adds to his Fault But this Author of the New Christianity wisely objects that the Apostle's Creed hath none of these Articles and Doctrines which I mentioned p. 12 13. Nor doth any considerate man wonder at it for the Creed is a Form of outward Profession which is chiefly to be made in the Publick Assemblies when Prayers are put up by the Church and the Holy Scriptures are read Then this Abridgment of Faith is properly used or when there is not generally time or opportunity to make any Enlargement But we are not to think that it expresly contains in it all the Necessary and Weighty Points all the Important Doctrines of our Belief it being only design'd to be an Abstract It is with this Creed as 't is with the Commandments and the Lord's Prayer If a man doth not more than is expresly enjoyned in the Decalogue he can't be said to Act as a Christian. If he prays for no more than is expresly mentioned in the Petitions of the foresaid Prayer he can't be said to Pray as a Good Christian. So if a man believe no more than is in express terms in the Apostle's Creed his Faith will not be the Faith of a Christian. And yet still it is to be granted that as all things to be done and all things to be prayed for are reducible to the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer so All matters of Faith in some manner may be reduced to this Brief Platform of Belief But when I call it an Abstract or Abbreviature it is implied that there are more Truths to be known and assented to by a Christian in order to making him really so than what we meet with here And yet I must take leave to tell our Vindicator that this Creed hath more in it than he and his brethren will subscribe to If he were not above Catechisms as well as Creeds I might remind him of Our Church's judgment concerning the Articles of this Creed Qu. What dost thou chiefly learn in these Articles of thy Belief Answ. First I learn to believe in God the Father who had made me and all the world Secondly in God the Son who hath redeemed me and all mankind Thirdly in God the Holy Ghost who sanctifieth me and all the Elect People of God These are killing words to a Disciple of Socinus who acknowledges neither the God-head of the Son nor of the Holy Ghost nor the Redemption or Sanctification by either Yet our Church with all the Christian Churches in the world owns these Truths to be contained in the Apostles Creed And there are other Articles of this Symbol let them palliate it as they please which the Racovian Gentlemen are unwilling to give their assent to They faulter about Christ's Iudging the quick and the dead they partly deny the Resurrection of the body they deny Life Everlasting as it respects wicked men for they hold that these shall be Annihilated of all which I may have occasion to speak another time At present I only take notice of their lopping off several Articles from this Creed But was it not judiciously said by this Writer that it is well for the Compilers of the Creed that they lived not in my days p. 12. I tell you Friend it was impossible they should for the Learned Usher and Vossius and others have proved that that Symbol was drawn up not at once but that some Articles of it were adjoyned many years after far beyond the extent of any man's life and therefore the Compilers of the Creed could not live in my days not could I live in theirs but I let this pass as one of the blunders of our Thoughtful and Musing Author Nor had he reason to think that those that made the Apostles Creed would have been censured by me for I have vindicated and asserted their Articles whereas he and his friends have new-modell'd the Creed yea indeed have presented us with One Article instead of Twelve and in order to that have sunk the Epistles because they are not Socinianized all over Socinianized If this Gentleman had said that the belief of Iesus's being the Messias was one of the first and leading acts of Christian Faith he had said right and none would have opposed it If he had said that the knowledg of the Gospel and consequently of the Doctrines of it advanc'd at first by degrees and shone brighter after our Saviour's Ascension than before he had spoken truth but when he positively and peremptorily declares that neither at first nor afterwards there was any Necessity of believing more than this that Iesus is the Messias he misrepresents the Gospel-Dispensation and mistakes the nature of Christiaanity To stop here and go no further is unsufferable This is as if a Breeder up of Children and Youth should carry them no further than the A B C. He is wholly for reducing of Christianity whereas he should have given it in its Full and Ample Extent especially he should not have kept back any thing of the Foundation CHAP. IV. The Christian Faith which this Gentleman describes is of the same scantling with that of the Mahometans The Affinity between the Turks and Anti-trinitarians The Devils are capable of a higher degree of Faith than that which he saith makes a Christian. A brief Idea of the Compleat Faith of a Christian. The Danger of asserting that there is but One Article of Christian belief necessary to be assented to This is the way to introduce Darkness and Blindness into Christendom and to promote the designs of that Church which cherishes Ignorance as the Mother of Devotion and Religion How far this Writer is instrumental in it What care he hath of mens Souls and of their Salvation It is the practise of Socinian Writers to curtail Christianity and to cut off as many Fundamental Articles from it as they can This Writer had his Platform from Crellius He is approved of and applauded by the English Socinians Three Reasons assign'd why the Socinians agree to maim the Heads of Christianity and to reduce all into One Article The Office of Catechizing was not instituted for the teaching of One Article of Faith only IT is likely I shall further exasperate this Author when I desire the Reader to observe that this Lank Faith of his is in a manner on other than the Faith of a Turk For the Alcoran acknowledges that the Spirit of God bore witness to Christ the Son of Mary a Divine Soul was put into him He was the Messenger of the Spirit and the Word of God And in another place God is brought in declaring that he had sent Christ the Son of Mary c. And in other places he is mention'd as a Prophet as a Great Man one Commission'd by God and sent by him into the world This is of the like import with what our good Ottoman Writer the Vindicator saith of our Saviour and this he holds is the sum of all that is Necessary
satisfying for us and purchasing Salvation by vertue of his Death when he designedly undertook to enumerate the Advanvantages and Benefits which accrue to mankind by Christ's coming into the World And in the making good of these Particular Charges I shall as I did before evidence to the World that this Writer hath not only a design to cherish Socinianism but at the same time to make way for Atheism I begin with the First on which I will enlarge more than on any of the rest because it comprehends in it several other Particulars and because in discussing of this I shall have opportunity to lay open the Sophistry and Dissimulation of this Vindicator and likewise to discover to the Reader how Mischievous and Pernicious his Design is First it is observable that this Guilty Man would be shifting off the Enditement by excepting against the formality of the Words as if such were not to be found in his Book But when doth he do this In the close of it when his matter was exhausted and he had nothing else to say Vindic. p. 38. Then he bethinks himself of this Salvo whereas he had generally before pleaded to the formal Enditement and had thereby owned it to be True And indeed he can do no other for it was the main work he set himself about to find but One Article of Faith in all the Chapters of the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles and accordingly he over and over again declares that there is but that One Truth viz. Iesus is the Messiah necessarily to be assented to by Christians or as he sometimes words it absolutely required to make a man a Christian or a member of Christ. This is the SOLE Doctrin press'd and requir'd to be believ'd in the whole tenour of our Saviour's and his Apostles preaching p. 192. of his Reasonableness of Christianity And again in the same place This was the ONLY Gospel Article of Faith which was Preached to them This he often inculcates having left out several considerable passage in the very Gospels and having thrown aside the Epistles as if they were no part of the New Testament hoping that some of his Readers would be bubbled by this means And when I told him of his One Article he knew well enough that I did not exclude the Article of the Deity for that is a Principle of Natural Religion whereas I only took notice of his passing by and wholly omitting those points which are Evangelical Yet he willfully mistakes me in this p. 27. of his Vindication and saith he doth not deny the necessary belief of a Deity or One only True God and so the belief of the Messias with that makes Two Articles Thus he would perswade the Reader that I misunderstood him and that I tax'd him with setting up One Article when he acknowledges two But the Reader sees his Shuffling for my Discourse did not treat neither doth his Book run that way of Principles of Natural Religion but of the Revealed one and Particularly the Christian. Accordingly this was it which I taxed him with that of all the Principles and Articles of Christianity he chose out but One as necessarily to be believed to make a Man a Christian. And though since he hath tried to split this One into two p. 28. yet he labours in vain for to believe Iesus to be the Messias amounts to the same with believing him to be a King or Ruler his being Anointed i. e. being the Messias including that in it Yet he hath the Vanity to add in great Characters THESE ARE ARTICLES as if the putting them into these Great Letters would make one Article two Such is the fond fancy and conceitedness of the Gentleman whereas in other places he hath formally declared that there is but One Article that is the necessary Matter of Faith This I had just reason to except against and now I will give a farther account of my doing so by shewing that besides that One Fundamental Principle or Article which he so often mentions there are Others that are as necessarily to be believed to make a Man a Christian yea to give him the denomination of a Believer in the sense of the Gospel Several of these I particularly but barely enumerated in my former Discourse and now I will distinctly insist on the most of them and let the Reader see that it is as necessary for a Convert to Christianity to give assent to them as to that other he so frequently specifies This Proposition that by one man sin entred into the World and death by sin and this which follows Death passed upon all men for as much as all men have sinned Rom. 5. 12. and that other that even the Regenerate for the Apostle speaks of himself and the Converted Ephesians are by nature the Children of wrath as well as others Eph. 2. 3. these I say are as absolutely necessary to be known assented to and believed in order to our being Christians as this Proposition Iesus is the Messias or Sent of God For I ask what was the end of his being sent Was it not to Help Mankind to rescue and deliver them from some Evil And where can we be inform'd concerning the Rise and Nature of this Evil but in the Sacred and Inspired Writings And do not these foresaid Texts which we find in St. Paul's Epistles acquaint us with the true Source and Quality of our condition by nature Do they not discover the Root of Mans Misery viz. the Apostacy of Adam for he is that one Man and the dreadful Consequences of it expressed by Death and Wrath And is this set down to no purpose in these Inspired Epistles Is it not requisite that we should know it and believe it Yea is not this absolutely requisite For it is impossible any one should firmly imbrace or so much as seriously attend to the Doctrin of the Messias unless he be persuaded that He stands in need of him And can he be persuaded of this unless he be acquainted with his Degenerate and Miserable State his universal Depravity and innate Proness to what is Vitious and with the true Original of it viz. The voluntary Defection and Fall of our First Parents and with that the loss of our Happiness The word Messias is an insignificant term till we have a belief of this Why then is there a Treatise published to tell the World that the bare belief of a Messias is all that is required of a Christian Again it is not only necessary to know that Iesus is the Messias but also to know and believe who this Iesus this Messias is viz. whether he be God or Man or both For every one will grant that there is a Vast Difference between the one and the other as much as there is betwixt Infinite and Finite and therefore that we may have a due apprehension concerning the Messias it is absolutely necessary that we should believe him to be what he is declared to
takes no notice of what falls from his own pen and therefore within a page or two he confutes himself and gives himself the Lye The plain truth is he Socinianizes here but will not own it which makes him run into these Contradictions He follows the steps of his Good Patron Crellius one of the stiffest Racovians that we have who throws aside several Articles of faith because they are Dark and Difficult and not adapted to the Capacity of the Vulgar This very thing he alledges to set off his Arguments against the Holy Trinity viz. that the doctrine which he maintains is according to the understanding of the Vulgar The Common people he saith among the Iews the Fishermen did not apprehend the doctrine of Three Persons in the Deity neither do the Vulgar Christians at this day form any such notion therefore away with the doctrine of the Trinity And this is the guise and practice of our Socinians at this day it is known that they are wont to propound this Sacred Point to the very School-boys very great Judges indeed and to demand their Resolution of it and they pretend that they give it in the Negative All the appeal now is to Vulgar Capacities to the judgment of the Multitude If these please to allow of any more Articles of Belief than One then our Author will consent to it that we shall have them but he acquaints us that they are for no more but One and therefore we must be content with That This is his New Divinity And a Socinian Brother who undertakes the defence of his Notions seconds him in this telling us that the Articles of faith which are generally propounded by Divines are difficult obscur unintelligible abstruse but the One Article of Mr. Lock is not so but is exactly calculated for the Vulgar Meridian and therefore is the only Authentick and Necessary Point in the Christian Theology I think the Reader will bear me witness that I have refuted this wild Conceit by giving a distinct account of the Evangelical Doctrines and Articles before mentioned and at the same time shewing how Intelligible and Plain they are and by letting him see the Absolute Necessity of their being assented to and embraced by every Christian. No true Lover of God and Truth need doubt of any of them for there is no Ambiguity and Doubtfulness in them They shine with their own light and to an unprejudiced eye are plain evident and illustrious And they would always continue so if some Ill-minded men did not perplex and entangle them on purpose to render them contemptible yea to exclude them wholly from being the matter of our belief And as to the doctrine of the Trinity which is the Main Verity which these men set themselves against there is not any Difficulty much less any Absurdity or Contradiction as they are wont to cry out in that Article of our Christian Belief Indeed there is a Difficulty in this and several Other Truths of the Gospel as to the Exact Manner of the things themselves which we shall never be able to comprehend at least not on this side of Heaven but there is no Difficulty as to the Reality and Certainty of them because we know they are Revealed to us by God in the Holy Scriptures Nay as to the thing it self thus far we can apprehend that it is not impossible or absurd that the Three Distinct Persons in the Deity should be One God for there may be a Plurality of Persons in the same Infinite Essence Every Person doth not require a Single Particular Essence or if they will call the Three Numerical Subsistencies by the name of Essences yet they are united in One General Substance or Essence which is common to them all And when they say it is a Contradiction that One should be Three which is as much as to say One is not One this is soon taken off by replying and that most truly that One and not One in the same respect is a Contradiction but One and not One in different respects is no Contradiction Any smatterer in Logick know this And this is the case here for tho the Three Personalities be distinguish'd and that really yet they agree in One Common Essence and so the Divinity is both One and Three in different respects on different considerations And this is that which is abundantly testified in Scripture in the Gospels as well as the Epistles let our Author remember thâ—t there we learn that the Divine Essence or Nature is branch'd out into Three Distinct Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost and that these three are One. Then as to the Proposition which this New Modeller of Christianity commends to the World as the only Necessary Matter of Faith although he pretends it is more Intelligible than any of those that I have named yet any Judicious Man cannot but see the contrary for this must be explain'd as well as those before his Vulgar Capacities can apprehend it Here first the name Iesus which is of Hebrew Extraction though since Greciz'd must be expounded and so must the Word Messias as I said before And when this is done they must be told even according to the confession of a late Socinian Writer whom afterwards I must discourse with a little the manner of his being the Messiah such as being conceived by the Holy Ghost and Power of the most High his being anointed with the Holy Ghost his being raised from the dead and exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour And then they must be told for what End and Purpose this was or else they can have no true belief of the Messias under which several Weighty Truths are comprehended And if he doth not agree to this viz. that the Words must be thus Opened and Explained and fully understood so that Christian Souls may have the true sense of them then he doth as good as say that the bare pronouncing of these Words Iesus is the Messias is enough to make a Christian. And we shall be apt to think that he intends this for a Charm or Spell and that the very Syllables will suffice to make one a True Believer especially if he be one of the Vulgar and Illiterate But it may be he hath something else to say to an Other Rank of Men Perhaps he holds that there is one Christianity for the bulk of mankind and another for the Finer and Better Sort of People And then it is likely he will tell us of two Heavens one very Spacious to hold the Multitude and the other of a Lesser Compass to receive the rest These are the Absurdities which I confess I delight not in exposing or so much as mentioning that this New Notion may produce Whence it appears that all his jargon and chatter about his One Article are vain and insignificant and are serviceable only to gull the Unwary Reader and which is worse to debauch Christianity it self CHAP. III. The late
for a man shall scarcely hear a more Audacious word though 't is true he endeavours to mollifie it with an if As to what he saith about my taking notice of the Gentleman 's slighting the Epistolary Writings I have fully answered it in the foregoing Papers and therefore shall add no more here He proceeds next to those Socinan Authors whose undue Notions concerning God I glanc'd upon The Author of the Considerations c. in reply to the Right Reverend Bishop who had from the notion of God's Eternity inferr'd that he was Self-existent or from himself hath these words What makes him viz. the Bishop say God must be from himself or self-originated for then he must be before he was which this Writer concludes to be a Contradiction Therefore he would make this Conclusion that God's Self-existence is a Contradiction I know it will be pretended that this is the Consequence only of the Bishops Notion of Eternity but it is plain that that Writer makes use of this Arguing to shake the belief of the Eternity and Self-Existence of the Allmighty and that will appear from what he further adds in way of Exception to what that Reverend Person saith afterwards concerning God's Eternity This Examinator talks of a false notion of Self-existence but doth not say what it is If I have mistaken the Considerer let him write plainer another time As to the Examinator's question How the Second and Third Persons can be Self-existent I answer They are Self-existent as they are eternally from the Self-same Deity Though according to the Nicene Creed Christ be God of God yet that doth not infring his Self-Existence because those words are not spoken of the Essence of Christ which is common to him with his Father but of his Personality He being the same with the Father as to the former hath his Existence of himself but differing from the Father as to the latter he is rightly said to be from him or of him as he is the Second Person in the Trinity This is easily reconciled with what he saith an Other Bishop asserts if this Vnitarian hath not a mind to quarrel In the next Paragraph he is quite non-plus'd for I had charg'd the Sacinian Authors with their denial of God's foreknowing future Contingencies and consequently denying the Omniscience of God which is an inseparable Attribute of the Deity and he having nothing to reply to the purpose first tells us he is not concern'd in it p. 18 whereas every one knows that he being one of the Party is concern'd Secondly assoon as he had as it were renounced the Socinian doctrine by saying he was not Concern'd in it he presently owns it for Truth as those words import p. 18. to deny his foreknowledg of the certainty of that which is not certain c. which is as much as to say that there are some things that are Uncertain and therefore Unknowable and these God can have no knowledg of And yet thirdly he would seem to hint that it is a dishonourable thing to God those are his words that he should not have a foresight of these things Thus Confused is our Author which shews he is not fit to be an Examiner of other mens Writings when he can't write Consistently himself but in three or four lines hath as many Blunders In the next words and what follows he perfectly gives up the Cause p. 18. for I had laid this to the charge of the Racovians that they denied the Immensity or Omnipresence of God which is a Property or Perfection never to be disjoyn'd from the Deity whereupon he tamely acknowledges that Crellius and the rest of the Fraternity are of this perswasion Only because the Gentleman must be wagging his tongue he gives us a scrap out of a Latin Poet and just names a Greek Father who never said any thing to that matter and so we are rid of them But he comes on again and goes off assoon for he barely mentions the Spirituality of God which I had asserted to be another Divine Excellency and it is such an Attribute of God that we can't conceive of him without it and therefore it is made the short and comprehensive Definition of him that he is a Spirit Iohn 4. 24. In my Discourse which this Examinator calls in question I took notice that the Socinians denied this Property of the Deity which I justly tax'd as an Atheistick Tang and I think it was a mild term for it is a Rank Sign of a great tendency to Atheism to deny that God is a Spirit i. e. an Immaterial Incorporeal Being But our present Author resolves himself into the opinion of those modest Divines who by their Blushing can be no other than Socinus's Scholars who determine nothing about the Point which is as much as to say he and they deny it But you must know they are now a little upon their Credit this Gentleman who speaks in the name of the rest had before given up the Immensity and Omniscience of God and therefore it is high time now to be upon the Reserve and to pause a little that the world may not see that they reject All those Properties of the Deity which I mention'd But notwithstanding this cunning practice of theirs the world may see yea it cannot but plainly see that they deny every one of these Divine Attributes more or less and this particularly which I mention'd last viz. that God is a Spirit properly so call'd For whereas I quoted Socinus and Crellius their Grand Patriots to prove this denial this Writer takes no notice of my doing so which lets us see that the opinion of those Great Masters is humbly submitted to by all the rest So now I hope the Reader is convinc'd that I was not Vnjust to the Socinians that I did not highly injure them as they have cried out when I charg'd them with Atheism or a Strong Tendency to it in some Points I tax'd them with denying these four Attributes the Self-Existence the Omniscience the Omnipotence the Spirituality of God and lo this professed Son of Socinus who was chosen out with great deliberation and judgment without doubt from the rest of his brethren to undertake the Cause to refute what I had alledg'd against them and who questionless hath said all that he could in the Case lo I say this professed and known Writer of the Brotherhood confirms and ratifies what I have laid to their charge For he produces the words out of their own Author which I referr'd to whence it appears that he had a mind to distort the Right Reverend Bishop of Worcester's words and to argue against the Self-Existence of God This Examinator without any more ado rejects the Second and third Attributes and by his boggling at the fourth we know what must be the fate of that Thus he and his fellow-Criminals being conscious to the truth and Justice of the Charge confess themselves Guilty They are so far from clearing themselves