THE AGREEMENT OF THE Unitarians WITH THE Catholick Church BEING ALSO A full Answer to the Infamations of Mr. Edwards and the needless Exceptions of my Lords the Bishops of Chichester Worcester and Sarum and of Monsieur De Luzancy PART I. In Answer to Mr. Edwards and my Lord the Bishop of Chichester Printed in the Year MDCXCVII In Answer to Mr. Edwards MR. Edwards after having written some trifling Books some indifferent ones divers good ones and one excellent Book his Demonstration of the Existence and Providence of God found an Inclination in himself that he could not resist of contriving a New Religion or rather Impiety and of imputing it to the Socinians By whom he means it appears the Unitarians Those in England who call themselves Unitarians never were in the Sentiments of Socinus or the Socinians Notwithstanding as our Opposers have pleased themselves in calling us Socinians we have not always declined the Name because in interpreting many Texts of Scripture we cannot but approve and follow the Judgment of those Writers who are confessed by all to be excellent Criticks and very judicious As particularly and chiefly H. Grotius who it must be granted was Socinian all over and D. Erasmus who tho he lived considerably before Socinus commonly interprets that way and therefore is charged by Cardinal Bellarmine as a downright Arian Non poterat says the Cardinal Arianam causam manifestius propugnare Erasmus could not more openly espouse the Arian side than he has done in his Notes on the Fathers and the principal Texts of Scripture Pref. ad Libros 5. de Christo But tho as I said we are not Socinians nor yet Arians seeing Mr. Edwards has contrived a Creed for us under the Name of Socinians I will answer both directly and sincerely concerning the several Articles of the Creed which he pretends to be ours As to the References unto places in particular Authors where Mr. Edwards would have it thought the Articles of that Creed are affirmed I have examined some of his principal References and can say of 'em they are either Perversions or downright Falsifications of what the Authors referred to did intend Dr. Wallis whose dishonest Quotations out of the Socinians have been detested by every Body is hardly more blamable in that kind than Mr. Edwards saving that the Doctor being as one rightly tells him somewhat more than a Socinian did but foul his own Nest by his Forgeries but we cannot certainly say what is the Opinion of Mr. Edwards in the great Article in question among us But come we to the Creed which he says is ours As I promised I will answer to every Article of it sincerely and directly I. I Believe concerning the Scripture that there are Errors Mistakes and Contradictions in some places of it That the Authority of some Books of it is questionable yea that the Whole Bible has been tampered with and may be suspected to be corrupted That there are Errors Mistakes and Contradictions in the Bible was never said by any that pretended to be a Christian if by the Bible you mean the Bible as it came out of the hands of the inspired Authors of it As on the other hand that there are Errors Mistakes or Contradictions in the vulgar Copies of the Bible used by the Church of Rome for instance or the English Church was never questioned by any Learned Man of whatsoever Sect or Way and least of all can Mr. Edwards say it He has published a Book concerning the Excellency and Perfection of Scripture in which Book he finds great Fault with our English Bible he saith of it in the Title of his 13th Chapter It is Faulty and Defective in many places of the Old and New Testaments and I offer all along in this Chapter particular Emendations in order to render it more exact and compleat As to the Hebrew and Greek Copies of the Bible 't is well known some are more perfect and some less they differ very much for in the Old Testament the Hebrew Criticks have noted 800 various Readings in the New there are many more Mr. Gregory of Oxford so much esteemed and even venerated for his admirable Learning says hereupon and says it cum Licentia Superiorum There is no Book in the World that hath suffered so much by the hand of time as the Bible Preface p. 4. He judged and judged truly that tho the first Authors of the Bible were divinely instructed Men yet the Copiers Printers and Publishers in following Ages were all of them Fallible Men and some of them ill-designing Men. He knew that all the Church-Historians and Criticks have confessed or rather have warned us that some Copies of the Bible have been very much Vitiated by the hands as well of the Orthodox as of Hereticks and that 't is matter of great Difficulty at this distance of time from the Apostolick Age to ascertain the true Reading of Holy Scripture in all places of it Yet we do not say hereupon as Mr. Edwards charges us that the Bible much less as he imputes to us the Whole Bible is corrupted For as to the faulty Readings in the common Bibles of some Churches and in some Manuscript Copies the Providence of God has so watched over this Sacred Book that we know what by Information of the antient Church-Historians and the Writings of the Fathers what by the early Translations of the Bible into Greek Syriac and Latin and the concurrent Testimony of the more Antient Manuscript Copies both who they were that introduced the corrupt Readings and what is the true Reading in all Texts of weight and consequence In short as to this matter we agree with the Criticks of other Sects and Denominations that tho ill Men have often attempted they could never effect the Corruption of Holy Scripture the antient Manuscripts the first Translations the Fathers and Historians of the Church are sufficient Directors concerning the authentick and genuine Reading of doubtful Places of Holy Scripture Farther whereas Mr. Edwards would intimate that we reject divers Books of Scripture On the contrary we receive into our Canon all those Books of Scripture that are received or owned by the Church of England and we reject the Books rejected by the Church of England We know well that some Books and Parts of Books reckoned to be wrote by the Apostles or Apostolical Men were questioned nay were refused by some of the Antients but we concur with the Opinion of the present Catholick Church concerning them for the Reasons given by the Catholick Church and which I shall mention by and by in the Reply to my Lord of Chichester If Mr. Edwards would have truly represented the Opinion of the Socinians concerning the Scriptures he knew where to find it and so expressed as would have satisfied every body He knows that in their brief Notes on the Creed of Athanasius they have declared what is their Sense in very unexceptionable Words viz. The Holy Scriptures are a
allow the eternal Generation of the Logos Son or Wisdom he explains also the Incarnation or Divinity of our Saviour He makes the Incarnation of God in the human Nature to be such and to have like Effects as God's inhabiting the Cloud of Glory during some part of the Old-Testament Ages for this Cloud was worshipped he saith and he might have added is called God because of God in it But in his Letter he contends that the Indwelling of the Godhead in Christ was a vital Indwelling like that of the Soul in the Body and not an assisting Indwelling like that of Inspiration or the Gift of Tongues or of Miracles This must be candidly interpreted or it is the Apollinarian Heresy condemned in so many General Councils but I am perswaded he meant no Heterodoxy by a vital Indwelling He meant not that the Humanity lives by its Union with the Divinity which was the Doctrine of Apollinaris he intends only that the Humanity of the Lord Christ is entirely under the Impressions and Conduct of the Indwelling Divinity and receives constant Communications of Light and Impulse from it So I find him speaking at p. 107. And in the next Page thus The eternal WORD assumed the Man into an inward Oeconomy so as always to illuminate conduct and actuate it This is the clearest Thought we can have of the human Nature's subsisting by the Subsistence of the WORD that is of the Incarnation or Hypostatical Union This is far enough to be Orthodox but the Unitarians believe somewhat more they are a degree or two more Catholick and Orthodox They believe indeed with his Lordship not only that God did inspire our Saviour or so far communicated himself that the Lord Christ wrought Miracles by the Virtue that was always in him and not by a Power bestowed only occasionally and incidentally but that our Saviour's Humanity was constantly illuminated conducted and actuated by God in him and had unfading Communications of Light and Impulse from the Divinity he was entirely under the Impressions and Conduct thereof Yet as his Lordship also adds at p. 107. still leaving to the inferiour Mind to the rational Soul of Christ it s own Liberty and all its natural Powers And we reflect also on it that 't is with much more Justice and Propriety that our Saviour is called God on the account of such Indwelling of God than Moses or Solomon or even than Angels themselves who can be called Gods but only by Representation or at most on the account of God's assisting and inspiring them as occasion hapned to require But the Unitarians as I said believe somewhat more They do not appropriate the Incarnation to merely the WORD They hold that the whole Deity or Godhead dwelt in our Saviour all the Fulness of the Godhead as St. Paul speaks and not only the WORD dwelt in him bodily Not that the whole Essence of the Infinite God became commensurate to a finite Man or that there followed hereupon a real Communication of Idioms as some have heretically conceited which is in very deed a Revival of Eutychianism but only as God is every where whatsoever he is he is God perfect God in one Place in any Point of Space no less than in the whole interminable Extension of Place or Space This being the Unitarian Doctrine concerning the Incarnation hypostatical or personal Union and Divinity of our Saviour always believed and professed by 'em his Lordship had no Reason to snatch at so many Occasions of venting his Choler on the Considerer as if he were in danger of losing his Bishoprick by occasion of the Growth of Unitarianism which he mistakes to be a Departure from the Doctrine of the Catholick Church when 't is nothing but an Opposition to the Heresy of the Realists Of which this Prelate has made it appear he has not the least Tang. Of the Satisfaction as 't is stated in the Letter THE Unitarians differ somewhat from some other Catholicks in explaining the Doctrine of the Satisfaction but they approve of his Lordship's Notions concerning that Subject There are two Accounts given of the Satisfaction One of them supposes there was a Necessity that an adequate Satisfaction should be made to the Justice of God for the Sins of Men and that otherwise God could not dismiss us of the personal Punishment due by the Divine Law to our Sins The other supposes there was no Necessity of an adequate Satisfaction on our Behalf there being no such vindictive Justice essential to God whereby he is obliged to punish unless a full Satisfaction be given for Offences and Offenders The greater Number of the more learned Catholicks whether they be Protestants or Romanists hold the latter of these as well as the Unitarians do they believe It was neither necessary nor perhaps possible that a Satisfaction should be given to the Divine Justice every way equal to the eternal Punishment of an infinite Number of Sinners As my Lord of Sarum argues at p. 35. The Acts of Christ tho infinite in Value have not a strict Equality with all the Sins of so many Men every one of which is of infinite Guilt He confesses hereby that an adequate Satisfaction was not only not necessary but not possible in the nature of the thing unless there had been as many Redeemers not only as there are Sinners but as there are Sins But let us consider yet more particularly what his Lordship's Doctrine is He saith The Lord Christ was loaded with all the ill Usage that malicious Men could invent he suffer'd inexpressible Agonies both in Body and Mind and last of all was crucified But in all this he willingly offer'd himself to suffer upon our Account and in our stead which was so accepted by God that he not only raised him from the Dead and exalted him on High but gave to him even as he is Man all Power both in Heaven and Earth and offers also to the World Pardon of Sin Of this Account of the Satisfaction the Considerer said the Unitarians have ever professed it His Lordship in the Letter replies that the Racovian Catechism and the first Writers of the Socinians expresly deny the expiatory Virtue of the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross but he owns that some Socinians are come off from that Error and do own the expiatory Virtue of that Sacrifice He adds that Dr. Outram's learned Performance on this Subject is universally applauded and acquiesced in and all he saith may be satisfied by Dr. Outram's Book what is the Doctrine generally received in the Church of England But as to the poor Wretch the Considerer he is a Stranger his Lordship pronounces to the History of this Controversy His Lordship frequently discovers his great Passion for the Considerer often bestows on him his formed Compliments and this particular Compliment I suppose has the Property of most other Compliments that is to say the Speaker knows 't is more than measure while he gives it for just
measure I shall leave him and the Considerer to their Monsigneurisms and answer to the thing it self Whereas he says the Racovian Catechism denies the expiatory Virtue of the Sacrifice of Christ 't is so far from being true that this Catechism calls the Death and Oblation of Christ on the Cross Sacrificium piaculare an expiatory Sacrifice As for the first Writers of the Socinians whom also his Lordship accuses as denying that the Sacrifice of Christ was expiatory those first Writers he may please to know were the very Authors of the Racovian Catechism This Catechism which is an Abridgment and Defence of the Socinian Doctrine was first written by Smalcius and other first Writers and Preachers among the Socinians and has been improved by continual Additions till last of all it was published about 16 Years since by Benedict Wissowatius with the Annotations of all the most considerable Writers of the Socinian way But the Unitarians must needs be glad to hear his Lordship who so well understands the History of this Controversy refer us to Dr. Outram's Book as an applauded and generally-received Performance and containing the undoubted Doctrine of the Church of England concerning the Sacrifice of Christ For the Explication of the Doctrine of the Satisfaction first hinted by Grotius in his Notes on his Books de Jure Belli Pacis and again on the New Testament and more fully explained by Ruarus and Sclichtingius in their Epistles I say the Explication of the Doctrine of the Satisfaction by these leading Unitarians is so plainly asserted and so fully vindicated by Dr. Outram that 't is good News that the Church of England as his Lordship and I believe very truly assures us doth not only universally receive but applaud it Dr. Outram was as much an Unitarian in the Doctrine of the Trinity the Incarnation and the Satisfaction as the Compilers of the Racovian Catechism but to establish his Doctrine he saw it was necessary to set it on another Foundation and to express it in other Terms than Socinus and Crellius had done He no more believed that the Oblation of the Lord Christ on the Cross was an adequate Satisfaction to God's Justice for the Sins of Men than even Socinus or Crellius did Tho he contends that the Lord Christ underwent poenam vicariam i. e. a Punishment in our stead which Expression as it is intended by the more rigid Calvinists was disliked and opposed by Socinus and Crellius yet it never enter'd into his mind that Christ so suffered in our stead as to be consider'd by God as having our Guilt or as undergoing a Punishment equivalent thereto On which two Points and not on the Words in our stead as his Lordship imagines our whole Controversy with some others especially the Calvinist Writers turns In short his Lordship Dr. Outram and other Catholick Writers who approve not the Notions of some School-Divines and some rigid Calvinists believe neither more nor less concerning the Sacrifice by the Lord Christ than the Men of the Racovian way do All these alike consider our Saviour as well in the Sufferings of his whole Life and in his extraordinary Agonies in the Garden as in his Passion on the Cross as suffering for us and in our stead his Life and Death had both of 'em the expiatory Virtue which his Lordship thinks the Unitarians deny of both And all these no less agree against some Calvinists and divers Metaphysicians who follow the Schools that the Oblation made by Christ was not an adequate Satisfaction to God's Justice it was rather an Application to his Mercy They agree he did not so suffer in our stead as to take on him our Guilt or to undergo a Punishment equivalent to our Sins no nor to undergo Punishment properly so called but only in a popular Sense of the Word Punishment For Punishment properly so called is the Evil of Suffering inflicted on a guilty Person for the evil of doing but the Lord Christ having done no Evil nor being in any Sense a guilty Person he cannot properly be said to be punisht but to suffer And for the Suffering in our stead this also is rather tolerable and passable than proper but it may be well admitted in this Sense which is the Sense of the Catholick Church viz. that If the Lord Christ had not suffered we the actual Offenders should have been punisht Briefly his Lordship has imagin'd a Controversy where there is really none and while he is a Catholick he must continue an Unitarian In Answer to the Four Letters by Mr. H. De Luzancy To the Publisher SIR I Have read the 4 Letters of Mr. De Luzancy against the Unitarians and as you desire will make some Answer to them His Preface makes two Attacks telling them 1. The Consent of the whole Christian World must be a strong Inducement to a modest Unitarian to mistrust all his Arguments To oppose all that has been or is great and good in the Church of God is too much for the most presuming Disputant The Case then as Mr. L. states it is one side has Argument the other has Authority or Number The Side or Party that has nothing but Argument ought not to presume on their Reasons against the Authority of the whole World or as he corrects himself upon second Thoughts all that is great and good in the Church If Mr. L. has no better way of deciding these Controversies how do I fear they will never be ended The Unitarians will surely deny that all the Christian World or so much as all that is great and good in the Church is against them they will pretend that themselves are a part of the Christian World and for great and good they need not to say it of themselves the Ablest of their great and good Opposers have often said it of them They will say farther that in a Clash between Argument and Number the whole World and all that is great in it when weighed against but one Argument is as if you had put nothing at all into the Scale they will certainly abide by it that Argument can be repelled by nothing but Argument as Diamonds are cut only by Diamonds I advise Mr. L. who urges against us all the World to consider a little of this Passage which he will find in a Treatise in the 2d Tome of the Works of Athanasius They are to be pitied who judg of a Doctrine by the numbers of those who profess it Phineas Lot Noah St. Stephen had the Multitude against 'em yet what honest Man would not rather be of their side than of the World's When you object to me Multitude you do but show the great extent of Wickedness and the great number of the Miserable 2. His next Blow is that Faith and Reason are two things what is the Object of Faith cannot be the Object of Reason Nor is it sufferable to reject the Belief of the Mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation because our narrow
and Spirit without Division or Separation which is Orthodoxy We ought therefore to say Dr. Sherlock has only contradicted himself but is not a Heretick He holds what indeed is Heresy three Substances three Minds and three Spirits but he holds also the Truth one individual Substance one Deity His Lordship touches upon this divers times as well in his Book as in his Preface nay he is so satisfied with it that at p. 107. he cannot he saith now see what is the difference between Dr. S th and his Nominals and Dr. Sherlock and the Realists The short of this Defence is that if one part of a Contradiction is true and orthodox the other false and heretical the Person affirming it shall be denominated not from his Heresy but from the orthodox Part of his Contradiction For my part I very readily agree to this charitable way of bringing off the Dr. but then let the Charity be truly Catholick let us extend it to others as well as to him and else it is not Charity but Partiality A Motley of Heresy and Orthodoxy his Lordship says is to be named a parte potiori from the sound part without reckning at all of the unsound but then I pray let Philoponus Joachim and Gentilis be judged by the same Law For they said as the Doctor does three infinite Substances three eternal Minds and Spirits and they asserted also as he does one Deity one Essence and one Substance by the mutual Inexistence of the Persons the Subordination of the second and third to the first and the concurrence of all of them to the Making and Government of the World while Dr. Sherlock resolves the whole Unity of the Deity and of the Divine Substance into only the mutual Consciousness of the three Personal Gods And this not only in all his former Books but in his last Pamphlet or the Distinction between Nominal and Real Trinitarians examined in Answer to the Disinterested A Book so monstrously erroneous that if it escapes all other hands I think verily his Second against the Jesuit Sabrand would take up Arms against him the Foot-boy would detect and expose his gross Heterodoxies We have heard his Lordship's way of ending all Controversies concerning the Blessed Trinity that is to say among Friends Persons of the same Church and Communion namely if they will but say what all have always said even Arius Philoponus Dr. Sherlock and Socinus that there is but one Deity and one Divine Substance let 'em contradict this as much as they will provided they do not absolutely and in Terms renounce it they shall be Catholicks Dr. Pain in his Letter to my Lord the Bp. of R. has much the same Salvo For after he had said Postscr p. 25. that God or the Trinity is an Original Eternal Mind with an Eternal Logos Wisdom or Substantial Ennoia or Knowledg and an Eternal Divine Spirit proceeding from both He concludes p. 26. that whosoever believes this Trinity whether with or without Explications whether with right or with wrong Explications he is undoubtedly Orthodox And at p. 11. he commends the wise Bishops of the Roman Church who tho they have Plenitude of Ecclesiastical Authority suffer the Jesuits and other Learned Men to vent their different Sentiments in these high Questions without interposing much less censuring either Party so long as they subscribe and consent to the general Doctrine of the Church They allow their Writers to say there are three Gods in a Personal Sense or three Personal Gods and to profess three Eternals and three Omnipotents But then he saith this Favour is extended only to Friends to one another to Sons of the Church for if Men of another Communion make the least Trip in explaining what is above all Explication nay is incomprehensible and unintelligible immediately they shall be charged with Blasphemy and Atheism He not obscurely intimates that the like Christian Charity Love and good Will so he speaks p. 13. should be used among Protestants especially among Clergy-men who are of the same Faith If our Friend S th accords to this so will we for we are of the same Faith with the English Church for the Church of England never believed or taught three Eternal All-perfect Minds and Spirits the denial of which is the only Heresy of which we are guilty we submit to all other Explications of the Trinity tho as we have said we utterly dislike some Words and Ways of expressing them His Lordship has also reprinted his Book concerning the Satisfaction with a new Preface to it What he hath affirmed there concerning that Point more than has been granted and assented to in these and 20 more publick Papers is not the Doctrine either of the Catholick Church or of the Church of England 't is only the unauthorised Opinion and Fancy of particular Writers who are as various about those Matters as they are about most others My Conclusion Sir seeing we have been so roughly as well as unjustly treated by these Antagonists shall be only to your self That I am With much Respect and Affection Yours March 10. 1696. FINIS