An ACCURATE EXAMINATION OF THE Principal Texts Usually alledged for The Divinity of our Saviour AND For the Satisfaction by him made to the Justice of God for the Sins of Men Occasioned by a BOOK of Mr. L. Milbourn CALLED Mysteries in Religion vindicated London Printed in the Year 1692. THE PREFACE TO Mr. L. MILBOVRN SIR I Began to read your Book with very close attention and regard but when I had gone over some part of it I perceived you were not so qualified that you might reasonably undertake to intermeddle in these Questions or deserve to be heard concerning them If in defect of other necessary Endowments of a Writer you please your self however in the bulkiness of your Book you may be advised for the time to come that on the contrary every Trifle is so much the better by how much the shorter it is and that a verbose Trifler is nauseous even to Friends In your Dedication you say the Bishops ought to use a just Severity against and to frown effectually upon such whom the late Act of Toleration excludes from all Benefit thereby that is they ought to fall to persecuting the Socinians for the supposed Errors of their Conscience Truly Sir we are beholden to you But what if the Socinians against whom you publickly excite the Bishops should write the Farce of your Life They know very well the several Scenes of it and the Part you have acted at Pembr Hall at London and afterwards at Yarmouth from whence 't is said you ran away Are you not aware that it were easy for them to make you a Town-talk as you have made your self a Country-talk and at best withdrew your self Your Preface has two Parts The First is an Apology for your Book the other is taken up in conplementing T. F. I will speak briefly to both I. That you have said but a little in a great deal that the Parts of your Book are ill put together that you have been impertinent in diverting to Matters that were beside your Text and Vndertaking all these you confess but you excuse the Meanness of your Performance by your Poverty and your Poverty you lay to the Charge of the People of Yarmouth who could not you say be made sensible of your Learning and Worth that is the meaning of what you have said at Pag. 1. of your Preface But such as know Yarmouth how populous and wealthy it is will not be perswaded out of it but that a Person of no more Learning or Parts than L. M. were he withal but Modest Peaceable and Exemplary might live at Yarmouth in quality of their Minister very handsomly and comfortably and besides be esteem'd and belov'd They tell us that seeing your Sermons against us have been so little liked at their Majesty's good Town of Yarmouth we ought to make trial how that discerning People will entertain our Pamphlets they have already refused the Evil there is therefore reasonable hope that they will chuse the Good and will rejoice in it The second Part of your Preface is all Complement on T. F. Thus you begin calling him pert Smatterer in Ignorance so says the Reverend Mr. L. M. and this was the best he could say when he undertook to give a Character of T. F. But I find that the most Reverend are in a very different Story concerning this Gentleman The Metropolitan of all England thought fit to say of him That Worthy and Useful Citizen Mr. T. F. Fun. Sermon on Mr. Gouge p. 63. What may be the Reason that T. F. is drawn in such different Colours I think 't is not hard to find the Reason Some because they heartily love God and reverence Vertue and Well-doing can think and speak respectfully even of those from whom they differ very widely in their Sentiments about the controverted Points of Christianity for God's sake they can cordially smile upon a good Man though they think him in an Error and they are of Opinion because the Holy Scriptures have said it that fervent Charity is greater than Faith But others measuring all Persons and Things by only the narrow Interests of themselves and their Party and wholly excluding God and the relation to him rail against their Adversaries giving all Men to the Devil that are of a Belief contrary to theirs Which brings to mind what Mr. Calvin has observed Vt quisque eorum pro ventre est maximè sollicitus ita pro fide suâ deprehenditur Bellator acerrimus i. e. As any of them are more concerned and afraid for their Bellies so he is found to bawl and rail loudest on behalf of his own particular Faith and Party Calv. Praef. ad Institut p. 7. Well but what might be the very meaning of this Witticism on T. F. pert Smatterer in Ignorance I suppose the meaning is T. F. has had his Education at London not at Cambridg or Oxford he knows nothing of Predicables Predicaments and Syllogisms nor has ever learned there to drink the third or fourth Bottle for his own share What an unhappy Education was this that his Friends took no care to make him a Fool and a Debauch that the Gifts and Impressions of God and Nature have not been effaced by a sort of Institution which sometimes to make a Scholar defaces both the Man and the Christian T. F. has only Reason and good Sense how unlucky was it that he should not destroy them by Logick and Metaphysicks However I am of Opinion T. F. will make his natural Talents go as far and do him as much Service and Credit as Logick and Metaphysicks and skill of the Bottle will do for L. M. or for his Cause The next Charge upon him is in these words The Socinians Hawker to disperse their new-fangled Divinity Hawker of all Men living L. M. should have forbore this word Hawker unless he has forgot because 't is a good while since how unluckily the hawking off Books succeeded with himself in a certain place which at present I forbear to name See Sir we can be affronted and abused without making haste to revenge our selves But why is our Divinity new-fangled It hath two such Marks of Antiquity by confession of our very Opposers that could they show either of them for their Divinity we would make little difficulty of coming over to their Party For first 't is acknowledged by the most Learned of our Opposers that the Patriarchal Ages and the Church of the Old Testament never knew the Doctrine of the Trinity We are confess'd by our Adversaries to believe concerning God as the Patriarchs and Prophets believed namely that there is but one who is God or that God is but one Person Secondly The Apostles Creed the only Monument of true Antiquity besides the Bible which the Christian Church has is owned too to be wholly Vnitarian for it gives the Appellation God to only the Almighty Father Maker of Heaven and Earth and speaks of our Saviour under no other Characters but those
and Erasmus translate here According to this Rendring our Saviour is not here called God over all but the Apostle gives Thanks to God over all for his unspeakable Gift our Lord Christ Our Author saith that if there be any Translations of this Text which favour the Socinians they are not much to be regarded But this is an Answer fitter for an Old Woman to make than for a Writer in these Questions Seeing He undertakes to confute the Socinians he ought to have shown that the Translation which confirms their Doctrine is some-way faulty He should have answered the Critical Reason which Erasmus and Curcellaeus give of their Translation They observe that if the words God over all had been intended of our Lord Christ the Apostle should have said in the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and I doubt not that our Author was aware that those Critics were in the right and therefore he willingly overlook'd both the Translation and the Reason of it If you Sir say to me this being a Critical Dispute how should an Vnlearned Man be able to judg which of the two Senses was intended by the Apostle What Ground can such a one have to say the Trinitarian Translation is not Good Yes he is as much qualified to judg as the most Learned For seeing the words may be confessedly by both Parcies rendred two ways he may be sure that is the true Reading and Rendring which agrees with Evident Reason and with the rest of Scripture both which allow of but one Person who is God over all and if there were more such Persons there must of necessity be more Gods This Reasoning directs him which Side he is to take not only in this Question but in all other Questions Whatsoever the Question is if a Text or Texts be alledged that may be translated several ways that is the true Translation which is firmed by evident Reason and other clear Texts and that is a false Translation which would introduce an Opinion contrary to Reason or to other indisputable Texts Therefore the Faith of the Unlearned may be as certain and well-grounded as the Faith of the greatest Critic for either other clear and indisputable Texts or a demonstrative Reason presents it self and dissolves the Difficulties And if this were not so it would not be the Duty of the Unlearned nay 't would be contrary to their Duty to be of any Perswasion or Party at all such must neither be Protestants nor Papists Socinians nor Trinitarians Remonstrants nor Calvinists nor of any other Sect because of this Pretence that they cannot make a critical Judgment of different Translations But no Party will dare to say this therefore say I the Unlearned may and have a right to be of a particular Side and Perswasion on this Account that by help of clear Texts or of evident Reason they may in all Questions easily discern which side they ought to take I will add that oft-times the Vnprejudiced and Judicious unlearned Person sees farther and clearer than the Interessed Prejudiced and Vnjudicious Critic or other Learned Person But of this I have said enough in that General Preface to some of our Pamphlets which has this Title An Exhortation to a Serious and Impartial Enquiry where I show that this is the very Principle on which the Reformation proceeded and that in taking it away the Reformation must fall and we must all return to Rome His last Scripture-Allegation is from Phil. 2.5 c. Let this Mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus who being in the Form of God thought it not robbery to be equal with God but made himself of no reputation and took on him the Form of a Servant and was made in the Likeness of Man and being found in fashion as a Man he humbled himself and became obedient unto Death even the Death of the Cross Wherefore God hath highly exalted him and given him a Name above every Name Mr. Misb has said but very little on this Context Others of his Parcy have made advantage of almost every Clause thereof The Lord Christ say they was in the Form of God What can that mean but that He was God for the Form of a thing is the very Nature of it And that this is a true Interpretation we certainly know by the next words which say He thought it not robbery to be equal with God Had He not been God it had been the greatest Robbery and Sacrilege possible to think himself equal with God 'T is true He humbled himself and took on him the Form of a Servant and was made in the likeness of Men and was found in fashion as a Man and became obedient to the Death of the Cross But even these very Expressions are such as plainly intimate that all this was nothing else but his Condescension He sloop'd to these things only because for great and weighty Reasons He was pleased so to do Of those Reasons or Ends the Apostle here mentions one to set us an Example Let that Mind saith he be in you which was in Christ Jesus who being so Great a Person yet humbled himself to take the Form of a Servant and was made in the likeness of Man I will here Sir tell you a Story A certain Country-man that hapned to live in a Parish where the Minister used to insist very often on these Questions about the Divinity and the Incarnation of our Saviour turned down in his Bible the Proofs alledged by his Minister and being a Man though of no Learning yet of a Good Capacity he found at length how to satisfy himself of the Insufficiency of all the Minister's Proofs on be half of the Divinity of our Saviour only he was puzled with this Context out of the Philippians that Christ was in the Form of God and thought it not robbery to be equal with God c. After much thinking he imagined that he could give a reasonable Account even of this Context all but that one Expression He thought it not robbery to be equal with God Here he stuck for if Christ be equal with God sure he is as the Church says a Person of God or of the Deity and the Trinitarian Doctrine must be true At length it came into his mind that there might be some Error in the Translation and therefore he ask'd his Minister Whether the words were altogether so in the true Bible so he called the Original Greek as they are in the English Bible I suspect says he that the word It in this Clause he thought it not robbery to be equal with God is not in what you use to call the Original and out of which you often correct our way of reading in the English Bibles I judg that the Apostle said only He Christ thought not robbery to be equal with God The Minister was forced to confess that It was not in the Greek and that it should have been printed as the words of
of a Man describing his Conception or Generation by the Holy Ghost or Power of God in the Womb of Holy Mary declaring that he died was buried rose again and was exalted to the right Hand of God that is to be next unto God all which is a denying him to be God It says no more of the Holy Ghost than it says of the Holy Catholick Church I believe in the Holy Ghost I believe in the Holy Catholick Church so all know this Creed is read in the Original Greek Your last fling at T. F. is to this purpose tho after a scurrilous fashion that the Socinians have made choice of him to disperse their Pamphlets That a Person so much concerned and imployed in the disposal of Charity might keep the Ballance even between Heaven and Hell and while he supports Mens Bodies might pervert and poison their Souls 'T is well Sir but what will your Wisdomship advise in the case Shall we turn this dangerous Man out of the gainful Imployment of neglecting his own Business and losing his Time to be an Instrument of Good to the Poor and Necessitous And let me ask you this Question Do you really think that this Gentleman ever endeavoured to proselyte to his particular Perswasion any of the Objects of Charity with whom he is concerned Does he think you seek to gather a Church out of the Hospitals the Prisons the Corners of Streets or of such Persons as are ready to perish for want of Bread or Clothes If you your self do not so think as you are challenged to give but one single Instance of what you would insinuate to your Head you are an ill Man to make that the subject of your Scurrility which should have been of your Praises and Commendations Doth the Age Sir so abound with Men who make it any part of their business to minister to the Wants of others that it should be advisable to discourage such Persons by false and scandalous Innuendo's But I am with-held by a particular Charge as I am told from him from doing him that Right against your Reproaches which I thought to be due to his Exemplary Industry and particular Dexterity in solliciting and managing the Cause and Interests of the Poor He saith if what he doth in that matter will not defend it self he is content to be without a Defence You conclude with submitting ALL that you have written to the Censure and Correction of Holy Mother-Church I acknowledg the Language of Babylon but was it convenient that a Presbyter of the Church of England as you write your self should thus publish to the whole World that he has neither Faith nor Religion I mean of his own but only what Mother Church shall prescribe to him as the terms of Preferment He propounds here in a Book of 800 Pages the Doctrines of the Trinity and the Satisfaction as Essential Articles of the Christian Religion and such as must be believed or if you 'll believe him you shall without doubt perish everlastingly He pretends he has proved these Doctrines by Demonstrations of Reason and by Testimonies of Holy Scripture and of all Antiquity Well does he himself believe what he has written Not a Tittle of it he says unless Mother Church approves of it he submits ALL Faith and Proofs to the Censure and Correction of his Holy Mother let her hang or save he submits This is the Man with whom we have to deal without Faith and without Conscience unless as the Church directs nay and he dares profess too to be otherwise without either Neither is L. M. alone but there are many others that believe their Paradoxes no more than we do but they subdue first their Consciences and afterwards their Minds to the Sophistries usually alledged to prove them so long as Holy Mother Church which can dispose of their Fortunes in the World recommends this Belief as the condition of holding a Parsonage or Vicarage or of getting a Deanary or Prebend On the same Conditions Mother Shipton should be as sacred and infallible with them as Mother Church and they would believe the Kingdom of Oberon and the Territories of Fairy-Land and had they been born Papists Transubstantiation should have been reckoned among the holy Mysteries which Faith must imbrace tho Reason craz'd they say since the Fall of Adam disclaims and renounces them But who is Holy Mother-Church to whom they pay such Profound Submissions I meet with her in Story some hundreds of Years past she seems to be such a one as the Scots imagin'd Queen Elizabeth to be I mean as uncertain and vivacious The Scots thought their King should never succeed to the Crown of England for Queen Elizabeth say they is not a particular Woman But the Lords of the Council in England call an old Woman Queen Elizabeth and so long as there is an old Woman in England they will never want a Queen Elizabeth But the worst thing to my Fancy in Holy Mother-Church is this that she is such an Individuum Vagum in one place she is this thing in another she is the just contrary she is not the same in England for instance that she is at Rome or at Geneva or in Germany and the two Northern Kingdoms or in the Provinces of the Levant in all these places she is so different a Person that she mortally hates and furiously persecutes her own self I find just such another Fantasm haunting the chosen Nation as is now meant by Mother Church and it was in as much regard with two sorts of People the Designing and the Weak as Mother Church is now with the like sorts of Men and Women Jer. 7.4 Trust not in vain words saying The Temple of the Lord The Temple of the Lord The Temple of the Lord are these By which they intended what some now do when they say Mother-Church Mother-Church Mother-Church but the Prophet ventures to call them vain words i. e. a lying and unprofitable Pretence But after all that Reverence which any pretend to have for this Holy Mother 't is certain there is nothing really meant by our Holy Mother the Church but only the strongest side or the prevailing Party And all the mighty Complements Men use to this blessed Mother are nothing else but their Wit or their Fears They find themselves the Slaves of an usurping Faction in the Church which is able to constrain them to profess any thing tho never so contradictory and absurd therefore the Witty presently list themselves of the Party call themselves her Sons and Children and subscribe and swear to all she propounds In others their Dread and Awe turns into real Reverence or rather Superstition and they act and believe as they are commanded without desiring or caring to reflect upon the Causes which first biassed their Minds to this Obedience but those Causes were originally nothing else but the Power and Wealth of the Holy Mother that is as was said of the strongest side But there is another
Made and Measured by the Motion of the Sun and other Heavenly Bodies and that Duration is by them called Eternity which preceded those Bodies and the Motions which make Time Therefore when they call the Son Coeternal which I think is not found in all their Writings above once or twice they do not mean that He was Really and Actually Coexistent with the Father from all Eternity But 't is their Intention to say He was made by the Father in that Duration which Philosophy calls Eternity some space before the World was made that he might be the Father's Instrument and Minister in creating all things Hereby they acknowledg that the Son was in some sense a Creator and God but it was only as He was the Father's Minister Instrument and Servant those are the Terms they use in making all things He was a Creator and God with respect to all other Creatures but with respect say they to the true and most high God He is only a Servant and a Creature In a word the Ante-Nicen Fathers i. e. those of the first 325 Years whose Works have been suffered to be extant neither held as the Unitarians do that the Lord Christ began to have a Being when He was born of the Virgin nor as the Church now does that He was true God and always actually Coexistent with God but they held with the Arrians that He was Created Begotten or Made for these are with them equivalent Terms in that Tract or Duration which is called not Time but Eternity and that He was the Father's Servant and Instrument in making first the Holy Ghost then the rest of the Creation This is that which is granted by Petavius Huetius Mornay Erasmus Grotius and other Criticks on the Fathers not as our Author supposes that those Fathers held the Doctrine concerning God and our Lord Christ that is now called Socinianism But though this be so yet we doubt not that we are able to prove that the general Body of Christians and an incompâ—â—able majority of their Learned Men believed as the Unitarians now do till about the Times of Victor and Zephiâ—in Bishops of Rome that is till toward the Year of our Lord 180. It has not availed our Opposers that they have suppress'd the works of those most Ancient Fathers who are known and confess'd to have been Unitarians such as Aquila Symmachus and Theadotion who so excellently translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek and Lucianus who restored the Greek Copiet to their first Integrity Artemas and Theodorus Men noted by their Adversaries to have been incomparably Learned and ancienter than any of the Orthodox Fathers as we now call them Paul also Patriarch of Antioch Photinus Archbishop of Sirmium Marcellus Bishop of Ancyra I say it has not advantaged our Opposers that they have destroyed the Writings of these Fathers for the Fathers that are still extant give us an account of the Opinion of those other Fathers thô concealing their Arguments Moreover they confess that those first Unitarians claimed to be the true Successors and Descendents of the Apostles and that they derived their Doctrine from them Euseb Hist Eccl. l. 5. c. 28. Besides this the only Creed of all the Churches till the Council of Nice and which is called the Aposties Creed because it contains the true Apostolick Tradition is confest on all hands to be wholly Vnitarian That Creed acknowledges but one God the Father Almighty and but one only Son of God even him saith this Creed who was conceived generated or begotten by the Holy Ghost on the Virgin Mary not as our Opposers feign an Eternal Son begotten of the Essence of God his Father But I will not Sir now dilate on these things it shall be done in a Treatise by it self if it please God to give me Leisure and Opportunity in the mean time I appeal to those Learned Criticks Petavius and others before mentioned that the ordinary pretence of such Scriblers and Sciolists as our Author is utterly false and ungrounded even this that the Ante-nicen Fathers held the Doctrine of the Trinity as the Church now does As for the Scoffs of Lucian on the God who is Three and One One and Three not having the Book by me I cannot tell whether he meant to jeer the Trinity of the Platonick Philosophers or of the Christians I conjecture he means the former Neither was he so ancient as some give out the best Criticks make him to have flourish'd about the Year of our Lord 176 when the new Doctrines were grown very rise and common The Account that Pliny gives of the Christians to the Emperor Trajan is ancient but in the particular objected to us very uncertain The Copies of Pliny in Tertullian's Time exprest the matter thus Ad canendum Christo Deo They sang Psalms of Praise to Christ and to God not ut Deo to Christ as God The very words of Tertullian are these Pliny in his Letter to Trajan objects nothing else to them but that they were obstinate in refusing to sactifice and that they held caetus ante lucanos ad canendam Christo Dio Meetings before day to sing to Christ and to God Tertul. Apol. adv Gentes c. 3. I make use of an Edition of Tertullian with the Notes of all the Criticks published by Rigaltius at Paris yet none of them dislikes the Reading by Tertullian or prefers to it the Modern Reading But admitting now that we were to read ut Deo as to a God Pliny in these words might speak only his own Opinion not the Opinion of the Christians He might conjecture that because the Christians sang certain Compositions in Praise of the Lord Christ in their Meetings therefore they held him to be a God Or ut Deo may be translated as if he were a God so as to make this sense They sing Psalms and Hymns to Christ as if he were a God whom themselves confess to have been a Man for Hymns are not usually sung but only to the Gods However it be this Citation makes not much to the purpose at most it only proves that even in Pliny's time some began to corrupt the Evangelical Doctrine concerning the Unity of God CHPA X. On divers Passages out of the Evangelists and Epistles FRom the Fathers our Author returns again to the Scriptures and advances an Argument to prove our Saviour's Divinity from those Texts which seem to intimate that the Lord Christ is to be prayed unto and also from others in which 't is said that even while he was upon Earth he was worshipped by some and did not refuse the worship paid to him He saith no Person can be the proper Object of Divine Worship such as Prayer is but He who is Omniscient Omnipotent and Omnipresent and that if the Socinians ascribe these Properties to our Saviour they make him to be true God That Jesus Christ was worshipped and that he ought to be worshipped he proves from these Texts Phil. 2.9 10