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
God Contra Celsum l. 1. p. 30 so he objects that Christ was educated in the dark was hired a servant in Aegypt that he there tryed their magick powers and returning from thence in confidence of his jugling tricks set up for a God Origen vindicates him from the malicious imputation of being a Magician but never pretends to deny that he was God or that he assumed that title nay he 's so far from that that he takes a great deal of pains to prove that He was God particularly from those passages of the 45 Psalm cited by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews in his first chapter which I have clear'd before and he adds that we must here consider the Prophet speaking to that God whose throne is everlasting l. 1. p. 43. and that he asserts that God was anointed by God who was His God with the oyl of gladness above his fellows which is the real sence of the words and which he tells us he had formerly silenc'd an obstinate Jew with In his second book Celsus introduces a Jew speaking against Christ and saying they could not own him for God who did not make good his word who endeavoured poorly to avoid Death and was at last betrayed by one of his own followers c. Origen answers Christians did neither believe the body of Christ nor his soul to be God but the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word the Son of the God of all things was God that Christians justly condemn the Jews who acknowledge not him to be God whom their own Prophets so often give testimony to as a powerful Being and as God which he is by the witness of the great God and Father of all things himself That when God in the beginning of the world said Let us make Man in our Image the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word perform'd all that his Father commanded for if according to that of the Psalmist He said and they were made l. 2. p. 6â— he commanded and all things were created if at God's command all the Creatures were framed who according to the meaning of the prophetical Spirit was able to put in execution such his Father's command but He who was the living Word and Truth it self The Word then in the beginning of all things was with God and the Word was God and without him nothing was made that was made It 's the Doctrine of S. John and of Origen too So far then we may know how the beginning of S. John's Gospel was understood in his days and what they thought might conveniently be proved from thence When the Jew afterwards is brought in objecting that Men who are partakers of the same Table would not lye in wait for one another much less would any one have treacherous designs upon God p. 74. Origen might easily have answered that cavil by denying that He was God and then by giving instances of Men false and treacherous to those who have eaten with them at the same Table but He owns his Godhead and only performs the latter Celsus afterwards brings in his Jew objecting against the Divinity of Christ thus Who ever heard of God coming down from heaven to earth on purpose to perswade Men as they say Christ did and failing in his design especially when he was long expected and hoped for a denyal of his Divinity had put a full stop to this objection too but Origen on the contrary retorts upon them That the Jews themselves were instance enough of the possibility of such a thing since God had appear'd so remarkably to them in bringing them up out of the land of Aegypt and in giving them a Law from Sina and yet they nor their Fathers could by that means be perswaded to obedience or prevented from running presently into Idolatry p. 106. After all this Celsus in his own person makes use of this argument to prove that Christ could not be God God says He is good and pure and happy and in himself infinitely excellent and lovely if He should descend to be among Men He must necessarily undergo a change a change from good to bad from pure to impure from happiness to misery and from the most excellent to the most sinful state this God would never undergo To this the Father answers That it 's true God is in himselâ— Immutable nor did he suffer any change oâ— this account But that which descended down to Men was in the form of God but out of his Love to mankind he debased himself so far as that he might be born among them but He suffer'd no change from baâ— to good for that He was without Sin he never committed any He was not chang'd from pure or clean to foul or filthy for Hâ— did not so much as know Sin nor did he fall from happiness to misery He humbled himself indeed but was not a whit the less happy even when he stoop'd the lowest for the good of mankind nor did he fall from the best to the most sinful state because what he did proceeded from Love and Charity to us by being among whom He that was the great Physician of Souls could be no more altered for the worse than a Physician for the body is by conversing with those that are sick and full of diseases But says he if Celsus think that because the immortal God the Word assumed a mortal body and an humane Soul that therefore He suffered an alteration or a change Let him know that the Word essentially continuing the Word still suffers by none of those things which happen either to the body or the Soul but that He condescends to become flesh and to speak in a Body l. 4. p. 169 170. for the sake of those who are not able to behold the eradiations and brightness of his Divinity so long till He who receives him being in a short time rais'd to a greater understanding by the Word may be able to contemplate his original nature And finally in his sixth book against the same Celsus he speaks â—hus excellently If then Celsus enquire how we think to know God and to be saved with him We will answer him That He who is the word of God being in them who seek him or who wait for his appearance is sufficient to make known and to reveal the Father who was not to be seen before His appearance for who else can save the Soul of Man and guide us in every thing to God but only God the Word who being in the beginning with God for the sake of those who are confin'd to flesh became flesh that he might be comprehended by those who were not able to see him as He was the Word and as He was with God and as He was God l. 6. p. 322. and appearing in flesh and speaking in the body He calls those who are in the flesh to himself that first he might make them like to the Word which was made flesh and
MYSTERIES IN RELIGION VINDICATED OR The Filiation Deity and Satisfaction of our Saviour asserted against Socinians and Others With Occasional Reflections on several late Pamphlets By LVKE MILBOVRNE a Presbyter of the Church of England 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Barnab Ep. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tatianus contra Gentes LONDON Printed for Walter Kettilby at the Bishop's Head in S. Paul's Church-Yard 1692. TO THE Right Reverend Father in GOD HENRY Lord Bishop of LONDON Dean of the Chappel Royal and one of the Lords of their Majesties most Honourable Privy Council MY LORD I Pretend not to do Honour to Your Sacred Character by the little Address of an obscure Writer but by representing Your Lordship to the World as treading in the glorious steps of antient Saints Martyrs and Bishops Your great Predecessors in the Government of the Church of God When busie Ignorants are doing their Fathers Work and scattering their Tares among the good Seed of Evangelical Truth it 's time for those in Your Lordship's station not only to Countenance those who oppose encroaching Error but to scatter these Midnight Workers with a just severity and to frown effectually on such as the most condescending Laws have thought fit to exclude from any interest in them That Your Lordship's Sentiments are agreeable to Mine I conclude from Your declar'd Willingness to accept so small a Present yet small as it is it 's offer'd with the greatest Affection to our Holy Mother the establish'd Church of England which that it may recover it 's pristine Lustre in spite of all the malignant influences of Heresie or Schism and Your Lordship live long as its Zealous Supporter is the hearty Prayer of MY LORD Your Lordship 's most Humble Faithful and Obedient Servant LVKE MILBOVRNE THE PREFACE TO THE READER Christian Reader IF any wonder the subsequent Discourse should be so near the Form of Sermons and tho' large should little answer its own Title let him know that the Author's circumstances would allow him to reduce it to no better Method and were enough to discourage him from any Vndertaking either usefully close or laborious If making Brick without Straw labouring hard without so much as the Reward of a competent Livelihood among a People not over-fond of Learning might make his Intellectuals move like the Egyptian Chariots with their Wheels off very slow and heavily none but those who are lazy ignorant or better provided for can wonder at him But whatever measure He has had He knew himself Originally dedicated to the Service of the Church of God that however his Hearers might be careless or ignorant of their own Good he was still their Watchman to give notice carefully of approaching Dangers and to make use of those Talents God had entrusted Him with to prevent Superstition false Doctrines and Heresies from over-running His Congregation This sence of Duty made him vigorously oppose the Ingress of Popery in the last Reign it made Him too contribute his Handful of Water to quench the growing flames and freely to expose himself to the Anger of an unhappily Bigotted Prince and the impotent disgusts of hot-headed Renegadoes from the Church of England This made him as jealous of that impudent Pamphlet assuming the Title of the Naked Gospel which finding very busily scattered abroad he designed it a particular Answer when a very Reverend Prelate of our Church Cujus Nomen semper acerbum Semper Honoratum sic Dii voluistis habebit giving him notice of Dr. Sherlock's excellent Performance and Dr. Jane's Promise with a peculiar respect to that Pamphlet He stopt his Pen as judging Himself too mean a Second for so learned and able Vndertakers But the News of increasing Socinianism and a clear apprehension of the Pestilent and Irrational Nature of that Heresie made Him cast his thoughts that way again and since it would be Pushing out He believed his Pains could not be ill spent in Exposing what the Wisdom of the Nation thought fit to except from their too much abus'd Indulgence He thinks too many Hands cannot be employed in so necessary a Service and since our Vnitarian Zealots by their numerous Pamphlets are opening the Way in Conjunction with other Sects for Atheism and Irreligion and so many Beaux Esprits the would-be Wits of the Age try to cloak Atheism under the Pretence of asserting The Rational Religion He should think himself very guilty were He silent when He had any thing to say against them The Refutation of these daring Errors is said to be Vndertaken by several of the Reverend London Clergy Men doubtless of sufficient abilities to baffle a thousand such little Whifflers in Reason as We are now pestered with But while they delay the Work too long the Author of this will think it happily publish'd if it serve only to excite their pious Zeal and oblige Them to make up the Defects of this by their more accurate and Learned Arguments It has affixed no small scandal upon some otherwise Venerable Names that they have made their Converse too cheap to the bold Spreader of Socinian Papers and while He takes Courage to break Laws under Covert of their Patronage They can no way better vindicate the Church of God or their own Reputations or repress Impudent Ignorance than by a vigorous and speedy opposition to his Pernicious Endeavours As for his own Performance in the following sheets the Author has endeavoured to give its due force to a Text He thinks very plain for the eternal Deity of our Saviour and to expose Socinian Criticism on that and other places of Scripture and has laid open some of those pitiful Artifices they make use of to pervert the Word of God He has essayed to set Humane Reason in its true Light to give it its just Weight in Religious Matters to shew the influence Divine Revelation ought to have upon it and yet after All He believes not that any Divine Revelation does or can supersede any truly Rational Principle Many are taken up as such which yet invalidate themselves by that Opposition they meet with from Others of as Acute Parts as those who first vend Them only such wherein all Discursive Souls agree can properly be called True Principles of Reason and these too are only such in the particular Parts of Knowledge to which they belong an Euclidean Demonstration can have no Place in Metaphysicks Nor can the Assertion of a Trinity prove the impossibility of squaring a Circle Weak Eyes are ill Judges of the various Modifications of Light and Deaf Ears of the delicate Harmony of Sounds Reason in the Soul may meet with as many Obstructions from the different Organization of that Body in which the Soul acts and however large the Minds of Socinus Crellius or his present Nephew may be T. F's Capacity must be very well tenter'd e'er it can comprehend all their Niceties or see clear Reason confirming every one of their ill-connected Heterodoxies Tho' the incomparable Bishop of Worcester has
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
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
by the commands of God i.e. by Worshipping him according to his prescriptions and we cannot come to know the commands of God but by Prophecy or Revelation Or we may rest in the Apostles definition that true Religion is the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness in hopes of eternal life Tit. 1.1 2. But if we respect Religion in general as taken up by all Nations we may describe it as The method of worshipping God by all men suitably to those notions they had of him and of their own duties As for the Jewish Nation they were once the sole professors of true Religion and for the hardness of their hearts were loaded with abundance of Ceremonial institutions but yet in the law of Moses and in the Prophets we find sincere and hearty obedience to the moral Law very much urged and insisted upon as the best evidence of true and unfeigned piety and where God expostulates sharply with his people for their rebellion and disobedience He tells them plainly Ps 50.8 9 13 16 17 23. I will not reprove thee for thy Sacrifices or thy burnt offerings to have been continually before me I will take no bullock out of thy house nor he-goat out of thy fold Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of goats No these things God could pardon But unto the wicked God says what hast thou to do to declare my statutes or that thou shouldest take my covenant into thy mouth the reason of the expostulation follows thou hatest instruction and castest my words behind thee by which words the great folly of those is exprest who pretend themselves the servants of God and instruments of his glory and yet live disagreeably to their profession wherefore it 's added Who so offereth praise glorifieth me and to him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God Thus again God by the Prophet Samuel argues with Saul 1 Sam. 15.22 Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as in obeying the voice of the Lord Behold to obey is better than sacrifice and to hearken than the fat of rams So the Prophet Isaiah Isa 1.11 13 16 17 18. To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs or of he-goats Bring no more vain oblations incense is an abomination to me it follows wash ye make ye clean put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes cease to do evil learn to do well seek judgment relieve the oppressed judge the fatherless plead for the widows Well what should be the effect of all this reformation as much as a wretched sinner could hope for from the most benign Being Come now and let us reason together saith the Lord tho' your sins be as scarlet they shall be white as snow tho' they be red like crimson they shall be as wool So the Prophet Micah Micah 6.6 7 8. Wherewith shall I come before the Lord and bow my self before the high God Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings with calves of a year old will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams or ten thousands of rivers of oyl shall I give my first-born for my transgression or the fruit of my Body for the sin of my soul No God requires not these things at our hands but He hath shewed thee O man what is good and what doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God Nay Solomon himself who was so personally profuse in his offerings that a man would have suspected he had fixt the whole substance of Religion in such exterior services when he comes to draw up what was incumbent upon Man in a few words passes sacrificing by as inconsiderable in respect of this sincere obedience Eccl. 12.13 Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter Fear God and keep his Commandments for this is the whole duty of man Thus far the writings of the Old Testament receiv'd by the ancient Jews shew us the ends of Religion viz. That where it really had a place it necessarily produc'd purity and sincerity of mind without which no sacrifice tho' never so costly could be accepted with God David teaches us the lesson plainly Ps 51.6 7 10 19. Behold thou desirest truth in the inward parts and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom purge me with hysop and I shall be clean wash me and I shall be whiter than snow Create in me a clean heart O God and renew a right spirit within me and much more to the same purpose then he concludes all Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness with burnt offering and whole burnt-offering then shall they offer bullocks upon thine Altar But since the Jews are for the most part hardned against their own greatest interest and so may be thought to have now changed their minds being known for such bigotted ceremonialists I shall add the confessions of one or two modern Jews So Rabbi Isaac Sangar in the book Cosri before cited Cosri pars 3. p. 157. for thus he tells the King he converses with A holy and pious man is not the rigid man for every ceremonial punctilio but he who where he dwells with a prudent and impartial hand gives every one their right who loves justice oppresses none defrauds none nor bribes any to be his slaves or tools upon occasion Again Because the eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole earth therefore the holy man neither does nor speaks nor thinks any thing but he believes the all-seeing eye of God to be upon him ready not only to reward for what 's well but for what 's ill done too and to visit for every perverse and wicked word or action p. 168. c. To him I shall add Rabbi Moises ben Maimon who in his More Nevochim More Nevoehim pars 3. c. 28. p. 419. or explainer of difficulties teaches us that every precept of God whether it be affirmative or negative aims at these things first that it may take away all violence from among men and beget good manners necessary for the conservation of political Societies and secondly that it may instil true principles of faith such as are in their own nature necessary to be known for the expelling of wickedness and encouraging honesty and virtue Now if these sober and necessary virtues which are of no value if not sincere be the ultimate intention of all God's Laws it follows that those virtues are more accounted of with God which are inward and affect the Soul than all outward performances how pompous soever as much as the end of a thing is more excellent than the means conducing to it The Son of Sirach agrees admirably with this truth He that sacrificeth of a thing wrongfully gotten Eccl. 34.18 19.
sin which was incapable of pardon from an offended God but upon the terms of the passion of his dearly beloved Son and will be throughly satisfied of the danger of such transgression by a rational assurance That if men sin wilfully after they have receiv'd the knowledge of the truth Hebr. 10.26 27. there remains now no more sacrifices for sins but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries If then true Religion consist in worshipping God according to those revelations he has made of himself to the world and we cannot propound any reason to our selves why God should have made any such revelation of himself to us but only that when we have a rule we might have an example too then whatsoever religion that is whose most obscure and incomprehensible mysteries highly promote that excellent work of following our exemplar or growing up into an assimilation to God himself by endeavouring to be holy as our heavenly father is holy and perfect as he is perfect That Religion must certainly carry us by the surest ways to eternal happiness but such a Religion is that instituted by our Saviour in the Gospel therefore that 's a Religion above all others for the sake of such mysteries so profound but withal so very profitable and instructive to be embraced by all wise and considering Men. A due reflection upon those mysteries any Religion is founded upon with a just apprehension of the deficiency of our own reason in tracing them is a very proper means to create in mens minds a due and exact reverence for it Thus that very notion that we have of God's infinity of his dwelling in impenetrable darkness or in inaccessible light of the unsearchableness of his ways the incomprehensibility of his wisdom c. All these things make awful impressions upon mens souls and make them to fear before God and to reverence him and this God him self intended when by his Prophet he assured the Jews My thoughts are not your thoughts Isai 55.8 9. neither are your ways my ways saith the Lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts This prodigious distance between the nature of God and Man was enough to overawe man on whose side there was so very great a disadvantage God's prohibition so often repeated to the Jews that they should not represent him to themselves by any figure or image whatsoever with the reason as frequently inculcated that they never had seen any thing which could look like any representation of him was to prevent that contempt which too much familiarity with superiors naturally produces for representing a God by any thing of a gross or material nature is apt to create as gross an Idaea of the Divinity it self in the mind of a Man and those once entertained produce a sawciness and familiarity not at all agreeable to that immense distance there is between a divine and a mortal Being Thus it 's observable that the Gentiles generally were upon several occasions extravagantly free with those Gods they worshipp'd Hence the Tyrians when Alexander the great besieged them chain'd the Image of Apollo to that of Hercules lest the God should leave them because one of their Citizens had had a melancholick dream forsooth that he designed to serve them such a slippery trick in their necessity So the Athenians clip'd off the wings of the Image of the goddess Victory lest she should fly away from them So Dionysius the elder of Sicily took off a golden mantle from the statue of Jupiter and put him on a woolen blanket with that scoffing reason that the blanket was fitter for all weathers being lighter in Summer and warmer in Winter So he took off the golden beard of Aesculapius with that Witticisme That it became not him to have so long a beard when his father Apollo had none It 's true these affronts were proper enough for those Idols to whom they were offer'd but they were very unbecoming those who offered them since they profest to believe that they were really gods so that they were not those Images or Statues which were abus'd but it was the true Divinity it self which they imagined resident in or about those Images And of this Inconvenience from material Images even of material Saints the Romanists are sometimes sensible witness that action of a Spanish Peasant who making his offering to the Image of the blessed Virgin and imagining she look'd not so kindly on him for it as he expected He very briskly told her she need not be so proud for He remembred she was but a sorry piece of timber the other day it was yet the more effectually to prevent such inconveniences that God appointed a part of the Tabernacle first and of the Temple at Jerusalem afterwards under the Sacred name of the Holy of Holies to be wholly inaccessible to any but the High Priest who bore an extraordinary Character among the Jews nor might He enter into it above once a Year and that with a great deal of respect and ceremony This made God to strike the men of Bethshemesh with so terrible a judgment for daring to pry into what God intended to keep secret 1 Sam. â— 19 and to strike Vzzah dead upon the place for presuming to do what was above his station and touch the Ark though it seem'd an action proceeding from a good zeal or a fear that the Ark the peculiar Symbol of God's presence among his People should have fallen to the ground 2 Sam. 6.9 but we may see what a terror that signal vengeance struck upon David himself and all his Company v. 10. and it 's observ'd of Pompey the Great that after He had been so bold as to look into the Holy of Holies upon his taking Jerusalem that though He saw nothing there nor offer'd any violence to any thing about the Temple but expressed a great deal of reverence towards the place and those that attended on it yet that God's judgments pursued him from that time that He prosper'd in little or nothing that He undertook all things from thence verging hastily to his final ruine So jealous is God of his honour so terrible to those who will be strugling to know what he would have kept secret from the World That great reverence which a due distance between God and the things belonging to him and Man creates is so well known in the World that wise Men have thought it convenient that there should be somewhat of a Mysterious Majesty in those who are God's representatives on earth which has taught the great Eastern Monarchs that prudent piece of state to shew themselves as seldom as possible to the People by which means the Vulgar not being capable of any diminutive thoughts of those whose weaknesses they are unacquainted with almost reverence their Kings as Gods and conclude no submissions can be
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
from heaven which all wise men have hitherto believed then the writers of the New Testament had no other way to prove their own inspiration but by agreement with the former lest the holy Spirit to whose conduct both pretended should seem inconsistent with himself or variable as mens humours could apprehend him It 's not now to be doubted but that our Saviour who knew what was in Man therefore all along gave just preventives of those Cavils which the malicious Jews could afterwards raise against him and therefore in his first Sermon upon the Mount he shews himself so far from evacuating what was in its own nature moral and perpetually obliging that he on the contrary clears it from all those putid glosses the Jewish readers or Rabbins had fixt upon it and whereas they had endeavoured to find as many starting holes from the severity of good Morals as the Jesuites of later years have done he gave his hearers the full sense and meaning of the Law that so by pretending to liberty from its rigours they might not run themselves into eternal woes and in plain terms lets them know that whereas they were ready simply to imagine the severities of the Scribes and Pharisees very extraordinary and meritorious they were infinitely deceived and that except their righteousness should exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees they should in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven Matth. 5.20 It was doubtless the full end and design of Moses and the Prophets to advance the honour of that God who employed them to make his Name and his Laws respected not only among the tribes of Israel but among all those nations to whose knowledge their writings were likely at any time to come who by the rationality and tendency of the Laws would certainly judge of the wisdom goodness and integrity of the Law-giver but when those Prophets and others had done their best their endeavours were mixt with so many failures and imperfections that sometimes they fell themselves a great way under God's displeasure as Moses by his infidelity and presumption at the rock The man of God that Prophesied against the Altar in Bethel by yielding to the lying suggestions of the old Prophet Jonah by his frowardness because of God's superseding his prophetical denunciation by his long suffering and mercy extended to penitent sinners c. And besides in all those services those holy Men perform'd they could claim no higher a title than that of undeserving servants for that they had only done what was their plain duty and in case of failure they were obnoxious to very severe penalties and Moses tho' he have that honourable character that he was faithful in all God's house it was but as a servant still and for a testimony of those things that were to be spoken after Heb. 3.5 6. But Christ as a Son over his own house took a more exact and effectual care in all things to promote the glory of his Father It 's natural for the Son to be more sollicitous in such cases than a mercenary servant who does what he does prompted both by a fear of punishment and an earnest expectation of reward above both which things a pious Son always lives and therefore whereas the rest always call God their Lord and King c. the blessed Jesus continually calls him his Father his heavenly father and by that relation he so stands in to the Almighty and by what he has done for us in taking our nature upon him and the consequences of that assumption he has procured the same privilege superiour to what was apprehended by those of old with assurance of being heard to say in our Prayers Our Father which art in heaven But to effect all this in relation to his Fathers honour and our good how many scorns abuses persecutions and barbarous cruelties did he undergo from wicked Men yet as freely as if he had been altogether unconcern'd so long as Men could but any ways be reduced to an acknowledgment of their errors and a serious repentance What he underwent so made him as Man the more fit to prescribe Laws to others who were likely to suffer extremely from the same foolish world for embracing those truths he delivered them as we always esteem an Humble man most fit to teach others humility and a Charitable man charity and a Patient man patience For tho' others may declaim as well in commendation of the same virtues and in reproof of the same vices yet the discourses of exemplary persons are justly expected to make the deepest impressions upon their hearers With this advantage our blessed Lord instructed every one that would receive his Doctrine in the ways of happiness he used all the allurements of irresistible Wisdom and unanswerable Reason all the motives of Mercy and Goodness to procure their attendance and obedience He set them a compleat pattern of obedience to God and of innocence and holiness in his converse and then gives that as a standing rule that his Disciples should follow his example and let their light shine before Men for that very end that others seeing their good works might glorifie their Father which was in Heaven But when the blessed Jesus design'd the reformation of a sinful World the nature of his Doctrine and the manner of its propagation was adapted rightly to so admirable an end And therefore whereas the wretched Heathen part of Mankind did infinitely dishonour their Creator whereas they exactly answer'd that account of the Apostle When they knew God they glorified him not as God neither were thankful Rom. 1.21 22 c. but became vain in their Imaginations and their foolish hearts were darkned they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an Image made like to corruptible Man and to Birds and to four-footed Beasts and to creeping things they changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipp'd and serv'd the creature more than the Creator whence they were filled with all unrighteousness fornication wickedness covetousness malice envy c. Whereas this was their real condition infinite numbers of them by this means running head-long into everlasting damnation and yet the ill-natured Jews to whom the Oracles of God were at that time committed took no care for their recovery pleasing themselves onely with a fond conceit of their own righteousness crying to all the rest of Mankind Stand by your selves come not near us for we are holier than you Since they only talk'd of their being the people of God and boasted of his Temple studying more to proselyte Men to an outward Circumcision and a few empty Ceremonies than to real inward holiness and integrity since these very Jews did but abuse their own greater advantages and trample upon the most excellent and obliging part of the Law our Saviour rectified their Error by the dilatation of his own Doctrine and taking exact care to have it spread as far as humane guilt had extended before so
who reach'd that consummate perfection in our nature and that for His sake we are receiv'd in all these things Heathen wisdom fail'd either prescribing gay impossibilities for practice or propounding happiness as the mark to aim at but teaching Men to shoot the contrary way by engaging them in mean pleasures and downright sensualities and where the speculations were best they had none to appeal to who had ever liv'd up to their own principles their most fam'd Sages being meer prostitutes to notorious immoralities notwithstanding all the fair shew some late Writers have endeavour'd to make with them onely Pagans had some few scatter'd extracts out of Scripture which were in themselves excellent but being onely fragments injudiciously cull'd and incoherent and wretchedly misunderstood were wholly useless Whereas all Rules and Methods of living before discover'd were lame and imperfect not sufficient to carry Men through those extraordinary difficulties and objections they might meet with in a course of virtue as appear'd by the Famous Brutus who because he saw it unfortunate concluded Virtue was nothing but an empty name Scripture is compleat and every way sufficient for the design it carries on and therefore stands at advantage against all other Rules because Whoever follows others most exactly cannot be happy at last but He that sticks close to our Rule cannot be unhappy it informs the Mind it resolves Doubts it answers Objections it encourages Weakness it dissipates Fears it reproves Errors and makes Sufferings easie of which there are so many thousands of instances own'd by Infidels themselves that from hence too it 's past dispute that our Rule has this quality of the Word of God In fine there 's nothing through the whole tenour of it either in its Doctrine or History that 's beneath the Majesty of an infinite God if God would speak to Man he could speak no better therefore he must speak thus and onely thus He that finds Princes composing Sacred Hymns infinitely beyond their Orpheus or Callimachus Moralizing as far beyond their admir'd Antoninus as he beyond Porters or Scavengers He that reads Prophets more soaring and divine than their Plato's or Zeno's or Pythagoras's and in a strain more soft and charming as well as more Majestick and Herdsmen more profound and more truly fatidical than their Sibyls or Apollo and Fishermen more accurate argumentative and rational than their Philosophers of the noblest Sects able to baffle 'em in Disputes to out-reach them in discovering the causes and natures of ordinary appearances in the World He that observes Men of various lives and conditions of different tempers different times distant places different natural abilities writing a series of Historical passages with more clearness better digested â—n point of Chronology more probable in â—atters of fact more full exact and imâ—artial in the Characters of Actions and Perâ—ons more agreeing with one another and â—he best Pagan Writers than all other Hiâ—â—orians whatsoever nay than Old and â—ublick Records themselves though preserv'd and managed with the greatest apparent care and exactness He that can find nothing low flagging and uneven among such variety of Pen-men nothing trifling useless or superfluous let his perswasion be what it will let him be Turk African or Indian if he have but his Reason free he must conclude if God ever did impart his will to Man it must be in this Book which we call Scripture and if He then return to his own principle of the necessity in point of justice that God should give a Rule to Man that might procure his Happiness it will as necessarily follow that our Scripture our Rule must be the Word of God Which proves its own Immortal Original farther in that notwithstanding the continued malice and subtilty of Enemies it could never be destroy'd it could never be disprov'd it could never be interpolated or any thing be added to it nor be made shorter or any thing taken from it but while other Humane Writings have been easily abus'd and additions and alterations made in them not discover'd or well distinguish'd to this day by the most exact Criticks nothing could so be fasten'd upon Holy Writ nor any inferiour Writer or uninspired impose his own upon the World for the Word of God Assur'd of these things We as Christians among other parts of Scripture embrace the History of our Saviour's Incarnation and these things being unanswerable by an Infidel upon his own principles as a Deist and a Rationalist he must own the whole History of Scripture to be true and amongst the rest this of the Birth of Christ for as I have no reason to suspect his Veracity who gives me an account of somewhat to his own advantage who yet has always told me truth in things that made against himself So a Pagan who thinks he has reason to receive all the other parts of Divine History because he finds them exactly true has no reason to suspect the Faith of the same Writers in one particular And besides the thing has been so oft attempted but with so little success that He may justly conclude That matters of fact impossible to be confuted by any argument cannot possibly be false This obliges an Infidel to acknowledge the truth of our History of the Incarnation in particular and Scripture in general own'd to be Divine is a certain foundation to build the Conversion of Infidels upon And thus much for the first head That Jesus Christ the Messias who appear'd on Earth in our Nature was really the Son of God We come now to the Second Particular which is this That the same Blessed Jesus who was the Son of God was God equal with his Father or really and truly God as well as real Man He was God though manifest in the Flesh To prove the Truth of which might seem needless had there not been of old and were there not of late Years reviv'd a Generation of men who under pretence of sacrificing to Reason have set themselves wholly to explode the Belief of a Trinity as a means to make good which adventure of theirs they positively deny the Divinity of the Son of God they cannot well admit of any Mysteries in Religion which themselves cannot comprehend the very pretence to which comprehension is enough to make a Mystery no Mystery for if They who employ themselves in this work can comprehend it every one may do so too or at least the generality of the Intelligent World but what 's generally understood cannot be a Mystery and yet our Apostle in the words preceding the Text tells us that That Mystery of Godliness of which this Text is a part is without all controversie a great Mystery But that Jesus Christ the Son of God was God equal with the Father we shall prove by these Considerations By those accounts of his Appearance and of his Nature laid down in the Old Testament By the Declarations of Himself and of his Apostles in the New Testament By his Actions during
his converse with the World in our Nature From the Faith of the Primitive Church From that common and on every hand approved practice of adoring and presenting our prayers to Him Then We are to consider that account the Scriptures of the Old Testament give of Him and of his Appearance in the World where I will not undertake an exact estimate of every thing that has by Ancient Writers been apply'd that way nor every thing that Modern Controversie-Writers have insisted upon but upon some particular and more remarkable passages onely Among which the First is that of three Angels appearing to Abraham just before the destruction of Sodom Gen. 18.2 where I shall not insist on that that Abraham ran to meet them at their approach and bow'd himself toward the ground because I look upon that and the consequent words as onely expressions of kindness and hospitality suitable to the custome of that Age and Country and to that respect a Person of Abraham's goodness and sagacity would express to Strangers of a promising miene and venerable aspect But after this v. 22. we find the Angels going for Sodom but Abraham standing still before the Lord Two onely went forward so Lot in Sodom met with and entertain'd but Two the Third continued still with Abraham with infinite condescension declaring to him the reason of this extraordinary appearance upon Earth this favour hindred not the design but the other Two pass'd on while Abraham had the liberty to argue the case with him who is particularly stil'd the Lord so the Writer so Abraham in that converse frequently stiles him and that not by the same word originally which Lot made use of to the two Angels appearing to him c. 19.2 which is onely 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Jews account a name applicable to any but by that sacred and ineffable name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A name as they say onely applicable to the most High God and here we find Abraham continually speaking as any who ownes and reveres the Eternal Majesty of God would supplicate to Him and making use of that particular argument in his request Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right c. 18.25 He then to whom Abraham apply'd himself was the Judge of all the Earth therefore no created Angel for such were never honour'd with that Character but it 's properly attributed to the Supreme God by the Psalmist Ps 94.1 2. O God to whom vengeance belongeth shew thy self lift up thy self thou Judge of the Earth and by the Apostle Heb. 12.23 where he tells the Hebrews They were come to God the Judge of all or as your Margin reads it To a Judge the God of all If we look yet forward into this story when Lot was convey'd safe from the destruction which fell upon Sodom Gen. 19.24 we are told The Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrha brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven Epiph. Haer. l. 3. p. 832. where Photinus from whom some denominate our Socinians owns it was the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word which rained from the Lord Sandii Hist Enud l. 1. p. 118. but that Word was God as we learn from the Evangelist John 1.1 By this we gain the certainty that our Saviour the Son of God had a Being before he was born of the Virgin Mary that the Title Power Acknowledgment belonging to the true God were given to him therefore that He was the true God To this might be added the History of Jacob's wrestling with the Man when he was left alone The Man he wrestled with Malac. 3.1 antiquity generally understood to be the Angel of the Covenant so Christ is nam'd Heb. 12.24 and this interpretation is no way disagreeable since the wrestler from the very contest gives Jacob the name of Israel which signifies a Prince Gen. 32.28 or one that powerfully prevails with God The Person wrestling with Jacob refuses to tell his name which created Angels were not wont to do Gabriel told Zacharias his name the name of Michael is often mention'd Luke 1.19 and the Writer of the Apocryphal book of Tobit supposes it no unusual thing when he introduces Tobias's companion calling himself Raphael one of the seven Angels that stand in the presence of God i. e. are in a more glorious state than the rest of that Heavenly Host Again Jacob expresses his sense of his Antagonist in the Name he gave to that place and the reason of it for says he I have seen God face to face and my life is preserved And lastly Jacob pray'd to him for a blessing and would not part without it which argued his acknowledgment of a Divine power in him and the Prophet Hosea makes such an interpretation of the Text scarce disputable where speaking of Jacob He had power over the Angel says he and prevailed Hos 12.4 5. He wept and made supplication unto him that was to own Him the true God He found Him in Bethel and there he spake with us Even the Lord GOD of HOSTS the Lord is his Memorial 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 An expression so great and so high as never any created Being pretended to We may then take notice of the 45 Psalm a Psalm by all the ancient Jews apply'd to the Messias and rightly as will appear that Messias was Jesus Christ in that both Arians of old and Socinians of late as well as the Orthodox agree his very Name carries it He is Jesus the Saviour He is the Christ the anointed of God the Father The Psalmist there represents him at first as a Man tho' Fairer than the rest of humane race Ps 45.2 but he subjoyns Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever the Scepter of thy Kingdom is a right Scepter Thou lovest righteousness and hatest wickedness therefore God thy God hath anointed thee with the oyl of gladness above thy fellows where that God to whom the Apostrophe or exclamation refers is called by the same name with that God who is said to anoint him in the original and the whole Text is authentically apply'd to the Son of God by the Apostle Hebr. 1.8 9. even to that Son whom he there shews to be so far above all Angelick Beings that when his Father brings his first begotten into the World he says And let all the Angels of God worship him which the Apostle quotes from the Psalmist Psal 97.7 not literally according to the Hebrew but according to the then current translation of the Septuagint which though varying from our Hebrew a little in words is the same in sense That the word by us translated Gods signifies and is apply'd to Created Beings sometimes we admit of as no way prejudicial to truth but if the Angels are commanded to worship Him and that Angel whom Saint John would have adored forbad him because He though an Angel Rev. 22.9 was but a
Christ nor Elias nor that Prophet but he answered positively too to their General question v. 19-23 that He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness Prepare ye the way of the Lord make his paths streight as saith the Prophet Esaias Now the Baptist being so very much reverenc'd and so mightily followed as he was his answer could not but be spread about through all Judaea and the expectations of Men be the more rais'd because the person there prophesied of by Isaias was to be the forerunner of the Messias he therefore being come the other could not be far behind Besides if we interpret the Gospel of the glad tydings of Salvation brought to all mankind the Evangelists expression will be untrue For not to mention the Promise to our first Parents and those afterwards repeated to the Patriarchs and frequently declared and enlarged upon by the Prophets that of the Angel to Zacharias the Father of S. John Baptist and that of the same Angel to the blessed Virgin and they were â—â—â—â—einly tydings of great joy and the real beginnings of that which is peculiarly stiled the Gospel both these were before the very conception of our Saviour therefore He as a meer man was not or had no being in the beginning of the Gospel and doubtless the Evangelist here in the beginning of his History taking up the very expressions of Moses in the beginning of Genesis and using his very words as translated by the Septuagint supposed his Readers would take his words in the same sence as they understand those of Moses and so in the beginning in both places signifies as much as before there was any thing existent so before any thing but the eternal God himself had a being God out of nothing produced all things and so before any thing God excepted had a being the Word was therefore that Word was God because God only could exist in the beginning or before the Creation of all things and thus the Evangelist says something peculiar of Christ and what might really set him above the Baptist or blessed Angels or any other Creatures whatsoever Otherwise the Apostle according to the Socinian fancy would have taken pains to prevent an Objection never brought at such a time too as never any Man could have rais'd it for he wrote his Gospel according to all accounts about the 90th year of our Saviour toward the end of his own very long life and when the Gospel was spread in all quarters and Heresies had gotten a great footing in the Church when that Objection about John Baptist would have appeared nonsensical and ridiculous Whereas had he design'd his Master's honour or the advantage of mankind he would have made haste and have pen'd his Gospel very early when such poor objections might have appeared with some countenance But it follows In the beginning the Word was with God this seems to prove very plainly that if the Word here spoken of be indeed the Son of God he had a being before he was visible in our Nature and that above or in Heaven or in the peculiar place of the Divine presence which granted is enough to destroy all the Socinian Doctrine of Christ's being a meer Creature or a Man like one of us and no more That Christ really had such a Being antecedent to his Incarnation we have reason to believe on the authority of concurrent Texts of Scripture for so our Saviour calls himself before the cavilling Jews John 6.51 That Bread which came down from Heaven But if he came down from heaven He must first have been there and that at least some time before he told them so The Jews in general nay his own Disciples thought this a very hard saying an expression that was very hard to be understood and so it was to those who were wholly taken up with carnal thoughts our Saviour cures their amazement or incredulity with a strange intimation What and if you should see the Son of man ascend up into heaven v. 61 62. This question plainly enough asserts that he had been with God before they converst with him here on earth and this Socinus himself acknowledges for he knew not how to disengage himself from the force of this and that yet more astonishing declaration of our Saviour to Nicodemus No man hath ascended up to heaven Joh. 3.13 but He that came down from heaven even the Son of Man which is in heaven which expression according to the Socinian Rational way of exposition as they call it is meer riddle or contradiction but according to the Catholick Faith concerning the eternal generation of the Son of God is easie and intelligible to every man For if it were God that was manifest in the flesh and continued the same eternal God still He might in his divine nature always be with his Father and yet in his Humane Nature be conversant among Men at the same time But tho' Socinus and his followers sometimes own the literal truth of these expressions they cannot hold true to what they allow for one while they 'd change it's nature and make it figurative So Jesus Christ was in heaven by the divine raptures or meditations of his Soul Explic. loc S Script Op. v 1. p. 146. or he was in heaven by that perfect knowledge he had of all divine matters thus Socinus himself But he quits it at last and flyes to that wonderful discovery filium hominis verè propriè de coelo descendisse in coelo fuisse That the Son of Man was truly and properly in heaven and descended from thence before he discours'd these things with the Jews But would you know how it was as S. Paul who tho' but a meer Man was caught up into the third heavens 2 Cor. 12.2 3 4. into Paradise and heard unspeakable words which it â—s not lawful for a man to utter so the blessed Jesus was taken up bodily into heaven and there was conversant some time with God and was there as in a School taught those things he was afterwards to preach and do in the world Would you know when It was say some when he was twelve years old and his parents mist him at their return from Jerusalem and after three days found him among the Doctors Wolzog. in Jo. c. 3. v. 13. Wolzogenius supposes it during the forty days fast in the wilderness for whereas Socinus thinks it highly fit that as Moses the type was with God upon the Mount that he might there learn those Laws and Ordinances he was to deliver to the Israelites so it was very reasonable Christ the Antitype should have some such like converse with God for the same purpose in a nobler place therefore this Author to carry on the parallel the farther would pitch it on that time to which the Evangelists allot forty days because Moses was the same space of time in the Mount and this was the great Invention of Laelius Socinus
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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
bodies and yet be Angels or Spirits still much more must it be believed that God could do the same Thus still he prosecutes his Argument and all his care was to prove not that Christ was God for that was granted on all hands but that he was Man which some denyed upon that very ground because he was God without controversie Again in his book of Prescriptions against Hereticks De Praescrip p. 36. He lays down somewhat like the form of a Creed and agreeable to our own Where first he says They believed one God the World's Creator who produced all things out of nothing by his Word that Word his Son was called by the name of God variously seen by the Patriarchs always heard in the Prophets at last brought by the power and Spirit of God the Father into the womb of the Virgin Mary He took flesh of Her and was born of Her and so became the Man Jesus Christ c. Here we have our Saviour's Existence antecedently to his birth of the blessed Virgin not only asserted but declared as the general Doctrine and Tradition of the Catholick Church and that less than two hundred years after our Saviour's Passion and made use of as a Prescription against an Heretick Now Marcion if he had not been well assured that Tertullian asserted no more than what was the current Doctrine of the Catholick Church might easily have baffled all Tertullian's pretence to Prescription by shewing him that all the Christians of the former Age were utterly ignorant of his pretended Articles of Faith but we never hear of any such Reply made Tho' we have no reason to doubt but that the Hereticks of those ages were as earnest to maintain their Errors as those are who tread in their footsteps in this After this in the same book Tertullian reflects upon other capital Hereticks So he tells us that Cerinthus maintained fol. 41. that Christ was only of the seed of Joseph a meer Man without any Divine Nature He tells us again that Theodotus of Byzantium blasphemed Christ for He too brought in a Doctrine quâ Christum Hominem tantummodo diceret Deum autem illum negaret Wherein he taught that Christ was a meer Man and that he was not God that He was indeed born of a Virgin thro' the Holy Ghost fol. 42. otherwise He was only a Man no better than others but as his Goodness gave him a greater authority than others If Tertullian then took Theodotus to be an Heretick on account of this Doctrine it can scarce be doubted but he 'd have taken Socinus and his Partners for the same had they liv'd in those days and I find our Socinians doing so much right to this Theodotus as fairly to reckon him among the Patrons of their opinions If we go farther with Tertullian we find him assaulting the same Heretick Marcion again and arguing God's extraordinary goodness from that great Humiliation of himself to take humane nature upon him He concludes his argument at last with this Totum denique Dei mei penes vos dedecus Adversus Mar. l. 2. f. 68. sacramentum est Humanae salutis c. All that which in your opinion is so disgraceful to the God I believe in is the Seal of our Salvation God converst with Man that Man might learn to do those things that are divine God acted suitably with Man that Man might endeavour to act agreeably to God God was found in a mean state that Man might be exalted to the utmost He that despises such a God can hardly be thought to believe in God crucified In another book against the same Marcion he argues from the antient apparitions of Angels that Christ tho' God had a true and real body We will not yield to thee says he that Angels had only a fantastick body but those bodies they assumed had a true solid humane substance this elsewhere he makes good it follows If it were not hard for Christ to exert the true sence and action of a Man in imaginary flesh it was much easier to make true and substantial flesh as he was the Author and maker of it to be the subject of true common sence and action Thy God was fain to appear in an imaginary body l. 3. fol. 72. because he was not able to produce a real one But my God who without pursuing the common course of nature could make real flesh of Earth could have invested Angels with real bodies of any kind whatsoever For with a word He made the world of nothing and shaped it into so many various bodies as we see Then he tells us Angels had flesh truly humane and connate with the time they appear'd in because Christ only himself was to be flesh of flesh that by his Birth he might purifie ours that by his Death he might free us from the slavery of Death he rising again in that flesh in which he was born only that he might die Therefore He appear'd in a true body accompanied with Angels to Abraham but not a body that was born because it was not that body which was to die In consequence of this discourse which proves our Saviour's Pre-existence to his Birth fol. 73. he urges his Adversary with that name of Immanuel or God with us from whence proving the reality of his divine he regularly infers the equal reality of his humane nature If we proceed we find the same Father publishing his Faith in the beginning of his book against Praxeas He was an Heretick so far yet from believing Christ to be a Creature or a meer Man that he asserted it was God the Father who was born of the Virgin and crucified and Dead and that He was Jesus Christ In opposition to him the Father declares As we are instructed by the Holy Ghost Adv. Prax. fol. 144. which leads us into all truth We believe one God and that the Word is the Son of that one God who was begotten of him by whom all things were made and without whom nothing was made that he was sent by the Father into the Virgin and born of Her Man and God the Son of Man and the Son of God and called Jesus Christ This was then his Faith and with him Christ had a being before he was born into the World and was what we assert the Creator of all things Thus afterwards he tells us in the same book the Father is God fol. 147. the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God and dilates upon and vindicates that truth He tells us that the Father is God Almighty and most high fol. 149. and that the Son justly claims the same titles and that the Father and the Son are one God and indeed c. 21.22 fol. 219 220. the farther proof of this is the general design of that book He confirms the same Doctrine in his Apology for Christianity against the Gentiles Besides these books he wrote one particularly concerning the
Trinity where among other things quoting the words of the Prophet Hosea I will not save them by my bow nor by horses Hos 1.7 nor by horsemen but I will save them by the Lord their God He infers from thence If God promises them Salvation in their God or by him and yet saves them only by Christ why should any Man be afraid to call Christ God since he is called so by his Father in Scripture Nay if the Father saves none but by God no man can be sav'd by God the Father who does not confess Christ to be God in and by whom God promises to give salvation whosoever acknowledges him to be God shall obtain Salvation in Christ De Trinit fol. 236. who is God whosoever acknowledges him not to be God shall not be sav'd by him With a great deal more to the same purpose In conclusion he takes notice of some who in those days argued at the Socinian rate That if Christ were God and Christ suffered Death then the Deity suffered death to which he answers appositely enough That if Christ had been only God and had dyed their conclusion had been true but Christ being man as well as God his Humanity suffer'd indeed but his Divine Nature was unprejudiced untouch'd Thus have we largely and impartially examined this Father about this Doctrine of Christ's being God and his assertions are so plain and direct and the Heresies he impeach'd in his writings of such a nature that they both concur exactly in the confirmation of the same that our Saviour was truly and really God equal with his Father and the most high God We have another glorious luminary of the same Church S. Cyprian that holy Martyr of Jesus Christ and the laborious Bishop of Carthage who as he was a great admirer of the writings of Tertullian so concurred with him in the same Doctrine of the Divinity of Jesus Christ S. Cyprian then in his book of the vanity of Idols having setled that fundamental truth That there is only one God presently shews that our Saviour is God too this he would not have done had he judged the inference good that to believe Jesus Christ was God was to make two Gods He would not so soon contradict himself nor go about to set up a new Idol when he was endeavouring to exterminate the old Thus then He tells us That whereas the Jews a stubborn and rebellious people had long abus'd the Goodness of God God was resolved to call to himself from among the Gentiles a People that should shew forth better effects of his mercy than they did the Manager of this Goodness Cyprian de Idolor vanit Edit Ox. p. 15. Grace and Method was He who is the Word and Son of God who had been foretold by all the Prophets the enlightner and teacher of all Mankind This Son is the Power the Fulness the Wisdom the Glory of God He enter'd into the Virgin assumed flesh by the co-operation of the Holy Ghost God united with Man He is our God He is Christ who put on the nature of those Men whom He leads to his Father Christ would be what Man is that Man might be what Christ is In his second book of Testimonies against the Jews p. 34 35. he spends one whole chapter in heaping up such Scripture texts as before Socinian Commentaries were thought on were judg'd sufficient proofs that Christ was God In particular he insists on those passages of the 45 Psalm which are applied to our Saviour so directly by the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 1 Joh. 5.7 That famous place There are three that bear record in heaven the Father the Word and the Holy Ghost and these three are one has been much controverted it seems to be a very plain text for the Trinity and consubstantiality or equality or sameness of nature in the Father Son and Holy Ghost but Criticks observe that this verse is wanting in several Copies of considerable Antiquity and Dr. Burnet in his account of the Library in Swisserland See his Lett. takes notice of its being wanting in several Manuscripts he had purposely examined yet after all our S. Cyprian much more antient than the eldest Manuscript he or any other Critical Writerâ— have yet given us an account of in his book of Church-unity quotes it as we read it iâ— our Bibles Socinus takes it for granted thâ— passage was inserted into the Bible by somâ— zealous Trinitarian who made use of anâ— fraud to advance their own Error S. Hiâ—rome who had found it wanting in somâ— Copies in his time which was about 400 years after Christ imputes the want of it more rationally to Arrian transcribers who finding themselves pinch'd with so plain a text when they could not answer it resolved to take it quite away This he signifies in a short Epistle to Eustochium printed formerly frequently in the Latin Bibles of late omitted as is observed by the learned Dr. Fell late Bishop of Oxford in his notes on S. Cyprian S. Cyprian by quoting the verse as we have it confirms S. Jerome's opinion and renders that of Socinus ridiculous for he quoted it before the Arrian Heresie was founded and that twice in his Works therefore could he have no such design as Socinus insinuates Yet S. Cyprian's opinion is that whosoever does not believe this Unity of the Father and the Son De Vnit Ec. p. 10â— as laid down in that Text does not believe the Law of God nor hold the Faith and Truth of the Father and the Son to his Salvation The â—ame S. Cyprian recommending Patience to Christians and that in a time when the â—aging Persecution made it extremely neâ—essary he advances it by the example of Christ for says He Jesus Christ Deus Dominus noster Our God and our Lord â—as taught us this virtue not only in his Words De bono Patientiae p. 213. â—ut in his Actions which he clears as Tertullian before him by his Descent from Heaven to earth assuming our nature and â—iffering in it Again in his account of â—he Council of Carthage held about those â—ho had been baptised by Hereticks among the suffrages of the Bishops there present Fortunatus Bishop of Thuchabore declares Jesus Christus Dominus Deus noster p. 233. c. 17 Dei Patris Creatoris filius Jesus Christ our Lord and God the Son of God the Father and Creator has founded his Church not upon Heresies c. 29.235 but upon a Rock The same title is given him by Euchratius Bishop of Thenâ— the same by Venantius Bishop of Tinisa a Confessor had not this been agreeable to the common sentiments of the Church in those days it would certainly have been the occasion of some contests and others would have observed and reflected on the incautiousness of their Collegues but we meet with no differences on this occasion therefore we rightly conclude they spoke agreeably to the Catholick
cheats and notorious villans in that they have left us such accounts of that Faith whereby Salvation must be attain'd as can only serve to cheat and abuse their Readers and lead them into unreasonable and damnable Errors They only laid so many snares in their unhappy Writings for the ruining mens Souls and their wicked designs have had but too too fatal effects upon the World Now all this is very hard to believe of Men who converst with the inspired Apostles some of whom had that glorious power of working Miracles confer'd upon them some laid down their Lives with the greatest joys and triumphs for the sake of their blessed Master and the rest were ready to have done so whensoever Providence should have summoned them to that fiery tryal It 's hard to believe that such Men could be betrayers or corrupters of the Faith in its most Essential Articles If these Fathers were honest and faithful in their Writings and set down there only what were their real thoughts as became honest and good Men if they defended Christianity against its subtle and powerful enemies with a just Industry and Integrity then in what I have alledged from them we have a faithful and honest account of what the Antient Church believed concerning the Nature of the Son of God and we have reason to satisfie our selves and to give praise to God who has still afforded us so much light as that we can agree with the Eldest and most Apostolical Churches in that saving truth That the Son of God who in fulness of time took upon him our flesh is really God equal with his Father If any should enquire Why I only make use of those Fathers who lived before the Nicene Council The reason is because they are less to be suspected by those we have to do with as having no interest in those Controversies which were afterwards managed by particular Persons with a great deal of heat and eagerness Besides the Socinians are sometimes apt to boast that the most antient Fathers are on their side whereas they 'l freely own the Principal Writers afterwards are against them not but that several did undertake the Patronage of the Arrians and their accomplices after the Council of Nice but their Writings are gone and they ly there at the mercy of their Adversaries Not only the Socinians themselves are apt sometimes to Appeal to the Ante-Nicene Fathers but several Great Men such as Erasmus Grotius Petavius and others are apt to yield this to them therefore it was proper in the first place to give a true account of the first Writers whose Doctrines others afterwards did but repeat and illustrate Our Church principally recommends to us the Doctrine that 's nearest to the fountain head that agreeing best with the fountain it self from which it is derived that is the Word of God Now the Socinians sometimes would fain put in for an Interest with these Antient Writers Vid. Epist intermutuas Ruari Zwickeri in Ruari Epist centuriá primâ and Zwicker particularly in his Irenicum Irenicor tho' he was very far himself from agreeing with his brethren in all particulars Yet upon better consideration they are loth to depend upon that authority of the Fathers knowing too well that they must be cast by their verdict Therefore their great Patriarch Socinus himself in his answer to Vujekus the Polonian Jesuit who had written a book on purpose to prove the Divinity of Christ where Vujekus presses him with the Authority of the Fathers answers thus That the perpetual and universal consent of the whole World is of the less weight against Divine Testimonies tho' obscure when those things which are the subjects of that consent evidently oppose reason and common sence But here we may say That truth can never be so entirely lost that the whole World should always desert it but where Scripture-expressions are obscure the perpetual consent of the whole World about their sence would be incomparably the best interpretation of those obscurities and it 's very hard to believe that the whole World should perpetually agree in what 's against reason and common sence A great number have embraced the Roman Doctrine of Transubstantiation but we know that neither All nor the greatest part of the World embraced it nor was it held perpetually by any and tho' we may allow Socinus to have been a man of great Reason yet we may allow those who held the contrary Opinion to His to have been as Rational as himself and perhaps on a strict scrutiny it may appear contradictious to reason and common sence to assert that our blessed Saviour was no more than a meer Man But in short Socinus never troubles himself to deny those Authorities the Jesuite had ramassed from the Fathers nor to answer them but makes use of one Herculean Argument against them all for first he tells us It can't be said the whole doctrine or the greatest part of the doctrine of the antient Church was opposite to the Socinians or agreeable to the Doctrine of their Adversaries for there were many whose Writings are now wholly lost whose opinions therefore we cannot judge of and many there were who never wrote any thing at all and they might be of a contrary mind to those whose Writings we still have and they were infinitely more numerous That the Arrian Heresie was once spread far and wide favoured by Princes confirmed by Councils and almost generally entertained tho' afterwards by degrees it vanish'd therefore says He our Adversaries need not boast of that universal and perpetual consent of the Church whether it were real or verbal for which was the true Church and where it was was for several ages disputable Itaque haec Authoritatum testimoniorum ex Patribus Conciliis congeries nullas vires habet praesertim vero adversum nos qui ab istis Patribus Conciliis quae extant nos dissentire non dissitemur Socinus contra Vujekum ad classem argum 7 c. 9. p. 618. Therefore this heap of Authorities from Fathers and Councils is of no force especially against us who freely own our dissent from those Fathers and Councils which are yet extant Nor can it ever be prov'd by the Writings of any of our Party that they did either assert or believe that those who wrote before the Nicene Council whose works are extant were of our mind tho' they were as little of the mind of our Adversaries as of ours This now is plain dealing and more ingenuous by far than wresting a few sentences contrary to the Writers minds only to amuse the ignorant with an empty shew of Antiquity But more plainly yet Socinus soon after confesses that the extant Fathers differed from his Party in that they assert That Christ or the Son of God had a Being of the substance of his Father before the worlds creation that he had often appear'd to the Fathers under the Old Testament nay that that one God his
Father had made the World it self and all other things by him and that by him He had made known to Men whatsoever he desired should be known by them Thus we have Socinus his own confirmation of what we had before produced as the sense of the Ante-Nicene Fathers After this he touches slightly upon some pieces written by those first Fathers which are of suspected credit but we have nothing to do with them having quoted nothing from any of them but what among Learned Men at present is of undoubted reputation As for the Fathers who writ after the Council of Nice he fairly owns that the Socinian's business is to oppose those Errors which they gave credit to by their Authority in the Church of God The Fathers then are on our side whether those of the eldest or those of an inferior date nor can we desire a greater advantage to our cause since we can neither find out any means by which these Hereticks should know God's Will and Meaning in his Word better than these Antient and Heroick Assertors of the Christian Religion We have no account of any new Visions or Revelations any of them have had Nor have we heard of any Miracles perform'd by them in confirmation of their Heterodoxies therefore when we believe that Jesus Christ the Son of God our Saviour is God equal with his Father we follow that truth which to our apprehension is very plain in Scripture which holy Saints and Martyrs have from the very beginning of Christianity embrac'd and which really is That Faith which was once delivered to the Saints as God willing will yet more plainly appear hereafter I observe here by the way what Socinus touches upon and what others of his Disciples allege farther that tho' the Fathers do thus make Jesus Christ to be God yet they always put a great difference between Him and his Father and insist particularly on his own Words in the case where He tells the Jews That his Father is greater than He that his Father orders commands directs and enables Him to do every thing c. It 's true they do sometimes speak suspitiously in this matter but what solves the Objection from such Texts of Scripture solves those Objections which may be drawn from such expressions in those antient Writers viz. That where they urge such things their meaning is only to assert that difference there is between Christ's Divine and his Humane Nature as He is Man we doubt not but he is inferior to his Father that he received power from Him and acted here upon earth in subordinacy to hi◠as He was God he was equal with his Father always united with him having the same Will Power Knowledge and Wisdom which his Father had by which means whereas meer flesh and blood would have had a strange reluctance against such sufferings as were necessarily prepar'd for him his Divinity in concurrence with that of his Father supported and enabled meer Humanity to effect and make good the work he had undertaken Thus we find the same Scriptures asserting of Christ Acts 2.32 that his Father raised him from the dead and that he rose from the dead of himself he asserting to himself only that power of laying down his life Joh. 10.18 and of taking it up again and both true as He was God as well as Man none could have taken his life from him without his own consent as He was Man as well as God none could have brought that flesh and blood to life again which was now a carcase by the reparation of the rational Soul without the concurrence of Almighty God but as such He and his Father were one They both Will'd and both Acted as they both were able to effect the same thing But besides this which answers those before-named seeming difficulties it 's enough to say that whereas the first Fathers of the Christian Church were irreconcileable enemies to Idolatry or to worshipping a Multiplicity of Gods which is the same thing whereas in all their Writings they took care to vindicate the Honour of the one true God in opposition to all false Gods when they assert Jesus Christ to be God they mean not that He is a false God for they prove themselves to be the only true Worshippers and they make it their boast that they worship Jesus Christ therefore they look'd upon him as true and real God and worship'd him only as such If then these Fathers did think Christ to be a God of an inferior or subordinate Nature or to be a Created God as the Socinians would have him be they directly contradicted their own Principles and brought in again that multiplicity or at least plurality of Gods they had before exploded As for the notion of a made or created God or a God à parte post as Socinus calls him it 's a dream so senceless and full of contradiction that it 's only to be wondered at that Men pretending to any sharpness of Reason should ever stumble upon so absurd a conceit For Scripture no where makes a distinction between God self-originated and God made by another and both true but it lays us down a plain difference between the true God the Creator and the Creature or any thing that is created by that true God and therefore tho' there be in Nature such things as Spiritual and Corporeal Beings yet the allowance of that difference makes or introduces no intermediate Beings between the Creator and the Creature every thing that is not God is made by God every thing that 's made by God is not God and so it must follow that if the Son be made by God he is not God but a Creature if the Son be in all particulars equal with God he is not made by God but is God himself Again The notion of a true and real God is infinity in every respect Heathens Jews Mahumetans Christians all agree in that if this be a true notion of a real God it must be such a notion as must sufficiently distinguish him from all other Beings infinite Attributes being wholly and only proper to and inseparable from Him If then these infinite attributes do agree to our Lord and Saviour He is and must therefore be the true God in contradistinction to all created Beings if they do not agree to him then He cannot be the true God therefore he must be a false God therefore he must be an Idol therefore he must be no God at all and this is the true and inevitable consequence of the Socinian notion of a made or a Created God For that the Supreme God should make another supreme as himself and yet at the same time continue supreme himself is nonsense and a contradiction that the Supreme God should make another God who yet is no God because the attributes belonging to a real God are not applicable to Him is a contradiction too therefore the Socinians and their Adherents must either declare in plain
and express words that our Saviour is no God at all either à parte ante with respect to the time past or before his Incarnation or à parte post with respect to the time to come or after his Incarnation but only a meer glorified Man or they must agree with us that He is God eternal equal with his Father as true and as real God as ever he was true and real Man and this is what those antient Fathers did certainly agree with and in all those passages I have quoted from them they must believe so or be absolutely inconsistent with themselves and all those who were their successors soon after in the Government of the Church of Christ must have strangely mistaken them and their opinions which yet is not so likely as it is that modern Writers should misunderstand them Now how their immediate Successors nay and their Contemporaries understood them will appear the better by a short view of the dealing of publick Councils and such as were approv'd by them with respect to the Samosatenian and Arrian Heresies in which it's observable That Gregory Bishop of Neo-Caesarea commonly called Thaumaturgus among other things gives us a Confession of Faith said by Gregory Nyssen to have been dictated to him in a Vision leaving that circumstance in suspence the sum of his Confession amounts to this Concil T. 2. p. 841. There is one God the Father of the living Word of essential Wisdom and Power and of an eternal Character the perfect begetter of him that was perfect the Father of the only begotten Son There is one Lord God of God God alone of him who alone is God the Character and Image of the Deity the Word working in us comprehending the contexture of all things and the power which made the universal Creation the true Son of the true Father invisible of him who was invisible incorruptible of him who was incorruptible immortal of him who was immortal and eternal of him that was eternal This confession of his Faith was express enough to our purpose and but necessary for that time when Samosatenianisme was springing forth and making way for more Heretical Innovators in the Faith About the same time was a Council called at Antioch where Paulus of Samosata was then Bishop whose Doctrine was in that agreeable with our Socinians that He held That Christ was a meer Man Concil T. 1. p. 844. that He had no Being before his Conception in the womb of the Virgin Mary and that He acquired the name of the Son of God by his good works and extraordinary righteousness In that Council then met at Antioch these Doctrines of Paulus were condemned and Anathematized this was about the year of our Lord 264. very early and by the concurrence of a number of Bishops in the condemnation of that Doctrine and that when there were no Roman Emperors nor other great secular Men to countenance them is a sufficient proof that Socinian Doctrine as now it is Samosatenian Heresie as then it was was not then approved of in the Church In their Synodical Epistle to Paulus thus they declare No man hath known the Father but the Son and He to whom the Son has revealed him Ibid. but we confess and preach That this Son is begotten the only begotten Son the Image of the invisible God the first-born of every Creature the Wisdom and Word and Power of God existing before all ages not in his Fathers foreknowledge but real God in his own Essence the Son of God so declared both in the Old and in the New Testament whosoever then fights against this truth and declares the Son of God not to have been God before the foundations of the World and who says that to believe and confess or to preach that the Son of God is God is to introduce two Gods we look upon such a Man to be without the pale of the Church and all Catholick Churches consent with us in this opinion Then they proceed to prove what they assert by several Texts of Scripture the greatest part of which we have considered before About the same time Dionysius Bishop of Alexandria answered Ten Questions propounded to him by Paulus Ibid. p. 857 wherein he maintained the same Doctrine of the Eternity and Consubstantiality of the Son of God Certainly these would not have not only declared their own opinions freely but appeal'd to Universal Judgment if they had thought it possible that they could have been confuted but Paulus offers at no such thing that we can hear of Paulus condemn'd by the first Council of Antioch renounced his Heretical opinions but soon return'd to his vomit again and undertook their vindication this Apostasie of his made a very great number of Bishops meet at Antioch a second time they look'd on the Controversie as of so great importance that even in the reign of Aurelian a cruel persecuting Emperour they thought it necessary to meet to crush so dangerous and fundamental an Error In that Council Paulus and his Doctrine are unanimously condemned again there Malchion a Presbyter disputing with Paulus tells him That Jesus Christ of God the Word and an humane body which was of the seed of David was made one no longer subsisting in a Divided but in an Vnited state In their Synodical Epistle not entirely extant they complain of Paulus as denying Christ to have descended down from Heaven Concil T. 1. p. 899. Baluzii Nova colloctio Concil p. 19 20 21 22. and for affirming him to be wholly from earth In some other fragments of the same Epistle omitted by Eusebius the Synod speaks thus Neither God who was clothed in an humane body was in that body free from humane passions neither was his humane body empty of Divine Power that Power which was in that body and by virtue of which that Humane body wrought those wonderful works Here then we have a body of Pious and Learned Men representing a great part of the Eastern Church concurring in the condemnation of those opinions which the Scholars of Socinus have lately reviv'd To these we may add for the Western Church the suffrage of Foelix the first of that name Bishop of Rome in a small fragment of an Epistle written by him about those controversies as the matter evinces to the Clergy of Alexandria the fragment is extant in the Apologetick of S. Cyril of Alexandria against the Eastern Bishops in the first General Council at Ephesus and it 's to this effect As for the Incarnation of the Word and our Faith in that point We believe in our Lord Jesus Christ Concil T. 1. p. 912. who was born of the Virgin Mary that He is the eternal Son of God and the Word and not a Man assumed by God that there might be another beside himself for the Son of God did not take humanity upon him for that end but being perfect God he also became perfect Man being Incarnate of the Virgin
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
good their Assertion That there was no need of Satisfying God's Justice on the behalf of Sinners and therefore that all what our Saviour did or suffer'd was not of a satisfactory Nature and from hence too they endeavour to confirm their Heretical Opinion That our Saviour was not God equal with his Father for that Truth being throughly cleared all the Socinian Chain of Heterodoxies is broken and comes to nothing But They say Christians generally think that Christ suffered proportionably for our Sins Ca◠Rac. §. 6. c. 8. p. 145. or that He underwent Punishments equivalent to what we Sinners should have undergone and that by the Merit of his Obedience he made a compleat compensation for our Disobedience but this Opinion say they is fallax erronea admodum perniciosa it is fallacious and erroneous and of very dangerous Consequence and this they assert upon these grounds Because such an Opinion is not founded upon clear Scriptures and then Because it is repugnant to the Rules of right Reason and when they come to discourse of its not being founded upon Scripture the great ground they go upon is Because the Scriptures testifie that God remits the Sins of Men freely Now this we assert as well as they and are infallibly assured that it 's only by Grace by free and unmerited Grace on our part that we are saved and when we remember that it has been proved by unanswerable Arguments that our Saviour is the Son of God that He is God himself and that He when there was no help left for guilty Mankind according to the eternal purpose of his Will came down from Heaven to Earth and took our Nature upon him only that by what he did in that Nature he might procure our eternal happiness when we consider his eternal Father as acting in agreement with him and for his Son's sake forgiving miserable Sinners and the One willing and the other doing and suffering so much on our accounts when it was impossible we should have any Motives in our selves that might serve to excite so immense a Goodness when we remember all these things we cannot but say that as many of us as have our Sins forgiven have them freely forgiven God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost all concurring jointly in the Pardon and all the Motives procuring that Pardon proceeding wholly from the Deity it self And this Truth will receive yet more light by considering the Import of those very Texts which the Socinians in their Catechism bring to make good their own Opinions so they prove the free Pardon of Sin from that of the Apostle 2 Cor. 5.19 That God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself not imputing their trespasses to them we need not here take any notice of another gross Error founded by them upon this Text viz. That by the Death and Obedience of Christ God was not reconciled to the World for he never was angry with it but the World was reconciled to God the World having foolishly forsaken him and being altogether alienated from him by Sin not to reflect any further directly on that Position we find by the Text now cited that God does not impute the Trespasses of those who believe to them but why only because they are reconciled to him in Christ not because he passes by their Trespasses purely on account of his own Will or because of his immediate Love to the Trespassers but it is for the sake of Jesus Christ their Trespasses must have stood imputed to them had they not been reconciled in him but if he particularly procured the Reconciliation of Sinners to his Father then it 's plain enough they were incapable of making any such Reconciliation for themselves and so could not procure the Remission or the non-Imputation of their Sins the reason of which could be no other than their want of Merit for had they had any inherent Merits of their own to plead the same infinite Justice which was concern'd to punish their Sins was equally concern'd to reward their Merits but if the want of Merit hinder'd their procuring their own Reconciliation there must have been some Merit in Christ which was able to effect it and that Merit must have been exhibited on our account and that Merit supplying the Sinners defect must have been satisfactory to divine Justice which otherwise must have fallen upon Sinners while they had no better deserving to plead on their own accounts but if God reconcile the World to himself in Christ and Christ be One eternal God co-essential with his Father what 's done by One is done by the Other and so though the Son merited at his Father's hand the Sinner's pardon yet the Sinner is freely forgiven of God the Son freely interposing between him and Divine Justice and freely concurring in the same Pardon of his Trespasses Again the Socinians prove the Freedom of God's Grace or Favour to us by that Rom. 3.24 25. Being justified freely by his Grace through the Redemption that is in Jesus Christ whom God hath set forth to be a Propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past through the forbearance of God here we own Free Grace or Pardon or Justification which signifie all the same thing with respect to this passage is plainly and clearly set forth but still this free Pardon or Justification is the consequence of that Redemption wrought for us by Jesus Christ that Redemption is effected by the offering of his Blood that Blood which is of a propitiatory or atoning Nature our Faith in or our certain belief of the infinite value of which Blood is necessary to procure us any good by it but neither would that Faith of ours be necessary nor would that Blood be so intrinsecally valuable if it were no way meritorious nor could Redemption be wrought for us if there were no Price paid on that account for a Prince is not said to redeem a guilty Prisoner when he sets him at liberty without any ransome but he is said to redeem the Prisoner who pays down that Price or undergoes that Penalty which is set on the Criminal's head so our Saviour paid that Price which was set on our Heads without Blood there could be no Remission therefore he gave his Blood for us without Punishment for Sins there could be no acquittal of Justice therefore he suffered to the loss of his Life beside those unknown Sorrows as the Ancient Church has stiled them which his innocent Soul underwent on our account But after this Redemption effected this Propitiation offer'd the Remission of Sins follow'd Now the Punishment of Sins being the effect of Justice and the Remission of them the effect of Mercy this Redemption-Price paid down satisfied Justice and made way for Mercy and therefore that Price so paid down was meritorious and meritorious for us who had no Merits of our own therefore this Remission
Dispensation of his Word and Sacraments that he is that great and glorious King in perpetual Obedience to whose Commands we are oblig'd to live and without Obedience to whose Commands perform'd according to our ability we certainly merit Eternal Punishment and this power over us as a Prophet and a King we doubt not took its Original from that Sacrifice he offer'd for our Sins in the fulness of time but on account of the certainty of which Rev. 13.8 he was effectually that Lamb slain from the beginning of the World Well then our Saviour in his Suffering paid a sufficient Price to satisfie for the Sins of all Mankind to atone God's anger against them as Sinners and to prevent their eternal Damnation but these Advantages accrueing from his Priesthood and his Sacrifice can only be participated in by those who submit to his Instruction and his Government he purchas'd that Interest in us at a dear rate and the Connexion between the one and the other is indissoluble He therefore that would reap any Benefit from the Sufferings of our Saviour must obey his Directions submit to his Laws do his Will he who acts so must certainly be very perfect in all Religious Duties therefore those who are eternally saved by Christ's Death must as far as possible be perfect in all Religious Duties therefore the true genuine Doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction must infer a necessity of Practical Holiness not destroy it thus we see when God appointed the brazen Serpent to be set up in the Wilderness for the relief of those who were bitten by fiery Serpents that brassy Representation had a power sufficient annex'd to it to heal all that were hurt but if any bitten Israelite out of an obstinate humour would not have cast his eyes upon the brazen Serpent though the Serpent had been just over his head he would have dy'd by the Wound because the Condition on which alone the Cure was to be had was annex'd to the appointment of that Serpent viz. that the wounded Person should look up to it Or let us take our view of the Doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction from another place then we shall find Faith as an originally necessary Condi ion of receiving any Benefit by it and Faith to be true must as necessarily work by Love for if I am cast into Prison as a Debtor and another out of pity to my deplorable state go and discharge all my Debts and receive an entire acquittance of all such Debts for me and in my name this is Love and Kindness and sufficient in the case in the Judgment of all Rational Men but if after all this done and the Acquittance shew'd me and attested I 'll not believe one word of all the matter and to prove I do not believe will continue a Prisoner still though always complaining of the sadness of my own Condition my Friend did enough for me but what am I the better my Incredulity makes my state and condition still as sensibly lamentable as before so whereas by Adam's Transgression all Men are brought into a state of Guilt and all stand as Prisoners under the hand of God justly incens'd against us and are such Debtors to his Justice as unless that Debt be discharg'd by or for us we must be eternally miserable Our blessed Saviour assured of our Insolvency has by himself satisfi'd his Father's Anger he has discharg'd that Debt we stand engaged in to Heaven his whole Gospel is a sufficient Evidence of what he has done for us in it we are acquitted by God the Father from those Punishments we were liable to for the sake of his Son and the truth of that Gospel has through all Ages been sufficiently attested to the World but if after all this we all turn Socinians if we will not believe that our Saviour has really extended any such Goodness towards us and to prove that we do not believe it we slight all those Rules of Holy Living which are given us and resolve with the rebellious Citizens in the Gospel that we will not have this Man to reign over us that we will not submit to his Laws nor acknowledge his Soveraignty his Satisfaction is ineffectual to us and though we groan under never so deep a sense of our natural Misery we can reap no good from that we must therefore believe in our Saviour we must believe him able willing and really to have satisfied his Father for our Debt we must believe that by virtue of that Satisfaction so made He 's able to save to the uttermost all those that come to God in and by him We must believe he 's really able to Teach us and that he certainly has a Right to Command us and when we sincerely believe all these things and that as it was one great end of our Lord's offering himself for us to free us from the Punishment so it was another to free us from the Slavery of Sin so that we should not obey it in the Lusts thereof it will be impossible that we should indulge our selves in Sin nay we cannot confirm the Truth of our profest Faith or make it credible to the World that we really Believe what we pretend to do unless we endeavour as he that has called us is holy so to be our selves holy in all manner of conversation Let those then who talk so freely of the Doctrine of our Lord's Satisfaction who would persuade us that it 's so irrational and pernicious to believe any such thing find out any Arguments from their own Scheme of Doctrine which may serve to enforce Practical Holiness more vigorously than what we have delivered if they can Will They tell us we are oblig'd to it out of pure Gratitude to Heaven bcause God is pleased to forgive us our Sins past freely and to confirm that free Pardon to us by the Death of his Son as if he meerly dy'd a kind of Martyr for that Truth which they make almost the sole end of all our Saviour's Sufferings Gratitude it 's true may operate powerfully upon a generous Soul but the most generous of all would be willing to understand the nature of that Obligation they have to be so grateful and the reasons of it We are then obliged by God's free pardoning of our Sins how do we know he has done so By the Testimony of Scripture that Word of God which is sufficient to instruct us to Eternal Life Well we own Scripture does inform us That our Sins are freely pardoned by God and we should build very confidently on that evidence did not those we have to do with teach us a great deal of Diffidence and show us that such Passages of Scripture are capable of very different Interpretations and that when we think we have a very clear proof of this or another Particular when we come to scan things accurately by our own Reason we find we have none at all for the same Scripture which tells us we are freely pardoned
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
both at the same time opened him that entrance into Heaven but there as our great and never-dying High-priest he makes Intercession for us to his Father he presents to his Father's view those mighty Sufferings he had undergone on our Account which serving as a Memorial of that eternal Determination of the Deity for Man's Redemption has the same and greater Efficacy on our behalf than a Plea from divine Truth and Justice it self he being invested with that Almighty Power of bestowing those Blessings he has purchas'd for us and the Demonstrations of his Merits his Will and his Goodness being all one Act. It 's true the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us Heb. 9.7 that the High-priest went not into the Holy place without Blood which he offered for himself and for the Errors of the people but how that was we have explained before since that Blood was made use of for purifying even the Holiest Place render'd impure by the Sins of the High-priest himself and by the Errors of the People Perhaps it would not be amiss to take some notice of those different Expiations of Sins in the Old and in the New Testament which the Socinians in their discourses concerning Christ's Priesthood tell us of i. e. That Legal Sacrifices were only appointed for such Crimes as were committed by Imprudence or Infirmity greater Offenders not being directed to make use of any but were doom'd to die for their Crimes whereas as they say the greatest of Sins provided Men persevere not in them but are truly penitent are expiated by the Sacrifice of Christ and this they prove from that of St. Paul Be it known unto you Act. 13.38 39. that through Christ is preach'd unto you the forgiveness of Sins and by him all that believe are justify'd from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses But here we are to consider that the Political as well as the Religious Laws of the Israelites being given at one time by Almighty God they are so blended together and made Dependents on one another that where an ordinary Sacrifice could not there the Death of the Offender himself might satisfie for the Crime committed A Sacrifice offer'd though by its Institution it were expiatory yet if the Sinner however ignorant or weak persisted in his Sin or approach'd the Altar of God without true Humility and Repentance for the Sin committed his Sin could not be pardoned on account of the Sacrifice offer'd but if such a Sinner did truly repent and amend his Errors his Offering was then accepted and not only temporary but eternal Judgments diverted from him for such Sacrifices typified the Sacrifice of Christ which was powerful to save us from both Worldly Punishments and the Damnation of Hell and as we have before observed the Virtue of those Sacrifices consisted wholly in that relation the Types had to their Antitype Now where the Jewish political Laws reach'd the Life of the Delinquent and took his Blood there it would have been an Impertinence to offer the Blood of other Creatures for him but it follows not but that the same Conditions of hearty Repentance and true Resolutions of amendment might procure the Offender's pardon from God though he suffered under the Rigour of the Sanguinary Laws and the daily Sacrifices were of some import with respect to such Criminals and the Blood of Christ though to be shed afterwards was available to the Salvation of such so a Terrour was struck upon Others by the Delinquent's outward Sufferings and Encouragement was given to the greatest Sinners to repent by the reasonable Hopes of their being pardoned by Heaven who yet were to suffer upon Earth And so we find among Christians in Christian Governments the Laws take notice of and animadvert upon notorious Sins some are punished by lighter Penalties some by Death it self yet the Prayers and Intercessions of the Church offer'd to God in the name of Christ may be and frequently are effectual to the Eternal Salvation of such Persons so justly suffering for their Crimes but for the Text alledged the Import of it is this That by the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ we are really and effectually freed from all Sins whereas the Ceremonies of the Law had no such intrinsic purging Power of themselves all their Validity depending wholly and onely on their Relation to this All sufficient Sacrifice of the Son of God But we are taught by these Innovators that this Sacrifice was not compleat till our Saviour enter'd Heaven Cat. Raco §. 7. p. 173. nor he possest of his High-Priesthood till that time yet at the same time they own Christ was a Priest when hanging on the Cross if he were a Priest he must be our High-priest for we meet with no Gradations in that Office of his in Scripture nor that by executing the Office of an inferiour Priest very well he purchas'd a title to an higher Dignity If he were an High-priest he was compleatly so else he was and he was not the High-priest at the same time but the Socinian Error in this matter lies in not distinguishing rightly of the Priests Offices the Apostle teaches us Heb. 5.1 2. That an High-priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God Now things pertaining to God are not only external Gifts and Sacrifices but those that are internal and Spritual too such as are Prayers and Supplications with respect to which it 's necessary an High-priest should have compassion on the Ignorant and on them who are out of the way for that he himself also is compassed with Infirmities a Sense of his own Wants is apt in any Man to raise a sympathizing Tenderness for others so that when he begs of God Pardon for his own Sins he may at the same time implore Divine Mercy for the Sins of others now the High-priest is compleatly such in doing both or either of these so upon the Cross our Saviour was our High-priest and his external expiatory Sacrifice was compleatly offered in Heaven interceding for us with his Father he there presents that Sacrifice shadow'd to us by what we commonly understand to be the meaning of Prayers and Supplications i. e. Christ in Heaven intercedes as powerfully and effectually for us as if he really did pray and supplicate as present on our behalf but that he should literally do so is unnecessary and not to be understood by his Intercession for us for he 's an Intercessor not only who prays and supplicates immediately for another or on his behalf but He 's one who by some extraordinary Action pleasing to him with whom he intercedes purchases a Power of doing that thing or shewing that Kindness to his Friends at all times by himself which without that purchace he must make continual and repeated Intreaties for such a Power has our Lord purchased for himself by offering himself a Satisfaction for the World's Sins in his Sufferings compleated
Body therefore it could not be presented so as the Blood of the Annual Sacrifice was by the Jewish High-priest nor could the Blood of Christ be so sprinkled as that was towards Heaven or toward the Mercy seat but our Lord's Ascension into Heaven and sitting at the righ-hand of God were one continued uninterrupted Act and that Blood which had been once offer'd upon the Cross needed not to be offer'd again he was made a perfect Messias a real Saviour through Sufferings a Saviour every way sufficient for those who should believe on him and having through his own Blood made way to the Exaltation of his Humane Nature he had no more to do but to satisfie his Followers in the truth of his Resurrection and to give them proper Instructions with respect to their future Employs and so immediately to ascend to and to sit on the right hand of the Majesty on high i. e. to exercise that absolute Dominion and Soveraignty over Believers as Man which as Man he had purchas'd at the dearest rate and as such we find him appearing in Apocalyptical Visions though at the same time bearing that Title King of kings and Lord of lords and thus have we cleared those Proofs justly alledged for our Saviour's Satisfaction for Humane Sins from Socinian Glosses and irrational Interpretations I shall now add only some short positive Evidence of the same Truth from particular Circumstances attending his Death and so conclude this particular It must therefore be remember'd That one End of our Saviour's exact fulfilling the Law was that he might be an example of Holiness and Obedience to us but if our Saviour's Sufferings were of such a nature as to import a great deal more than barely such an Example then it was really to be considered further and the Reasons of that Import to be enquired into Holiness includes all sorts of Vertue amongst the rest Patience Fortitude Courage and the like supposing our Saviour to have satisfied our Heavenly Father for our Sins to have atoned that Anger justly excited against a Rebellious World these Vertues were prodigiously eminent in him the weight of God's Wrath against Sin and Sinners was enough had it been permitted to take its course to have crush'd a world of miserable Wretches therefore it had been impossible for a meer Man to have struggled with and to have averted that terrible Indignation from us but if we take away this particular Consideration of his treading the wine-press of his Father's Indignation alone nothing seems more mean among the various accounts of the Sufferers for Truth than the Carriage of our Blessed Saviour that Man whom yet Socinians themselves acknowledge to have moved in a Sphere superiour to the rest of Adam's Race If we look upon that Death our Saviour dy'd it must be own'd it was grievous and painful yet when we consider it duly the Shame and Ignominy in it was the heaviest Circumstance attending it otherwise when we come to compare his Death as to its outward Circumstances with the Sufferings of Prophets and Martyrs of old they were meerly Trifles and inconsiderable The Apostle tells us among Faith's ancient Heroes of those who were sawn asunder so we are told in particular that great Prophet Isaiah was sawn with a wooden Saw the more dull the more lingring the more tormenting so the three Children were cast into the burning fiery Furnace by Nebuchadnezzar and Daniel into the Lions Den to have been torn in pieces under the cruel Paws of ravening Beasts where we are not to look upon the Miraculous Deliverance those illustrious Sufferers met with but upon the barbarous Cruelties intended against them but if from them we come to view the cruel Subtilties of Heathen Persecutors there we find all the variety of Tortures exquisite Malice could invent executed upon poor Christians the terrible Racks stretching their disabled Limbs and leaving no sound Joint in their Bodies a Torment terrible indeed to the strongest natural Constitutions they out-living their Pains and recovering Strength only to enable them for renewing Miseries some broken upon the Wheel dying piece by piece and Nature in the mean time sustain'd by Puddle-Water and Excrement some burnt alive in scorching Flames some broiled or roasted before lingring Fires some worried to Death by enraged Wild Beasts others cloath'd with Pitchy Vestments and so set on fire to fry away in inexpressible Pains meerly to make sport or to serve for Flambeaus to midnight Wanderers What should we descend lower to the poor persecuted Protestants in Merindo and Chabrieres or the unhappy Piedmonteses of late Years to see Mens Mouths and Womens Privities stufft with Gun-powder by barbarous Villains and so their Bodies or their Heads blown in pieces by that murdering Artifice to name no more of those inhumane Cruelties managed so that Holy Men admirable Christians have been Days and Months and Years a dying and beside all this it was oft-times the Aggravation of their Sorrows to see their Friends and nearest Relations murder'd first before their Eyes to have all the unjust and scandalous Reproaches in the World fixt upon them for Women to see their sucking Infants thrust through with Swords their own Blood and their Mothers Milk flowing from their bleeding Wounds together to see them tost and carried triumphant upon their Spears torn from their dying Mothers ript up Wombs and thrown immediately into consuming Flames these Sights such as might rack the most resolute Soul and almost squeeze sympathizing Tears from brute Beasts or insensate Rocks the very reading those dismal Tragedies are enough to make Men shiver with Horror and survey the Bloody Scene with Amazement and Consternation yet after all we find those glorious Martyrs so far from Fear or Apprehensions of their approaching Fate that never Happy Pair went with more cheerful Looks to the Bridal Bed than they went with to Racks and Wheels to Flames and Gibbets or whatever else their angry and malicious Enemies could inflict upon them nay they were so far from being daunted with the cruel Executions of their Fellow Saints that ambitious Princes were not more active to grasp at Crowns and Sceptres than they at the more splendid bloody Crown of Martyrdome nay so desirous were they of that Honour that whole Multitudes made up of Men Women and Children readily without being sought for or accus'd offered their Throats voluntarily to Pagan Governours to the Amazement and Confusion of their most violent Persecutors If we observe the Behaviour of those admirable Persons under their Sufferings their Management is all of a piece though they were all the day long as Sheep appointed to be slain though they found their Portion in this World never so severe or uncomfortable yet in all these things they were more than Conquerours through Christ who loved them they fear'd not the Cruelty of their Enemies but the Kindness of their Friends lest out of Compassion to them they should find out any means to rob them of that Crown they
Saints or pious Men may have a Surplusage of Merits such as may not only serve themselves and their own Necessities but accommodate others who were defective in themselves but it 's yet a greater Madness to believe that the Son of God had no Merits and was able to purchase no Pardon for our sins by his Sufferings or that by dying for our Sins he was unable to satisfie his Father's Displeasure against Sinners the Mischief and Falshood of such Opinions I have proved at large in the former parts of this Discourse yet God in his Wisdom and for the Tryal of those who can adhere stedfastly to the Truth as it is in Christ Jesus is pleased to permit these Errors to be divulged and defended and propagated with a mischievous Diligence by Men of mighty Names and Interests who presuming upon the present Indulgence assume boldly to vent and spread those Poisons they were forc'd to conceal within their own Breasts before Time was when by the just Judgment of God upon the Laodicean Temper of the generality of Christians Arianism got strength and clouded all the native Glories of the Church of God it was then when as St. Hierome says the World stood in amaze to see it self grown Arian at once God grant the Plague of Socinianism be not permitted to infect the Church of England with as fatal a Success that those Damnable Heresies wherein the Lord who bought us is denied gain not among us too many Proselytes and Patrons too they have indeed their oyly Words their plausible Arguments their extraordinary pretences to Morality and extremity of Confidence yet could they never hope to prevail did they not observe the extream Debauchery and Loosness of the Age they consider the Principles of solid Religion as generally slighted the lazy Humours of Men as little careful to enquire into the Nature of Doctrines propounded but ready either to sink into down-right Atheism or to take up with the first Scheme of Religion that may come to hand Men aim more at eminence in what they abusively call Wit than at serious Piety and therefore subtil watchful Hereticks pretend only to reduce Religion to the Rules of Reason i. e. of their own Reason who have started so many Impieties though the Reason of all Mankind beside themselves appear in contradiction to them as if a company of Opinators who neither value their own nor others Souls were to fix their particular Sentiments as the only Standards of Sense and Truth when indeed they have only the Fucus of Sophistry to make a shew of easily observ'd by those who stand upon their watch and are willing to be certainly convinced of the Truth of things before they entertain them There are others besides Papists who are only Wolves in Sheeps clothing and by how much the more venerable Name they assume to themselves by so much the more dangerous they are Every Man is ready to stand upon his guard if he fears being attacqu'd by a Roman Priest or by a pragmatick Jesuit but who would suspect that any of those who pretend to Tenderness of Conscience and a superfineness in Religious matters should blaspheme God the Son or God the Holy Ghost who would imagine that those who dare call themselves Sons of the Church of England nay Attendants at her Altars Hers who particularly declares against these very Heresies in those Articles they are oblig'd to subscribe and to defend should so affront their Sacred Mother and go about to seduce her Children from her sound and wholesome Doctrines But if Apostolick times could be pester'd with such False Teachers we may expect worse Measure upon whom the Ends of the World are come but above all what can be more astonishing than that those who pretend so great Good Will to our Sion should charge the Practice of our Church in praying equally to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and proposing the Creeds of Constantinople and that call'd by the Name of St. Athanasius as guilty of Popery and those things as Reliques of that Idolatrous Religion Popery is a hated name and those who would have any thing hated need to fix nothing more odious upon it but if it be Popery to believe that our Saviour is the Son of God that he is God that by his Sufferings he has satisfied for our Sins and now sits at the right-hand of his Father making Intercession for our Sins God grant we may live and die in that Faith since our Case is such take heed how you hear or what you read let none deceive you with vain Words you have heard and read the Truth and if now or hereafter We or an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than what we have preached in this particular Let him be accursed and again Let him be accursed Amen FINIS A TABLE OF THE Principal Heads IN THIS DISCOURSE THE Design of the present Discourse Page 1 Socinian Endeavours to change the Text answered Page 4 A Mystery what Page 12 Doctrines may be Mysterious tho' revealed Page 13 Humane Reason enquired into as used in Religious Matters 1. It s original Excellence Page 19 2. It 's very much impair'd by Man's Fall Page 21 3. It 's yet sufficient to convince us of a general Necessity of Religion Page 25 4. Well employ'd it meets with Divine Assistance Page 32 5. By Exercise it grows more knowing and comprehensive Page 38 6. Yet it 's not compleat till the Future Life 's attain'd Page 44 Deductions from thence 1. God's Goodness to be admired because it continues us a discursive Faculty useful towards Salvation Page 47 2. We should use our Reason in Matters of Religion with all Humility and Sobriety Page 55 The Necessity of Enquiring into our Lord's Divinity no breach upon that Humility or Sobriety Page 63 The Text further explained and The Mystery of Godliness prov'd not applicable to the Gospel or God's revealed Will. Page 66 Not applicable to God the Father Page 68 The true Meaning of the Text with the subsequent Instances laid down and applied to our Saviour Page 73 And Paraphrased Page 79 I. The First Position then laid down That the Foundation of Christianity is indisputably Great and Mysterious and that prov'd necessary 1. By the World's universal Agreement that Mysteries both fundamental as to Faith and externally essential as to Rites are necessary in Religion Page 83 Rites among the Jews mystical by God's Appointment Page 94 Those of the Gentiles the same naturally Page 96 The first Design and Mystery of Sacrifices Page 98 The Devil imitating God and why Page 107 Sacrifices yet not believed sufficient to appease Heaven by any Intrinsic but only by a Relative Virtue Page 108 Our Saviour intended not the Abolition of every thing Mysterious in Religion Page 113 Mens Sentiments about the true Ends of Religion before our Lord's Incarnation enquir'd into Page 114 Those of the Jews Ibid. Those of the Gentiles Page 119 The Ends of Religion