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A36211
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The Doctrine of the Catholick Church and of the Church of England concerning the blessed Trinity explained and asserted against the dangerous heterodoxes in a sermon by Dr. William Sherlock before my Lord Mayor and the court of aldermen.
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1697
(1697)
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Wing D1774; ESTC R1156
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21,435
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32
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Man living knows any thing at all for this Enumeration Substances Essences Reasons Unions Properties Operations comprehends all things even the whole of created and uncreated Nature It is certain and confess'd by all Men but this Gentleman who seems to delight in nothing so much as Paradoxes and thinks the Pulpit and Press the likeliest Places to make 'em famous and remarkable that our Reason can be no otherwise imployed but either about Substances or their Unions essential Reasons Operations or Properties What is it Sir I pray but either it is a Substance or the Property or Operation of a Substance For as to essential Reasons and Vnions the former as well as Modes and Accidents come under the general name of Properties Risibility for instance is an essential Reason of Man as he is Man and yet it is reckoned among the Properties as well as Gracility Grossness Agility Slowness Whiteness Redness and such like Modes and Accidents are called the Properties of particular Men Properties by which they are distinguished from one another As essential Reasons are but Properties so Unions are but the Operations of Substances or their Properties In short I say that without being needlesly nice Substances with their Properties and Operations will denote the whole Complex of things their Reasons and Vnions are superfluously added And if these are not the Objects of Reason Reason has no Objects at all In truth they are the only things about which Reason is conversant Metaphysicians consider spiritual Substances their Properties and Operations Natural Philosophers consider Bodies or corporeal Substances their Operations and their Properties Particular Arts and Crafts are conversant about particular Bodies as Physicians and Chirurgions about the humane Body Chymists about Plants and Metals the Lapidary about Jewels the Apothecary about Drugs Do these Artists know nothing about the Substances their Properties or Operations their Vnions and essential Reasons about which both their Minds and Bodies are every day imployed Assuredly when the Court desired Mr. Dean of St. Paul's to print this Sermon they could not have done him a greater Disservice than thus to prompt his Vanity to expose his scandalous Inadversions to the View and Scorn of every body It is well seen why this Dean has preach'd against Philosophy Because he hath very little himself He has heard of Essence Properties Operations essential Reasons and not knowing well what they mean he guesses they are things that a zealous Preacher ought to bestir himself against A little more Zeal and Ignorance might have qualified him to be one of my Lords the Inquisitors in the Inquisition-Office at Lisbon where lately they condemned an English Mare to be burnt as a Witch because she could signify the Hour of the Day on a Watch or Clock could dance to a Fiddle with several such little Feats as are easily taught to Beasts Some Persons interceded with the Holy Fathers for the Mare telling 'em she had been shown all over Christendom and that these Tricks had been often taught to other docile Beasts especially to Elephants But the Fathers as zealous as some body else against what they did not understand answered she shall be burnt for admitting she is not a Witch be sure coming from England she is a Heretick He says Lastly This that the Question is about Essences Vnions Properties is all the Incomprehensibleness that can be charged on the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation For my part to deal frankly after all the bustle and noise that has been made on both sides about Mysteries and Incomprehensibles I know no Incomprehensibleness or Mystery in the Catholick Doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation I mean as they are explained and declared by the Church and now received by the Unitarians themselves not as they are perverted and misrepresented by a little Faction that have learned from Dr. Cudworth to call themselves Realists as if their Tritheism were the only real Trinity The Church teaches that there is but one Eternal All-perfect Spirit but one infinite spiritual Substance and this is what we indifferently call GOD the Divinity the Deity the Divine Nature the Divine Essence or Substance As to the distinction of Persons in the Deity to use the Words of the Bishop of Worcester When we consider a Divine Essence there can be no distinction conceived in it but by different Modes of Subsistence or what is the same different relative Properties The Trinity then is the Divine Essence Godhead or Deity consider'd under three different Modes of Subsistence which are called Relative Properties because they distinguish and because a threefold Relation arises in the Deity from them and Persons they are called because distinguishing characterizing Properties whether in a common Nature or in particular Natures or Substances when considered with the Nature or Substance make what antient and constant Custom nameth Persons These Modes or Properties are by some more particularly described St. Austin and from him the Divines of the Schools insist upon Intellectus Notitia Amor or Original Mind or Wisdom the Logos or reflex Wisdom generated by Mind and the Spiration of Divine Love The first as generating is named the Father the second being generated by a condescension to humane Language is called the Son the third being a Spiration has the name of Spirit I know not as I said what Mystery or Incomprehensibleness there is in this account which has been the Language and Explication of the Church ever since St. Austin and not of the Latin Church only but of the Greek as I intend to prove at large whenever leisure and a fit opportunity shall serve I see plainly that the occasion of calling the Trinity a Mystery except only among the Unlearned or not Learned in Scholastick and Philosophical Terms and the various Acceptations of them I say the occasion of calling the Doctrine of the Trinity a Mystery was this because the term Persons and again Father Son and Spirit are used concerning the Deity in a very different Sense from their Import or Meaning when used of Men or other created Beings For all humane Persons and Father and Son among Men are distinguished not only by different Modes and Properties but by distinct Substances Intellects and Wills but the Deity is but one Essence or spiritual Substance with one Understanding Will and Energy in number Thus the Idea of Persons and of Father Son and Spirit in God implying a Notion so very different from the meaning of the same terms when spoken of Men and created Beings 't was thought sit to say they are used concerning God in a mystical Sense concerning other Beings in a profane or common Sense A Sense of Words or Terms not so usually applied or rather contrary to the vulgar and secular Use of them was named Mystery at first I judg only by the less Learned afterwards to conciliate the greater Reverence to the Article by the more Learned also As to the Incarnation The Doctrine of the
REMARKS ON Dr. SHERLOCK 's SERMON OF The Danger of corrupting the Faith by Philosophy ADVERTISEMENT Lately Published AN Apology for the Parliament humbly representing to Mr. John Gailhard some Reasons why they did not at his Request enact Sanguinary Laws against Protestants in their last Session In two Letters by different Hands Sold by Richard Baldwin THE DOCTRINE OF THE Catholick Church AND OF THE CHURCH of ENGLAND CONCERNING THE Blessed Trinity Explained and Asserted Against the Dangerous Heterodoxes in a Sermon by Dr. WILLIAM SHERLOCK before my Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen LONDON Printed for Richard Baldwin in Warwick-lane 1697. Remarks upon Dr. WILLIAM SHERLOCK's False and Treacherous Defence and Explication of some principal Articles of Faith in a Sermon before my Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen on April 25. 1697. I No sooner saw the Title of this Sermon The Danger of corrupting the Faith by Philosophy and the Text Let no man spoil you through Philosophy but I imagined what was the Author's design To protect himself from and to be revenged upon the Oxford-Heads and the famous Decree there made by an Insult upon the Learning of the Place upon Philosophy it self He addresses his Sermon against Philosophy and Reason Against Philosophy on the Authority of a mistaken Text of Scripture Against Reason on his own Authority but not without a just provocation we may be sure because he found Reason was first against him Reason Sagacity Knowledg Wisdom are but only several names of the same thing and I never heard of any thing that Reason was against or that was against Reason but only Folly or Falshood Therefore tho there have been some as particularly great Erasmus who jestingly wrote Encomium moriae the Praise of Folly I did not expect that a Dean of St. Paul's would have preach'd for Folly because I took preaching to be a serious Exercise Dr. Sherlock had a mind to declaim against Reason and against Philosophy Why For the sake he saith of certain Articles of Faith that are in great and present danger from Philosophy and Reason What Man wilt thou say then that there are Articles of Faith which disagree with Reason and with Philosophy Reason being nothing else but Wisdom nor Philosophy but the Observations and Experiments that have been made concerning the nature of things in one word Experience This Undertaking to defend the Articles of Faith by decrying Reason and Philosophy is to say in effect the Articles of Faith are not consistent either with natural Wisdom or with experimental Knowledg Than which a more dangerous or more opprobrious thing could not be said by Vaninus or Hobbs or other the rankest Atheist in the World In very deed 't is the whole that Atheists and Infidels would perswade they reckon and so far forth they reckon truly that they gain their point by such a Concession This kind of Defence therefore is as false and treacherous as our Author's Explication of the Articles intended is heretical and antichristian Non tali auxilio non defensoribus istis the Articles of Faith lack no such Defences or Defenders Tho all of them are not discoverable by meer Philosophy or by natural unassisted Reason yet they perfectly agree with both and receive light and confirmation from ' em Well but seeing the Doctor had taken a conceit against Philosophy Why did he choose this Text so contrary in the opinion of all Interpreters to his purpose For they are all of opinion that the Apostle speaks not of Philosophy in general but of the Platonick Philosophy and more especially of the notions of that Philosophy concerning a Trinity of Divine Spirits and Substances which Notions are the very same with Dr. Sherlock's as is not only confessed but most largely proved by the chief Assertor of them Dr. Cudworth See Mr. Pool's Synop. Critic in loc and Dr. Cudworth's Intel. System p. 546 deinceps But let us make an Abstract or Summary of this Sermon of the Points or Doctrines it advances and of the Reasonings that are used here to support them And afterwards consider briefly both the one and the other He observes 1. That Philosophy and Reason are the only things which those men adore who would have no God at all And that what makes some men Atheists and Infidels even the Philosophick Tincture and their adherence to Natural Reason the same makes others to be Hereticks that is to be Arians Socinians and Pelagians Pag. 1. and 6. and 9. 2. That to find the true Christian Faith we must attend only to Scripture Not to the meer Words or Phrases there used for such a Confession or Declaration of the Faith would leave all the Heresies untouch'd and all Hereticks in quiet possession of their Opinions because they all submit to the Words and Phrases of Scripture But for ascertaining what is the true Faith we must attend to Scripture only in this Sense namely to what is the true Meaning of Scripture-words and Phrases to that Meaning which the Phrase and Words do imply rejecting all mixture of Philosophy and natural Reason in our Disputes and Inquiries concerning the Meaning of Scripture P. 7 8 9. 3. That as we are Christians and unless we will be understood to reject the supreme Authority of Revelation we must believe those Doctrines that are most mysterious and unconceivable notwithstanding any Objections from Natural Reason and from Philosophy against ' em Whereupon he hath this Aphorism He that believes no farther than natural Reason approves believes his Reason and not the Revelation he is a natural Philosopher not a Believer P. 11 12. 4. That Difficulty of conceiving a thing nay the absolute Vnconceivableness of it must not hinder our Assent to what is contained in Divine Revelation because we do not disbelieve what is made known to us by Sense or by Reason notwithstanding any Difficulty or Vnconceivableness adhering to it And as to Contradictions so often objected in these cases 't is an easy matter to find Contradictions in what we do not understand when we will be reasoning on what we do not understand there will be Contradictions and Impossibilities innumerable in our Guesses about ' em P. 13 14 15 16. After this he answers to two Objections whereof the first is That it seems very unnatural that God having made us Reasonable Creatures and thereby having made natural Reason the measure of Truth and Falshood to us we should notwithstanding be required to believe without Reason If we must believe with our Understandings how can we believe what we do not understand To this he answers by saying when an Objection is made against any thing or that it is as we apprehend without Reason or against and contrary to Reason the Objection is of no value if such thing is not the proper Object of Reason such as the Natures and Essences of things their essential Reasons their Unions Operations and Properties which no Man he saith can pretend are the Objects of