no difference in this case many devices may be in mans heart but the counsel of the Lord that shall stand Prov. 19. 21. however men may alter and the dealings and dispensations of Gods providence in several acts of mercy and justice upon that score may be different towards them yet this is without alteration or change in his purposes towards them who remains still the same yesterday and to day and for ever The Socinians utter many bold and dangerous expressions in opposition to this plain truth which is the unavoydable consequence of their denyal of Gods Omniscience Forasmuch as there are many events which depend upon the actions of men which arising from the freedom of their Will are therefore purely contingent and consequently out of the reach of Gods knowledge this must according to them unavoidably cause God to alter his counsels to take new measures to change his affections towards men and alter his purposes concerning them that is he who is a Reprobate to day may be an Elect person to morrow and he who at present is elect may afterwards be reprobated and those may finally perish quos Deus saluti destinavit whom God once designed for eternal happiness Socin de Off. hominis Christiani cap. 11. Now this one would think should be an Argument of inconstancy and consequently not fit to be ascribed to God Crellius will tell you there is no such matter this is only an instance of his freedom it shews you only that there is a variety in the acts of Gods will but no inconstancy For a man is then said to be constant to his purpose who persists in it till some good reason obliges him to alter it and therefore what you would call wavering he will say is the result of wisdome God accommodating his decrees to the nature of things and the actions of men so that in short God is subject to change but not without good reason he may alter his purposes as wise men usually do according to the different circumstances of things and as the exigence of his affairs shall require But with the leave of this bold man another would be apt to think that tho men may without the imputation of levity alter their counsels yet this arises from the imperfection of their natures and particularly of their knowledge of future events which tho it be no fault yet it must be acknowledged a weakness tho such an one as they are no more accountable for than they are because they cannot restore sight to a man born blind or raise the dead But it cannot be ascribed to God without a derogation to his infinite knowledge and unerring judgement and is therefore an argument of weakness notwithstanding all that Crellius urges very weakly to the contrary Ibid. Therefore that we may return where we first began to the Decrees of God concerning the future and final state of men this is certain that they with relation to their several and respective objects are fixed and unmoveable for be they antecedent or subsequent to his foresight of mens faith or infidelity it matters not in this case the Scriptures however assure us and right reason would confirm the same that they are immutable more stable then the Foundations of the Earth or the Poles of the World which may and shall be shaken and stagger out of their places like drunken men but the Counsel of the Lord that shall stand For let holyness and perseverance be the cause or the effect of Gods election yet all sober persons agree in this that whoever lives an holy life and perseveres in it is undoubtedly chosen by God to eternal life and whosoever lives and dies in his sins and impenitence is certainly designed and shall be doomed to everlasting punishment here the foundation of the Lord standeth sure the Lord knoweth them that are his and them that are not so But Socinus who denies the certainty of Gods knowledge of many future events viz. those which are contingent such as are the actions of men as depending upon the uncertain because free motions of their will must in pursuance of this principle deny the certainty of Gods Election because he cannot foresee who will obey his commands and continue to do so against all the temptations which they will meet with in the world to the contrary and consequently he must say what another would account Impiety to think that God Almighty for want of knowing the determination of mens choice must likewise be ignorant of the final event of their actions and therefore he who at present is the object of his Love and designed by him for the joyes of Heaven may in the conclusion for ought he knows merit his displeasure and be tumbled down to hell Now that men may make such uncertain conjectures concerning their final state and thereupon meet with a fatal and terrible disappointment may be a certain tho a sad truth and therefore no great wonder But to think that it should thus happen to the Allwise Creator of men is to have too mean and dishonourable conceptions of him and such the Socinians have doubting not to aver that God finds reason to alter not only his dispensations towards men according to their behaviour but his own intentions of kindness and displeasure choosing what at first he refused and refusing afterwards what once he thought worthy of his Approbation and choice Socin prael Th. cap. 7. A fifth attribute in God and which indeed cannot be separated from him without overthrowing all Religion is his Justice and that not only as it signifies his holiness and righteousness but as it betokens his anger indignation his severity and displeasure against Sin and Sinners And this the Scripture speaks very often of Psal 5. the Psalmist describes God as one not only that hath no pleasure in wickedness ver 4. which arises from the holiness and righteousness of his nature but as one likewise that hates all the workers of iniquity ver 5. and particularly who abhors the deceitful and will destroy the Lying man The wicked and him that loveth violence his Soul abhors Psal 11. 5. Hence he stiles himself a jealous God jealous of his authority and honour and will revenge the contempt of it he is slow to anger but yet will not acquit the wicked forasmuch as he is jealous and furious who will take vengeance on his adversaries and reserves wrath for his enemies Nahum 2 3. and when God proclaims his name the name by which he desires to be known it is the God merciful and gracious c. but yet one that will by no means clear the guilty Exod. 34. 6. Numb 14. 18. he is Deus ultionum the God to whom vengeance belongeth Ps 94. 1. the God of recompences Jer. 51. 56. and in short a consuming fire Heb. 12. 29. All which expressions seem plainly to denote that Justice in God is a necessary and an essential attribute and which you can no more separate
the ministry and the persons to whom Christ hath committed the care and government of his Church their distinction and authority to preach the Gospel and to exercise discipline in it concerning the Sacraments and the end of their institution and particularly concerning the nature and efficacy of Baptism and the Lords Supper lastly concerning a future state and the condition of men after this Life To which may be added some other doctrines which do not seem to have any connexion with the former but yet are of dangerous consequence to the peace and welfare of all civil Societies those I mean which he hath advanced about the power and authority of the Civil Magistrate the Lawfulness of War and Oaths in a Christian Commonwealth which have as mischievous an influence upon the order and peace of States and Kingdoms as his other opinions have upon Religion So that Socinus having observed what was wanting in the former Hereticks to make their attempts entirely successful against the Christian Religion being engaged in the same design but in order to make it more effectual he wisely resolved to correct what he thought was amiss in them wherefore laying aside what was more gross and absurd in the wilder and more extravagnt opinions of the ancient Hereticks and supplying the defects of the more subtile and refined who came afterwards he and his followers have at length given us a body of their divinity more compleat in its kind then ever the world was blessed with before their time Not but that in spight of all their art and skill such being the fate and folly of error they cannot avoid especially in the defence and maintenance of their opinions falling into many and those very plain contradictions Upon the whole matter I think it may be reasonably doubted whether Socinus any more than that grand Impostor Mahomet may be properly called a Heretick as being the Founder of a new Religion rather than the Author of a new name and sect among Christians For as the Alcoran of the former is as we are told a fardel of errors and absurdities arising from the impure mixture of Christianity Judaism and Paganism together with some idle and extravagant notions of his own so the doctrine of Socinus seems to be a composition of the errors of Arius Photinus and Pelagius c. together with some additions of his own not indeed so seemingly absurd as those of Mahomet but I am afraid no less dangerous to the Christian religion of which he hath retained only the name together with the empty sound of the words but with such false glosses such forced and malicious interpretations as have quite destroyed the true notion as the whole design of the Gospel in opposition to which he hath given us a kind of natural and new Religion not such as the spirit of God hath revealed in his word but such as his own carnal reason suggested to him in opposition to that revelation And that this may not be looked upon to be an uncharitable because a groundless charge I shall lay before the reader a scheme of the religion revealed by God in Holy Scripture and particularly that published by Christ and his Apostles in the writings of the New Testament and which hath bin embraced by all sound Christians in all ages of the Church from the first planting of one in the world to this day together with another of the new or newly revived opinions of the Socinians that by comparing of both he may be able to make a judgment of what is here suggested which upon examination I hope he will find to be agreeable to truth and not contrary to charity And first as it is fit we shall begin with the great object of our religion Almighty God in the knowledge and worship of whom together with an obedience to his commands consists the entire nature of religion And here upon enquiry I believe we shall find that what the Scriptures have revealed concerning the nature of God is widely different from the account which Socinus and his disciples give us of him As to what concerns the nature of God the Scriptures propose him to be considered two ways by us 1. Absolutely in his glorious and essential attributes or 2 ly Relatively in the great and adorable mystery of the ever blessed Trinity First if we consider God in his Attributes we shall find that the first great and if I may so call it fundamental attribute which the Scriptures reveal and indeed natural reason dictates concerning him is the unity of the Godhead Deut. 6. 4. Hear O Israel the Lord our God is one Lord. Deut. 32. 39. See now that I even I am he and there is no God with me 1 Cor. 8. 5. 6. For tho there be that are called Gods whether in heaven or in earth c. But to us there is but one God the Father of whom are all things 1 Tim. 2. 5. There is but one God and one Mediator between God and man c. Here undoubtedly it will be said that the Socinians are beyond all suspition orthodox all their studies and labors being employed in asserting and vindicating the unity of the Godhead in opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity which according to their apprehensions must infer a plurality of Gods But for all their boasts concerning this matter and assuming to themselves upon that score the name of Unitarians we must not be too hasty in acquitting them from the imputation of Polytheism for tho they deny the eternal generation and divinity of Christ and say that he had no existence before his being formed in the womb of the Virgin and appearance in the world and that the being which he then had was purely humane yet after his resurrection from the grave and his ascension into heaven they say that God the Father as the reward of his obedience and sufferings exalted him to the honour and dignity of a God not indeed to be the supreme and eternal God but however deus verus a true God distinct and separate from his Father and Socinus takes it ill of his adversaries that they should charge him with denying Christ to be God and complains against them that will not be brought to confess and worship him for their Lord and God who was once a weak and infirm man and herein he saith the power and goodness of God was discovered and his admirable wisdom displayed in extolling and deifying this man beyond what we can imagin And to the objection that might be made against this opinion as that which did unavoidably infer a plurality of Gods Wolzogenius will tell you that if by two Gods you mean one of whom are all things and we in him and one by whom are all things and we by him we are so far saith he from being ashamed of worshipping two such Gods that we rather glory in it But if it shall be farther said that to do them right they
diffuses his Light Heat and other influences to the remotest parts of the Earth But of this Attribute more hereafter The 3. Attribute ascribed to God in Scripture is his omniscience whereby he knows all things past present and to come which knowledge of his extends it self not only to all things and persons but likewise to all their actions and the effects of them and together with them views the secret springs and principles of those actions discerning the designs and contrivances of men and all the thoughts and intents of the heart There being no creature that is not manifest in his sight but all things are naked and open to the eyes of him with whom we have to do Heb. 4. 13. What our Translation renders open is more Emphatically expressed in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all things are as it were diffected and anatomized the very inside of all things are laid open to his view What is lodged in the darkest corners and deepest recesses of the Soul cannot be hid from his sight whose eies are in every place like a flame of fire beholding the evil and the good Nay this knowledge is of so vast an extent as to comprehend within its mighty compass not only things past and present but likewise all things to come for his duration being commensurate to all the parts of time he doth not measure things as we do by first and last but all things present and to come are open to him at one view with whom a thousand years are but as one day and one day as a thousand years 2 Pet. 3. 8. Nay not only those things which are properly future with respect to any necessary causes of their production but even those which are most contingent as depending upon the spontaneous motion of mens free will all such actions together with the most casual events as well as remote consequences of them are the objects of Gods knowledge who doth not only discern our Intentions and designs whilst they are in fieri in the time of their hatching and framing in the Soul but antecedently long before the mind comes to any determination he understands our thoughts afar of Ps 139. 2. And of this besides the plain declarations of Scripture the predictions that have bin made by God of the most contingent and fortuitous events are an Argument that one would think should place this truth beyond all contradiction It being that which God Almighty made choice of to vindicate the honour of his divine nature and perfections in opposition to the vain claim that was laid to them by the dull Idols of the heathens and their more stupid worshippers Esay 41. 22. Let them bring forth and shew us what shall happen let them shew the former things what they be that we may consider them and know the latter end of them and declare us things for to come Shew the things that are to come hereafter that we may know that you are God It is true this knowledge of God as it extends to things to come is too wonderful for us we cannot attain to it and therefore if we think to measure his knowledge by our own shallow conception of things we engage in a task more absurd and ridiculous than if we should attempt to take up the waters of the Ocean and inclose them in the hollow of our hand And of this absurdity are the Socinians guilty who will by no means be brought to acknowledge this great truth for tho when you come to discourse with them upon this subject they will tell you they allow God to be omniscient and that he knows all things yet you must not be too hasty in taking an advantage of that concession You must give them leave to explain themselves God knows all things That 's true but with this limitation quatenus sunt scibilia as far as they are capable of being known But future contingencies must be excluded out of that number having no being either in themselves or in any certain or necessary causes of their production and therefore are no more the object of any even divine knowledge then darkness is the object of sight your eyes may as soon be dazled with one as your understandings be affected or receive any Impression from the other For Gods knowledge say they is agreeable to the nature of the things known which may in some sense be true but is a truth ill applyed by them when they tell us that God knows things that are certain as such that shall come to pass things that are likely he considers as such that may probably come to pass things that are barely possible as depending upon the arbitrary and therefore uncertain determinations of mens free will he knows as possible that is they may or may not come to pass but whether of these two shall happen that is still a secret even to God himself whose divine knowledge cannot arrive to the knowledge of such future contingencies of which according to the known maxim there can be no certain or determinate truth or falshood Perhaps you will say this maxim is true with respect to second causes and any created knowledge but not with respect to the knowledge of God to whom the most casual events are present and therefore certain for as much as he foresees which way men will freely determine their own choice either in acting or forbearing to act in doing this or doing the contrary And without this prescience we cannot well imagine how God should be able to govern the world and particularly Angels and Men in whose actions and the event of them his own glory is so eminently concerned The Socinians will tell you all this is a great mistake and that such a notion of Gods knowledge is so far from being necessary to his providence that it is derogatory to the freedom of mens will and thereby leads to the dishonour of God and the overthrow of all Religion which Crellius endeavours at large to prove Lib. de Natura Dei cap. 24. de Sapientia Dei And after he hath taken some pains to shew that this omniscience is opposite to reason he comes to shew its repugnance as he thinks to the plain declarations of Scripture and what he and his Master say upon this head and upon that which follows it will be worth our while a little to enlarge upon forasmuch as it will help to give us a true Idaea of Socinianism which tends plainly to the dishonour of God and in the conclusion to the overthrow of all natural as well as revealed Religion Now the places of Scripture which he quotes to this purpose are those which speak of Gods waiting for the amendment and repentance of sinners as he doth in that remarkable manner Esay 5. 4. What could I have done more for my vineyard that I have not already done to it and yet when I expected it should bring forth grapes it brought forth wild grapes and v. 7. When he
therefore one might be tempted to imagine against his Conscience would perswade the world to believe that the difference between us and the Socinians in the point of the Divinity of the son of God was a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a contention about words rather then any real difference in a matter of faith which is quite contrary to the notion that either the Orthodox or the Socinians have of this matter who lay a greater and truer stress upon their Opinions then this man doth who pretends to bless the world with a discovery of what no body ever knew before But I believe the Reader who hath perused the foregoing discourse will be induced to believe that either the Socinians or we are in a very great mistake the distance between us being wider then that between Heaven and Earth and indeed no less then between Finite and Infinite So that upon a true state of things I believe it will be found that our Opinions are not only seemingly inconsistent but absolutely irreconcileable forasmuch as in order to reconcile them we must part with the Infinite nature of God the Father and the Divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost And surely that man must be very fond nay he must be mad for peace that can be content to sacrifice both Truth and the Divine Author of it in order to purchase it Once indeed our Blessed Saviour came down among men and offered up himself upon the Cross in order to reconcile the two greatest Enemies God and Man but it is too much in all Conscience which is expected of us that we should make a new Oblation of our Saviour and not only as the Jews did nail his Body to the Cross but sacrifice even his Divinity to compose the differences in Religion But perhaps some may say the Socinians are men of more reason and moderation then to desire us presently to part with all our Religion to gratifie them They only plead for liberty and in order to their joyning with us that we would remove those obstacles of communion viz. Articles Creeds Confessions of Faith some useless expressions in our Common Prayer which contain too plain and uncharitable acknowledgments of the Trinity which hinder many pious useful and excellent persons from coming to our Churches Why should we not strip our Faith of all those larger and unwarrantable explications which Councils and Fathers have made of it and reduce all to the naked expressions of Scripture that is content our selves with a few Ambiguous words which the perverse and subtile Interpretations of Hereticks have made so and let every man abound in his own sense They believe Christ to be the Son of God so as to be true God likewise what need we trouble our selves or them with the word Consubstantial pity it is that a word nay a Letter should divide men in their Opinions and Affections To all which tho I have a great deal that I could answer yet at present all that I shall say shall be this That the Socinians are wise men persons of a deep reach but they must not think that all the rest of the World are fools It were too much in all Conscience to desire us to part with all at first but they know what advantage to make of our Concessions if they can perswade us with that foolish woman Prov. 14. 1. to pull down our house with our own hands it will save them the toyl and drudgery of so doing at least if they can prevail with us to demolish our Outworks then they will be able as with greater ease so likewise with greater hopes of success to attack the main Fort. In short the Ancient Creeds and Confessions and those Ancient words in which the Doctrine of Faith hath bin conveyed down to us are only an Hedge of Thornes as they have bin truly and pertinently styled with which the Christian Faith hath bin guarded against the designs of disguised Hereticks and I hope they will prick their fingers who shall attempt the removing of them And thus much shall serve to be said upon the first Head of the great difference there is between what the Scriptures affirme and what the Socinians say of the great object of our Religion God Allmighty And if there were only this in the case I hope it might prove sufficient to guard any pious well meaning Christian from the Infection of their Impious Opinions which furnish him with notions so dishonorable and injurious to his maker and who by denying the blessed Trinity and the Divinity of our Saviour have subverted the very foundations of Christianity altered the whole Oeconomy of mans Salvation so that they and we must go different waies to Heaven as having neither the same meanes of Grace nor the same hopes of Glory I should now proceede to shew the Opposition between the Socinian tenets and the other parts of the Christian Doctrine which are thereby contradicted and overthrown But this must be referred till a time of further and better leasure But by this Taste which I have given the Reader of Socinianism I may have reason to hope that he will be of the Opinion that Religion is like Wine the older the more excellent and desireable And therefore that no man of wisdome or indeed of common sense who hath not lost all Relish of divine things when he hath tasted of the old Religion will straightly desire the New because he will find that the Old is much better Now to the Holy Blessed and undivided Trinity three Persons and one God be all Honour Glory and Praise both now and for evermore Amen FINIS 1 Ad evertendam Rempublicam sobrium accessisse Suet. in Jul. Caes 1 Quasi nos Christum verum deum esse negamus quod tamen à nobis non sit Socin oper Tom. 2. p. 645. 2 Ut pro Deo ac Domino suo venerentur p. 631. 3 In eo homine supra quam dici potest extollendo deificando Ibid. 4 Ut potius id gloriae nobis laudi ducamus Wolzogen Prolegom in Evangel Johannis cap. 8. de vera divinitate Christi 1 Quod vero Deus ille unus qui pater est solus verus dicitur id non ideo fieri dicimus quod nemo alius praeter Patrem deus verus sit sed quia nemo alius praeter Patrem isto prorsus modo deus verus sit quo ille est Smal. Exam. Cent. Err. p. 4. 2 Certissimum est quod non unus tantum verus Deus sit Ibid. 3 Contendimus firmissime docemus esse plures Deos praeter unum Eosque veros Refut Smigl de Novis Monst Nov. Ar. p. 14. 4 Tantum unum summum deum agnoscere unum tantum natura Deum Colere unum tantum Independentem Deum confiteri esse Judaicum quiddam abnegationem Christianae Religionis Ibid. p. 26. 1 Ea verba speaking of those words Jer. 23. 23. Am I a God at hand and