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A52602 An account of Mr. Firmin's religion, and of the present state of the Unitarian controversy Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719. 1698 (1698) Wing N1502; ESTC R4610 32,345 84

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any should say they are not prohibited in the Mosaick Law Some of them were punishable with death by that Law as Gluttony and Drunkenness by the Law at Deut. 21.20 Luxury Riot Lust and such like are contrary to the good of a Man's Children and of himself or of his Neighbor and the Commonwealth and therefore are implicitly forbid by that Commandment at Lev. 19.18 which requires that a man should love his Neighbor as himself I do not love my Neighbor as my self if I am guilty of Luxury or Riot by which my Heir and the Poor are defrauded or if I am guilty of Ambition Covetousness or Lust by which I spoil or grind or wrong my Neighbor Nay Lust Riot Excess Covetousness do unfit us and that very much for the service of God and for the honest and honorable discharge of our station whatsoever that be in the Commonwealth therefore we may say they are implicitely forbidden by all those Commandments of the Law that require either the Fear Regard and Service of God or the welfare and esteem of our Neighbor or Selves XII Concerning Magistrates I believe 't is not lawful for them under the Gospel to inflict Capital Punishment Death on any Offenders no not on Murderers This was the Doctrine of divers of the Fathers of the three first Ages scarce any of 'em believ'd otherwise Nay they added 't is not lawful to go to the Wars as a Souldier or Officer or to assist at Executions or even to defend a Mans own Life by any such resistance as will take away the Life of the injurious Aggressor The reason they gave for this last was that by killing a Person who attempts to murder me he is dispatched out of the world without Repentance and therefore is certainly damn'd but the Christian by being killed loses only his Life and enters upon a blessed Immortality Some Unitarians have been of this mind while others have written against the whole Doctrine In short it is not their Doctrine as Unitarians for some of them have held it while others I believe the most disallow it XIII Concerning some other points I believe as the Church of Rome believes for we agree with them in several points of Doctrin What these points are he tells us at Chap. 9. from p. 201. Namely that somethings were said by our Saviour by way only of monition or counsel not of command That we merit by a good Life and may be perfect That all Sins are not damnable That the prayers of the living may help the dead Nay the Author of the Considerations on the Explitions of the Trinity speaks favourably of the Transubstantiation Let us begin at the foot of this account The Author of the Considerations is no otherwise favourable to the Doctrine of the Transubstantiation than by saying of it 'T is only a Philosophical Error or Folly not an Impiety p. 21. And again p. 22. 'T is a Mistake into which the Papists have been cozened by the Philosophy of Aristotle Would Mr. Edwards think a man favoured the Doctrines in his Books if he gave them no better Names than Mistakes Errors and Follies Mr. Edwards finds Impiety Irreligion Atheism and what not in all Doctrines and all Authors he dislikes We are no so dextrous We sometimes think that we spy an Error or Mistake and sometimes it seems so gross as to deserve the name of a Folly but to call it Impiety Irreligion Abnegation of Christianity how much soever Mr. Edwards delights in it and makes it his constant Practice as well in preaching as writing we cannot approve the Example it being always contrary to Charity good Manners and Truth The Prayers of this Living may help the Dead Mr. Edwards quotes for this but one Socinian Writer nor is that Author positive in the case He only says Those who believe a middle state or place for the Dead do well to pray for them That is in case you suppose beside Heaven and Hell some middle place where Souls may repent and reform or are any otherwise capable of mercy or where they have not yet received their last Doom It is Charity to interceed by our Prayers for them as much as we would for the Living I believe he is the only Writer of his Sect that can be charged with any such thing but we have it in print concerning a late Archbishop of Canterbury Dr. Sheldon that he prayed for the Dead in his daily Prayers But what one particular Man dos or says is not to be imputed to his whole Party and reported to the whole world as an Article of their Creed All Sins are not damnable A Christian may merit by his good works and may be perfect Merit and Perfection may be truly or falsly said of the works and life of a Christian man according as you interpret the terms Merit and Perfection Taking 'em in the sense that Protestants use them no Man can merit of God the infinite Recompences of Heaven and of Blessedness everlasting nor was any Man perfect or without Sin but only that Lamb of God that taketh away the Sins of the world But Merit and Perfection are sometimes used in a popular sense namely for that tho imperfect yet sincere Obedience to God's Commandments to which God has graciously appointed the recompence of everlasting Blessedness in Heaven and for universal Obedience as it is opposed not to Oversights and Frailties but a wilful indulging our selves in particular Sins In this sense every sincere Christian both merits and is perfect Yet I own that divers Unitarian Writers have spoke either too loosly or too incorrectly on the point of Perfection but they have been as much opposed by some of their own number The same cannot be said concerning the distinction of Sin into mortal and venial for our People are positive and unanimous that as St. John words this matter there is a Sin which is not unto death 1 John 5.16 God Almighty they say has not appointed Hell-fire to our Frailties and Inadvertences but to our Contempts and advised Breach of his Laws Some things said by our Saviour are Counsels to such as would be perfect not absolute indispensible Commands to all the Faithful without exception He quotes for this an obscure passage of one single Socinian Writer who never was espoused in that matter by any of his Party We judg that the distinction of Counsels and Commands is a great and very dangerous Presumption a back-door by which to escape from almost a mans whole Duty The two Doctrines of Counsels for the perfect and probable Opinions will furnish the most profligate Wretch in the world with defences and excuses for his very greatest Enormities Lastly after all I believe Tho the aforesaid Articles are all of 'em necessary to make a Man a Socinian yet the belief of only one of them is enough to make a Man a Christian and that one Article is that Jesus is the Messias In which it is not included whether
only by nature In good truth they are better and stronger by nature than I ever hope to be in this Life by the superadded Grace of God But here again he did not strike home he intended more than he durst say and he durst not say it lest we should ask him whether he believes the just contrary That There is no need of the Spirit to repent to believe or to obey the Gospel and perform religious Acts. 'T is a serious point We answer with St. Paul the Spirit HELPETH our Infirmities Rom. 8.26 But we judg for all that the Holy Scripture gives no occasion to any to turn Enthusiasts and to resolve the whole duty we owe and must perform to God and to our Neighbor into preternatural Impulses as if we were Machines and not men or Puppets moved by invisible Wires not Men that act by their own Reason and Choice That Men are righteous before God not by the merit of Christ but by their own good works We answer with all but Antinomians and the more rigid Calvinists the Merit of Christ is not reckoned to us without Faith and good Works of our own But I am not certain that the Calvinists or the Antinomists would not assent to that Proposition or not allow it to be orthodox I incline to think those People have no real difference with the Church nor the Church with them but that they mistake one anothers meaning V. Another branch of our Creed according to Mr. Edwards runs thus I believe concerning a future State That the Souls of the Deceased have no knowledg or perception of any thing they are not sensible of any Rewards or Pains and that their very Nature is absorpt That at death the Soul as well as Body sleeps was an error of some of the most ancient Fathers as well as of some Unitarians But neither of 'em said as Mr. Edwards pretends that in death the very Nature of the Soul is absorpt which is to say extinct they both of them held that there is a Resurrection of the Soul as well as Body But why dos Mr. Edwards impute that opinion to us when he has read for he quotes the book in the first Part of the Considerations on the Explications of the Trinity what is our sense of that matter The words at p. 33. are these This Error was common to Socinus and some of the Fathers The Learned Mr. Du Pinn in his Abridgment of the Fathers has noted that Justin Martyr Irenaeus Minutius Faelix and Arnobius were in this Sentiment There was no reason to object this to Socinus as if it were a peculiar opinion of his much less to the English Unitarians who never defended it nor that I know of do any of 'em hold it VI. He says next I believe we shall not rise with the same Bodies but that another Matter or Substance shall be substituted in their place I see most of our Opposers have affected to mistake our meaning concerning the resurrection of the Body We hold nothing that is singular in the case we differ not from the Catholick Church about it We say with St. Paul 1 Cor. 15.35 How are the dead raised and with what Bodies do they come Thou sowest not the body that shall be The Body that is raised is not in all respects the same that was committed to the earth in divers perhaps in the most it is We rise not Infants or decrepit old Men or lame or deaf or any way distorted tho' many so lived and so died Nay as to the Passions resulting from the present complexion of the body and therefore to be reckon'd the Modifications and as it were parts of the body we rise not with them it is not the same Body in respect of those Passions that it here lived For instance some are by complexion very cowardly or pensive or choleric or jealous the Body that shall be will not be such It will be conformed to the likeness of the glorious Body of our Lord Christ that is be freed from all both external and internal Imperfections Farthermore our present body Physicians and Philosophers say is in a continual Flux all the parts of it internal as well as external continually decay and are continually also renewed They decay by the Perspiration that is continually caused by the internal heat and are continually renewed by the Nourishment taken in and converted into Blood Spirits Flesh and Bones 'T is said by the Learned in these matters that no man's body is the very same as to the matter and substance of it this present year that it was the last year and will be the next year 'T is wholly new by the nourishment of the present year We say therefore there shall be a Resurrection of the Body and as some of the Antient Creeds spoke of the same Body as truly and as properly as N.N. is the same Man this year that he was one or seven or twenty years ago If Mr. Edwards requires us to say more he exacts more than the Church believes For by the Resurrection of the same Body the Church intends only that 't is as truly the same as a Man notwithstanding the Flux of his parts is now the same N. N. or J. B. that he was seven or ten years past Yet not altogether the same because inconceivably better That is without any external or internal Deformities or Weaknesses VII I believe that at the Day of Judgment Men shall not be required to give an account of their Actions the most flagitious Sinners shall not be examined concerning any thing of their past Life Only they shall be punished and their Punishment is this to utterly cease or perish for ever The unquenchable Fire is nothing but Annihilation I do not know that the Scriptures or the Catholic Church do require any to believe that Sinners shall be examined concerning their past Life at the day of the general Judgment To what purpose I pray doth the All-knowing Judg need to be informed concerning the particulars of their Gui●●● If every person is to be severally ex●●●●ed concerning the particulars of his ●●ansacted Life the Day of Judgment will extend it self to many Millions of Ages more and farther than the whole duration of the World from its beginning to its consummation It should seem Mr. Edwards thinks that because the Scriptures speak of the great Judgment by God in the language of Men and of Human Judicatures such as Trumpets the Throne of the Judg a formal Sentence the Pleadings of the Guilty the Answers of the Judg that therefore in very deed we are to expect such a Scene at the Judgment by God as at a common Assize I conceive on the contrary that all such expressions and words wherever they are found in Scripture are not intended as real Descriptions but as Comparisons or Resemblances by which the capacities of the Vulgar may he assisted and their affections wrought upon All that is intended by such expressions is