Selected quad for the lemma: truth_n
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A52602
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An account of Mr. Firmin's religion, and of the present state of the Unitarian controversy
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Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719.
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1698
(1698)
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Wing N1502; ESTC R4610
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32,345
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84
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he be God or Man or whether he satisfied Divine Justice for our Sins by his Death but only that a Man of Nazareth was ordained and sent by God to be a Saviour I see all Mr. Edwards his Colts-teeth are not yet out of his head he cannot forbear dealing sometimes in Railery and Wit but I must seriously desire him to name me any Socinian or Unitarian Writer that ever said no more is required to make a Christian but only that he believe Jesus is the Messias The truth of the matter is this Mr. Edwards has been lately very much foiled first by a Learned Gentleman then by a Divine of the Church of England upon this Question Whether it be of the essence of a Christian as a Christian to assent to more than this one Article that Jesus is the Messias sent by God to instruct and save the World They do not doubt that 't is a Christians duty to learn by degrees all the other Articles of the Christian Creed and to believe them but if he hath attained or by occasion of whatsoever Impediments that were not caused by his own Negligence or Perversness he can attain to more either Knowledg or Faith yet this one Article doth make him a Christian It doth not satisfy Mr. Edwards that upon all the points in question they have declared themselves to be Anti-Socinians he resolves for all that they shall be Socinians and this opinion which they maintain against him a new Article of the Socinian Creed It may be one way he thinks to reduce 'em to silence if he calls their opinion Socinianism and if after that they will not pull in their Horns it shall be Irreligion or downright Atheism or at least abnegation of Christianity or Popery his other Compliments to those whom he is pleased to attack I have now answered concerning all the Articles of our Religion with sincerity without any the least disguise or reserved or unusual meaning or meanings And I am not sorry that Mr. Edwards almost constrained us to explain our selves concerning these points For as unsincere and untrue as his Imputations are and as scurrilous as his manner of representing them and discoursing upon them sometimes is the Retortion or Answer here made will be judged by indifferent and discerning Persons to be home and satisfactory As to the man himself Mr. Edwards has been serviceable to the common Christianity by divers learned Books therefore I wish to him whatsoever good himself desires to himself these Concertations between us notwithstanding THIS Scheme as it expresses the real Sentiments of the Socinians so it perfectly agrees with the Doctrine of the Catholick Church and of the Church of England saving that in the fourth Article concerning Original Sin Freewill and Grace the Answer is not so explicit and direct as it would have been if Mr. Edwards had not affectedly declined to declare and express the Doctrine of the Church concerning those matters In their first Rise the Unitarians followed the Doctrine of St. Austin and Mr. Calvin in the Article of Original Sin and the depending Articles Free-will and the Grace of God but F. Socinus coming into Transilvania and then into Poland revived among 'em the Pelagian Doctrine so that for about an Age they were Pelagians in the question of Original Sin and its Dependents In this last Century as they speak or Age being the seventeenth from the birth of our Saviour those Questions have received a new turn in all the Western Churches that is to say among the Roman Catholicks and the Protestants of all denominations A kind of Semipelagianism is grown into repute in most places being a temper or expedient of Peace both Parties yielding somewhat and yet both retaining enough to make their Doctrine consistent with our natural Notions of the Justice and Mercy of God And to this I think the Unitarians now rather encline but not generally that is not universally or not all of them In short the above-recited Scheme is direct and clear except only in the fourth Article concerning Original Sin and the Points thereon depending But those Questions being now variously held in all Churches and among all Parties the Socinians are no more Dissenters on the account of what some or most of them believe concerning that Article than Bishop Jer. Taylor for instance and Dr. Hammond and the Remonstrant Party supposed to be the greater part of the Church of England are So that upon the whole we may say There is now no Sociniun Controversy The misunderstanding that was common to both Parties the Church and the Unitarians is annihilated and Mr. Firmin by approving and publishing the Scheme of Agreement professed himself of the same mind with the Catholick Church and the Church of England Mr. Firmin was sensible of this notwithstanding as Curator of the Unitarian an Religion he resolved to have continued his endeavours that no false Notion oâ— the Trinity should corrupt the sincere Faith of the Vnity He was perswaded that the Faith of the Unity is the first Article of Christianity the Article that distinguishes Christians from Pagans as the belief of the Messiah already come distinguishes us from Jews He judged that tho the unscriptural terms Trinity three Divine Persons and such like in the sense they are intended by the Church contain a Doctrine which is true yet taken in the sense they bear in common familiar Speech in which sense the greater number of men almost all the unlearned must needs understand them they imply a more gross and absurd Polytheism than any of the old Heathens were guilty of He that understands three Divine Persons to be three distinct infinite all-perfect Spirits or Beings or Minds three Creators three several Objects of Worship is more guilty of Polytheism than the Greeks or Romans ever were before their conversion to Christianity for tho they and other Nations were Heathens that is Polytheists Asserters of more Gods yet they never believed more than one Infinite All-perfect Spirit the Father and King of the lesser Deities Mr. Firmin knew well that the Majority of vulgar Christians and not a few Learned Men have a Tritheistick Notion or Conception of the Trinity or three Divine Persons each of which is God namely that they are three distinct Infinite All-perfect Minds or Spirits Meeting this every day in Conversation as well as in Books he was not less zealous for the Doctrine of the Unity after the Publication of the Scheme of Agreement than before And therefore he purposed besides the continuation of all his former Efforts to hold Assemblies for Divine Worship distinct from the Assemblies of any other denomination of Christians But he did not intend these Assemblies or Congregations by way of scism or separation from the Church but only as Fraternities in the Church who would undertake a more especial care of that Article for the sake of which 't is certain both the Testaments were written The great design and scope of both
only by nature In good truth they are better and stronger by nature than I ever hope to be in this Life by the superadded Grace of God But here again he did not strike home he intended more than he durst say and he durst not say it lest we should ask him whether he believes the just contrary That There is no need of the Spirit to repent to believe or to obey the Gospel and perform religious Acts. 'T is a serious point We answer with St. Paul the Spirit HELPETH our Infirmities Rom. 8.26 But we judg for all that the Holy Scripture gives no occasion to any to turn Enthusiasts and to resolve the whole duty we owe and must perform to God and to our Neighbor into preternatural Impulses as if we were Machines and not men or Puppets moved by invisible Wires not Men that act by their own Reason and Choice That Men are righteous before God not by the merit of Christ but by their own good works We answer with all but Antinomians and the more rigid Calvinists the Merit of Christ is not reckoned to us without Faith and good Works of our own But I am not certain that the Calvinists or the Antinomists would not assent to that Proposition or not allow it to be orthodox I incline to think those People have no real difference with the Church nor the Church with them but that they mistake one anothers meaning V. Another branch of our Creed according to Mr. Edwards runs thus I believe concerning a future State That the Souls of the Deceased have no knowledg or perception of any thing they are not sensible of any Rewards or Pains and that their very Nature is absorpt That at death the Soul as well as Body sleeps was an error of some of the most ancient Fathers as well as of some Unitarians But neither of 'em said as Mr. Edwards pretends that in death the very Nature of the Soul is absorpt which is to say extinct they both of them held that there is a Resurrection of the Soul as well as Body But why dos Mr. Edwards impute that opinion to us when he has read for he quotes the book in the first Part of the Considerations on the Explications of the Trinity what is our sense of that matter The words at p. 33. are these This Error was common to Socinus and some of the Fathers The Learned Mr. Du Pinn in his Abridgment of the Fathers has noted that Justin Martyr Irenaeus Minutius Faelix and Arnobius were in this Sentiment There was no reason to object this to Socinus as if it were a peculiar opinion of his much less to the English Unitarians who never defended it nor that I know of do any of 'em hold it VI. He says next I believe we shall not rise with the same Bodies but that another Matter or Substance shall be substituted in their place I see most of our Opposers have affected to mistake our meaning concerning the resurrection of the Body We hold nothing that is singular in the case we differ not from the Catholick Church about it We say with St. Paul 1 Cor. 15.35 How are the dead raised and with what Bodies do they come Thou sowest not the body that shall be The Body that is raised is not in all respects the same that was committed to the earth in divers perhaps in the most it is We rise not Infants or decrepit old Men or lame or deaf or any way distorted tho' many so lived and so died Nay as to the Passions resulting from the present complexion of the body and therefore to be reckon'd the Modifications and as it were parts of the body we rise not with them it is not the same Body in respect of those Passions that it here lived For instance some are by complexion very cowardly or pensive or choleric or jealous the Body that shall be will not be such It will be conformed to the likeness of the glorious Body of our Lord Christ that is be freed from all both external and internal Imperfections Farthermore our present body Physicians and Philosophers say is in a continual Flux all the parts of it internal as well as external continually decay and are continually also renewed They decay by the Perspiration that is continually caused by the internal heat and are continually renewed by the Nourishment taken in and converted into Blood Spirits Flesh and Bones 'T is said by the Learned in these matters that no man's body is the very same as to the matter and substance of it this present year that it was the last year and will be the next year 'T is wholly new by the nourishment of the present year We say therefore there shall be a Resurrection of the Body and as some of the Antient Creeds spoke of the same Body as truly and as properly as N.N. is the same Man this year that he was one or seven or twenty years ago If Mr. Edwards requires us to say more he exacts more than the Church believes For by the Resurrection of the same Body the Church intends only that 't is as truly the same as a Man notwithstanding the Flux of his parts is now the same N. N. or J. B. that he was seven or ten years past Yet not altogether the same because inconceivably better That is without any external or internal Deformities or Weaknesses VII I believe that at the Day of Judgment Men shall not be required to give an account of their Actions the most flagitious Sinners shall not be examined concerning any thing of their past Life Only they shall be punished and their Punishment is this to utterly cease or perish for ever The unquenchable Fire is nothing but Annihilation I do not know that the Scriptures or the Catholic Church do require any to believe that Sinners shall be examined concerning their past Life at the day of the general Judgment To what purpose I pray doth the All-knowing Judg need to be informed concerning the particulars of their Guiâ—â—â— If every person is to be severally exâ—â—â—â—ed concerning the particulars of his â—â—ansacted Life the Day of Judgment will extend it self to many Millions of Ages more and farther than the whole duration of the World from its beginning to its consummation It should seem Mr. Edwards thinks that because the Scriptures speak of the great Judgment by God in the language of Men and of Human Judicatures such as Trumpets the Throne of the Judg a formal Sentence the Pleadings of the Guilty the Answers of the Judg that therefore in very deed we are to expect such a Scene at the Judgment by God as at a common Assize I conceive on the contrary that all such expressions and words wherever they are found in Scripture are not intended as real Descriptions but as Comparisons or Resemblances by which the capacities of the Vulgar may he assisted and their affections wrought upon All that is intended by such expressions is