of God We see then that these Ceremonies to instance in no more have only a Typical Nature and can have no more because though they may serve to represent to our Memories the solid Duties of sincere Religion yet it 's impossible they should operate on the inward Man or in themselves make any one that is punctual in them acceptable in the sight of God Nor was there any need they should be more than Memorials or Representations of more important Good for those Ceremonial Vsages were from their first beginning whether among Adam's universal Race or the People of Israel intended only as comfortable supports to mens Spirits otherwise ready to droop under the various pressing calamities of a mortal Life God had given Adam the promise of the blessed Seed whose heel was to be bruised by the Serpent which bruise signified Death unless we can imagine Adam so weak as to draw any comfort from a literal Interpretation of the words but that sense could really afford none more than a promise that I should break the Head of some Snake and that should bite or wound my Heel could be a matter of consolation to all Mankind but Adam's case was this He saw how his Folly and Disobedience had made way to Sin and Death to tyrannize over all his own Posterity that the Sin committed was irrevocable the wages of Sin consequently inevitable these thoughts were enough to deject the most daring Spirits and Adam without the interposition of immense Goodness must have sunk irrecoverably beneath the dreadful weight of his own Misery What could prevent his despair could only be this an Assurance that the Powers of Sin and Death should not totally prevail but there should by some sufficient means be a stop effectually put to their Tyranny This Assurance God design'd to give him in that memorable Promise which though spoken to the Serpent was only a terrible Threatning to him but a precious Promise to Adam I will put enmity between thee and the Woman Gen. 3.15 and between thy seed and her seed it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel The bare settling an Enmity between Him who had tempted Adam by the Serpent and the Seed of the Woman could have signified little to Adam's satisfaction he had suffered too deeply in the first engagement with Him and therefore could not wish his Posterity engaged in a perpetual Warfare with so subtle an Adversary therefore the following words the seed of the Woman shall bruise the Serpent's head contain'd the Comfort long'd for To bruise the Head is to wound a vital part to crush it is to put an
Obedience uninterrupted and universal at least it must be said He 's very unkind for He who can forgive and as Socinus asserts does forgive all our Sins without any Satisfaction tender'd to his Justice might as well forgive us without putting us to the trouble of informing our Minds or regulating and restraining our Actions for we cannot easily give any reason why he should exact such Duties of us as Conditions of our Salvation when if it pleas'd him he could give us Salvation without any Conditions at all If it be objected that He has declared otherwise in his reveal'd Will and it's Justice in him to be true to his own Declarations that Plea again reduces all to perfect Arbitrariness and he will be irrespectively Merciful merely because he will be Merciful and he will be irrespectively Vindictive merely because he will be so which things seem somewhat to contradict our common notion of Justice That it does suum cuique tribuere give to every one what 's due and proper to him We believe more safely that God lays those Duties which yet we are unable to perform in that perfect manner we ought upon us that they might be as continual Remembrancers to us of that Satisfaction which he really requires at our hands for could we perform all God's revealed Will without any failure either in Time or Circumstance God's Justice would be otherwise satisfied and employ'd wholly in distributing Rewards among us but since when we take the utmost pains our Duties are either at one time or other essentially or circumstantially sinful therefore we our selves ought to conclude some such Satisfaction necessary as may make up for our unavoidable defects and since we are assured by God's Word that One has undertaken that Work who was every way capable of performing it we are obliged in gratitude to so great a Benefactor to endeavour after all that Holiness and Perfection how little soever it is that we are capable of and we are oblig'd to do it for our own sakes because it 's no way reasonable those should be Partakers of any benefit from Christ's Satisfaction who do not perform those Conditions upon which only that Satisfaction can be any ways beneficial to us To this we may add yet further That if God can forgive Sinners without Satisfaction made for their Sins without any derogation from his Justice how merciful soever God may seem to Mankind yet he seems wholly to have forgotten all that Mercy with respect to the fallen Angels for if no Satisfaction was needful for Sin why could not their Maker forgive their Transgressions too without it as well as Men's there might have been a thousand Means doubtless found out to confirm a Covenant of Grace with them as well as that of the Death of Christ to confirm the same Covenant with Men but it seems God would not so forgive them though he could they could offer no Satisfaction for themselves therefore they are eternally and immediately damn'd these Conclusions are necessary and inevitable from Socinian Principles but in themselves are detestable and damnable But what the Socinians fail to effect by God's Word they make no doubt of making good by dint of Reason in which they look upon themselves as wholly invincible Here then they assert That if Christ have made Satisfaction for us and that suitable to our Necessities then Christ must have suffer'd the pains of Eternal Death because Mankind by Sins were liable to such Eternal Death but here we may observe that they fasten upon that single Instance of Christ's Sufferings viz. his Death in the matter of Satisfaction for Sinners onely whereas our Lord was a continual Sufferer on that account from his first Condescension to take our Nature upon him to his Crucifixion and I make no question but what he underwent when he bore humane Infirmities when he was in that bitter Agony in the Garden when he cry'd out upon the Cross My God My God why hast thou forsaken me I make no question but his Sufferings in those Instances were much greater than what he underwent in Death it self and so the very Story of his Passion represents things in relation to those latter Scenes of his Life on Earth for what prodigious Cause must we imagine there was that he declar'd to Peter and the Sons of Zebedee Matth. 26.38 My Soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto Death 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 my Soul is compass'd round about or even overwhelmed with Sorrow for so the Original imports In his Agony in the Garden what through a clear Apprehension of that dreadful Task he was then to set about more immediately what with the Fervour and Earnestness of his Prayers to his Father either that if it were possible that Cup that bitter Cup he was then to drink might pass from him or that what he was then suffering might be truly effectual to that great End for which he suffer'd Luke 22.44 his Sweat was as if it had been great drops of blood falling down to the ground the Terror of his instant Sufferings to that Flesh and Blood he had assumed as well as the Strength of his Enemies and the greatness of the Conflict he was then engaged in might be the occasion of that stupendous Sweat for experience tells us that Fear opens the Pores of the Body and emits as grumous Sweats as the most earnest Intention whatsoever of the Body or the Mind and the Angel appearing to Christ in the Garden and strengthening him seems more necessary with respect to those Terrors ready to seize on Flesh and Blood engaged in mighty Sorrows and oppressing Woes than meerly to re-inforce that Earnestness in Prayer which the greater the Danger is so long as the Soul is consistent with it self will naturally be the more earnest and importunate for Assistance or Deliverance His Sufferings yet seem to work more violently upon him when he comes to that bitter Cry My God My God why hast thou forsaken me why dost thou seem to hide thy Face from me and to leave me wholly to the barbarous Cruelties of wicked and malicious Men the Complaint was more natural and carried with it a greater Emphasis when proceeding from that Son of God that onely that beloved Son in whom he was well pleased so far his holy Soul seems to be upon the rack but when he receives his last bitter Draught and owns the mighty work as well as the Types and Predictions relating to him were finished the Storms that ruffled him before seem to sink into a Calm and he breath'd out his Sacred Life with those charming eruptions of unbounded Love Father forgive them Luke 23.34 for they know not what they do and those full expressions of absolute Satisfaction in what he had undergone Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit v. 46. Our Lord's Sufferings ended there and there with his dying Breath he rais'd to himself the first Trophies of his glorious Victories for though
shall not depart from Judah Page 241 Exod. 4.16 Moses a God to Pharaoh and Aaron his Prophet Page 343 7.1 Moses a God to Pharaoh and Aaron his Prophet Page 343 14.21 They believed in the Lord and in his Servant Moses Page 329 25.22 The Propitiatory or Mercy-seat Page 721 34.7 Forgiving Iniquity Transgression and Sin Page 699 Levit. 16.12 13. Censer of Burning Coals in the Holiest Place Page 726 v. 16. To make an Atonement for the most Holy Place Page 725 2 Kings 3.26 27. King of Moab offering his Son Page 105 2 Chron. 30.18 19 20. Hezekiah's Prayer for the Vnprepared Page 603 Psalm 40.6 7 8. Sacrifice and Burnt-Offerings not desired Page 225 45.2 Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever Page 314 82.6 7. I have said Ye are Gods Page 342 Isaiah 9.6 Vnto us a Child is born a Son is given Page 320 Jeremiah 23.5 6. I will raise unto David a Righteous Branch Page 321 Micah 5.2 Thou Bethlehem Ephrata c. Page 323 Haggai 2.8 The Glory of the Second House greater c. Page 753 Matth. 1.23 Thou shalt call his Name Emanuel Page 325 18.23 The Parable of the Debtors to their Lord. Page 651 28.18 All Power is given to me in Heaven and Earth Page 407 v. 19. In the Name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost Page 328 Luke 4.29 30. They led him to the Brow of the Hill Page 382 24.45 He open'd their Vnderstandings Page 395 John 1.1 In the beginning was the Word Page 332 3.13 No man hath ascended up into Heaven c. Page 337 5.23 The Father hath committed all Judgment c. Page 202 10.30 I and my Father are One. Page 354 10.34 35 36. Is it not written in your Law Page 558 17 21. That they all may be One as Thou c. Page 358 20.28 My Lord and my God Page 360 Acts 7.59 Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Page 524 Rom. 2.6 God will render to every Man c. Page 124 3.24 25 26. Justified freely by his Grace c. Page 649 703 8.19 20 21 22. The earnest Expectation of the Creature Page 490 9.5 Of whom as concerning the Flesh Christ came Page 370 10.13 Whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord c. Page 203 1 Cor. 1.14 15. Lest any should say I had baptized in my own c. Page 402 10.2 All were baptized into Moses c. Page 329 15.3 Christ died for our Sins Page 693 2 Cor. 5.19 20. Reconciling the World c. Page 648 719 12.7 8 9. For this cause I besought the Lord thrice Page 527 Gal. 3.19 In the hand of a Mediator Page 711 Philip. 2.5 11. Being in the Form of God c. Page 374 Col. 1.24 What was behind of the Afflictions of Christ Page 694 1 Thess 5.17 Pray without ceasing Page 505 Heb. 1.8 9 10. c. When he bringeth his First-Begotten c. Page 314 5.5 Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee Page 549 6.1 2. Leaving the Principles c. Page 184 8.4 If on Earth he should not be a Priest c. Page 733 c. 9. c. 10. Page 689 727 728. 11.1 Faith is the substance of things hoped for c. Page 87 1 Pet. 2.24 Bore our Sins in his own Body on the Cross Page 698. 3.18 He suffered for our Sins the just for the unjust Page 697 1 John 2.1 2. He is the Propitiation for our Sins Page 719 5.7 There are Three that bear Record in Heaven Page 458 v. 20. This is the True God and Eternal Life Page 205 ERRATA PAge 3. l. 5. after Salvation dele p. 5. l. 20. put a Period after Text. l. 30. after Attentatam d. ◠p. 6. l. 3. r. Wissowatius p. 130. in the Margent r. Serrarii p. 142. l. 19. r. seem'd p. 148. l. 31. r. Posterity p. 200. l. 14 r. One p. 209. l. 26. r. really and indeed p. 221. l. 7. r. Paradisiacum p. 239. r. this p. 139. l. 21. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 149. l. 21. d. And. p. 289. l. 29. r. those p. 312. l. 3. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In the Margent r. Sandii Hist Eccles Enucl p. 318. l. 6. r. for p. 332. l. 16. r. those p. 336. l. 25. r. Stranger p. 364. l. 29. r. at p. 413. l. 21. r. far p. 448. l. 20. r. Libraries p. 467. l. 22. r. Separation p. 492. l. 26. d. One p. 511. l. 10. r. deliver p. 539. l. 3. r. Lazarus p. 552. l. 31. in Marg. r. Epistolarum p. 602. l. 12. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 609. l. 13. r. Sacrifices p. 666. l. 1. he be p. 690. l. 29. r. Levitical p. 700. in Marg. r. Brixian l. 3. r. curing p. 704. l. 31. r. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 p. 720. l. 11. r. Catiline p. 752. l. 10. r. Administrator Several smaller Mistakes especially in the Pointing the Reader will easily observe and pass by or correct as fitting Books Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's-Head in St. Paul's Church-Yard TEN Sermons with Two Discourses of Conscience By the Lord Archbishop of York 4 to 's Sermon before the House of Lords Nov. 5. 1691. 's Sermon before the King and Queen on Christmass-Day 1691. 's Sermon before the Queen on Easter-Day 1692. Henrici Mori D. D. Opera omnia Bishop Overal's Convocation-Book 1606. concerning the Government of God's Catholick Church and the Kingdoms of the whole World 4 to Dr Falkner's Libertas Ecclesiastica 8 vo 's Vindication of Liturgies Ibid. 's Christian Loyalty Ibid. Mr. Lamb's Fresh Suit against Independency Ibid. Mr. W. Allen's Tracts Ibid. Bishop Fowler 's Libertas Evangelica Ib. Jovian or an Answer to Julian the Apostate Ibid. Animadversions on Mr. Johnson's Answer to Jovian In Three Letters to a Country Friend Ibid. Turner de Angelorum Hominum Lapsu 4 to Mr. Raymond's Pattern of Pure and Undefiled Religion 8 vo 's Exposition on the Church-Catechism Ibid. Mr. Lamb's Dialogues between a Minister and his Parishioner about the Lord's Supper Ibid. 's Sermon before the King at Windsor 's Sermon before the Lord Mayor 's Liberty of Humane Nature stated discussed and limited 's Sermon before the King and Queen Jan. 19. 1689. 's Sermon before the Queen Jan. 24. 1690. Dr Hickman's Thanksgiving-Sermon before the Honourable House of Commons Oct. 19. 1690. 's Sermon before the Queen at Whitehall Oct. 26. 1690. Dr Burnet's Theory of the Earth 2 Vol. Folio 's Answer to Mr. Warren's Exceptions against the Theory of the Earth 's Consideration of Mr. Warren's Defence 's Telluris Theoria Sacra 2 Vol. 4 to Bishop of Bath and Wells Reflections on a French Testament Printed at Bourdeaux 's Christian Sufferer supported 8 vo Dr Grove now Lord Bishop of Chichester his Sermon before the King and Queen June 1. 1690. Dr Hooper's Sermon before the Queen Jan. 24. 1690 1. Dr Pelling's Sermon before the King and Queen Dec. 8. 1689. 's Vindication of those that have taken the Oaths 4 to Dr Worthington of Resignation 8 vo 's Christian Love Ibid. Religion the Perfection of Man By Mr. Jeffery Ibid. Faith and Practice of a Church of England Man 12º The Fourth Edition Kelsey Concio de Aeterno Christi Sacerdot 's Sermon of Christ Crucified Aug. 23. 1691. Mr. Milbourn's Sermon Jan. 30. 1682. 's Sermon Sept. 9. 1683. An Answer to an Heretical Book called the Naked Gospel which was condemned and order'd to be publickly Burnt by the Convocation of the University of Oxford Aug. 19. 1690. With some Reflections on Dr Bury's new Edition of that Book to which is added a Short History of Socinianism by W. Nichols M. A. c. Two Letters of Advice I. For the Susception of Holy Orders II. For Studies Theological especially such as are Rational At the end of the former is inserted a Catalogue of the Christian Writers and Genuine Works that are Extant of the First Three Centuries By Henry Dodwell M. A. c.
on the Apostles and their companions enabled them to prove that Christ was the Son of God and to confirm their rational arguments and deductions from the Old Testament by a thousand signs and miracles such as made the most stubborn of mankind bow their necks to the yoke of Christ and own that He was truly what he call'd himself the Son of God and the Saviour of the World If we proceed according to the Apostles method Jesus Christ God Incarnate was seen of Angels seen with the greatest admiration since even Angelic intellectuals could never have reach'd so far as to imagine God's love to mankind which yet they knew to be extraordinary should shew it self in so prodigious a condescension Yet when he was pleas'd to stoop so low the Angels saw and knew and prais'd him tho' wrapt in swadling clothes and lying in a manger they ador'd him and administred to him tho' tempted forty days and forty nights by the Devil in the wilderness they attended him with their ministerial comforts when in that bitter agony in the garden when praying more earnestly his sweat was as it had been great drops of blood falling down to the ground Luke 22.43 44. They attended his sepulchre when he shook off the fetters of Death Matt. 28.2 3 4. Acts 1.10 and broke through the confinement of the grave striking terror on the trembling Watch but bringing comfort to the women whose early zeal brought them first to the sacred Sepulchre and they waited as diligently on his ascent into Heaven so that they saw him and admired that immense love which appeared so glorious in his humble and so powerful in his exalted state This Saviour of the world that he might really be so was preach'd unto the Gentiles the Word of God was now confin'd no longer to the Jewish nation that vail of the Temple rent in twain when he gave up the ghost upon the Cross took away that wall of separation which was between those Jews and the rest of mankind and through him both Jews and Gentiles have access by one Spirit unto Eph. 2.28 the father Now of himself in this case He taught his disciples after his resurrection That thus it behoved Christ to suffer Luke 24.46 47. and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem Thus Philip preached Christ in Samaria Paul preached him every where in the Synagogues Paul declares to the Corinthians We preach Christ crucified 1 Cor. 1.23 24. to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness but unto them which are call'd both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God And many Texts we meet with declaring the same thing and teaching us that it 's the great incumbent duty on all those who call themselves Pastors of the flock of Christ to preach him and him only to the world For he who was so preach'd to the Gentiles was indeed believed on in the world The three Eastern Sages who adored our Saviour in his infant age were the first fruits of the Gentile world and even Samaritans were profelyted to his Doctrine while he converst with the world to believe in him was that condition without which Salvation could not be attained So he teaches Nicodemus John 3.16 God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life v. 18. He that believeth on him is not condemned but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God It was a just sense of the indispensible nature of this condition that made men submit so readily to the first preaching of the Apostles and fly out so eagerly and so early into that Question What shall we do to be saved 'T was that which in Judaea brought multitudes daily into the Church of such as should be saved and enabled S. Paul to preach the Gospel fully from Jerusalem and round about unto Illyricum and that with extraordinary success and gave Tertullian in the Second Century a just ground to boast of the vast multitudes of Christians in every quarter of the Roman Empire And to this day the same blessed Jesus is the only rational hope of all that dwell on the earth and of those that remain on the broad Sea To conclude this explication of the Text this same Jesus after he had done and suffered so much for our sakes while he converst with and blest his Disciples Luke 24.51 he was parted from them and carried up into heaven He had at last that Petition answered which in the days of his flesh he put up to his Father Now O Father glorifie thou me with thine own self John 17.5 with the glory which I had with thee before the world was And if it was glorious for Elijah to be carried up to Heaven in his fiery chariot while Elisha was a spectator of his translation how much more glorious was it when our Saviour in the open view of all his followers had the clouds themselves humbly bowing to his feet to raise him thither where he sits continually at the right hand of his Father making intercession for us miserable sinners Having thus given the true interpretation of the Text take its full meaning together in this Paraphrase S. Paul still speaking to and instructing Timothy as in this Verse he does It 's not without great Reason that I have given thee who art thy self a Bishop in it such directions about those whom thou art to admit as Ministers in the Church of God That Religion our blessed Master has bequeathed to us has nothing in it but what is Holy and Pure too pure to be touch'd with unclean hands and not fit for every unlearned and presuming Novice to meddle with The whole Body of our Faith is founded upon such things as are infinitely true but of so sublime and surprising a Nature that the strongest Humane Reason can never wholly comprehend them all let me but name them as reveal'd and all mankind will soon agree that the most soaring and capacious Soul must falter in its enquiries after them The eternal Son of God God equal with his Father the great Creator of all things rather than perishing man should be eternally lost resolv'd to atone divine vengeance with his own sufferings and since without blood there could be no remission and the immense Divinity could not suffer so He took flesh and blood our weak and passible nature upon himself and in our nature offered himself a sacrifice to his Father for us This glorious Sacrifice produc'd the great effect and reconciled our angry Judge but that undertaking was too great for man tho' so deeply concern'd to believe the chasm between an holy God and polluted man too wide and hideous
the bringing the Son of God to Death who had so terribly over-aw'd and baffled him before were the utmost reach of Hell's impetuous Malice yet that very Death of his gave the infernal Tyrant that fatal Blow which he strove by that very Prosecution to put off that mighty Wound which Hell with all its Stratagems and Strugglings can never recover and this great Event the vanishing of that thick Darkness at that very Instant of his Expiration which before when Nature's Lord was in his Agonies cover'd the Face of the whole Earth the terrible Convulsions of the Earth the Dissolution of mighty Rocks the Rending of the Temples Vail and long buried Saints starting from their Graves as if at that very Instant of their Saviour's Death all the Chains of that King of Terrors had been broke at once with that great Event all these mighty Wonders seem'd to sympathize Now if with these greater and more inexpressible Sufferings we consider all the rest which our Saviour's Life was obnoxious to from his Cradle to his Tomb and withal reflect with due reverence upon the dignity of the Sufferer the distance may not seem so immoderately great as the Socinians would have us believe between the Satisfaction given and the Necessities of those it was given for But further we are to consider that the Eternity of that Death Adam's Sin had laid him open to did not proceed from the nature of the Sin it self for no Crime infinite in its own Nature can proceed from a finite Being but the Eternity of that Penalty annex'd to Sin in Man arises from the absolute Infinity of that God against whom he sinn'd and whose Anger when irreversible must be eternal from a respect to that infinite Goodness and Justice essential to him whereby he had conferred such mighty Benefits upon Man and laid so very reasonable Duties upon him which yet Man had ingratefully slighted and abused Now if the greatness of the Penalty arise from the greatness or immensity of the Being offended then the Greatness and Value of the Satisfaction tender'd in lieu of that Penalty arises from the same Consideration viz. the greatness of that God it 's offer'd to and accepted by and as we believe God to be infinitely Wise and therefore not to be impos'd upon so as with Glaucus in the Poet to exchange 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things of the greatest consideration for Trifles Gold for Brass so we reasonably conclude That God understands the true Value of that Satisfaction offer'd to Justice in the Sufferings of his Son we are assured that he has accepted of what his Son has done on our behalf therefore we are assured too that what he has so acted for us was and is equivalent to those Punishments we ought as Sinners to have undergone for the Satisfaction of eternal Justice Our Adversaries indeed would persuade us That if we insist so much on the Dignity of the Person suffering we must suppose that Christ suffer'd for our Sins as he was God or in his divine Nature which Supposition would be blasphemous and the Conclusion impossible but by their leave we neither mean nor pretend to any such thing We know and assert that Immortality cannot die and that the Deity cannot suffer yet we believe that He who was and is true God did both suffer and die but we know He that was God took upon him the Nature of Man and therefore though he could not nor did die as God yet that Humane Nature which he assum'd both could and did suffer and die and by that Suffering and Death among other Proofs evidenc'd the Reality of his being Man as well as he demonstrated his Divinity by his continual Words and Actions But now let us consider God condescending to take upon him our Nature that very Condescension alone is of infinite weight we look upon it as a very meritorious piece of Humility for a Soveraign Prince to take upon him the Habit of a Beggar only to procure good for some miserable undeserving Wretches the Athenians therefore long celebrated the glorious Memory of their last Monarch Codrus who put on the ignoble Arms of a private Centinel meerly that he might die by the hands of those Enemies who had been forewarn'd by an Oracle not to kill him by which private Habit assum'd he procur'd the safety of his Country but we never admire much the Humility or Condescension of that Beggar who wears Rags because he has no richer Habits to put on Now had the Son of God taken upon him a Royal Grandeur had he been wrapt in purple ador'd by all Mankind in his Cradle worn the Imperial Crown even in his Infancy or had he taken any other Methods we could fancy to our selves which might have render'd him considerable to the World yet this had been an infinitely greater Humiliation than for a Cyrus or an Alexander or a Trajan or a Constantine or a Tamerlane to have taken upon him the Person of the most contemptible Wretch in the World and for the noblest End It cannot well be questioned whether it was possible for God to take into his Own an Humane Nature or not Humanity it self being the product of his own Eternal Power was as all other parts of the Creation wholly at his command and though God's assuming a Body might be suppos'd enough of it self to render that Body immortal yet we may reasonably be assured that he could make it according to his own good Pleasure liable to Death as well as other Humane Bodies were but the Union between the Divine and Humane Nature being so close and absolute the Humane Nature howsoever submitted to Mortality must contract an infinite Honour and Dignity from thence but after all the Condescension is not a whit the less that he who is God should assume that mortal Nature nor is his Love less admirable who should assume it for our sake or who should stoop so low purely to make up that breach that was between his Father and Mankind but if to this Condescension we add a due consideration of those many Calamities or extreme Sufferings this Humane Nature was all along obnoxious to if we consider the Son of God as he was Man always in a state of Persecution and that carried on by various Degrees to the utmost Extremity and then recollect again that Honour it had contracted from that close and inseparable Union there was between the Divine and Humane Nature in Christ such Sufferings in such a Person must be acknowledg'd infinitely meritorious and consequently capable of atoning or satisfying for infinite Guilt though such Sufferings were not Eternal as those of sinful Men are or ought to have been for it 's not necessary that the Satisfaction given for Humane Sins should be of the same kind as if Divine Anger could have been averted by no Method but that of the Lex talionis or like for like but that the Redemption-Price paid for the guilty Prisoner should be of