v. 30. So that they took up stones to stone him as guilty of Blasphemy because being a Man he made himself God v. 33. There were some Hereticks of old and are so now in our days who call themselves Christians but are much of the Jews Opinion and think Christ is but a mere Man or a Creature and that he is not the Son of God in a true and proper sense nor One with the Father as to the Divine Nature though they do not like the Jews take up stones to throw at Christ as challenging this to himself yet they are if not so angry yet more disingenuous than they upon one account that they deny the true sense and meaning of Christs words as he spoke and understood them which the Jews fairly acknowledged and accused him upon it The Jews owned the words of Christ in his and in a right sense but denyed the truth of the thing the Arrians and Socinians deny both the truth of the thing and the true meaning of the words Now 't is a matter of very great importance to be satisfied in both to know and believe that that great Person whom we call our Saviour in whom we put our trust and confidence and hopes of Salvation whom we worship and pray to to whom we devote our selves in our Baptism and at other times that he is not a mere Man or Creature but as he said of himself the Son of God in a proper sense and one with the Father as having the same Divine Nature and Essence and Perfection with him that begot him and so a proper object both of our Faith Hope and Worship which he could not be without both Internal and External Idolatry if he were not thus God and the Son of God and One with the Father in respect of the same Divine Nature with his Father It shall be my business at present to Prove this after I have made a few General Remarks upon this passage and these words of our Saviour The First of which shall be this That the Jews understood our Saviour in this sense they supposed and concluded that he made himself God by saying That he was One with the Father and the Son of God for this was all we know he said He did not say directly and expresly that he was God so far as appears by the account given by the Evangelist And a great Man observes Cardinal Cusa in Cribrat Alcoran lib. 1. cap. 11. Cardinal Cusa Christus Filium Dei se nominavit Deum Patrem non Deum cum nominatio Dei sit nominatio Patris Christi And an Eminent Protestant Flaccius Illyricus agrees with him Flac. Illyric Clavis Scriptur in verbo Deus In Novo Testamento plerumque prima Persona vocatur Deus plerumque Paulus in suis Epistolis nomen Dei Patri tribuit But to be one with God was to be understood to have one Nature with him and to be the Son of God was to have this Divine Nature communicated to him from God the Father and so to be God or to make himself God or assert and declare himself to be so in that sense Thus the Jews took our Saviours words and thus understood him and they probably had very great and particular Reason so to do from the Phrases and Expressions then in use and from some Learned Writings or Authors of Credit among them at that time 't is certain they immediately put this sense upon them And this was the Ground and Reason of their charge of Blasphemy against Christ that he made himself God by making himself one with the Father and the Son of God and no doubt this was the true sense and meaning and import of our Saviours words according as they understood them especially 2. Because our Saviour did not deny this nor any way disown this sense of them nor say any thing to show they were mistaken in the sense of his words or to correct and undeceive them Now he would certainly have done this both to have corrected their Error and to have defended himself against their Charge had it not been true that he made himself God by those words of his as they understood them Had his words been to be taken in the sense which our Socinian Adversaries would now put upon them That he was One with the Father only by Consent and Agreement and not by Nature and the Son of God only by Adoption and Favour or upon the account of his extraordinary Human Birth his Resurrection from the Dead his Mediatorial Office and great Authority to which he was advanced after his Ascension though it had been a strange Prolepsis to have called himself so then upon the three last accounts and not as the True Proper and Natural Son of God our Saviours words had then given no ground or occasion for such a Charge as they laid against him and he might easily have took it off and vindicated himself by telling them that they mistook his words and that he did not mean them in the sense in which they falsly understood them and this no doubt he would have done had it been truly so and had not their sense of them been true and allowed by our Saviour It would have been hardly consistent with his Sincerity and Probity his Integrity and Honesty as a Man if he had not been God too as he was the Son of God and One with the Father to let the Jews understand his words in such a wrong sense and lay such a high Charge of Blasphemy against him upon it and not to say any thing to show they were mistaken and to correct their Error and to prevent their Sin and to vindicate and defend himself for otherwise it will look as if he had been willing to let their Mistake pass though he knew it to be so and to assume to himself the Vanity of being thought to be God and by his words to make himself such tho' he had never said it or thought it but knew the contrary which is an intolerable Reflection upon the meek and humble Jesus and not only upon the Truth of his Divinity but even his Honesty as a Man 3. The Argument which our Saviour used to defend himself against their Charge This does not invalidate as our Adversaries imagine the truth of his being One with the Father by Nature and the proper Eternal Son of God 'T is this at the 34 35 36. Ver. Jesus answered them Is it not written in your law I have said ye are gods If he called them gods unto whom the word of God came and the scripture cannot be broken Say ye of him whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world Thou blasphemest because I said I am the Son of God These were called Gods in the stile of the Jewish Scriptures and particularly Psal 82.2 who were called by God to be his immediate Ministers and Officers as Moses and other Magistrates therefore whoever
are hence the Distinction of a Specifical and Numerical Unity and of a Specifical and Numerical Essence though I take Essence to be a common Nature or General Idea taking in several things at one view and that there is no such thing as particular Essence distinct from particular Beings so that there is no multiplication of Essence in several Divine Persons or Beings Now as to those three being One it may be meant in any way whatever so far as those words alone import but there are other places of Scripture and there is a connexion and analogy of our Faith from all places compared together which oblige us to believe that the Son and Holy Ghost have the same Divine Nature and Essence with the Father derived and communicated to them Eternally Permanently and Perpetually and that they are in the Father as in the Fountain of their Being and are naturally and inseparably united to him and that he is the self-existent Unoriginated Principle the Root and Fountain of the other two and therefore they are One with him because though having real Beings and subsistences of their own yet they are from him and in him But still it will be objected that each of them is God the Father is God the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God and then there must be Three Gods and yet but One God which brings the contradiction still upon us I Answer The One God is spoken of God the Father in Scripture as I have shown you and as a great many * Ignat. Irenae Athanas Greg. Naz. Euseb Novat Hilar. Ambrose Austin Calv. Zanchy Comen Petav. Bull. c. and particularly Bishop * Art 1. Pearson upon the Creed observes That the Name of God taken absolutely is often in Scripture spoken of the Father and is in many places to be taken particularly of the Father and from hence says he he is stiled One God the True God the Only True God and this he sayes further is a most necessary Truth to be acknowledged for the avoiding multiplication and Plurality of Gods He laying the Unity mainly here as I have done so that though the Son is God and the Holy Ghost is God which they are not often call'd in Scripture which rather reserves and gives the name of God absolutely and peculiarly to the Father * Observandum est quod plerumque Paulus suis Epistolis no nen Dei Patri tribuit in Novo Testamento plerumque tantum prima persma vocatur Deus Flac. Illyric Clavis Scripturae in verbo Deus as God loved the World God sent his Son and the like yet neither of them are meant by that one God which the Scripture speaks of when it speaks peculiarly of the Father They indeed having the Divine Nature and the Divine Attributes and Perfections belonging to them may each of them be properly called God and the Divinity does certainly and truly belong to each of them but then the Word God is not taken alwayes in one and the same Sence but it is sometimes meant of one Person and sometimes of another or of all being taken either Essentially or Personally as all Divines own and generally if not alwayes in Scripture taken absolutely and spoken so of one God it is meant of God the Father which may give us such an account of the Trinity and of the Unity Vbi enim est diversa significatio non estcontradictio Affirmantis negantis Aequivocatio enim impedit contradictionem Aquin Sum. P. 1. Qu. 13. as may take off all the charge of a contradiction since they are not one three nor is each of them God and all of them God or one God in the same respect sense and meaning of the words but in different Those Terms being not alwayes taken in the same adaequate Univocal Sense but are used often Equivocally The Father is the only self-existent unoriginated Being the Cause and Root 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the other two as the Antients often call him and so is the most absolutely Perfect Being and God in the highest Sense and the Scriptures Creeds and Christian Offices call him so absolutely and by way of Eminence and Prerogative The Son is produced of the Father and so is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or God in that Sense as the Father who is from none but is God of God and is very God as having the Divine Nature and Perfections belonging to him but Communicated and derived from the Father as the Holy Ghost from both 3. As by our Faiths being Mysterious and Incomprehensible and Unaccountable to our Reason I do not mean that ' its Idea's or Terms destroy one another or imply a contradiction which is to make it contrary to it self so neither is it contrary to any certain Principle of Reason nor to any Natural Truth whatsoever known to us If it were it could not be true for one Truth cannot be contrary to another and what is true by Nature cannot be false by Revelation for then God the Author of both and the God of Truth would lye and contradict himself There are common notions Principles of Reason and some Natural Truths known by Sense and Experience which we are as certain of as of our Beings and which are the Foundations of all Knowledge and which we have such evidence of that to give them up would be to run into boundless Scepticisme and own nothing to be True or False but that God hath made us of such faculties that we might be deceived in every thing now Revelation can by no means destroy these as that the whole is greater then a part that one is not three nor three one in the same respect and meaning that a Body cannot be in two places at once that our Senses are true and the like and therefore Transubstantiation cannot be true nor can that be the Sense of those words this is my Body but now in the Trinity there is nothing contrary to any Natural Truth or to any Principle of Reason for that God should have a Son of the same Nature and Divinity with himself and that an Eternal Spirit should proceed from both tho' it be a Truth by it self and of pure and immediate Revelation which our Reason could not have found out from any known Property of the Divine Nature nor from any Reason and Necessity in the thing it self yet there is nothing in it contrary to the Natural Notion of a God or to any other certain Principle of Truth or Reason The only thing that can be pretended is that of the Divine Unity which is thought to be such a Natural Notion as to be inconsistent with any more Divine Persons then one and therefore has been objected against the Trinity by all the Adversaries of this Doctrine by the Jews and Mahometans by the Samosatenians the Photinians the Arrians the Macedonians and the Socinians who have all charged it with Tritheism and Polytheism contrary to the Divine
Infinite Division of Numbers in Decimal Fractions the Case of asymptotes How two Lines may be so drawn as always to approach and come nearer one another and yet never touch one another tho' drawn in infinitum The like Instances might be given of other Mysteries in Arts and Sciences which are as Incredible and Unreasonable to those who do not know them as any Mysteries in Religion and yet are certainly true and unquestionably believed by those who do and yet to them a great many of them may be Incomprehensible 'T is only Ignorance and want of Knowledge makes them seem unreasonable and incredible the more we improve in those Arts the more we shall see the Truth of them and have no doubt about them And so it is in the Mysteries of Religion 't is the shallowness and weakness of our Faculties makes them difficult and incomprehensible to us When we come to know God better especially in another World these reveal'd Truths concerning his Nature will be better understood and comprehended by us though now to deny and disbelieve them after they so are fully revealed because they are Incomprehensible is as if an Ignorant Person should call in question all Truths of those Arts and Sciences which he does not understand and which are Incomprehensible to him 4. There are Incomprehensible Truths in Natural Religion as well as in Revelation and in the Mystery of the Christian Faith God who is known by Nature and whose Being and Perfections are the great objects of natural Religion is as Incomprehensible and as much too big for our finite Reason and Faculties fully to Comprehend as any of the Articles of Revealed Religion or Christian Faith His 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-Existence is such a thing as our Thoughts are wholly lost about when we consider of it and yet something must be self-existent even by the Atheistic hypothesis So something must be Eternal and yet let any man try his thoughts about Eternity Infinite Duration or Infinite Succession and see how they are swallowed up in those deeps of Speculation Let him conceive if he can Eternity without Succession and Immensity without Extension and clear himself from that Contradiction if applyed to any thing but God that what is past or future is yet present that he now exists to morrow and that a thousand years ago his Duration was the same as now and nothing is added to it he may improve these into as puzling and incomprehensible difficulties if he pleases as any thing about the Trinity What shall we think of that inextricable Difficulty of Gods prescience of all Humane Actions by which they are certain and yet of our Liberty by which they are contingent when it is as hard to make those two Consistent as to make Father and Son to be one and yet we must do so or else rob God of one of his greatest Perfections or else rob Man of his Will and Freedom and so destroy all Moral Good and Evil. Since there are then so many Mysteries and Incomprehensible Truths even in Natural Religion which our Deists I hope do sincerely believe and which is owned to be the foundation of all other why should we wonder at those which are not much greater in Revelation and in the Mystery of Christian Faith The Creation of the World out of nothing is as Inconceivable and as Mysterious as the Generation of the Son from the Father and one Infinite Being is as much too big for our Finite Understandings to Comprehend as Three and his Attributes and Perfections are as hard to be distinguished and as irreconcileable with the simplicity of the Divine Nature as multiplicity of Persons His Justice and his Mercy his Power Wisdom and Goodness are no more the same as conceived by us but excite as truly different Ideas in us as his being a Father and begetting a Son and having a holy Ghost proceeding from him but yet the three Persons are more than three Attributes and the same person cannot be Father and Son to himself as he is Just and Merciful to us nor is it only three Considerations Capacities or Titles of one Being but three proper and distinct Persons that constitute the Sacred Trinity But we may as well conceive a monad emaning or producing two from it self as Creating all things out of nothing and being as Infinite as himself and the World both and as having three several Attributes distinct in themselves and not Confounded or Identified with one another 5. There are other Truths in Revelation as Incomprehensible and Unconceivable as this of the Trinity or the Mystery of Christian Faith To mention nothing else those many Miracles which are the proof and demonstration of the Divine Revelation and which must be acknowledged by all those who admit it and are not at all question'd by our Socinian Adversaries these are as Incomprehensible and Unintelligible to us as any Articles of our Faith they are matters as much above our Reason and do as much exceed all other things we know and all the likenesses and compositions of any thing we are acquainted with in Nature as the Trinity or any thing else in Revelation The Divine Power is no more limited to do those things only which we can conceive than the Divine Veracity to Reveal those things only which we can Comprehend and yet we are to believe both If we could conceive fully how the one was done we might do it our selves and if we could comprehend perfectly how the others are true and how those several Ideas are connected and agree together we might compound them our selves and so God would not be more Powerful or more Wise than Man is Our Finite Understanding is no more able to comprehend all that God does than our Finite Power to effect every thing that he can Miracles are as much above us as to Facts and as much Mysteries as to the Laws of Matter and Motion and the known properties of Bodies as Revealed Articles are above us as to Truths and known principles of Reason and as to any other comparative Ideas and representations of things which are Familiar to us and which we are well acquainted with Our Adversaries may therefore as well deny all Miracles as being Unconceivable and Incomprehensible to their Reason and as Mysterious Facts which are very much above Nature and above all our Conceptions as the Mysteries of Faith and the Principles of Revealed Religion such as the Blessed Trinity upon this very score and account and may for the same Reason discard all revelation and all natural Religion which I fear is the design of some of them but I hope not of the greatest part Lastly I proposed to show that there are as many Difficulties and more Mysteries in their sense that is Inconsistencies and Absurdities in the Socinian Scheme and System of Opinions than in the Orthodox Faith they oppose Thus to make a mere Man a God to exalt a Creature to such a Degree as
must be very arrogant in our Adversaries to oppose themselves to the Belief of the whole Primitive Church and to disagree with all those Holy Men and Learned Writers whom we call the Fathers who have transmitted Christianity and this Doctrine down to us and this Socinus even frankly and openly owns Patres omnes ab ipsis dissentire in his Answer to Wiekus Tom. 2. Resp ad 2 Cap. Wieki Clas 7. c. 9. p. 618. and sayes Haec authoritatum testimoniorum ex Patribus Concilii congeries nullas vires habet praesertim adversus nos qui ab istis Patribus Conciliis quae extant nos dissentire non diffitemur This was said with great freedom but greater insolence his followers have had more cunning and less Honesty than to own this It is not proper at this time and place to prove what their Master owns and to prove the Divinity of Christ from the Antient Church and from the universal suffrage of its Writers in all Ages that has been done beyond all possibility of an Answer from the boldest Pretender But our very Enemies have all along bore witness to this Truth that the Christians believed and worshipped Christ as a God so sayes Pliny in his Letter to Trajan that the Christians met and sang a Hymn to Christ as to God and Celsus charges the Christians with worshiping Christ as a new God and Julian writ to this purpose to Photinus agreeing with him that Christ was but a Man against the Churches Doctrine of a Galilean God as he blasphemously speaks so Lucian in his Philopatris exposes the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the God of Christians and Mahomet all along through his Alcoron finds fault with the Christians for believing and worshipping Christ as God whom he owns to be a Prophet and a great Man sent of God as well as Socinus The Christians would have disowned this charge had it not been true especially when in the hands of their Enemies and under Persecution for it when they might have escaped Death and the greatest Tortures and Sufferings had they been Socinians and denyed Christs Divinity They had none of their subtle distinctions of a God by Nature and a God by Office to help them out but they believed Christ to be as true a God by Nature as he was a Man and they took God in the true and plain sense for a Divine Almighty Being who was to be worship'd by them and that Christ was such an one as well as a Man This was the Doctrine they were taught by the Church and by the Scriptures and that all Christians believed till the Subtleties of Arrius Eunomius Artius and others and the greater Subtleties of the School-men afterwards in making One to be Three and Three One and the as great Subtleties of the Socinians in opposing them darkened and obscured the plain Christian Doctrine which we are Baptized into of Father Son and Holy Ghost and that the Son who was born of the Virgin and dyed for us and rose again and was Christ the Saviour of Mankind that he was also the Son of God and the only begotten of God the Father who had the same Divine Nature with him and so was God and to be worship'd and pray'd to The Usefulness and Necessity of which Doctrine I should come now to show had I time In a word I take all Christian Faith and Hope and Worship to depend upon it and even Christianity it self as it is a distinct Religion from Natural and as it obliges us to such peculiar Articles of Faith as well as to such common Rules of Morality If Christ be not God and have not the Divine Nature belonging to him but be only a Man as he is not to be worship'd as I have shown so how we trust and hope and believe in him for Salvation and put such a full confidence in a Creature that it would not be greater if he were a God A poor finite Creature like our selves is not a fit object of our hope and trust for so great a matter as an Infinite Divine Being who has all Power and all Goodness The great God may exalt if he pleases any of us or any other Man to as much Power and Dignity as the Socinians say he has done Christ and they may have been made their own Saviours or Saviours to all the World in the Socinian Notion as well as he but surely none but a God no Man or Creature could be the Redeemer and the Saviour of Mankind Our Redemption is a greater Work than our Creation and the Lord that bought us deserves as great Thanks and Gratitude Praise Honour and Acknowledgment from us as he that Made us and therefore we should necessarily run into Idolatry if he were not God also Could this great and Mysterious Work have been accomplished any other way than by the Son of God a God Incarnate and made Flesh the Divine Wisdom which does nothing in vain would in all likelyhood have found out an easier and a cheaper Method and not have been at the expence of such a Miraculous such an Extraordinary such a Mysterious way as Men and Angels are astonisht at when they look into the mighty depth and profound greatness of it God the Father shewed his utmost Love to Mankind and exhausted the Riches of his Mercy to Sinners in sending his Son his only begotten Son into the World to save us and his Son showed the greatest Condescension and utmost Humiliation and emptying of himself thus to come into the World and become a Man but had he been only a Man where had the Mystery of this been This great Love of the Father and this Condescension of the Son on both which the Scripture layes such a particular weight and Emphasis had been lost and sunk and dwindled into very little and had all its mighty Figures and Characters in which it is represented in Scripture abated lessened and diminisht if Christ had been only a Creature and a meer-Man and had not been truly and properly the Son of God begotten of him from all Eternity as well as of the Virgin afterwards and One with the Father in respect of his Divine Nature and Original To him God blessed for ever be all Honour and Worship Praise Glory and Thanksgiving now and for evermore Amen FINIS