himself so often as he does It is clear therefore on the one side That the Acts of Understanding Memory and Will neither are nor can be Acts of Mutual Consciousness and on the other that Father Son and Holy Ghost do every one of them Exert Acts of Mutual Consciousness upon one another and consequently that as to this thing there is a total entire difference between both sides of the Comparison For which cause it is to be hoped that this Author himself will henceforth Consult the Credit of his own Reason so far as to give over proving That the Unity of the Divine Nature in the three Blessed Persons consists wholly and solely in the Mutual Consciousness of the said Persons by Examples taken from such Created Things as are by no means Mutually Conscious to one another But to manifest yet further the Vanity of this his Allegation out of St. Austin I shall plainly shew wherein this Father placed the Unity of the Three Divine Persons And that in short is in the Unity of their Nature Essence and Substance This is the Catholick Faith says he that we believe Father Son and Holy Ghost to be of one and the same Substance And again Let us believe in the Father Son and Holy Ghost These are Eternal and Unchangeable that is One God of one Substance the Eternal Trinity And moreover speaking of such as would have Three Gods to be Worshipped he adds That they know not what is the meaning of one and the same Substance and are deceived by their own Fancies and because they see Three Bodies separate in three Places they think the Substance of God is so to be understood I think it very needless to add the like Testimonies from other Fathers how numerous and full soever they may be for our Author having here quoted only St. Austin I shall confine my Answer to his Quotation and think it enough for me to over-rule an Inference from a Similitude taken out of St. Austin by a Plain Literal Unexceptionable Declaration of St. Austin's Opinion The Sum of the whole Matter is this That the thing to be proved by this Author is That the Three Divine Persons are One only by an Unity of Mutual Consciousness And to prove this he produces only a Similitude out of St. Austin and that also a Similitude taken from things in which no such thing as Mutual Consciousness is to be found By which it appears that his Argument is manifestly lame of both Legs and as such I leave it to shift for it self 5. In the fifth and last place He tells us That the Fathers also resolved the Unity of the God head in the three Divine Persons into the Unity of Principle meaning thereby that though there be three Divine Persons in the God-head Father Son and Holy Ghost yet the Father is the Original and Fountain of the Deity who begets the Son of his own Substance and from whom and the Son the Holy Ghost eternally proceeds of the same Substance with the Father and Son so that there is but one Principle and Fountain of the Deity and therefore but one God Page 128. line 6. Now all this is very true but how will our Author bring it to his purpose Why thus or not at all viz. That the Numerical Unity of Nature in the three Divine Persons by being founded in and resolved into this Unity of Principle does therefore properly consist in Mutual Consciousness This I say must be his Inference and it is a large step I confess and larger than any of the Fathers ever made Nevertheless without making it this Author must sit down short of his Point And yet if he really thinks that his Point may be concluded from hence why in the Name of Sence and Reason might he not as well have argued from Gen. 1. 1. That God created the Heavens and the Earth and that therefore the Three Divine Persons are and must be one only by an Unity of Mutual Consciousness For it would have followed every whit as well from this as from the other But since the Creation of both I believe never Man disputed as this Man does while he pretends to prove his Mutual Consciousness from the Unity of Principle in the Oeconomy of the Divine Persons And yet if he does not design to prove it from thence to what purpose is this Unity of Principle here alledged where the only Point to be proved is That the Unity of the Divine Nature in the three Persons is only an Unity of Mutual Consciousness But to come a little closer to him If this Author can make it out that the Father Communicates his Substance to the Son and the Father and the Son together Communicate the same to the Holy Ghost by one Eternal Act of Mutual Consciousness common to all three Persons then his Argument from Unity of Principle to an Unity of Nature consisting in Mutual Consciousness may signifie and conclude something but this he attempts not nor if he should would he or any Man living be ever able to prove it But he is for coming over this Argument again and tells us That as Petavius well observes it does not of it self prove the Unity that is to say the Numerical Unity of the God-head but only the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Sameness of Nature i. e. as he elsewhere explains himself the Specifick Sameness of Nature And that therefore the Fathers thought fit to add That God begets a Son not without but within Himself Page 128. line 17 c. In Answer to which Observation though it affects the Point of Mutual Consciousness the only thing now in hand no more than what he had alledged before yet in vindication both of the Fathers and of Petavius himself I must needs tell this Author That it is equally an Abuse to both For as to the Fathers it has been sufficiently proved to him That neither is there any such thing as a Specifick Unity or Sameness of Nature in the Divine Persons nor that the Fathers ever owned any such but still by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 held only a Numerical Unity of Nature and no other so that their saying That God begot a Son within himself was rather a further Explication of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than any Addition at all to it And as for Petavius whereas this Man says That he has observed That this Argumentation of the Fathers does not of it self prove the Numerical Unity of the God-head in the three Persons I averr That Petavius observes no such thing He says indeed If this Reasoning viz. from Unity of Principle were considered Absolutely and Universally it would prove rather a Specifick than a Numerical Unity of Nature and gives a Reason for it from Humane Generation But then he does by no means say That the Fathers Arguments in this Case ought to be so considered but plainly limits them to the Divine Generation as of a peculiar kind
differing from all others And thereupon no less plainly Asserts That when the Father begets the Son he Communicates to him the same Numerical Substance and Nature and says expresly That the force and strength of the Fathers Argumentation is taken from the proper Condition and Nature of the Divinity and the Divine Generation from whence they collect not any kind of Unity of Essence but only a Singular and Numerical Unity in the three Divine Persons Which he makes good by Instances from St. Athanasius and St. Hilary And this is the true state of the Case and shews That Petavius understood the Fathers whether he who takes upon him to be his Corrector and Confuter does or no. In the mean time it is shameless to insinuate in this manner that Petavius represented these Arguments of the Fathers as proving only the Specifick Sameness of Nature and not the Numerical Unity of the God-head when he plainly shews That they designed thereby to prove a Numerical Unity of Essence in the Divine Persons and nothing else But this Author seems to assume to himself a peculiar Privilege of saying what he will and of whom he will In which nevertheless I cannot but commend his Conduct as little as I like his Arguing For that as he makes so bold with so Learned and Renowned a Person as Petavius So he wisely does it now that he is laid fast in his Grave For had Petavius been living and this Man wrote his Book in the same Language in which Petavius wrote his which for a certain Reason I am pretty well satisfied he never would there is no doubt but Petavius would have tossed him and his New Notion of three distinct infinite Spirits long since in a Blanket and effectually taught him the difference of insulting over a great Man when his Head is low and when he is able to defend himself We have seen how little our Author has been able to serve himself of the fore mentioned Resolution of the Unity of the Divine Nature into an Unity of Principle by way of Argument in behalf of his Mutual Consciousness Nevertheless though it fails him as an Argument yet that he may not wholly lose it he seems desirous to cultivate it as a Notion and upon that score tells us That it needs something further both to Complete and Explain it which with reference to his own Apprehensions of it I easily believe but however I shall take some Account of what he says both as to the Completion and Explication of it And First For the Completion He tells us That Father Son and Holy Ghost are Essential to one God and that upon this Account there must be necessarily three Persons in the Unity of the God-head and can be no more As to which last clause he must give me leave to tell him That it is not the bare Essentiality of the three Persons to the God-head which proves that there can be no more than three belonging to it but it is the Peculiar Condition of the Persons which proves this without which the Essentiality of the Three would no more hinder the Essentiality of a Fourth or Fifth than the Essentiality of Two could take away the Essentiality of a Third And therefore though the Proposition laid down by him be true yet his Reason for it will not hold But one choice Passage quoted by him out of a great Father I must by no means omit viz. That upon Account of this Unity of Principle St. Austin calls the Trinity Unam quandam summam Rem Page 123. line 8. Concerning which I desire any Man living except this Author to declare freely whether he thinks that St. Austin or any one else of Sence and Learning would call three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits which are neither Numerically nor Specificully nor so much as Collectively one Unam quandam summam Rem But in the Second Place As for his Explication of the said Notion he tells us That he shall proceed by several steps and those as he would perswade us very plain and Universally acknowledged by all Page 126. lines 16 17 c. Nevertheless by his good leave I shall and must demur to two of them as by no means fit to be acknowledged by any and much less such as are acknowledged by all And they are the Third and Fourth In which he tells us That in the first place Original Mind and Wisdom and in the second That Knowledge of it self and lastly Love of it self are all of them distinct Acts and so distinct that they can never be one simple individual Act And withal that these Acts being thus distinct must be Three substantial Acts in God that is to say Three subsisting Persons By which three substantial Acts he must of necessity mean three such Acts as are three Substances Forasmuch as he adds in the very next words That there is nothing but Essence and Substance in God Page 130. line 7 8 9. to the middle of the page Now against these strange Positions I Argue thus First If the three fore-mentioned Acts are so distinct in God that they can never be one Simple Individual Act then I inferr That the said three Acts cannot possibly be one God Forasmuch as to be one God is to be one pure simple indivisible Act. And thus we see how at one step or stroke he has Ungodded the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity For these three Acts he tells us are the three Persons in the God head Though I believe no Divine before him ever affirmed a Person to be an Act or an Act a Person with how great Confidence soever and something else this Man affirms it here Secondly If those three Acts in the God-head are three distinct infinite Substances as he plainly says they are by telling us Page 130. line 19. That there is nothing but Essence and Substance in God then in the God-head there are and must be three distinct Gods or God-heads Forasmuch as an infinite Substance being properly God every distinct infinite Substance is and must be a distinct God These I affirm to be the direct unavoidable Consequences of those two short Paragraphs in Page 130. which he makes his Third and Fourth Explanatory Steps But because he may here probably bear himself upon that Maxim That there is nothing but Essence and Substance in God which yet by the way might better become any one to plead than himself let me tell him That that Proposition is not absolutely and in all Sences true If indeed he means by it That there is no Being whether Substance or Accident in God besides his own most Pure Simple Indivisible Substance or Essence which is the commonly received sence of it it is most true But if he therefore affirms That neither are there any Modes or Relations in God this will not be granted him For in God besides Essence or Substance we assert That there is that which we call Mode Habitude and Relation And by one or
Fathers to have been not only less happy in expressing themselves about this Mystery than this Author as with great Modesty and Deference to them he often tells us they were but which is yet much worse that they were the most wretchedly unhappy in wording their own Notions of all Men who ever yet set Pen to Paper And as for this Author if Unutterable Unconceivable and Unintelligible can pass with him for Plain Easie and Intelligible it is high time for me to leave off disputing with him and either to have no more to do with him or without any further demurr to profess my self as ready to believe and grant Contradictions as he is or can be to Write them CHAP. VIII In which is set down the Ancient and generally received Doctrine of the Church concerning the Article of the Blessed Trinity as it is Delivered and Explained by Councils Fathers School-men and other later Divines together with a Vindication of the said Doctrine so Explained from this Author s Exceptions THough I cannot think that the Nature and Design of the Work undertook by me which was only to Animadvert upon and confute this Author's Novel Heterodox Notions about the Trinity does or can directly engage me to proceed any further or lay any Necessity upon me to give a positive Account of the Doctrine and Sence of the Church about this great Article yet since this Author in asserting his own Opinion could not be content to do it without reproaching and reflecting upon those Ancient Terms which the Church has been so long in possession of and has still thought fit to use in declaring it self upon this Subject as if instead of Explaining they served only to perplex obscure and confound it and since the Reasonableness or Unreasonableness of either Hypothesis is most likely to appear by fairly setting down one as well as the other and shewing what this Opiniator is gone off from as well as what he is gone over to I judge it neither improper nor unuseful to represent what the Church has hitherto held and taught concerning this Important Article of the Trinity as I find it in Councils Confessions Fathers School-men and other Church-Writers Ancient and Modern And in this also I must be again content to entertain my Reader only with a Tast or Specimen out of so vast a store which yet I do with very good Reason judge both satisfactory and sufficient in a Point of Divinity Universally owned received and embraced and unless by such as reject and deny the Trinity it self never Impugned or Contradicted before Now the commonly received Doctrine of the Church and Schools concerning the Blessed Trinity so far as I can judge but still with the humblest Submission to the Judgment of the Church of England in the Case is this That the Christian Faith having laid this sure Foundation that there is but one God and that there is nothing i. e. no Positive Real Being strictly and properly so called in God but what is God and lastly That there can be no Composition in the Deity with any such Positive Real Being distinct from the Deity it self and yet the Church finding in Scripture mention of three to whom distinctly the God-head does belong it has by warrant of the same Scripture Heb. 1. 3. expressed these three by the Name of Persons and stated their Personalities upon three distinct Modes of Subsistence alloted to one and the same God-head and these also distinguished from one another by three distinct Relations Concerning which we must observe That albeit according to the Reality of the Thing the Subsistence and Relation of each Person make but one Single Indivisible Mode of Being yet according to the Natural Order of conceiving Things we must conceive of the Subsistence as precedent to the Relation Forasmuch as humane Reason considers Things simply as Subsisting before it can consider them as Relating to one another But for the further Explication of the Point before us it will here be necessary to premise what is properly a Mode of Being And this the School Divines do not allow to be either a Substance or an Accident which yet makes the adequate Division of Real Beings since there is no such Being but what is contained under one of them but a Mode is properly a certain Habitude of some Being Essence or Thing whereby the said Essence or Being is determined to some particular State or Condition which barely of it self it would not be determined to And according to this account of it a Mode in Things Spiritual and Immaterial seems to have much the like reference to such kind of Beings that a Posture has to a Body to which it gives some difference or distinction without superadding any new Entity or Being to it In a word a Mode is not properly a Being either Substance or Accident but a certain affection cleaving to it and determining it from its common general Nature and indifference to something more particular as we have just now explained As for Instance in Created Beings Dependence is a Mode determining the general Nature of Being to that particular State or Condition by vertue whereof it proceeds from and is supported by another and the like may be said of Mutability Presence Absence Inherence Adherence and such like viz. That they are not Beings but Modes or Affections of Being and inseparable from it so far that they can have no Existence of their own after a separation or division from the Things or Beings to which they do belong And thus having explained in General what a Mode is we are to know That the Personalities by which the Deity stands diversified into Three Distinct Persons are by the Generality of Divines both Ancient and Modern called and accounted Modes or at least something Analogous to them since no one Thing can agree both to God and the Creature by a perfect Univocation And moreover as every Mode Essentially includes in it the Thing or Being of which it is the Mode so every Person of the Blessed Trinity by vertue ofits proper Mode of Subsistence includes in it the Godhead it self and is properly the Godhead as subsisting with and under such a certain Mode or Relation And this I affirm to be the Current Doctrine both of the Fathers and the Schools concerning the Persons of the Blessed Trinity and the constantly received Account given by them of a Divine Person so far as they pretend to Explain what such a Person is And accordingly as these Relations are Three and but Three so the Persons of the Godhead to whom they belong are so too viz. Father Son and Holy Ghost But then we must observe also That the Relations which the Godhead may sustain are of Two sorts 1st Extrinsecal and founded upon some External act issuing from God of which sort are the Relations of Creator Preserver Governour and the like to the Things Created Preserved and Governed by him Which though they leave a real effect upon
at length to be promiscuously used without any Jealousie or Suspicion and to be accepted on all hands though not presently in the same signification 3. The Third Thing which I would observe is That some of the forementioned Terms signifie Causally and some only Declaratively that is to say some import the Ground and Reason of the Distinction of the Divine Persons and some import only Marks Notes and Signs of such a Distinction Of the first sort amongst the Greeks are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and amongst the Latines Subsistentiae Modi Subsistendi Proprietates Relationes Of the Latter sort amongst the Greeks are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and amongst the Latines Notiones But for the fuller and further illustration and improvement of this Note I cannot but add the Observation of the solid and exactly Learned Forbesius viz. That of these Modes called by the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is a Four-fold Use or Effect as they sustain Four several Considerations viz. That First As Modes of subsistence they Constitute the Persons And Secondly That by the Relations which they imply and include they cause the said Persons to be referred to one another And Thirdly That as they are Properties they distinguish the Persons from each other And Lastly That as Notions they are Means and as it were Instruments whereby we are enabled in some measure to apprehend and conceive of the Divine Persons Forbesius Instruct. Hist. Theolog. Lib. 1. Cap. 35. Sect. 16. By all which it appears That the several forementioned Terms do really import but one and the same Thing differently considered according to the several Uses and Effects ascribed to it in respect of the Oeconomy of the Three Divine Persons amongst themselves 4. In the Fourth and Last place we may observe That the words most commonly and frequently used by Writers in treating of the Divine Persons are the forementioned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 amongst the Greeks And the Terms Personae Relationes Proprietates and in the latter Ages especially Subsistentiae and Modi Subsistendi amongst the Latines These Observations I thought fit to lay down for our clearer and readier Apprehension of the Expressions used by the Fathers and other Church-Writers in their Discourses about this great Article of the Christian Faith And so I proceed now to my Authorities shewing both from the Aucient and Modern use of the Terms aforesaid and more especially of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Subsistentiae Modi subsistendi that the Church has all along placed the respective Personalities of the Three Divine Persons in Three distinct Modes of Subsistence according to the Doctrine asserted by us And here I shall begin with the Greek Writers setting them down according to the Order and Age in which they Lived And first with Iustin Martyr who in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Exposition of Faith speaks thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Son says he and the Holy Ghost are not the same with the Father For the Terms Unbegotten Begotten and Proceeding are not the Names of Essence but Modes of Subsistence Iustin. Exposition fidei p. 373. Colon. Edition 1686. Again speaking of the same Terms he tells us That they are not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say not denoting the Essence but signifying the Hypostases or subsistences adding withal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That they are sufficient for us to distinguish the Persons and to shew the proper and peculiar Subsistence of Father Son and Holy Ghost by Pag. 374. And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is we ought to own or confess one God expressed to us in Father Son and Holy Ghost hereby acknowledging as they are Father Son and Holy Ghost Three Subsistences of one and the same Godhead but as they are God understanding thereby one Essence or Substance common to all the Subsistences p. 379. ibid. By all which Expressions we see Personality stated upon Subsistence Our next Testimony shall be from Athanasius who in his Treatise de Sanctissimâ Virgine Deiparâ gives this Account of his Faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is We believe in Father Son and Holy Ghost a Trinity of Hypostases or Persons having amongst them such a Distinction as admits of no Division and such an Union or Unity as is without all Confusion Athan. Tom. 1. p. 1029. Colon. Edit 1686. The Author called Dionysius the Areopagite tho by a false Title for the Areopagite lived in the first Century but this Writer in the fourth in his Book de Divinis Nominibus cap. 1. sets forth the Trinity thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Trinity so called because of its manifestation of a Divine or superlative Fecundity shewn in Three Subsistences or Persons Epiphanius also in the 62d Heresie and 3d. Paragraph gives the like account of the same 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Trinity is Numbred by Father Son and Holy Ghost not as one Thing called only by Three Names but as being in Truth Three perfect Subsistences or Persons as well as Three perfect Names In like manner Gregory Nazianzen speaks much the same Thing in his 29th Oration 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We ought says he to hold one God and to confess Three Subsistences or Three Persons each with his respective Property according to his Subsistence Greg. Nazianz. Tom. 1. P. 490. Edit Paris 1630. Gregory Nyssen upon those words in the first of Genesis Let us make man expresses himself thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God says he made man laying the stress upon the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Singular Number that you may reckon or account the Godhead to be but One But not so the Subsistences For there is a proper Subsistence of the Father a proper Subsistence of the Son and a proper Subsistence of the Holy Ghost Greg. Nyssen Tom. 1. p. 141. Edit Paris 1615. St. Basil in his Book de Spiritu Sancto Chap. 18. speaks thus of the Second Person of the Trinity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We says he never to this Day heard of a Second God but Worshipping the Son as God of God we both acknowledge the Property of the Hypostases or Persons and insist upon one Supreme Governour or Lord of all Things Bas. Tom. 2. p. 332. Edit Paris 1637. Likewise St. Cyrill of Alexandria declares himself much the same way in his third Dialogue de Trinitate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We may observe says he in one Deity a Ternary or Triplicity according to or in respect of Subsistence The same we find also in Isidorus Pelusiota Lib. 1. Epist. 247. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 There is says he One Godhead
but Three Hypostases or Subsistences This keep this hold c. Theodoret also speaks very fully upon the same Subject in his first Dialogue contr Anomaeos 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say Such Things as belong properly to the Divine Essence or Substance are in like manner common to Father Son and Holy Ghost But the Term Father is not common to them and therefore Father is no Property of the Essence but of the Subsistence or Person But now if one Thing be proper to the Hypostasis or Subsistence and there be other Properties of the Essence it follows That Essence and Hypostasis do not signifie one and the same thing And again a little after 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is The Essence or Substance of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost is common being equally and alike Immortal Incorruptible Holy and Good And for this Reason we affirm One Essence and Three Hypostases Auctarium sive Tom. 5. Theodoret. p. 286. Edit Paris 1684. Certainly nothing could with greater Evidence state the Personalities of Father Son and Holy Ghost upon Three several Subsistences than the Words here quoted out of this Father And I quote them out of him though I know the same Dialogues are inserted into Athanasius's Works but I am convinced by the reasons given by Garnerius the Learned Editor of this Auctarium that the said Dialogues cannot belong to Athanasius Next to him let us hear Basilius Seleuciensis speaking the same Thing in his first Oration upon the first Verse of the first Chapter of Genesis where upon these words Let us make Man after our own Image and Likeness he discourses thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say The Image here formed is but One but the mention here made is not of One Hypostasis or Person only but of Three For the Thing formed being the common Work of the whole Deity shews the Trinity to have been the Former thereof and so gives us one Image or Resemblance of the Trinity But if the Image of the Trinity be but One the Nature of the Hypostases or Persons must be One too For the Unity of the Image proclaims the Unity of the Substance or Essence Basil. Seleuciens Orat. 1. p. 5. Printed at Paris with Gregorius Thaumaturgus c. Anno Dom. 1622. Zacharias Sirnamed Scholasticus and sometime Metropolitan of Mitylene of the Sixth Century in his Disputation against the Philosophers who held the Eternity of the World to a certain Philosopher asking him How the Christians could acknowledg the same both a Trinity and an Unity too Makes this Answer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is We affirm a Trinity in Unity and an Unity in Trinity hereby affirming the Subsistences or Persons to be Three and the Essence or Substance to be only One Johannes Damascenus a Writer of the Eighth Century in his Third Book de Orthodoxâ fide Chap. 11. about the end of it speaks thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is The Godhead declares the Nature but the Term Father the Subsistence as Humanity does the Humane Nature but Peter the Subsistence or Person For the Term God denotes the Divine Nature in Common and equally denominates or is ascribed to each of the Hypostases or Subsistences Damascen Page 207. Edit Basil. 1575. I shall close up these particular Testimonies with some Passages in the Creed commonly called the Athanasian which I place so low because it is manifest that Athanasius was not the Author of it it being not so much as mentioned in any Antient Writer as the very Learned Dr. Cave affirms till it occurs in Theodulphus Aurelianensis who lived about the latter end of the Eighth Century Now the Passages are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in some Copies 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That is Neither confounding the Hypostases or Persons nor dividing the Substance For there is one Hypostasis of the Father another of the Son and another of the Holy Ghost but the Godhead of the Father Son and Holy Ghost is One c. And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is The whole Three Hypostases or Persons are Coeternal together and Coequal These Passages are full and plain and the Creed it self may well claim the Antiquity at least of the Eighth Century My next Authorities shall be those of the Councils But before I pass to them I cannot but observe and own to the Reader concerning some of the first of my Quotations viz. those out of Justin Martyr and that out of St. Athanasius that it has been very much questioned by some Learned Men Whether those Books from whence they are taken do really belong to the Authors to whom they are ascribed and among whose Works they are inserted or no. This I say I was not ignorant of nevertheless I thought fit to quote them by the Names under which I found them placed since many very Learned Persons and much more acquainted with the Writings of the Ancients than I pretend to be have upon several Occasions done so before me And the said Tracts are certainly of a very early date and though the Authors of them should fall a Century or two lower yet they still retain Antiquity enough to make good the Point for which I alledged them Nevertheless I must and do confess it very probable That the more distinct and exact use of the Terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as applyed to the Divine Persons did not generally and commonly take place but as by degrees the Discussion of the Arian and other the like Controversies through frequent Disputes grew to still a greater and greater Maturity And that the use of these Terms did obtain then and upon that Account I think a very considerable Argument to authorize and recommend them to all Sober and Judicious Minds And so I pass to the Testimonies of Councils concerning the same Amongst which we have here in the first place the Council of Chalcedon making a Confession or Declaration of their Faith concerning the Person of our Saviour and that both as to the Absolute undivided Unity of his Person and as to the Difference and Distinction of his Two Natures part of which Confession runs thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is We confess One and the same Lord Jesus Christ the only begotten Son of God in Two Natures without Confusion c. the difference of the said Natures being by no means destroyed by their Union but rather the property of each Nature being thereby preserved and both concurring to or meeting in One Person or Hypostasis This Account of the Chalcedon Confession we have in the Second Book of Evagrius towards the latter end of the 4th Chapter and a lively Instance it is of the Council's expressing the Personality of Christ by and stating It upon Subsistence In the next place upon Justinian's calling the second Council of
Constantinople being the Fifth General one in the Year 553 for Condemning of the Tria Capitula we have a large and Noble Confession of Faith made by that Emperour and owned and applauded by all the Council and inserted amongst the Acts of it And in this we have the Three Divine Persons several times expressed by so many 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as a Term equivalent to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and indeed importing withall the Personality or Formal Reason of the same and that so fully and plainly that nothing could or can be more so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That is We profess to Believe One Father Son and Holy Ghost Glorifying thereby a Consubstantial Trinity One Deity or Nature or Essence and Power and Authority in Three Subsistences or Persons And again to the same purpose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 We worship says he an Unity in Trinity and a Trinity in Unity having both a strange and wonderful Distinction and Union that is to say an Union or Singularity in respect of the Substance or God-head and a Trinity in respect of Properties Subsistences or Persons with several more such Passages to the same Purpose and Signification And then as for the Council it self the first Canon of it speaks thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is If any one Confess not One Nature or Substance One Power and Authority of Father Son and Holy Ghost a Coessential Trinity and One Deity to be Worshipped in Three Subsistences or persons Let such an one be Accursed In the next place we have the Sixth General Council and the Third of Constantinople called by Constantinus Pogonatus against the Monothelites in the Year 681. In the Acts of which Council Article 6. we have the Council owning the same Thing and in the same words which a little before we quoted out of the Council of Chalcedon And moreover in the Tenth Article the Council declares it self thus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. That is We believing our Lord Iesus Christ to be the True God do affirm in him Two Distinct Natures shining forth in One Subsistence or Person Agreeably to this the Council immediately following called by the Greeks 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and by the â—atines Concilium Quini Sextum Consisting chiefly of the same Persons with the former and called by the same Constantine about Ten Years after for the making of Canons about Discipline by way of Supplement to the Fifth and Sixth Councils which had made none This Council I say in the first of its Canons which is as a kind of Preface owns and applauds the Nicene Fathers for that with an Unanimous Agreement and consent of Faith they had declared and cleared up one Consubst antiality in the Three Hypostases or Subsistences of the Divine Nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. And Lastly in the Florentine Council held in the Fif teenth Century in which the Greeks with their Emperor Iohannes Palaeologus met the Latines in order to an Accord between them touching that so much controverted Article about the Procession of the Holy Ghost In this Council Isay we have the Greeks also expressing the Personality of the Holy Ghost by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For whereas the Latines affirmed that the Holy Ghost the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say stream or flow from the Son the Greeks desired them to explain what they meant by that Expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and whether they understood that he derived both his Essence and Personality from him and that in these words very significant to our purpose 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 By which we see that even with these Modern Greeks also the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is all one with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie Essence and Person as applyed to the Persons of the Blessed Trinity Hist. Concil Florent in the last Chapter and Question 7. of Section 8. Pag. 246. set forth by Dr. Creyghton 1660. I cannot think it requisite to quote any Thing more from the Greeks upon this Subject it being as clear as the Day that both Fathers and Councils stated the Personalities of Father Son and Holy Ghost upon Three distinct Hypostases or Subsistences of one and the same God-head Essence or Substance distinguished thereby into Three Persons And so I pass from the Greeks to the Latines whom we shall find giving an Account of the same partly by subsistences and Modes of subsistence and partly by Relations But not equally by both in all Ages of the Church For we have before shewn That there was a long and sharp Contest between the Greeks and the Latines about the Word Hypostasis and that the Latines dreaded the use of it as knowing no other Latin Word to render it by but Substantia which they could by no means ascribe plurally to God and as for the Word Subsistentia that was not then accounted properly Latin and it was but upon this occasion and to fence against the Ambiguity of the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that it came at length into use amongst the Latines And even after all it must be yet further confessed That notwithstanding that fair foundation of Accord between the Greeks and Latines laid by the forementioned Council of Alexandria and the hearty Endeavours both of Athanasius and of Gregory Nazianzen after him to accommodate the business between them the Latines were not so ready to come over to the Greeks in the free use of the Word Hypostasis as the Greeks were to comply withthe Latines in the use of the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 answering to their Persona And therefore in vain would any one seek for an Explication of the Divine Persons in the Trinity by the Terms Subsistentiae or Modi Subsistendi in the earlier Latin Writers such as Tertullian about the latter end of the second Century and St. Cyprian about themiddle of the Third and Lactantius about the latter end of the same and the beginning of the Fourth Nevertheless find it we do in the Writers of the following Ages And how and in what sence it was used by them shall be now considered And here we will begin with St. Ambrose who is full and clear in the case in his Book in Symbolum Apostolicum Cap. 2. Tom. 2. in these Words Ità ergò rectum Catholicum est ut unum Deum secundùm Unitatem Substantiae fateamur Patrem Filium Spiritum Sanctum in suâ quemque Subsistentiâ sentiamus A Passage so very plain that nothing certainly could more effectually declare That this Father reckoned the Personalities of the Three Divine Persons to consist in their several and respective Subsistences The next whom we shall alledge is St. Hilary who flourished in the Fourth Century and wrote Twelve Books
height of Impudence and Ignorance too to say That that Word confounds our Thoughts Notions and Conceptions of God which all Divines and Philosophers in all Places and Ages have constantly express'd the Nature of God by And which after the Notion of his bare Existence does next in order offer it self to the Mind of Man in its Speculations of this Great Object PARADOX We know not says he how far Infinite Wisdom and Goodness and Power reaches but then we certainly know that they have their Bounds and that the Divine Nature is the utmost Bounds of them p. 79. To which I Answer That for an Infinite Wisdom to have Bounds and the Bounds of it to be the Divine Nature which it self has no Bounds is in ipsis Terminis an express downright and shameless Contradiction See this further laid open in my Second Chapter PARADOX This Creed says he speaking of the Athanastan does not speak of the Three Divine Persons as distinguished from one another P. 88. Line 21. In reply to which I am amazed to read an Assertion so manifestly false and yet so positively uttered For will this Author put out the Eyes of his Reader He tells us here that Athanasius or whosoever else might be the Author of this Creed does not herein speak of the Three Divine Persons as distinguish'd from one another But I demand of him does Athanasius here speak of them as of Three Persons or no If the first then he does and must speak of them as distinguished from one another for that without such a Distinction they are not so much as Three But if he does not speak of them as of Three and as of Three thus distinguished What then mean those Words of the Creed There is one Person of the Father another of the Son and another of the Holy Ghost Do these Words speak of these Persons as distinguished or do they not If they do then what this Man has here said of the Creed is shamelesly false and if they do not express the said Persons as distinct I defie all the Wit of Man to find out any Words that can PARADOX He tells us That the Title of the one Only true God cannot be so properly attributed to any one Person but only to the Father p. 89. Answer This I have already shewn in Chap. 5. p. 137. to be both false and dangerous as by direct consequence either making several sorts of Gods or excluding both the Son and the Holy Ghost from the one true Godhead At present I shall only say thus much That the One only true God and the true God are Terms perfectly equivalent and not only Commensurate but Identical in their signification and withal That this very Author himself affirms Page 186. Line the last That the Son must be included in the Character of the only True God which how he can be without having this Character properly affirmed and predicated of him and his sustaining thereby the Denomination of the only True God let this Confident Self-contradicting Man declare if he can In the mean time let me tell him further That these Terms the True God and the only True God do both of them import an Attribute or Denomination purely Essential and by no means Personal or Oeconomical And moreover that every such Attribute does and must agree to all the Three Persons equally and whatsoever equally agrees to them all may with equal Propriety be affirmed of all and each of them and consequently that the Title of the One only True God may every whit as truly and properly be attributed to the Son and Holy Ghost as to the Father himself See more of this in my forementioned Chapter PARADOX I affirm says he that the Glory and Majesty and all the other perfections of the Three Divine Persons are as distinct as their Persons are And again These perfections are as distinct as the Persons and yet as Numerically one and the same as the Godhead is p. 91. Answer The first part of these Assertions is utterly inconsistent with and wholly overthrows the last And it is indeed very horrid as by inevitable consequence inferring a Tritheisme For if the essential Perfections of God which in truth are only the Divine Essence under several Conceptions and Denominations are as distinct as the Persons whom the Church acknowledges to be really distinct then it will and must follow That in the Trinity there are Three really distinct Essences or Godheads as well as Three really distinct Persons And if they are thus distinct it is impossible that the Three Persons should by virtue thereof either be or be truly said to be really one so that this Author we see has herein asserted a Trinity with a Witness but as for any Unity in it you may go look But I perceive he was driven to this false and absurd Assertion by that Argument of his Socinian Adversary urging him That if the Essential Glory and Majesty in Father Son and Holy Ghost be but One then it cannot be said that their Glory is equal their Majesty co-eternal forasmuch as Unity is not capable of Equality which must of necessity be between two or more This I say no doubt drove him to this Inconvenience In Answer to which Objection though I owe not this Author so much Service as I shall readily grant That where there is an Equality there must be also a Plurality of some sort or other whatsoever it be So I shall observe That the Divine Essence Glory or Majesty which I still affirm to be but different Names of the same thing falling under divers Conceptions and every other essential perfection of the Godhead may be considered two ways First Absolutely and Abstractedly in it self and as prescinding from all personal Determinations in which sense the Divine Nature Essence and every Essential Attribute included in it is and always must be taken whensoever in Discourse it is spoken of either as compared with or contra-distinguished to all or any of the Persons And accordingly in this sense being absolutely One it is incapable of any Relation of Equality Forasmuch as one Thing considered but as One cannot be said to be equal to it self Or Secondly This Glory Majesty or any other Essential perfection of the Godhead may be considered as sustaining Three several Modes of Subsistence in Three distinct Persons which said Modes as they found a plurality in this Essential Glory or Majesty though by no means of it so this Plurality founds a Capacity of Equality by virtue whereof the same Glory according to its peculiar way of Subsisting in the Father may be said to be equal to it self as Subsisting after another way in the Son and after a third in the Holy Ghost so that immediately and strictly this Equality is between the Three several Modes of Subsistence which this Essential Glory or Majesty sustains or if you will belongs to the said Glory for and by reason of them And this is the true Answer
Communication of his Nature to his Son which Act as proceeding from him is called Generation and renders him Formally a Father and as Terminated in the Son is called Filiation and Constitutes him Formally a Son and in like manner the Holy Ghost Subsists personally by that Act of Procession by which he proceeds from and relates to both the Father and the Son So that that proper Mode of Subsistence by which in Conjunction with the Divine Essence always included in it each of them is rendred a Person is wholly Relative and so belongs to one of them that it also bears a Necessary reference to another From all which it undeniably follows That the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity are in the Formal Constitution of them Relative to one another and consequently That the Three Personalities by which they become Formally Three Persons and are so denominated are Three Eternal Relations But now for the Minor Proposition in the first Syllogism viz. That Self-Consciousness is a Thing in the Nature of it Absolute and Irrelative that I think can need but little Proof it being that Act by which each Person intimately knows and is Conscious to himself of his own Being Acts Motions and every Thing personally belonging to him so that as such it terminates within and looks no further than that one Person whom it is an Entire Survey and Comprehension of And as it is an Absolute and Irrelative Term so it may be Conceived distinctly and fully without Conceiving or implying the Conception of any Thing or Person besides And now what Relation does or can such an Act of Self-Consciousness imply in it It is indeed on the contrary a direct Contradiction to all that is Relative For it incloses the Person wholly within himself neither pointing nor looking further nor referring to any one else If it be here said That each Person by an Act of Self-Consciousness intimately knows the Relation which he stands in to the other Two Persons To this I Answer Two Things 1. That to know a Thing or Person to be Relative or to be Conscious of the Relation belonging to it or him does not make that Act of Knowledge to be either a Relation or of a Relative Nature 2. I Answer That this very Thing proves Self-Consciousness not to be the Constituent Reason of Personality For if the Father knows himself to be a Father by an Act of Self-Consciousness it is evident That Self-Consciousness did not make him so but that he was a Father and had the Relation of a Father and thereby a Personality belonging to him as such in Order of Nature Antecedent to this Act of Self-Consciousness and therefore that this Self-Consciousness cannot be the Reason of the Relation nor of the Personality implyed in it Forasmuch as it is in several respects Posterior to the Person whom it belongs to as in the foregoing Argument we have abundantly shewn But to take a particular and distinct Account of this Notion in the several Persons of the Trinity Does the Father become a Father by being Conscious to himself that he is so or rather by that Act by which he Communicates his Nature to and thereby generates a Son Or does the Son's Relation to the Father consist in his being Conscious to himself of this Relation Or Lastly does the Holy Ghost proceed from the Father and the Son and so personally relate to both by that Act of Self-Consciousness by which he is Conscious to himself of this Procession All this is Absurd Unnatural and Impossible For no Person is related to another by that Act of Self-Consciousness by which he knows and reflects Personally upon himself And yet it is certain That to be a Father is a Relative Subsistence and to be a Son depending upon the Father by an Eternal Act of Generation perpetually begetting him is also to have a Relative Subsistence and lastly to be Eternally proceeding from Both as the Holy Ghost is must likewise import a Way or Mode of Subsisting altogether as Relative as the Two former In which three ways of Subsistence consist the Personalities of the Three Persons respectively and upon these Self-Consciousness can have no Constituting Influence at all as being an Act quite of another Nature to wit Absolute and Irrelative and resting wholly within the Person whom it belongs to From all which I conclude That Self-Consciousness neither is nor can be the Formal Reason of Personality in the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity And this Argument I take to have the force and clearness of a Demonstration Argument III. The Third Argument is this If Self-Consciousness be the Formal Reason of Personality in the Three Divine Persons then there is no Repugnancy in the Nature and Reason of the Thing it self but that there might be Three Thousand Persons in the Deity as well as Three But this is Absurd and therefore so must that be likewise from which it follows The Consequence appears from this That there is no Repugnancy but that there might be so many Self-Consciousnesses or Self-Conscious Minds or Spirits for the Deity to Communicate it self to And therefore if Self-Consciousness be the Formal Reason of Personality there is no Repugnancy but that there might be Three Thousand Persons in the God-head as well as Three The Proposition is proved thus Because this Repugnancy if there be any must be either from the Nature of Self-Consciousness in the several Self-Conscious Minds or Spirits it belongs to or from the Nature of the God-head which is to be Communicated to them But it is from neither of them For First there is nothing in the Nature of Self-Consciousness to hinder its Multiplication into never so great a Number of Particulars but that there may be Three Thousand or Three Millions of Self-Conscious Minds or Spirits as well as Three Nor in the next place is there any Repugnancy on the Part of the God-head That Three Thousand Self-Conscious Spirits should subsist in it any more than that Three should For the Godhead considered precisely and abstractedly in it self and not as actually included in any Person is as able to Communicate it self to the greatest Number as to the smallest If it be here said That the Three Persons are not only Three Self-Conscious Spirits but also Three distinct Infinite Self-Conscious Spirits as our Author says they are and of which more in the next Chapter I Answer That there may be as well Three Thousand distinct infinite Spirits as Three For Infinity is as much inconsistent with the least Plurality of Infinites as with the greatest and therefore if it be no Repugnancy that there should be Three distinct Infinite Minds neither is there that there should be Three Thousand So that if Self-Consciousness be the Formal Reason of Personality there appears no Repugnancy either from the Nature of Self-Consciousness or the Number of the Spirits endued with it nor from the supposed Infinity of the said Spirits no nor yet from the Nature of
for representing the vanity of his Hypothesis by the forementioned Example and Comparison But I hope the World will give me leave to distinguish between Things Sacred and his Absurd Phantastick way of treating of them which I can by no means look upon as Sacred nor indeed any Thing else in his whole Book but the bare Subject it treats of and the Scriptures there quoted by him For to speak my thoughts plainly I believe this Sacred Mystery of the Trinity was never so ridiculed and exposed to the Contempt of the Profane Scoffers at it as it has been by this New-fashioned Defence of it And so I dismiss his two so much Admired Terms by himself I mean as in no degree answering the Expectation he raised of them For I cannot find That they have either heightned or strength'ned Men's Intellectual Faculties or cast a greater light and clearness upon that Object which has so long exercised them but that a Trinity in Unity is as Mysterious as ever and the Mind of Man as unable to grasp and comprehend it as it has been from the beginning of Christianity to this day In a word Self-Consciousness and Mutual-Consciousness have rendred nothing about the Divine Nature and Persons plainer easier and more Intelligible nor indeed after such a mighty stress so irrationally laid upon two slight empty words have they made any thing but the Author himself better understood than it was before CHAP. V. In which is proved against this Author That the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are not Three Distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits IT being certain both from Philosophy and Religion that there is but one only God or God-head in which Christian Religion has taught us That there are Three Persons Many Eminent Professors of it have attempted to shew how one and the same Nature might Subsist in Three Persons and how the said Three Persons might meet in one and make no more than one simple undivided Nature It had been to be wished I confess that Divines had rested in the bare Expressions delivered in Scripture concerning this Mystery and ventured no further by any particular and bold Explications of it But since the Nature or rather Humour of Man has been still too strong for his Duty and his Curiosity especially in things Sacred been apt to carry him too far those however have been all along the most pardonable who have ventured least and proceeded upon the surest grounds both of Scripture it self and of Reason discoursing upon it And such I affirm the Ancient Writers and Fathers of the Church and after them the School-men to have been who with all their Faults or rather Infelicities caused by the Times and Circumstances they lived in are better Divines and Soberer Reasoners than any of those Pert Confident Raw Men who are much better at Despising and Carping at them than at Reading and Understanding them Though Wise Men Despise nothing but they will know it first and for that Cause very rationally despise them But among those who leaving the Common Road of the Church have took a By-way to themselves none of late Years especially have ventured so boldly and so far as this Author who pretending to be more happy forsooth in his Explication of this Mystery than all before him as who would not believe a Man in his own Commendation and to give a more satisfactory Account of this long received and Revered Article by Terms perfectly New and peculiarly his own has advanced quite different Notions about this Mystery from any that our Church was ever yet acquainted with Affirming as he does That the Three Persons in the God-head are Three Distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits as will appear from the several places of his Book where he declares his Thoughts upon this great Subject As First in Page 50. he says The Three Divine Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost are Three Infinite Minds really distinct from each other Again in Page 66. The Persons says he are perfectly distinct for they are Three distinct and Infinite Minds and therefore Three distinct Persons For a Person is an Intelligent Being and to say they are Three Divine Persons and not Three distinct Infinite Minds is both Heresie and Nonsense For which extraordinary Complement passed upon the whole Body of the Church of England and perhaps all the Churches of Christendom besides as I have paid him part of my thanks already so I will not fail yet further to account with him before I put an end to this Chapter In the mean time he goes on in Page 102. I plainly assert says he That as the Father is an Eternal and Infinite Mind so the Son is an Eternal and Infinite Mind distinct from the Father and the Holy Ghost is an Eternal and Infinite Mind distinct both from Father and Son Adding withall these words Which says he every Body can understand without any skill in Logick or Metaphysicks And this I confess is most truly and seasonably remarked by him For the want of this Qualification is so far from being any hindrance in the Case mentioned that I dare undertake that nothing but want of skill in Logick and Metaphysicks can bring any Man living who acknowledges the Trinity to own this Assertion I need repeat no more of his Expressions to this purpose these being sufficient to declare his Opinion save only that in Page 119. where he says That Three Minds or Spirits which have no other difference are yet distinguish'd by Self-Consciousness and are Three distinct Spirits And that other in Page 258. where speaking of the Three Persons I grant says he that they are Three Holy Spirits By the same Token that he there very Learnedly distinguishes between Ghost and Spirit allowing the said Three Persons as we have shewn to be Three Holy Spirits but at the same time denying them to be Three Holy Ghosts and this with great scorn of those who should hold or speak otherwise To which at present I shall say no more but this That he would do well to turn these two Propositions into Greek or Latin and that will presently shew him what difference and distinction there is between a Ghost and a Spirit and why the very same things which are affirmed of the one notwithstanding the difference of those words in English may not with the same Truth be affirmed of the other also But the Examination of this odd Assertion will fall in more naturally towards the latter end of this Chapter where it shall be particularly considered I have now shewn this Author's Judgment in the Point and in opposition to what he has so boldly Asserted and laid down I do here deny That the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity are Three distinct Infinite Minds or Three distinct Infinite Spirits And to overthrow his Assertion and evince the Truth of mine I shall trouble neither my Reader nor my self with many Arguments But of those which I shall make use of the first is this
That to assert that the Father and the Son differ in Substance is Arianism And yet if they were Two distinct Substances for them not to differ in Substance would be impossible And as for the Greek Writers they never admit of Three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Deity but where 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is used to signifie the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as sometimes it was used And by reason of this Ambiguity it was that the Latin Church was so long fearful of using the word Hypostasis and used only that of Persona answering to the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lest they should hereby be thought to admit of Three Substances as well as Three Persons in the God-head Nor in the next place is the same less evident from Reason than we have shewn it to be from Authority For if the Three Persons be Three distinct Substances then Two distinct Substances will concur in and belong to each Person to wit That Substance which is the Divine Essence and so is Communicable or Common to all the Persons and that Substance which Constitutes each Person and thereby is so peculiar to him as to distinguish him from the other and consequently to be incommunicable to any besides him to whom it belongs Since for one and the same Substance to be Common to all Three Persons and withal to belong incommunicably to each of the Three and thereby to distinguish them from one another is Contradictious and Impossible And yet on the other side to assert Two distinct Substances in each Person is altogether as Absurd and that as upon many other Accounts so particularly upon this That it must infer such a Composition in the Divine Persons as is utterly Incompatible with the Absolute Simplicity and Infinite Perfection of the Divine Nature And therefore the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity can by no means be said to be Three distinct Substances but only one Infinite Substance equally Common to and Subsisting in them all and diversified by their respective Relations And moreover since Three distinct Minds or Spirits are Essentially Three distinct Substances neither can the Three Persons of the Trinity be said to be Three distinct Minds or Spirits which was the Point to be made out Argument III. My Third Argument against the same shall proceed thus If it be truly said That one and the same Infinite Mind or Spirit is Father Son and Holy Ghost I mean all Three taken together and it cannot be truly said That one and the same Infinite Mind or Spirit is Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits then it follows That Father Son and Holy Ghost are not Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits But it may be truly said That one and the same Infinite Mind or Spirit is Father Son and Holy Ghost and it cannot be truly said That one and the same Infinite Mind or Spirit is Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits Therefore the Three Persons in the Trinity viz. Father Son and Holy Ghost are not Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits This is the Argument Now the Consequence of the Major appears from this That the same Thing or Things at the same time and in the same respect cannot be truly affirmed and denied of the same Subject And therefore since Father Son and Holy Ghost taken joyntly together are truly predicated of one and the same Infinite Mind and Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits cannot be truly affirmed or predicated and consequently may be truly denied of the same it follows That Father Son and Holy Ghost and Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits neither are nor can be accounted the same nor be truly affirmable of one another As for the Minor it consists of two parts and accordingly must be proved severally in each of them And First That it is and may be truly said That one and the same Infinite Mind is Father Son and Holy Ghost viz. joyntly taken as I noted before This I say may be proved from hence That God is truly said to be Father Son and Holy Ghost still so taken And it having been already evinced That one Infinite Mind or Spirit and one God are terms convertible and equipollent it follows That whatsoever is truly affirmed or denied of the one may be as truly affirmed or denied of the other And this is too evident to need any further proof And therefore in the next place for the proof of the other part of the Minor viz. That one and the same Infinite Mind or Spirit cannot be truly said to be Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits This is no less evident than the former because in such a Proposition both Subject and Predicate imply a Mutual Negation of and Contradiction to one and another and where it is so it is impossible for one to be truly affirmed or predicated of the other And now after this plain proof given both of the Major and the Minor Proposition and this also drawn into so little a compass I hope this Author will not bear himself so much above all the Rules which other Mortals proceed by as after the Premises proved to deny the Conclusion viz. That the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity Father Son and Holy Ghost are not Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits The Affirmation of which is that which I undertook to confute But before I dismiss this Argument I cannot but take notice That the same Terms with a bare Transposition of them viz. by shifting place between the Predicate and the Subject which in Adequate and Commensurate Predications may very well be done will as effectually conclude to the same Purpose as they did in the way in which we have already proposed them And so the Argument will proceed thus If it be truly and properly said That the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity are one Numerical Infinite Mind or Spirit then they cannot be truly said to be Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits But they are truly and properly said to be one Numerical Infinite Mind or Spirit And therefore they neither are nor can be truly said to be Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits The Consequence of the first Proposition is manifest because as we have shewn before one and the same Infinite Mind cannot be Three distinct Infinite Minds without a Contradiction in the Terms And for the Minor viz. That the Three Persons are truly said to be one Infinite Mind or Spirit That also is proved by this That all and every one of them are truly and properly said to be God and God is truly and properly one Numerical Infinite Mind or Spirit And therefore if the Three Persons are said to be the First they must be said to be this Latter also and that as I shew before because of the Reciprocal Predication of those Terms But as to the Matter before us That God is truly and properly one Numerical Infinite Mind or Spirit even this Author himself allows who in Page
69. positively says That we know nothing of the Divine Essence but that God is an Infinite Mind Very well and if he grant him to be an Infinite Mind let him prove this Infinite Mind to be three distinct Infinite Minds if he can The Truth is Infinite Mind or Spirit is an Essential Attribute of the Divine Nature and Convertible with it and whatsoever is so belongs equally to all the Three Persons and consequently cannot be ascribed to them plurally any more than the Deity it self it being as uncapable as that of being multiplied Upon which Account if the Three Persons are with equal Truth said to be one Infinite Mind or Spirit and to be one God they can no more be said to be Three distinct Infinite Minds than they can be said to be Three distinct Gods So that which way soever the Argument be proposed either That one Infinite Mind is Father Son and Holy Ghost or That Father Son and Holy Ghost are one Infinite Mind it still overthrows this Author's Hypothesis That the said Three Persons are Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits Argument IV. My Fourth and Last Argument against the same shall be this Whatsoever Attribute may be truly predicated of all and each of the Divine Persons in the Athanasian Form so belongs to them all in Common that it can belong to none of them under any Term of distinction from the rest But the Attribute Infinite Mind or Spirit may be truly predicated of all and each of the Divine Persons in and according to the Athanasian Form And therefore it can belong to none of them under any Term of distinction from the rest The Major is as evident as that no Attribute can be Common to several Subjects and yet peculiar and appropriate to each of them And the Minor is proved by Instance thus The Father is an Infinite Mind the Son is an Infinite Mind and the Holy Ghost is an Infinite Mind and yet they are not Three Infinite Minds but one Infinite Mind And this I affirm to be as good Divinity as any part in the Athanasian Creed and such as I shall abide by both against this Author and any other whatsoever But now let us see how his Assertion cast into the Athanasian Model shews it self as thus The Father is a distinct Infinite Mind the Son is a distinct Infinite Mind and the Holy Ghost is a distinct Infinite Mind and yet they are not Three distinct Infinite Minds but one distinct Infinite Mind And this is so far from being true that it is indeed neither Truth nor Sence For what Truth can there be in denying That Three Persons of which every one is said to be a distinct Infinite Mind are Three distinct Infinite Minds And what sence can there be in affirming or saying That they are but one distinct Infinite Mind Whereas the Term distinct is never properly used or applyed but with respect had to several Particulars each discriminated from the other but by no means where there is mention made only of one Thing and no more as it is here in this Proposition But to make what allowances the Case will bear and for that purpose to remit something of the strictness of the Athanasian Form by leaving out the word distinct in the last and illative Clause we shall then see that our Author's Hypothesis will proceed thus The Father is a distinct Infinite Mind the Son is a distinct Infinite Mind and the Holy Ghost is a distinct Infinite Mind and yet they are not Three Infinite Minds but one Infinite Mind Thus I say it must proceed in the Athanasian way with the word distinct left out of the Conclusion Nevertheless even so the Inference is still manifestly and grosly false in both the branches of it For it is absolutely false That Three distinct Infinite Minds are not Three Infinite Minds and altogether as false That Three Infinite Minds are but One Infinite Mind The Author's Hypothesis put into the Athanasian Model must needs fall in with that Fallacy sometimes urged against us by the Socinians viz. The Father is a Person the Son a Person and the Holy Ghost a Person and yet they are not Three Persons but one Person which is manifestly Sophistical by arguing ab imparibus tanquam paribus viz. Concluding that of an Attribute Relative and Multiplicable which can be concluded only of such as are not So. For the Athanasian Inference holds only in Attributes Essential and Common to all the Three Persons joyntly or severally taken and not in such as are Proper Personal and Peculiar to each As also in such as are Absolute as the Attribute of Mind or Spirit without the word distinct is and not in such as are Relative For those Attributes which agree to the Divine Persons Personally Peculiarly and Relatively can never Unite or Coincide into one in the Inference or Conclusion In a word Infinite Mind or Spirit is a Predicate perfectly Essential and so in its Numerical Unity Common to all the Three Divine Persons and for that cause not to be affirmed of or ascribed to either all or any of them with the Term distinct added to it or joyned with it For that would multiply an Attribute that cannot be multiplyed And now what I have here discoursed upon and drawn from the Athanasian Creed with respect to this particular Subject I leave to our Author's strictest Examination For my own part I rely upon this Creed as a sure Test or Rule to discover the falshood of his Hypothesis by So that as long as it is true that God is one numerical Infinite Mind or Spirit and as long as the Athanasian Form duely applied is a firm and good way of Reasoning this Author's Assertion That the Three Divine Persons are Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits is thereby irrefragably overthrown And therefore I shall not concern my self to produce any more Arguments against it Only by way of Overplus to and Illustration of those which have already been alledged I cannot but observe the Concurrent Opinion of the Philosophers and most Learned Men amongst the Heathens about God's being one Infinite Mind or Spirit as a necessary deduction no doubt made by Natural Reason from the Principles thereof concerning the Divine Nature For most of the Philosophers looked upon God as the Soul of the World as One Infinite Mind or Spirit that animated and presided over the Universe For so held Pythagoras as Cicero in his first Book de Naturâ Deorum and Lactantius in his Book de irâ Dei tells us Pythagoras quoque unum Deum confitetur dicens Incorpoream esse mentem quae per omnem Naturam diffusa intenta vitalem sensum tribuit In like manner the Great Hermes being asked What God was answered 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Maker of all Things a most Wise and Eternal Mind Thales called him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God the Mind of the World Diogenes Cleanthes and Oenipides 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
Term One True God or One only True God and the Term One True God or One only True God including in it no more than the Term One God and consequently if he asserts That these Terms cannot with equal Propriety be attributed to and predicated of the Son and the Holy Ghost we have him both Arian and Macedonian together in this Assertion And I believe his Adversary the Author of the Notes could hardly have desired a greater Advantage against him than his calling it as he does a Corruption of the Athanasian Creed to joyn the Term One True God to every Person of the Trinity adding withal That upon the doing so it would sound pretty like a Contradiction to say in the close That there was but One True God These are our Author's words but much fitter to have proceeded from a Socinian than from one professing a belief and which is more a defence of the Trinity But in answer to them I tell him That the repeated Attribution of The One True God or Only True God to each of the Three Persons is no Corruption of that Creed at all Forasmuch as these Terms The One True God and the only True God import an Attribute purely Essential and so equally and in Common belonging to all the Three Persons and not an Attribute properly Personal and so appropriate to some one or other of the said Persons And if this Author would have duly distinguished between Essential and Personal Attributes he could not have discoursed of these Matters at so odd a rate as here he does And therefore I deny it to be any Contradiction let it sound in his Ears how it will to conclude That the said Three Persons notwithstanding this Repetition are not Three True Gods but only One True God But he says That such a Repeated Application implies as if each Person considered as distinguished and separated from the other were the One True God To which I Answer 1. That to imply as if a thing were so and to imply that really it is so makes a very great difference in the case indeed so great that this Author must not think from words implying only the former to conclude the latter which yet must be done or what he here alledges is nothing to his purpose But 2. I Answer yet farther That the forementioned words do indeed imply and which is more plainly declare That the Three Persons who are said to be the One or only True God are while they sustain that Attribute really distinct from one another but it does not imply That this is said of them under that peculiar Formality as they are distinct and much less as separated which latter they neither are nor can be The truth is what he has said against the repeated Application of this Term to every one of the Three Persons may be equally objected against all the repeated Predications in the Athanasian Creed but to as little purpose one as the other since albeit all these Predications do agree to Persons really distinct yet they agree not to them under that formal and precise consideration as distinct For nothing but their respective Personal Relations agree to them under that Capacity and this effectually clears off this objection But here I cannot but wonder that this Man should jumble together these two Terms distinguished and separated as he does twice here in the compass of eight Lines when the signification of them as applyed to the Three Divine Persons is so vastly different that one of these Terms viz. distinguished necessarily belongs to them and the other which is separated neither does nor can take place amongst them Nay and when this Author himself has so earnestly and frequently contended for the difference of them as all along asserting the distinction of Persons and as often denying their separation But he proceeds and says That this Expression of The One or only True God is never that he knows of attributed to Son or Holy Ghost either in Scripture or any Catholick Writer Which words methinks as I cannot but observe again do not look as if a Man were Writing against the Socinians Nevertheless admitting the Truth of his Allegation That this Term the One True God is not to be found expresly attributed to the Son or the Holy Ghost will he infer from hence that therefore it neither can nor ought to be so For if that be attributed to them Both in Scripture and Catholick Writers which necessarily and essentially implys The One True God and does and must signifie the very same Thing is it not all one as if in Terminis it had been ascribed to them Doubtless there are several other Expressions in the Athanasian Creed as hardly as this to be found elsewhere However the Thing being certain from other words equivalent this exception is of no force at all nor by any one who understands these Matters is or ought to be accounted so and much less can I see to what end it should be insisted upon by any one while he is encountring the Socinians And therefore whereas he says This Attribute or Title viz. The One True God cannot so properly be ascribed to any one Person but only to the Father whom he tells us the Fathers call the Fountain of the Deity what he here designs by the words so properly which seem to import degrees of Propriety I cannot well tell But this I ask in short May it be properly attributed to the Son and to the Holy Ghost or may it not If not then they are not properly The One True God nor consequently are they properly The True God For whatsoever any one properly is that he may be properly said to be And as for the Father 's being the Fountain of the Deity I hope he looks upon this Expression only as Metaphorical and such as ought not to be stretched to the utmost of its Native Sence for fear the Consequences of it may engage him too far to be able to make an handsome Retreat which I assure him if he does not take heed they certainly will But in a word I demand of him Whether the Father 's being the Fountain of Deity does appropriate and restrain the Thing expressed by the One True God to the Father in contra-distinction to the other Two Persons or not If it does then the same Absurdity recurs viz. That neither is the Son nor the Holy Ghost the One True God and consequently neither simply really and essentially God But on the other side if the Father 's being the Fountain of the Deity does not appropriate the Thing signified by the One True God to the Father then it leaves it common to the other Two Persons with Himself and to each of them And whatsoever is so may with the same Propriety and Truth of Speech be ascribed to and affirmed of them as it is often ascribed to and affirmed of the Father Himself The Truth is this Man 's adventurous and unwary way of
expressing himself in this sacred and arduous Subject to give it no worse word whatsoever it may deserve affords the Arians and Socinians no small Advantages against this Doctrine should it stand upon the strength of His Defence as thanks be to God it does not But I must not here omit that Passage which in the former part of this Chapter I promised more particularly to consider a Passage which indeed looks something strangely It is that in P. 258. line 27. where he tells us that he allows That in the Blessed Trinity there are Three Holy Spirits but denys That there are Three Holy Ghosts so natural is it for false Opinions to force Men to absurd Expressions But my Answer to him is short and positive That neither are there Three Holy Spirits nor Three Holy Ghosts in the Blessed Trinity in any sense properly belonging to these words However the Thing meant by him so far as it is reducible to Truth and Reason is and must be this viz. That when the Third Person of the Trinity is called the Holy Ghost there the word Holy Ghost which otherwise signifies the same with Holy Spirit must be taken Personally and consequently Incommunicably but when the Father or Son is said to be a Spirit or Holy Spirit there Spirit must be understood Essentially for that Immaterial Spiritual and Divine Nature which is common to and Predicable of all the Divine Persons All which is most true But then for this very Reason I must tell our Author withal That as Holy Ghost taken Personally is but Numerically one so Spirit or Holy Spirit as it is understood Essentially is but Numerically one too And therefore though the Father may be called a Spirit or Holy Spirit and the two other Persons may each of them be called so likewise yet they are not therefore Three distinct Spirits or Holy Spirits nor can be truly so called as this Author pretends they ought to be and we have sufficiently disproved but they are all one and the same Holy Spirit Essentially taken and which so taken is as much as one and the same God And moreover though Spirit understood Personally distinguishes the Third Person from the other two yet taken Essentially it speaks him one and the same Spirit as well as one and the same God with them and can by no means distinguish him from them any more than the Divine Essence or Nature which Spirit in this sence is only another word for can discriminate the Three Persons from one another So that upon the whole Matter it is equally false and impossible That in the Blessed Trinity there should be Three Holy Spirits or Holy Ghosts Terms perfectly Synonymous either upon a Personal or an Essential account and consequently that there should be so at all For as the word Spirit imports a peculiar Mode of Subsistence by way of Spiration from the Father and the Son so it is Personal and Incommunicable but as it imports the Immaterial Substance of the Deity so indeed as being the same with the Deity it self it is equally Common to all the Three Persons but still for all that remains Numerically one and no more as all must acknowledge the Deity to be And this is the true state of the Case But to state the difference between the Holy Ghost and the other Two Persons upon something signified by Holy Ghost which is not signified by Holy Spirit as the words of this Author manifestly do while he affirms Three Holy Spirits but denies Three Holy Ghosts this is not only a playing with words which he pretends to scorn but a taking of words for things which I am sure is very ridiculous And now before I conclude this Chapter having a Debt upon me declared at the beginning of it I leave it to the Impartial and Discreet Reader to judge what is to be thought or said of that Man who in such an Insolent Decretorious manner shall in such a point as this before us charge Nonsense and Heresie two very vile words upon all that Subscribe not to this his New and before unheard of Opinion I must profess I never met with the like in any Sober Author and hardly in the most Licentious Libeller The Nature of the Subject I have according to my poor Abilities discussed and finding my self thereupon extremely to dissent from this Author am yet by no means willing to pass for a Nonsensical Heretick for my pains For must it be Nonsence not to own Contradictions viz. That One infinite Spirit is Three distinct Infinite Spirits Or must it be Heresie not to Subscribe to Tritheisme as the best and most Orthodox Explication of the Article of the Trinity As for Non-sence it must certainly imply the asserting of something for true concerning the Subject discoursed of which yet in truth is contradictory to it since there can be no Non-sence but what contradicts some Truth And whereas this Author has elsewhere viz. P. 4. declared it unreasonable to charge a contradiction in any Thing where the Nature of the Thing discoursed of is not throughly comprehended and understood I desire to know of him whether he throughly understands and comprehends the Article and Mystery of the Trinity If he says he does I need no other Demonstration of his unfitness to write about it But if he owns that he does not let him only stick to his own Rule and then he may keep the Charge of Non-sense to himself But what shall we say to the Charge of Heresie in which St. Austin would have no Person who is so charged to be silent Why in the first place we must search and enquire whether it be so or no And here if my Life lay upon it I cannot find either in Irenaeus adversùs Haereses or in Tertullian's Prescriptions contra Haereticos Cap. 49. Nor in Philastrius's Catalogue nor in Epiphanius nor in St. Austin nor in Theodoret nor in Iohannes Damascenus's Book de Haeresibus nor in the latter Haeresiologists such as Alphonsus à Castro Prateolus with several others I cannot I say find in all or in any one of these the Heresie of not asserting the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity to be Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits no nor yet the Heresie of denying them to be so But where then may we find it Why in this Author's Book And therefore look no further it is enough that so great a Master has said it whose Authority in saying a Thing is as good as another Man 's in proving it at any time And he says it as we see positively and perhaps if need be will be ready to take his Corporal Oath upon it That such as deny his Hypothesis are Hereticks Now in this case our Condition is in good earnest very sad and I know nothing to comfort us but that the Statute de Haeretico comburendo is Repealed And well is it for the Poor Clergy and Church of England that it is so for otherwise this Man
as defective as the Thing he Argues for is Absurd Nevertheless let us see what the main Conclusion is which he would draw from the Premises Why it is this That the Father is Eternal Wisdom or Mind and the Son Eternal Wisdom and Mind I give you his very Terms And who denies this Or what does it conclude for him For still I ask Does he who says That the Father is Eternal Wisdom or Mind and the Son Eternal Wisdom and Mind by saying so affirm That the Father and the Son are Two distinct Eternal Wisdoms or Minds Any more than he who says That the Father is God and the Son God affirms them to be Two distinct Gods Let him say it if he can and he shall not fail of a through Consutation as soon as it can be Printed off But to give the Reader an Account of the whole matter in short This Author has espoused a very Heterodox and dangerous Notion viz. That the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits and in order to the proof of this would perswade us That there are Two distinct Wisdoms one in the Father and the other in the Son and that for this Reason Because the Father who is Essentially Wise cannot be said to be Wise by that begotten Wisdom which is in the Son albeit the Son be yet said to be the Wisdom of the Father but that the Father must have one distinct Wisdom of his own and the Son another distinct Wisdom of his own This I am sure is the full Account of his Argument from top to bottom In Answer to which I have plainly and undeniably shewn That the Father is Wise by one and the same Essential Wisdom common to Father Son and Holy Ghost though not under that particular Modification as it Subsists in the other Two Persons but by that peculiar Modification by which it is appropriated to and Subsists in his own And that those different Modifications do not for all that make it any more than one single Numerical Wisdom but only one and the same under so many distinct Modes of Subsistence determining it to so many distinct Personalities This is the Sum both of his Opinion and of mine and I referr it to the Judicious Reader to arbitrate the Case between us with this profession and promise that if in all or any one of the Quotations alledged by him he can shew That it is either expresly affirmed or necessarily implyed That the Father and the Son are two distinct Infinite Minds I will without further proof of any sort forthwith yield him the Cause and withal renounce all my poor share in Common Sense and Reason nay and all belief of my own Eyes for the future But there is one Clause more which he brings in as one part of his main Conclusion Page 103. Line 33. viz. That if we confess this of the Father and the Son to wit That they are each of them Eternal Mind or Wisdom there can be no dispute about the Holy Ghost who is Eternal Mind and Wisdom distinct both from Father and Son Now this is perfectly gratis dictum without either proof or pretence of proof and that whether we respect the Orthodox or the Heterodox and Heretical And First For the Orthodox they utterly deny the Holy Ghost to be an Eternal Mind or Wisdom distinct both from the Father and the Son and I challenge this Author to produce me but one reputed Orthodox Writer who affirms it In the mean time it argues no small Confidence to give it the mildest Term in this Man to Assert that as certain and without Dispute which is neither granted on one side nor so much as pretended to be proved on the other But Secondly If we respect the Heterodox and Heretical who no doubt can dispute as much as others will this Man say That these also grant this his Assertion about the Holy Ghost without any dispute No it is certain that they neither do nor will For this Author may be pleased to observe That as some in the Primitive Times allowed the Son to be only like the Father so they made the Holy Ghost a downright Creature and an inferiour Agent to both Such were the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 under their Head and Leader Macedonius as we see in St. Austin de Haeresibus Cap. 52. hereby placing him as much below the Son as they had placed the Son below the Father or rather more Whereupon I appeal even to this Author himself whether those who did so would without all dispute have allowed the Holy Ghost to be an Eternal Infinite Mind or Wisdom distinct both from the Father and the Son and upon that Account Essentially and Necessarily equal to them both Let this Author rub his Fore-head and affirm this if he can and for the future take notice That it becomes a True and Solid Reasoner where a Thing is disputed fairly to prove it and not boldly and barely to presume it In the last place he alledges the Judgment of all the Fathers indefinitely in the Case And truly where he cannot cite so much as one of them to the purpose I think he does extremely well to make short work of it and with one bold Impertinent stroke to alledge them all together His Allegation is this That it is usual with the Fathers to represent the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity as distinct as Peter James and John Well and what then Why That then the said Three Persons are Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits I deny the Consequence and to give a particular Answer to this general Allegation I tell him That it is a Fallacy of the Homonymy of the Word and that the Term as distinct is Ambiguous For it may either signifie 1. As Real Or 2. As Great a Distinction As for the first I grant That the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity differ as really as Peter Iames and Iohn Forasmuch as they differ by something in the Thing it self or ex parte rei antecedent to and independent upon any Apprehension or Operation of the Mind about it which is a Real difference and whatsoever is so is altogether as Real as the Difference between one Man and another can be But Secondly If by Real distinction be meant as great a distinction so we utterly deny that the Three Divine Persons differ as much as Peter and Iames and Iohn do or that the Fathers ever thought they did so For this would inferr a greater difference or distinction between them than even our Author himself will allow of even such a difference as reaches to a Division or Separation of the Persons so differing And since it is impossible for the Persons of the Trinity to differ so it is hard to imagine upon what bottom of Reason our Author should measure the Distinction or Difference of the Three Divine Persons by the Distinction or Difference that is between Peter Iames and Iohn
save one after this this Man should positively say as he does That the Fathers never so much as Dream'd of a specifick Unity of Nature in the Divine Persons having here in Page 107. affirmed it to be no less than absolutely necessary to make the Three Persons one God And that certainly is a necessity with a witness But he who exacts of this Author a consistency with himself for five Pages together deals very severely with him And accordingly the more I consider of this Matter I cannot but think that what he says of the Nicene Fathers holding a Specifick Unity of Nature in the Divine Persons Page 106. and his affirming that Gregory Nyssen St. Cyril Maximus and Damascen never so much as Dream'd of any such Unity Page 109. Line 22. will by no means consist together For first If by the Nicene Fathers be meant not only those who were present at that Council but those Fathers also who about those Times held the same Faith which was Established in that Council then his two fore-cited Passages contain a gross manifest fulsome Contradiction even as gross as the positive asserting of a thing and the never so much as dreaming of it can import But if by the Nicene Fathers he means only those who sat and acted in that Council he will hardly however perswade any understanding Man That Gregory Nyssen who Wrote and flourished between Fifty and Sixty Years after the Council and Maximus about Sixty and St. Cyril about Ninety could be so grosly ignorant of and Strangers to the Sentiments of those Fathers as not so much as to Dream of that wherein they had placed the Unity of the God-head This to me seems Incredible and morally Impossible since it is not to be imagined that Nyssen Cyril and Maximus could so soon forget or knowingly dare to relinquish the Doctrine of the fore-mentioned Fathers whose Authority was so great and Sacred all the Christian World over And therefore since this Author allows these Fathers not to have Dreamt of a Specifick Unity of the Divine Nature I conclude That neither did the Nicene Fathers Dream of it any more than they howsoever they might express themselves upon some occasions And thus having as well as he could made his first step by Asserting a Specifick Unity or Sameness of Nature in the Three Divine Persons from the Fathers that is to say partly from what Petavius and Dr. Cudworth had told him of the Nicene Fathers holding such a Specifick Unity between them and partly from the other Fathers never so much as dreaming of it he proceeds now to his other step or rather Counter-step which is to shew That the Unity between the Divine Persons held by the Fathers was no other than a Numerical Unity of Nature or Essence belonging to them For since to be one only Specifically and to be one only Numerically are by no means consistent with one another in respect of the same Persons what can this be so truly and properly called as a Counter-step to that which he had made before His Method being plainly this First he tells us that the Nicene Fathers by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 understood only a Specifick Unity or Sameness of Nature in the Divine Persons Page 106. And then that the Fathers mentioning them indefinitely held this Sameness of Nature absolutely necessary to make the said Three Persons one God Page 107. And now at length he tells us Page 121. Lines 27 28 29. That though several of the Fathers attempted several ways of explaining that Unity of Nature that is in the Divine Persons yet they all agree in the Thing That Father Son and Holy Ghost Three distinct Divine Persons are united in one Numerical Nature and Essence So that the Sum of all must be this as appears also from his own words in the latter end of Page 120. and the four first Lines of the 121. that according to him the Fathers held a Specifick Unity of Nature necessary to make the Three Divine Persons one God but not sufficient without the Completion of it by a Numerical Unity superadded to it This I say is the Sum of what he delivers and in direct opposition to which I do here deny That there is any such Thing as a Specifick Unity of Nature belonging to the Divine Persons or that the Fathers ever held that there was And to prove this I shall premise this Assertion both as certain in itself and withall affirmed by this Author in those forecited words viz. That all the Fathers held That Father Son and Holy Ghost Three distinct Persons are United in or rather are One by One Numerical Nature and Essence Which being so premised I have these Considerations to oppose to the Admission of any Specifick Unity in the Divine Nature as it belongs to the Divine Persons As First If a Numerical Unity in the same Divine Nature be sufficient to make the Three Divine Persons to whom it belongs One God then a Specifick Unity of the same is not necessary but a Numerical Unity in the same Divine Nature is sufficient to make the said Three Persons One God and therefore a Specifick Unity is not necessary The Consequence is evident because nothing can be necessary to any Thing or Effect beyond or beside what is sufficient for the same since this would imply a manifest Contradiction by making the same Thing in the same respect both sufficient and not sufficient And as for the Minor That an Agreement in one and the same Numerical Divine Nature is sufficient to make the Persons so agreeing One God I suppose this carries with it so much Self-Evidence that no Man of Reason will pretend to doubt of and much less to deny it Secondly A greater degree of Unity and a less degree of Unity are not to be admitted in the Divine Nature But a Numerical Unity and a Specifical Unity are a greater and a less degree of Unity and therefore they are not both to be admitted in the Divine Nature The Major is proved thus because two such Unities would overthrow the simplicity of the Divine Nature forasmuch as they must be either two degrees of the same kind of Unity or they must be two different kinds of Unity Either of which would inferr a Composition by no means to be endured in the Divine Nature As for the Minor it is evident in it self and needs no Proof Thirdly Such a degree or sort of Unity of Nature as may agree to Ten Thousand Individuals neither can nor ought to be admitted in the Divine Nature with reference to the Divine Persons But a Specifick Unity of Nature may agree to Ten Thousand Individuals as well as to Two or Three since upon a Specifick Account it has no Stint or Limitation but may be every whit as well and properly in the former Number as in the latter and therefore it neither can nor ought to be admitted in the Divine Nature Fourthly Such an Unity as is principally
to proceed That Assertion of this Author That God is properly Energy or Operation contains in it more Absurdities than one For first he takes Energy and Operation for the same Thing whereas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is properly vis activa and Operation is only the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or actual Exercise of that vis or Power But whether it signifies one or both it is certain that God is properly neither of them For as I have shewn before we must speak of God as we are able to conceive of him and we conceive of God not as of an Action but as of an Agent that is as of a Substance acting or exerting it self and upon this Account I do here tell this Author that it is impossible for Humane Reason to conceive of Action or Operation but as founded in Substance and that nothing would more confound and overturn all the Methods Ways and Notions of Men's Minds than to endeavour to conceive of it otherwise And therefore if God is sometimes called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Action it is by a Metonymy of the Adjunct for the Subject or the Effect for the Cause for truly and properly he is not so And now if this Author shall think to take Sanctuary in that known Expression of God That he is a pure simple Act he may please to take notice that the Term Act is Ambiguous and sometimes signifies an Actus Entitativus which is no more than the Entity or Being of a Thing and sometimes an Actus Physicus which is the Operation or Exertion of some Active Power And it is in the former sense only in which God is said to be a pure simple Act and not in the latter And by this Author's Favour every Substance Essence or Nature is such an Act which quite spoils all his fine Notion about expressing God only by Terms of Energy and Operation in exclusion of those of Nature Essence and Substance This I thought fit to premise as throwing up the very foundation of all his Arguments and indeed of his whole Hypothesis And so I come to his Argument the Sum of which is this That the Divine Nature is Divine Energy or Operation and therefore That the Unity of Divine Operation is Unity of Divine Nature and Lastly That this Unity of Divine Nature is Mutual-Consciousness Now it is certain That there is not one of all these Three Propositions true but that is no fault of mine since if they were cast into a Syllogism that would not mend the Matter for the Syllogism must proceed thus Unity of Divine Energy or Operation is Mutual-Consciousness Unity of Divine Nature is Unity of Divine Energy or Operation And therefore Unity of Divine Nature is Mutual-Consciousness Every one of which Propositions is still salse And yet I shall referr it to this Author himself or to any one who has Read and Considered his Book to form a better Argument from what he has said of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with reference to the present Subject if he can Nevertheless whether it be an Argument or no Argument my Answer to his Allegation of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with relation to the Unity of the Divine Nature and to Mutual-Consciousness is thus First That it is one Thing to be a Proof of a Thing and another to be that wherein the Nature of the Thing proved does consist Thus actual Ratiocination is a certain Proof of a Principle of Reason yet nevertheless it is not that wherein a Principle of Reason does consist since that may be and continue when actual Ratiocination ceases In like manner I will allow the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be a Proof of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But I absolutely deny That the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Energy is that wherein the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Nature is or ought to be placed or that the Fathers ever accounted it so how truly and strongly soever it might in their Judgment inferrit What the Fathers designed to prove by Unity of Operation in the Three Divine Persons is evident from the following Passages to which Twenty times as many might be added Gregory Nyssen tells us that those whose Energy is the same have their Nature altogether the same And St. Basil That those who have the same Operations have also the same Essence or Substance But the Operation orEnergy of the Father and the Son is one as appears in that Expression Let us make Man And again Whatsoever the Fatherdoes that likewise does the Son and therefore there is but one Essence of the Father and the Son And again The Sameness of Operation in the Father Son and Holy Ghost evidently shews That there is no difference in their Essence or Substance And accordingly St. Austin The Operation cannot be diverse where the Nature is not only equal but also undivided From all which it is most clear That the Fathers alledge this Unity of Operation only as a Proof or Argument of this Unity of Nature or Essence And therefore since nothing can be a proof of it self That they did not take Unity of Operation and Unity of Nature for one and the same Thing But Secondly Supposing but not granting that it were so viz. That Unity of Operation did not only prove but really was it self this Unity of Nature or Essence yet how will this Author prove that Unity of Nature or Unity of Operation is properly Mutual-Consciousness Is there so much as one Tittle in the Fathers expressing or necessarily implying that it is so And as to the Reason of the Thing it self Will any one say That there is no other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 belonging to the Divine Nature but Mutual-Consciousness Or that this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the whole Latitude and Compass of it extends no further Nay on the contrary does it not Exert it self in Infinite other Acts And what is yet more does it not more properly belong to any other of the Divine Acts than to an Act of Knowledge bare Knowledge as such being of it self unoperative and Mutual-Consciousness is but an Act of Knowledge I protest I am ashamed to dispute seriously against such Stuff 2. His next Argument to prove That Mutual-Consciousness is formally that Unity of Nature which is in the Three Divine Persons is taken from another Expression of the said Gregory Nyssen viz. That there is amongst the Divine Persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Concerning which this Author has the boldness to appeal to any one to judge whether this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 this single Motion of the Will which at the same instant is in Father Son and Holy Ghost can signifie any thing but Mutual Consciousness which makes them Numerically One Page 117. Lines 8 9 10 c. And he adds That it is impossible they should have such a single Motion of Will passing through them all without this Mutual Consciousness Page 124. Lines 30 31. And this is the
other of these in Conjunction with Essence or Substance we give account of all the Acts Attributes and Personalities belonging to the Divine Nature or God-head This is the constant unanimously received Doctrine of Divines School-men and Metaphysicians in their Discourses upon God and without which it is impossible to Discourse intelligibly of the Divine Acts Attributes or Persons And as it stands upon a firm bottom so it may well be defended And if this Author has ought to except against it I shall be ready to undertake the defence of it against him at any time But still that he may keep up that Glorious standing Character of Self-Contradiction which one would think to be the very Ratio formalis or at least the Personal Property of the Man Having here in Page 130. made a very bold step by Asserting the three Divine Persons to be three distinct Acts and so distinct that they can never be one Simple Individual Act. In the very next Page but one viz. 132. line 13. he roundly affirms That the Father and the Son are one single Energy and Operation Now how safe and happy is this Man that no Absurdities or Contradictions can ever hurt him Or at least that he never feels them let them pinch never so close and hard What remains is chiefly a Discourse about the different way of the Son 's issuing from the Father and the Holy Ghost's issuing from both As that the former is called Generation because the Son issues from the Father by a Reflex Act and the latter termed Procession because the Holy Ghost issues from both by a Direct Act. But why a Reflex Act must needs be termed properly a Generation and a Direct Act not be capable of being properly so accounted this our Acute Author very discreetly says nothing at all to though under favour all that he says besides leaves us as much in the Dark as we were before And for my own part I cannot think my self concerned to clear up a Point wholly foreign to that which alone I have undertook the Discussion of And thus I have finished my Dispute with Him concerning the Authorities of the Fathers alledged in behalf of his Notion of Mutual Consciousness as that wherein he places the Unity of the Divine Nature belonging to the three Blessed Persons The Sum of which whole Dispute is resolved into this single Question viz. In what the Father 's placed the Unity in Trinity And if they placed it in the Sameness or Unity of Nature Substance or Essence words applyed by them to this Subject at least a thousand Times and still used to signifie one and the same thing then it is plain that they did not place it in an Unity of Mutual Consciousness For I suppose no Man this Author himself not excepted will say That Essence or Substance and Mutual Consciousness are Terms Synonymous and of the same signification And as the whole Dispute turns upon this single Question so in the management of it on my part I have with great particularity gone over all the Proofs by which this Author pretends to have evinced his Doctrine from the Fathers The utmost of which Proofs amounts to this That the Fathers proved an Unity of Nature in the Divine Persons from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 common to them all And moreover sometimes illustrated the said Unity by the three Faculties of the Understanding Memory and Will being one with the Soul which they belonged to And lastly That they resolved the Unity of the Trinity into an Unity of Principle the Father being upon that account styled Principium fons Deitatis as communicating the Divine Substance to the Son and together with the Son to the Holy Ghost And what of all this I pray Do all or any of the fore-mentioned Terms signifie Mutual Consciousness Why No But this Author with a non obstante both to the proper signification and common use of them all by absolute Prerogative declares them to mean Mutual Consciousness And so his Point is proved viz That Mutual Consciousness is not only an Argument inferring the Unity of the Divine Nature in the three Blessed Persons which yet was all that the Fathers used the fore-mentioned Terms for but which is more That it is that very thing wherein this Unity does Consist This I say is a true though a short Account of all his Arguments upon this Subject and according to my custom I refer it to the Judicious Reader to judge impartially whether it be not so and withall to improve and carry on the aforesaid Arguments in his behalf to all further advantage that they may be capable of But in the issue methinks the Author himself seems to review them with much less confidence of their Puissance than when at first he produced them For if we look back upon the Triumphant Flag hung out by him at his Entrance upon this part of his Work the only proper time for him to Triumph in and when he declared That his Explication of the Trinity was the Constant Doctrine of the Fathers and the Schools Page 101. lines 24 25. who could have imagined but that he then foresaw that he should prove his Point with all the strength and evidence which his own Heart could desire And yet alas Such for the most part is the vast distance between Promises and Performances that we have him bringing up the Rear of all with this sneaking Conclusion Page 138. line 22 c. It must be confessed says he That the Ancient Fathers did not express their sence in the same Terms that I have done But I leave it to any Indifferent and Impartial Reader whether they do not seem to have intended the same Explication which I have given of this Venerable Mystery These are his words and I do very particularly recommend them to the Reader as deserving his peculiar Notice For is this now the Upshot and Result of so daring a Boast and so confident an Undertaking to prove his Opinion the constant Doctrine of the Fathers viz. That though the Fathers speak not one word of it nay though they knew not how to express themselves about it Page 125. line 18. yet that to an Indifferent Reader and a very indifferent one indeed he must needs be in the worst sence they may seem to intend the same Explication he had given of it So that the sum of his whole Proof and Argument amounts to this and no more viz. That to some Persons videtur quod sic and to others videtur quod non For see how low he sinks in the issue First of all from the Fathers positive saying or holding what he does it is brought down to their Intending it and from their Intending it it falls at last to their seeming to intend it and that is all And now is not this a worthy Proof of so high a Point And may it not justly subject this
Unity or Communication and distinction c. St. Basil also Writing against such as would derogate from the Equality of the Divine Persons speaks of the Trinity thus Either let these Inexpressible things be silently Reverenced or Religiously and Becomingly Represented And again in a Discourse against such as used Contumelious Words of the Trinity speaking there of the Holy Ghost as Essentially one with the Father and the Son he says the Intimate Conjunction between him and them is hereby declared viz. by the Scripture there quoted by him and applyed to them but the Ineffable Manner of his Subsistence hereby Inviolably preserved So that still we see with this Father the Oeconomy of the Three Divine Persons in the Blessed Trinity is a thing Ineffable and above all Description or Expression Nazianzen also speaks of the Trinity under these Epithetes styling it the Adorable Trinity Above and before the World before all Time of the same Majesty of the same Glory Increate and Invisible above our Reach and Incomprehensible And the same Epithetes are given it by Nicephorus Patriarch of Constantinople in the Acts of the Council of Ephesus declaring the Trinity to be of One and the same Essence Transcendent in its Substance Invisible and Inconceivable And Lastly Eulogius Arch-bishop of Alexandria sets it forth thus We divide not says he what is but One we part not the Singularity nor distract the Unity but so Assert this Unity in an Eternal Singularity as to ascribe the same to Three distinct Hypostases by no means subjecting things above our Understanding to Human Reasonings nor by an Over-curious Search undervaluing things so much above all Search or Discovery Having given this Specimen of what the Greek Fathers and Writers thought and spoke of the Trinity let us now pass to the Latines And amongst these we have in the first place St. Hilary expressing himself thus The Mystery of the Trinity is Immense and Incomprehensible not to be express'd by Words nor reach'd by Sence Imperceivable it blinds our Sight it exceeds the Capacity of our Understanding I understand it not Nevertheless I will comfort my self in this That neither do the Angels know it nor Ages apprehend it nor have the Apostles enquired of it nor the Son himself declared it Let us therefore leave off complaining c. After him let us hear St. Ambrose The Divinity of the Holy Trinity says he is to be believed by us to be without beginning or end albeit hardly possible to be comprehended by the Mind of Man Upon which Account it may be not improperly said concerning it That we comprehend this only of it that in truth it cannot be comprehended To St. Ambrose succeeds St. Austin In this Trinity says this learned Father is but one God which is indeed wonderfully unspeakable and unspeakably wonderful To the same purpose Fulgentius So far as I can judge only the Eternal and Unchangeable Trinity ought to be looked upon by us as worthy to be esteemed Incomprehensibly Miraculous and as much exceeding all that we can think or imagine of it as it surmounts all that we are After him we shall produce Hormisda Bishop of Rome in a Letter to Iustinian the Emperour about the beginning of the Sixth Century speaking thus The Holy Trinity says he is but One it is not multiplyed by Number nor grows by any Addition or Encrease Nor can it either be comprehended by our Understanding nor in respect of its Divinity be at all Divided And a little after Let us Worship Father Son and Holy Ghost distinct in themselves but with one indistinct Worship that is to say The Incomprehensible and Unutterable Substance of the Trinity And presently again Great and Incomprensible is the Mystery of the Holy Trinity In the last place St. Bernard delivers himself upon the same Subject thus I confidently affirm says he that the Eternal and Blessed Trinity which I do not understand I do yet believe and embrace with my Faith what I cannot comprehend with my Mind I have here as I said given a Specimen of what the Ancient Writers of the Church both Greek and Latin thought and said of the Blessed Trinity and it is I confess but a Specimen since I think that enough for an Universally acknowledged and never before contradicted Proposition Whereas had it but in the least seemed a Novelty as this Author's Hypothesis not only seems but unquestionably is I should have thought my self obliged to have brought as many Quotations for it from Antiquity as would have filled a much larger Book than I intend this shall be But as for those which I have here produced I do solemnly appeal to any Man living Christian or not Christian who does but understand these Languages whether the Fathers now Quoted by me and all the rest upon the same Subject speak agreeably to them looked upon Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity as a Plain Easie and Intelligible Notion So that if the Judgment of the Fathers and of this Author be in this point one and the same it must unavoidably follow That either the Fathers have not yet declared their Judgment and Doctrine or that this Author has not yet declared his Since so much as has been declared on the one side is a direct and gross Contradiction to what has been Asserted on the other And moreover the fore alledged Testimonies of the Fathers are such that we are not put to draw what we contend for by remote far fetched Consequences from them but it lies plain open and manifest in them in words too clear and full to be denyed and too convincing to be evaded So that we are sure both of their Words and Expressions and of the common sence of all Mankind to expound and understand them by And will this bold over bearing Man after all this Claim their meaning to be the same with his What his meaning is he has told us forty times over viz. The Unity in Trinity c. is so far from being an Unintelligible Notion that it is not so much as difficult how much soever the dull mistaken World has for near 1700 Years thought otherwise And now if this be the true Account and state of this Matter that when the Fathers say of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Trinity that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That is to say Ineffable Inconceivable Unintelligible Incomprehensible and if possible transcending the very Notion of the Deity it self above all Humane Understanding and Reason Discourse and Scrutiny I say if by all this he can prove that the Fathers meant That it was a very Plain Easie and Intelligible Notion as by affirming that those who used all these Expressions meant the same with himself he does and must affirm or say That they knew not their own meaning or at least were not able to express it but in words quite contrary to it I must needs own the
the Things themselves yet derive only an External Habitude and denomination consequent from it upon the Deity it self The 2d Sort of Relation is Intrinsecal and founded upon those Internal Acts by which one Person produces another or proceeds from another For to produce and to proceed whether by Generation or Spiration is that which makes or Constitutes a Plurality of Persons in the Godhead From all which it follows That the Relation by which God as a Creator or Preserver respects his Creatures is extremely different from that by which God as a Father respects his Son The former adding only to the Deity an Extrinsecal denomination but the latter leaving upon it an Internal Incommunicable Character Essentially Inseparable from the Deity So that although it may well enough be said That God might never have been a Creator yet it cannot be said of Him That he might never have been a Father the former being only an effect of his Will but this latter the Necessary Result of his Nature Now these Internal Acts upon which the Divine Relations are founded and from which they flow are First That Eternal Act by which the Father Communicates his Divine Nature to the Son which accordingly is called Generation And that by which the Son receives his Divine Nature from the Father which is called Filiation And. Thirdly The Act of Spiration by which the Father and the Son together eternally breath forth the Holy Spirit And Lastly The Act of Procession by which the Holy Ghost proceeds and receives his Divine Nature joyntly from them both These I say are those Internal Incommunicable and distinguishing Acts from which the Personal Relations belonging to the Three Divine Persons are derived But you will say Does not this infer Four Persons in the Godhead viz. That as Generation and Filiation make two so Spiration and Procession should make two more I Answer No Because the same Person may sustain several Personal Relations and Exert and receive several Personal Acts where those Acts or Relations are not opposite to or inconsistent with one another in the same Subject As for instance The Person of the Father may Exert both an Act of Generation and of Spiration and so sustain the Relations resulting from both without any Multiplication of his Person and the Son likewise may receive and sustain the Act of Filiation and withal Exert an Act of Spiration without any Multiplication of Personality And this because neither are the Acts of Generation and Spiration inconsistent in the Father nor the Acts of Filiation and Spiration incompatible in the Son Though indeed the Acts of Generation and Filiation and the Relations springing therefrom would be utterly inconsistent because opposite in any one Person as likewise upon the same Account would the Acts of Spiration and Procession From whence by plain and undeniable Consequence it follows That Generation and Filiation Spiration and Procession Constitute only Three Persons in the Eternal Godhead and no more For Relations merely disparate do not Constitute several distinct Persons unless they be opposite too That Maxime of the Schools being most true That Sola Oppositio multiplicat in Divinis So that albeit Filiation and Spiration are Terms opposite to their respective Correlates yet being only disparate with reference to one another and as both of them meet and are lodged in one and the same Subject viz. the Person of the Son they neither cause nor infer in him any more than one Single Personality But now if any one should ask me What this Generation and Filiation this Spiration and Procession are I answer That herein consists the Mystery and since such Mysteries exceed the Comprehension of Humane Reason I am not in the least ashamed most readily to own my ignorance thereof in that known Anthem used in the Church Quid sit Gigni quid Processus Me nescire sum processus For tho the Author whom I have been Disputing with by the help and vertue of Two Wonder working words able to make one who is no Conjurer do strange things undertakes to make this greatest of Mysteries Plain Easie and Intelligible and when he has done this as he says he has owns it nevertheless for a Mystery still yet in the Judgment of other Mortals to acknowledge a Thing Inexplicable and in the same Breath to offer an Explication of it too will be thought a little too much for one of an ordinary pitch of Sence and Reason to pretend to and therefore for my own part I dare not look so high Upon the whole matter in discoursing of the Trinity Two Things are absolutely necessary to be held and insisted upon One That each and every Person of the Blessed Trinity entirely contains and includes in himself the whole Divine Nature The other That each Person is Incommunicably different and distinct from the other And here if it should be asked How they differ and whether it be by any real distinction between the Persons I Answer Yes But for the better explaining of my Answer we must distinguish of Two sorts of Real Distinctions 1. The first greater viz. When Two Things or real Beings differ from one another 2. The other lesser as when the difference is between a Thing or real Being on the one side and the Mode of it on the other Or between Two or more Modes of the same Being And this Distinction or Difference is called Real in opposition to that which is wholly founded upon the Apprehension or Operation of the Intellect and has of it self no Existence without it But a Being and the Mode adhering to it differ whether the Mind ever apprehends and thinks of them or no. And thus we affirm That the Divine Persons really differ and are distinguished from one another viz. by a Modal or lesser sort of Real difference according to which the Divine Nature Subsisting under and being determined by such a certain Mode personally differs from it self as subsisting under and determined by another Forasmuch as the Divine Nature or Godhead so subsisting and determined is properly a Person Nor ought this smallness of difference between the Divine Persons to be any presumption against the Truth of what we have delivered concerning the Oeconomy of the Blessed Trinity as shall be more particularly shewn in Answer to one of this Author's Objections against it before we come to a conclusion of this Chapter In the mean time to sum up the foregoing Particulars the Reader may please to take what I aver to be the Doctrine of the Catholick Church about this great Article in this following Account of it viz. That there is one and but one Self-Existing Infinite Eternal c. Being Nature or Substance which we call God And that this Infinite Eternal Self-Existing Being or Nature Exists in and is common to Three distinct Persons Father Son and Holy Ghost Of which the Son eternally issues from the Father by way of Generation and the Holy Ghost joyntly from both by way of
Men of whom alone we now speak both an Act of Knowledge and of Self-reflection too may be without an Act of Love consequent thereupon And if the former may be without the latter then they are not inseparably united as this Author here says they are PARADOX He says That Love is a distinct Act and therefore in God must be a Person P. 133. Answ. If this be a true and good Consequence then the Ground and Reason of it must be This That every distinct Act in God is and must be a distinct Person And if so then every Decree in God whether it be his Decree of Election or of Reprobation if there be such an one or of creating the World and sending Christ into it and at last of destroying it and the like are each of them so many Persons For every Divine Decree is an Act of God and an Immanent Act too as resting within him and as such not passing forth to any Thing without Him that Maxim of the Schools being most true that Decreta nihil ponunt in esse Nor is this all but most of the Divine Acts are free also so that there was nothing in the Nature of them to hinder but that they equally might or might not have been which applied to the Divine Persons would make strange work in Divinity In the mean time if this Author will maintain this Doctrin viz. That Acts and Persons are the same in God as I think he ought in all Reason to maintain the immediate consequences of his own Assertion I dare undertake that here he will stand alone again and that he is the only Divine who ever owned or defended such wretched Stuff PARADOX These three Powers of Understanding Self-reflection and Self-Love are one Mind viz. in Created Spirits of which alone he here speaks adding in the very next words What are mere Faculties and Powers in Created Spirits are Persons in the Godhead c. Pag. 135. at the latter end Answer This is a very gross Absurdity and to make it appear so I do here tell him That the Three foremention'd Powers are no more one Mind than three Qualities are one Substance and that very Term Powers might have taught him as much Potentia and Impotentia making one Species of Quality under which all Powers and Faculties are placed So that his three powers of Understanding Self-Reflection and Self-Love are one only Unitate Subjecti as being subjected in one and the same Mind but not unitate Essentiae as Essentially differing both from one another and from the Mind it self too in which they are Certainly if this Man did not look upon himself as above all Rules of Logick and Philosophy he would never venture upon such absurd Assertions PARADOX He tells us That the Son and Holy Ghost Will and Act with the Father not the Father with the Son and the Holy Ghost Pag. 169. Line 13 14 c. Answ. This is a direct Contradiction For if the Son and Holy Ghost Will and Act with the Father the Father must Will and Act with the Son and the Holy Ghost And he who can find a distinct sense in these two Propositions and much more affirm the first and deny the latter has a better Faculty at distinguishing than any Mortal Man using his Sense and Reason will pretend to It being all one as if I should say I saw Thomas William and John together of whom William and John were in the Company of Thomas but Thomas was not in the Company of William and John And I challenge any sensible thinking Man to make better sense of this Author 's fore-mention'd Assertion if he can But this must not go alone without a further cast of his Nature by heightning it with another Contradiction too which you shall find by comparing it with pag. 188. line 4. where he affirms That Father Son and Holy Ghost act together having before expresly told us here That the Father does not will and act with the Son and Holy Ghost which very Assertion also to shew him the further fatal Consequences of it absolutely blows up and destroys his whole Hypothesis of Mutual Consciousness by destroying that upon which he had built it For if the Father may and does Will and Act without the Son and Holy Ghost then farewel to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for they must never be alledged in this Cause more PARADOX Nothing can make God visible but a personal Union to a visible Nature Page 234. Line 22 23. Answer This is a most false Assertion and directly contrary to Scripture And to prove it so I shall lay down these Four Conclusions First That the Godhead or Divine Nature neither is nor can be visible to a Corporeal Eye by an immediate sight or Intuition of the Godhead it self Secondly That God is visible to such an Eye only by the special Signs or Symbols of his Presence Thirdly That God is visible by a Body personally united to him only as the said Body is such a Sign or Symbol of his peculiar Presence And Fourthly and Lastly That a Body actually assumed by God for a Time is during that Time as true and visible a Symbol of his Presence as a Body or Nature personally united to him can be And thus it was that God appeared visibly to the Patriarchs in Old Time and particularly to Abraham to Gideon and to the Father and Mother of Sampson who thereupon thought that they should Die for having seen God Face to Face For generally all Interpreters hold the Person who thus appeared to have been the Second Person of the blessed Trinity the Eternal Son of the Father though sometimes called simply the Angel and sometimes the Angel of the Covenant from the Office he was then actually imployed in by his Father as the extraordinary Messenger and Reporter of his Mind to holy Men upon some great Occasions This supposed I desire this bold Author to tell me Whether the second Person of the Trinity God equal with the Father was personally united to the Body which he then appeared in or not If not then the forementioned Assertion That nothing can make God visible but a personal Union to a visible Nature falls shamefully to the Ground as utterly false But if he was personally united to it then these Paradoxes must follow 1. That he either laid down that assumed Body afterwards or he did not if he did then an Hypostatical Union with God may be dissolv'd and not only so but there may be also a thousand personal Unions one after another if God shall think fit to assume a Body and appear in it so often which would be contrary to the sense of all Divines and to all Principles of sound Divinity which own but one hypostatical Union and no more Or 2. He still retains an Union to that assumed Body and then there is a double hypostatical Union viz. One to the visible Body assumed by him in
〈◊〉 The Soul of the World Plato in Phoedone says of God That he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Mind that is the Cause and orderer of all Things And Plato the Son of Ariston says 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God is the Mind of the World And Lactantius gives this Testimony of Aristotle That Quamvis secum ipse dissideat ac repugnantia sibi dicat sentiat by which one would think our Author better acquainted with him than he is in summum tamen unam mentem mundo praeesse testatur Lact. de falsa Relig. Lib. 1. Cap. 5. Agreeably to all which Seneca in the Preface to his Natural Questions putting the Question Quid est Deus What is God Answers Mens Universi The Mind of the Universe As the Learned Emperour Antoninus after him expresses God the same way and by the same word in Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Lib. 5. p. 148. Oxon. Edit And that Passage in Virgil's 6. Aeneid is famous where speaking of God as the Great Soul of the World running through all the Parts of that vast Body he expresses it in those known Verses Coelum ac Terras Camposque liquentes Lucentemque Globum Lunae Titaniaque Astra Spiritus intus alit totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem magno se corpore miscet And the same was the Opinion of Cato before him a great Man though but a small Author who tells us from the Ancient Poets who were accounted the Philosophers of the first Ages That Deus est Animus God is a Mind or Spirit And the Truth is I reckon that these Learned Men all along by an Infinite Mind or Spirit understood as truly and certainly One Infinite Mind or Spirit as if the Term of Unity had been added by them For besides that the Particles a or the which we use in translating any single word into our own Language import so much the very condition also of the Subject spoken of as being Infinite must needs infer the same So that we see here how the Judgment of Natural Reason in these Eminent Philosophers amongst the Heathens falls in with what God himself revealed by the Mouth of our Saviour concerning his own Nature in John 4. 24. viz. That God is a Spirit For we have them expressing him by these words Aninius Mens Spiritus So that had they all lived after St. Iohn as one of them did their Sentences might have passed for so many Paraphrases upon the Text all declaring God to be One Infinite Soul Mind or Spirit But perhaps our Author will here say What is all this to the purpose since we found our knowledge of the Three Divine Persons wholly upon Revelation And I grant we do so Yet nevertheless I shall by his good favour shew That what I have alledged is very much to the purpose And to this end premising here what we have already proved viz. That to be One Infinite Mind and to be Three distinct Infinite Minds involve in them a Mutual Negation of and Contradiction to one another Forasmuch as to be Unum is to be Indivisum in se that is to say Indivisible into more things such as it self This I say premised First I desire this Author to produce that Revelation which declares the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity to be Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits For I deny that there is any such Secondly I affirm That whatsoever is a Truth in Natural Reason cannot be contradicted by any other Truth declared by Revelation since it is impossible for any one Truth to contradict another Upon which grounds I here ask our Author Is it a Contradiction for One God to be One Infinite Mind or Spirit and to be also Three Infinite Minds or Spirits If he grant this as I have proved it whether he does or no then I ask him in the next place Whether it be a Proposition true in Natural Reason That God is one Infinite Mind or Spirit If he grants this also then I infer That it cannot be proved true from Revelation That God is Three Infinite Minds or Spirits since the certain Truth of the first Proposition supposed and admitted must needs disprove the Truth of that Revelation which pretends to establish the second But some again may perhaps ask Suppose it were revealed in express Terms That God is Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits would you in this case throw aside this Revelation in submission to the former Proposition declared by Natural Reason I Answer No But if the Revelation were express and undeniable I would adhere to it but at the same time while I did so I would quit the former Proposition and conclude That Natural Reason had not discoursed right when it concluded That God was one Infinite Mind or Spirit But to hold both Propositions to be True and to assent to them both as such This the Mind of Man can never do So that in a word I conclude That if it be certainly true from Reason That God is one Infinite Mind or Spirit No Revelation can or ought to be pleaded That he is Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits And if Revelation cannot or ought not to be pleaded for it I am sure we have no ground to believe it And yet at the same time I own and assert a Revelation of the truth of this Proposition That God is Three Persons or which is all one That God is Father Son and Holy Ghost since it does not at all contradict the forementioned Propositions founded upon Natural Reason viz. That God is One Infinite Mind or Spirit nor could it yet ever be proved to do so either by Arians or Socinians But on the contrary these two Propositions viz. God is One Infinite Mind or Spirit and that other God is Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits which he must be if the Three Divine Persons are Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits are Gross Palpable and Irreconcileable Contradictions And because they are so it is demonstratively certain That the said Three Persons are not Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits As this Author against all Principles of Philosophy and Divinity has most erroneously affirmed them to be I have said enough I hope upon this Subject But before I quit it it will not be amiss to observe what work this Man makes with the Persons of the Blessed Trinity as indeed he seldom almost turns his Pen but he gives some scurvy stroke at it or other particularly in Page 89. he affirms That the Expression of the One true God and the only true God cannot properly be attributed to the Son nor to the Holy Ghost From whence I infer That then neither can the Expression of God or the True God be properly attributed to the Son or to the Holy Ghost Forasmuch as the Terms one God and One True God or one only True God are equivalent The Term One God including in it every whit as much as the
nothing is so but a Mind or Spirit it may as I have said imply a Mind but it does not directly signifie it But admitting that it does both does this expression prove That the Son is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 distinct from the Father By no means For not only the Son but the Father may be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Holy Ghost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and yet they are not Three 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the Reason of this is because 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is an Essential Attribute following the Divine Nature and therefore common to all the Three Persons and not a Personal Attribute peculiar to any one of them So that granting the Son to be as truly and properly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as this Author would have him yet we absolutely deny That he is a distinct 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from the Father And this Expression I am sure is far enough from proving him to be so From Nyssen he passes to St. Athanasius who he tells us observes out of these words of our Saviour John 10. 30. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that our Saviour does not say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that by so speaking he gave us a perfect Duality of Persons in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and an Unity of Nature in the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All which is very true and that this distinction of Persons overthrows the Heresie of Sabellius and the Unity of their Nature the Heresie of Arius But then this is also as true that all this is nothing at all to our Author's Purpose For how does this prove either that the Three Divine Persons are Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits Or that Self-Consciousness is the proper ground or Reason of their distinction Why yes says He If the Father be an Eternal Mind and Wisdom then the Son is also an Eternal but begotten Mind and Wisdom Very true but still I deny that it follows hence That the Eternal Mind or Wisdom Begetting and the Eternal Mind or Wisdom Begotten are Two distinct Minds or Wisdoms but only one and the same Mind or Wisdom under these Two distinct Modifications of Begetting and being Begot But he pretends to explain and confirm his Notion of a distinct Mind or Wisdom out of those words of the Nicene Creed in which the Son is said to be God of God Light of Light very God of very God By which words I cannot imagine how this Author thinks to serve his turn unless that by Light must be meant Infinite Wisdom or Infinitely Wise Mind and that this must also infer the Father and Son to be Two distinct Infinitely Wise Minds or Wisdoms one issuing from the other But if so then the same words will and must infer them also to be two distinct Gods and very Gods For all these words stand upon the same level in the same Sentence and then if we do but joyn the Term Distinct equally with every one of them we shall see what Monstrous Blasphemous Stuff will be drawn out of this Creed In the mean time let this Author know once for all That Light of Light imports not here Two distinct Lights but one Infinite Light under Two different ways of Subsisting viz. either by and from it self as it does in the Father or of and from another as it does in the Son All which is plainly and fully imported in and by the Particle of signifying properly as here applyed Derivation or Communication in the thing which it is applyed to And this is the clear undoubted sense of the Word as it is used here In the mean time I hope the Arians and Socinians will joyn in a Letter of Thanks to this Author for making such an Inference from the Nicene Creed In the next place he comes to St. Austin where though I am equally at a loss to find how he proves his Point by him any more than by those whom he has already produced yet I will transcribe the whole Quotation into the Margin that so both the Reader may have it under his Eye and the Author have no cause to complain that he is not fairly dealt with Now that which he would infer from thence seems to be this That God the Father is Infinitely Wise by a Wisdom of his own distinct from that Wisdom by which the Son is called The Wisdom of the Father and consequently that they are Two distinct Infinite Wisdoms or Infinitely Wise Minds This I say is that which he would inferr and argue from St. Austin or I know not what else it can be But this is by no means deducible from his words for the Father is wise by one and the same Infinite Wisdom equally belonging both to the Father and the Son but not by it under that peculiar Formality as it belongs to the Son For it belongs to the Son as Communicated to Him whereas it belongs to the Father as Originally in and from Himself And whereas it is objected That if the Father should be Wise by the Wisdom which he Begot then he could not be said to be Wise by a Wisdom of his own but only by a Begotten Wisdom proper to the Son I Answer That neither does this follow since it is but one and the same Essential Wisdom in both viz. in him who Begets and in him who is Begotten Though as it is in him who is Begotten it is not after the same way in Him who Begets So that it is this determining Particle as or Quatenus which by importing a distinction of the manner causes a quite different application of the Term while the Thing is still the same For the Father himself is not denominated Wise even by that very Wisdom that is Essential to Him considered as Personally determined to the Son for so it must be considered as Derived and Communicated and no Divine Perfection can agree to the Father under the Formal Consideration of Derived and Communicated albeit the Thing it self which is Derived and Communicated absolutely considered may and does In a word the Father is Wise by one and the same Wisdom which is both in himself and in his Son but not by it as it is in the Son But by the way it is worth observing That this Man who here in the 102 and 103 Pages denies the Father to be Wise by this Begotten Wisdom which the Son is here called and which in the Sense we have now given of it is very true and alledges St. Austin and Lombard to abett him in it This very Man I say Page 131. Line 24. affirms That the Son is that Wisdom and Knowledge wherewith his Father knows himself Where If for the Father to be Wise and to know himself be formally the same Act and as much the same as his Wisdom and Knowledge can be as it is manifest they are then I leave it to this
For though the Three Divine Persons differ as really yet it is certain that they do not differ as much But what the Fathers alledged only as an Illustration of the Case this Man is pleased to make a direct proof of his Point which by his Favour is to stretch it a little too far For if he would make the foregoing Example a Parallel Instance to the Thing which he applies it to it would prove a great deal too much as has been shewn and therefore as to the Thing which it is brought for does indeed prove nothing at all Now the Thing it is brought to prove is That the Three Divine Persons are Three distinct Infinite Minds or Spirits but since we have shewn That a Real Difference or Distinction may be much short of such an one as is between two or more Minds or Spirits which we own to be as great as between two or more Men it follows That the Real Difference which is between the Three Divine Persons cannot prove them to be so many distinct Minds or Spirits In short our Author 's whole Argument amounts to no more but this which though it may sound something jocularly is really and strictly true viz. That because Peter Iames and Iohn are so many Men therefore Father Son and Holy Ghost are so many Minds A pleasant way of Arguing certainly I have now examined all that this Author has alledged about the distinction of the Three Divine Persons and I have done it particularly and exactly not omitting any one of his Quotations But how comes it to pass all this while that we have not so much as one Syllable out of the Fathers or School-men in behalf of Self-Consciousness Which being according to this Author the Constituent Reason of the Personality and Personal Distinction of the Three Divine Persons will he pretend to prove the Distinction it self from the Fathers and at the same time not speak one Tittle of the Principle or Reason of this Distinction Or will he profess to prove his whole Hypothesis by the Authority of the Fathers and yet be silent of Self-Consciousness which he himself makes one grand and principal part of the said Hypothesis Certainly one would think that the very shame of the World and that Common Awe and regard of Truth which Nature has imprinted upon the Minds of Men should keep any one from offering to impose upon Men in so gross and shameless a manner as to venture to call a Notion or Opinion the Constant Doctrine both of the Fathers and the Schools nay and to profess to make it out and shew it to be so and while he is so doing not to to produce one Father or Schoolman I say again not so much as one of either in behalf of that which he so confidently and expresly avows to be the joynt Sentiment of Both. This surely is a way of proving or rather of imposing peculiar to Himself But we have seen how extremely fond he is of this new Invented Term and Notion And therefore since he will needs have the Reputation of being the sole Father and Begetter of the Hopefull Issue there is no Reason in the World that Antiquity should find other Fathers to maintain it CHAP. VII In which is shewn That the Passages alledged by this Author out of the Fathers do not prove Mutual-Consciousness to be that wherein the Unity of the Divine Nature in the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity does Consist But that the Fathers place it in something else OUR Author having undertook to make good his Doctrine about the Blessed Trinity from the Fathers and that both as to the Distinction of the Divine Persons and also as to their Unity in the same Nature And having said what he could from those Ancient Writers for that new sort of Distinction which he ascribes to the said Persons in the former part of his 4th Section which I have confuted in the preceding Chapter he proceeds now in the following and much longer part of the same Section to prove the Unity of the Three Persons in one and the same Nature according to his own Hypothesis And the Proofs of this we shall reduce under these Two following Heads as containing all that is alledged by him upon this point of his Discourse viz. First That it is one and the same Numerical Divine Nature which belongs to all the Three Divine Persons And Secondly That the Thing wherein this Numerical Unity of the Divine Nature does consist is that Mutual-Consciousness by which all the Three Persons are intimately Conscious to one another of all that is known by or belongs to each of them in particular And here the Authority of the Fathers is pleaded by him for both of these and I readily grant it for the first but however shall examine what this Author produces for the one as well as for the other But before I do this I must observe to him That if that Distinction Asserted by him between the Divine Persons whereby they stand distinguished as Three Infinite Minds or Spirits holds good all his proofs of the Unity of their Nature will come much too late For he has thereby already destroyed the very Subject of his Discourse and it is in vain to seek wherein the Numerical Unity of the Divine Nature as it belongs to the Three Persons does Consist after he has affirmed that which makes such an Unity utterly impossible And it has been sufficiently proved against him in our 5th Chapter That Three Infinite Minds or Spirits can never be one Numerical Infinite Mind or Spirit nor consequently one God Three distinct Spirits can never be otherwise One than by being United into one Compound or Collective Being which could such a Thing be admitted here might be called indeed an Union but an Unity properly it could not And hereupon I cannot but observe also That this Author very often uses these Terms promiscuously as if Union and Unity being United into One and being One signified the very same Thing whereas in strictness and propriety of Speech whatsoever Things are United into One cannot be Originally One and è Converso whatsoever is Originally One cannot be so by being United into One for as Suidas explains the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is to say Union is so called from the pressing or thrusting together several Things into one But our Author who with great profoundness tells us of the same Nature in Three distinct Persons being United into One Numerical Essence or God-head Page 118. Lines 9 10. has certainly a different Notion of Union from all the World besides For how one and the same Nature though in never so many distinct Persons since it is still supposed the same in all can be said to be United into any one Thing I believe surpasses all Humane Apprehension to conceive Union in the very Nature of it being of several Things not of one and the same I desire the Reader to consult the place and
when he has done so he opposes them Both to a Numerical Sameness of Nature as appears from the Adversative Particle But placed between them In which let me tell him he is guilty of a very great mistake both by making those Things the same which are not the same and by making an Opposition where there is a real Coincidence For by his favour one and the same Numerical Divine Nature is a Common Nature too forasmuch as without any Division or Multiplication of it self it belongs in Common to the Three Divine Persons The Term Deus indeed is neither a Genus nor a Species Nevertheless all Divines and School-men allow it to be a Terminus Communis as properly predicable of and Common to Father Son and Holy Ghost and in this very Thing consists the Mystery of the Trinity That one and the same Numerical Nature should be Common to and Exist in Three Numerically distinct Persons And therefore for one who pretends to teach the whole World Divinity while he is Discoursing of the Divine Nature and Persons to oppose Common Nature to Nature Numerically One and from the Commonness of it to make the Fathers Argue against its Numericalness whereas the same Divine Nature may be and really is both it is a shrewd sign of the want of something or other in that Man that must needs render him extremely unfit to prescribe and dictate in these Matters In fine the sole Point driven at all along by the Fathers as to the Question about the Unity of the Divine Nature for their Arguments to prove the Coequality of the Three Divine Persons against the Arians are not now before us is an Assertion of a Real Numerical Existing Unity of the said Nature in the said Persons I say a Numerical Unity without making any more steps or degrees in it than One or owning any distinction between Sameness of Nature and Sameness of Essence And much less by making as this Author does a Specifick Sameness of Nature one thing wherein they place the Unity of the Divine Nature and then making Sameness of Essence another and further degree in the Unity of the said Nature and when they have done so by a return back explaining this Sameness of Essence by the Sameness of Nature newly mentioned as he says they do in these words immediately following by way of Exegesis of the former viz. That there is but one God because all the Three Divine Persons have the same Nature Page 107. and the two last Lines All which is a Ridiculous Circle and a Contradiction to boot making Sameness of Nature one step and Sameness of Essence another and then making this Sameness of Essence no more than a Sameness of Nature again so that according to him the Fathers must be said to go further by resting in the very same step which they first made Which way of Reasoning I confess may serve well enough for one who can forget in one Page what he had said in the other just before But by his favour the Fathers were a little more Consistent and understood themselves better than to run Divisions in such a senseless manner upon a Thing that admitted none And thus having shewn how he has dealt with the Fathers in the Account given by him of their Opinion about the Unity of the Divine Nature in the Persons of the Blessed Trinity which was the first Head under which I reduced his Allegations from them I come now in the 2d Place to the other and Principal Head under which he undertakes to prove the chief and more peculiar part of his Hypothesis from the said Fathérs viz. That the Unity and Identity of Nature belonging to the Three Divine Persons consists in the Mutual-Consciousness which is between them That is in Truth That they are therefore One God because they are Conscious to themselves that they are so And here I shall begin with shewing how this Author overthrows the Point undertook by him before he produces any Arguments from the Fathers for it And to this Purpose I shall resume those words of his before cited by me out of Page 106. In which he reminds his Reader That Trinity in Unity being so great a Mystery and of which we have no Example in Nature it is no wonder if it cannot be explained by any one kind of Natural Union and that therefore it was necessary to use several Examples and to allude to several kinds of Union to form an adequate Notion of the Unity of the God-head Now here since our Author's Notion and the Fathers too as he says of this Unity is nothing else but Mutual-Consciousness I desire to Learn of him what necessity there was or is of using several Examples and alluding to several kinds of Union to explain or form an adequate Notion of that And I wonder what kind of Thing he would make of his Mutual-Consciousness should he come to explain and describe it by several Examples and several Kinds of Union But this is not all for he tells us likewise as we also observed before that there are several steps to be taken towards the Explication of this Mystery Whereupon I would again learn of him how many steps are necessary to explain Mutual-Conciousness for one would imagine one single step sufficient to represent and declare a Thing which every Body understands This Author indeed confidently enough Asserts That the Fathers give no other Account of a Trinity in Unity than the same which he gives of it Pag. 101. Line 2. But certainly if the Fathers thought several Examples Steps and Kinds of Union absolutely necessary to explain the Notion they had of this Unity and if these cannot be necessary to explain the Notion of Mutual-Consciousness then it must follow That the Fathers neither did nor possibly could by that Unity mean Mutual-Consciousness And if this Author doubts of the force of this Reasoning let him try his skill and see what Learned stuff he is like to make of it when he comes to explain his Notion of Mutual-Consciousness by several Examples Steps and Sorts of Union and out of them all to form one adequate Notion of this so much admired Thing Wherefore I conclude and I think unanswerably That the Fathers by this Unity between the Divine Persons mean one Thing and this Man quite another and consequently that they have given a very different Account of it from what he gives contrary to his equally bold and false Asseveration affirming it to be the very same And now I am ready to see what he has to offer us from the Fathers in behalf of his Mutual-Consciousness but because I am extremely desirous that the Reader should keep him close to the Point and not suffer him to wander from it which in dispute he is as apt to do as any Man living I shall presume to hint this to him That the Point to be proved by this Author is not that the Three Divine Persons have one and the same
Sum of his Argument from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 In Answer to which before I address my self to his Argument I will give some Account of the Quotation In which by his Favour we are to take the sense of the Father's words from the Father himself and not from the Inferences which he who Quotes them thinks fit to draw from them how good soever he may be at that Work Now what St. Gregory means by them appears plainly by his manner of Reasoning The Question before him was Whether the Three Divine Persons were Three Gods Which St. Gregory denies and amongst other Proofs says That God is the Name of Energy and from the Unity of Energy proves the Unity of the Deity and that three Persons are but one God because the Operation is the same in all To this he raises an Objection from the Sameness of Faculty Office or Operation amongst Men as Geometricians Husbandmen Orators whose Office Business and Operations in their respective way are the same which yet does not hinder but that they are still Three or more several Men. To which he Answers that these act seperately and by themselves but that it is not so in the Divine Nature no Person in the Holy Trinity doing any Thing by himself only or acting separately from the other Two but that there is one and the same Motion ond Disposition of Will passing from the Father through the Son to the Holy Ghost This is the force of St. Gregory's Reasoning and the plain meaning of it is no more but this That Three Men acting the same Thing are still Three Men because they act separately and by themselves but that the Three Persons in the Trinity are but One God because they do not act separately but that there is the same Motion and Disposition of Will in all the Three Persons as on the contrary Three Men's not having one and the same Motion of Will equally proves That they are not One but Three several Men and accordingly makes a manifest difference between Three Men acting the same Thing and the Operation of the Three Persons in the Blessed Trinity which is the Sum of St. Gregory's Answer to the forementioned Objection And now what does all this prove Why truly neither of those Two Things which this Author must prove or he proves nothing viz. That this Unity of Motion and Disposition of Will is properly and formally Unity of Divine Nature And next That this Unity of Divine Nature is properly Mutual Consciousness These two Things I say it is incumbent upon him to prove But how it can be done from the fore-mentioned Words or Argument of Gregory Nyssen I believe will pose the Learned'st Man alive to shew The proper Answer therefore to this Argument will be much the same with that just before given to the Argument drawn from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of which this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is but a Branch and it proceeds thus First I deny the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be any more than a proof of the Unity of the Divine Nature just as either the Effect or the Causality is a sure proof of the Cause but for all that is not the Cause or as a Consequent proves its Antecedent without being the Antecedent or that wherein the Nature of the Antecedent does consist Secondly In the next place I deny that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is formally and properly the same with Mutual-Consciousness any more than an Act or Motion of the Will is formally the same with an Act of the Understanding And before this Author takes it for granted which is his constant way of proving things I expect that he make it appear That 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifie formally one and the same Thing And it was boldly done of him to say the least to appeal to his Reader about a Thing in which if he understood the difference between an Act of Volition and an Act of Intellection he must certainly judge against him But it may be reply'd That this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does at least inserr a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I grant it may But affirm That this is nothing to his Purpose unless it could follow from hence that that which inferrs or proves a Thing is the very Thing which it inferrs and proves which it neither is nor for that Reason can be As for what he adds That this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 cannot be in the Three Divine Persons without such a Mutual-Consciousness I do readily grant this also But in the mean time is not this Dictator yet old enough to distinguish between the Causa sinè quâ non or rather the Condition of a Thing and the Ratio formalis or Nature of that Thing Between That without which a Thing cannot be and that which that Thing properly is There can be no such Thing as Sight without a due Circulation of the Blood and Spirits But is such a Circulation therefore properly an Act of Sight Or an Act of Sight such a Circulation To dispute this further would be but to abuse the Reader 's Patience And last of all if this Author should take advantage of those words from Gregory Nyssen That God is the Name of Energy Besides that it is not the bare Notation but use of the Word that must govern its signification I would have this Author know That God may have many Names by which his Nature is not signified as well as several others by which it is and may be But I must confess it is a very pleasant Thing as was in some measure hinted before to prove the Divine Nature to be Energy because the Name God does not signifie Nature but Energy or Operation whereas in Truth if it proves any thing it proves that Nature and Energy applyed to God do by no means signifie the same Thing And so I have done with his Argument from the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and effectually demonstrated That there is not so much as the least shew or semblance of any proof from this That Mutual Consciousness is properly that wherein the Unity of the Divine Nature in the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity does consist 3. His Third Argument is from the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 commonly Translated Circumincession and signifying a Mutual-Inexistence or In-dwelling of each Person in the other Two The Word was first used in this sence so far as I can find by Damascen a Father of the 8th Century But the Thing meant by it is contained in those words of our Saviour in Iohn 14. 11. 21. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me which I confess are a solid and sufficient proof of the Unity and Identity of the Divine Nature both in the Father and the Son and withal a very happy and significant Expression of the same
no doubt have took him upon such an advantage and well-favouredly exposed him for so foul a Blunder But to go on In Page 209. Line 13. of the same Book I find mention of the Quadrigesimal Fast. And this put me as much to a stand as the other to imagine what kind of Fast this should be For the nearest and likest Word I could derive it from was Quadriga signifying a Coach Cart or Waggon And accordingly as the Jews had their Feast of Weeks and of Tabernacles so I did not know but the Papists or some Christians like them might have some Fast called The Fast of Coaches or Waggons and might possibly give it that Name from its being carried on with the Discipline of the Whip and the Lash as Coaches and Waggons used to be This Conjecture I say I made with my self For I concluded that this Author could not mean it of the Lenten-Fast for that is called Quadragesima or Jejunium Quadragesimale and issues from the Numeral Quadraginta and so is quite another Thing from this Quadrigesimal-Fast which I cannot find in all the Rubrick of our Church though perhaps when those Excellent Persons spoken of Apology P. 5. Line 20. have finished their Intended Alterations of our Rubrick we shall find it there too In the next place let us pass to such of his Words as stand conjoyned with others in Sentences or Forms of Speaking And here let us first of all consider his absurd use of that form of Expression as I may so speak which he has at least Twenty times in this one Book Now the proper use of these Words is to bespeak excuse for that which they are joyned to as for something that is legendum cum veniâ and containing in it a kind of Catachresis or at least some Inequality some Defect or other in the Expression with Reference to the Thing designed to be expressed by it And this I am sure is all the true and proper Reason assignable for the use of these Words as I may so speak But this Author applies and uses them even when he pretends to give the properest and most Literal Account and Explication of Things and such an one as is not only better than all others but even exclusive of them also as the only True Account that can be given of them As for instance where he affirms Self-Consciousness to be the True and only Formal Reason of Personality and Mutual-Consciousness to be the same of the Unity of the Divine Nature in the Three Persons he ushers it in with those Words as I may so speak Page 56. Line 6 7 8 c. Which according to what he holds about these Two Terms is all one as if I should say God is an Infinite Eternal Almighty Being as I may so speak and God is the Creator and Governour of the World as I may so speak and Man is a Rational Creature having Two Eyes Two Arms and Two Legs I may so speak all which is egregiously Absurd and Ridiculous And the more so for that this very Author reproaches one of his Adversaries whether Owen Baxter Lobb or the Reconciler I cannot at present remember but the Thing I perfectly do for using the like Expression as I may so say with great scoff and scorn telling him thereupon That certainly no Man had ever more need of so says than he had Now for my own part I think this Author's so speaks are every whit as bad and contemptible as his Adversary's so says unless he can perswade the World That a Man may speak an Absurd thing much more excusably than he can say it To this we may add some more such Absurd Expressions As for instance that in P. 55. Line 26. where he says That the Three Divine Persons are so United to each other as every Man is to himself In which Words besides the falseness of the Proposition it being impossible for the Three Divine Persons to be so United to each other as to be but One Person which yet every Man is we ought to note also the Absurdity of the Expression For all Union or Unition is Essentially between two things at least so that unless the Man be One thing and himself another He cannot be said to be United to Himself He may perhaps be properly enough said to be One with Himself but to say That he is United to himself is unpardonable Nonsence Again in Page 85. Line 8. He tells us That the Infinite Wisdom which is in the Father Son and Holy Ghost is Identically the same which is as much as to say That a Man is Wisely Wise Honestly Honest Learnedly Learned and the like For though I know what it is to be perfectly or absolutely the same yet to affirm any Thing or Person to be Identically the same is an Idle and a Nauseous Tautology Likewise in Page 182. Line 19. He tells us That God intercedes with no Body but himself Concerning which Form of Speaking I must observe That when the Term But is used as a Particle of Exception it implys the Thing or Person excepted from others to be of the same kind or at least condition with the rest from which it was excepted And therefore unless God were a Body it can with no Congruity of Speech be said That God intercedes with no Body but himself So that this also must pass for another Blunder With the like Absurdity he tells us in Page 124. Line 15. Where there are Two distinct and divided Operations if any of them can act alone without the other there must be Two divided Natures Now it is a Maxime in Philosophy and that such an one as I think ought to take place in Grammar too That Actionis non datur Actio And accordingly if the Reason of Things ought to be the Rule of Words then to say That an Operation Acts or Operates is extremely Senceless and Ridiculous But to proceed he has a way of promiscuously applying such Words to Things as are properly applicable to Persons only such as are who and whose As for instance he tells us of the Being of a Thing whose Nature we cannot conceive Page 6. Line 11. And in the same Page Line 23. We may know says he that there are a great many things whose Nature and Properties we cannot conceive And in Page 7. Line 18. It is so far from being a wonder to meet with any Thing whose Nature we do not understand c. But is this Sence or Grammar Or does any Man say Reach me that Book who lies there or that Chair who stands there No certainly none who understands what proper speaking is would express himself so And moreover to shew that he can speak of Persons in a Dialect belonging only to bare Things as well as he did of bare Things in words proper only to Persons he tells us of a Son produced out of the Substance of its Parent instead of his Parent Page 257. Line 19. which is a
Knowledge by which each Person knows and comprehends himself and whatsoever belongs to him The Major Proposition therefore is to be proved viz. That no Personal Act can be the formal Reason of Personality in the Person whose Act it is And I prove it thus The formal Reason of every Thing is in order of Nature before the Thing of which it is the formal Reason but no Personal Act is in order of Nature before the Personality of the Person whose Act it is and therefore it cannot be the formal Reason of his Personality The Major is Self-evident And as for the Minor That no Personal Act is before the Personality of the Person whose Act it is This also is manifest Because such an Act cannot be before the Person himself and therefore not before his Personality For as much as his Personality is that by which he is formally a Person so that it is impossible to be before the one without being before the other too And now that it cannot be before the Person himself is manifest from hence that as every Personal Act in general bears a Relation of Posteriority to the Person to whom it belongs as to the Cause or Productive Principle of all the Acts proceeding from Him so this particular Act of Self-Consciousness bears a Treble Relation of Posteriority to the Person whose Act it is viz. as to the Agent or Principle producing it 2. As to the Subject Recipient of it and sustaining it And Thirdly and Lastly As to the Object which it is terminated to All which Respects it sustains not barely as it is an Act but partly as it is an Immanent Act and partly also a Reflex Act. In the first place therefore every Person being the Agent or Productive Cause of all the personal Acts issuing from Him he must upon that Account in Order of Nature precede the said Acts and consequently every Divine Person must in Nature be before that Act of Self-Consciousness which personally belongs to him And moreover since it is likewise an Immanent Act it relates to him as the Subject in which it is as well as the Cause from which it is and upon that Account also must bear a Natural Posteriority to Him And then lastly as it is also a Reflex Act by which the Person knows himself to be a Person and is Conscious to Himself what he is and what he does it terminates upon him as its Object also So that the Cause the Subject and the Object of this Act being the same Person in this last respect no less than in the two former it bears another and third Relation of Posteriority to Him since every Act not productive of something besides and without the Agent is in Order of Nature Posterior to the Object it terminates upon From all which I conclude That that Act of Self-Consciousness by which each Divine Person knows or is Conscious to Himself of his own Personality cannot be the Formal Reason of the said Personality without being in Order of Nature both before it and after it too viz. Before it as it is the Formal Reason of it and yet Posterior to it as it is an Act proceeding from lodged and received in and lastly Terminated upon the same Person All which is so very plain that hardly can any Thing be plainer And indeed the very word Self-Consciousness contradicts and overthrows its being the ground or Formal Reason of Personality For still Self must be before Consciousness and Self imports Personality as being that by which a Person is said to be what he is and they both stand united in this one Word as the Act and the Object and therefore Consciousness cannot be the Reason of it Or to express the same Thing by other Terms Self-Subsistence must precede Self-Consciousness and Self-Subsistence here implys Personality and therefore Personality upon the same Account must in Nature precede Self-Consciousness and consequently cannot be the formal Effect or Result of it For surely according to the most Essential Order of Things a Person must be what he is before he can know what he is And this Argument I confess being founded upon the Priority of Subsistence to all Acts and particularly to those of knowledge in every Person Self-Conscious does and must Universally run through all Instances in which Personality and Self-Consciousness with reference to one another come to be treated of And as it affects Self-Consciousness so it will equally take place in Mutual-Consciousness too What Allowances are to be here made for the absolute Simplicity Eternity and Pure Actuality of the Divine Nature and Persons when these Notions are applyed to them we have already observed in the first of those Preliminary Considerations mentioned in this Chapter The proper use and design of all which Notions is to lead guide and direct our Apprehensions about that Great Object so much too big for our Narrow Faculties so that whatsoever contradicts the Natural Order of these Apprehensions ought upon no ground of Reason to be admitted in our Discourses of the Divine Nature how much soever it may and does transcend the said Apprehensions And this must be allowed us or we must sink under the vast Disproportion of the thing before us and not discourse of it at all For I cannot think that the Word Self-Consciousness has brought the Deity one jot lower to us or raised our Understandings one degree higher and nearer to that Argument II. My Second Argument against Self-Consciousness being the Formal Reason of Personality in the Divine Persons is this Nothing in the Nature of it Absolute and Irrelative can be the Formal Reason of Personality in the Persons of the Blessed Trinity but Self-Consciousness is in the Nature of it Absolute and Irrelative and therefore it cannot be the Reason of personality in any of the said Persons Now the Major Proposition is proved thus Nothing in the Nature of it Absolute can be the Formal Reason of any Thing in the Nature of it purely and perfectly Relative But the Personality of every one of the Divine Persons is purely and perfectly Relative and therefore Nothing Absolute can be the Formal Constituent Reason of their Personality The Major of which Syllogism is also manifest For Things Essentially different and thereby uncapable of being affirmed of one another cannot possibly be the Formal Reason of one another And that the Persons in the Blessed Trinity are purely Relative to one another and consequently that their Personalities are so many Relations is no less evident from this That Two of them relate to one another as Father and Son and the Third to Both as proceeding from Both and it is impossible for one Thing to proceed from another especially by a Continual Act of Procession without Importing a Relation to that from which it so proceeds so that the very personal Subsistence of these Persons implys and carries in it a Formal Relation For the Father Subsists personally as a Father by that Eternal
Spiration which Three Divine Persons superadd to this Divine Nature or Deity Three different Modes of Subsistence founding so many different Relations each of them belonging to each Person in a peculiar Uncommunicable manner so that by vertue thereof each person respectively differs and stands distinguished from the other Two And yet by reason of one and the same Numerical Divine Nature or Godhead equally existing in and common to all the Three Persons they are all but One and the same God who is blessed for Ever This I reckon to be a True and Just Representation of the Doctrine of the Catholick Church so far as it has thought fit to declare it self upon this Great and Sacred Mystery Not that I think this sets the Point clear from all Difficulties and Objections For the Nature and Condition of the Thing will not have it so nor have the Ablest Divines ever thought it so for where then were the Mystery But that it gives us the fairest and most consistent Account of this Article both with reference to Scripture and Reason and liable to the fewest Exceptions against it of any other Hypothesis or Explication of it whatsoever And the same will appear yet further from those Terms which the Writers of the Church have all along used in expressing themselves upon this Subject And that both with respect First To the Unity and Agreement of the Three Divine Persons in one and the same Nature And Secondly To their Personal Distinction from one another And first For their Unity and Agreement in one and the same Nature The Greeks expressed this by the Terms 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And the Latines by Consubstantialitas and Coessentialitas By all which I affirm That they understood an Agreement in one and the same Numerical Nature or Essence For tho this Author has affirmed That the Nicene Fathers understood no more by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 than a Specifick Unity of Nature this Matter has been sufficiently accounted for and his Assertion effectually confuted in the foregoing Chapter In the next place As for the Terms expressing the Distinction and Difference of the Divine Persons from one another the Greeks make use of these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Trinity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Subsistences or Persons 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Modes of Subsistence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Properties 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Marks of Distinction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 distinguishing Properties 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Notes of Signification And agreeably to them the Latines also make use of the following Terms Trinitas Personae Subsistentiae Modi Subsistendi Proprietates Relationes and Notiones seu Notionalia By which last the Schoolmen mean such Terms and Expressions as serve to notifie and declare to us the proper and peculiar distinction of the Divine Persons And they reckon four of them viz. the above mentioned Paternitas Filiatio Spiratio Processio all of them importing Relation To which some add a fifth which the Greeks call 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and the Latines Innascibilitas a Term not importing in it any positive Relation but only a meer Negation of all producibility by any Superiour principle and upon that account peculiar to the Father who alone of all the Persons of the Blessed Trinity is without Production Touching all which Terms I cannot think it necessary to enlarge any further in a particular and more distinct Explication of them since how differing soever they may be in their respective significations they all concur in the same use and design which is to express something proper and peculiar to the Divine Persons whereby they are rendred distinct from and Incommunicable to one another But these few general Remarks I think fit to lay down concerning them As 1. That albeit most of these Terms as to the Form of the Word run abstractively yet they are for the most part to be understood Concretively and not as simple Forms but as Forms in Conjunction with the Subject which they belong to In the former abstracted sence they are properly Personalities or Personal Properties viz. Those Modes or Forms by which the Persons whom they appertain to are formally constituted and denominated what they are but in the Latter and Concrete Sence they signifie the Persons themselves 2. The Second Thing which I would observe is That there has been in the first Ages of the Church some Ambiguity in the use of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Persona For neither would the Latines at first admit of Three Hypostases in God as taking 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the same Thing for that they had no other Latin Word to Translate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by but Substantia by which also they Translated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Word Subsistentia being then looked upon by them as Barbarous and not in use so that they refused the Term 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for fear of admitting of Three distinct Substances or Essences in the Trinity which they knew would lead them into the Errour of Arius Nor on the other side would the Greeks acquiesce in a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nor admit of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for fear of falling thereby into the contrary Errour of Sabellius for that they thought the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imported no real Internal difference but only a difference of Name or Attribute or at most of Office and for them to allow no more than such an one amongst the Divine Persons they knew was Sabellianisme And this Controversie of Words exercised the Church for a considerable time to appease and compose which amongst other Matters a Council was called and held at Alexandria about the Year of Christ 362. in which amongst many other Bishops Convened from Italy Arabia Aegypt and Lybia was present also Athanasius himself And in this Council both sides having been fully heard and found to agree in sence though they differ'd in words it was ordained That they should thenceforth Mutually acknowledg one another for Orthodox and for the future cease contending about these words to the disturbance of the Church By which means and especially by the Explication given of these words by Athanasius whereby as Gregory Nazianzen tells us in his Panegyrick upon him he satisfied and reconciled both Greeks and Latines to the indifferent use of them and indeed that Oration made by Nazianzen himself in the Council of Constantinople viz. The second General before 150 Bishops not a little contributing to the same the sence of these Terms from that time forward came generally to be fixed and the Ambiguity of them removed and so the Controversie by degrees ceased between the Greeks and Latines and the Words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Personae and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Subsistentiae grew