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
taken away but strongly confirm'd the necessity of obedience to God's Laws whether written or natural which was as we have before observ'd the general intent of Religion and agreeable to those notions the World commonly had of it Since for the better carrying on this end Mysteries are so very advantageous to religion as to make Men have reverend apprehensions of it upon account of its incomparable Excellencies in its causes and effects and upon account of the weakness and shallowness of their own understandings since all these particulars are true it 's likewise absolutely necessary that the Christian the onely true Holy pure Religion should be built upon such a foundation as might appear to all Men upon the strictest inquiry beyond all doubt or controversie Mysterious inexplicable incomprehensible Nor could it be an impertinent labour to clear this truth because it totally ruines all the pretences of the Socinians that after the Revelation once made of the great fundamentals of our Faith there could remain nothing of so obscure a nature but that we by the pure strength of our own reason might be able to comprehend it In short that though it be true that Scripture as sufficient for that purpose is and ought to be the sole rule of Faith yet reason ought to be the rule of Scripture Reason as it now stands loaded with all the miserable consequences of sin reason so blind as without the extraordinary light of holy Scriptures to be wholly unable to lead a Man to Eternal life it obviates their assertions that the true ancient Catholick Interpretation of this and other Texts of Scripture that speak of the eternal Divine nature of the Son of God or of that glorious Trinity subsisting in the Father Son and Holy Ghost is false and unreasonable meerly because it introduces an unintelligible incarnation and unity of the Divine and Humane nature in Christ a Mysterious co-essentiality of God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost c. notwithstanding all those glorious revelations God has made of himself in Scripture For if it be certainly true that Religion in it's general notion cannot subsist unless built upon a mystick foundation and that therefore Christian Religion in particular cannot subsist without it then it will follow that the continuing Mystick nature of the great Articles of our Faith can create no prejudice in any person whatsoever against our Religion on their account since especially it will remain impossible to draw any genuine consequences from those mysteries but what will be so far from impeaching that they will strongly confirm and re-inforce all those duties relating to God or man which are laid upon us by the natural or written Law and it will follow farther that the Socinians themselves by their endeavours to level all the Articles of our Faith the great saving principles of the Gospel to impair'd reason or by endeavouring to leave Christiany naked of all Mysteries do what in them lies to disannul all the Religion of Christians to take away all the use and advantage of the Gospel leaving the world so involv'd in Atheism or in meer Deism at this time very little to be preferr'd before the other Having done now with the positive assertion our next work is with all exactness and humility to consider the illustration of this Proposition in the severals laid down by the Apostle which altogether afford us the whole sum and substance of the Gospel for all that glad tydings sent from Heaven to Earth for the comfort of mankind consists in this That for their sakes to procure their Salvation God was manifest in the flesh justified in the spirit seen of Angels preach'd unto the Gentiles believ'd on in the world receiv'd up into glory all which particulars tho' the full prosecution of the first be all our present task are incomprehensible mysteries yet as well worth our enquiring into as the Apostles writing them who without doubt would never have laid the weight of piety or godliness or true Religion upon those grounds had they not been worth our looking into or their truth worth our vindicating from all the attacks of prejudiced opinionative or haeretical men It 's true a late author tells us Naked Gospel p 34. c. 1. l. 20. That to dispute concerning a Mystery and at the same time to confess it a mystery is a contradiction as great as any in the greatest mystery the expression is worth our remark for the boldness and absurdity it contains It 's bold not to say impious to insinuate so broadly in a discourse where Christianity's concern'd that all great Mysteries are made up of or at least contain contradictions what have we then nothing at all Mysterious in Scripture what 's that love between the blessed Jesus and his Spouse the Church so admirably character'd in the book of Canticles can our Author find nothing Mysterious in all those adumbrations of ineffable love or can he easily give us a Catalogue of the Contradictions there the real Contradictions I mean for things that are of no mysterious nature at all on any other account may seem to contain somewhat contradictory but seeming contradictions are not real Can he fathom every thing relating to Daniel's weeks Men of a great deal of learning industry and sobriety have taken a great deal of pains to explain the mystery of them and have scarce yet given the world satisfaction were not the Vision mysterious it would be more easily clear'd but because it is not must it therefore be contradictious to it self or to make a yet closer instance the nature of a God can He or any Socinian make it comprehensible to humane understandings or else will the very notion of a God imply a contradiction He must be a very new fangled Son of the Church of England who will assert that but why must it imply a contradiction to dispute or discourse about or to enquire into a confest mystery That God was manifest in the flesh is true we believe that every circumstance relating to his Incarnation as laid down in Scripture is true according to the genuine and common interpretation of such words whereby these circumstances are express'd we believe too That as they are true we may dispute about them and clear them from all that Sophistry whereby some subtle men would fain baffle us out of them is no uncouth or irrational opinion yet after all we take the whole account of this Incarnation as laid down in Scripture to be a very great mystery But where lyes the Contradiction either in believing it a mystery or in defending it as such This truth that God was manifest in the flesh is as before intimated that upon the literal truth of which the whole Salvation of mankind depends How he should have been so is to all mankind mysterious and incomprehensible yet may we without any contradiction explain defend prove and draw inferences from it Hear what a Bishop of our own a genuine
could be subservient Brev. c. 19. Concil t. 5. p 762. Liberatus indeed tells such a story in his abridgment but it 's so impertinent that even Crellius himself concludes he was mistaken in it and we may go farther and pronounce it wholly false since a Manuscript Copy of the new Testament presented to Charles the first of blessed memory by Cyrill then Patriarch of Constantinople reads as we do at this day and that Copy being about 1300 years old was written long before the latter Macedonius was born so that there was no need of running himself into danger by inserting that word into St. Paul's Text which was there before the Socinians tho' daring enough to impose upon the world could not but see the absurdity of their own pretence therefore they try to weaken the force of this Text by another artifice For so they tell us that allowing the word God in the Text it 's not to be understood of Jesus Christ but of God the Father and in this they have Grotius tho' at a distance their Leader too who gives us this general interpretation of the Verse We are not here concern'd about any ordinary truth but about that part of it which no man of himself was able to make out which has an extraordinary faculty to generate true piety in our hearts vid. Grot. in locum a part of truth in comparison of which all the Precepts and Principles of the Mosaic Law and of Philosophy are idle and of no effect and this mysterious truth amounts to this That the Gospel was published not by Angels but by poor infirm and inconsiderable men as our Lord and his Apostles seem'd to the World so the great mystery was manifest in the flesh this Gospel was justified in the spirit i. e. it was approv'd to the World by many Miracles these being wrought by the influence of the spirit it was seen of Angels and that with the greatest admiration for Angels came to the knowledge of the Gospel by the means of Men it was preacht to the Gentiles not only to the Jews who before were God's peculiar people but to the Gentiles who were meer strangers to the true God it was believ'd on in the World a great part of Mankind entertaining it and it was receiv'd up in glory i e. it was exalted very gloriously because it introduced a far greater degree of Holiness into the World than any former Opinions did So much pains did that learned man take to obscure a plain Text of Scripture and his gloss upon it was but impertinent and absurd at last He 's mighty willing to let the Verse pass without that emphatical word in it but his fancy about the Gospel's being manifest in the flesh and seen of Angels being justified in the Spirit and receiv'd up into glory are so poor and dilute as became not a man of learning and sense to obtrude upon the world therefore his Socinian followers tho' they touch upon this gloss of his yet they quit the Gospel which he insists upon and take God the Father in its room So Volkelius asserts Deum Patrem in carne manifestatum fuisse intelligendum esse that by the Text we are to understand that God the Father was manifest in the flesh and pursues that assertion with this Paraphrase of the whole That God by Christ and his Apostles who suffer'd many things on that account did more clearly then ever discover himself and his will unknown to all precedent Ages In the mean time tho' he reveal'd these things by inconsiderable men he took care by that divine power he shew'd in them to evidence his own justice and truth and to have his will approv'd that at that time and not sooner this will of his was known and understood by the very Angels and the extraordinary wisdom of God which shines in it lay open before them that this same will of God was preach'd to foreign Nations unacquainted with him before and destitute of divine revelation vid. Volkelium ubi supra cum reliquis that the World in all parts gave credit to it and that it was openly receiv'd by Men with a great deal of Honour So far Volkelius with whom agree Crellius tho' dilating more largely upon the place Zwicker and the Racovian Catechism Schlicktingius goes along with Grotius and will by no means admit of the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or God and in plain terms tells us Schlicktingius in loc Deum manifestatum esse in carne dicere nugari est it 's meer fooling to say God was manifest in the flesh and that Godliness and God manifest in the world were very different things But this we shall have occasion to animadvert upon afterwards As for this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the great mystery mention'd in the Text Suidas interprets 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 holy rites of a secret nature Vid. Suid. in Lex v. 1. Vid. Vossii Etym. ling. latinae Dieterici Lex nov testam or not commonly known that they were so call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 because those that heard them stopt their mouths that they might not divulge or explain them to any Vossius and Dieterichus from Casaubon and Hornius chuse rather to derive it from the Hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which signifies to hide or to conceal from hence comes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a concealment or a place to hide one in so that whencesoever it s deriv'd they agree it signifies somewhat of a secret nature not easily to be found out In Ecclesia ea vox generatim accipitur pro re Sacrâ naturae lumine incomprehensibili says Vossius as us'd by Ecclesiastical Writers it 's generally taken for holy things incomprehensible by the light of nature tho' sometimes it has a more restrain'd signification relating to Symbolical rites and so the two Sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper are frequently call'd mysteries but in the Text where we are told the mystery of Godliness is great and that assertion prov'd by the following particulars we learn that the whole affair of the Incarnation of the blessed Jesus with its consequences by which the Redemption of Mankind from the slavery of sin and death was effected is a deep and profound mystery or secret not to be comprehended by any humane understanding and yet so necessarily to be believ'd that no man can rightly assume the name of Christian or pretend to give a due credit to the doctrine of the Gospel without embracing and fully believing it But here we lie open again to the insults of our Socinian adversaries for they seem very unwilling to allow any such things at present as mysteries in Religion for tho' they do believe there were in former ages as particularly before our Saviour's time many things tending to humane salvation which yet to humane understandings were inscrutable and never to be found out yet these things are now
have no proper organs to demonstrate their innate reason by these unhappinesses are all the fatal consequences of sin and we could hardly believe that sin had had any ill consequences at all had not reason suffer'd by it for if we can as really we do observe that reason teaches every one who now adverts seriously to it to aim at quiet and happiness so had not sin clouded it strangely it had been impossible any temptation whatsoever contrived by Hell or its emissaries could have baffled it But it 's plain that by our present incapacities to answer the sophistry of the tempter we are continually betray'd to sin reason in its height and purity would have convinced us of the madness and folly of every thing that 's ill reason as it now stands perverted suffers us unless prevented with a great deal of industry to embrace ill under the notion of good and it 's no small argument of a great weakness in our rational faculties to be so impos'd on We oftentimes now entertain our capital adversary the Devil as an angel of light we misprise vice for virtue falshood for truth sophistry for solid arguments novelty for antiquity superstition for devotion noise for sense interest for zeal confidence for great parts and ingenuity and reason it self as now it stands when we have a few lucid intervals shews us the extreme ridiculousness of those mistakes and the abilities which some have to expose the follies of others and at the same time to betray their own is unanswerable evidence of the imbecillity of humane reason in general It 's doubtless possible for some of excellent constitutions to argue themselves into a strong perswasion that there is a God It 's again possible nay we see it too too common for men of delicate intellectuals to pretend to answer all the arguments brought to prove the being of a God and they do it so plausibly as to get proselytes and to make abundance of room for horrid Atheism We make no question but that we have proofs really unanswerable of the Divinity of the Son of God the Socinians with whom we are now concern'd deny it and pretend to demonstrations of the contrary and all from principles of reason or Scriptures rationally interpreted and many well meaning men think they are in the right and therefore close with them These oppositions of Reason could never have happen'd had the Soul or mind enjoy'd its original freedom and activity for nothing could possibly have been offer'd in opposition to reason wholly clear and perfect that having been incapable of stooping to mean arts and trifling sophistry But we need indeed no more but to reflect a little on our first Parents and on our selves to prove the truth of this conclusion It 's impossible to overlook the prodigious difference there was between Adam as a knowing Monarch giving names to all Creatures according to their natures and Adam sowing Fig-leaves together to hide his nakedness from Creatures whom some conclude irrational and flying to the shelter of the Trees of Eden for a security from the presence of an all-seeing God one argued excess of wisdom the other the extravagance of folly and for our selves as the Jews proved themselves dull and senseless who could not be convinced or reduced by him who spake as never man spake so we cannot without extreme difficulty find any impressions of good made on our Souls by the most forcible discourses whereas reason in its primitive glory could admit of nothing but what was holy just and good all this notwithstanding we conclude That Humane reason corrupted as it is has yet so much of light and strength as to shew and convince us of a general necessity of Religion This we assert of the light of nature which really is nothing but meer reason as it stands at present affected Now if the works of nature are such as according to the assertion of the Apostle do evidence the Almighty's power and Godhead this evidence must be clear to somewhat that 's able to comprehend it and if it be so very full and plain that they who neglect it are altogether inexcusable then that reason which we now enjoy which alone is capable of apprehending natural evidence must still have that strength that those who by its conduct cannot find out a God and their general duty to him are therefore not to be excus'd God has made the World and all things therein and gives to all life and breath Acts 17.24 25 26 27. and all things and has made of one blood all Nations to dwell upon the Earth that they might seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him but it would have been very ill argued of the Apostle from such Topicks if such observations had not really been enough to guide those who search after God to make a discovery of him And here the Socinians seem to act by very strange measures they conclude as before I observ'd from Smalcius that there 's nothing to be admitted into Religion but what 's agreeable to reason but we cannot tell what 's agreeable to reason unless we can fully and clearly comprehend it for otherwise we may be mistaken and suppose that agreeable to reason which really is not so But at the same time Socinus himself looks upon the light of nature as not sufficient to impress on Man the notion of a God Socin praelect Theol. c. 2 but will have that general opinion of the existence of God to flow only from traditional knowledge or from revelation yet after this assertion of his Crellius one of the most learned of his followers and defenders goes about in his Book de Deo ejus attributis to demonstrate the being of a God from the works of the Creation But if Man has not sense enough by considering the works of nature to argue to the being of a God such a demonstration is extremely impertinent Socinus would prove his opinion among other things by that of the Apostle He that comes to God must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of those that diligently seek him which is prefaced with that That without faith it is impossible to please God Heb. 11.6 But this is no proof at all for Men may by considering circumstances come to the acknowledgment of some supreme power and yet never believe in him nor ever own or practise their duty to him and therefore St. Paul takes notice of some holding the truth in unrighteousness who when they knew God glorified him not as God tho' they were convinced of his existence they were not careful to perform the duty of Creatures or servants to a Supreme Creator they were not thankful but became vain in their Imaginations Rom. 1.21 and their foolish hearts were darkned c. Now those St. Paul there reflects on were Heathens in general who being under a necessity of believing that there was a God by rational discourse
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
deep ever to be made up It 's true when God himself was mention'd as the undertaker of so great a work even despairing man might entertain some dawning hopes but when they saw a poor Carpenter's Son one who had not so much as where to lay his head assume yet the glorious title of the world's Redeemer and Saviour their hopes slagg'd their almost grasped joys seem'd just vanishing into empty air When the Holy Ghost God too infinitely good and powerful and wise interpos'd and attended that humble Man with so much vigour and constancy that He by a thousand glorious actions and by a close and perpetual correspondence with Heaven visible even to vulgar eyes prov'd the entire Union that was between himself and his Father and that Sacred Spirit and justified himself in the thoughts of very aliens themselves who could not but acknowledge of a truth that for all his mean appearance and his scandalous Passion on the Cross He was the Son of God But could men have doubted still the happy Angels those purer and more discerning Spirits saw him too they saw him and knew him and ador'd him they saw their mighty Lord tho' veil'd in all the rags of poor mortality And tho' sin might have made a former breach between those blessed Spirits and polluted man yet now where their Lord loved they lov'd too and always look'd and always waited on him while he wrought the worlds redemption while he was so justified and so attended on divers gave up themselves absolutely to his service whom he lov'd and taught and protected and endued with miraculous knowledge eloquence and courage and sent them on that blessed errand to preach to the Gentiles the glad tydings of Salvation in his name They boldly undertook the work and tho' they had ignorance and prejudice and malice and cunning to contend with meer men contemn'd before but then inspired broke through all opposition and the forsaken Gentiles heard the gladsome sounds of peace and tho' there were too many enemies to their own good yet those laborious messengers of Heaven preached with that power and efficacy that men began every where to call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ Nay the more men of perverse minds cross'd the designs of that Gospel preach'd in the name of the Son of God the more those who believed in him were multiplied As for himself when he had finished that stupendous work and by his own Death had conquered Hell and Death He broke those fatal chains and rose again no more lyable to humane rage His Almighty Father who had viewed all the prodigious efforts of his Love to mankind with an ineffable complacency reach'd out his holy arm to receive that very humane Nature in which his beloved Son had done and suffered so much from him the chearful clouds were sent for a Chariot and he went upwards flying upon the wings of the wind while jâ—cund Angels those ministerial flames waited on his triumphs and taught his wondring followers what they were afterwards to expect from their Redeemer These are those mighty mysteries on which our most holy faith is built their truth however unintelligible to us is our security and the sincerity of our faith will necessarily show it self in an holy conversation and godliness The Verse I have explain'd then imports That without Controversie the Mystery of Godliness is great or in more words That the Basis or foundation of that Religion introduced into the World by the Doctrine of Christ's Gospel is indisputably and agreeably to the nature of Religion to Humane reason extremely profound and unintelligible To prove this we shall enquire Into the Vniversal agreement of all persons of what Religion soever That Mysteries are essential to Religion Whether our Saviour intended the entire abolition of all other Religions for the settlement of his own or rather to unite what was good in every distinct Religion into one and to sublime or perfect that so as it might tend most to God's glory and Man's happiness and whether that could be effected Men standing in their present corrupt state without the retaining of old or instituting of new Mysteries in his Religion What considerable advantages can accrue to Religion from those Mysteries it 's founded upon Then we must enquire into that Vniversal agreement of all persons whatsoever that Mysteries or some principles or circumstances of a more secret and abstruse nature are essential to all Religion But here to prevent all mistakes it must be remember'd That so much as concerns the practical part of Religion as contain'd in the Word of God is so clear and evident that the words of St. Paul are justly apply'd to them If they be hid they are hid to those that are lost whose eyes the God of this World hath blinded that the light of the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ should not shine upon them 2 Cor. 4.3 4. The words whereby all things necessary to be done toward the attainment of eternal life are exprest are such and so plain that the simplest Christian may understand them And that person who goes about to involve the practical duty of a Christian whether in respect of his communication with God or man in obscure and mysterious terms crosses the end of the Gospel which is to instruct the weakest understanding in an easie and intelligible way how to live godly righteously and soberly in this present evil world yet it must be acknowledged that even in relation to practice there are some apparent difficulties and notwithstanding all that plainness apparent in God's word a Man has a very hard task sometimes to distinguish between what 's lawful and what 's unlawful such cases are commonly known by the name of Cases of Conscience or such matters wherein so many arguments seemingly strong and plausible appear on both sides to the understanding that it knows not which way to act and all that hesitancy or doubtfulness arises onely from a fear of offending God These generally respecting Christian practice create a great deal of trouble frequently to very good Men for others are seldom troubled with such religious fears and these are sometimes by various and unusual circumstances rendred so very intricate that the wisest and most discerning Men are often at a loss to clear and resolve them to the Querent's satisfaction Here the Jews were order'd to have recourse to their Priests whose lips were suppos'd to preserve knowledge and the Priests when there was any thing of a more inextricable nature had the Vrim and Thummim to appeal to The Heathens had some emergent doubts as to matter of publick management of themselves which sometimes perplex'd them too and they had their imaginary wise Men the Priests attending their desecrated altars who would assume as if they had the art of resolving doubts those who profess Christianity have still a severer task in these matters as having no Oracle immediately to consult and having doubts more numerous and
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
son of our sacred Mother the English Church says of this manifestation of God in the flesh How it was effected Vid. Montacut Norvic in Act. Mon. Eccles c. 1. par 39. p. 27. 1 Pet. 1.12 by what means made possible heaven and earth cannot understand nor deliver 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It was a mystery from the beginning the Angels understood it not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it will be a mystery to eternity the Angels as yet can go no farther than their 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to receive a glimmering of it as it were by the crany of a window or by the chink of a door and how shall we dare to enquire how it was done 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this question is indissoluble that inextricable Faith alone has power to resolve them both this we submissively agree to and therefore we enquire not how or in what manner God was made flesh any farther than some particulars relating to that Incarnation are plainly laid down in Scripture far be any such presuming curiosity from us only since the Apostle in the consequent parts of the Text has asserted that God was made flesh which according to the natural sound and common acceptation of such words in all languages and writers is that he who was made flesh or appear'd in the flesh was God since the Apostle has asserted the positive truth and has made it the first part of the great mystery of godliness and such a part as all the other particulars do but serve to prove and confirm We must assert too that this particular point or article of Faith that He who was made flesh for the Salvation of mankind was really God God properly so call'd the most high the eternal God blessed for ever not any made or subordinate God but the maker of all things in a word the true God exclusive of all created Beings whatsoever We assert that this is an Article of our Faith so true and so important that upon a true embracing it in the sence so laid down the Salvation of all men depends as much as upon believing in Christ the Son of God at all or on being neither impious nor blasphemers nor idolaters And therefore we assert farther that how great a mystery soever this may appear and it never ought to appear otherwise to enquire into and seek for all such Scriptures as may render it indisputable is neither impertinent to our Lord's design in being so incarnate nor is it fruitless to those who make it their business to inquire into such proofs nor is it dangerous to any who make that enquiry with due humility and care But on the contrary it 's very dangerous nay fatal as before not to enquire into it or not to be fully satisfied about it I know we have in this point more enemies than the meer Socinians some capital asserters of the Arminian tenets being desirous to give such a latitude to Religion as may take in all their friends are very willing to perswade us that it 's not very material or necessary to believe that Jesus Christ the Son of God is God of the same substance or nature with his father So Episcopius a man of great learning and ingenuity in his fourth book of Theological Institutions c. 34. Traitè sur la Divin de J.C.S. 1. c. 1. p. 10. c. the sum of whose plea amounts to this That the essence of Christian Religion consists not in meer contemplative knowledge but in practice and that it consists much more in obedience than in abstracted speculations on the Deity which tho' it be true enough has really no place here for can we call those principles meer or simple speculations which are so important that we our selves are or are not Idolaters accordingly as they are true or false If Christ be of the same substance with his Father or if which comes to the same end Christ be the supreme or sovereign God he ought to be adored in that quality and Socinians themselves cannot without impiety refuse to acknowledge him as such and to honour him under that name but if he be not so we cannot confound him with the Sovereign God without Idolatry The great concern here then is to avoid impiety or idolatry and by consequence those inquiries must be of a practical nature which are of so very great and extraordinary an importance Episcopius makes several vain attempts to shew That it is not at all essential to Salvation to know if Jesus Christ be God by an eternal generation or that being but a simple creature or which is the same a meer man like one of us he is called God upon account of his ministry for when he goes about to make us see that these are no fundamental inquiries in shewing us that those who believe Jesus Christ is a meer Creature may worship him without being guilty of Idolatry because they adore him not as he is man but as he holds the place of God as his Ambassador or Substitute this proof is imperfect and insufficient For to prove that these questions are impertinent or unnecessary it 's not enough to shew that Socinians without being Idolaters may worship him whom they believe to be no more by nature than a meer Man which supposition yet we shall in due time prove God willing to be false But he ought to shew withal that we without Idolatry may worship Jesus Christ as the supreme God as we really are taught to do by the Church of England tho' at the same time he really be not the sovereign God which seems to be a very hard if not an impossible task as I question not but hereafter it will more plainly appear At present I shall only touch upon an argument urged by Episcopius from a Topick very easily found out the reason then given by him why it is not necessary that we should believe Jesus Christ to be perfect or the true God is Quia nuspiam in Scripturâ id necessarium creditu esse asseritur nec per bonam nedum necessariam consequentiam ex eâ elicitur Because it 's a doctrine of which the Scripture no where affirms that it 's necessary to be believed nor can it be drawn from thence by any good much less by any necessary consequence And he goes on to shew that this argument ought to be of very great force among those of the reformation because they profess there 's nothing necessary to be believed but what 's either directly or in plain terms contained in Scripture or drawn from thence by very clear consequence the last indeed the sixth Article of the Church of England agrees with but what she thinks of his first assertion may very well be gathered from the second wherein she propounds this Doctrine as necessary to be believed The Son which is the word of the Father begotten from everlasting of the Father the very and eternal God of one substance with the Father took man's
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
to set up their Master for the Son of God who had justly suffered before for blaspheming that Divinity he pretended so near a relation to But tho' what I have said already may go a good way toward the proof of that That Jesus was the Son of God yet for the farther clearing this matter we may enquire Into the promises and predictions concerning his birth or appearance in the world as an Intercessor for it Into the manner and circumstances of his Birth Into the intent and design of his Doctrine Into that influence Scripture history in these cases ought to have upon all those who own the being of a God whether they be Christians or not It 's our business to enquire into those promises and predictions current in the world concerning such an Incarnation of the Divinity or its extraordinary appearance in the world for the restauration of its bliss before by the encrease of wickedness perverted and ruined for Promises and Prophecies concerning a person yet unborn and these publick and obvious to an inquisitive world are wont to signifie such a person wholly extraordinary especially when the same spirit which imparts the fore-knowledge of him gives his very name to the world so we find when the Man of God cryed against the Altar in Bethel 1 Kings 13.2 he prophesied That a child should be born unto the house of David Josiah by name who upon that Altar should offer the Priests of the high places themselves and pollute it with dead mens bones that Josiah spoken of there so long before his birth made good the Prophets word to the utmost and has that admirable character bestowed upon him by the Holy Ghost 2 Kings 23.16 25. That like to him there was no King before him that turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might according to all the Law of Moses neither after him arose there any like him So the name of Cyrus was foretold long before his birth by the Prophet Isaiah He 's there stil'd God's shepherd his anointed the man whose right hand God himself had holden but he was to be a perfect Hero and such heathen as well as sacred Historians represent him and God by Isaiah predicts his glory Isai 44.28.45.1 2. even That he should perform all his pleasure saying to Jerusalem thou shalt be built and to the temple thy foundations shall be laid which Cyrus so named by the Prophet was indeed a type of our Jesus our Saviour and deliverer How numerous and how plain soever the Prophecies of him in Scripture were we shall more particularly consider hereafter but some principal passages we must on this occasion take notice of And first of that foundation of humane hopes the Proto-evangelium Paradisiicum or that promise made to our first Parents in their lapsed state tho' before their expulsion from Paradise for it was a promise to them tho' a threat to the Serpent to whom the speech was more immediately directed Gen. 3.15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel This being by all Christians and antient Jews interpreted of the Messias was the first glad tydings of hope to those who were just fallen into a ruinous condition this supported our great Parents spirits when otherwise nothing could present it self to them but fears terrors and desperation after this we find God promising as a peculiar blessing to Abraham and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed Gen. 22.18 which the Jews too of old understood of the Messias to be of the stock of Abraham according to the flesh nor could it otherwise have been made good for the Jewish nation tho' they were partakers of particular and infallible oracles yet were but an obscure nation in respect of the rest of mankind and tho' they were active in the degeneracy of their Church to make Proselytes to their Law yet the numbers were not great and if that of our Saviour be truth That they made their Proselytes two fold more the children of wrath than they were themselves Matt. 23.15 that care of theirs was no very great blessing to the world Therefore S. Peter in the close of that Sermon he preached on occasion of the lame man's cure Acts 3.25 26. applyes this promise to our Jesus and more distinctly and determinately S. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians Gal. 3.16 Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made He saith not unto seeds as of many but as of one and to thy seed which is Christ And further we have in the early ages of the world that famous and indisputable prophecy of dying Jacob The Scepter shall not depart from Judah Gen. 49.10 nor a Lawgiver from between his feet until Shilo come and unto him shall the gathering of the people be the exact accomplishment of which as Shilo means the Messias that is the Christ we shall afterwards take notice of It were no difficulty to shew how many of those institutions and Ceremonies of the Jews prefigured this same Saviour but I shall rather confine my self to prophetick words than actions as tending more directly to my purpose Famous was that prediction of Balaam Numb 24.17 I shall see him but not now I shall behold him but not nigh there shall come a star out of Jacob and a scepter shall rise out of Israel and shall smite the corners of Moab and destroy all the children of Seth. And afterwards Out of Jacob shall come He that shall have the Dominion and shall destroy him that remaineth of the City by which general destruction is onely meant that Idolatry and those Idolaters which the Doctrine of the Gospel should confound and this as Christians have all along applied to Christ So the Jews prov'd sufficiently they understood it so by their eager following the Barcochab whom they thought pointed out by this Text as I hinted before Nor did the Jews till afterwards when they came to seek subterfuges for their obduracy question the meaning of their Law-giver when he told them The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet Deut. 18.15 from the midst of thee of thy Brethren like unto me unto him ye shall hearken this could onely be made good of Christ since Moises Ben Maimon the most learned of Jewish Writers of late has largely prov'd the disparity between Moses and all other Prophets mention'd in Scripture and Scripture it self asserts That there arose not a Prophet since in Israel like unto Moses Deut. 34.10 whom the Lord knew face to face Our Saviour onely spoke out Divine Mysteries in the day time and in the face of the whole world he needed not as others the mediation of Angels or of Dreams or of Visions to make him understand the will of God but saw and
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
was so indisputably innocent Again to aim wholly at the extirpation of vice of all sin and wickedness and the promoting and recommending of virtue and goodness carries the highest purity and sanctity along with it If miscarriages in government and trespasses upon humane Laws produce terrible convulsions of state and unexpected revolutions in political affairs of which at this day we live to see unaccountable instances it 's easie to infer from thence that encroachments upon the Laws of God and nature must have the same influence upon general affairs and create strange disorders in the World and mightily prejudice all the bonds of humane Society It naturally excites God's vindictive justice and makes him scatter vengeance every where it creates nothing but mutual distrusts and jealousie of one another among men so that they grow like Wolves or Devils in their mutual animosities and injuries As these things are the consequence of wickedness so they are certain proofs and indications of the prevalence of Sin in any place or Nation they show a general infection to have spread it self in a very corrupt people and therefore he that endeavours to purge out the malignant humours of men labouring under such pernicious distempers employs himself in the purest and most desirable work since he endeavours onely to reconcile guilty nature to an incensed God and waspish and ill humour'd Men to one another A full and rigid execution of Laws against impudent vices may keep some under by its terror and make them at least seek the darkest corners for the perpetrating of villanies but it represents not Sin a whit the more in its native ugliness nor gives any ordinary satisfaction that Sin is exceeding sinful for it 's easie enough to conclude that God and Men may prohibit and punish such or such an action out of their own arbitrariness to shew their own absolute and uncontroulable power upon which account though Force may restrain them for a while yet there remain in perverted minds some strange Gustos of delight in finding opportunities to do what they are forbidden and which they conclude may be things good enough notwithstanding such prohibitions but when vice is delineated truly by Instructors appointed for that purpose who are neither afraid nor asham'd to speak Truth when they find Sin decried by solemn and weighty arguments more than by authority where on the other hand they find virtue and goodness described fairly as it deserves recommended by earnest and gentle perswasives set out with all its circumstantial beauties discover'd in its happy effects with relation both to earthly and heavenly influences when they see blessings shour'd down from Heaven upon them and their very Enemies at peace with them when they see how all this onely propounds a pure and unmixed goodness in Devotions towards God and in Converse among Men such Observers have nothing to say for themselves in case they chuse the worst part they cann't pretend so much as to excuse themselves that they embrace evil not voluntarily but by mistake and sub specie boni since vice and virtue ly both unveil'd and naked before them Or they must acknowledge themselves onely to be resolutely wicked to be so because they will be so which puts them easily past all hopes of pity or of Pardon But since devotion and ordinary converse were so exceedingly deprav'd and since the wisest among meer Men had made so many attempts for reforming them and yet had been so miserably mistaken in their measures to that end as to convince them of the impossibility of such atchievments from their hands when one person howsoever despicable and mean in his outward appearances could reassume the forsaken design and not onely assume but apparently accomplish it laying down such Rules as if exactly follow'd must necessarily restore all things to an absolute perfection when Men observe all his instructions to agree closely among themselves and with the ancient authentick methods of doing well and all concurring still in the same center of Vniversal Sanctity it must be necessarily concluded That the Vndertaker was somewhat more than Man that nothing less than infinite holiness and wisdom could effect such things which being yet apparently effected by One who was a true Man that true Man must withall be acknowledged the Son of God And whereas the generality of inquisitive Men in their searches after truth and wisdom always observed strange deficiencies in humane reason whereby antient wise men broke into so many several divisions in their inquiries after the Chief good whereas they found that none could lay down a fair project for pursuit of That but that presently he was assaulted by whole Armies of adversaries and all projects found absurd and unprofitable for acquiring that they aim'd at When the Gospel of our Saviour came to be divulged tho' it met with adversaries enough they were all too weak to inval date its strength and reason It was neither the juggling fair-tongu'd Pharisee nor the absurd and ambitious Saducee nor the wrangling Sophister nor the Sceptical or cunning Philosopher nor the undermining Heretick that were able to ruine the reputation of the Christian Doctrine but it still grew upon them tho' they were cruelly assisted by earthly powers and indeed made use of all the roughest means for the extirpation of the Professors of the Gospel And what was very considerable tho' the great promoters of Religion after the Apostles and their immediate Successor's times neither had the gift of languages nor had much of the learned education of those Ages yet they were able having truth on their side to baffle all the learning of the great wise men among both Jews and Pagans which could never have happened had not what they preached and defended been highly rational For keen adversaries who pretended to the greatest acuteness of Wit and Sence would never have quitted arguments that had been stronger for the sake of meer cant and impertinent jangling But indeed the common scope of the inquiries of wise men being to discover what was really the greatest degree of humane happiness and the highest and chiefest good by which they confest somewhat Lost and tho' possibly to be retrieved yet not without the greatest difficulties imaginable there was no proposition made by any for the full discovery and attainment of that Good but it was eagerly listned to and the probabilities on all sides being duly weighed and the effects of the several propositions being carefully consider'd Christianity gain'd the victory whose effects were the most considerable whose Professors the most innocent whose promises were the most excellent and punctual and whose rules the most general intelligible and unquestionable Pagans and Jews if they were not wilfully ignorant could not but see all those principles of reason which themselves pretended to extremely advanc'd by this doctrine introduced by Christ for whereas they were wont to decry pride and haughtiness of spirit arrogance and contempt of others very earnestly its true the
their reasons against it by shewing the certainty of judgment after death the severity of that judgment the uncertainty of the time of our leaving this world the immediate consequence of judgment upon death and that there is no intermedial state of reconciliation to heaven and therefore he advises his disciples Luke 21.34 Let not your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness and so that day come upon you unawares he refers them to the instance of the old world where they lived in mirth and jollity till the flood came suddenly upon them and destroyed them all and to the instance of the Sodomites who practised the same dissolute Libertinism Luke 17.27 29. till it rained fire and brimstone from heaven and destroyed them all Now if there be reason to avoid these vices to escape some temporal inconveniences Men should do so much more to shun shame and scandal and eternal torments Thus did the blessed Jesus in all the instances of sin or goodness use so much stronger arguments for the first and against the last than the most studious meer humane zeal could reach to that consequently Men were infinitely more obedient to him than they were to other Dictators in virtue For if Scipio Africanus could truly make it his boast That among all his souldiers there was not one but at his bidding would throw himself off the highest rock into the sea tho' certain to be drown'd how much was our Saviour honoured when so many thousand zealous Christians voluntarily exposed themselves to the most exquisite torments in assertion of that truth He had transmitted to them When not the angry insurrections of the headstrong multitude nor the threatning frowns of raging Tyrants nor the lingring tortures of racks and wheels could affright them from their obedience when all the pitiful subterfuges of mean and common souls were generously scorned and the Crown of Martyrdom esteem'd much more than the Imperial Diadem But it was the clear and unanswerable reason of our Saviours commands of his Laws that convinced so many and those who were unwilling to renounce their own reason were as unwilling to relinquish the precepts of the Gospel tho' they could not be fond of extreme misery yet they would endure any thing rather than to believe they were no Men and it was no sign of predominant madness or Hypochondriacal vapours for men to discourse more intelligently than before to be more earnest in pursuit of wisdom to be more humble more sober more charitable more devout more blameless in their lives and conversations than others But could a meer Man dive so far into the depths of reason beyond the rest of the World who wanted all visible and external means for the improvement of his knowledge and natural abilities Christ had not what we call liberal education the Jews who knew it objected that against him How knoweth this Man Letters having never learned But he answers them appositely enough My doctrine is not mine but his that sent me and adds He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory John 7.15 16 18. but he that seeketh his glory that sent him the same is true and there is no unrighteousness in him Now to advance Reason beyond humane reach to promote God's glory not as a Servant but with greater strength of argument and zeal than a meer man could do proves beyond contradiction that the Man Christ Jesus could be none other than the Son of God I come now to enquire into that influence Scripture-history in those cases ought to have upon all those who own the Being of a God whether they be converted to Christianity or not which will necessarily take in that authority which the Word of God as such ought to have with an Infidel which enquiry though it be of a nice and speculative nature yet it will necessarily convince All of that value they ought to set upon Scripture when they call themselves Believers and Christians how careful they should be to punish and discourage all slights and contempts thrown upon it and how ready to lose their lives or any thing that 's dear to 'em rather than part with those truths contain'd in it It were easie to prove Scripture equally valuable to the greatest strangers to Christianity with any other Humane writings whatsoever For Heathens never pretended any such veneration for those Writings they had opportunity to converse with how great names soever they bore in their titles as to be afraid to oppose or confute them and to distinguish among them between truths and falshoods and proper subjects of Credibility and Incredibility for tho' the Opinions of some Persons were look'd upon as more rational than those of others and the Writings of some Historians as more Authentick yet they were all acknowledged full of mistakes and naturally liable to such nay their very Divine Writings those which they thought written and which tradition told them were written by divine instinct were frequently call'd in question and so their Poets the first Authors of their Divinity were generally reputed great Fablers and they deserv'd it well and their Sibyls whose Oracles were so much celebrated among them were by Tully in his 2d Book de Divinatione before the name of Christians or of Christ himself was heard in the World cry'd down as a cheat for the most part and where Acrosticks as some of those so call'd were incapable of that divine Original they pretended to Which instance whether Tully were in the right or no proves yet certainly the dubiousness of Mens minds among the Heathens as to the authority of their most sacred and esteem'd Writings and how small a Crime they held it to impeach any of them Yet they valued many Authors so much as to take a great deal of care to preserve their Writings and to transmit them very carefully to Posterity Now to raise Scripture to this proportion of esteem among them no more needs to be alledg'd than that the Subjects they treat on are generally very good as the Writings of any old Philosophers could pretend to be that though the Nation principally concern'd in it was not so famous as many of the rufling or Politick founders of other large Empires were yet there were such a People really in the World as the Jews and afterwards as the Christians were that they had Laws given them and liv'd under particular forms of Government and that the Historical account given of Jewish Politicks and Monarchs and of the first Founders of Christianity and their industry and success were as Rational and as likely to be true as the Histories of other Political transactions and a great deal more likely to be true in the eldest parts of its History as that of the World's Beginning of the Long Lives of those before the Flood of the Flood it self and the escape of a very small number from it of the Reparation of the World by a new increase of Mankind and other Creatures of the
Philosophy first and commence a God afterwards for which end he threw himself alive into the mouth of Aetna in Sicily and receiv'd his Apotheôsis in the midst of flames Yet after all Philosophy was capable of doing very little and could not nor ever was receiv'd by Men as any parcel of that Law they wanted to guide them because they were wholly unable to determine among them what that one great and chief Good was the fruition of which they were to aim at and in submission to which they were to admit of the propounded Law on account of the weak title of these Pretenders the Priests who attended on the publick services of their more celebrated gods pretended to extraordinary Inspirations and some of them especially such as the Cumaean Sybil Tiresias Amphiaraus the Priests of Jupiter Hammon the Delphian Dodonian and Trophonian Priests c. seemed to be in frequent Raptures and sacred Agonies as if they had been newly conversing with some Gods and in these fits they delivered strange obscurities uncouth and wild as we find by Homer Apollonius Virgil Statius Sophocles Seneca and others These Priests thus obtaining a great reputation for sanctity and it being thought they were but as so many Engines conveying the speeches of the Gods down to Men their Dictates bore a great sway in the Heathen World and they were much consulted in the inventing and making of Laws But these again were so disagreeing among themselves and with one another their Fancies generally so irrationally extravagant and unintelligible the self-interest in them so notoriously apparent to every body and their Lives and Manners so absolutely undivine which was a very considerable prejudice among Heathens themselves and matters of fact delivered by them to posterity in writing were commonly so wild so trifling or so full of falsities that all these things quite ruined their claims and still the Heathen World had new Laws and new Lawgivers to seek Hence their Gods themselves that is the Devil who usurped the Divine name and under that name at several times and in several places procur'd divine Honours to himself took courage to give answers to enquirers and a kind of Directions for Men to act by and that he might look the liker a God indeed he 'd now and then adventure upon some little Truths such as had a very considerable Moral import in them such as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Noli altum sapere and some few more of a like nature but these Oracular Rules proceeding from so great a Patron of real impiety and abominable Idolatries were commonly received accordingly and tho' as to Sacrifices and all the gaieties of a costly Worship they were willingly enough ruled by that usurping Impostor and if any barbarous offering was to be made in blood of Slaves or Children or the like Superstition was but too obedient Yet in those things that were really Good and worth taking notice of they were so distrustful as they came to nothing among them Maximus Tyrius therefore in those cases prefers Philosophy it self so far as concerns the Conduct of Men's lives to all these Oracles for as he argues the Gods pretend to tell us what 's sodden in a boiling Caldron in Lydia Dissert 19. p. 189. they tell us of a wooden Wall of ohe danger of cutting through the Corinthian Isthmus sometimes they talk of a future Earthquake of a threatning war and an approaching Plague but as for those things which are much more worth our knowledge such as how Wars may be avoided by what means we may live without any need of Walls and Fortifications how we may behave our selves so as to have no reason to fear a Plague not one word neither Apollo at Delphos nor Jupiter at Dodona nor any other Gods have any thing to say to these things only Philosophy teaches these things Yet afterwards he flyes even from That too as insufficient For says he I require such an Oracle which may teach me without ambiguity to live quietly answer me then whither will you send Mankind which way must they go in the case where must they end let the Rule of Life be one let it be common to and concern All Thus He neither satisfied with Philosophy nor any way to Happiness yet known to him no nor with the additional stories of God's descending down to Earth in Humane Forms to converse with and to instruct Men in the method of acquiring Happiness Now this Rule thus sought for among Heathens we say the Scripture is They know not that it is so We prove it because the Scripture is the Word of God There 's no ingenuous Pagan but will agree with us that if it is the Word of God indeed it must of necessity be the thing they look for and sufficient to effect those great things they desire from it it 's our part then to prove what we call Scripture to be God's Word and thus far they meet us in the way They acknowledge the absolute necessity of such a Word the absolute necessity of Man's obeying him who governs all things the absolute incapacity Men are in to know of themselves how to perform that duty its extraordinary consistency with Divine Goodness that there should be such a Word given to Mankind whereby they may be guided to happiness and their joy and readiness to receive such a Word sufficiently proved to be such when exhibited all which infer their supposition that God may if he please impart his Will in such a manner to the World Now what a Heathen would require in such a Word which should be the rule of his life could only be That it should be One that it should be of equal concern and respect to All that it should not be clog'd with Ambiguities that it should be Practicable that it should be sufficient for the end it 's designed for and that it should be suitable to and worthy of its Author these are the most comprehensive Qualifications a stranger to Christianity would have in that Word which is ascribed to God and these it will not be very difficult to show in that Scripture which we believe for If we look into the Moral and Perpetually obliging part of God's Word as a Rule of Life and Practice it 's but One and that a very short one too as laid down in the Decalogue by Moses the Jewish and as Epitomized in the Gospel by Jesus the Christians Lawgiver Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self and upon these two as our Saviour teaches depend all both the Law and the Prophets the whole body of the Old Testament and the New is but one large and plain comment upon these few words shewing their full import in abundance of particular instances so as there are no Emergencies of Humane life but what are reducible to them There
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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
That our Lord is called Immanuel by the Prophet as cited by S. Matthew or God with us that we might not think he was Man only but that we might know he was God too If then Christ was God as well as Man his Divine Nature being mentioned in contradistinction to his humane Nature Irenaeus cannot mean that He who was really a Man was only metaphorically God but that he was as really and essentially God as He was Man which is what we believe With Irenaeus agrees Clemens of Alexandria who thus teaches the Gentiles in his Admonition to them We are the rational Creatures of God the Word so he calls our Saviour after the Evangelist S. John Admon ad Gent. p. 5. l. D. by whom we pretend to Antiquity because God the Word was in the beginning but because the Word was from above He was and is the divine original of all things but since He has now taken upon him the name of Christ a name suitable to his power and which was sanctified of old I call him a new song This refers to his former Allegorical discourse wherein he endeavours to describe every thing under terms proper to Harmony or Musick This Word then this Christ who was at first in God was both the cause of our original existence and of our well-being But now this Word himself has made himself manifest to men who alone is both God and Man the cause of all our good by whom we being taught to live well are sent from hence to eternal life for according to that inspired Apostle of our Lord the Grace of God hath appear'd to all men teaching them that denying all ungodliness and worldly lusts we should live godly righteously and soberly in this present world looking for the glorious coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ This is the new song that manifestation of God the Word who was in the beginning and before all things and now shines brightly out to us He appear'd but lately who was our Saviour before He who is appear'd in him who is because the Word was with God and that Word by which all things were made makes his appearance as a Master that Word which as a Creator gave us life in our first formation appearing now as a Master or Teacher has taught us to live well that hereafter as God he may bestow upon us eternal life Thus far that very learned Father and his whole discourse does so plainly teach us the Pre-existence of our Saviour before his Conception in the Womb of the blessed Virgin and consequently his Divine Nature in his eternal being with the Father that the most ignorant person in the World may plainly understand what the Faith of this Writer was Thus afterwards speaking of John Baptist the forerunner of our Saviour he tells them John taught men to be prepared for the presence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of God the Christ Afterwards speaking of that care our Saviour took to have the Gospel preached he adds The Lord did not effect so great work in so short a time without a sacred care He was despised in appearance but adored indeed being a Purifyer a Saviour and extremely kind The Divine Word being really most manifest God and put into an equal rank with the Lord of all things for as much as he was his Son and the Word was in God Ibid. p. 68. l. D. he was neither disbelieved when he was first preached nor was he unknown or unacknowledged when assuming the presence of a Man and being made flesh he managed the saving design of his assumed Humanity Again speaking to those who are blind with sin and folly under the person of Tiresias that blind Thebane Wizzard and inviting such to believe in Christ he speaks thus If thou wilt thou too shalt be initiated into these Mysteries and join in the Choir of blessed Angels about the unbegotten the never to be destroyed the only true God God the Word assisting in the same Hymn with us He is eternal the only Jesus or Saviour the great High-priest of God who is the Father p. 70. L D. he intercedes for Men and he perswades them to goodness I shall instance but in one passage more in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 where having cited that of the Psalmist Who shall ascend into the Hill of the Lord or who shall stand in his holy place c. at large He thus descants upon it The Prophet says He in my opinion here briefly describes the true Gnostick or the man of true knowledge to us and by the bye David shews us that our Saviour is God for he calls him the face of the God of Jacob who brought us glad tidings and taught us of or concerning the Spirit therefore the Apostle calls the Son the Character of the glory of God Him who taught the truth concerning God and who represented to us that God and the Father was one only and Almighty whom none could know but the Son Stromat l. 7. p. 733. C. and He to whom the Son shall reveal him That God is but one appears by those who seek the face of the God of Jacob whom our God and our Saviour characterises as the only God and father of Good Here then we have the Father true and real God the Son true and real God and yet but one God and this is that Faith which we preach To Clemens I shall only add his Scholar Origen for the Greek Church a man of extraordinary eminence in his time who in his third Book against Celsus that great adversary of the Christian Religion reflecting upon the vanity of Heathen Gods and their incapacity to help those that depend on them he tells Celsus that upon this very reason because there is no help in false gods it 's a sure Rule among Christians that no man should trust in any being as God except only in Jesus Christ and a little after whereas Celsus objects against us so often that we believe Jesus consisting of a mortal body to be God and imagine our selves very pious in so thinking he answers Let those who accuse us know that He whom we know and believe to be God of old and to be the Son of God he is of himself the Word the Wisdom and the Truth and that even that mortal body and reasonable Soul which he assumed by its Communication and Unity and Mixture with the Word or with his divine nature arose to so great a height as to be God i.e. his humane and his divine nature make by a substantial or essential union one God and that I give no false interpretation to his words here will appear by what I shall allege afterwards It 's all along the humour of Celsus then when he speaks in the Person of a Jew and when he speaks in his own Name and Person to reproach the Christians with the irrationality of their Religion on that particular account that they owned Christ as
and published in Decapolis how great things Jesus had done for him and by this means all those who were not wilfully blind might easily discover that the Lord whom they expected was come Our Saviour by these particular actions got a mighty advantage against Pharisaick Prejudices and evidenc'd his own glory and their shame at the same instant As all ages had shew'd some on whom the Devil had exercised a more particular Power so among the Jews there had been several instances of the same nature and as they had a certain knowledge of the miserable state of those who were so troubled so pious Men among the Jews had had particular recourse to Almighty God that God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob interceding by their Prayers for Mercy and relief for those so visited they who were brought up in the methods of True Religion applyed not themselves to Charms or Magick Arts to get a victory over him who was the Inventor and Promoter of such Arts as the Gentile world did but they applied themselves to their own God whose Mercy and Power they were well acquainted with and of whom they knew all the Powers of darkness stood in awe and it please God often to hear the Prayers of such pious Persons on behalf of those Demoniacs and to cast those Fiends out of them this dealing of that God who had planted true Religion among them by Moses gave a continual evidence to the Divinity of that Religion those ejections of Devils being effected not by the loose devotions of an impious Rabble but by the humble and incessant applications of such who lived in punctual obedience to the Law and justified its holy nature by their lives and conversations these our Saviour takes notice of when the Pharisees reproach'd him with casting out Devils by Beelzebub the Prince of Devils when in return to their scandalous Objection he asks them Matth. â—2 27 If I by Beelzebub cast out Devils by whom then do your Children cast them out And from thence carries on an argument to convince them of the falseness of their objection Now if it were true that pious Men among the Jews did by devout Prayers to God cast out Devils and by so doing confirm their Religion because it was certain God would not hear the Prayers of those who should have separated from a Religion of his own Institution if this were so then since Christ liv'd himself in a compleat Obedience to the same divine Law in an Obedience so absolute that he could challenge all his quick-sighted Adversaries to convince him of sin and while he liv'd in such Obedience did the same things with those whom they supposed Holy and Good Men then it must necessarily follow that Christ acted as religiously as They cast out Devils by the same means and acted by the same divine Power as those holy men among themselves did Had he indeed gone about to seduce them from the Service of the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob they might justly have exclaim'd against him but he referr'd all the glory of what he did to the same God and appeal'd to him as his Father therefore they could not upon any just reason condemn him as acting by any unlawful ways while they admired their own Children for those very things for which they pretended to condemn Him From this he proceeds to a farther Argument in his own vindication The Devil indeed is strong and powerful and where he gets possession is very Hardly removed If he pretends on foolish Exorcisms to quit his hold it 's but to delude the Ignorant and Credulous and to return at his own pleasure if he be not for that illusion He cannot be stronger than himself therefore He cannot cast out Himself but the Devil is really and frequently cast out and that so as not to be able to return to his former Mansion when he pleases therefore he must be cast out by one really stronger than himself but there is no Being more Powerful than the Prince of Darkness 1 Tim 3.16 except only that God who created him therefore it must be by the strength of that great God that He was cast out Now that our Saviour frequently cast out Devils nay that the very Disciples who followed him and who acted only by a Power delegated from him cast out Devils was plain to the Eyes of all Men therefore both the Master and the Disciples cast out Devils by a Power truely Divine for as our Saviour urges them How can one enter into a strong man's house Matth. 12.29 and spoil his goods except he first bind the strong man which He that does must be stronger than He and then He will spoil his goods Thus were those captious Adversaries of their own happiness baffled and thus was the Glory of our blessed Saviour encreas'd for by this means being in the outward Communion of the Jewish Church and asserting the Honour of the same God whom they worshipp'd it must appear plain beyond Contradiction that He really came from God that he was the Anointed of God That Messias upon whose comeing both They and their Fathers had for many ages built their hopes The frequency then of the Devils exercising his Tyranny at that time upon mens bodies gave our Saviour the more frequent opportunities of exerting his own Divinity and so the Devil himself that great Enemy of his appearance was the great Evidence of the truth of that appearance and that by those very means by which he hoped principally to obstruct those benefits flowing from his Appearance so numerous Rebels starting up in several quarters of the Kingdom give a well-arm'd Prince the greater opportunities of becomeing more Absolute than before by those very methods whereby they hoped to have shaken off his Yoke and to have set up a Government according to their own fancies To this Consideration might perhaps be added that this great prevalency of the Infernal Powers about the time of our Saviour's appearance was one certain evidence of that fulness of time in which the Messias was to be revealed since it was a great evidence of the general Deluge of Wickedness which then had overflowed the World so that it was full time for the Son of God to interpose with his Power lest God's anger should have consign'd a generally infected World to his Revenge who waited for it and began to domineer in it as his own but We find the Devil not at all satisfied with those disorders he created in the Bodies of Men but that he was much more Tyrannical over their Souls their better their immortal Part there it was the Image of their great Creator was impress'd there he loved to Tyrannize and as far as possible to deface that glorious original Image and He prevail'd but too effectually The Devil had seduced a great part of the World entirely from the Service of the Creator to himself the worst of Creatures He had set up his own Altars in
try'd He could not reasonably refuse to stand to that Tryal but neither do we find that his Enemies ever went about to shew the Discrepancy between his Doctrines and his Practice and therefore when they thought to cajole him into their snares by a most malicious Complement they gave him indeed no more than a true and proper Character Master we know that thou art true Matth. 22.16 and teachest the way of God in truth neither carest thou for any man for thou regardest not the persons of men this Character was really his due whatsoever they meant by it and they who were unwilling to acknowledge their own Hypocrisie could never fairly go off from so remarkable a Testimonial If then the Blessed Jesus were so signally innocent He was above all other the fittest to assert and vindicate the Authority of his Father's Laws and this he carefully did and made his appeal to all those Laws without exception according as occasions offer'd themselves After all then if he would really put an end to the Ceremonial Law and yet maintain to the last his Character of Truth and Justice He must of necessity be the Son of God and God himself his Authority otherwise notwithstanding the mutable Nature of those Laws not being sufficient to bear him out in so great an Alteration Our Saviour was Incarnate That the Law of God as given to the Jews might in our Nature be fulfilled exactly and according to the Letter and so that he who fulfilled it might be a compleat example of Holiness and Obedience to us and how great an Undertaker this required we shall have hereafter Opportunities enough to understand Now when I lay down this reason by the word Law I understand whatsoever was given to the Jews whether Moral as confirming the Law of uncorrupted Nature or Political as relating to their Civil Government or Ceremonial as referring to their various Religious Rites both the last so far as they could concern the Practice of a private Person so that indeed the whole Law as given to the Jews contain'd in it whatsoever could have been expected from Adam had he retain'd his original Innocence or whatsoever humane Nature in its utmost perfection could possibly attain to Now that such a compleat Obedience should be expected from some One Partaker of humane nature was but reasonable when the great work of Man's Redemption was in hand for since Man created in all that Perfection his Nature was capable of had yet fall'n from that Obedience which was justly expected from him he being in a condition every way capable of performing it and by that fall of his had necessarily involv'd all those who should be deriv'd from him in all those Miseries attending the guilt of Sin and since the intent of God's Goodness was that from the Obedience of one man descended of the same flesh and blood many should be made righteous or be blessed with those Rewards attending upon Righteousness as the Apostle assures us it came to pass it was but just and reasonable that that Man from whom that righteousness was to descend to Mankind that that Man should compleatly make up that Character of the first Man when in Innocence which had he persever'd in as he ought his whole Posterity had been entirely happy and yet that task was abundantly greater for the second Adam our Lord Jesus Christ than it was for the first Adam our great Parent for Adam had no Corruption deriv'd down to him from his Original from whence it has been not impertinently question'd Whether before Sin enter'd into the World and Death by Sin He was liable to the common Rules of Mortality But our Saviour when he took Flesh of the Virgin took it up at such a time as Humane nature was sunk into its utmost depravation nor would an allowance of that Roman Foolery That the Blessed Virgin was born without any Original Sin or Guilt upon her help the matter For so long as she was descended from such Parents as had their share in the Corruption of Humane Nature her Freedom would not of consequence free every one who should be born of her but she being no way beyond other Women but only on account of her Practical Holiness our Lord as descended from her must be in all things like his Brethren liable to all the Inconveniences attending a Body certainly mortal for as for his being without Sin it depended on the Union of a Mortal to an Immortal Being the very nature of which superiour Being was more effectual than the Refiner's Fire on Gold or Silver purifying that otherwise corrupt Body it was united to and fortifying it against all that proclivity to Sin and easie succumbency to Temptation which the rest of Mankind was obnoxious to Nor was it any thing but such a coacting Omnipotence which could possibly have produc'd a clean thing out of an unclean or a Body without Sin out of that which was naturally sinful There is certainly such a state as that of Eternal Happiness but it is attainable only as the reward of Merit in a proper sense or as we ordinarily say it 's as Wages which he who faithfully performs his work deserves and may justly lay claim to as his own and therefore cannot be deny'd without Injustice as for instance whereas the condition of eternal Life is This do and live whosoever it is that performs the Condition and does what 's requir'd he has for so doing provided there be no circumstantial failure in the performance of the work a just and rightful claim to that eternal Life propounded and God himself could not be just should he deny the propos'd reward to such a One as should compleatly perform the Condition set before him Had Man continued in the state of Innocence he had had this proper claim of his own to eternal Happiness he might justly have claim'd it and could not without extremity of Injustice have been deny'd it but that eternal Happiness which we now expect is of Grace or it 's the free Gift of God which we as Sinners and such we are all without exception have no proper or inherent right to but it 's not the immediate free Gift of God as if he without any performance of incumbent duty on our part would bestow upon us an eternally glorious Inheritance for this would be as inconsistent with that infinite Justice which makes up the Idaea of the Supreme God as it would be to deny Wages or a Reward to him that had truly deserved it nor is it a free giving Man such an inward Ability to perform all the punctilio's of the Divine reveal'd Will as by which they might make a full compensation to Divine Justice for the original pravity of Nature and do all such things to the utmost as could be requir'd from the beginning to the end of Life for this were to alter the whole frame of Humane Nature and to give it in the present state of things an
when he girt up his Loins and ran before Ahab to the entring in of Jesreel Numb 14.10 and as a poor persecuted Man when he was forced to fly for his Life from the fury of Jezebel the Prophets generally died Martyrs for those Truths they published and the Apostles tho'mighty in those signs and wonders which they did in the World's View yet several of them died by ways as cruel and tormenting as our Saviour himself from whence it will follow that Moses and Elijah that the Prophets and Apostles were as great Examples of Humility and Condescension as our Saviour himself and therefore St. Paul when he set Christ as an example of Humility before the Philippians did it only at randome and might as well have named himself or any of his Fellow-Apostles on the same account and doubtless this Doctrine tends very much to the Advancement of Christian Piety But now if we quit Socinian Reason and consider the Truth of things if we look upon our Saviour as pre-existent to his appearing in the World as being God of God and Light of Light and that from Eternity and consider him as condescending to assume our Nature as appearing without those Terrors of Divinity and clothed with all the Sweetnesses of innocent Humanity if we respect him who had all things originally at command and did yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 become poor for our sakes where we cannot but take notice of our new Author's pitiful Criticism who tells us that Word signifies not to become poor but to be poor yet Suidas tells us that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies Suidas in Verbo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one that falls into want from having been sufficiently provided for which we think is becoming Poor from being Rich and not being originally Poor and so whereas Poverty in the Poet Aristophanes tells us Aristoph in Plut. p. 58. I.B.E. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Life of a Beggar is to be without any thing of his own but what he receives from the Charity of others which was really our Saviour's Case Gerard a better Critic than our Authour defines according to ancient Etymologists Car. Ger. in locum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Beggar as one falling or descending from Riches to Penury from Sufficiency to extream Want so far as to have nothing but what 's given by others thus our Saviour became Poor nay a Beggar others administring to his Maintenance of their Substance and he descended from that celestial Glory with which he was robed from Eternity to assume Humane Nature and in that Nature to be so poor and despised on that account as the Evangelists represent him and we know as well as he can tell us that God as God cannot be poor but we are as sure that that real Flesh and Blood assumed by our Saviour was liable to the same inconveniences with the rest that were Partakers of the same Nature among which one was Poverty very incident to those who are born to no worldly Estates But how Men come to be Rich and Glorious by having the power of doing Miracles conferr'd upon them we cannot easily discover our Saviour's Miracles brought him in no Treasures and his Apostles notwithstanding that Power of doing the like conferred on them by Heaven were in a very low Condition in the World and Paul among his numerous Converts was but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a poor Man fain to get his Living by the Labours of his own hands Now certainly the Jews were as much obliged to observe our Saviour's Humility as others and they saw him low enough but they who very well knew the Meanness of his Birth that could ask the Question Is not this the Carpenter's Son could not make any extraordinary Remark upon that but could they have believ'd him the Son of God which those converted among them afterwards did by which they understood his being equal with God they would have been very ready to admire his Humiliation as his Disciples did when owning him their Master they saw him stooping to wash their Feet so that our Saviour was no way visibly Rich or Glorious in the World unless they 'll say he was so because contented which every Wise and Good Man is and they who saw neither any Riches nor Glory that he had upon Earth could not have been easily drawn to set him as a pattern of Humility before themselves because they saw him in the form of a Servant if he were a meer Man when he was once more than a Servant when all power was given to him both in Heaven and Earth he appear'd as a Master on every occasion and quickly withdrew himself from the sight of Men and the humility or condescension of one that has nothing is neither admirable nor exemplary If we could dwell longer on this Subject I make no doubt but it would appear that above all other Doctrines Socinianism should never be embraced as tending to the advancement of true Piety and since we have had so many holy Martyrs living and dying in the belief of Christ's Satisfaction for our Sins we may conclude that Doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction is neither so pernicious nor destructive of Holiness as those Hereticks would persuade us and therefore we may the better assert this Doctrine and make good our Foundation of it i. e. the notion of infinite Justice in God which does necessarily infer that every Sinner ought to be punished But they tell us Cat. Rac §. 6. c. 8 p. 147. That we make God's Mercy such as cannot but forgive all Sin and his Justice such as cannot but punish all Sin and so we set God's Attributes at irreconcileable odds one with another but I do not remember infinite Mercy defin'd by any of Ours by that particular Character of necessarily forgiving every Sin We believe indeed that the Sins of those who are pardon'd could not be pardon'd were there not infinite Mercy in God but we generally believe that infinite Mercy exerted it self when Christ came into the World to redeem Sinners and that indefinite Expression of our Saviour that God so loved the World that he gave his onely begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting Life teaches us as much Now if Faith be so necessary a Condition that without it the Sins of none can be pardon'd then infinite Mercy cannot imply a necessity of pardoning every Sin and if that Condition of believing be requisite I know not why another Condition such as a Christ offering up himself a Sacrifice to atone his Father's displeasure for Mens sins should not be so too As for infinite Justice we believe it necessarily infers a Punishment for every Transgression and therefore we believe that had not our Saviour undergone that Punishment for our sins which was due to us every Sin of ours must have been inevitably punish'd and therefore whereas we conclude agreeably to Scripture that the greatest part of
the Socinians tell us otherwise that Christ's dying for us signifies his procuring a great deal of good for us by his Death this we certainly believe he did but cannot imagine it 's any detraction from the Worth of that Good he procured for us to conclude that he suffered instead of Sinners for if he offered himself to Divine Punishment in the place of those who were unquestionably obnoxious to it and if his Father accepted of that Offer then all those Sinners who accept of those Conditions on which alone his Death is effectually beneficial to them are certain of the pardon of their Sins and of eternal Happiness the natural Consquence of that Pardon But they have yet a farther Shift and because St. John tells us We ought to lay down our Lives for the Brethren 1 John 3.16 Col. 1.24 and St. Paul tells the Colossians that by his sufferings he fill'd up what was behind of the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for his Body's sake which was the Church they conclude that as those who die for the Brethren cannot be said to die in their stead nor St. Paul to satisfie by his sufferings for the sins of the Church so neither could Christ on account of his being said to die for us be reasonably thought to satisfie for our sins but this Allegation is impertinent for though we are obliged to expose our Lives to the utmost hazards for the Conversion and Edification of others yet where was it ever said We should be wounded for the Transgressions of our Brethren or be bruised for their Iniquities or that they should be healed by our stripes that God should lay on us the Iniquities of all our Brethren that We should make our Souls an Offering for Sin that We should be delivered for the Offences of our Brethren and should bear their Sins in our own Bodies on the Cross all which things with more to the same purpose are spoken of Christ and ought to be the Explications of the other As for that of St. Paul if we translate it as we very well may all their pretences from it are lost I rejoice in all my sufferings for you all or in those Troubles and Persecutions I undergo for Preaching the Gospel to you and in my turn fulfil in my flesh the latter parts of Christ's Afflictions for his own Body that is the Church and so Afflictions or Sufferings for the Church are not apply'd to St. Paul but to Christ who really laid down his Life for his Flock and all the Afflictions of the Servants of Christ are but the Counterparts of what Christ has done for them it being their Duty to mantain what he has delivered to them and to be faithful to Death as he dy'd before for them and the Church the Body of Christ is exceedingly edified and benefitted by the couragious Sufferings of their Fellow-Members Martyrs and Confessors giving the best evidences of the Excellent Nature of the Gospel and confirming and encouraging others in the same Resolutions of dying rather than forsaking Truth but neither can any of the former passages be applied to St. Paul therefore his Words cannot bear the same sense as applied to him as the same Expressions do when they are apply'd to Christ Scripture which is its own best Interpreter no where explaining it in the same manner But further our Saviour is said to have born our sins and to have carried our sorrows this seems to be a Metaphor taken from a Man carrying that Burthen himself which another ought to carry and this is commonly lookt on as a considerable evidence of Love and Kindness 1 Tim. 3.16 c. 2. the same has carried Men out to a willingness to die for one another so Pylades was willing to die for his Friend Orestes only that he might escape a Tyrant's Fury and Nisus in the Poet would gladly have redeem'd his lov'd Euryalus from the Enemy's Sword by putting himself into their hands in lieu of him but the tendry in these Cases was certainly a vicarious Death and the Persons so offering themselves without all doubt concluded that whatsoever could be pretended to by the most severe Justiciaries would be well satisfied by an Innocent's offering his own Life for an Offender and that voluntarily by virtue of which Consent or Desire there could be no wrong done to the innocent Sufferer and hence St. Peter tells us of Christ that he suffered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 once for sins 1 Pet. 3.18 the Just for the Vnjust where by the way we may observe the phrase of dying for Sins is authentically explain'd by dying for Sinners or for the Unjust i. e. He bore that Burden of God's Displeasure in himself though he were Just and Righteous which was due to the Unrighteous and yet as among Men those generous Offers made by Friends for one another are not wont to be displeasing to the greatest Princes nor are they a whit the more angry with the vicarious Innocent though to satisfie the Rules of Justice they accept the Offer no more was God displeased with his Son for taking upon him that Burthen due to Sinners since it only was the Sin which had trespass'd so much on Justice and provided that were punished either in the real or the substituted Offender who was only putatively Criminal infinite Justice would be satisfied Sin condemned and all Mankind be afraid of committing that which they saw was in its own Nature unpardonable One would think too that other passage of the same Apostle were plain enough 1 Pet. 2.24 That Christ bore our Sins in his own body upon the Cross Sins are there put for the Punishment due to Sins and the bearing them in his own Body must signifie his Body's being punished for them and if for them then for those who had committed them now if Christ did not take our place or appear in our room in those Sufferings there can be no reason suitable to Divine Wisdom and Justice why he an Innocent should die at all for our Transgressions for to say That his Father had design'd him for it before and therefore he must die would be impertinent to say that without dying a vicarious Death for us he could procure any good with respect to our Sins would be very hard to prove for he might Die to make good the Truth of those things he had preach'd to set us an example of Patience Submission and Humility which Socinians tell us were the great Ends of his Death and yet we be as far from obtaining Remission of Sins by the means of his Death as we were at first So we believe that St. Stephen was murdered for giving Testimony to Evangelic Truths the very Circumstances of his Death prove him an eminent Example of Patience Fortitude and Resignation his Resolution appearing upon a Socinian view much beyond that of our Saviour himself yet St. Stephen is not said to have died for the sins of the World nor
merciful and faithful High-priest in things pertaining to God to make reconciliation for the Sins of the People or to atone for them i. e. to reconcile God to People that had sinned for in that he himself hath suffered being tempted he is able to succour them that are tempted There remains nothing more on this Subject to be done but to draw a practical Inference or two from our Apostolical doctrine that God was manifest in the flesh or that He who really and eternally was God took upon him humane Nature for the Salvation of Mankind From hence we should learn a just Admiration of that transcendent Love and infinite Compassion extended to us by God the Father in sending by God the Son in being sent to and condescending to come among us Words are too weak to express the mighty debt of Gratitude we are engaged in to Heaven on that account only Actions may in some measure express our Acknowledgments let us not conceit our selves exempt from the Condition of the rest of Mankind We lost our original Innocence we were precluded from Paradise from tasting the Tree of Life by Cherubims and a flaming Sword whan could we then hope for We were created happy we forfeited it too too easily what could we afterwards pretend to But God however provok'd by the eternal Intercession of his Son had reserv'd Mercy for us therefore he allow'd Mankind a time and space of Repentance Repentance was the sole possible Condition of Eternal Happiness Repentance invalid yet and unfruitful in it self had it not been render'd acceptable by the Blood of the Lamb slain from the Foundation of the World the Truth of what I do assert in this particular appears from the Song of the four Beasts and the twenty four Elders when they adored this Lamb of God and prais'd him in the name of the Saints Thou wast slain Rev. 5.9 and hast redeemed us to God by thy Blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation those so redeemed from all parts include all Persons dying in the true Faith of God from the beginning of the World some of whom we find mentioned and prais'd for our Example in the Eleventh to the Hebrews and therefore when St. John afterwards gives us an account of those who received the Seal of God on their Foreheads he first reckons up 144000 of the Tribes of Israel a certain for an uncertain Number but after them he tells us he saw a great multitude 7.9 14. which no man could number of all nations and kindred and people and tongues who stood before the throne and before the Lamb clothed with white Robes and with Palms in their hands of whom and what they were when the Apostle enquired of one of the Elders he received this Answer these are they which came out of great Tribulation and have wash'd their Robes and have made them white in the Blood of the Lamb now this numberless Number of happy Souls mark'd by Heaven for its own represents all those walking and dying in the Fear of God through all Ages for Tribulation was the Characteristic of a pious Man before God was manifest in the Flesh as well as afterwards but they had all their Robes wash'd in the Blood of the same Lamb therefore that Blood was effectual for Man's Salvation and render'd all their Religious Performances of which Repentance was a chief acceptable in the sight of God before such time as it was actually and openly shed upon the Cross That Mankind might be apprehensive of their Duties and be as certain in their Repentance as they had been in their Miscarriages God who had given them all the Providential Encouragements possible to serve him faithfully and willingly was pleased to send his Messengers from time to time to call them to Repentance so Enoch by the transcendent Holiness of his Life which doubtless was accompanied with as edifying Instructions preach'd Repentance to a World even so early grown old in Sin so Noah for an Hundred Years together preach'd Repentance to a perishing Generation after the Renewal of the World again from that Stock purposely preserv'd in the Ark Prophets and Holy Men were frequently inspired by Heaven and sent through the World on the Reforming that too rarely successful Errand nor were they so wholly confin'd to Israel the Lot of God's own Inheritance but that they sometimes deliver'd Messages to the adjacent Gentiles so Obadiah to Edom Jonah and Nahum to Nineveh c. this was certainly an Effect of wonderful Compassion that a God so justly offended at Humane Crimes should have any respect to them or use so many Methods of bringing them to a Sense of their own Errors and that Misery attending them but what measure did those Messengers meet with the same with those Servants in the Parable whom their Lord sent to the Husbandmen to receive of the fruits of his Vineyard some were beaten some wounded some murder'd all slighted and disregarded Yet to evidence his Love further God when he observed how unsuccessful his Ambassadours had been He sent his Son the Conclusion was rational they will reverence my Son but the Event was contrary even that Son by foolish Husbandmen was cast out of his own Vineyard and cruelly murder'd And was not that senseless Barbarism too much was it not too much to affront Mercy so notoriously would we thus requite the Lord O foolish People and unwise that we are ill would it become those now who call themselves Christians to trample under foot the blood of the Gospel-Covenant to crucifie to themselves afresh the Lord of Life and to put him once more to an open shame Did he come down from Heaven to Earth from Glory to Misery to save us and shall we be so much Fools as having a Prize put into our Hands not to have Hearts to make use of it shall we refuse to be saved by him nay shall we not Love him shall we not Admire him shall we not Adore him shall we not obey him in all things shall we not be ready to suffer all that Hell and wicked Men can invent to our prejudice rather than forsake his Truth or dishonour his Gospel Reason would teach us these things for they who have received the greatest Favours ought to repay them with the greatest Gratitude but alas we generally discourse to senseless Walls or try our Charms on deaf Adders for who hath believed our Report and to whom is the Arm of the Lord revealed The Leopard may sooner change his Spots or the Negro his Skin than those who are inured to Wickedness be persuaded to relinquish it by the most cogent Arguments in the world but how base and ridiculous does it look that Holy Men of old could live upon God's Promises of redeeming them that in confidence of his Veracity in a full and strong Faith in his Goodness they could account themselves but Pilgrims and Strangers here on Earth and by religious Lives and