God-head before the Incarnation For this account will admit the Personality of Christ to be founded first †P. 32. in the Humane Nature according to some of his Lordship's Criticks which he dares not contradict who place the foundation of the Sonship in the lower Nature Yea this Description will admit the Patripassian Heresie of but one Person in the Deity For if the Eternal Word were no Person distinct from the Father the Union thereof with the Humanity constitutes the Father an incarnate Person or otherwise by this State of his Lordships Doctrine the Father Son and Holy Ghost may be conceived as one incarnate Person Whereas his Lordship well knows our Faith to be clear That the Eternal Word is personally distinct or a distinct Person from the Father and alone assumed the Humanity into a Personal Union with himself and so alone was the Person of Christ exceptively of the Father and the Holy Ghost from this Personality and Character § 5. Now if a Man would enquire into the Motives of this affected obscurity in his Lordship that leaves open a gap to so many Heresies his Lordship's Words would lead one to a conclusion or at least a fair jealousie that his Lordship does not believe any Distinction really Personal between the Father Word and Holy Spirit but that the true and real Personality of Christ is proper to the Humane Nature For he teacheth us that those whom the Church calleth Persons the Scripture only calls by the Names of Father Son or Word and Holy Ghost Where that artificial Word only derogates from the propriety and fitness of the term Person as if the Scripture terms did not come up to it nor justifie it And if his Lordship will stand by the †P. 45. plain intention of his Words elsewhere he places Christ's Personality only in his Manhood in these words That Divine Person in whom dwelt the Eternal Word So that the Word must be different from the Person in whom it dwelt which must be the Heresie of Sabellius Maâ—… or Nestorius In short while he 〈◊〉 the Canonical term of Person to contain some notion in it not imported in the Scripture terms he seems for that cause to censure it for that the Scripture does not come up so far as to teach three Persons but only Father Son or Word and Holy Ghost But when he says this third Opinion is than by the Incarnation God and Man truly became one Person I would fain know whether the term Person be proper for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or no If not the Doctrine is to be blamed that teaches him to be truly one Person since the truth of a Character is the greatest propriety and if it be not true the Doctrine that teaches it is to be cashiered But if to avoid this it be true then I would fain be instructed whether the Church does not use the term Person in the same formal intention concerning the Father Son and Holy Spirit when She calls them three Persons as She does when She calls Christ or the Son of God incarnate a Person For if She uses the term in the same formal intention then if the Christ be a proper Person so are the Father and Holy Spirit two other Persons properly and truly distinct in the sense of the Church but if the Church has one intention in the Term when applied to Christ 〈◊〉 God-man and another when applied to the Eternal Trinity let this be made out by just Authority and I have done § 6. But the Order of his Lordship's Discourse obliges me to break off a little from this Disquisition till the next Section where we must resume it For he tells us if we will believe him that the term Person by those of our Perswasion came to be applied to the three to discover those who thought that these three were different names of the same thing which were for the most part and were generally called Patripassians and were expelled as Hereticks from the Church Now wherein lay their Heresie Why in this That the Father Son and Holy Ghost were not three co-essential Persons really distinct which was the Catholick Faith instead of which they coined this pretence That those Names had not three distinct subjects of which they were predicates or denominations but only were three titles of God the Father who became incarnate and suffered for us Now hence it appears that their Heresie consisted in the denial of what was ever before received in the Church That the Father Son and Holy Ghost were three Persons And if so then is his Lordship's insinuation false and injurious that the term Person had its rise and occasion from Patripassianism and consequently is of a later Date that by this fraudulent Hypochronism the term and the sense of it may be taken for not Primitive and Traditional but a mere later and artificial invention Now to prove what I say to be true I am to produce authentick Testimonies Now in the Latin World the first I ever have read of that taught Patripassianism was Praxeas against whose Heresie herein Tertullian wrote and charged in for denying the Eternal Word to be a * Tert. ad Praxeam Non vis enim eum substantiâ—um habere in re per substantiae proprietatem ut res persona quaedam videri possit substantial and real Person which Tertullian though then a Montanist then asserted with the Church though his †Tert. ibid. Itaque Sophiam quoque exaudi ut secundam Personam conditam Sic Filius in suâ personâ profitetur Patrem in nomine Sophiae Novatian de Trinit secundam Personam efficiens terms and senses were sometimes very singularly odd concerning the production of the second Person In the Eastern Church several lapsed into the like Error the most famous of which was Sabellius from whom the Heresie was entitled Sabellianism which denied what that Church also had ever asserted That the Father Son and Holy Spirit were three Persons instead whereof they asserted them to be but one Person For the truth hereof I shall recite the Words †Athan. con Sabell Greg. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of St. Athanasius as beyond all Exception valid From whence it appears that the Sabellians asserted but one Person against that Plurality of Persons fore-acknowledged in the Church And now I leave it to his Lordship to explain how the denial of three Persons could be Apostasie as this Father calls it had not the Faith of them been before expresly avowed and received For Heresie is an opposition of true received Faith and Apostasie must be from an antecedent Profession So that the Doctrine of a Personal Trinity was not later than Patripassianism but the Original Faith Nor does his Lordship seem candid in concealing this which was the substance of that Heresie while he mentions only their teaching three Names of one thing or Person which was a Conâ—ectary or at least a Colour added to
yet it seems ill-luck would have it that these subordinating Fathers in the very career of their exorbitant Subordination fell into such Notions of the Homoousion which overturn their own dear Subordination †P. 31. So that by the same Substance or Essence they do in many places express themselves as if they only meant the same being in a general sense as all Humane Souls are of the same Substance that is the same Order or sort of Beings and they seemed to entitle them to different Operations not only in an Oeconomical way but thought that the one did that which the other did not Now supposing this had been true how could they at the same time have fallen into the subordinating Heresie For this Heresie is at least Arian grounding the Subordination of Dignity on Inequality of Essence but all Humane Souls are essentially equal as are all individuals of the same Species however entitled to different Operations But in truth his Lordship falfly charges them with a mere specifick Homoousion in the Trinity I own they bring it for illustration so far that as separate individuals of the same kind are called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and thereby is implied an equality of Essence * Dionys Alexand. ap Athan. de Syn. Nsc con Arian Decret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Athan. de commun Essent Pat. Fil. Spir. Sti. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against his Lordships different Operations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so the same word used in the Godhead of the Father and the Son excludes that essential inequality of the Arians which his Lordship would yet trump upon these very Fathers But then the Fathers teach a proper originary Homoousion by which the Father communicates his own Substance to the Son and thereupon the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the essential inseparability of these Persons in the Godhead which a mere specifick Homoousion will not reach to But thus the argument runs strongly against the Hereticks If Fathers Sons and Kinsmen be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being of the same nature and descended from the same loins if more loosely all things of the same kind are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though separate and much differing in shape humors and actions one from another how much more are the Father and the Son 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Divine Nature that are in all respects undivided and without any dissimilitude or inequality But though this be the strongest way of arguing against Hereticks from the specifick Homoousion to the individual by shewing that the term in general admits different Modes or Degrees of coessentiality or connaturality of which the individual is the greatest and exactest in the Trinity yet even simply the term it self in its utmost generality and without restriction will by consequence inferr a co-eternity in the Persons Let the Term therefore open to the loosest Importance let it be fansied that the Father Son and Holy Spirit are Three Persons of one common Kind diversly acting in themselves yet even this Notion will hold them to be equally of an Eternal and Divine Essence which was strong against Arians Photinians and Macedonians but it not being so clear against Tritheism therefore all the Fathers asserted the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the origination of the Son and Holy Spirit inseparably in the Father on purpose to disclaim and silence those charges of Tritheism which yet his Lordship does not blush to fix on them in words to be considered immediately notwithstanding their express remonstrances and demonstrations to the contrary And yet after all supposing that the cavils of the Hereticks had forced the Fathers into such forms of argumentation as might then appear expedient and good ad hominem which now in an Age of other apprehensions seem not so these are not to be stretched by us to reproachful and unintended Consequences of which the Church in those Ages knew them to be innocent and therefore gloried in their Piety But as to the diversity of Operations with which his Lordship twits them whatsoever forms may drop from them in popular or homiletical discourses in which no Men take so much care to be critical as affective I believe his Lordship can produce no Divine Operations ad extra so applied to one Person as positively to exclude all concurrence in the others For I wot not that they oppose St. Paul's * 1 Cor. 12.6 Doctrine that there are diversities of Operations but the same God which worketh all in all § 12. And yet we find his Lordship †P. 42. falling into that very guilt with which he upbraids the Fathers by framing worse Similes as shall appear in due place and from them framing a Theological conceit that in the Divine Essence which is the simplest and perfect est Vnity there may be Three that may have a diversity of Operations as well as Oeconomies Here his Lordship did not much remember St. Paul above-cited nor himself in his 31. page on which we now are But whether this may be so or not so God knows it follows not from the Simile of a compounded Nature operating diversly from Principles Parts and Virtues specifically and naturally opposite which in his Lordship's expression may be brought to the Terms of a Contradiction of which I suppose there is no capacity in the most simple Nature of the Deity § 13. But let us see the foul aspect of the Homoousion in the Writings of these Fathers and what Reformation followed thereupon This was saith his Lordship * P. 31. more easily apprehended but it seemed so directly to assert three Gods which was very contrary to many most express declarations both in the Old and New Testament in which the Vnity of the Deity is so often held forth that therefore others took another way of explaining this making it their foundation that the Deity was one numerical Being In this Reflexion here are two things which in his Lordship's judgment and he says the judgment of the after Ancients seem directly to assert three Gods viz. their Arguments from a specisick Homoousion and their ascribing divers Operations The Jews and Greeks of old charged us * Athan. con Arian Orat. 4. with Polytheism on the account of our Trinity and his Lordship here seems to justifie and second the Infidels in that Charge against all the Fathers who argued from the specifick Homoousion and distinct Operations which I think were well nigh all the Greek Fathers after the Nicene Council even Athanasius who thus * Ubi sup argues and yet dissolves the Crime of Polytheism which his Lordship with Jews and Heathens lays upon them but from which I have clear'd them also § 11. But if divers Operations as well as the Arguments from a specifick Homousion seem directly to assert three Gods how came his Lordship to
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by Theognostus who still maintains the Old Jewish and Primitive Simile against all Sadducean and Sabellian perversions of it such as we above saw practised by the Adversaries of this truth in the days of Justin Martyr See above § 8. § 17. Secondly the Antiquity of the Simile taken from our Minds admits so large a Vindication that to quote †Arm. Alex. Protrep Tertull. adv Prax. Theoph. ad Autolyo Orig. con Cels l. 7. de Princip l. 1. c. 2. Euseb con Marcell l 2. c. 17. Athan. Syn. Nic. con Hoer Arian Decret con Arian Orat. 2. Orat. 3. Orat. 4. con Gent. Greg. Nyss de hom Opific c. 5. Greg. Naz. Irenic 2. Ambros de dignit human condit Aug. in Evan. Joh. Tract c. 1. sayings at large would make a little compendious Library of the Fathers and therefore to avoid a bulk I must referr to a few Authors and Authorities in the Margin that are confessedly of a much greater antiquity than his Lordship assigns to the invention or use of this Simile who yet resemble the Theology of the Trinity by the image thereof in our Minds which the Scriptures affirming to be created after the Image and in the Likeness of God recommended to those Fathers and us to learn Theories of God by those glances of his Divinity with which he has both adorned and enlightened our intellectual Powers from those inspired strains of Theology that so expresly suit with that Idea we have of our own internal Principles § 18. But now let us further try whether his Lordship * P. 32. that flouts the Fathers for their many impertinent Similes does not pretend to supply us with others in our own Nature which really are much more impertinent to â—e conception of the Trinity We do plâ—â—â—ly perceive †P. 41 42. saith he iâ—â—â—ur selves two if not three Principles of Operation that do not only differ 〈◊〉 Vnderstanding and Will which are only different Modes of thinking but differ in their Character and way of Operation All our cogitations and reasonings are a sort of Acts in which we can reflect on the way how we operate We perceive that we act freely in them and that we turn our Minds to such objects and thoughts as we please But by another Principle of which we perceive nothing and can reflect upon no part of it we live in our Bodies we animate and actuate them we receive sensations from them and give motions to them we live and dye and do not know how all this is done It seems to be from some Emanation from our Souls in which we do not feel that we have any liberty and so we must conclude that this Principle in us is natural and necessary In acts of Memory Imagination and Discourse there seems to be a mixture of both Principles or a third that results out of them For we feel a freedom in one respect but as for those marks that are in our brain that set things in our memory or furnish us with words we are necessary Agents they come in our way but we do not know how We cannot call up a figure of things or words at pleasure some disorder in our Mechanism hides or flattens them which when it goes off they start up and serve us but not by any act of our Vnderstanding and Will Thus we see that in this single undivided Essence of ours there are different Principles of Operation so different as liberty and necessity are from one another I am far from thinking that this is a proper explanation or resemblance of this mystery and here I indeed jump in judgment with his Lordship yet it may be called in some sort an illustration of it since it shews us from our own Composition that in one Essence there may be such different Principles which in their proper Character may be brought to the terms of a contradiction of being free and not free So in the Divine Essence which is the simplest and perfectest Vnity there may be three that may have a diversity of Operations c. Tenderden Steeple and Goodwyn Sands This is a worthy Simile indeed to supplant that scouted one of the Ancients in which is no representation of the Logos and its Parent Principle nor of the Spirit of Holiness that is in the Father and the Son none of their co-essentiality co-eternity or order all which are resembled in that Simile which this undermines But however let us try the stuff first generally and then particularly In the general view here are two Principles of necessity and freedom The necessity consists in our being and its Physical Operations of Life and Death the liberty in the Elective faculty of our Minds Now what can this resemble in God but the natural necessity of the Divine Life and the Operations if we may so speak by which the Son is generated from the Father and the Holy Spirit derived from both and the liberty of all God's other acts But this cannot amount to a Trinity nor resemble contrary or different Principles since God's liberty of acting differs not really from his necessary existence And both that necessity and liberty equally agree to every Person in the Trinity and so cannot resemble their distinction But now we will be more particular and trace these Philosophick dictates 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that so we may see the depths of them First then his Lordship cannot tell whether there be in us two or three Principles of Operation only if there be not three be sure there are two so then we are sure of a Figure for two but not for three Principles or rather Persons in the Deity This at first setting out is like to be a sweet illustration of the Trinity I doubt 't is crack'd through some disorder in its Mechanism But whether two or three they differ not like Vnderstanding and Will that are but different Modes of thinking Now if we take Understanding and Will for the Principles of actual intellection and volition as his Lordship's comparison of Principles to them seems to do then I deny them to be Modes of thinking since Principles are not the Modes of their Principiates but give them to their Principiates If his Lordship means not the Principles but only the acts of intellection and volition then I deny volition to be a Mode of thinking And whether you conceive the acts of intellection and will mixt or pure yet according to the true abstract distinctions of them they are not divers Modes of the same specifick Act but Acts whose formal reason is specifically different Now as trifling as all this is and seems to be yet his Lordship seems to have had a great feteh in it against the Canonical Similitude of our Minds lest Understanding and Will being near the same with Understanding and Love and flowing from our Mind as its Parent should be thought a fair Simile for the Trinity for this cause it was
cum Tryph. Clem. Alex. Protrep Tertull Praesc adv Jud. con Marcion l. 2. con Prax. Novatian de Trinit Euseb Praep. Ev. l. 7. c. 15. con Marcell l. 2.17 Eccl. Hist l. 1. c. 2. Panegyrista Paulini ap Eus Eccl. Hist l. 10. Constant ad Sanctor Caetum ap Euseb c. 9. Pastor Hermae l. 3. Similit 9. Athenag Legat. Theoph. ad Autolyc Orig. con Cels l. 1. l. 2. l. 3. l. 4. l. 5. l. 6. l. 7. de Princip l. c. 2. Cypr. de Idol Vanit Basil con Eunom l. 5. Serm. in Princip Naz. de sacr Pasch Prudent 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 de Roman Martyr in Apotheof Greg. Thaumat ad Origen Athan. ubique Pseudo-Ambros de fide con Arian Aug. con 5. Haeres in Evan. Joh. c. 1. Tract 1 2. de Tempor Ser. 190. infinities plura reperies ejusdem generis apud omnes Primitive as well as suceeding Ages to be sealed with their Blood and Sufferings and was not a mere upstart project to supply the former Tritheism taught in the more ancient Church Now if according to the common and universal Senses and Notions of all Men the Mind is the Parent and Original of all actual Reason in it then if the Divine Reason be the truest and most Essential Reason the Parent Principle thereof must be the truest and most Essential Mind which Principle of this Reason the Scripture having owned Paternal it follows that God the Father is an Eternal Mind having a coessential Reason for its coessential Issue the perfect Image and Character of its Parent § 22. In the next place let us see whether the Character of the Holy Spirit agrees well to the Substantial Love of God according to the Doctrine of the traduced Ancients Let it then be noted that that Mind in which a vital and consubstantial reason perfectly subsists doth by that reason in one clear intuitive luminous and Archetypal Idea discern all possible Forms Essences Habitudes Powers and Reasons of things and therefore very particularly all the distinctive forms and differences of good and evil From whence there must proceed in such a Mind and Reason a vital and essential Spirit which we in our Language would perhaps call a Principle of Holiness to wit an essential Love of all the Forms and Reasons of Good and therein an essential aversation of all the kinds and degrees of Evil this being but one and the same Spirit having different aspects on different objects Now without such a Spirit of Love and Holiness no being can be perfectly good or happy since perfect goodness as well as happiness consists essentially in love and purity Now the goodness of things must be the proper object of such Love and must be discerned by that actual Reason that contains in it the Idea's of all things possible Whence this Love is as essential to the Deity as Reason and thereupon the Apostle faith †1 Joh. 4.8 that God is Love the suum of which truth is nobly celebrated * Const ad Sanct. Caet ap Eus c. 7. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by the great Constantine as the Doctrine which he had been taught by the Christian Fathers herein according with the perpetual Theology of God's People who ever acknowledge this Holiness of the Divine Wisdom and Spirit from its constant indication For * Sap. Sal. 1 3 4 5. froward thoughts separate from God and into a malicious Soul Wisdom will not enter nor dwell in the Body that is subject unto sin For the Holy Spirit of Discipline will fly deceit and remove from thoughts that are without understanding and will not abide when unrighteousness cometh in for Wisdom is a loving Spirit c. § 23. But here again a fresh difficulty arises from the homonymy of terms For St. Paul calling our Lord †1 Cor. 1.24 the Wisdom of God the generality and the exactest of the Fathers follow him in that style and make the Wisdom and Logos to be the same subsistence distinct from the Holy Spirit Some of the Ancients as great as any speaking distinctly * Iren. Theoph. Antiochen p. 81. c. 108.114 distinguish the Logos from the Sophia and make the Sophia the Person of the Holy Spirit and yet again at other times †Theoph. Antioch p. 81. confound the Logos and Sophia for the same second Person the Son * Theoph. p. 81. Tertull whom also they call the Spirit of God the Father Wherefore 't is necessary to our Theory that we remove this Cloud And here we are to distinguish Wisdom into speculative and practical for which distinction there is apparent authority in the Scripture and ground in our own inner Experience Now the Reason of any Spiritual Nature is its formal proper speculative Wisdom but an Holy Spirit and temper of Mind is the practical In this latter sense the forequoted place out of the Apochryphal Wisdom calls the loving Spirit of God or his Spirit of Discipline Wisdom but †Sap. Sal. 7.22 c. elsewhere the same Author Preaches that in Wisdom which is the Artificer of all things there is a Spirit which among other attributes is Holy and loves the thing that is good and is Almighty where the in-existence of the Holy Spirit of Love in that Wisdom the Artificer of all things puts a distinction between this Spirit and Wisdom and so hereby Wisdom in this place as well as by its Character must be the Archetypal Logos or Architectonick Reason of God the Father And hence these ambiguous Fathers seem to have copied their Theories and Language sometimes calling the Logos Wisdom to wit the intuitive sometime the Holy Spirit as the practical Wisdom of God the Father And so there are learned Men that ground the alledged homonymy of the Word Spirit in some forms of Scripture But I that think the Scripture as a Rule for Canonick Theology thinking it unsafe to fix any exorbitant Senses on the Terms expressive of the Trinity without absolute necessity am apt to think those Fathers called the Logos the Spirit of God sometimes through some Scriptures by them so mistaken or appearing in that sense to them under a loose and general Notion that whatsoever issues from the Essence of God the Father so issues by a Spiritual Efflux or else is of a Spiritual Substance as the Father is and so as Tertullian calls the Logos Spirit of Spirit and God of God But since all these Fathers expresly own a Trinity of Persons the third of which is signally characterized by the appropriate Title of Holy Spirit there can be no doubt of the consonancy of their Faith to the Catholick Doctrine and to this Theory of it in the Holy Spirit which to serve his Lordship I am here to illustrate § 24. These Bars being thus removed we shall proceed to examine on what ground this Substantial Love of God is called by the name of Spirit Now this
their Heresie against the Trinity of real Persons 'T is true a Man may innocently say That the term Person was used against Patripassians while he contends for the proper truth of their Personality as the Defender of Dr. Sherlock's Notion of a Trinity in Unity †P. 25. Ubi citatur Facund pro defensione triâ—â— capit c. 1. p. 19. cites Facundus's Saying that these Words Person and Subsistence were used by the Fathers in opposition to the Sabellian Heresie but to throw out such Expressions with a Design to deny the Primitive Antiquity of this Faith of Three proper Persons or Personalities is extremely perfidious of which this is a certain Sign when Men avoid the use of these Terms as a stock of Offence as his Lordship appears industriously to do in his State of the Doctrine I have not Facundus by me and so cannot so well judge of the convenience of his Words But as to the Term Hypostasis or Subsistence tho' it was in use long before Sabellianism and used of the Person of the Father * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. 1.2 yet was that use promiscuous for Essence and Subsistence long after Sabellianism and the determinate use thereof for the distinct Persons was later than the Sardican Council and was indeed at last so fixed to denote their substantial Personality or personal Subsistence against the Sabellians who asserted the Word and Holy Spirit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 non-subsistent that is not distinctly subsistent from the Person of the Father in the Unity of Essence but the Term Person both in the Eastern and Western Churches was ever received from the beginning without any variety or ambiguity § 7. Now that my Surmises against his Lordship's Integrity herein are well grounded will appear from his Lordship's explanation of this Term which tho' it be received in the third Party yet he dares not make his own nor allow for proper By Person saith he is only meant that every one of that Blessed Three has a peculiar distinction in himself by which he is truly different from the other Two Here it is plain that by using the Term Three so often without adding Person he shuns the Word as much as he dares at present to do and assigns a distinction which is not any way personal For it being only such a diversity that one is not the other it will as well agree to two or three Tobaco pipes for these are truly different from each other I would therefore ask his Lordship Does the Name of Father as distinct from the Son import no more than that one is not the other or does it import a Personality really Paternal If he will grant only the former part of the disjunction as he grants no more in his Discourse then there really was no God the Father from Eternity till the Creation of Christ which was the first Article of Arianism nor was he who is by all called God the Father even a true Person which yet however all have ever acknowledged But if he ever was a true Person and Father then first as to him the Term is elder than Patripassianism and I demand a good reason why the Eternal Word is not as much and as true a Person also especially if he be the Eternal Son of the Eternal Father For otherwise the Father and the Son will be of Dignities specifically different if one be of a personal and the other of impersonal Character tho' how a real Son can be a thing really impersonal I cannot conceive and then be that allows no more distinction but only this that one is not the other tacitly denying the relative distinction between Father and the Son doth really deny both the Father and the Son When these Words were orally delivered at Warmister I observed them to my self but looked on it as a slip only of an extemporary speaking but when I see it also after the last concoction delivered from the Press I suspect somewhat more than should be I am sure the Dictate is rotten and tacitly imports a renunciation of our Christianity § 8. And yet after all so great is the force of Truth that it will maintain its Evidence even in the Tongues and Pens of its Adversaries For though some part of his Lordship's Doctrines denies the Personality yet others unwittingly concede it For first of all when he calls the Trinity the Blessed Three not daring to say Persons the Character of Blessed doth import a Peal Personality For whether it be taken for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the sense of God's essential Happiness or in the sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the objects of our religious Praises yet if the Three are either or both ways Blessed they must be Persons For among created Beings none are internally or effectually blessed but what are Personal but if any Man will cavil and say that God in the Creation blessed things Impersonal and promised such Blessings also in the Mosaical Covenants it is enough to reply That these Blessed Three are uncapable of those lower forms of Benediction and must have a Divine Blessedness if they are of a Divine Nature Now his Lordship will not say that these are Three Distinct Blessed Essences and he says they are more than three Names Oeconomies or Modes so that he cannot with consistence call them three Blessed Names Oeconomies or Modes and then what can he or any one else conceive by Three Blessed but Three Blessed Persons For though it may be truly said that the highest Blessedness is that of Essence yet none but a Person or Persons can be essentially Blessed So that his Lordship asserting a Blessed Three must against his will yield them to be three Persons really distinct though not divide And so when he says that every one of that Blessed Three has a peculiar distinction in himself this Pronoun himself is expresly Personal and so either the Personality is Real or his Lordship very unaccurate in attributing a Personal Pronoun to every one of the Three and so is at his choice either unaccurate or self-contradictory or heretical or for the sake of a blessed Comprehension all together § 9. Let us now consider his Lordship's proper Tradition of this third Opinion or perhaps his own under the Colour of that for 't is not easie to find him This saith he is in general the Sum of the Received Doctrine that in God's undivided Essence there are Three really different from each other that are more than three Names Oeconomies or Modes But here is not one word of Persons though asserted by the whole Catholick Church by our own Articles and Liturgies which his Lordship has sworn his unfeigned Assent and Consent to and is by his Station bound to defend and for which he has the great example of his late Metropolitan What latent Ulcer is the Cause of this tergiversation I cannot exactly tell but something there must be at the bottom But since this being matter
a Creature St. John's Gospel and first Epistle were expresly written and these were a sort of Un-Christian Judaizers of several Characters from their proper Authors So that his Lordship's Observation though never so well intended is however partly false and partly impertinent And yet allowing this Argument as much force as can be designedly granted it it will amount to no more than this That the Enemies of our Religion could not upbraid us with a professed Worship of a professed Creature because he whom the Christians worshipp'd in our flesh was by them owned to be the Eternal God Yet no doubt the Jews ever did and do at this Day charge us with the Worship of a vile Creature who really as they think had no Deity in him else had they also thought him to be God they had been ipso facto converted to us the want of this Faith being the only Bar to their Conversion and the cause why they execrate both our Lord and us for this very Doctrine So unlucky is his Lordship even in the fairest part of this Discourse as if God had laid this Curse on him that he that had sophistically handled the Christian Faith in most part of it should not have the Glory or Comfort of having served it in any one particular A Vindication of the Primitive Fathers against the Imputations of Gilbert Lord Bishop of Sarum c. PART II. § 1. I Have now I think performed my first undertaking that his Lordship hath ill stated the Doctrines of our Faith A truth so evident to his own Clergy even those that would throw a friendly skirt over these Nudities that they ascribe all or seem willing so to do to haste inconsideration and want of judgment not to any heretical Designs or Contrivances Whether his Lordship will be thankful for these kinds of Excuse I cannot tell but at the best they are but Fig-leaves For can any Candour excuse an heedless or injudicious Lecture in a Bishop or Divinity Professor first uttered to a learned Body and after exposed to the Censure of the World in a matter most fundamental in Christianity most liable to prejudices and this after the most accurate determinations of the Church Universal especially since he so openly upbraids the Fathers and Patrons of this Faith with their unaccuracies and impertinencies and this not in their particular and private conceptions which the Church hath not authorized but in their most Catholick and established Theories Surely such a Cenfor ought to have been accurate above all Men and not to have needed the Candor of a Reader § 2. This dealing with the Fathers is such an indecent sort of immorality that 't is not to be endured in one of his Lordship's Character The Fathers it is true were Men and they have their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those slips here and there incident to the infirmities of Humane Nature and if his Lordship had reverently touched upon any of these not with a design to blacken their memory but only to caution his Clergy against such forms or notions he had dealt very commendably But it falls out quite otherwise For he Taxes them for no real obliquities but their Catholick Principles fixes on them such Theories as they never dreamed of and such as are destructive of their own avowed Faith and this without quoting so much as one passage out of them he gives them not so much as one good word but finally presents them to us as a parcel of impertinent and self contradicting Bablers which how it conduces to the encouraging Deism and Heresie I humbly leave to the Censure of my Holy Mother the Church of England Sure I am as this ill office was utterly needless to his Exposition of the Faith so modesty ought to have repressed it if for no other consideration yet for this one reason That they may receive him into their Society with joy at the day when he shall be gathered unto his Fathers § 3. The Business then of this second part is to discuss the truth and justice of his Lordship's Imputations cast upon these Holy Worthies which he introduces thus by telling his Clergy that †P. 31. he will not pretend to inform them how this Mystery is to be understood and in what respect these Persons which he calls so according to custom not his own sense are believed to be one and in what respects they are Three By explaining a Mystery can only be meant the shewing how it is laid down and revealed in Scripture for to pretend to give any other Account of it is to take away its mysteriousness when the manner how it is in it self is offered to be made intelligible Now what doth this prima facie intimate but that it is not laid down in the Scripture in what respect the Persons are one nor in what respect they are Three But first in the Doctrine of Unity I think the Scriptures do sufficiently teach that the Father Son and Holy Spirit are one in respect of Essence notwithstanding all the wriggles of Hereticks not only in that passage of St. John 1 Ep. 5.7 which his Lordship has exposed * Letter I from Zurich for doubted but in many others And if his Lordship dares deny this respect of Essence to be taught by the Scriptures concerning the Unity I will adventure the proof of it But if his Lordship be not so hardy then let him recant this Impeachment of the Scriptures that they have not taught us in what respect the Persons are One I am however content that Men of Candour take this only for an heedless slip not a designed Artifice Let it be so yet is it a dangerous one and used by the Men of the broad way that leadeth to destruction to the service of heretical Comprehensions The Antapologist to Dr. Sherlock owns the forequoted Text of St. John for undoubted There are Three that bear record in Heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Spirit and these Three are One. This saith he is Scripture * Antap. p. 5. but how they are one the Scripture teacheth not What is this fetch for but that we may not press the Heretick's to own an essential Unity but whatsoever else will serve their several Turns and deliver them from the Canon of the Faith But secondly his Lordship ought to have instructed his Clergy in what respects they are Three according to the Scriptures which do instruct us herein with certain notions and respects by which they are distinguished from each other in the Unity of Essence For are not Father and Son Personal Characters and founded on a substantial generation the Father being the Person Generant as such and the Son the Person generated as such And is not the Logos the substantial Issue of the Eternal Mind and as such distinguished from its Parent The Holy Spirit is of the Father and the Son and does the personal Offices of a Paraclete by mission from the Father and
necessary that they should be but two Modes of thinking This being premised our cogitations and reasonings are acts of a free Principle but our animal Operations are necessary But what is this to the Theory of the Divine Nature For these contrarieties of Operations proceed from the composition of contrary Substances Soul and Body whereas the Deity is most simple and uncompounded and consequently cannot be represented by any compositum whatsoever especially a compound of contraries Well! but necessary Operations of the animal Life seem to be from some Emanations from our Souls Very well and do these seeming Emanations represent an Idea of the Emanations of the second and third Person I doubt not for those in the Deity are but two but these of our Souls on our Bodies if they were Emanations as they are not are very manifold But if they be representative Emanations why then his Lordship here goes beyond due bounds in being pleased with the Notions and Similes of Emanations or else these Notions are regular and then why are the Fathers taxed for exorbitancy in them But if these Emanations of the animal life are not representative why are they brought in here under the term of Emanations to make us believe them representative of the Divine Emanations So much then for a Dyad representative Now a Kingdom for a third Well then we have in acts of Memory Imagination and Discourse a mixture of both Principles i. e. free and necessary or a third that results out of them As for his mixtures I leave them purely to himself but for his third resulting Principle I am to seek For it must be a Principle that is neither free nor necessary and such a one is hard to be got for love or money but however that a Principle neither free nor necessary should result from two whereof one is free and the other necessary will I doubt bring his Lordship of mere necessity to the terms of a contradiction how uncontradicted soever he affects to be § 19. Advance we now from the old Similes of the Fathers to the Theology it self represented by them Now it is not a novel Observation or Fancy as his Lordship snearingly suggests but the ancient internal Catholick and substantial Wisdom of the Faith that the * Iren. l. 2. c 47. Deus enim cum sit totus Mens totus Ratio totus Spiritus operans c. Octav. ap Minuc Foelic Quid aliud à nobis Deus quam Mens Ratio Spiritus praedicatur Greg. Naz. ad Patr. cum Eccl. Naz. ipsi permisit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 scil lablorum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ad Graec. Inlid Ser. 2. de Principio 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 three adorable Persons in the Godhead are an Eternal and Substantial Mind Reason and Holy Spirit Now to avoid all cavil and equivocation it is not unnecessary that I state the exactest Notions of the Fathers in these Terms of their Theology For that the words being of very various and involved significations in common use will be liable to easie mistakes in this profound and critical Theory especially when Readers shall discover sometimes the same terms to be promiscuously used for different Persons § 20. I begin therefore with that of Mind This most properly and primitively signifies the noetick or intellectual Principle in all rational Beings the Spring the Fountain the Original of those intellectual Graces and Perfections that are found in such Spiritual Natures But by an easie Trope it is also very commonly used in all sorts of Writings for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Conceptions Counsels Sentiments Propensions and Resolves of the Mind as were it necessary might be shewn in infinite instances But thirdly there hath been a Philosophick and Artificial Sense of the word of a more late invention setting 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Minds for single Spirits Now the exact Notion of Mind as the first Principle in the Deity is the first of these the proper and the Primitive as it is the Original of God's Essential Reason and Holy Spirit Now according to this exact and canonical Notation the term Mind is not only an Essential but a Paternal and Producent Character so that speaking with canonick accuracy we cannot say that there are three Minds for this is directly to assert three Fathers and by consequence three Sons or Logoi and so likewise three Holy Spirits since every such Mind must have its Reason and Spirit of which it is and must be a natural and necessary original To assert three Minds in the sense of Spirits is directly to assert three Gods it being the same thing and as irregular to say there are in the Deity three Spirits as three Gods But if we will take the term equivocally in different Senses then we find some Fathers calling not only * Athenag Leg. p. 38. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at prius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 scil quod dixerat 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sic forte intelligendum illud p. 110. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theoph. ad Autolyc p. 129. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Logon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pater 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Alex. Protrep 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 at Strom. l. 7. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 de codem Logo the Father the Mind in distinction from the Logos but the Logos also tropically by the name of Mind as being the essential 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Reason of the Father of the same Essence and therefore in respect of that Essence loosly called by the same name according perhaps to the Pattern and Language of Plato the Philosophick Ancients using this homonymy according to the tast of the Platonick Philosophers which were of so great credit among the Greeks whom our Worthies cited as of Authority with the Gentiles in their Apologeticks in order to their more easie conversion And yet neither in this laxer acception or comprehensiveness have I ever read among our Ancients the assertion of three Minds For using the term mind in an essential Notion only not a paternal the assertion of three Minds would have looked like three Essences § 21. But though we have sufficiently proved our Doctrine not to be a novel whimsie but a Primitive and Catholick Tradition yet will I prove its foundations to be really Divine For the Son of God is so called with relation to a Father from whom he derives his proper Subsistence and Character And this Son of God the Father is he whom St. John calls the Logos according to the old Jewish Theology God of God the internal substantial Reason of God the Father in whom or who is the Image of his Father by whom the Father made and governs all things And from hence this hath ever been the avowed Faith of all the * Iren. l. 1 c. 1. l. 2. c. 55. l. 3. c. 18. l. 4. c. 14. c. 28. c. 37. c. 75. l. 5. c. 6 Just Martyr Apol. 2. Dial.
is distinguished from and asserted the Author of those Operations and Graces there the Spirit cannot be those very Operations or Graces produced by them as those middle Virtues and Qualities must be See 1 Cor. 12.1 to 12. 2 Thess 2.13 1 Pet. 1.2 Gal. 5.22 Joh. c. 14. c. 15. c. 16. 1 Joh. 5.7 In which last the Holy Spirit is said to be in Heaven and consequently can be no middle Quality in us and yet in Heaven personally distinct from the Father and the Word which I take to be a good Argument from a good Authority in despite of Hereticks and defective Libraries to which I could add very many more were it necessary But the truth is the Texts alledged by Crellius do not all manifestly denote by the Spirit of God a mere created Virtue or Quality but may except some few to be by and by considered denote the essential Spirit of God supervening upon Men and creating in them the Spirits of Wisdom Vigour Prophecy Life c. And particularly where Elihu Job 33.4 saith the spirit of God hath made me he implies the prae-existence of that Spirit before himself and so not after effected in him being indeed a Virtue operant not operated but a precedent cause of the Operation it self And though according to the literal form of the Hebrew the evil Spirit that troubled Saul is called the Lords evil Spirit 1 Sam. 16.15 16 23. and 18.10 and 19.9 yet this may denote not a divine Operation surely which is not evil but a wicked infernal Personal Spirit the Lictor or Carnifex which God sent to punish him But if we keep to Crellius's Notion and let the evil Spirit here be a Quality effected in Saul it must be from some inspiring Agent which the Quality being evil cannot be God and so must be an evil Spirit of darkness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 1 Sam. 16.14 sent from the Lord. And if so how can it be evinced that the Term evil Spirit does not denote the Person of the Evil Angel but only the effect of his infernal Operation And as to the Spirit of Wisdom with which God had filled some Persons for making the Priests habits c. Exod. 28.3 it appears not to be that effected Wisdom it self but the Divine Principle efficient thereof from Exod. 31.1 Where God says he had filled Bezaleel with the Spirit of God in Wisdom and Understanding c. where the filling Power i. e. the Spirit of God is distinguished from its effect i. e. that Wisdom and Understanding inspired by the Spirit of God into him And that Spirit of God producent of that Wisdom Exod. 31.3 might well be called the Spirit of that Wisdom which it produced as likewise Esa 11.2 So that in all these places I am verily perswaded that the Spirit of God signifies not a mere Divine Operation nor a mere Virtue divinely operated but a Principle and Substantial Power operant But that the Term Spirit of God may be sometimes put for the Grace effected thereby nay and that actions of Subjects are many times elegantly attributed to their Adjuncts as it may also happen to the effect for the efficient I shall not gainsay but such mere Metonymies do not presently exhibit a formal Prosopopoecia of those Adjuncts or Effects without other technical Schemes such as usually appear in Poetick or Dramatick fancies not in serious Prose plain Discourse didactick Institutions especially in the Simple Catechetical and Inartificial Rules of Faith delivered by Christ and his Apostles Besides with Poets and other Painters personated Qualities put on the feminine Veil Face and Sex but Christ describes his Holy Spirit * Joh. 14.16 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 16.13 14. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ita 15.26 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. as a Masculine Person when he calls him Paraclete with a Personal Pronoun He to shew him as it were exactly both in Nature and Person Where as Bishop Pearson well observes on Joh. 16.13 14 c. upon the Article of the Holy Ghost those personal Attributes of the Spirit can be by no means applied to God the Father nor to the Apostles by any Metonymy whatsoever according to the Socinian pretention But further that supreme Spirit of God is only one which yet by manifold Operations creates many kinds of Virtues which therefore are plurally called Spirits 1 Cor. 12.10 1 Cor. 14.32 § 29. Now to break off this blow Crellius coins a double sort of Unity for the Holy Spirit One generical consisting in this that all such Spirits how numerous and various soever are yet of one Genus of Spirit as all individual Bodies and sorts of Bodies are included in one Genus of Body But such Unity is but merely notional and uncapable of individual Acts and Offices which yet are ascribed to the one Holy Spirit For when †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one and the self same Spirit is said to distribute all gifts according as he will it is manifest that many single and many sorts of Graces are given by the will of one only Spirit individually One. For individual and actually existent effects must be the products of individual and actually existing Cause or Causes not from mere Genus and Species which are not the subjects of Historical Relations For it cannot be said of Substance or Body in general that one and the self same Substance or Body produces all Physical effects in the material World nor of Man in Specie that one and the self same Man performs all the Acts and Offices that are done by all and every single Man Nor is Genus and Species capable of Personal Unities and Distinctions But now the Apostle distinguishes both the Operations and Effects of one and the self same Spirit both from themselves and that Spirit not only numerically but specifically and yet asserts them the products * 1 Cor. 12. of one and the self same Spirit one and the self same Lord one and the self same God shewing at least the Unity of the Spirit to be such and the same as is the Unity of the Lord and God which must be therefore most perfectly Individual But if each particular Divine Inspiration or it s produced Graces had been so many distinct Holy Spirits of God in themselves since there are such multitudes and multiplicities of them there was no reason why in the same breath he should assert them many and manifold and yet but one operant Spirit only which therefore must be distinct from them as the Cause from the effect as the Author from the product and as the Donor from the gift § 30. His second sort of Unity is that of Origine by which he pretends the Spirit to be called One because though infinitely manifold or divisible in it self yet it proceeds from one God and in this respect may be called One But neither will this last fit For the Terms one and the self same are too narrow and express a closer
Unity and cannot be applied to innumerable particulars that are only of one Original For all particular Men cannot be said to be one and the self same Man which performs all humane actions that are because all Men originally descend from one Father Adam Nor can all the Israelites be said to be one and the self same Israelite that destroyed the Canaanites because they all descended from one Father Israel Nor can all the Socinians be called one and the self same Socinian that wriggles himself into a thousand tricks and turnings because they all descended from one Doctor or Father Faustus for I will not meddle with Laelius But in truth if there had been a vast number of the Holy Spirits of God and these but mere Qualities to which Personal Names Pronouns and Predicates are so often attributed in the singular number of one Holy Spirit on the score of a mere generical or originary Unity why do we never plurally read of many such Holy Spirits of God so personated according to this invention with an open acknowledgment of their Plurality and sometimes of their Impersonality but only of one such Holy Spirit under such Personal Titles and Descriptions Or why had not the Article of the Holy Spirit in the Greeds been always taught and professed according to this pretty novel interpretation Since the Church ought to have been taught and dealt with plainly and not tricked into mazes or impieties by Figures Fetches and Sophistries more ambiguous and involved than the Devil's Oracles Nor will the seven Spirits of God in the Revelation help for they are waiting Ministers at the Throne of God not Qualities inspired into us and they are but seven neither a number far too small for the kinds or numbers of inspired Graces We see then that the Wit of Man cannot bear up against the Truth and Wisdom of God And herein our Country-man Biddle was so convinced of * Bid. of the Holy Spirit the errors of his Socinian Fathers that he even scouts them and roundly falls off to the Elder Enemies of the Holy Spirit with whom he passed for a created Person § 31. Hoping then that this may help to convince his Lordship of the Personality of the Holy Spirit of Divine Love I will a little for the sake of others endeavour also to prove the Holy Spirit not to be a created Person This will appear first from all those places in which he is said †Didym de Sp. S. l. 1. ex version Hieron Ipsum quoque Effusionis nomen increatam Spiritus Sancti substantiam probat Neque enim Deus cum Angelum mittit aut aliam creaturam effundam dicit de Angelo meo aut throno aut dominatione to be put or poured out upon Men which is no where spoken of Angels which yet are Spirits ministring to the Heirs of Salvation which argument convinced the Socinians of the Macedonian Error But a Divine Virtue though in its Energies it recede not from God yet because of those influences is it self said and in a manner seems to be poured out upon and communicated to divinely-inspired Souls into which a connatural congenial or consimilar Virtue is thereby infused So the Spirit of God poured out upon all Flesh Joel 2.28 29. is a Virtue substantially intrinsical to the Deity which yet St. Peter testifies to be the same Spirit which acted the Apostles at the Feast of Pentecost Act. 2. and which is celebrated with Personal Titles Pronouns and Attributes Joh. c. 14. c. 15. c. 16. And herein also is asserted his omnipresence as also by the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon ch 1. v. 7. The Spirit of the Lord filleth the World and by the Psalmist Psal 139.7 Whither shall I go then from thy Spirit or whither shall I flee from thy presence Here the Spirit of God cannot be a middle Virtue inspiring David since this he had no reason to dread or shun and yet all Men by sinning especially by knavery and doubling shun and fly from this Grace too easily Nor are the acts of Divine Vengeance ever called the Spirit of God in the Patient Neither is this Spirit of God here a created Spirit whose Presence cannot be escaped since the Psalmist here only speaks of God's Presence and Power See onward to v. 17. And further * Didym de Sp. S. l. 1. Demonstratur Angelica Virtus ab hoc prorfus aliena Angelus quippe qui aderat verbi gratia Apostolo in Asia oranti non poterat simul eodem tempore adesse aliis in caeteris partibus constitutis Vid. praeced seq praed Athanas omnino Disp con Arium though one created Angel can follow one single or more sociated Men wheresoever we can suppose one way for their flight yet one single Angel cannot at once follow or be present to all Men in all their Dispersions which omnipresence however all Men ought to own in the Spirit of God Now if any Man shall urge that the Words thy Spirit are put for thee as my Spirit for I Gen. 6.3 The same Psalmist's same words in a full literal intention Psal 51.11 Cast me not away from thy presence and take not thy Holy Spirit from me must interpret our present Text without a circumlocution as many others will that of Gen. 6.3 And yet admitting a Figure or Trope it represents the Spirit of God as God which is what I contend for as being internal to the Divine Mind Esa 40.13 14. With this Omnipresence he hath also a Divine Empire by which he distributes all the Divine Graces to whom and as he will every where 1 Cor. 12.11 All which put together doth more fully set forth the Singularity Omnipresence and Supremacy of the Holy Spirit than those mere forms of Speech which as they are attributed to the Holy Spirit in the Kingdom of God are also attributed to the Prince of Devils in the Kingdom of Darkness which is Biddle's grand Evasion from our Arguments taken from such sayings that the Spirit dwells in us teaches us c. for these and such like expressions are uttered of the Devil that he deceives the World blinds the Souls of Unbelievers Captivates Impenitents takes away the Word out of the hearts of the Hearers became a lying Spirit in Four Hundred Prophets c. which sayings do not indeed denote the Devil 's Personal Omnipresence to all at once but only that he thus reacheth Men by his Ministers which Biddle would perswade us of the Holy Spirit also but they had certainly denoted a terrestrial Omnipresence if it had been added that there is but one only Evil Spirit and that he alone by his own Personal Operations had thus acted on all wicked Men and that no mortal Man can avoid his Presence and Power none of which is expressed of the Devil and yet if it had his exclusion out of Heaven is asserted also where yet the Holy Spirit of God dwells and shines in essential Glory not to
mention also that the Devil who long time universally tyrannized is yet never said to be poured out upon all Flesh But now the aforesaid Attributes given to the Prince of Devils manifestly set forth his Supremacy in the Kingdom of Darkness and therefore in the Kingdom of God the like Phrases of the Holy Spirit of God must denote his Supremacy therein and by consequence his Deity since God alone is the one Supreme King of that Kingdom and thus our Faith is established firmly against the Macedonians also § 32. Now of what hath been said thus much I believe would be granted by all the Anti-personists that there is in God the Father an essential Reason and Spirit of Sanctity though not personally subsistent For a Person being with them a complete suppositum rationale and intellectual Subject or Being separate and standing single from all others they hold it a contradiction to hold three Persons in one individual Deity § 33. To this I hope to give so just and candid an answer as may embolden his Lordship to joyn in the Litany heartier and to speak clearer next time in his Theological Essays The name Person or whatsoever answers thereto in the learned Languages first of all signifies a Man's Face natural and artificial and thence the whole single Man hence after were the Gods in profane and intellectual Spirits in sacred Writings represented personally and so now the Term Person agrees to all single intelligent Beings by common and inartificial use But we that have no natural Idea of the Modes of Subsistence peculiar to Father Son and Holy Spirit without Divine Revelation cannot without it conceive the form of their Personality So for this we must rest wholly on Divine Revelation And accordingly I would describe a Person for a Theological Term thus whatsoever hath Personal Titles and Characters properly attributed to it by God's Word the same is a Person though we cannot frame an Idea of the form of its Personality And then I can add but the Divine Mind Reason and Holy Spirit have three properly distinguishing Personal Characteristick Titles Father Son and Paraclete to be owned in our avowed Faith and Baptism therefore these three are three distinct Persons though we cannot form a natural Idea of the Mode of their Personality * Aug. de Tempor Ser 189 Ego Personas in Patre Filio Spiritu Sancto non dico quasi personas hominum Personam Patris dico quod Pater est Filii quod Filius est Spiritus Sancti quod Spiritus Sanctus est dividuntur enim proprietatibus sed naturâ sociantur and though yet we are sure they are not separate and disjoyned like three Humane Persons In this mystery therefore the sense of this term is not vulgar nor of common Notion but peculiarly and necessarily Technical For since God hath revealed that in the Unity of his Nature there is one first Principle with two other co-eternally emanant or descendent from him and subsisting individually in him by which he created and governs all things and this under the Personal and Distinctive Characters of Father Son and Holy Spirit the Paraclete and many other Personal Attributes distinctive of their proper Subsistences in the Essential Unity of the Godhead the Term Person fell unavoidably into Canonical use though under a strict care against the vulgar notion of Humane or such like separate Persons and restrained only to the revealed Theories of the Mystery And under this regular limitation I challenge the Art of the World to sind out any one Characteristick Term so fit proper and congruous to denote their formal Personalities ascribed to them in the Scripture as this of Person in which the whole Catholick Church of old unanimously agreed antecedently to any Conciliar Definitions and is therefore of greater Antiquity and Authority than the Greek Hypostasis which though well founded in * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. 1. 3. yet was a while of ambiguous use and interpretation till it was by the help of Athanasius and others canonically adjusted and fixed according to the sense of our Term Person And yet supposing a sensible defect in these Terms Person and Subsistence what modest Man would upbraid the whole Church of God for such an insuperable impotency in Humane Nature which all wise Men perceive and own in their speaking of God after its utmost endeavours cares and consultations upon cogent necessities to fix the terms of our Faith and Doctrine in the best manner possible while yet the Revilers can produce nothing better or equal 'T is certainly an intollerable indecency against the Gravity Duty Care and Right ' of Men that are in Authority of proscribing Doctrines in any Profession what soever for to such certainly it belongs to fit Terms of Art to their Theories as reason shall require as well as they can without the merit or hazard of malevolence and detraction § 34. But because I would fill the thirsty and candid Soul with a satisfying Theory herein I will dig deeper into the grounds of these Personal Characters in the Scriptures and the Traditional Term of Person thence Canonically used First then Personality is a Character only of what is substantial and intellectual as are the Father Son and Holy Spirit the Paraclete who therefore have a good ground of bearing those Personal Titles But tho' these peculiar Titles have this common Basis yet have they their peculiar and formal reasons of Distinction The first Principle of all being called Father from his Eternal generation of the Logos which is called Son from being so eternally generated of the Father's Substance without division or partition thereof And * Con. Arian Orat. 2. here the Father being ever Father never Son and the Logos ever Son never Father St. Athanasius justly as well as sagaciously appropriates these Titles to these Persons in a primary Right and peculiar Excellency above all others since earthly Persons change their Character being one while Sons other while Fathers and Sons other while Fathers only and other while neither The Personal Distinctives of the Holy Spirit are taken from his connatural Operations and Offices which are Personal and the Titles therefore apposite Now that the essential Reason and Spirit of God the Father should each be as equally Personal as the Socinians themselves confess the Father to be will hence appear rational for that they are consubstantial with him and as substantially Divine as that Eternal Mind from and in which they are and live without any inequality in their Nature Perfection or essential Dignity And therefore if one be distinctly Personal so must the others also And therefore the Pronoun He first belonging to God original i. e. the Father as the first Person is properly also communicable to the other Persons each of them deriving their Deity and Personal subsistence from him with peculiar reasons of their proper Personal Characters and Distinctions And hence it was necessary to a just
but only in the Humanity if one could see his inside since he * 45. That Divine Person in whom dwelt the Eternal Word c. makes the Manhood it self a Person distinct from the Eternal Word that dwelt therein and instead of confuting †P. 32. helps those Criticks that place their first Conceptions of the Sonship in the Humanity and as to the Union he is so ambiguous that he tells us not whether the Father and the Holy Spirit came into this resulting Personality or no only saying without any peculiar restriction that God and Man became one Person thus leaving a latitude for various Heresies in this Mystery § 11. So much then for the Personality Advance we next to the Deity of the Messias * P. 40. We believe saith he that Christ was God by vertue of the Indwelling of the Eternal Word in him The Jews could make no Objection to this who knew that their Fathers had worshipped the Cloud of Glory because of God's resting upon it And this he lays as a foundation on which he may properly Deifie Christ's Humane Nature But this Jewish Doctrine is absolutely false and is but either an heedless or willfull Depravation of the Learned Dr. Whithy's chast and accurate * Tractat. de ver Jes Christ Deitat p. Theories herein To make which appear in its proper visage let us consider what Worship is in the sense of his Lordship with whom it imports †Lord of Sarum P. 38. not only Incurvation of Body which may be paid to Creatures but Acts of Faith and Trust Prayers and Praises c. Now will his Lordship stare me or any Man in the face and say that the Jews did thus Worship the Cloud of Glory This I think will be routed by one Syllogism whatsoever the Jews worshipped according to the Law was God The Cloud of Glory was not God Ergo the Jews did not Worship the Gloud of Glory I take it for granted that this Syllogism is impenetrable and let his Lordship try his skill upon it if he please It is indeed agrecable to truth and learned Men teach that Isreal worshipped God in the Cloud over the Ark in the Temple as in all the Symbols and Places of his especial Presence but the Symbols or Places themselves were not the Objects of the Jewish Adoration though Papists bend this to the Adoration of the Host And as simple as the Fathers are they can inform his Lordship †Just Mart. Dial. cum Tryph. ad ista Psalm 24. Quis est Rex Gloriae Dominus Exercitumm c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that every Man whatsoever will own that in Psalm 24. neither Solomon nor the Tabernacle or Ark of the Testimony was the King of Glory which they adored Yet that his Lordship's Concelts may have fair usage I am content to lay together all that he has said to this purpose to try whether they are in truth sound or adulterated or whether they can bear a fair Tryal He therefore teaches †P. 36. that 't is evident from several forms of expressing that Cloud of Glory that a constant and immediate visible Indwelling of the Jehovah was according to Scripture Phrase said to be Jehova which was applied to nothing else This the Greek render 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Term the Apostles universally applying to our Saviour could mean no other but that he was the true Jehovah by a more perfect dwelling of the Deity in him c. Now here are two great Absurdities first that the visible Indwelling of the Jehovah is in Scripture phrase called Jehova and secondly that this Name was applied to nothing else For first 't is he that dwelt between the Cherubims in a symbol of Glory over the Ark first in the Tabernacle after in the Temple is called Jehovah not his very Habitation 'T is the Title of the Resident not the Residence and so his Lordship himself applies it also in contradiction either to himself or the Scripture if he expounds it rightly That which perhaps led his Lordship into this fancy is that Shechinah Grammatically signifies Habitation and is thence taken by the Rabbins in a sense peculiarly sacred for the Majestick Presence of God between the Cherubims c. and that he takes to be called Jehova But his Lordship was not at leisure to apprehend that the Rahbinick use has turned the Grammatical notation of Habitation that is but an accident and made it to import that substantial Light and Glory the Symbol of the Divine Presence the Scripture word Glory and the Rabbinick Term Shechinah being equivalent For the Rabbins by Shechinah mean not mere presence but that Lucid Glory by which God presentiated himself But if his Lordship will excuse this unacouracy and say That This Glory is called Jehova in the Scripture yet this is also false and will not serve his turn For this Shechinah is called * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Glory of Jehovah and God is called †Psal 24. the King and * Act. 7.2 God of Glory with relation to the Shechinah yet no Man will change the terms Glory of Jehovah thus The Jehovah of Jehovah or the God or King of Glory into this form The God or King of Jehovah which yet might be done if Jehova were the name of that Glory When Moses asked Jehovah to see a greater and more Majestatick Glory of the Divine Presence and that Jehovah made his Glory to pass by Exod. 33.18 21 22. The Glory is plainly distinguished from the Jehovah For Moses would not pray thus O Jehovah shew me thy Jehovah nor would the Jehovah say my Jehovah shall pass by Jehovah therefore was not the mere Shechinah either God's Habitation or the Cloud of Glory but he that presentlated himself therein And hence the ritual Worship of Israel though performed toward that Cloud was yet performed not to it but to him whose Majesty so appeared in or by it Nor does this Symbol adequately come up to the Mystery of the personal Union for God's inhabiting in a Cloud of Glory did not make a personal Union between God and the Cloud as the in habitation of God in Christ Humane Nature being of an higher and more intimate and unitive Connexion did which yet however doth not really turn our Nature in Christ into Deity except we will go over to Eutychianism and a confusion of Substance nor do we adore his Humanity as so Deified but we Worship the Eternal Son of God united to and mediating for us in our Nature § 12. But whereas his Lordship has out-pitched all Mortals in saying That in Scripture Phrase Jehova never imports any thing else but a constant and visible immediate Inhabitation which has been sufficiently baffled in the precedent Section I will adventure to advance and say that in the Scripture the word Jehovah is used for God without any imaginable respect to such a Shechinah In the Book of Job it is
very often found yet there being no Shechinah in his Land of Vz the Author or Translator could not use the term Jehovah concerning God appearing in the Shechinah of the Children of Israel for Job was an Alien and of the Line of Esau In those infinite Places where the Creation and all other Divine Works without the Land of Canaan are attributed to Jehovah there the name has no respect to the Shechinah Wheresoever he is mentioned by this name in Affairs among the Ten Tribes after their separation by Jeroboam from the Worship at Jerusalem there is no respect to the Shechinah for he had no such among the Ten Tribes When Ezekiel in Captivity before the destruction of the Temple mentions the Oracles of Jehovah or God by this name in the Land of the Chaldeans he has no respect to a Shechinah When the Temple was destroyed there was never any Shechinah restored to that Temple any more yet the inspired Pen-men after this call him by the name Jehovah for which I referr his Lordship to the Bible or the Concordances And to conclude the Eternal Wisdom of the Father speaking by Solomon calls him Jehovah with respect to such a time as was before all possibility of a Shechinah Prov. 8.22 Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of his way before his works of old And truly if Jehovah were the name of God only as in the Shechinah then as it did not belong to him before the Shechinah so it ceases to appertain to him since the extinction thereof in the dissolution of the first Temple except his Lordship will have it revive again by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Habitation of God in Christ's Humane Nature But then as often as it was used by the High Priest if not others under the second Temple and after the cessation of other Prophets till Christ came by his Lordship's Criticism it must be improper and the Prophets that called God Jehovah after the Destruction of the Temple did misname him But after all to keep up an old custom his Lordship adds another contradiction for he says * P. 38. Jehovah is a federal name of God Now if so then was it properly used of God all the while the Jews were in the Old Covenant with God which was till the Death of Christ surely and consequently all that tract of time in which there was no Shechinah from the ruin of the first Temple was this name most proper § 13. From the Jewish Shechinah come we to Christ of whom his Lordship thus teaches * P. 40. that Christ was God by vertue of the Indwelling of the Eternal Word in him †P. 35. that the Jehovah dwelt so immediately and bodily in Christ Jesus that by that Indwelling he was truly Jehovah * P. 37. that he was the true Jehovah by a more perfect Indwelling of the Deity in him than that had been which was in the Cloud Now this must be grounded upon a Principle or Maxim That whatsoever the Delty immediately inhabits as it did the Cloud and the Humanity of Christ that thing becomes God and the true Johovah by virtue of that Inhabitation and therefore the Cloud and the Humanity of Christ were the true Jehovah by this Residence and if so the Cloud and Christ are substantially the same thing though yet the Cloud hath ceased to be for many Ages And by the same Doctrine the inner Sanctuary of the Tabernacle and the Temple and much more the Temples of our Bodies and Souls in which Christ as God dwells immediately by his Holy Spirit are the true Jehovah also by virtue of this Inhabitation And besides all these absurdities his Lordship's terms exclusively diversifie the whole Christ who is inhabited from the Eternal Word which does inhabit in him and so according to his Lordship he becomes if not a Socinian yet a sactitious God one way or other § 14. Ay But does not the Apostle justifie his Lordship's form of speaking when he saith * Col. 2.9 that in Christ dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily which his Lordship †P. 40. cites for his Authority These are indeed the Apostle's Words and his Lordship cunningly referrs to them though never intended to his Lordship's Consequences and Imagnations For the Apostle seems to oppose the Gnostick Pleromata excluding Christ from the Supreme Pleroma and Divinity Now things are inexistent in others either as things contained in things containing or as parts in the whole or one part in another The first Mode cannot belong to the inexistence of the Deity in our nature the second or third form of inexistence may be conveniently asserted here For first the whole Christ being a Compositum of the Word and Manhood the God-head of the Word may be said to be in Christ as part in the whole But if you take Christ here Synecdochically for that part of him which is distinct from the God-head which is often done sometimes expresly as the Man Christ Jesus sometimes implicitly from the necessary sense of the Texts then this Text will be thus interpretable In Christ i.e. the Man Christ or his Manhood dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead as the superior in the inferior part of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and as the Soul in a Body But neither of these Senses inferr that all that in which the fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily as a Soul in a Body is thereby really God and the true Jehovah for this would inferr an Eutychian confusion of Natures and Attributes To illustrute this his Lordship may observe that we say an excellent Soul is found in this Man either as part in the whole or strictly as the whole Man is put only for the Body yet no Man will hence inferr that all that in which the excellent Soul dwells thereby becomes a true Soul for this would confound the two Natures into one And truly as the formal Structure of his Lordship's words is heretical so his Arguments for it from the Jewish Shechinah are Idolatrous and will justifie Idolatry i.e. Creature-Worship both in Jews and Christians 'T is true indeed the Fathers generally teach a gracious adoptive and metaphorical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of our nature in Christ and of all Saints by him but not so as to make that Nature or these Saints the true Jehovah notwithstanding their mutual coinhabitation to all Eternity § 15. It must be allowed and I allow it freely that the Argument brought from the perpetual rendring of Jehovah by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the signal appropriation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the New Testament to our Lord while both Testaments establish only one and the same Lord is in it self exceeding good and urged generally by most learned Men to this purpose but however it is almost marred by his Lordship's conjuring up an Objection which he had not skill enough to lay The great Objection * P. 37. says he that ariseth
the Son on which account he hath personal and distinctive Pronouns and Attributes given him Which shews the form of distinction to be Personal and the different Mode of their descent origination and mission So much therefore of the Modes of their distinction being taught by the Scriptures is also well taught by the Church and ought to have been so by his Lordship though other Modes of this Subsistence that are not revealed pass our measures and capacities and Men's inauthentick speculations on them are not to be admitted for Catholick or Canonical § 4. And now we come to consider the exorbitances of the Fathers in their teaching the Respects and Modes of this Unity and Distinction †P. 31. In this saith his Lordship too many both Ancients and Moderns have perhaps gone beyond due bounds while some were pleased with the Platonical Notions of Emanations and a foecundity in the Divine Essence Now here it must be noted that the Ancients and Moderns which his Lordship here speaks of are the Defenders of the Faith of the Trinity against the Arian and other Ancient Heresies Now as great Friends as my Lord and Petavius are I would fain know how they can be reconciled herein For if * Petav. citat Bullo in Prooem Defens Fid. Nicen. p. 8. Arius were a genuine Platonist in the created pre-existence of the Logos how came any of the Anti-Arian Ancients to be Platonick in their Doctrines of Eternal Pre-existence and Emanations 'T is hard that Arians and Catholick Fathers should both be in the same Platonick Errors in a point in which they were contradictory and in which alone their great division was founded But as for the Eternal Emanations asserted by the Fathers they were taught purely from all ill mixtures of Platonists and others in that while they from sacred Tradition assert those Effluxes yet they all deny them to be like corporeal Emanations by corporeal abscissions or divisions of parts It would be endless to cite places of this kind Let it suffice that the Doctrine of Emanation * Sap. Sal. 7.25 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 was pure Jewish Theology by which term received into the forms of Christian Theology they meant the derivation of the whole Divinity from the Father to the Logos and the Holy Spirit without †Athan. Expos Fid. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Id. de Syn. Nic. con Arian decret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 any division or partition of Substance For the truth of which I referr instead of many to one Athanasius that spake the sense of the whole Church in his time and of the Fathers before him Now the Fathers all denying an emanation which like that of Bodies consists in abscission of Parts will hereby be discharged from the fancies of Platonick Emanations which the * P. 28. Defender of Dr. Sherlock's Notion of a Trinity in Unity charges with such Abscission in the Platonick Triad We are not yet advanced to the Beatisick Vision nor the tongues of Angels nor if we were could we adequately describe the glorious Mysteries of these Divine Subsistences yet God himself gives us leave to speak of his revealed Truths herein according to our infirmities that we who see these Mysteries remotely and only by dark resemblances may communicate those notions in as remote forms of expression while we keep however to the Schemes himself has set us and embase those Theories with no Humane Corruptions And hence I freely allow the words of Emanation as being taken from the Images of corporeal Effluxes not to be fully equal to the Mystery intended but such as would be apt to lead us into crass and material conceptions of the Deity did not our Theology expresly forefend us But under this guard the terms are not only innocent but Authentick and that Authority with the Fathers descended not from Plato but from Canonical and allowed Scriptures which have set corporeal Emanations as dark Symbols of these internal Communications of the Divine Essence in the Trinity of which sort of Similes are the * Athan. ad Serap Sp. S. non esse Creaturam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Id. de Syn. Nic. con Arian Decret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Vid. con Arian Orat. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Rays and Emanations of Light and Glory and the streams of Fountains from which in the Scriptures the Fathers have taken those Emanatory forms of expression which therefore owe not their Authority or Reception to Plato that so his Lordship should call them Platonical in derogation to the Grandeur of the Christian Theology like the reproach of Amelius upon St. John as if he also had preached the Philosopher 'T is true indeed the Primitive Fathers writing for our Faith against Gentilism do often cite this Philosopher not as an Author of our Principles but as a good witness to the Greeks for their Credibility though sometimes when upbraided with him by the Heathens they freely call him a plagiary of the Jewish and Sacred Theology which he afterwards cook'd up after a Greek Mode Now the Corruptions in Plato's Doctrine of the Trinity the Fathers use not nor are pleased with but those seeds of true Theology that are in him they love and cherish not as Plato's but as God's the Wisdom of God having graciously permitted some Notions and Rudiments of Faith to be conveyed to the Wise of the Heathen before the publication of Christianity to prepare a way for its after-reception and vindication among them And having thus vindicated the Ancients in their Doctrines of these Essential Emanations let me observe how tectly sly and abusive his Lordship's Reflexion on them is Some saith he were pleased with the Platonical Notions of Emanation as if all the Catholick Ancients had not the same Notions of Emanation but some were for and some against these Emanations But here it had been fair to have graced the Margin with the Catalogue of the Emanatory and Antiemanatory Ancients and I do here urge and challenge his Lordship to produce them in foro to speak for themselves before sentence be passed upon them This I doubt is an hard task but a demand that cannot be denied me without shame But it seems these Platonick Ancients were grown old unto Dotage and become Children again and as such were pleased poor Souls with the pretty Baubles that Plato invented for them and thus we have made a good beginning upon the Fifth Commandment if the Sense thereof may extend to the Fathers of our Religion and the Church § 5. To the absurdity of Emanations succeeds that of foecundity in the Divine Essence which his Lordship taxes in both Ancients and Moderns that is most eminently in St. Athanasius and Bishop Pearson that were in their respective Ages the exactest and gravest Divines in the World without exception or diminution
especially on this Hypothesis That the Sun is a Globe of fire as to the Eye it seems to be On this notion I think it proper even without a Trope But why will not his Lordship allow me a Trope if the truth needs it in accensum who requires it for himself in Lumen For without a Trope Lumen doth not signifie either Candle or Fire and if all the words must be taken in their Primitive intention then his Lordship loses his pretence that this place speaks of two Candles or two Fires But had it here really signified Fire yet it does not hence follow that it speaks of two separate Fires since St. Hilary has found ignem in igne and lumen de lumine accensum in the same Fire Which answer I shall give also if any Man shall object that * Cit. Bullo Defens Fid. Nicen. p. 368. of Hippolytus tanquam lumen de lumine aquam ex fonte aut radium à Sole where the lumen de lumine and the radius à Sole being both distinctly set with another Simile interposed I take lumen de lumine in general to respect all sorts of luminaries whatsoever which send forth a coaeval Ray or sort of flaming Light from their Original Substance without any diminution So much for his Lordship and Tertullian § 8. But there are two passages offered to my consideration that seem much more apposite to his Lordship's purpose one out of Justin Martyr the other out of Tatian his Scholar which I will exactly consider Justin in his Dialogue with Trypho had asserted that in the beginning before all Creatures God begat out of himself a certain rational Virtue or Power which is also called the Glory of the Lord by the Holy Spirit and sometimes Son and sometimes Wisdom and sometimes Angel and sometimes God and sometimes Lord and Word sometimes he calls himself the Captain of an Host when he appeared in the shape of a Man to Joshua the Son of Nun. For that he is capable of all appellations in that he ministreth to his Father's will and for that he was begotten by * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Interpreter leaves out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so the consequents require the Will of the Father after the manner we see a word produced in us For when we utter a word we beget it not by abscission or separation so as to lessen the internal word or reason by this utterance And as we see in Fire that out of one Fire another is kindled without the diminution of the first Fire from whence it was kindled this remaining the same And that which is kindled of it also †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 appears to subsist not having lessened that from whence it was lighted Now sometime after the Father shews the reason to those Jews why he so often repeated this truth because saith he I know that there are some willing to prevent me and pretend that the Power that appeared from the Father of all things unto Moses or to Abraham or Jacob is called Angel in its progression unto Men because by it the purposes of the Father are declared unto Men. And that it is called Glory because it presents it self in an incomprehensible appearance and Man because it appears in such humane shapes as the Father will and they call it Word because it brings the speeches of God unto Men. They say also that this Power is indivisible and inseparable from the Father after the same manner as they say the light of the Sun upon the Earth is not to be cut off or separated from the Sun which is in Heaven but when he sets the Light is carried off with it So say they the Father when he pleaseth causeth his Power †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to leap forth to fly abroad and when he listeth retracts it again to himself After this manner also they teach that he makes Angels But now that there are Angels always abiding and not resolved again into that of which they were made hath been already demonstrated and withal * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 videntur vitiosa it hath been abundantly shewn so of this power which the Prophetick Word calls God and Angel and that he is not as the Light of the Sun only †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nominally numbred but really is another in number I have shewn by exquisite reason in my former discourses in short when I said this virtue was begotten by his Power and Will not by Resection as if the Essence of the Father were divided asunder as all other things divided and parted are not the same they were before the division And for example's sake I took those instances as we see from one Fire other Fires kindled that Fire not being lessened from whence many may be kindled but remaining the same Thus Justin. By which it appears that these kind of Pro-Sabellians used the Simile of the Sun and its light to prove the Logos non-subsistent no Person Son or Angel of the Father and therefore Justin rejected that Simile by which the Sun and its Light and God and his Logos are only nominally distinguished and took the Simile of Fires kindled from Fires in which there is none of that diminution which those Adversaries object to our Doctrine of the consubstantiality and both Fires subsist really after one is kindled from the other in a true diversity If then Justin threw off the Simile of the Sun as favouring the Heresie after called Sabellian and took that of Fires kindled from other Fires as Tatian also uses the Simile of Torches lighted from Torches is it not probable that our Light of Light came from these Similes used by Justin and Tatian which are neither Sabellian as putting two subsistent subjects nor Arian as illustrating the Homoousion In answer to this I need be but very short that Justin doth not speak of the Eternal Internal and Substantial Emanation of the Logos but of his first progression at the Will of his Father to the Creation of all things that this progression was a kind of generation or nativity was the unanimous conception I think of all the Philosophick Ancients because as here below nativity produceth the Child into light and action that was before wrapp'd up secretly in the Womb quiescent and non-apparent so the Logos by this emission from the Father to the Creation of all things did in a manner come out of the Father's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to use the words of Theophilus Antiochenus to the publick sight apprehension or perception of the intellectual World created by him and acted also providentially in every part of the Creation Nor was this form of Theology ever condemned in the Church though it was not made or esteemed matter of necessary Faith or Doctrine Now the Nature of this Theory was that * Athenag Leg. Edit Oxon. p. 38. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Whom yet he there calls
Simile and always alledged it to the explication of the Nicene form without fear of being impeached of Sabellianism But as for Justin's Simile of several Fires and Tatian's several Torches though the invaluable Dr. Bull 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hereby well shews that these Ancients held the Homoousion yet * Bull Defen Fid. Nie. p. 357. Similia autem quae post ea quae hue usque explicavimus adbibet Tatianus ad mysterium sive aeternae productionis sive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 utcunque iâ—â—â—strandum nolo omnino praestare c. he confesses Tatian's Simile which is the same with Justin's to be lame and such as he will not make out and so with this note I conclude this long disquisition § 9. But before we leave this our form of Faith it may not be amiss to find it out a better Original Now the Glorious purity of the Divine Essence is such that for it we have no adequate conception and therefore we are forced to celebrate it by names of the greatest Glories and Purities which we know and which seem by the intention of God in Nature to be Symbols of it And of all these the most Excellent is Light This in General St. Paul * Eph. 5.13 excellently defines that †〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 à 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inde 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. whatsoever doth make manifest is Light according to the Greek derivation of the Word And accordingly the Vrim in the Pontifick Pectoral is by the Septuagint rendred 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 So that that which is most excellently manifeslative that is the most perfect and true Light Of these there must be two sorts according to the two great parts of the Mundane System i. e. intellectual and corporeal and of these the intellectual are really the nobler and of these the manifestative Light of the Deity must be the truest and highest of all upon which no Manichean darkness can border Hence St. John saith that * 1 Joh. 1.5 God is light and in him is no darkness at all which is originally true of God the Father and as really true of the Son and Holy Spirit For of the Son the same St. John saith †Joh. 1.9 That he is the true Light that Lighteth every Man that cometh into the World and if true then not Parabolical or Metaphorical Only So that as the Scriptures teach the Father to be originally God and the Son really God of God the Father so when they teach God the Father to be true original Light and the Son to be true Light also by immediate consequence they teach the Son to be true Light of Light Original like that Text which the Fathers apply to this purpose In thy Light shall we see Light So that our Light of Light is not the product of a Simile in two Candles but a literal truth revealed in the Scriptures and thence as truly taken as God of God And we may as well deny the reality and truth of the Life of God deny him to be the living God though he himself swears by that Life and attests the truth of it as to deny that he is true Light which is expresly asserted of the Father and the Son Now the Son being what he is from the Father here is literal Scripture for Light of Light Light indeed inaccessible yet Light true and essential And from hence I dare deduce the Nicene form instead of that Chandlers Shop whence his Lordship's fancy had its illumination Here then will I fix his Lordship in this Question Whether the Logos the Son of God be really what the Scripture calls him true Light and Life If not I yield the Argument but at his Lordship's peril But if he really be then the Creed is true without a Metaphor from Divine Revelation not from humane conceits and adumbrations As for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I grant it a term metaphorical but that is nor in the Creed perhaps because a Simile and the same like all Similes below the dignity of the Hypostasis represented thereby but however this is nothing to his Lordship's pretty Simile that he found out for the good old Faith and Fathers but the Light of Light is as literally true as any thing spoken of God can be or is in Holy Scripture § 10. But supposing many Fathers had borrowed their dim light from these Candles yet it seems it led them like an Ignis fatuus into strange brakes if as his †Lordship taxes them * P. 31. in this way of explaining this matter they have said many things which intimate that they believed an inequality between the Persons and a subordination of the second and third to the first That the Fathers do teach a Pensonal Gradation or Subordination in the Deity Igrant and for the account hereof I referr to Dr. Bull 's fourth Section of his Great Monument of the Faith But had these Fathers fallen into the conceit of this Simile of Souls propagated from Souls or Candles lighted from Candles I cannot see how they could have bended it to assimilate such or any Subordination For there is none such between Souls propagated from Souls or Candles lighted from Candles though there be succession of time Beside Inequality and Subordination either Respects Essences or Persons and his Lordship ought to have named the particular sort least his Reader should be apt to mistake that these Fathers held an essential Inequality and Subordination as many Heresies did and the terms to common Ears will seem to import but this he leaves undetermined that we may not see him in the dark Besides even in the Personal Subordination his Lordship ought to have been clear that it signifies no proper Inferiority or Subjection such as is between supreme and inferiour Authorities among Men the plenitude of the Highest not being imparted to the Subject Governour which no Fathers assert in the Trinity and yet the terms of Inequality and Personal Subordination simply set without an explanatory guard will to common senses suggest this wrong Notion as the Sense of the Fathers though their Subordination is explicitely no other but what consists in the order of Emanations and the Operations ad extra accordingly the Father originally working all things by the Logos and the Holy Spirit who therefore were commonly called * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ministers and Officers to the Father till Hereticks took up their Words and Authorities for a Cavil to a greater degradation than ever was intended or would have been endured by those Fathers Wherefore his Lordship is obliged by all Laws of integrity to shew the exorbitancy of this Subordination which they all own or if not to prove that these Ancient Souls and Candlesticks propagated the Doctrine of any other Subordination which I dare undertake he can never do but without doing it must incurr the guilt of defaming the Innocent that are now with God § 11. But
grant such a conception allowable that there may be three that may have a diversity of Operations as well as Oeconomies For if he be no Tritheist in allowing this Conception why does he reflect on it as Tritheite in the Fathers And yet his Lordship diversifies the Operations much more exclusively each of other Person than any Fathers do and in such a manner as inferrs a Tetrad in the Deity in which according to his Lordship the Father must be a second Principle For his words run thus †P. 42. In the Divine Essence which is the simplest and perfectest Vnity there may be three that may have a diversity of Operations as well as Oeconomies By the first God may be supposed to have made and to govern all things by the second to have actuated and been most perfectly united to the Humanity of Christ and by the third to have inspired the Penmen of the Scriptures and the Workers of Miracles and still to renew and purifie all good Minds all which notwithstanding we firmly believe there is but one God Now whatsoever acts by another is distinct from that other by which it acts and prior in the Agency by the order of Reason If then God acts by the first which is the Father that God is in Nature and Subsistence antecedent to the Father and the first hath a former and if God who acts by three be distinct from those three by which he acts there are then four Distincts and Distinctions in the Deity or else the three are not essential in the Deity but only operant and unsubstantial Powers and Qualities Yet is it against Faith to say that God acts or creates by the Father because it makes him secondary by an unallowable conception the Canonical Faith herein being that God original or God the Father acts by his Son and Holy Spirit But whether we make the Father primary or secundary if we attribute the Creation to him exclusively of the Logos and Holy Spirit and the Inspirations to the Spirit exclusively of the Father and the Son and the Divine Operations in the Union of our Nature with the Logos to the Logos only exclusively of the Father and Holy Spirit according to his Lordship's scheme of conceptions we rove from truth from Scripture from Catholick Tradition which ascribes these to the single Persons by a peculiar respect of Oeconomick Order but not by an exclusive propriety of Operation And yet though his Lordship recommends this conception of such a separate Agency in his three Divine Anonymities yet can he find no such incongruities in the received Doctrines of those his despised Fathers But 't is time to take breath and consider what reformation following extinguished this Tritheism in the Catholick Church and Faith Why Others therefore laid another foundation in one numerical Deity or Being Now what is this but to insinuate nay openly to assert that the former Fathers that believed Emanations and Foecundity and argued from the specifick Homoousion with the respective Operations did not fundamentally own one individual Deity And yet how could they that stuck to the Nicene Creed deny the fundamental Article of one God which yet all the taxed Fathers defended as the Faith of all the former Fathers who made the Monarchy a fundamental Principle against Gentilism and were herein exactly and professedly followed by all their Successors Nay the feature of his Lordship's reflexion seems to attaint all Antiquity of Tritheism till after the Doctors of the specifick Homoousion and distinct Operations ceased as not holding the Unity of the Godhead for his conjunction therefore makes this Unity a post-nate Principle taken up upon the apprehension that the former Doctrines of the Church were Tritheite according to his Lordship's general Imputation § 14. And now it seems high time to observe upon what fancies for they are represented as such these Tritheite Principles were reformed by these over seri patrum nepotes * They then observed †P. 32. that the Sun besides its own Globe had an Emanation of Light and another of Heat which had different Operations and all from the same Essence And that the Soul of Man had both Intallection and Love which flowed from its Essence So they conceived that the Primary Act of the Divine Essence was its Wisdom by which it saw all things and in which as in an Eternal Word it designed all things This they thought might be called the Son as being the generation of the Eternal Mind while from the fountain Principle together with the inward Word there did arise a Love that was to issue forth and that was to be the Soul of the Creation and was more particularly to animate the Church and in this Love all things were to have life and favour This was rested on and was afterwards dressed up with a great deal of dark nicety by the Schools and grew to be the universally received explanation So that it seems these conceptions these reforming conceptions are very novel and the Doctrine derived from them became not universal but by the Definitions of the Schools § 15. But before we come to justifie their due Antiquity let us consider whether as his Lordship represents them the Tritheism of the former Fathers were really amended by them For in this Simile here are two Emanations from the Globe of the Sun Light and Heat which have different Operations which if they represent different Operations of the different Persons in the Deity this reduces that Tritheism which the Simile was designed to avoid So unhappy were these Theological Tinkers in mending the former Theories § 16. But however let us see whether these Theories had not really a more early Original and Reception in the Universal Church I begin with the Simile of the Sun †Apolog c. 21. sup citat §. 7. Vide. Now Tertullian the most ancient of all our Latin Writers used this Simile and says that in respect thereof the Logos was ever backward celebrated under this Title as the Ray of God So * Instit l. 4. c. 29. ille tanquam Sol hic quasi radius à Sole porrectus Lactantius had learned the same Simile from Tertullian or his Church So †In Evan. Joh. c. 5. Tract 20. Si separas candorem Solis à Sole separa Verbum à Patre St. Austin an African likewise had from his Fathers derived the same Example of the Sun The Greek Fathers that lived in and just after the Nicene Council so often so uniformly and canonically use it who yet argued from the specifick Sense of the Homoousion that the citations of them would fill a Volume so this Fancy is not later than these Tritheit Homooufiasts And to let his Lordship see that it was an Ante-Nicene Simile not only the Scripture term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 may convince but the express production of it * Theognost ap Athan de Syn. Nic. con Arian Decret 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
word though so very variously significant is however used either absolutely as when it 's said God is a Spirit or Angels are ministring Spirits a Spirit hath not Flesh and Blood and other sayings of the same formal intention in the Word or else relatively and attributively to something whose Spirit it is or is called Of this latter form is the characteristick Title of the Spirit of God or Holy Spirit of God and Christ c. And the Word Spirit thus relatively attributed to Beings simply immaterial denotes an active Principle Power or Virtue in them and this either Potential or Moral Thus it is mentioned as a potential Principle Josh 5.1 Esa 19.3 Luk. 1.17 as a moral Principle Ezr. 1.1 5. Psal 32.2 and 34.18 and 51.10 17. Esa 57.15 Ezek. 11.19 and 36.26 Matth. 5.3 Luke 9.55 Joh. 4.23 24. Rom. 8.15 16. 1 Cor. 4.21 Eph. 4.23 1 pet 3 4. and so in infinite other places So likewise the Spirit of God seems oft to denote in him what we commonly call a Principle acting potentially but chiefly and most especially in the sanctifical Operations of all which the Holy Spirit is the proper and immediate Spring and Original Hence the Works of the Creation as attributed to the Spirit of God Job 26.13 and 33.4 where I see no reason to depart from the ordinary and canonical and characteristick sense of the Term. From which places in my opinion we may best interpret Gen. 1.2 where it is said that the Spirit of God moved or hovered upon the face of the Waters In this potential way of Operation the Spirit of God acted the Prophets Judges and other Worthies of Israel in their mighty Words and Works that exceeded the Power of Humane Nature as may be seen in very many Texts of Scripture Thus the Holy Spirit came upon the Virgin Mary and the Power of the most High did over-shadow her Luke 1.35 For I here preferr the Catholick Interpretation of the Creeds which teach this to be the supervention of the Holy Spirit from other like Texts and Universal Tradition before the sense of * Ad Autolyc p. 81. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Theophilus Antiochenus who applies them to the Logos as speaking by the Prophets though the †Symb. Constantinop 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Catholick Church hath determined the Divine Spirit that spake by them to be the third Person Which Spirit acting Elias was feared by Obadiah that it would carry the Prophet out of all discovery 1 King 18.12 And according to this potential notation we call all subtle and vigorous Powers in Nature Spirits as also the courage and activity of any animal I know the Rabbins Crellius and others make this potential Spirit to be a created effluent Virtue but the permanency of it in God with its other properties and descriptions every where exhibited in the Scriptures do evince the contrary reason it self also witnessing that God never was without an omnipotent Spirit of Holiness which may very properly consist in the essential Love of God than which what can be more vigorous active influential and productive We see how strong the Spring and Spirit of an ardent love is toward the most mighty adventures and how infinitely more must it be in the Divine Nature from which it gave Life and Spirit to universal Nature and blessed every thing according to its order and cherishes all things by a lively and penetrating Providence and drives on all the Motions and Springs of the whole Creation by a perpetual and constant impulse and at times exerted miraculous Operations to the manifestation of its transcendent Power Goodness and Holiness and thereby to the conversion of Men to the Living God But this Principle if I may so call it without offence as I design without error more exhibits its own appropriate celebrated Character of Holy to our Conceptions by actual Inspirations of Sanctity into all sanctified Minds And such is the sense of the Catholick Antiquity For being * Orig. Hom. 11. in Numer 18. de Princip l. 1. c. 8. Greg. Thaumat in Symbol Revelat. Athan con Arium Disp Dial. de Trinit Naz. de Heron Philosoph Basil con Eunom l. 5. de Sp. S. Episcop Philosopho in Concil Nicen. ap Socr. Eccl. Hist l. 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pseudo-Chrys in Matth. 7. Hom. 18. Aug. de verb. Dom. in Evan. Matth. c. 12. Ser. 11. Faustin ad Flaccil Imperat. de fide con Arian original Holiness it self it 's most connatural and consimilar Operation is the sanctifical for which cause it is signally called Holy as the substantial immediate Principle of all communications of Sanctity and Goodness to the Creatures And as a †Clem. Alex. Strom. l. 6. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Christiani 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 good and holy temper in the Soul of Man is called a good and holy Spirit which therefore acts accordingly and gives us thereby a Theory of the Holy Spirit of God So the essential Spirit of Holiness in God is if my infirmities may be permitted to speak my sense as it were the very temper of his Nature called often also his Heart and Soul under the same connotation which the impious Man is said to grieve Esa 63.10 Eph. 4.30 as being an internal and essential Principle offended by those Wits to which it bears an eternal and unalterable aversion which is also very strong and potential being †Ambr. de dignit hum condit c. 2. Greg. Nyssen de homin Opisic c. 5. Aug. in Ep. Job Tract 6. in Evang. Job c. 2. Tract 9. in c. 17. Tract 105. expresly called by some Fathers the substantial Love of God from the Authority of St. John From this property of Love Goodness and Holiness it is called by St. Paul the Spirit of Holiness Rom. 1.4 for I see no reason to recede from the canonical propriety and by Nehemias and David the good Spirit of God teaching and leading Men unto righteousness Neh. 19.20 Psal 143.10 And the Psalmist describes the Holy Spirit of God and a right Spirit in Man as consimilar Principles of moral Goodness the one as the temper of the Divine the other as the Temper of an Humane Mind Psal 51.10 11. which being by Sanctification likened to the Spirit of God is said to communicate of the Holy Spirit 2 Cor. 13.13 Philip. 2.1 whereby we are said to be one Spirit with God 1 Cor. 6.7 by being herein transformed into his Image 2 Cor. 3.18 and purified in obeying the Truth by the Spirit unto an unfeigned love of the Brethren 1 Pet. 1.22 And when St. Paul asserts the fruits of the Spirit to be Love Joy Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness Charity Righteousness and Truth Gal. 5.22 Eph. 5.9 by the Fruit he shews the nature of the Root and Principle viz. that the Spirit of God is by Nature Loving Good and Holy and by Grace endearing and sanctifical And this Character of
the Spirit of God does also illustrate the potential Notion for the more pure and unmixt any Powers are the more quick and spirituous are their Faculties and Operations from which invigorating influences of God's Holy Spirit we are not only sanctified but made fervent in Spirit Rom. 12.11 and strengthened in our inner Man Eph. 3.16 and armed against the Powers of Evil Eph. 6.17 to mortifie the deeds of the Body Rom. 8.13 and to abound in hope through the Power of the Holy Ghost Rom. 15.13 This is the mighty Spirit that acted Elias this was that Spirit that made Jeremy a defenced City and an Iron Pillar and brazen Walls against the whole Land c. Jer. 1.18 19. and supported all the Prophets Apostles and Martyrs against all the Powers of Hell and this World And yet by what influence but that of the Divine Holiness and Love by which they were not only inspired but inspirited with such holy ardours and rapturous affections of God as made them to despise and triumph over all Oppositions and to tread upon the Adder and Scorpion and all the Power of the Enemy Now if this be nor true Doctrine I desire his Lordship to refute it if it be let him forbear to flout the Ancients that taught the Holy Spirit to be Love § 25. But as I have here given a consuetudinary and canonical account of this Title from common and sacred Language so will I endeavour to add an Etymological The Word Spirit then in all our learned Languages is derived from Verbs of breathing or blowing and so primitively signifies a Breath or Gale of Air which seeming to common apprehensions the most subtil agil and penetrating of all sublunary Elements its name was therefore for want of another more suitable applied to immaterial Substances Principles and active Powers especially plastick and animant by way of eminent distinction from gross matter and passive dulness Now such immaterial and subtil Powers exert their Operation by at least a seeming spiration of influences And the moral Principles of the Mind proceed internally from it * Athan. ad Serap Sp. S. non esse Creatur 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it were by an odorous form of Spiration grateful unto it self and God the Author when good and inspired from above for a sweet savour And such a Notion the Apochryphal Wisdom of Solomon gives us of the Divine Wisdom as including in it the †Ch. 7. v. 25. Spirit of God For it is the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the breath of the Power of God and an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an Efflux of the glory of the Almighty And Job's Friend Elihu seems to have taken the Spirit of God as a Virtue or Principle in the Deity that gave him and all Men life by a spirant Operation the Spirit of God hath made me and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Breath of the Almighty hath given me life Job 33.4 referring to the Tradition thus recorded in Gen. 2.7 that God breathed into Man the Breath of Life of which * Symbol Constantinop 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we own his Spirit to be Lord and Giver But as to sanctifical Operations on created Spirits and Minds it is universally acknowledged that the Spirit of God exerts them by a Divine manner of Inspiration So that I conclude that Etymologically the Spirit of God is so called as being derived from the Father and the Son by an unconceivable manner of internal Spiration of Love essential and as inspiring into all Beings their proper Virtues and Powers by an invigorating stream of influences especially in the sanctifying Operations on our Minds by which new and holy Spirits are created in us § 26. Now lest this Spirit of Love and Holiness in the Divine Nature should be reputed Personal from its Personal Descriptions in Holy Writ some have fansied it to be a mere unsubstantial and impersonal Quality in God the Father only personated only by Trope and Figure But against these it is to be noted that he is the Spirit of the Son also and so for that cause even upon this Hypothesis the Son must be God with the Father But further there being no possible imperfection in the Deity it can admit of no unsubstantial Qualities for as they are imperfections in themselves so do they suppose an imperfection in their Subjects whether adorned or vilified by them If therefore there be a permanent Spirit of Holiness in the Deity it must be perfect and for that cause substantial And this Substantiality is the ground of that Personality which we attribute to the Father Son and Holy Spirit according to the order and measure of our Conceptions without the help of any Socinian Metonymy or Prosopopaeia according to †Aug. in Ev. Joh. c. 17. Tract 105. Spiritus est Patris Filii tanquam charitas substantialis consubstantialis amborum the Catholick and Primitive Theology asserted by St. Austin § 27. But to evade this Truth there were * See Didym de Sp. S. Hereticks of old as well as of late that fell in with the Rabbins and made the Holy Spirit a mere Operation or an effluent Virtue not in God but without and from the Deity terminated in us which †See his Book de Spirit Sancto Crellius every where calls a middle quality between the essential Power of God and its more manifest effects to which middle quality he much like his Master Socinus says Personal Attributes are given by a Metonymy or a Prosopopaeia arising sometimes from a Metonymy of the effect which is this Spirit for the efficient which is God whose Person this effected Spirit or middle Quality figuratively bears or from a Metonymy of the Adjunct which is this effected Spirit for its divinely inspired Subject whose Person also this Spirit in like manner sometimes doth sustain For the Confirmation whereof he quotes Exod. 31.3 and 35.31 comparing therewith Exod. 28.3 and 35.35 Numb 24.2 and 27.18 Deut. 34.9 Judg. 3.10 and 6.34 and 11.29 and 13 25. and 14.19 and 15.14 1 Sam. 10.6 10. and 11.6 and 16.13 14 c. and 18.10 and 19.9 20 23. 1 King 18.12 and 22.24 1 Chr. 12.18 and 28.12 2 Chron. 15. 1. Job 33.4 Psal 51.11 12. Esa 44.3 and 63.11 proofs enough one would think in all Conscience § 28. But supposing that all these Texts had denoted a Principle created or instilled into us yet here is no Personal Representation thereof whereas it was to be proved that the Spirit of God in those Texts that Characterize him Personally is a mere created Quality in us and that it is no where otherwise never any virtue essential to God For we need not deny that the Holy Spirits and Principles inspired by and from the Substantial Spirit of God into us may sometimes derive the Name as well as the Nature of that their Original and the most Catholick Divines concede it but where the Original Spirit of God
perfection of Christian Theology that our Scriptures Faith and Tradition should Characterize the second and third Hypostasis as personally as the first for otherwise a Personal Distinction and Notion of one and Impersonal Distinctions of the others or either of them must have set them as unequal specifically different and heterogeneous in the same Deity and consequently not consubstantial or co-essential for that the Impersonals must have been in nature inseriour to the Personal which would make a most corrupt mixture a most praerupt and monstrous anomaly in the Godhead § 35. But perhaps some Men with whom no diversities are taken for true but the separate gross and material may censure this Diversity between the Eternal Mind Reason and Holy Spirit of Love so then notional and imaginary that it cannot sustain or ground any Characters personally distinctive without a very violent and abusive impropriety Now if my Lord or any other be in this prejudice let them note that there is a certain true Diversity between them and such as we can somewhat conceive from the Shade we have of it in our own Souls Whence a sedate Theory will conclude that the true and proper Modes of this their distinct subsistence in the Unity of the Godhead are in themselves most perfect and clear and as Illustrious as the Individual Glory of the Divine Essence which one day it will be our Heaven and Happiness more immediately to view in the fulness of indistant Light if at present we will be content to learn our Theories from God's Tradition and not preclude our selves from that blessed capacity by a wanton and affected infidelity for to this glorious intuition this Faith prepares us by cleansing us from Heathen Phaenomena of Providence and drawing us to the nobler Theories of the Creation and the Powers of its Author and exciting us to an active hope and pursuit of that Glory and Happiness that consists in the uninterrupted Vision of God In the mean time however it is rational to believe that there is a far greater reason in that diversity of their Individual consubsistence upon which Personal Attributes Characters Predicates and Distinctives are by the Rules of our Faith given unto them than any humane faculties can reach tho' in these upon Divine Revelation there is Light enought to support the congruity of this Tradition against all opposite Heresies whatsoever § 36. But the Scoffers will be apt to deride this Theory as aiming to render the Faith intelligible which as they think impossible because their prejudices have so fatally blinded them that they fansy no Man can discern what they cannot so will they say that these Theories take away the Mystery and consequently expose the venerableness thereof to contempt whereas it hath been our common Wisdom to cover our Absurdities with a superstitious veil and pretence of unsathomable Mystery Now what shall we do how shall we behave our selves between these contrary extremes To the Anti-Mysterists therefore I reply That if it be hereby made intelligible they have no reason to quarrel at it since their only complaint for their infidelity is that it is unintelligible But to the Crypto-Mysterists who give occasion to the Anti-Mysterists to deride us for absurdities c. I shall only need to say with * Con. Arian Orat. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. St. Athanasius The Faith is no Riddle to be kept in the dark but a Divine Mystery to illuminate our Souls In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God This was not given from Heaven to stupifie and amuse but to sublimate our Theories of God and to exercise our inner Senses unto previous Idea's of that Divinity which will be more immediately opened unto in the State of Glory St. Paul thought it a noble Wisdom to understand Mysteries 1 Cor. 13.2 to which all the Sons of Wisdom though to others there is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are initiated Let it therefore be deep and recondite while it is rich and noble the treasure is the better for its difficulty and what is to be gotten is with joy to be communicated to such as have Ears to hear Tell but a Man that there are three in one and one in three without any other Theories how dry and infant must that Notion be How little life and taste is there in such a Rudiment But when a Man is brought by heavenly Theories of the Logos to have some apprehensions of the super-essential Excellency of the Father and almost to feel the vital Love of the Holy Spirit to view hereby the Originals of the Creation and the Schemes of Providence in the Ray of Light Essential in the Archetypal Tables of the Almighty Mind this is Transport this is Aether this is Heaven it self to which we are wafted up by these depreciated Senses of the Fathers Yet whatsoever flight a religious Mind may take in these contemplations God knows these advances of mine are very short and I have no more to advise an aspiring Piety but to drink of these living Waters from their first Fountains the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers But he that thinks it no Mystery or valuable Theory that the first Principle of all is an eternal glorious lucid Mind our of whose foecundity there coessentially streams a luminous and infinite substantial Reason with a benign and adorable Spirit of Substantial Love and Holiness the noble Springs and Fountains of the whole Creation and the World to come forgets the thick darkness of the old Heathen and even of the present untutour'd World in these Idea's and Informations he forgets the shortness of the most sublimate Theories in proportion to the full Glory of the Mystery he forgets how much the Wise of the Heathen admired some few glances of it among the Jews and are themselves valued for them even by our Fathers and our Moderns also he conceives not how divine and surprizing this Light appeared to the World upon the first opening of Christianity how it clears up the delusions of Gentilism and spiritualizes our Idea's of God above all mixtures of carnality and prepares them for a glorious intuition of him hereafter and lastly such Men loath Manna and the Food of Angels forgetting their first weaknesses and the difficulties they struggled with before they attained to this Theology neither do they humbly reflect on their present narrowness in respect of what yet remains within the Veil or else they could never have sallen into contempt of this Revelation as light and void of depth and mystery § 37. Now lest any Man from hence should frame an Objection that upon this Theory we may frame as many Persons in the Deity as there are Attributes of God let it be observed that all the received Attributes of God do denote one or more or all of these three * This word in our tongue I suppose may not offend as being somewhat turned from what 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Principium commonly denote And I call them so only in respect of the creatures not absolutely in respect of their own subsistence as if they were three unprincipiated Principles for so there is but one viz. God the Father So I agree with the Doctrine of the Fathers as they deny three Principles nonprinoipiate for otherwise three such Principles would be three Gods Principles and so are not really distinct from them or simply describe the whole Divine Essence and so no single one of these Principles or else are merely negative and so signifie no positive Principle or Hypostasis in the Deity or else are extrinsecal and relative only to exteriour productions and so touch nothing Eternal or Inessential to the Divine Nature that I mention not how that Eternal Generation and Procession can be conceived of no Attributes distinct from the Trinity the Father Logos and Holy Spirit There is therefore in the Deity no positive distinct intelligible Power Virtue or Principle but Father Son and Holy Spirit Mind Reason and the Holy Spirit of Love by the Revelation of whose Nature Subsistence Personality Counsels and Operations the Christian Theology and Religion is most pure desecate sublime full and absolute as became the last revelations by the Son of God but had not been so had it wanted any of these received Articles and Theories concerning the adorable and ever blessed Trinity § 38. But whereas there are who professing the Catholick Faith themselves would yet open the Church Doors to contrary Opinions by making the Gospel Fathers and Religious Councils naked unto shame and contriving to abrogate the Sanctions of our Faith I pathetically beg them to consider deeply what I have said hereupon especially in the four last Sections and further remark that since by the Grace of the Holy Spirit and the Mediation of the Son we have an access unto union with God the Father the first Parent and Principle of all that dwells in Light otherwise altogether inaccessible it was necessary that our Rule of Faith if justly perfect should shew us the way of this ascent and particularly what that Logos and Holy Spirit properly and essentially are by whom we arise into this Communion with the Father Else such a defect had remained in these necessary Notices as had rendred our Faith and Theology blind and uncertain to the inevitable danger of a fundamental Impiety For Men hearing of the Son and Holy Spirit must have been curious for a Notion of them and must have taken them for create or uncreate Now if being uncreate Men had taken them for created as we see many will against express Revelation and universal Tradition to the contrary Men would have prosaned them and their Deity the sault whereof had been imputable to God had he not yielded us the necessary Revelation of their Order and Godhead And so likewise had they been created God would not have left us without sufficient notice thereof lest we mistaking should have adored them for Divine as the whole Church hath done and does But certainly he could not so much so fully so often so perpetually have asserted their Godhead and Personality had they been merely created or impersonal To have revealed nothing of them had been to have shewed no way to Communion and Knowledgge of God the Father and to have said somewhat of them but not enough to fix a Faith and Notion of their Essence and Character had been a Snare But since what is now taught is both necessary and perfect I think it a damnable Sin not to keep such a Divine Depositum perfect whole and undefiled as it was delivered unto us but by false indulgences of Latitude to betray it up to profanation corruption contempt and infidelity § 39. And here having made a sufficient Apology for those Theories of the Fathers against his Lordship's charge of Novelty and Humane Fancy I could heartily have begg'd a Nunc Dimittis and have ended in these pleasing Contemplations But our Life is a Warfare and his Lordship 's further process requires my further attendance But many saith his Lordship have thought that the Term Son did not at all belong to the * He means to any one of them blessed Three but only to our Saviour as he was the Messias the Jews having had this Notion of the Messias that as he was to be the King of Israel so he was to be the Son of God We find Nathanael addressed himself thus to him and when the High Priest adjured our Saviour he knits these two together art thou the Christ the Son of the most High God Which shews that they did esteem those two as one and the same thing This account of the Jews notion his Lordship seems to have taken out of Dr. Hammond's Annotation on Psal 2. v. 7. Thou art my Son this day have I begotten thee For these are that great and good Doctor 's words the learned Jews themselves resolved that he was to be the Son of God and that in an eminent manner So the High Priest Matth. 26.63 Tell us whether thou art the Christ the Son of God and Joh. 1.49 Rabbi thou art the Son of God thou art the King of Israel c. Which Text therefore the Doctor prophetically interprets of his resurrection and exaltation according to good New Testament Authorities But he that said this never taught his Lordship that the term Son did not at all belong to any of the blessed Three but expresly in the same Annotation proves from Rom. 1.4 that he was declared to be the Eternal Son of God the second of the blessed three by his Resurrection from the dead And it is not fair play in his Lordship to cite a place and conceal the Author that so God's truth and his doubling might not be discerned But since we are upon a critical disquisition of these terms Messias and Son of God we will consider first what the real truth is and secondly the opinion of the Jews First then it is certain that God's constitution of any Person in a State of favour gives the favourite the Title of a Son by virtue thereof Thus God calls the People of Israel his Son and his First Born Exod. 4. 22. and so literally Hosea 11.1 and many other places set God as their Father because God had admitted them as the seed of Abraham into his especial Covenant as we are also Sons of God by the adoption of the New Covenant And hence exaltation by God to an high Authority has founded a title of Gods and Sons of God unto Men and Angels And consequently the various signal Exaltations of Christ in his Humane Nature above all others make him in those respects justly to be styled the Son of God If then he had been only exalted into the heavenly Throne without any antecedent Death or Resurrection this alone would have founded a Filial Title much more when in Order thereto he was born again our of a
Virgin Sepulcher whereby he became the first Born or first Begotten from the Dead So his Transfiguration on Mount Tabor and his Unction by the Holy Ghost at his Baptism in both which the Bath-Col the voice from Heaven pronounced him God's beloved Son were fair grounds for the same Character His Conception by the Holy Ghost in the Virgin 's Womb was a foundation thereof * Luk. 1.35 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 shed's that this was not the first ground of his Filiation before all these though not the primary By the †Heb. 1.2 Son God made the Worlds and thereby the Son became Heir of all things And hereupon it was by many Ancients preached as Good Theology that herein also he was the Son of God and the * Col. 1.15 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 first Born and Heir of the whole Creation they setting it off as a kind of Nativity and Production of the Logos into Light and the World And those many Texts of Scripture besides the Catholick Tradition of Creeds that teach him to be in the form of God and equal with God the true God God above all blessed for ever and that he hath received his being from the Father have established the Faith of an Eternal Paternity and Coeternal Filiation So that if we take the Humane Nature into the Conception and Character of the Christ as his Lordship does here are several grounds for the Character of Son before our Lord actually was a Man or could be on his Lordships Notions the Messias And so Son of God and Messias cannot really in the true intention of the Scriptures be altogether synonymous equaeval or equipollent though belonging to the same Person Now if Nathanael made a good and full Confession when he told our Lord * John 1.50 Thou art the Son of God thou art the King of Israel then he owned all the truth of the Filial Character but if his Faith were defective then it is no ground for his Lordship's Criticks to stay so low in it and not advance to the Highest revealed Excellency of the Character which I believe the true Israelite reached as well as †Matth. 16.16 Joh. 6.69 St. Peter and others since the Gospels set this for a good memorial of their and the Catholick Faith But however let us see what the Faith of the Jews contributes to our Edification By the Testimony of the Fathers from after Josephus's days it appears an established or received Doctrine among the Jews as also other Hereticks herein so judaizing that the Messias was to be a mere Man and so no wonder if all Rabbins since that own him to be the Son of God take him only for a positive or adoptive Son by mere advancement Now if his Lordship thinks this to have been their Faith also in our Lord's days then those some Criticks of his Lordship's cannot found the Filiation of the Theanthropus in this Jewish Faith But if these Jews did believe their expected Messias to be a real Immanuel according to their Prophet and this Immanuel to be the Son of God how can his Lordship's Criticks prove that in the Immanuel's Filiation * P. 32. in which the Humane Nature being the first Conception †the first Conception of the Sonship was in his Humanity For if there were another Conception of Sonship in the Divine Nature how can they or his Lordship prove it to be posterior to that in the Humanity To be Son of God is a Character at least of Dignity and if there be any thing in the Deity that bears it it cannot derive it from any Creature and so in order of Conception it ought not to be posterior to the Title in a Creature His Lordship had best have a eare lest he and his Critick's * Vid. Euseb con Marcell call in upon Marcellus in this rode of Conceptions and father the Heresie upon the Jews But if there be no real Son in the God head there will be no Father neither before the Creation and consequently the Humane Nature being originally filia◠being united to God who by the Creation thereof only is its Father i. e. natural Parent will convey the Title of Son to its own Father by this Union which since it can be only a nominal dispensation here comes in a beloved Sabellianism But if there be a Sonship in the Godhead since it cannot be derivative it must be Primitive to the Character given to the united Humanity because of that Union and if so how can its Conception be first lodged in the Humanity to which it is socially communicated in the entire Suppositum of the Theanthropus but not singly distributed by any dividing Conception except we will put up with Nestorius But to look a little further into this matter I think it manifest that the Jews believed the Son of God to be a Person not Humane but equal to the Father and so had no first Conceptions of it in Humane Nature The Personal Title of Son with others that Philo gives the Logos which he did not believe to have been incarnate is a full proof of this first point that he was called Son by the Jews without any respects to Humanity since he taught this as the Theology of Moses and the Tradition of the Elders and that this Filial Logos was by them believed equal to God the Father * Joh. ch 5.17 c. vid. ch 10. St. John proves for that the Jews would have killed Jesus for saying that God was his Father making himself thereby equal with God and so God which our Saviour refuses not but defends And even Josephus after the Destruction of Jerusalem owning our Jesus to be Christ doubts whether it were lawful to call him a Man because the old Notion that God was and was to be the King of Israel was not yet worn out They looked on the Kingdom of the Messias as the Kingdom of God and they looked for the Son of God whom Agur of old knew under that Character to come and set up his Reign among them and to subdue all Nations thereunto And therefore St. John shews him and the Devils confess him the Son of God also as well as his Disciples nay the Conturion at his Crucifixion owned him to be the Son of God who never saw him to have been nor ever hoped to see him hereafter to be the King of the Jews according to their Notions of his Royalty For though they looked on their King to come to be God the Son of the Father yet they took his Kingdom to be secular And he that considers that in the Gospels the terms of Father Son and Holy Spirit are spoken of to and by the Jews familiarly without any of our Lord's correction of the Jewish Notion or Institution of any other either in common among the multitudes or privately among his Disciples must resolve
that the true notion of these three Persons was popular and received by an indubitate and good Tradition or else our Lord and his Apostles having a recondite Notion of them unexplained could not be understood by that People Nor could Nathanael and Peter and others have made a right confession of Faith without any preliminary Catechism of the Notion had it not been general And in vain had God the Father at his Baptism declared him to be his Son in whom he was well pleased to all the multitude had they been Strangers to the true sense of the Title which imported not only a Royalty but an * Matth. 4. Mar. 1. Luke 4. omnipotent Divine Power even had he pleased of turning Stones into Bread by his mere Commandment †Matth. 8.29 Mar. 5.7 Luke 8.28 and to torment even Devils before their time and also a Divine Knowledge of the Father for no Man knoweth the Father but the Son who being the * Luke 4.34 Holy One of God was therefore the Holy One of Israel And though it may be objected that when the Jews demanded him to come down from the Cross if he would be believed 't is said by the Evangelists If he be the Christ the King of Israel let him come down from the Cross yet this supposes that had he this Power he must have it as God the Christ and King and not as a Man only anointed King of Israel So that neither the true nor false Conceptions of the Jews concerning his Filial Character can help his Lordship and his Criticks in their first Conceptions of it in his Humanity And here indeed there lies a large and noble Field before me for a Theory concerning the Titles of Christ Lord King of Israel c. on what grounds they stand in the Divine and Humane Nature wherein might be shewn that neither are the first Conceptions of all these in our Lord's Humanity to the utter ruin of Criticism but it being not here necessary and withal being a matter of a large speculation I wave it in this place and the rather because if my unhappy Eyes will hold out so far to serve my designs I intend a peculiar Treatise concerning the Kingdom of God in which these Titular Characters of our Lord will be largely discussed In the mean time I am sorry his Lordship's Criticks are spoiled in their kind aims to explain the Texts that teach the inferiority of Christ as Man to the Father but I am pretty well pleased however that the Catholick Doctrine has no need of such new fashioned planes to smooth its difficulties § 40. But now at last the Scene opens and the whole mysterious intrigue comes out why all this pother is made For saith my Lord * P. 32. If this be true all the Speculations concerning an Eternal Generation are cut off in the strict sense of the words though in a larger sense every Emanation of what sort soever may be so called But was it my Lord's part to leave this in suspense whether it be true or no To leave hereby a liberty to deny the Nicene Faith that he was begotten of his Father before all Worlds Would not common honesty oblige a Divinity Professor to determine one way or other between the inconsistent Fathers and these sagacious Criticks either for or against an Eternal Generation and yet to let us see which way he inclines he brings Texts of Scripture perverted for the sense of Hereticks but not one sacred syllable for the Fathers nothing but fastidious and exposing Censures Yet this was not enough The distinct Emanations of the Son and the Holy Spirit were to be confounded though one be from the Father only and immediately the other from the Father and the Son as we Westerns confess or to speak more like the Greeks from the Father by the Son that so the Emanation of the Holy Spirit being in a larger sense called Generation the Holy Spirit may in a larger sense be called the Son of God And so God the Father shall have improperly two Sons but really none at all till the being of Christ's Humanity § 41. And now for a blessed Epiphonema * P. 32. But it may be justly questioned whether by these they have made it better to be understood or more firmly believed or whether others have not taken advantage to represent these subtilties as Dregs either of Aeones of the Valentinians or of the Platonick Notions And it being long before these Theories were well stated and settled it is no wonder if many of the Fathers have not only differed from one another but even from themselves in speaking upon this Argument When Men go about to explain a thing of which they can have no distinct Idea it is very natural for them to run out into a vast multiplicity of words into great length and much darkness and confusion Many †Witness P. 41 42. c. impertinent Similes will be urged and often impertinent reasonings will be made use of all which are the unavoidable consequences of a Man's going about to explain to others what he does not distinctly understand himself Now to this calumnious reflexion it were enough to say the Lord rebuke thee but for the sake of others that may either glory in it or be beguiled by it I will answer it in order First then all these traduced Theories of Faith are universally professed and received in the whole Church of God and have but a very few Adversaries And we have reason to attribute this universal Consent herein to the Piety and Labours of the Ancients who so victoriously defended it against the Highest Parts Principalities and Powers For whatsoever failures and lesser mistakes from which no mortal is or can be secure may sometimes appear in a course of nice Disputations yet the main Body of them appeared so strong and convincing that they bowed down the whole World into Conviction I mean the Christian World while the Adversaries thereof have deservedly attained the glory of preparing the way for Mahometism What matter then is it if these Divine Theories which his Lordship opprobriously calls subtilties be abusively represented by wicked Men Does it follow that the Theology is vicious and to be quitted Such Counsel as this would soon have strangled the whole Christianity which at first was every where traduced What they if that Impostor Sandius * Enucl Hist Eccl. l. 1. would derive our Faith from Valentinus The vulgar Christians do not know nor trouble themselves with those fabulous Aeons nor is there any danger of frighting them from the Faith by this imputation And as for the Learned or Students in Antiquity they will soon discover the falshood and even to save or facilitate their labour 't is unanswerably †Bull. Defens Fid. Nicen. p. 64 65. alib Sect. 3. c. 1. done to their hands already by an Author his Lordship will never be able to answer But this Calumny is