Intercession of the Eternal Son of God For if Christ Jesus who is the Saviour of Mankind be not the Eternal Son of God in humane Nature all those great Assurances which the Gospel gives us of God's love to Sinners in giving his own Eternal Son for us of the Expiation of our Sins by the Blood of the Son of God a price of inestimable value and of all the Blessings which we expect both in this world and in the next from the powerful intercession of a Beloved Son and a meritorious High-Priest I say all these strong Consolations dwindle into no more than the Word and Promise of a great and extraordinary Prophet the Death of a Martyr and the Intercession of a Beloved Creature and humble Supplicant who has no inherent Power and Authority to save us Our Modern Socinians are very sensible what an invincible prejudice this is for few serious Christians will be willing to part with their hopes of Heaven or to part with greater infinitely greater hopes for less or to think so meanly of their Saviour who is the object of their Faith and Worship as to thrust him down into the rank and number of meer Creatures This the Catholick Church would never endure in the Arians who yet attributed a most excellent Nature and Glory to Christ next to God himself superior to the highest Orders of Angels as being before the World it self and the Maker of it but yet not true and perfect God as not having the same Nature with his Father nor Eternally begotten by him much less would they ever endure the thoughts of the Photinian or Samosatenian Heresy that is of Socinianism which makes Christ but a meer man who had no Being before he was Born of his Virgin Mother This I say being so invincible a prejudice against them they have of late tried new Arts and have taken advantage of some very unhappy Disputes to impose upon unwary men and to appear abroad with new Confidence under a less frightful Disguise The late Controversy about Three infinite Minds and Spirits in the Trinity has given them the advantage of distinguishing between Real and Nominal Trinitarians or such Trinitarians as believe a Trinity of Real subsisting Persons and those who believe only one Real Person who is God with a Trinity of Names or Offices or immanent Acts and Powers The Realists they call Trithiests or such Hereticks as assert Three Gods The Nominals they think very Orthodox and the Church and tho' the Nominals and Socinians differ in some forms of Speech yet they say and I think very truly that there is no considerable difference in their Faith as they state it and seem well enough inclined to exchange that odious name of Socinians for the more plausible and popular name of Nominal Trinitarians And thus they can Dispute as heartily as ever and with more safety and honour against the Faith of the Trinity so they do but call it a Real Trinity and may dispute for Socinianism as earnestly as ever so they do but call it a Nominal Trinity En quo discordia cives Perduxit miseros That this is the whole Artifice of this present Pamphlet any one who reads it may see with half an eye and I hope some men if ever they can grow cool will consider a little better of it I do not so much intend gravely to Dispute with this Author as to wash off his Paint and bring the Controversy back again to its right Owners those truly opposite Parties of Trinitarians Sabellians and Socinians That those whom he calls the Real Trinitarians are the only men who believe a Christian Trinity and that the Nominal Trinitarians do not believe a Trinity is evident in their very Names for a Trinity which is the object of our Faith and Worship is certainly a Real Trinity if it be at all and one would think that a Trinity which is not a Real Trinity should be no Trinity at all The Zeal which the Socinians express against a Real Trinity is a good Argument That that is the true Christian Trinity which they and their Predecessors have always rejected in contradiction to the Catholick Faith and the great fondness they express for a Nominal Trinity is as good a proof that it is no Trinity at all Such a Trinity as is reconcileable with Socinianism as all these men own a Nominal Trinity to be can never be the Christian Faith unless Socinianism be Christianity Which I hope those men whom this and some other late Writers call Nominal Trinitarians will not yet own and yet if Socinianism be a Contradiction to the Christian Faith that must be the true Catholick Faith of the Trinity which most directly contradicts Socinianism in the parting Points and that none but a Real Trinity does So that it is in vain for them to hope to conceal themselves under some insignificant Names let them deal fairly with the world and Dispute professedly against a Trinity for a Real Trinity is neither better nor worse than a Trinity and then let them produce their Authorities and Reasons to prove that the Catholick Church even the Nicene Council it self never believed a Trinity and that the Faith of a Trinity is Tritheism This becomes men of candour and honesty let their Opinions be what they will but to sneak and sculk like men who have a mind to steal a Cause and are as much ashamed to appear in open light as such kind of Traders use to be is mean and pilfering and unworthy of their Ancestors who own'd themselves at Noon-day and bravely outfaced all the Authority of the Catholick Church and all the Reason of Mankind That this is the truth of the Case and that they themselves look upon this distinction as no more than a jest is evident from that account this Writer gives of the Doctrine of the Realists and Nominalists concerning the Trinity As to the Explication the Party called Realists say The Holy Trinity or the Three Divine Persons are Three distinct infinite Substances Three Minds Three Spirits they are Three such Persons that is as distinct and as really subsisting and living as three Angels or three Men are Each Person has his own peculiar individual Substance his own personal and proper Understanding Will and Power of Action an Omnipotence Omniscience and all other Divine Attributes divers in number from the personal Omnipotence Omniscience c. of the other two Persons In the Creation as also in the Government of the world they are to be considered as distinct Agents not as one Creator or one Governor but only in this sense that the Father acts by the Son through the Spirit of which the meaning is that the Father in regard of his Paternal Prerogative acteth not immediately but by the Son and Spirit This Account as far as it concerns the real Subsistence of Three distinct infinite Persons in the Unity of the God-head does contain the true Catholick Faith of the Trinity and yet
bare dispute concerning the use of those words Three eternal infinite Minds and Spirits for Three eternal infinite intelligent Persons no more proves those who reject such expressions while they own each Person by himself to be infinite Mind and Spirit to be meer Nominalists than the use of such expressions in a qualified Catholick Sense as the Catholick Fathers have formerly used them or other Terms equivalent to them proves those who use them to be Tritheists And yet this is all our Author pretends to justifie this distinction between Realists and Nominalists viz. The Controversy depending between Dr. S th and Dr. Sherlock But I cannot pass on without making one Remark on this That Dr. S th and those who have espoused that side of the Question are as much concerned to vindicate themselves from the imputation which this Author has fixed on them of being meer Nominalists or Sabellians as Dr. Sherlock and his Friends are to vindicate themselves from Tritheism and I confess I think a great deal more because in the heat of Dispute or through Inadvertency if it be not their settled Principle and Judgment they have given more just occasion for such a Charge When One and the same Person with Three substantial Deaneries shall be very gravely alledged as a proper Representation of a Trinity in Unity when a meer mode of subsistence shall be given as a proper and adequate Definition of a Person as applied to the Trinity when a large Book shall be writ on purpose to demonstrate That there is and can be but One Person in the Trinity in the true proper Notion as it signifies an intelligent Person what can the most equal and impartial Judge make of this but downright Sabellianism For whether it be allowable to say Three Minds and Spirits or not I 'm sure without owning Three proper subsisting intelligent Persons each of whom is in his own Person infinite Mind and Spirit there can be no Real Trinity If their Sense be more Orthodox than their Words I do heartily beg of them for God's sake and the sake of our common Faith so to explain their Words as to remove this scandal as Dr. Sherlock has done and not to Charge a Trinity of real subsisting intelligent Persons which is all he professes to own or ever to have intended with Tritheism till they can give us something in the room of it more Orthodox than a Sabellian Trinity which the Catholick Church has always rejected with Abhorrence SECT III. The Authorities of the Nominalists against a Real Trinity briefly Examined THis Socinian having given such an account as it is of the Doctrine of the Realists and Nominalists as disinterested as he pretends to be he professedly Espouses the side of the Nominalists against the Realists that is under a new Name he follows his old Trade of Disputing against the Trinity only with this advantage that he now pleads the Cause of the Church of his beloved Church of Nominalists against these Tritheistick Hereticks the Realists But when men consider who this Advocate is it will do the Nominalists no Credit nor any Service to the Cause For a Socinian tho' he change his Name will be a Socinian still that is a professed Enemy to the Catholick Faith of the Trinity and to the Eternal God head and Incarnation of our Saviour Christ and there is very good Reason to believe that what he opposes is the True Catholick Faith and what he vindicates and defends is Heresy What Agreement there is between the Nominalists and Socinians and what an easie accommodation may be made between them we shall hear towards the Conclusion but this will not satisfie our Author that the present Orthodox Church which to the reproach of the Church and to the advantage of his own Cause he will have to be all Nominalists which is such an abuse as concerned Persons ought to resent I say not satisfied that the present Church is on his side nothing will serve him less than to prove that this was always the Faith of the Catholick Church A brave and bold Undertaking but what his wiser Predecessors Socinus Crellius c. would have laught at and which I doubt not but he Laughs at himself and will have cause to Laugh if he can meet with any Persons soft and easy enough to believe him He well and truly observes that this Question What has been the Doctrine of the Catholick Church in this point must be decided by Authorities or Witnesses and therefore he appeals to Authorities and those I grant the most venerable Authorities and Witnesses that can be had even General Councils I wish he would continue in this good humour and then I should not doubt but he would quickly change his side But this is contemptible Hypocrisy in a man who despises all Authorities not only human but sacred when they contradict his own private Reasonings to appeal to Authority I can easily bear with men of weak Understandings but I hate Knavery for Truth needs no Tricks and how much Socinians value Fathers and Councils is sufficiently known He begins with the Nicene Council which brought into the Church the term Homoousios by which is meant that the Divine Persons have the same Substance or are of One Substance But then he says it is disputed between the Nominalists and Realists in what Sense the Council understood this One Substance Whether the same Substance in number the self-same Substance so that there is indeed but One Divine Substance Or the same Substance for kind sort or nature namely the same in all Essential Properties So that in Truth there are Three distinct or numerically different Substances which are the same only in nature and kind This he makes the Controversy between the Church that is his Nominalists and the Realists but this is far from being the true state of the Controversy All whom he calls Realists own that Father and Son are but One and the self-same Substance communicated whole and undivided from Father to Son so that the Father is Substance the Son Substance in his own Person and both the same Substance And the like of the Holy Spirit that as Marius Victorinus says They are ter una Substantia Thrice One and the same Substance and this is all that those mean who venture to say they are Three Substances for the Dispute between those Realists who say there is but one Substance of the Divine Persons and those who own Three is not whether the Son be true and real Substance in his own Person as distinct from the Person of the Father for all but Sabellians agree in this but whether considering the perfect Unity and Identity of Nature and Substance in Three it be Orthodox to say Three Substances and not rather One Substance and Three who subsist which is a more Orthodox form of speech and less liable to exception And thus we allow That the Nicene Fathers by the Homoousion did mean One and the
Sabellianism and it is not probable that these Fathers should not understand the sense of the Council or that while they contended earnestly for the Nicene Faith they should condemn the true Nicene Faith for Heresy as he owns they do This would have put a modest man out of countenance but he takes courage and huffs at these Fathers and private Doctors Particular Fathers are but particular Doctors 't is from general Councils only we can take the Churches Doctrine It is very provoking to see a man banter the world at this rate with the utmost contempt and scorn of his Readers It is plain how great an Admirer he is of General Councils and what he thinks of his Readers whom he hopes to persuade that the Catholick Fathers who made up the Council even Athanassius himself who had so great a part in it did either ignorantly mistake the sense of the Council or wilfully pervert it especially when all the Ante-Nicene Fathers owned the same Faith as he may learn from Dr. Bull and those Catholicks who after the Nicene Council disputed the use of that term Homoousios yet agreed in the same Faith as I have already shewn What follows is all of a piece He expounds the Arian Homoiousios or of a like Substance to signify the same Substance in sort or kind or properties that is specifically the same but only differing in number as Father and Son have the same specifick Nature but are Two Persons And thence concludes that the Nicene Homoousios which the Arians at first refused but afterwards fraudulently subscribed in the sense of Homoiousios must signify but One singular solitary Substance but one Person in the Sabellian Sense But who ever before heard that the Arian Homoiousion signified a specifick Sameness and Unity of Nature Or that the Arians owned Father and Son to have the same specifick Nature as Adam and Abel had The Catholick Fathers themselves as Athanasius Hilary Basil the two Gregory's c. owned such a likeness of Nature as this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be equivalent to the Homoousion and to be True Catholick Doctrine and this they asserted against the Arians But it is in vain to dispute with a man who has either Ignorance or Confidence enough thus to impose upon his Readers His next Appeal is to the Sixth General Council which was the Third of Constantinople and when I met with this I was not a little surprized to think what he would make of it This Council as he himself tells the Story determined That there were two Natural Wills and two Operations in the Lord Christ and the Reason of this was because they asserted Two Natures in Christ the Divine and Human Nature and that each Nature has a Natural Will of its own and therefore as there are Two Natures there must be Two distinct and natural Wills in Christ. This is a plain proof of the Mystery of the Incarnation that the Divine Nature in the Person of the Son was Incarnate for there could not be two Wills unless there were two Natures which was the foundation of this Decree in Christ And this Macarius himself in his Confession of Faith profest to own both in opposition to Nestorius and Eutyches Now this Catholick Faith of the Incarnation which is so often and so expresly own'd by this Council is utterly irreconcileable with this Sabellian Unity of the Divine Nature and Substance without running into the Patripassian Heresy that the whole Trinity is Incarnate For if Christ in One Person hath Two Natures be truly and really both God and Man and consequently has Two distinct Wills a Divine and Humane Will either as God he must be distinct in Nature and Person from the Father and the Holy Ghost or if all Three Persons of the Trinity are but one single solitary Nature and consequently but One true and proper Person all Three Father Son and Holy Ghost must be Incarnate and suffer in the Incarnation and Sufferings of Christ which the Catholick Church condemned as Heresy Well! But he tells us That this Council owned that there is but One Will in the Three Persons of the Trinity and therefore consequently they can be but one true and proper Person This we own with the Council That there is but one essential Will in the Trinity tho' each Person has a Personal Will But this he says cannot be the meaning of the Council because the question was concerning Natural Wills or Powers of willing This is all fallacy A Natural Will is such a Will as belongs to that Nature whose Will it is As a Divine Nature has a Divine Will and a Humane Nature a Humane Will the power of willing is Personal and signifies a Personal Will And it is evident the Council speaks of the first not of the second And not to multiply Quotations I shall give but one plain proof of it Theophanes askt Macarius and Stephen Whether Adam had a reasonable Soul They answer Yes Then he askt them Whether he had a natural Will Stephen the Monk answers That before the Fall he had a Divine Will 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that he Willed together with God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Demetrius calls this Blasphemy for if he was a Co-Willer he was a Co-Creator also with God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and others said that this made Adam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Consubstantial with God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for he who is a Co-Willer with God is Consubstantial also And for this they alledge the Authority of St. Cyril who tells us of Christ That as he is Consubstantial 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so he Wills together with his Father 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and gives this reason for it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that one Nature has but one Will Now if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies one who Wills with another then there must be two who Will and if these two are One Will it cannot signify personally but essentially One And if they be Consubstantial have one Substance and one Will in the same Sense we know what this Council meant by One Substance no more one personal Substance than one personal Will His next Authority is the Council of Lateran under Pope Innocent III. and though the Christian World is not much beholden to that Council yet I cannot think as I find a great many Wise men do that they have made any alteration in the Substance of our Faith whatever they have done in the form of Expression That the Trinity is una summa res One Supream Being was the Doctrine of St. Austin from whom Peter Lombard had it and all the Catholick Fathers owned the Trinity to be a most simple Monad which is the same thing when at the same time they asserted against the Sabellians Three real subsisting distinct Persons each of which is the same whole undivided Divinity communicated whole and perfect from Father to Son and from Father and Son to
their Senses where their Reason and Philosophy is at a loss nay in such Matters as if they did not see them they think they could demonstrate absolutely contradictious and impossible and did Men heartily believe the Scriptures why should they not as absolutely submit their Reason to the Authority of God as to the Evidence of Sense But let them answer for this But the whole Strength of this Argument which he manages with great Triumph and Scorn dwindles into the old Socinian Sophism that one God signifies but one only Person who is God and that whatever other Unity you ascribe to three Persons each of which is by himself true and perfect God still they are three Gods for since each of these Spirits or Persons each of which is an infinite Mind or Spirit are said to be infinite all-perfect they must be said to be Gods mutually Conscious mutually inexisting and the rest but no more one God than they are one Spirit and therefore the Realists may as well pretend that by these Devices of theirs they have contrived three infinite Spirits into one Person or into one Spirit as into one God And that a disinterested Person I suppose he means such as himself and Philosophers and Jews and Pagans he might have added Sabellians and Socinians and Mahumatans will call these three Gods Now it is no wonder that this disinterested Person thinks all our Explications of the Unity of God insufficient when we so vastly differ about the Notion of one God That we are so far from proving three Divine Persons to be one God in his Sense that we reject his Notion of one God as Judaism and Heresie and herein we have the Authority of the Catholick Church on our side And here I would desire the Reader to observe that this Argument is not meerly against that Phrase of three Minds and Spirits and Substances but against three Persons each of which is in his own proper Person Mind and Spirit and Substance for three such Persons by this Authors Argument are three Gods and can no more be contrived as he prophanely speaks into one God than into one Personal Spirit But yet since he graciously owns that one infinite Almighty Spirit is one God what if we should prove these three Infinite Persons each of which is Mind and Spirit to be one and the same Infinite Eternal Spirit And yet this has always been the Faith of the Catholick Church St. Austin is express in it The Father is Spirit and the Son Spirit and the Holy Ghost Spirit but not three Spirits but one Spirit that is not Personally but Essentially One they are three Persons but one Essence essentially one Spirit And if God be perfect pure simple Essence the Unity of Essence is the Unity of God This was the Doctrine of all the Catholick Fathers and this we must insist on till our Modern Demonstrators speak more home to this Point that one Divine Essence one Self-originated Divinity though subsisting in three distinct Persons is but one God I can't discourse this at large now that may be done if there be Occasion for it another time but at present I shall only give a brief Account of the Doctrine of the Fathers as to this Point They tell us that there is but one self-originated Divinity but one Father and therefore but one God that this Eternal Unbegotten Father begets an Eternal Son of his own Nature and Substance and in like Manner that is in the same Nature and Substance the Holy Spirit Eternally proceeds from Father and Son So that there being but one Nature one Divinity communicated whole and entire and perfectly the same without Division of Substance there is but one Divine Nature but one Divinity distinctly in three not one meerly as a Species is one though they often allude also to a Specific Unity but one as one Individual though not one Singular Nature is one as one which subsists wholly indivisibly and perfectly in three is one which is one and one and one by a perfect Sameness and Identity of Nature and Substance but not three That these three are inseparable from each other never did subsist a part never can but are in each other which they call the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Circumincession which makes the Divinity one simple indivisible Monad And here we may allow a Place and he never intended any other Place for it to what Dr. Sherlock calls mutual Consciousness which is the proper and natural In-being of three each of which is Mind and Spirit which is not barely a knowing each other by an external Communication of Thoughts and Counsels which is far from being an essential natural Unity but such an inward vital Sensation as each Person has of himself which after all the Noise and Clamour about it seems to be a very sensible Representation of the natural In-being and Circumincession of the Divine Persons and as natural a Demonstration of the Unity of the Divine Essence as self-consciousness must be acknowledged to be of the Unity of a Person It is certain without this they cannot be one Energy and Power wherein the Fathers also place the Unity of the God-Head one Agent one Creator and Governour But where there is such an inseparable Union such a mutual conscious Sensation there can be but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Greg. Nyssen speaks One Motion of the Divine Will though distinctly and without Confusion in three And this makes them one Agent one Essential Will one Essential Wisdom one Essential Power so that here is in the properest Sence but one Omniscience one Omnipotence one Will c. and therefore but one God though Father Son and Holy Ghost are each of them in their own Persons Omnipotent Omniscient and whatever belongs to the Idea of God All this indeed does not make these three Divine Persons one Person and therefore not one God in the Socinian Sense of one God which is the only Deficiency this Author charges this Account of the Divine Unity with and is wisely done of him because he knows we reject this Notion of the Divine Unity and therefore here he is safe we assert that the Unity of God is not the Unity of a Person but the Unity of Nature and Essence and to confute this he gravely proves that three Persons are not and cannot be one Person But if he would have opposed us he should either have shewn First That the Account the Catholick Fathers give for for we pretend to give no other of the Unity of God does not prove the perfect Unity of the Divine Essence in three Persons or Secondly that one undivided Divinity is not one God or Thirdly that the same Eternal Essence cannot subsist whole and perfect distinctly and indivisibly in Three that is that God cannot communicate his own Nature and Substance without Division and Separation to his Son and Spirit or that God cannot have an Eternal Son and an Eternal Spirit if
tho' one would wonder how Original Mind and Wisdom should be Wise by reflex Wisdom which is but a secondary Wisdom which supposes a first and therefore as one would guess could not make the first wise but Cabassutius only says that the Father is not actually wise without the Son that is as he explains it without begetting that Eternal Word and Wisdom which is the Person of the Son I shall make no Remarks on this let the World judge of the skill or the honesty of this Author What he adds about Emanations is just to the same Tune The Eternal Generation of the Substance of the Father was by the Nicene Council represented by Light of Light and the Co-eternity of the Son with the Father by the Co-existence of Emanatory Causes and their Effects as of the Sun and its Rays which are as old as the Sun The Author like other Socinians thinking of nothing but Body and bodily and corporeal Emanations falls presently a demonstrating Let A. B. C. be three infinite Substances if B. and C. infinite Substances emane from A. an infinite Substance also it is self-evident that the two infinite Substances must exhaust and thereby in the end annihilate one infinite Substance This is a notable Demonstration as to corporeal Substances for if the whole flow out of it self it is certain it must cease to be what it was and become another Whole if it be not a Contradiction that the same Whole should flow out of it self and become another Whole which in Bodies could make no other Change in a Whole but a Change of Place for let a Whole emane if that be not Nonsense for a corporeal Whole to emane and go where it will it is it self and the same Whole still And I think it is no better Sense to talk of exhausting an infinite Substance for nothing can be exhausted but what is finite unless what is infinite can have an end and an exhausting Emanation of an infinite Substance is no better Sense than the rest for it necessarily supposes an infinite Substance with divisible Parts which may be separated from it self and from each other which I take to be a Contradiction to the very Notion of Infinity It is certain that such Emanations as exhaust their Subject can be only bodily Emanations for Bodies only have divisible and separable Parts that I defie the most absurd self-contradicting Trinitarian in the World to put so many Absurdities and Contradictions into one Sentence as he has done in this One infinite Substance whether corporeal or incorporeal can never eternally supply two infinite Substances the two infinite Substances by continual Emanations must needs dry up the One that was their Fountain To talk of an infinite corporeal Substance which he here supposes is absurd and unphilosophical for nothing can be infinite which has Parts for what is infinite by Nature can never be finite and yet if such a supposed infinite Body were divided in the middle as all Bodies may be divided this infinite corporeal Substance would prove two finite Substances for each of them would have one End where their Substance was divided to talk of such Emanations from incorporeal Substances which have no divisible Parts as can dry up an infinite Fountain which must be by a Partition and Division of Substances is another Contradiction and to dry up an infinite Fountain as I observed before is another and to supply infinite Substances by such Emanations which cannot be infinite if they want any supply is a fourth very good one But allowing this Author to rejoice in such refined Speculations I would desire to know who those are who attribute the Eternal Generation of the Son and Procession of the Holy Spirit to such eternal corporeal Effluxes and Emanations as will endanger the exhausting and drying up the infinite Fountain of the Deity If there be any such Men they are arrant Hereticks I assure him for the Catholick Fathers abhorred the thoughts of all such Emanations They did not indeed scruple the use of such Words as Emanation Probole Exition and the like whereby they signified that the Son was truly and in a proper sense of his Father's Substance and a real distinct Person from the Person of the Father but they expresly rejected all corporeal Effluxes all Division and Separation of the Father's Substance and taught that the Son is begotten whole of whole perfect God of perfect God by a real Communication but not a Transfusion of Substance not ad extra without as Creature-Generations are but within his Father as the Word is inseparable from the Mind whose Word it is So that our Author disputes here without any other Adversary but his own gross Imaginations and he may triumph securely and demonstrate these corporeal exhausting dying Emanations out of Countenance and the Realists no farther concerned than to look on and see the Event of the Combate or to wish him better employed If he would have effectually baffled these Realists he should have proved that God could not communicate his own Nature and Substance to the Son Whole of Whole without such an Emanation of his Substance as divides it from it self and separates one part of it from another as it is in bodily Exhalations This would effectually have confuted a substantial Generation for all Men grant that the Divine Substance can't be divided and this was the Objection of the Arians against the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Son 's being begotten of the Substance of the Father but the Catholick Fathers asserted a real substantial Generation without a Division of Substance and taught them to distinguish between the Generation of Body and Spirit And whoever considers how a finite created Mind can communicate its Thoughts to another which when perfectly communicated are perfectly the same whole and entire in both and but one and the same Thought though in two Minds may conceive that an infinite Mind which is a pure and simple Act infinitely more simple and indivisible than Thought it self may be able to communicate its self more perfectly than a finite Mind can communicate its Thoughts and if it can it must communicate it self whole and entire and as indivisibly as a Thought and subsist distinctly perfectly One and the same in Two SECT V. The Fourth and Fifth Arguments against a Real Trinity Answered IV. TO proceed his next Argument against the Realists is this That all Explications by which 't is endeavour'd to shew how three infinite intellectual Substances three Almighty Spirits and Minds may be one God are manifestly Deficient Now suppose this true that no Man can give a perfect Account of the Unity of the Divine Nature in Three Distinct Infinite Divine Persons must we therefore deny either the Trinity or Unity both which we say are expresly taught in Scripture because we cannot fully comprehend so Sublime and Venerable a Mystery They pay greater Deference than this to the Evidence of Sense they will believe