originally in himself yet it implyes an absolute contradiction that he should be able to confer such an infinite Power upon a finite or a mortal Subject for that would be to setle a double Almightiness in the world of which one should not be Almighty or whereas Omnipotence is such an attribute as where-ever it resides it must constitute a True and Supreme God and whereas its such an attribute as cannot stand alone without a concurrent-infinity in every respect yet it may rest in a Subject neither God nor yet Supreme but in such a one as is still tho' highly exalted mortal in its own nature and capable of destruction or annihilation For if it depends only on God's Will that Christ's Body now exalted to the right hand of his Father is no more lyable to Death then had it pleased God he might have invested Moses or Elias or Enoch with this same Omnipotence as well as our Saviour and our Saviour is no more secure of the continuation of that Omnipotence he is at present possest of in himself than the good Angels are of continuing in their present state of bliss i.e. so long as the supreme God upholds them they are safe if He withdraw but for one moment they are as miserable as their fallen companions But the very thought of these things are absurd and blasphemous however not to be avoided without acknowledging the eternal Divinity of the Son of God For the farther evidence of this Truth we must look into the Faith of the Antient Church and see how this Doctrine that God was manifest in the flesh or that He who was manifest in the flesh was God the True the Supreme the most High God is asserted in it This inquiry we make not because we think Antiquity infallible nor because we imagine every opinion maintained by any Father of the Church ought to be an authentick prescription to us Where any of them have in any particular deviated from the sence of God's holy Word we value not their opinions a-whit the more for their being antient But this we must own that those who lived nearest the times of our Saviour and his Apostles had the best opportunities of knowing what they meant or how those who personally converst with them understood them as it 's easier for me who have seen and known my Father to learn from him what were the thoughts of my Grandfather or great Grandfather both which it may be my Father may have seen and converst with than to find out what particular Opinions were entertained by my Predecessors before the Conquest and so upwards Again where Scripture and Reason improved from thence give us a full evidence of any truth the concurrence and harmony of Antiquity with these evidences is of great weight and gives us a fair deduction of divine and necessary Truths thro' all ages and shews us how in spite of all the oppositions and artifices made use of by the enemies of Truth yet God has been pleased to preserve it entire and to derive it by various chanels down to us that we embracing and asserting the same Holy Faith may be partakers of the same eternal happiness with our predecessors Prophets Apostles Martyrs Confessors who have all dyed in the True Faith and fear of God on this consideration we shall by God's assistance give you a short account of the Primitive Faith in this particular Here then in due order of time We begin with that Clement remembred with Honour by S. Paul Phil. 4.3 as one of those fellow labourers of his whose names are in the book of life This Clement was afterwards Bishop of the Church of God in Rome on which account and by reason of his great eminence in the Church of God some of the Factors of that See have endeavoured to fasten several spurious writings upon him but the abuse was too gross to impose upon a learned world However of his we have one Authentick Epistle written in the name of the Church of Rome to the Church of Corinth Conc. Gen. Lab. Cossart T. 1. p. 133. B. upon account of a violent Schism broken out in that Church to the great scandal of the Christian Religion and to the obstruction of the progress of the Gospel In this Epistle tho' nothing were purposely written on the subject we are now treating on yet there are some not obscure evidences of what opinion He and the Church of Rome in whose name he wrote had in those early days of our blessed Lord He calls him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a name very great and such as is no where given to any meer Man it 's designed here to illustrate the extraordinary dignity of our Saviour for by so setting him off the Apostolical writer enforces his argument upon the Corinthians to perswade them to Humility which would be an excellent foundation for Charity for tho' our Lord Jesus Christ were so great tho' he were the Scepter of the greatness of God yet he came not as he might in an assuming and lofty manner but with the greatest Humility and this argument S. Hierome in his commentary on the 52 of Isaiah and the three last verses according to our translation makes use of to the same purpose owning Clement for his Author but now if the Argument of these great Men was good it must necessarily follow that our Saviour had a Being and a glorious Being too before he was born of the blessed Virgin which Birth of his into a calamitous World has always been accounted one part of his Humiliation this Humiliation could not have been thought so considerable had he not been very great and happy before Christ could not have been so great and glorious antecedently to his Birth but He must have been God and therefore the True the most high God for there could be even in a Socinians account no more but One True God before the Incarnation of our Saviour You see my beloved people says the good Man what an example is set before you and if our Lord so humbled himself viz. if he descended from Heaven to earth for our sakes how humble should those be who take upon them the yoke of his Gospel Twice afterwards this same Holy Man concluding his period with Jesus Christ p. 137. C. adds To whom be glory and Majesty for ever and ever Amen The same expressions of praise he gives to God the Father several times p. 156. B. p. 144. B. p. 148. C. p. 160. C. D and what can we conclude from using such a Doxology indifferently to God the Father and to Jesus Christ his Son But that He understood them to be of one and the same nature both Infinitely Glorious both one proper object of praise and adoration And the same venerable Author speaking of the Patriarchs Abraham Isaac and Jacob adds particularly of the last that from him descended all those Priests and Levites who serve at God's altar 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
MYSTERIES IN RELIGION VINDICATED OR The Filiation Deity and Satisfaction of our Saviour asserted against Socinians and Others With Occasional Reflections on several late Pamphlets By LVKE MILBOVRNE a Presbyter of the Church of England 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Barnab Ep. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tatianus contra Gentes LONDON Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's Head in S. Paul's Church-Yard 1692. TO THE Right Reverend Father in GOD HENRY Lord Bishop of LONDON Dean of the Chappel Royal and one of the Lords of their Majesties most Honourable Privy Council MY LORD I Pretend not to do Honour to Your Sacred Character by the little Address of an obscure Writer but by representing Your Lordship to the World as treading in the glorious steps of antient Saints Martyrs and Bishops Your great Predecessors in the Government of the Church of God When busie Ignorants are doing their Fathers Work and scattering their Tares among the good Seed of Evangelical Truth it 's time for those in Your Lordship's station not only to Countenance those who oppose encroaching Error but to scatter these Midnight Workers with a just severity and to frown effectually on such as the most condescending Laws have thought fit to exclude from any interest in them That Your Lordship's Sentiments are agreeable to Mine I conclude from Your declar'd Willingness to accept so small a Present yet small as it is it 's offer'd with the greatest Affection to our Holy Mother the establish'd Church of England which that it may recover it 's pristine Lustre in spite of all the malignant influences of Heresie or Schism and Your Lordship live long as its Zealous Supporter is the hearty Prayer of MY LORD Your Lordship 's most Humble Faithful and Obedient Servant LVKE MILBOVRNE THE PREFACE TO THE READER Christian Reader IF any wonder the subsequent Discourse should be so near the Form of Sermons and tho' large should little answer its own Title let him know that the Author's circumstances would allow him to reduce it to no better Method and were enough to discourage him from any Vndertaking either usefully close or laborious If making Brick without Straw labouring hard without so much as the Reward of a competent Livelihood among a People not over-fond of Learning might make his Intellectuals move like the Egyptian Chariots with their Wheels off very slow and heavily none but those who are lazy ignorant or better provided for can wonder at him But whatever measure He has had He knew himself Originally dedicated to the Service of the Church of God that however his Hearers might be careless or ignorant of their own Good he was still their Watchman to give notice carefully of approaching Dangers and to make use of those Talents God had entrusted Him with to prevent Superstition false Doctrines and Heresies from over-running His Congregation This sence of Duty made him vigorously oppose the Ingress of Popery in the last Reign it made Him too contribute his Handful of Water to quench the growing flames and freely to expose himself to the Anger of an unhappily Bigotted Prince and the impotent disgusts of hot-headed Renegadoes from the Church of England This made him as jealous of that impudent Pamphlet assuming the Title of the Naked Gospel which finding very busily scattered abroad he designed it a particular Answer when a very Reverend Prelate of our Church Cujus Nomen semper acerbum Semper Honoratum sic Dii voluistis habebit giving him notice of Dr. Sherlock's excellent Performance and Dr. Jane's Promise with a peculiar respect to that Pamphlet He stopt his Pen as judging Himself too mean a Second for so learned and able Vndertakers But the News of increasing Socinianism and a clear apprehension of the Pestilent and Irrational Nature of that Heresie made Him cast his thoughts that way again and since it would be Pushing out He believed his Pains could not be ill spent in Exposing what the Wisdom of the Nation thought fit to except from their too much abus'd Indulgence He thinks too many Hands cannot be employed in so necessary a Service and since our Vnitarian Zealots by their numerous Pamphlets are opening the Way in Conjunction with other Sects for Atheism and Irreligion and so many Beaux Esprits the would-be Wits of the Age try to cloak Atheism under the Pretence of asserting The Rational Religion He should think himself very guilty were He silent when He had any thing to say against them The Refutation of these daring Errors is said to be Vndertaken by several of the Reverend London Clergy Men doubtless of sufficient abilities to baffle a thousand such little Whifflers in Reason as We are now pestered with But while they delay the Work too long the Author of this will think it happily publish'd if it serve only to excite their pious Zeal and oblige Them to make up the Defects of this by their more accurate and Learned Arguments It has affixed no small scandal upon some otherwise Venerable Names that they have made their Converse too cheap to the bold Spreader of Socinian Papers and while He takes Courage to break Laws under Covert of their Patronage They can no way better vindicate the Church of God or their own Reputations or repress Impudent Ignorance than by a vigorous and speedy opposition to his Pernicious Endeavours As for his own Performance in the following sheets the Author has endeavoured to give its due force to a Text He thinks very plain for the eternal Deity of our Saviour and to expose Socinian Criticism on that and other places of Scripture and has laid open some of those pitiful Artifices they make use of to pervert the Word of God He has essayed to set Humane Reason in its true Light to give it its just Weight in Religious Matters to shew the influence Divine Revelation ought to have upon it and yet after All He believes not that any Divine Revelation does or can supersede any truly Rational Principle Many are taken up as such which yet invalidate themselves by that Opposition they meet with from Others of as Acute Parts as those who first vend Them only such wherein all Discursive Souls agree can properly be called True Principles of Reason and these too are only such in the particular Parts of Knowledge to which they belong an Euclidean Demonstration can have no Place in Metaphysicks Nor can the Assertion of a Trinity prove the impossibility of squaring a Circle Weak Eyes are ill Judges of the various Modifications of Light and Deaf Ears of the delicate Harmony of Sounds Reason in the Soul may meet with as many Obstructions from the different Organization of that Body in which the Soul acts and however large the Minds of Socinus Crellius or his present Nephew may be T. F's Capacity must be very well tenter'd e'er it can comprehend all their Niceties or see clear Reason confirming every one of their ill-connected Heterodoxies Tho' the incomparable Bishop of Worcester has
cheats and notorious villans in that they have left us such accounts of that Faith whereby Salvation must be attain'd as can only serve to cheat and abuse their Readers and lead them into unreasonable and damnable Errors They only laid so many snares in their unhappy Writings for the ruining mens Souls and their wicked designs have had but too too fatal effects upon the World Now all this is very hard to believe of Men who converst with the inspired Apostles some of whom had that glorious power of working Miracles confer'd upon them some laid down their Lives with the greatest joys and triumphs for the sake of their blessed Master and the rest were ready to have done so whensoever Providence should have summoned them to that fiery tryal It 's hard to believe that such Men could be betrayers or corrupters of the Faith in its most Essential Articles If these Fathers were honest and faithful in their Writings and set down there only what were their real thoughts as became honest and good Men if they defended Christianity against its subtle and powerful enemies with a just Industry and Integrity then in what I have alledged from them we have a faithful and honest account of what the Antient Church believed concerning the Nature of the Son of God and we have reason to satisfie our selves and to give praise to God who has still afforded us so much light as that we can agree with the Eldest and most Apostolical Churches in that saving truth That the Son of God who in fulness of time took upon him our flesh is really God equal with his Father If any should enquire Why I only make use of those Fathers who lived before the Nicene Council The reason is because they are less to be suspected by those we have to do with as having no interest in those Controversies which were afterwards managed by particular Persons with a great deal of heat and eagerness Besides the Socinians are sometimes apt to boast that the most antient Fathers are on their side whereas they 'l freely own the Principal Writers afterwards are against them not but that several did undertake the Patronage of the Arrians and their accomplices after the Council of Nice but their Writings are gone and they ly there at the mercy of their Adversaries Not only the Socinians themselves are apt sometimes to Appeal to the Ante-Nicene Fathers but several Great Men such as Erasmus Grotius Petavius and others are apt to yield this to them therefore it was proper in the first place to give a true account of the first Writers whose Doctrines others afterwards did but repeat and illustrate Our Church principally recommends to us the Doctrine that 's nearest to the fountain head that agreeing best with the fountain it self from which it is derived that is the Word of God Now the Socinians sometimes would fain put in for an Interest with these Antient Writers Vid. Epist intermutuas Ruari Zwickeri in Ruari Epist centuriá primâ and Zwicker particularly in his Irenicum Irenicor tho' he was very far himself from agreeing with his brethren in all particulars Yet upon better consideration they are loth to depend upon that authority of the Fathers knowing too well that they must be cast by their verdict Therefore their great Patriarch Socinus himself in his answer to Vujekus the Polonian Jesuit who had written a book on purpose to prove the Divinity of Christ where Vujekus presses him with the Authority of the Fathers answers thus That the perpetual and universal consent of the whole World is of the less weight against Divine Testimonies tho' obscure when those things which are the subjects of that consent evidently oppose reason and common sence But here we may say That truth can never be so entirely lost that the whole World should always desert it but where Scripture-expressions are obscure the perpetual consent of the whole World about their sence would be incomparably the best interpretation of those obscurities and it 's very hard to believe that the whole World should perpetually agree in what 's against reason and common sence A great number have embraced the Roman Doctrine of Transubstantiation but we know that neither All nor the greatest part of the World embraced it nor was it held perpetually by any and tho' we may allow Socinus to have been a man of great Reason yet we may allow those who held the contrary Opinion to His to have been as Rational as himself and perhaps on a strict scrutiny it may appear contradictious to reason and common sence to assert that our blessed Saviour was no more than a meer Man But in short Socinus never troubles himself to deny those Authorities the Jesuite had ramassed from the Fathers nor to answer them but makes use of one Herculean Argument against them all for first he tells us It can't be said the whole doctrine or the greatest part of the doctrine of the antient Church was opposite to the Socinians or agreeable to the Doctrine of their Adversaries for there were many whose Writings are now wholly lost whose opinions therefore we cannot judge of and many there were who never wrote any thing at all and they might be of a contrary mind to those whose Writings we still have and they were infinitely more numerous That the Arrian Heresie was once spread far and wide favoured by Princes confirmed by Councils and almost generally entertained tho' afterwards by degrees it vanish'd therefore says He our Adversaries need not boast of that universal and perpetual consent of the Church whether it were real or verbal for which was the true Church and where it was was for several ages disputable Itaque haec Authoritatum testimoniorum ex Patribus Conciliis congeries nullas vires habet praesertim vero adversum nos qui ab istis Patribus Conciliis quae extant nos dissentire non dissitemur Socinus contra Vujekum ad classem argum 7 c. 9. p. 618. Therefore this heap of Authorities from Fathers and Councils is of no force especially against us who freely own our dissent from those Fathers and Councils which are yet extant Nor can it ever be prov'd by the Writings of any of our Party that they did either assert or believe that those who wrote before the Nicene Council whose works are extant were of our mind tho' they were as little of the mind of our Adversaries as of ours This now is plain dealing and more ingenuous by far than wresting a few sentences contrary to the Writers minds only to amuse the ignorant with an empty shew of Antiquity But more plainly yet Socinus soon after confesses that the extant Fathers differed from his Party in that they assert That Christ or the Son of God had a Being of the substance of his Father before the worlds creation that he had often appear'd to the Fathers under the Old Testament nay that that one God his
Actions prove to the World they were in quest of a better Countrey and yet We who have seen the Performance of those Promises they depended on their Obscurities all cleared their Certainty vindicated We who are beset with such a Cloud of Witnesses cannot cast aside every Sin and the Weight that does so easily oppress us and run with Joy the Race that 's set before us Were we Bond-slaves to Hell and has the Son of God struck off our Chains and Fetters and do we love them still is Light come into the World and can we love Darkness rather than Light were we all liable to eternal Vengeance and has our Lord redeemed us with his own most precious Blood from the dismal strokes of that Vengeance and shall we not believe in him that has alone trod the Wine-press of his Father's Wrath for us We were Sinners we were Enemies we were foolish and obstinate Enemies yet the Son of God that great Shepherd of the Sheep came to seek and to save that which was lost and can we be his Enemies still who was so much our Friend I 'm sure whatever corrupt Nature may tempt us to it would be wretched Policy in us to reject what he has done for us the wicked Husbandmen kill'd their Lord's Son indeed but it was to their own Confusion the rebellious Citizens refus'd to have their rightful King reign over them but it was to their Destruction the First or Primary End of our Saviour's Coming was that Men might be saved but if Men foolishly neglect that End there is a Secondary Design in it that those who still continue in Sin may be without Excuse that they may have nothing to plead for themselves at the great Day but that the Justice of his Wrath against Sin and Sinners may appear to Men and Angels Where an Ambassadour of Peace is sent and slighted the Dignity of the Ambassadour aggravates the Contempt the Apostle therefore having in the first Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews demonstrated the Dignity of Christ and proved his pre-eminence to Men and Angels who yet after the several Methods God had formerly taken to reveal himself had in those latter days spoken himself to the World makes this rational Deduction from all Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we hear in the name of Christ Heb. 2.1 2 3. for if the word spoken by Angels was stedfast and every Transgression and Disobedience receiv'd a just Recompence of reward how shall we escape if we neglect so great Salvation which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord and was confirm'd to us by them that heard him If we repent not at his Call if we submit not to his Admonitions nor lay hold on his Grace we must not please our selves with empty Dreams of entring into his Rest there remains now no more Sacrifice for Sins His indeed is sufficient to those who believe in and obey him but for those who obey not the Truth there remains nothing but Indignation and Wrath Tribulation and Anguish to every Soul that doth Evil let his State and Condition be what it will this Wo I hope all those who profess Christianity will endeavour to avoid and that all those who name the Name of Christ that glorious saving Name will depart from Iniquity If our Saviour be the Son of God if he be God himself infinite and eternal and yet humbled himself and took upon him the Form of a Servant for our Redemption if it were absolutely necessary that he who undertook so great a Work should be real God as well as real Man or else must have sunk in that prodigious Attempt it behoves all those who expect Salvation by his Name to adhere to this Doctrine to believe in Christ as he is set forth to us in Sacred Writ that is as God co-equal and co-essential with his Father I would to God the Caution were needless There were some Hereticks in the Ancient Church who would needs maintain our Lord was not true Man had only a phantastical Body but not real Flesh and Blood as we have others as it were to ballance them would assert our Saviour was a meer Man and no more that he was not real God nor his Love to us nor his Undertakings for us so great as we are ready to conclude God's Blessing upon the Labours of the Governours of the Church in those days crusht the growing Heresies and they bequeath'd to us a Faith undeprav'd unchanged nor had the Trent-Conventicle an Opportunity to propound their additional Articles of Faith till besides the Eastern Churches God was pleased to raise up Men in these Western parts of the World of extraordinary Piety and Learning and Industry who had rescued the genuine Christian Faith from Fraud and Obscurity to give it us so as the Ancient Christians had left it without Additions or Alterations by which Cares they prevented the malignant Designs of the Roman Church but as the Devil will always be sowing his Tares of Heresies and Falshoods among the good Wheat of Divine Truths so with the Reformation of Religion besides the bloody Severities of Romish Bigots several of the ancient Heresies were reviv'd and particularly that which denied the Eternal Divinity of the Son of God which as it walk'd about formerly under several Names so it has of late though as the Presbyterians and Independents the other day in spite of former Feuds are pleased to give themselves the painted Title of Vnited Brethren so those wretched Hereticks however at odds among themselves agreed in the gay Name of Vnitarians under which Name Turks and Jews come as well and properly as they if they could be true to their own Principles They unite indeed all in that one impious Error in denying the Divinity of our Saviour a Heresie detestable to every sober and intelligent Christian a Heresie proper only to introduce Deism and Sadducism and to thrust true Evangelical Christianity out of doors This all those who love their Religion ought to oppose and declare against with as much Zeal and Care and more than they would against the foulest Errors of the Roman See for though there are so many Falsities and Absurdities propounded to us in that Communion yet there 's nothing flies so directly in the face of Almighty God as this it 's Folly enough to believe the Bishop of Rome Christ's universal Vicar upon Earth but it 's a greater Stupidity to believe that Christ himself is no more truly and originally God than that pretended Vicar it 's Idolatry to pray to Saints or Angels and to make them the ultimate Object of our Adorations it 's greater yet to make a meer Man the Object of the same Devotions and to suppose him a made God and capable of doing every thing for us we beg at his hands though he were no more but a Creature as others at his first existence it 's Madness to believe that
him for we shall see him as he is And when reason once comes to use sense so far as to see God as he is infinitely happy infinitely good infinitely glorious it has gone far enough And thus far have I given an account of Humane reason or the light of Nature for I think I may well enough use them as Synonymous and how far it may be useful in matters of a Divine nature I shall draw onely a Corollary or two from thence and then proceed We conclude from what has been discours'd concerning Humane reason That our obligation to Almighty God is infinite in that He who might have taken from us wholly that natural light because we had so extremely slighted it was yet pleas'd to continue it so far as that rightly apply'd it might still be useful to us even in matters of salvation It 's true we cannot examine things with that clearness and satisfaction which Adam's first enquiries were accompany'd with our understandings are somewhat parallel to that Earth which fell under a Curse for the sin of Man It was naturally fertile before in good things but then it was to bring forth onely bryars and thorns yet Man might eat bread from it still onely it must be in the sweat of his brows He must take pains for that now which he might have had without any trouble before So our Natural reason was clear and free at first common occurrences needed no deep meditations nor extraordinary passages any tedious study to apprehend them in every circumstance The case is now otherwise our reason busies it self naturally about trifles and onely puzles and perplexes it self in matters of no weight or moment yet still it may move to good purpose but it requires abundance of care and pains to cultivate it so as it may produce any thing that 's good and even with a great deal of pains too sometimes it makes conclusions onely vain troublesome and miserably false this unhappiness is the consequence of our own follies at first and it's God's unmerited goodness that we can yet by making use of due means distinguish in some measure between truth and falshood at least in the more obvious parts of religion and his goodness yet appears farther in that where our decrepit reason fails he 's pleas'd to interpose with the influences of his blessed Spirit and to preserve the Modest and Humble from falling into damnable Error that our Reason may have a subject profitable to employ it self upon God has given us his Word blessed are they who meditate on that word day and night he calls upon us to apply our selves to the Law and to the testimony to search the Scriptures to search them with the same care and diligence as those who work in Mines seek for the golden Ore Whereas he lays in his Word several Commands upon us He would have us examine them so as we may be convinced that they are not grievous but Holy just and good These Commandments therefore must be examin'd by the rule of right Reason which whosoever follows will be infinitely satisfied in them In his dealings with mankind he calls upon them to examine their own ways by the same rule he enters into arguments highly rational with mankind himself he bids them to judge in their own causes between himself and them and see if discussing things rationally they must not necessarily fall upon that confession That God's ways are equal but the ways of men unequal When he recommends his mercies when he would terrifie with his judgments He appeals to Humane Reason still or that share of light which we are now partakers of Now he that will employ that light he has upon such noble subjects if he be not prejudiced with wicked principles before or puff'd up with self-conceit must necessarily be a very religious man for the clearer any mans rational faculty is the more pious he must be only men of very low abilities can be either Atheists or Hereticks It 's confest indeed some Hereticks as the Socinians in particular with whom we are at present concern'd pretend highly to Reason but they only sham us with fond pretences and their reason is all empty and sophistical and Atheists are the Men of sence if we may believe fools and madmen but there is a vast difference between a flashy Wit and a ridiculing Humour and sound judgment and solid and weighty argument But God who knew before what artifices Hell and wicked men would make use of to pervert truth calls upon us to exercise our reason farther in discovering and baffling those cheats the enemies of our Souls would fain put upon us wherein as Hereticks and Schismaticks generally make their appeals to God's Word and we have warning in that very Word That in those doctrines where there 's any shew of difficulty those who are unlearned and unstable wrest the Scriptures to their own destructions We are warn'd to try the Spirits whether they be of God and Scripture being the rule of tryal we are oblig'd to study the true sence and meaning of that To which end our rational faculty carries us along in studying the original Languages in which Scripture was written and finding out the true meaning and import of words and phrases in other authors and the modes and customs of countries to which any Texts refer Reason goes with us in comparing text with text and matters of faith or practice laid down in one place with those laid down in another in observing the force of those arguments drawn from such and such Texts their real dependance upon or direct consequence from the places alledg'd and the general consistency of opinions offer'd with the end and design of those positive truths laid down in Scripture Reason has here a large field to exercise it self in And whereas we are urg'd by some to abjure that utterly with respect to those points of faith or practice that are under debate pretending they 'd insist only on the letter of Scripture Maximus tells us well in the formerly cited discourse of his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they drive you from examining Scripture too strictly insinuating that it 's dangerous to pry too narrowly into secrets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Maximi disceptatio inter opera Athan. T. 2. p. 296. but disswading it indeed that they might avoid the reproof of their Errors from thence where he takes farther notice how such persons if they meet but with a word that at first hearing sounds favourably to their fancies they run away with it without ever considering the design of the inspired Writer or examining the agreement of their own shallow glosses with the general tenour of Holy Writ an humour that prevails with too many still who prefer the sound of words before the truth and pertinency of texts of Scripture and therefore imagine themselves to argue very piously and agreeably to God's word when all their talk is nothing to the purpose But mysteries the great
that it could not reasonably be requir'd that a man should engage himself in the study of the whole Book of God if there were any thing positively asserted there the knowledge and understanding of which would be lost time as the studies of all impertinencies are But howsoever necessary these studies are if they are not prosecuted in a due manner i. e. with an humble sense of our own natural defects with a sober and submissive judgment and with all that modesty which becomes one who is desirous to learn they 'l prove but mischievous and make Hereticks Schismaticks or Atheists instead of knowing and improving orthodox Christians It 's true that nothing ought to be admitted into Religion which is contrary to reason but it must be understood which is contrary to reason in its primitive integrity for that which we call reason now we every one find extremely subject to mistakes and for me to measure those truths which are reveal'd by an infallible God by the standard of that sense or judgment which I know to be mistakeful and fallible is unreasonable with any sober discourser to extremity and it argues too great a pride in our low condition to imagine that because once we were made perfect that therefore we should in any respect continue so though we had sought out to our selves many inventions Many are deceived by their own vain opinion ver 24. says the Son of Syrach and nothing can certainly be more prejudicial to a Man in his disquisitions after truth than a great conceit of his own abilities to find it out God commonly blasts such fond pretenders to ingenuity and makes them take a great deal of pains only to procure infamy and perpetual disgrace to themselves Such mischiefs would be avoided yet Humane Reason have it's due use and esteem if the Apostles injunction were well obey'd that no man should think of himself more highly than he ought to think Rom. 12.3 but to think soberly according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith Men ought when they meet with any difficulties in divine Writings not to make their Reason the measure of Truth but to make Truth the measure of their Reason and rather to suspect their own apprehension of it than the weakness or ambiguity on the defectiveness of the authors assertions or expressions And so much for the use of Humane Reason in matters of Religion it 's a great blessing to us still tho' impair'd by sin and if soberly and modestly used will by divine assistance rise to a greater strength and vigour and be able to comprehend every day more and more of the mystery of Godliness till it comes in a glorifi'd state to comprehend every thing that can any way contribute to its consummate happiness Having gone thus far in the debate concerning the use of Humane Reason in matters of Religion and declared how careful we should be not to indulge our selves in vain and useless curiosities for the vindication of our selves as Christians we are to consider that a full proof of the Divinity of the Son of God is a task that comes under no reproof in the case That the blessed Jesus the great captain of our Salvation is God as well as Man that he is God of God light of light very God of very God as the Nicene Creed expresses it that he is perfect God not a factitious or an aequivocal God as some would have him but that He who is God the Son is infinite in all his Attributes God over all blessed for ever as God the Father is is Articulus stantis aut cadentis Ecclesiae such an Article of our Christian Faith so essential to the Mystical Body of Christ that while it 's embrac'd the Church has a real Being when it 's laid aside the very Being of the Church expires at the same time It 's so necessary an Article of Faith that except a man keep it whole and undefiled without doubt he shall perish everlastingly for he that believes in such a Messias such a Saviour who is not God is really an Idolater as fixing his belief in one that is not able to save For Man's misery is too great to be reliev'd by any inferiour power and the blood of Bulls and of Goats might as well have serv'd for the expiation of Humane guilt as the sufferings of one who was a meer man and consequently could have no proper merit to plead for us no inherent power wherewith to assist us Some of those Hereticks who deny the Divinity of the Son of God have been so sensible of this that they have maintain'd and preach'd it in those Congregations where they have been concern'd That it 's as lawful to pray to the blessed Virgin or to any other Saint or any Angel as it is to pray to the Son of God and that all those are really guilty of Idolatry who make any such Prayers or Supplications to him Now tho other Socinians call these blasphemers on this account they are really injurious to 'em for if that which they all agree in be true viz. That Jesus Christ is not the most high God then whosoever worships him as God breaks the first and second Commandments as much as those of the Church of Rome do and are as notorious Idolaters as we shall hereafter have occasion to prove In quest then of the truth of this doctrine That Jesus Christ is the true God we are to bend our Reason and to meet and baffle those great pretenders to it with their own weapons and to prove to them that tho we think the mystery of godliness to be great as the Text asserts it to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Chrysostom expresses it to be unexpressible and wonderful and incomprehensible yet we receive some considerable advantages from its being revealed for by that means we know the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the positive truth that he who appear'd in the flesh visible to humane eyes and so far humbled to atone for humane Crimes was really God hence to be ador'd by us hence able to perform the work he came about and to save to the utmost all those that come to the Father in and by him and this we firmly and stedfastly believe tho' we cannot comprehend the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the manner how so great a miracle of Mercy should be brought about and those proofs by any particulars whatsoever laid down of this truth using reason with that sobriety and modesty which we ought we may examine and try throughly and judge how far they come up to those things they are designed to make good and so our Faith it self may be rational and thence invincible tho' every particular of it be not intelligible to us in its full extent With relation to the Text then we assert That the Mystery of Godliness which the Apostle tells us is great cannot be apply'd to the several particulars laid down in
his offering is ridiculous and the gifts of unjust men are not accepted the most high is not pleased with the offerings of the wicked neither is he pacified for sin by the multitude of sacrifices and thus much may suffice to shew us whereon the Jews laid the whole stress or weight of their Religion Nor did the Heathen world among their wiser thoughts much deviate from the same paths of truth to this we find the whole Doctrine of the Stoick Philosophers inclining as it 's summ'd up by the learned Gataker in his preface to Marcus Antoninus For they believing and maintaining That there was really a God who did take a constant care of worldly affairs and that his Providence did concern it self with the actions of single men as well as of entire Societies from thence very rationally concluded that He alone ought to be adored by man invocated to all humane undertakings that He should possess all our thoughts over-rule our words terminate our actions that Men should give themselves entirely to the celebration of his name and that by a simple voluntary and compleat obedience whithersoever his Providence is pleased to lead us without any tergiversation or murmuring and should endeavour to adorn that vocation he is pleased to fix us in by solid virtue and that with an inflexible courage tho' by so doing we should incurr the hazards of a thousand deaths This is so rational that it looks almost like Christianity it self Plato declares himself excellently speaking concerning the uselessness of any great pomp in religious sacrifices 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Plato in Alcibiade vid. Cragii resp Lacedaem l. 3. p. 180. For it would be a very hard case if the gods should respect only or principally the nature of our gifts and sacrifices and not our souls whether they be holy and just but I think they much more regard these than all the pompous expence of sacrifices in spite of which a man either in a private station or as a publick magistrate may in one years space be guilty of a thousand trespasses both against the gods and men The same Plato who was himself an Athenian tells us this remarkable story There being long and continual wars between the Lacedemonians and Athenians the Athenians were always beaten both by Sea and Land the Athenians extremely troubled at their misfortune and debating among themselves by what means they might prevent the like for the future thought it was worth their while to consult the Oracle of Jupiter Ammon and amongst other things the messengers were to enquire of the Oracle what the reason was that they gave the Lacedemonians continual victories rather than themselves for the case was plain that the Athenians always offered the most and the best sacrifices of all the Grecians and enrich'd the Altars of the gods with the noblest presents and spent more money upon their august annual religious solemnities than all the Grecians put together whereas the Lacedemonians tho' every whit as rich never troubled themselves with any such cares and were mighty sparing in their sacrifices to all which plea the Oracle very briefly answer'd that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the sincere and honest devotion of the Lacedemonians was more valued by the Gods than all the costly Sacrifices of the Grecians Thus sometimes would the Devil himself speak what was rational Suidas in verbo p. 1101. Suidas in his interpretation of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 touches upon this story and infers from it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That sincere piety is a matter of no burdensom expence no extreme curiosity but full of modesty Thus too Philostratus a man otherwise of design bad enough in the life of Apollonius Thyanaeus one whom he would equal for sanctity and miracles to the blessed Jesus brings in that Apollonius discoursing with the Priest of Aesculapius and telling him That the Gods acting with infinite justice 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where they find any man of a sound mind and uninfected with wickedness they reward him not with a golden Crown but with all internal good but where they meet with one stigmatized and corrupted with sin they reserve him to punishment and are but the more angry when such miscreants dare to enter their Temples and attend their Services Then turning to Aesculapius the pretended God He tells him Thou O Aesculapius doest wisely and as becomes a God not permitting wicked men to approach thee tho' loaded with all the riches of the Indies or of Croesus for such do not sacrifice nor make their offerings out of reverence to thy Divinity but because they have deserved punishment for their Impieties they 'd buy it off with mony which divine justice will by no means admit of The same Apollonius afterwards to a Cilician Prince that seem'd afraid to approach the Altar Philostratus in vita Apollon c. 8 9. and to admire Apollonius his happiness in being so familiar with the God speaks thus My love to and studying of virtue has procured me this freedom 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and if thou wilt take but the same care to be honestly virtuous come boldly to the God and petition freely for whatsoever thou canst wish for I shall not seek into later Philosophers such as Seneca or Plotinus or Arrian or Hierocles whose noblest Sentiments I look upon as drawn not from Zeno or Plato but from their converse with Apostolical Writings or the Books of the Eldest Christian Fathers whose Doctrines they endeavoured to transfer to the reputation of declining Idolatry Onely we may take notice that not onely Philosophers whose grave studies might promise as much but the loose Scenes of a Plautus or a Terence will inform us That they must be men of the best lives to whom the Gods would bend the gentlest ears that others may importune Heaven to no purpose while the innocent Soul shall compel the Gods themselves to be obsequious How agreeably all this to that of the Son of Syrach the offering of the righteous maketh the Altar fat Eccles 35.6 7 10. and the sweet savour thereof is before the most High the sacrifice of a just Man is acceptable and the Memorial thereof shall never be forgotten Do not think to corrupt with gifts for such God will not receive and trust not to unrighteous sacrifices for the Lord is just and with him is no respect of persons and a Man would almost think that old Tragedian cited by Porphyrius and Clemens Alexandrinus had some such passages as these in his eye when he cry'd out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. i. e. What Man can be so weak a fool so supinely credulous as to imagine the Gods are pleas'd with bones quite bare of flesh and stinking vapours things which hungry Dogs would never care for or who would believe that Gods would take themselves to be highly honoured and obliged to abundance of gratitude to thieves or pickaroons or tyrants vid. Gatak in Antonin
vogue of the World and their Dictates have been valued by learned Men as the great standards of Philosophic reason Nay the acquists of some in these matters have puft them up with that ridiculous vanity and pride that they have dared to trample upon all Religion nay upon the Deity it self imagining themselves able to demonstrate how the World and all the parts of it might be constituted regulated and continued without any concurrence of a Divine and unbounded Providence but when these same mighty pretenders to wit and sense have come to look into the shallow Mystick rites of ancient Heathens they have but fool'd and disgraced themselves but when such fall upon the foundations of Christianity they prove like that Stone our Saviour speaks of which whosoever shall fall on shall be broken Matth. 21.44 but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder they onely show themselves egregious fools and endeavour to ridicule every thing which they find themselves unable to understand Thus Lucian or some of his Contemporaries in his Philopatris a Dialogue of that name makes it his business to scoff at several things reveal'd in Scripture and at several of the Mysteries of Christianity though neither he nor his followers not Celsus nor Porphyry nor Libanius nor Julian himself nor any other of that witty scoffing tribe were ever able to confute the Writings of the Prophets or the Apostles or to baffle their Christian Antagonists by any serious argument In the forenam'd Dialogue Critias offering to swear to Triepho or to give him an oath for his security from any danger having named several of their Heathen Gods Triepho derides them all with reason enough Critias at last breaks out thus By whom then shall I swear that I may be believ'd The other answers Thou shalt swear by that God who rules above Philopatris Oper. Luciani T. 2. p. 770. the great the immortal the Heavenly God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Son of the Father the Spirit proceeding from the Father one of three and three of one 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Reckon of these as of Jupiter esteem these God after this the same Buffoon proceeds to scoff at that great Apostle of the Gentiles St. Paul calling him that bald high-nos'd Galilaean who mounted upon the air into the third Heaven and there learnt wonderful matters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He regenerated or renewed us by water and gently guided us into the foot-steps of the blessed and redeem'd us out of the regions of the wicked and again he burlesques the original of all things where he tells his Companion that there was light incorruptible invisible incomprehensible which put an end to darkness and disorder 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 onely with speaking one word as that slow-tongu'd Man meaning Moses has written and more to the same purpose and of the same scurrilous stamp and this is the wit of Atheistical heads who think it 's enough to expose a Doctrine they understand not or cannot edifie by as some would express it meerly to name it and no more where as the true Sons of Religion though they are far enough from pretending to fathom the great objects of faith cannot yet but derive ineffable consolations from the positive truth of those Mysteries contain'd in Holy Writ but this overweening of their own extraordinary wit made many persons of excellent natural abilities of well exercised reason and inimitable diligence in the first ages of the Gospel stumble so foully at the Doctrine of a crucified Saviour for as a just punishment for that foolish pride and self conceit God destroy'd the wisdom of the wise 1 Cor. 1.19 and brought to nothing the understanding of the prudent so the Stoic and Epicuraean Philosophers were mightily puzled with those new Gods as they were pleas'd to call them Acts 17.18 viz. Jesus and the resurrection as if because they could not understand what the meaning of a resurrection was therefore the Apostles who preach'd it up must needs either make a God or a Goddess of it Thus the same doctrine of the resurrection and that of Christ's being the Son of God and several other mystick truths were cast in the teeth of suffering Christians as if they could be no better than mad men who would undergo so many hardships for assertions so very unintelligible as that they could deserve nothing less than derision and it was often urged as an evidence of a bad cause that it had so many strange and incomprehensible postulates attending on it The same is the plea of the Atheistical what if I should add of the Heretical wits of our age who labour hard to expose whatsoever they meet with beyond the reach of their debauch'd understandings and would therefore have all sound Religion banish'd out of the Commonwealth because forsooth they cannot comprehend How God should become Man should be born of a pure Virgin should converse with men should dye for their sins rise again for their justification and ascend up into glory with that humane body he had assumed unto himself from whence before the Worlds dissolution he should certainly come to be the Supreme determining Judge of all both Men and actions upon which Faith the whole Christian Oeconomy is built and without the certain truth of all which Christianity would be the most absurd and unreasonable religion in the World Thus Hereticks thus Atheists discourse as if it were indeed impossible there should exist a God of greater wisdom and power than themselves or however that he must dispose of all things just agreeably to their Capacities on pain of being dethroned for a default when yet every day they see men like themselves born into the World but can give no possible account of the reason of their acquiring such and such particular shapes or features in the World they see a man born naked into the World but cannot tell us why they are not all cover'd with hair or scaly armour like Beasts or with scales and fins as Fishes or with feathers as Birds they see and know they have naturally but two feet but cannot tell why they should not be born without any as Worms or Fishes or why they should not have four as the greater number of Beasts or why not greater numbers as most insects they see Man a Creature of a noble and Majestick frame endued with a discursive faculty ready to descant upon every visible object yet cannot tell why nature should have given man but two eyes wherewith to survey so vast and unaccountable a variety when at the same time she has studded the head of a contemptible Fly with several thousands they find themselves able to call to mind a mighty number of particulars seen heard read talkt of but cannot inform themselves certainly where the numerous Idaeas of sensible things past should be lodged when at the same time the mind is crouded with a World of present objects and roving too after the
too great to them But what should I talk of Princes when even those arts every day made use of have some darker parts on which reason we see some Men infinitely curious in comparison with others and that every Art has its every days improvements and to make them the more valued their first Inventers are very careful not to prostitute what has cost them a great deal of pains and study to every one that would be prying into their methods and discoveries Hence Ocellus Lucanus an old Astrologer adjures his Readers by every thing he thought mysterious in his Art to keep what he imparted to them among their most religious secrets and not communicate them to profane or illiterate persons and that they should repay their kind Instructor with that reverence he deserved Such solemn engagements Orpheus and other ancient Heathens required of those who were initiated in their mystical Theology For the religious among the Gentiles were throughly convinc'd of this that the more unintelligible the meaning of their religious rites was the greater restraint they laid on vulgar and untutour'd Souls and made them the more resolute in their superstitions Hence one concludes That those things which are easily understood are generally despis'd by the vulgar so that to make such plain things have any due effect on inferiour Souls they must be attended by somewhat of a prodigious nature Tho' the Writers from whom I alledge these things were but Heathens yet they discours'd rationally and but with too much truth For every one has seen the proof of what they assert notoriously made good It has been charged on our English Church as an unpardonable crime as a robbing Souls of that food design'd by God himself for their entertainment that they have omitted Solomon's Song a great part of Ezekiel's prophecy and the Book of the Revelation in the Lessons of their daily service It 's true they have done so the Jews did more for notwithstanding their great diligence in reading Scripture they thought it fit not to allow the reading Solomon's Song or Ecclesiastes or a good part of Ezekiel's or Daniel's Visions till they were more than thirty years of age concluding those mysterious Writings to be far above common understandings and we do not find Mens wits now adays so infinitely out-strip those of their Predecessors that every illiterate mechanick or ordinary auditor can understand them Those who complain of not having those Books read in our Service should never complain of the obscurity of rational and coherent discourses nor pretend to be most edified by the plainest things If we must judge of Peoples edifying in attendance upon Divine ordinances by their lifted Hands and Eyes by their loud sighs and seemingly passionate groans I have known them frequent in a numerous Congregation where falshood blasphemy and unintelligible non-sence has taken up the greatest part of the Preacher's discourse and I have observed the same in the wild extempore effusions of some eminent Dissenters This plainly shews that there are too many who understand not what is meant by plain preaching they call noise and earnestness a furious action and a tone sometimes melting and whining sometimes sobbing and roaring by that name which is all so far from deserving it that nothing can possibly be more offensive to Almighty God nor more destructive to the precious and immortal Soul Plain preaching consists in truth laid down in proper and significant terms urged by pertinent and solid arguments and defended by well connected reason drawn chiefly from that great Fountain of light and truth the written Word of God it teaches men who attend it with due diligence and humility a great many of those things they were utterly unacquainted with before it lays down before them the whole counsel of God which has respect to their eternal Salvation it explains God's Word where it seems obscure shews the connexion of Divine truths with one another throughout that sacred Book and not only warns men of encroaching Errors but solidly confutes them The plain Preacher supposes Christians are not always to continue in an Infant state always to stand in need of inculcating the first Elements of Religion He supposes mens younger years should be throughly season'd with those Principles that a greater age should have proportionable improvements for he 's infallibly assured that those who are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth are neither better nor worse than vessels of wrath fitted for destruction He believes every Ambassador of Christ has reason to expect from professors of a mature age what that Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews expected from them That leaving the Principles of the Doctrine of Christ they should go on unto perfection not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works Hebr. 6.1 2 and of faith towards God of the Doctrine of Baptism and of laying on of hands and of the resurrection of the dead and of eternal Judgment It seems then the inspired Writer thought the preaching of faith and repentance to be so far from being the sole duty of a Preacher that he thought it unreasonable and highly reprovable that the Preacher should have any occasion to inculcate them at all to truly edifying Christians It was neither credit nor advantage to the Hebrews that they were dull of hearing Hebr. 5.11 12 13. that they were unskilful in the word of righteousness that whereas they ought to have been teachers for their time they had need to be taught again themselves Nor can the same dulness ever be commendable in others Yet every age has been unhappily furnish'd with such pretenders to Religion who talk much of it but never grow the better or the wiser for it Such our Saviour met with and such his Apostles especially that great Apostle of the Gentiles St. Paul who were full of their complaints of hard sayings such as none could bear and on that reason were always ready to follow false teachers and false Apostles The vulgar thought them much more edifying than either the Son of God himself or those whom he had peculiarly sent and fitted for the promoting of mens salvation and so they would always have thought had not they in pity to prevailing Ignorance and that it might be inexcusable done so many authentick and undeniable miracles to prove their own Divine Commission which once proved a more serious regard to what they preach'd would be acknowledged necessary and even dark parables and profound speculations about the deepest points in Divinity would appear very comfortable and instructive Our Saviour speaking in parables to the Jews reflected severely upon them in his reason for so doing I do so says He because they seeing see not Matth. 13.13 14 15. and hearing they hear not neither do they understand and in them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaias which saith By hearing ye shall hear and shall not understand and seeing ye shall see and shall not
to effect our Salvation God and particularly God the Son should assume our nature to himself We shall make some deductions from these Considerations We assert then That that Man call'd Jesus Christ and reputed the Messias or the Saviour of the World who appear'd in our nature was really indeed the Son of God It 's he whose Genealogy we have in Scripture descended according to the flesh from the Royal Line of the House of Judah the true and legal Heir of David's sacred Family whose birth into the World as it was mean and despicable so it was very publick and unquestionable We find his actions set down at large in the Gospels and Him according to their history a Man of a blameless life and conversation and of inexpressible condescenscions and goodness we observe him going about and doing good the proper character of a great Person in the Country of Judaea healing Diseases casting out Devils forgiving Sins and that not by a precarious or surreptitious power but by a really supreme inherent Authority of his own We meet with him afterwards accus'd by Jews condemn'd by Romans and according to their Law crucified between two Thieves on Mount Calvary buried by Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus rais'd again in a stupendious manner conversant among several Persons who were his Companions and admirers before talking eating and drinking with them forty days together and afterwards in publick view lifted up above the Clouds beyond the utmost reach of humane Eyes this Man call'd Jesus Christ by the Writers of all these things was really the Son of God He that would recommend a new discovery to the World gives a considerable advantage to its reputation by the extraordinary worth and merit of the Author and therefore whereas the Gospel or the glad tidings of salvation were the newest and most glorious discovery the World was capable of and though the most welcome to a declining Age yet with all the most incredible it was incumbent upon the first divulgers of it to recommend it upon the wisdom and power of its founder The reputed wise Men of old to render them more venerable to the multitude were wont to derive the first Originals of their great Benefactors from the Gods But never was any benefit conferr'd on any place or Person by the kindest Patron which could stand in competition with that which the blessed Jesus conferr'd on the whole World therefore never could any such publick Benefactor be with equal reason deriv'd from Heaven with him From thence therefore the inspired Writers deduce his Pedigree too as well as from David and tell us boldly that that great Man whose praises they celebrate in their Writings was indeed the Son of God which they assert not in a Metaphorical sense as the Psalmist calls Rulers and Governours Psal 82.6 I have said ye are Gods and ye are all of you Children of the most high As the Angels are stil'd by God himself in his question to Job Whereupon are the foundations of the Earth fastened or who laid the corner stone thereof When the Morning stars sang together Job 38.6 7. and all the Sons of God shouted for joy as believers are stil'd by the Evangelist As many as received him to them gave he power to become the Sons of God even to them that believe on his name John 1.12 1 Joh. 3.2 And again Beloved we are now the Sons of God But the holy Writers make him the Son of God in a plain literal sense as Seth is call'd the Son of Adam being begotten of him as Isaac of Abraham as Solomon of David or as we generally understand the word in our common expressions of the nearest Relations declaring him so the Son of God begotten of his father before all worlds in contradistinction to creation But it would not have been enough to satisfie the world in the truth of that extraordinary original for them to assert it for tho' men value great discoveries according to the credit of their Authors yet the weight and greatness of the discoveries make them nice and curious in their disquisitions about them that they may not be impos'd on for how wretched a disappointment would it have been for a whole world to be big with the violent expectation of a Saviour to be throughly sensible of their own necessity to have a company of men boldly publish to them that the expected Saviour was really come and qualified suitably to those wonderful expectations they had of him and yet to find nothing but a sham or an imposture at last a Bar-cozbi the Son of a ly instead of a Barcochab the Star that should have risen in Jacob as the unhappy Jews were deluded at last In such a case Men are wont to look for clear and uncontroulable evidences of the authority of the discoverer and had not God himself afforded such to the world in relation to the descent and original of our Saviour it would scarce have been reconcileable to infinite justice to have condemn'd the world for not believing on him Nor would Almighty God have made use of those effectual means to satisfie humane doubts had he not himself judged it highly rational that those creatures of his for whom he intended so great a good should receive entire satisfaction in the truth and nature of that good bestow'd In the evidences of his being the Son of God lay all the strength and weight of his Doctrine and the validity and efficacy of that Repentance preach'd by the Apostles in his name had he after all those glorious pretences been one of an inferior rank there never had been so great an Impostor in the world as Christ nor such frontless cheats as his Apostles nor such abused besotted bewitched Creatures in Nature as the Christians in all ages have been Therefore to vindicate both their own Credit and that of their Master the Evangelists in their writings first appeal to the common knowledge of those who liv'd at the same time that Christ convers'd on earth at which time had what they published been false it would certainly have been quickly confuted by the interested Jews and Romans For the Jews who saw themselves expos'd under the characters of the most obstinate and ingrateful infidels in the world and the Romans who saw themselves traduced as tools in the hands of their own vassals to carry on the most barbarous and unreasonable cruelties would certainly have vindicated themselves to the utmost against their slanderers could they have found any flaws in those things they delivered yet the Jews never went about to deny the existence of Jesus the supposed Son of Joseph nor the reality of those mighty works perform'd by him but rather to shew the possibility of all those things tho' Jesus were not the Messias wherein they were easily baffled and the Gentiles endeavoured to confront his Miracles by the pretended wonders wrought by Simon Magus and Apollonius Thyanaeus and so to depretiate the Messiah's
that had but Men been as careful to improve their vertues as their vices none upon Earth could have been ignorant of God's will but the knowledge of that must have cover'd the Earth as the waters cover the Sea As he took his flesh of the Jews so he took the earliest care to reduce the lost sheep of the house of Israel preaching and doing miracles among them in his own Person beside sending out his Disciples to preach in all their Cities But the veil of the Temple was quickly rent in twain and the Holy of Holies the highest Heavens laid open to all that sincerely believ'd on him whether they were Jews or Gentiles He came not as an Herald to proclaim War but with the glad tidings of peace and as an ambassadour of reconciliation he resolv'd to make Mercy triumphant over Justice to give light to them that sate in a more than Aegyptian darkness and to guide them in the ways of everlasting life and therefore as himself vouchsafed to talk with the Samaritan Woman and others of that Nation to shew that he was not so rigidly uncharitable and unconcern'd for Universal welfare as the Jews were so he gave his Apostles a very large commission to carry his Doctrine to all Nations that all People if careful of their own Eternal Interests might come to the knowledge of his truth and be sav'd That Doctrine and those Laws by which he intended to effect these great things to reduce a corrupted World to a sense of duty were so Innocent so Pure so Rational and Divine that nothing less than a common Reformation could have been expected from them for let a Man examine the Gospel through let him do it with the most violent prejudices the severest Eyes he 'l find no foot-steps of self-interest in our Saviour's management of himself he sought not the applauses and honours of the vulgar as appear'd by those frequent offences he gave them in his plain and open reproofs and those disagreeable propositions he commonly made to them otherwise the vulgar were not so dull but that He who spoke as never man spake might in a great measure have influenc'd them and drawn them to an easie rebellion against their foolish and obstinate Superiours notwithstanding all his care to the contrary the predominant humour was once to take him by force and make him a King which he was so far from indulging Joh. 6.15 that he quietly withdrew himself from their disorderly zeal He expos'd himself indeed to all manner of hazards but never sought to advance himself any farther than to a bare vindication of his Innocence What he aim'd at was the good and safety of others to snatch them who were falling into everlasting flames from that dreadful place to make them wiser and every way better what he propounded to them was the Cross self-denyal patience humility a constant expectation of afflictions things not popular among vain men but such as would stand them in more stead than all the trifling honours and pleasures of the World If then onely to aim at publick good if to lay down and command such Doctrines as himself could reap no benefit by but those to whom he spoke might if to declare openly against all high and ambitious thoughts and to be the great Example of his own Instructions argue the harmless nature of that design a Man carries on doubtless what our Saviour taught tended to the most Innocent purposes in the World Had he privately compos'd a Law and afterwards without propounding it to publick examination endeavour'd to settle it by force of arms by an eager persecution of those who should have rejected it even to extermination howsoever good the Law might have been the very method of its propagation would have been an insuperable prejudice against it and would have made all Men conclude its deficiency as to reason and justice But our Saviour pursued another Method He trod in those steps so many had traced very happily before He endeavour'd to advance onely such notions as were confessedly of Divine original He propounded them to the Judgment and censure of all He was ready to answer all Questions to resolve all doubts to silence all cavils and though He carried on his purpose with the utmost Zeal yet He made use onely of gentle perswasions and of unanswerable arguments which none who were not direct enemies to reason could refuse He pleaded a Divine authority for his undertaking yet desir'd not that his Plea should be regarded any farther than he confirm'd it by his works and by the Innocence of his life his works were truly miraculous all works of mercy not of terror obliging not only his friends by them but his very enemies witness the cure of Malchus's ear He call'd for no fire down from Heaven no Earthquakes no storms of Sulphur or Vniversal Deluges to force Men to submission but endeavour'd fairly to convince all who had not heard of his Doctrine before how much it tended to their welfare not forbiding their objections or studying little shifts and artifices to evade them Now if those who have made men better than they were by plain force are justly celebrated by all as Benefactors how much more do they deserve the name who do as much good by gentler means The Peruvians were wont to account their Yncaes the Sons of Heaven because they made it their continual business to civilize a barbarous World to do which they propounded their own Laws first to the inspection of strangers and endeavour'd to perswade them of the great benefits they were like to receive by submitting to them producing examples of the felicity of others by the same obedience but where they were rejected those Yncae's introduced civility by force of arms yet stand not condemn'd in record even for those rougher proceedings and it could not argue an inferiour Original for our Saviour that he us'd no violence at all and yet if we compare the successes of his Gospel inforced by nothing but reason a charitable Zeal and profitable Miracles with the progresses either of Moses's Law which was from Heaven or that of Mahomet which has been spread prodigiously by Wars and Conquests or that of the Peruvian Yncae's which was promoted by the calmest ways that ever any meer humane politicks were the Gospel has prevail'd infinitely beyond them all having been truly Catholick when others have been confin'd to particular Countries having out-stood all arguments rais'd against it when the rest have been baffled by almost every undertaker and having out-stood the strength of time when the very name of several others are almost lost and even Mahometism it self of a much younger standing though it has thriven beyond the rest has fallen very short of the progress of the Gospel This Universal prevalence is an irrefragable evidence of the Gospels excellence and proves the Contriver of it not to have been of an Earthly original since nothing but Heaven could recommend and practise what
God Contra Celsum l. 1. p. 30 so he objects that Christ was educated in the dark was hired a servant in Aegypt that he there tryed their magick powers and returning from thence in confidence of his jugling tricks set up for a God Origen vindicates him from the malicious imputation of being a Magician but never pretends to deny that he was God or that he assumed that title nay he 's so far from that that he takes a great deal of pains to prove that He was God particularly from those passages of the 45 Psalm cited by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews in his first chapter which I have clear'd before and he adds that we must here consider the Prophet speaking to that God whose throne is everlasting l. 1. p. 43. and that he asserts that God was anointed by God who was His God with the oyl of gladness above his fellows which is the real sence of the words and which he tells us he had formerly silenc'd an obstinate Jew with In his second book Celsus introduces a Jew speaking against Christ and saying they could not own him for God who did not make good his word who endeavoured poorly to avoid Death and was at last betrayed by one of his own followers c. Origen answers Christians did neither believe the body of Christ nor his soul to be God but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word the Son of the God of all things was God that Christians justly condemn the Jews who acknowledge not him to be God whom their own Prophets so often give testimony to as a powerful Being and as God which he is by the witness of the great God and Father of all things himself That when God in the beginning of the world said Let us make Man in our Image the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word perform'd all that his Father commanded for if according to that of the Psalmist He said and they were made l. 2. p. 6â— he commanded and all things were created if at God's command all the Creatures were framed who according to the meaning of the prophetical Spirit was able to put in execution such his Father's command but He who was the living Word and Truth it self The Word then in the beginning of all things was with God and the Word was God and without him nothing was made that was made It 's the Doctrine of S. John and of Origen too So far then we may know how the beginning of S. John's Gospel was understood in his days and what they thought might conveniently be proved from thence When the Jew afterwards is brought in objecting that Men who are partakers of the same Table would not lye in wait for one another much less would any one have treacherous designs upon God p. 74. Origen might easily have answered that cavil by denying that He was God and then by giving instances of Men false and treacherous to those who have eaten with them at the same Table but He owns his Godhead and only performs the latter Celsus afterwards brings in his Jew objecting against the Divinity of Christ thus Who ever heard of God coming down from heaven to earth on purpose to perswade Men as they say Christ did and failing in his design especially when he was long expected and hoped for a denyal of his Divinity had put a full stop to this objection too but Origen on the contrary retorts upon them That the Jews themselves were instance enough of the possibility of such a thing since God had appear'd so remarkably to them in bringing them up out of the land of Aegypt and in giving them a Law from Sina and yet they nor their Fathers could by that means be perswaded to obedience or prevented from running presently into Idolatry p. 106. After all this Celsus in his own person makes use of this argument to prove that Christ could not be God God says He is good and pure and happy and in himself infinitely excellent and lovely if He should descend to be among Men He must necessarily undergo a change a change from good to bad from pure to impure from happiness to misery and from the most excellent to the most sinful state this God would never undergo To this the Father answers That it 's true God is in himselâ— Immutable nor did he suffer any change oâ— this account But that which descended down to Men was in the form of God but out of his Love to mankind he debased himself so far as that he might be born among them but He suffer'd no change from baâ— to good for that He was without Sin he never committed any He was not chang'd from pure or clean to foul or filthy for Hâ— did not so much as know Sin nor did he fall from happiness to misery He humbled himself indeed but was not a whit the less happy even when he stoop'd the lowest for the good of mankind nor did he fall from the best to the most sinful state because what he did proceeded from Love and Charity to us by being among whom He that was the great Physician of Souls could be no more altered for the worse than a Physician for the body is by conversing with those that are sick and full of diseases But says he if Celsus think that because the immortal God the Word assumed a mortal body and an humane Soul that therefore He suffered an alteration or a change Let him know that the Word essentially continuing the Word still suffers by none of those things which happen either to the body or the Soul but that He condescends to become flesh and to speak in a Body l. 4. p. 169 170. for the sake of those who are not able to behold the eradiations and brightness of his Divinity so long till He who receives him being in a short time rais'd to a greater understanding by the Word may be able to contemplate his original nature And finally in his sixth book against the same Celsus he speaks â—hus excellently If then Celsus enquire how we think to know God and to be saved with him We will answer him That He who is the word of God being in them who seek him or who wait for his appearance is sufficient to make known and to reveal the Father who was not to be seen before His appearance for who else can save the Soul of Man and guide us in every thing to God but only God the Word who being in the beginning with God for the sake of those who are confin'd to flesh became flesh that he might be comprehended by those who were not able to see him as He was the Word and as He was with God and as He was God l. 6. p. 322. and appearing in flesh and speaking in the body He calls those who are in the flesh to himself that first he might make them like to the Word which was made flesh and
Dispensation of his Word and Sacraments that he is that great and glorious King in perpetual Obedience to whose Commands we are oblig'd to live and without Obedience to whose Commands perform'd according to our ability we certainly merit Eternal Punishment and this power over us as a Prophet and a King we doubt not took its Original from that Sacrifice he offer'd for our Sins in the fulness of time but on account of the certainty of which Rev. 13.8 he was effectually that Lamb slain from the beginning of the World Well then our Saviour in his Suffering paid a sufficient Price to satisfie for the Sins of all Mankind to atone God's anger against them as Sinners and to prevent their eternal Damnation but these Advantages accrueing from his Priesthood and his Sacrifice can only be participated in by those who submit to his Instruction and his Government he purchas'd that Interest in us at a dear rate and the Connexion between the one and the other is indissoluble He therefore that would reap any Benefit from the Sufferings of our Saviour must obey his Directions submit to his Laws do his Will he who acts so must certainly be very perfect in all Religious Duties therefore those who are eternally saved by Christ's Death must as far as possible be perfect in all Religious Duties therefore the true genuine Doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction must infer a necessity of Practical Holiness not destroy it thus we see when God appointed the brazen Serpent to be set up in the Wilderness for the relief of those who were bitten by fiery Serpents that brassy Representation had a power sufficient annex'd to it to heal all that were hurt but if any bitten Israelite out of an obstinate humour would not have cast his eyes upon the brazen Serpent though the Serpent had been just over his head he would have dy'd by the Wound because the Condition on which alone the Cure was to be had was annex'd to the appointment of that Serpent viz. that the wounded Person should look up to it Or let us take our view of the Doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction from another place then we shall find Faith as an originally necessary Condi ion of receiving any Benefit by it and Faith to be true must as necessarily work by Love for if I am cast into Prison as a Debtor and another out of pity to my deplorable state go and discharge all my Debts and receive an entire acquittance of all such Debts for me and in my name this is Love and Kindness and sufficient in the case in the Judgment of all Rational Men but if after all this done and the Acquittance shew'd me and attested I 'll not believe one word of all the matter and to prove I do not believe will continue a Prisoner still though always complaining of the sadness of my own Condition my Friend did enough for me but what am I the better my Incredulity makes my state and condition still as sensibly lamentable as before so whereas by Adam's Transgression all Men are brought into a state of Guilt and all stand as Prisoners under the hand of God justly incens'd against us and are such Debtors to his Justice as unless that Debt be discharg'd by or for us we must be eternally miserable Our blessed Saviour assured of our Insolvency has by himself satisfi'd his Father's Anger he has discharg'd that Debt we stand engaged in to Heaven his whole Gospel is a sufficient Evidence of what he has done for us in it we are acquitted by God the Father from those Punishments we were liable to for the sake of his Son and the truth of that Gospel has through all Ages been sufficiently attested to the World but if after all this we all turn Socinians if we will not believe that our Saviour has really extended any such Goodness towards us and to prove that we do not believe it we slight all those Rules of Holy Living which are given us and resolve with the rebellious Citizens in the Gospel that we will not have this Man to reign over us that we will not submit to his Laws nor acknowledge his Soveraignty his Satisfaction is ineffectual to us and though we groan under never so deep a sense of our natural Misery we can reap no good from that we must therefore believe in our Saviour we must believe him able willing and really to have satisfied his Father for our Debt we must believe that by virtue of that Satisfaction so made He 's able to save to the uttermost all those that come to God in and by him We must believe he 's really able to Teach us and that he certainly has a Right to Command us and when we sincerely believe all these things and that as it was one great end of our Lord's offering himself for us to free us from the Punishment so it was another to free us from the Slavery of Sin so that we should not obey it in the Lusts thereof it will be impossible that we should indulge our selves in Sin nay we cannot confirm the Truth of our profest Faith or make it credible to the World that we really Believe what we pretend to do unless we endeavour as he that has called us is holy so to be our selves holy in all manner of conversation Let those then who talk so freely of the Doctrine of our Lord's Satisfaction who would persuade us that it 's so irrational and pernicious to believe any such thing find out any Arguments from their own Scheme of Doctrine which may serve to enforce Practical Holiness more vigorously than what we have delivered if they can Will They tell us we are oblig'd to it out of pure Gratitude to Heaven bcause God is pleased to forgive us our Sins past freely and to confirm that free Pardon to us by the Death of his Son as if he meerly dy'd a kind of Martyr for that Truth which they make almost the sole end of all our Saviour's Sufferings Gratitude it 's true may operate powerfully upon a generous Soul but the most generous of all would be willing to understand the nature of that Obligation they have to be so grateful and the reasons of it We are then obliged by God's free pardoning of our Sins how do we know he has done so By the Testimony of Scripture that Word of God which is sufficient to instruct us to Eternal Life Well we own Scripture does inform us That our Sins are freely pardoned by God and we should build very confidently on that evidence did not those we have to do with teach us a great deal of Diffidence and show us that such Passages of Scripture are capable of very different Interpretations and that when we think we have a very clear proof of this or another Particular when we come to scan things accurately by our own Reason we find we have none at all for the same Scripture which tells us we are freely pardoned
tells us as plainly and as intelligibly That the Lord Jesus Christ is that Lamb of God who takes away the Sins of the World that Christ died for us or for our Sins that he bore our Sins and carried our Transgressions that he redeemed us with his own most precious Blood that he gave his Soul a Redemption-Price for many that he 's our Mediator that he has reconciled us to God and is a Propitiation for our Sins and that the Scripture has very distinctly stated the Comparison between Legal expiatory Sacrifices and the Sacrifice of Christ the former being only so many Types and Shadows the latter the Antitype or the thing so long and so often represented by them And yet according to Socinian Doctrine we must not believe one word of all this but we must fly to foolish Glosses and impertinent Figures to elude the force of all these Assertions and Scripture must be made a Nose of Wax that it may the better be subservient to the ridiculous prejudices of pretended Rationalists But if we may so slightly pass over these Assertions we may as slightly pass the rest and deny that we ow any Gratitude to God on account of the forgiveness of our Sins according to true Catholick Principles we believe both that our Saviour has satisfied for our Sins and that our God has freely forgiven them and none but a Socinian Reasoner would find any difficulty to reconcile those Truths to one another as we have shewn before But we 'll suppose Gratitude to Heaven for Mercies receiv'd especially that of Salvation by Christ would oblige us sufficiently to Holiness of Life it will follow from thence that that Doctrine which sets off the Love and Mercy of God and Christ to the greatest advantage must needs offer the most considerable Motives for our Obedience but here a new Vindicator of Socinianism acknowledges Defence of the Hist of Vnitar p. 50. That the Socinian Doctrine makes the Love of God less wonderful than the Trinitarian therefore the Socinian Doctrine affords us less effectual Motives to grateful Obedience than the Trinitarian Doctrine does and since the Love of God is of so extraordinary a Nature really that it passes knowledge Eph. 3.19 as the Apostle assures us since no words can set it off according to its Excellence nor the very Conceptions of Men reach it for if they could Men might know the utmost dimensions of it then whatsoever Scheme of Doctrine goes about to lessen that Love under a pretence of making it more intelligible that is really destructive of true Piety and as far as possible takes away all Obligations to Obedience arising from Gratitude for God's Love to Mankind So the Doctrine of our Saviour's great Humiliation in being incarnate for our Sakes seems a very powerful reason why we should be meek and lowly in spirit will their Opinion that he was a meer Man taking his first and sole Original from the Blessed Virgin promote Humility more powerfully that he was very great on that account that he did many Miracles we readily own but we cannot but imagine our mighty Man of Reason talks Nonsense when he tells us Ib. Def p. 51. That Christ by the power bestow'd upon him cast out Devils cured all sorts of Diseases raised the dead commanded the Winds and the Seas and was then indeed in the likeness of God but it was a great Humility in him that he was so far from making an Ostentation of his Glory and Greatness that he became like a Servant c. If indeed he had that power of doing such great Miracles and had conceal'd it or had never done any thing miraculous but in Corners and where the Noise of it could never have crept out into the World it might have look'd like somewhat of our Author's Humility but the greatest part of our Saviour's Miracles were done openly in the Synagogues on the Sabbath Day and elsewhere when Multitudes were gathered together and this as we take it was to own and publish his Greatness and Power to the World and it was but necessary he should do so for these Miracles of his were the authentic Evidences of his Messiahship the Evidences to which he appeal'd when he declar'd that If he had not done among them the works which never man did John 15.24 they had had no sin but that now they had no cloke for their sin because they themselves had been Eye-witnesses of those great things which they could no more prove were done by any Diabolical Power than our Socinians can that they were not done by a Power Inherent Natural and Divine in himself and the same Evangelist after having given us the History of Christ's turning Water into Wine at the Marriage of Cana in Galilee adds this Remark to it 2.11 This beginning of Miracles did Jesus and manifested forth his Glory and his Disciples believed on him so that in this particular we see our Saviour not expressing an unwillingness to be known or to have it known what and how great he was and as for his becoming a Servant notwithstanding all that Power it was no matter either so great or so peculiar to him as should render him so extraordinary an Example to us for his Birth as to his Condition in this World was very mean and if we believe as some do that for many Years he follow'd the same Employ which Joseph his suppos'd Father did and that he had an illiterate Education 7.15 as the Jews object to him which particulars are almost unquestionable his Condition was servile from the beginning and therefore not so strange that he should willingly be a Servant to others especially since it has always been the Policy of those who endeavour to head a Party to manage themselves with all the obliging Condescensions in the World so Menelaus in Euripides tells Agamemnon he should remember when he sought the Command of the Grecian Army Euripid. in Aulide 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 How humble he was taking every Man kindly by the Hand and having his doors always open to the meanest Plow-jobber and courteously speaking to all though they seem'd to take no notice of him If this were the Mode of Great Men aspiring after more Grandeur what of wonder was there that He who had not so much as where to lay his Head should be so humble and so much a Servant to every one especially since he came to call Men to follow him and set up for the Soveraign Head of the greatest Society of Men in the World As for our Saviour's Sufferings notwithstanding his Power of doing Miracles he was far from standing alone in that particular for Moses himself though so great by God's own appointment among his own People though he were a King in Jesurun Exod. 17.4 though he did many Miracles was in danger of Stoning by the discontented Israelites Elijah a Man of a very considerable Character acted as a Servant