that in our debates with the Socinians as the dispute is so are the Arguments of another nature than those in that sort of Controversies which we have been speaking of The matter is abstruse and mysterious We are not willing to speak more of God than he himself has taught us This you call obscurity and want of satisfaction and because the Socinians are perpetually reasoning of an Increated and Incomprehensible Substance as they do of Finite and Created Beings and are never weary of applying their notions of what they understand to what they understand not at all and has no sort of proportion to it Then you say that their writings are clear I appeal to your self whether you are not highly unjust to us Nay whether any one Controversy in the World was ever manag'd with so little Candor as this is by you Socin But pray how have you manag'd it Forgive me if I tell you that the Church never shew'd so much Weakness in any thing as in this very particular You are angry with us for Reasoning too much and you have Reason'd your selves out of doors You pretended to assert a Trinity and cannot tell us what that Trinity is You are Trinitarians indeed but at the same time the sad Assertors of a Trinity which is too much or too little Degenerates into Tritheism or Sabellianism and if receiv'd according to some explications is Real and Blasphemous and if according to others is Nominal and signify's nothing Orthod Truly I wonder this was not yet come out For you cannot now speak to a Socinian but he brings in this right or wrong The Author of the considerations of the several explications of the Trinity made the best of it and perswaded himself that he had given us the mortal wound The Writer of the discourse concerning the Real and Nominal Trinitarians promises himself no less than the ruine of the Church if the fatal distinction is carry'd on and improv'd as it ought to be He that dawbs with untemper'd mortar and calls himself a Prebyter of the Church of England is of the same mind The whole Church say they Condemns the Real Trinitarians and the Nominals being rank Sabellians must of course be condemn'd too Blessed discovery which when truly examin'd is the greatest piece of unsincerity imaginable Socin I must beg leave to interrupt you and blame you for denying that which is clearer than the Sun Where lies then the unsincerity Is it in affirming that you will not tell us what your Trinity is Or is it in distributing you into Real and Nominal Trinitarians Orthod 'T is in every part of the Allegation Can any thing be more unsincere than for you to tell us that we oblige you to believe a Trinity and are not willing to tell you what that Trinity is Pray were you ever Baptiz'd Have you ever paid your Duty to God in the solemn use of our excellent Liturgy Did you ever join in the Doxology by which the Church in the Primitive Ages down to ours put in the mouth of her Children a confutation of the Samosatenian Sabellian Arrian Nestorian and Macedonian Heresies Did you ever make a profession of that Faith which you embrac'd in your Baptism by reciting the Apostolical and Catholick Creeds Did you ever read the Articles of the Church of England or of any other Church in the World For I positively averr that they do all and every one of them speak and assert the same thing Socin True They tell us of a Trinity but do not tell us what that Trinity is Orthod Do they not tell you that God is one That in that one adorable and Divine Nature are Father Son and Holy Spirit That the Father is God the Son God and the Holy Ghost God and yet not three Gods but one God This is to tell you that there is a Blessed Trinity and what that Trinity is Socin True again But they do not tell us how God can be One and Three How that Trinity and Unity are reconcil'd How every Person is God and yet but one God and if they do not say this in effect they say nothing Orthod This is the arrantest Sophism that ever was or can be us'd in a dispute The Church asserts the thing because God has asserted it He has not been pleas'd to reveal the manner and therefore the Church says nothing to it All is built upon the Divine Revelation Must we not believe that a thing is when God has affirm'd that it is because he has not thought fit to make clear to us how it is Should I tell you that the Sun is a luminous Body which by dispersing its Beams over all the Creation gives Light and Colour to every thing and that the earth is impregnated by certain qualities which with an admirable luxuriancy cover it with Fruits and Flowers Would you deny this because I do not acquaint you how that Body is luminous how the impressions of light mix with all things and shew what they are Would you deny the fruitfulness of the Earth because I cannot explain those qualities by which it is impregnated Socin This reaches not at all the difficulty For these are things of sense which I am satisfy'd to be and to exist Besides I am capable of Philosophical inquiries by which if I do not certainly know the How I come at least very near it Orthod But this not only reaches the difficulty but wholly resolves it For your Philosophical inquiries are but inquiries things for the most part uncertain But that wherein the stress of the difficulty lies is the degree of certainty by which we are assur'd that such a thing is And I say that the Divine Revelation is infinitely more certain than the fullest testimony of Sense and that if I am satisfy'd that God has reveal'd a Trinity I am more assur'd that there are Three Persons in the Divine Nature than I am assur'd that the Sun is a luminous and the Earth a fruitful Body though I could understand how the one shines and how the other is actuated into so many several forms Socin Then now the Church of Rome will give you thanks For this is the very Topick us'd in the famous case of Transubstantiation Orthod This is one of the Socinian Common Places But not to spend time about so little an objection which will carry the digression too far let me tell you that a Topick may be good but yet ill and falsly apply'd In that dispute between them and us we deny the Divine Revelation We say God has not reveal'd it But to return You make a mighty noise with your distinction of Real and Nominal Trinitarians and pretend that it is the natural result of several explications of the Trinity To overthrow this at once it is enough to say that the Church owns no particular explication of this Divine Mystery nor concerns herself with what private Authors have said of it The Church has spoke in general Councils
afraid you cannot resolve them The first is this If you are neither for a Real nor a Nominal Trinity then you are for no Trinity at all For there is no medium between them The second is that in what sense soever you hold a Trinity I cannot believe it A Trinity of Persons of which every one is God and yet but one God is to me the most absurd notion in the World I have study'd the matter with as much application as I can But to me it still appears to be a perpetual affront to Reason and good sense Orthod Give me leave to tell you that the first is no difficulty at all The Church believes a Real Trinity Not in that sense of Real which your Friends have made so much noise about and so unjustly imputed to us which infers three Gods But in that sense which in the asserting three Divine Persons preserves still the Unity of the Divine Nature To speak plainly and prevent that wrangling to which obscurity generally leads Men what the Church proposes to our belief consists in this The Unity of God is so clearly prov'd both by Reason and the Authority of the Sacred Writings that there is not in the World a truer or a plainer assertion than this God is one and can be but one But the same Sacred Writings speaking of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit and giving those Characters of them by which they appear incommunicably distinct from one another It makes this second assertion The Father is not the Son or the Holy Spirit Nor the Son the Father or the Holy Spirit Nor the Holy Spirit Father or Son But the Scripture being express and positive in giving to every one of these Persons the Name Nature Attributes and Operations of God there arises a third assertion The Father is God the Son God and the Holy Ghost God But the first of these propositions standing unmoveable and God ceasing to be if he ceases to be one All at last are resolv'd into this Fourth That in that ONE adorable and Divine Nature are Father Son and Holy Spirit every one God and yet but ONE God This is the Real Trinity which the Church believes which the Apostles have taught For which the Martyrs dy'd and notwithstanding all the oppositions of Hereticks has obtain'd and will obtain to the end of the World I cannot read the Ecclesiastical History but I adore the veracity of Christ and see in that very particular the fullfilling of his promise to the Church that the Gates of Hell shall not prevail against Her Your second difficulty is as easily resolv'd as the first For how can that be an affront to Reason and good Sense which God has commanded us to believe Socin There must be a great deal more in it than what you have laid down Vast many Books have been written on this Subject You are not ignorant how from the first and intermediate ages of Christianity to this time it has been the ground of irreconcilable disputes I do not speak only when the Emperours espous'd the Cause and this or that Opinion prevail'd because it was the Religion of the Court But I speak of the retirements of the Schools where the dispute was furious and the Doctors more set one against another than Marius and Sylla Caesar and Pompey This grand and Mysterious Contradiction has given birth to infinite Contradictions which like the Hydra's head multiply daily without number The Socinians in that Print of theirs call'd A Letter of Resolution concerning the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation pag. 10. have charg'd this home upon you The Author tells you roundly that there is no fewer than fifteen divisions amongst you each division consisting of two Parties at the least some of them of four or five So that they are in all about forty Parties of them A strong Argument by the way against the pretended Vnity of the Church Orthod What I have propos'd to you is the simplicity of the Revelation God has reveal'd so much and in that there is enough to satisfy our selves The disingenuity of the Author of that Letter appears in this that he talks of divisions and Parties and pretends to enumerate them whereas there never was any about this Socin Can you think that a Learned Person as this Author is durst have the confidence to assure such a thing if he had not very good grounds for it Orthod Call it what you please I dare to averr that he has none at all But to make this clear I must needs tell you that in a Revelation two things are to be consider'd The one is the thing reveal'd as in this case the Father is God the Son God and the Holy Spirit God and yet not three but one God The other is the manner how these things are which are reveal'd How the Father is a Father how the Son is a Son how the Holy Spirit proceeds from Father and Son How every one of these is God and yet but one God I dare say that there has not been nor can never be a more universal agreement than there has been in the first Had we been contented to adore and believe there had never been any Schisms or Divisions in that particular But Man will be curious pretend to unfold Mysteries and clearly see into his Nature who has made darkness his Pavilion round about him He must of course receive the punishment due to his Presumption and instead of that noble pleasure which results from knowing meet with all the sad consequences of a confident ignorance Any one moderately acquainted with Ecclesiastical Learning will see that this has been the conduct of the Church to stick to that first part as certain and undoubted and not at all to meddle with the other as full of danger This is visible in all the confessions of Faith of the Primitive Councils which are full in asserting the Vnity of God and the Trinity of Persons and all upon the certainty of the Divine Revelation But pretend to no kind of explication of the HOW or manner of it I confess that private Doctors have done it and that with heats not becoming the matter in dispute The Schools have given way to a World of impertinent questions and have been as impertinent in their resolutions as impertinence can be They have commented upon one another and still the Commentary has been obscurer than the Text. But when all is done they have stuck firmly to the doctrine reveal'd and unanimously agreed in this though they disagreed in there explications about it I should look upon it as the greatest Miracle that ever was done if they had explain'd that which is inexplicable Is there no such thing as the Heavens because some Philosophers have maintain'd that they were Fluid and others that they were Solid bodies Is there no such thing as the Earth because that sort of Men have wrangl'd about its figure and motion The same may be ask'd of
and National Synods We have her Mind in her publick Confessions of Faith She is so far from espousing any sort of explication that she ever thought that that great Mystery could not be explain'd The Church suffers Men to write concerning these matters St. Austin has given several considerable reasons for it in his Books on this very Subject and in that de utilit credend The opposing of Heresy the improvement of Piety the study of the Holy Scriptures of which this makes so considerable a part are the principal But to think that the Church will stand by all the Opinions of private Writers and own their errours and mistakes is a prodigious inadvertency What Church in the World can be safe if made to answer for all the Authors of her Communion What becomes then of the objection It is all overthrown in this one word The Church has nothing to do with those explications which the Socinians fansie they have so much expos'd And as for the explications themselves I believe that if the Judicious Hooker and the Learned Cudworth were alive you durst not so much as name them The rest are Men of great abilities who can arm in their defence no better Pens than their own Socin But do you put Bishops and eminent Bishops too in the rank of private Persons Who can best speak the sence of the Church but those who are call'd by the Fathers the Husbands of their Churches the Keepers of the Canons and the Successors of the Apostles Some seem to be Tritheists and others seem to be Sabellians Orthod Truly you have us'd the Bishops in your Writings as if they had been no more than private Persons the reflections on their Lordships having been so sharp and so many His Grace the late Arch-Bishop whom by your own confession you ought to have reverenc'd was not free from your aspersions My Lord of Glocester has had his share In the latest answer to my Lord of Sarum you forget the large Encomiums given him before The Bishop of Worcester for whom the Learned World has so just a value met in the answer to his late Book with the same way of Entertainment But laying all this aside and answering your meaning A Bishop with all the respect due to the Sacred Dignity is still a private Doctor Nor can the Church be favourable to his explications if they are contrary to her Doctrine But what of all this Our Bishops are all Orthodox Socin I do not know what you mean by Orthodox There is no Orthodoxy but Truth They who teach Three Gods cannot be Orthodox and this is done by the Real Trinitarians The Socinians believe and adore but one and this is done by the Nominals The greatest part of the Church goes I confess that way and therefore it is Orthodox because Socinian In short we may talk till Doom's day and never be the Wiser The question at last must be this are you a Real or a Nominal Trinitarian If a Real then we shall never be reconcil'd If a Nominal then we are certainly agreed Orthod What I have said already seems to me to be satisfactory But since you are not contented with it let us examine the several parts of your distinction What is the meaning of Real Trinitarians But let me beg of you to answer plainly and directly Socin I will answer in the very words of the Author of the Discourse concerning them He says pag. 7. The Realists are denominated from their believing Three distinct Divine Spirits or Minds who are so many Real subsisting Persons Again p. 19. They are every day Challeng'd and impeach'd of Tritheism And again p. 25. Themselves do sometimes almost openly and explicitely own and profess their Tritheism Their doctrine of the Trinity manifestly implies Three Gods Orthod What is the meaning of Nominal Trinitarians Socin They are they who maintain a Trinity which Consists only in the several Names Offices Relations and Modes of Existence of the Divine Nature This was first taught by Noëtus and Sabellius embrac'd afterwards by the assertors of the Homoousios and receiv'd by the Schools and Divinity Chairs ever since This is the substance of what he says of the Nominals in the first part of the Discourse Orthod And this you make the Foundation of that difference which you imagine to be in the Church and has of late fill'd up all your Prints Socin Yes indeed and with a great deal of Reason You are all afraid of the distinction It is of your side so notorious a giving up of the Cause that we have parted with all our Old Arguments and retrench'd our selves there as in a place from whence we cannot be driven Orthod Then pray set your heart at rest and suffer your selves to be forc'd from it For I presume positively to averr that there is no such thing in nature as these Trinitarians of your own making You pretended already to a God of your own making You wish'd for a Scripture of your own making To make a Trinity too is a little too hard I say then and pray forgive the sharpness of the words that all this is a mistake a slander and a calumny upon the Church Socin How much must you abate of your assurance when I shew you in several late Writings that the Three Persons of the Trinity are Three distinct Infinite Minds Spirits and Substances I appeal to your self whether this is not manifest Tritheism For what is God but an Infinite Mind Spirit or Substance Orthod I have told you already and tell you again that such expressions are wholly unknown to the Church and therefore cannot with any candor be fastn'd upon it Oblige me so far as to shew me a Church in the World this day or formerly which uses them or else be pleas'd to own that you are guilty of a great deal of disingenuity But though such a denial is sufficient because it is of a thing which you cannot and dare not undertake to prove yet it will be much clearer if you give your self the trouble to consider that such a notion in the Christian Church is impossible and has not the least ground or appearance of truth You are acquainted with the Sacred Writings of the New Testament and no doubt have inform'd your self of the Confessions of Faith of the Ancient Councils the assertions of the generality of the Fathers the doctrine of the Schoolmen the sense of the Greek and Latin Church even since the fatal separation and in the division of so many Kingdoms from the last in these two Ages you know perfectly all the Articles which the Famous Societies of Protestants have declar'd to be the points of their belief This suppos'd I lay before you these plain and easy but Substantial Observations First That the Church of God has always asserted the Vnity of the Divine Nature as the Foundation of all Religion It has been its great and distinguishing Character You will tell me that the Philosophers did so
too and that the Jews were witnesses to all the World of this Sacred Truth I grant it The Unity of God was the Fundamental Article of the Mosaical dispensation Pythagoras Socrates Plato Aristotle the Academicks have spoke admirably well to it But I say that Christianity has been as far superior to them in this point as they themselves exceeded the rest of Mortals For the Jews kept this to themselves without propagating it to others and the wise Heathen confuting their doctrine by their practice openly embrac'd Polytheism None treated of God and his Divine Attributes of which the Vnity is the Center as the Holy Jesus and his disciples have done This the Apostles spread through the World This the Fathers taught indefatigably One God One Divine Nature Spirit Mind substance has been the constant Voice of the Church He is not a Christian who believes not that God is one and can be but one If it were not too tedious I would produce some of their Authorities Socin It is altogether needless This is our very Doctrine I am fully perswaded of this and infinitely pleas'd to hear you speak so home to it Orthod I am afraid you will not be so well pleas'd with my second observation and it is this That the same Church of God which so Zealously asserted his Vnity never did it without asserting at the same time a Trinity of Persons in that One Divine Nature No matter of fact which depends from Testimony can be made to appear more incontestably true than this You have a large Collection of Books at home Let us step to your Library and I dare engage to convince you of this by the most exact induction of particulars which can ever be made from the very Apostolical Creed to this time I say once more and presume to be positive in it that the Church in delivering the Faith ever taught the Existence of God to be necessary and Eternal and his Vnity so perfect and entire that it transcends what notion soever we have of Unity even that which we call Numerical coming much short of it But at the same time she taught and profess'd to believe and adore in that Vnity of Nature a Trinity of Hypostases or Persons the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit Thus run the Apostolical the Nicene Ephesine and Constantinopolitan Creeds Thus speak the Ante-Nicene Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers Thus all the Learning of the Schools and all the now Churches in the World express themselves Thirdly But least the belief of a Trinity of Persons whose Coeternity and Coequality is asserted should affect the Vnity of the Divine Nature the Church has stated it in one and the same indivisible and inseparable simple and uncompounded Essence They are Coeternal and Coequal because Coessential And they are Coessential because Subsisting in that Nature which cannot be multiply'd It is true to say of each Person that he is God and yet it is false to say that they are Three Gods The Trinity multiplying the Persons but the Vnity remaining the same that is the greatest and most unconceivable Vnity in the World And therefore the Sacred Councils and the Fathers have been carefull to the utmost to distinguish the Personality from the Nature as afraid of multiplying the one as of confounding the other You see then that the first member of your distinction is worth nothing The charge laid against the Church in that particular is not only false but impossible You have attempted to divide the Church of God into two Parties The first you have accus'd of Tritheism or of teaching the belief and Worship of Three Gods Unfortunate in this that the very exposition of the Doctrine of the Church the very reading of any one Creed is an open confutation of what you have pretended to make us guilty of Socin I hope you will not take it ill If I make some remarks as well as you First I confess that the Nicene and following Councils spoke as you do and that many of the Post-Nicene Fathers the Schoolmen and the present Churches agree with you in this but I deny it of the Apostolical Creed which ought to have been the Form of all the rest Where can you find there a Trinity in Vnity Where can you see Coeternity Coequality Coessentiality and all those Famous Terms which the Church perserv'd ever since For my part I can perceive no such thing To this Creed we stand as to a rule left us by the Apostles themselves Suffer us to keep but that and take you all the rest Secondly I challenge the Ante-Nicene Fathers we say they are strangers to your Doctrine The Answer to Dr. Bull has made it invincibly appear Have you taken notice how the Learned Author of that answer has discover'd the impostures of Pseudo-Hermas and the pretended Epistles of Barnabas and Ignatius What clear account he has given of the Nazarens Mineans and Alogi And what a plain proof he has brought against your Trinity and the Divinity of Jesus Christ out of the Epistle of Clemens of Rome to the Church of Corinth Thirdly Admitting all your allegations to be true A Trinity in Vnity Three Gods in one God is a thing wholly unaccountable Orthod The question between you and me is not whether it is unaccountable or not The question is whether those whom you call Real Trinitarians have departed from the doctrine of the Unity of God and have actually and manifestly as you speak own'd their Tritheism The matter of Fact and not the Reasonableness or Unreasonableness of the thing is the Point in dispute Your mistake is Palpable For the Trinity in Vnity is not Three Gods in one God a Language which the Church ever abhorr'd but Three Persons in one God Three Subsistences in one Divine Nature Pray name me one Man in the Church even of those who have most abounded in their own sense and spoke most loosly in the explication of our Mysteries who was not as Zealous a defender of the Unity of God as yourself can be This is then the most unpardonable want of Candor imaginable You call me a Tritheist I deny it You prove it because I believe the Blessed Trinity I own I do Then you exclaim I believe Three Gods The Father the Son and the Holy Spirit I say No! For though the Father is God the Son is God and the Holy Ghost God yet they are but one God For God can be but one The Divine Nature is incapable of Multiplication Division or Augmentation You may and will urge again that this is very unreasonable I hope to shew you one day that it is highly Rational But in the mean time I gain the point and complain that you do me wrong and are inexcusable in charging me with destroying the Unity of God 2ly You are positive that the Ante-Nicene Fathers asserted the Vnity but not the Trinity I suppose you mean in our sence of a Trinity or else the mistake is not