when he girt up his Loins and ran before Ahab to the entring in of Jesreel Numb 14.10 and as a poor persecuted Man when he was forced to fly for his Life from the fury of Jezebel the Prophets generally died Martyrs for those Truths they published and the Apostles tho'mighty in those signs and wonders which they did in the World's View yet several of them died by ways as cruel and tormenting as our Saviour himself from whence it will follow that Moses and Elijah that the Prophets and Apostles were as great Examples of Humility and Condescension as our Saviour himself and therefore St. Paul when he set Christ as an example of Humility before the Philippians did it only at randome and might as well have named himself or any of his Fellow-Apostles on the same account and doubtless this Doctrine tends very much to the Advancement of Christian Piety But now if we quit Socinian Reason and consider the Truth of things if we look upon our Saviour as pre-existent to his appearing in the World as being God of God and Light of Light and that from Eternity and consider him as condescending to assume our Nature as appearing without those Terrors of Divinity and clothed with all the Sweetnesses of innocent Humanity if we respect him who had all things originally at command and did yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 become poor for our sakes where we cannot but take notice of our new Author's pitiful Criticism who tells us that Word signifies not to become poor but to be poor yet Suidas tells us that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies Suidas in Verbo 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 one that falls into want from having been sufficiently provided for which we think is becoming Poor from being Rich and not being originally Poor and so whereas Poverty in the Poet Aristophanes tells us Aristoph in Plut. p. 58. I.B.E. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Life of a Beggar is to be without any thing of his own but what he receives from the Charity of others which was really our Saviour's Case Gerard a better Critic than our Authour defines according to ancient Etymologists Car. Ger. in locum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Beggar as one falling or descending from Riches to Penury from Sufficiency to extream Want so far as to have nothing but what 's given by others thus our Saviour became Poor nay a Beggar others administring to his Maintenance of their Substance and he descended from that celestial Glory with which he was robed from Eternity to assume Humane Nature and in that Nature to be so poor and despised on that account as the Evangelists represent him and we know as well as he can tell us that God as God cannot be poor but we are as sure that that real Flesh and Blood assumed by our Saviour was liable to the same inconveniences with the rest that were Partakers of the same Nature among which one was Poverty very incident to those who are born to no worldly Estates But how Men come to be Rich and Glorious by having the power of doing Miracles conferr'd upon them we cannot easily discover our Saviour's Miracles brought him in no Treasures and his Apostles notwithstanding that Power of doing the like conferred on them by Heaven were in a very low Condition in the World and Paul among his numerous Converts was but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a poor Man fain to get his Living by the Labours of his own hands Now certainly the Jews were as much obliged to observe our Saviour's Humility as others and they saw him low enough but they who very well knew the Meanness of his Birth that could ask the Question Is not this the Carpenter's Son could not make any extraordinary Remark upon that but could they have believ'd him the Son of God which those converted among them afterwards did by which they understood his being equal with God they would have been very ready to admire his Humiliation as his Disciples did when owning him their Master they saw him stooping to wash their Feet so that our Saviour was no way visibly Rich or Glorious in the World unless they 'll say he was so because contented which every Wise and Good Man is and they who saw neither any Riches nor Glory that he had upon Earth could not have been easily drawn to set him as a pattern of Humility before themselves because they saw him in the form of a Servant if he were a meer Man when he was once more than a Servant when all power was given to him both in Heaven and Earth he appear'd as a Master on every occasion and quickly withdrew himself from the sight of Men and the humility or condescension of one that has nothing is neither admirable nor exemplary If we could dwell longer on this Subject I make no doubt but it would appear that above all other Doctrines Socinianism should never be embraced as tending to the advancement of true Piety and since we have had so many holy Martyrs living and dying in the belief of Christ's Satisfaction for our Sins we may conclude that Doctrine of Christ's Satisfaction is neither so pernicious nor destructive of Holiness as those Hereticks would persuade us and therefore we may the better assert this Doctrine and make good our Foundation of it i. e. the notion of infinite Justice in God which does necessarily infer that every Sinner ought to be punished But they tell us Cat. Rac §. 6. c. 8 p. 147. That we make God's Mercy such as cannot but forgive all Sin and his Justice such as cannot but punish all Sin and so we set God's Attributes at irreconcileable odds one with another but I do not remember infinite Mercy defin'd by any of Ours by that particular Character of necessarily forgiving every Sin We believe indeed that the Sins of those who are pardon'd could not be pardon'd were there not infinite Mercy in God but we generally believe that infinite Mercy exerted it self when Christ came into the World to redeem Sinners and that indefinite Expression of our Saviour that God so loved the World that he gave his onely begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting Life teaches us as much Now if Faith be so necessary a Condition that without it the Sins of none can be pardon'd then infinite Mercy cannot imply a necessity of pardoning every Sin and if that Condition of believing be requisite I know not why another Condition such as a Christ offering up himself a Sacrifice to atone his Father's displeasure for Mens sins should not be so too As for infinite Justice we believe it necessarily infers a Punishment for every Transgression and therefore we believe that had not our Saviour undergone that Punishment for our sins which was due to us every Sin of ours must have been inevitably punish'd and therefore whereas we conclude agreeably to Scripture that the greatest part of
to the Jews of whom we acknowledge that they had no such distinct notions of the Trinity as we by the Gospels assistance have at present but yet both among Jews and Gentiles he was declar'd by other names than that of God the Father and if according to our common Logical notions Relatives do mutually suppose or remove one another if Jesus Christ was not really and actually the Son of God pre-existent to his incarnation the name of Father could not properly have been apply'd to the supreme God nor he be preach'd to the World under that character so that in fine we conclude that the preaching of God the Father to the World was no part of the Mystery of Godliness Nor is it properly so to say that God the Father was believ'd on in the World for that too was nothing newly effected by the appearance of our Saviour the World in general from its first original believ'd there was a God if there were any who from those apprehensions they had of the existence of a God set themselves to live virtuously as considering that God under the notion of a knowing and severe Judge and one capable of rewarding men according to their works such Persons believ'd in God according to our own sense when we repeat the Creed Now that some did thus believe before our Saviour's appearance in the flesh is unquestionable all those who liv'd religiously before the promulgation of the Mosaic Law did thus believe in God and are some of them remembred as the great Heroes of Faith in the beginning of the Eleventh Chapter to the Hebrews If then this were a Mystery it was of a very ancient standing and discovered long before the coming of Christ The application of the particulars thus far failing we have some reason to believe that neither will the last agree any better to that imposed sense He was received up in glory or into glory Here our adversaries flie to God's will again so confounding God and God's will as if they were not to be considered as distinct but this we have consider'd before where we observed that contradiction the Gospel met with in the World As to God the Father where or when or how or by whom was he receiv'd up in glory the holy Scriptures give us no intimation of his having descended at any time from Heaven to Earth and He that 's receiv'd up into glory ought to be so receiv'd by some Being superior to himself which a Socinian knows God the Father cannot have now as the Apostle teaches us He that descended Eph. 4.10 is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens that he might fill all things but God the Father never that we hear of in Scripture descended therefore God the Father who ever of himself was surrounded with infinite glory never was by any receiv'd up into glory And thus have we shown the vanity of those glosses which the Socinians and others have fixt upon this Text we shall now show to whom the particulars in the Text do properly and unquestionably belong And here since Scripture makes it very plain that the whole method of serving God in an acceptable manner is laid down by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ That as himself tells us He is the Way the Truth John 14.6 and the Life and no man comes to the Father but by him The whole mystery of Godliness or of true Christian Religion can consist in nothing but what refers to him who is the author of it that is the blessed Jesus concerning whom and whose doings and sufferings for us there is nothing reveal'd in the Gospel or in the foregoing prophecies but what 's mysterious He was indeed God manifest in the flesh God blessed for ever yet for the sake of wretched Sinners descending to Earth and taking our Nature upon him being cloth'd with flesh and all those incumbrances and infirmities attending upon a mortal state sin onely excepted He is that eternal Word which was in the begining with God nay that Word that was God John 1.1.14 and that Word was made flesh and dwelt among us as we learn from St. John Now if Christ really was God the most opinionative of the Socinians would conclude the Text plain enough for that Christ was certainly and literally made flesh but if we cannot read this Text of the Apostle truly without inserting the word God And Smalcius one of the great promoters of the Socinian heresie declares Smalc de verbo incarnato c. 18. Nos Graecum textum Vulgatae longe esse anteponendum censemus is vero habet Deum in carne esse manifestatum We look upon the Greek Text as far to be preferr'd before the Vulgar Latine and the Greek reads it God was manifest in the flesh and if neither the Gospel nor the will of God nor God the Father can properly or truly be said to be made flesh and yet God was manifest in the flesh then that Jesus who was truly and literally cloth'd with our flesh must be that God the farther proof of Christ's real and eternal Divinity belongs to another place but his true and indisputable humanity is the first plain and most obvious assertion of the Apostle here This same blessed Jesus was as plainly justified in the Spirit since not onely the miracles he did justified him in the sight of all Mankind and prov'd that he could be no cheat or Impostor as the Jews were willing to have him thought but at the time of his Baptism by John in Jordan while he was praying the Heaven was open'd and the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a Dove upon him and a voice came from Heaven which said Thou art my beloved Son Luke 3.21 22. in thee I am well pleas'd Now the Holy Spirit would not in so open a manner have descended on him who had pretended to that relation to Allmighty God which really never belong'd to him Therefore John the Baptist makes a right inference from that descent I saw says he Joh. 1.32 the Spirit descending from Heaven like a Dove and it abode upon him And I knew him not v. 33 34. but he that sent me to baptize with water the same said unto me Vpon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending and remaining on him the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost And I saw and bare record that this is the Son of God Our Lord himself makes it one of his last instructions to his Disciples that when the Comforter that Holy Spirit whom he would send should come he should amongst other things convince the world of righteousness because He the blessed Jesus went to his Father and the world should see him no more c. 16. v. 8. 10 14. and that that Holy Spirit should glorifie him for he should receive of his and shew it to men And thus effectually that Sacred Spirit when he was so plentifully according to promise pour'd out
on the Apostles and their companions enabled them to prove that Christ was the Son of God and to confirm their rational arguments and deductions from the Old Testament by a thousand signs and miracles such as made the most stubborn of mankind bow their necks to the yoke of Christ and own that He was truly what he call'd himself the Son of God and the Saviour of the World If we proceed according to the Apostles method Jesus Christ God Incarnate was seen of Angels seen with the greatest admiration since even Angelic intellectuals could never have reach'd so far as to imagine God's love to mankind which yet they knew to be extraordinary should shew it self in so prodigious a condescension Yet when he was pleas'd to stoop so low the Angels saw and knew and prais'd him tho' wrapt in swadling clothes and lying in a manger they ador'd him and administred to him tho' tempted forty days and forty nights by the Devil in the wilderness they attended him with their ministerial comforts when in that bitter agony in the garden when praying more earnestly his sweat was as it had been great drops of blood falling down to the ground Luke 22.43 44. They attended his sepulchre when he shook off the fetters of Death Matt. 28.2 3 4. Acts 1.10 and broke through the confinement of the grave striking terror on the trembling Watch but bringing comfort to the women whose early zeal brought them first to the sacred Sepulchre and they waited as diligently on his ascent into Heaven so that they saw him and admired that immense love which appeared so glorious in his humble and so powerful in his exalted state This Saviour of the world that he might really be so was preach'd unto the Gentiles the Word of God was now confin'd no longer to the Jewish nation that vail of the Temple rent in twain when he gave up the ghost upon the Cross took away that wall of separation which was between those Jews and the rest of mankind and through him both Jews and Gentiles have access by one Spirit unto Eph. 2.28 the father Now of himself in this case He taught his disciples after his resurrection That thus it behoved Christ to suffer Luke 24.46 47. and to rise from the dead the third day and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations beginning at Jerusalem Thus Philip preached Christ in Samaria Paul preached him every where in the Synagogues Paul declares to the Corinthians We preach Christ crucified 1 Cor. 1.23 24. to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness but unto them which are call'd both Jews and Greeks Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God And many Texts we meet with declaring the same thing and teaching us that it 's the great incumbent duty on all those who call themselves Pastors of the flock of Christ to preach him and him only to the world For he who was so preach'd to the Gentiles was indeed believed on in the world The three Eastern Sages who adored our Saviour in his infant age were the first fruits of the Gentile world and even Samaritans were profelyted to his Doctrine while he converst with the world to believe in him was that condition without which Salvation could not be attained So he teaches Nicodemus John 3.16 God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but have everlasting life v. 18. He that believeth on him is not condemned but he that believeth not is condemned already because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God It was a just sense of the indispensible nature of this condition that made men submit so readily to the first preaching of the Apostles and fly out so eagerly and so early into that Question What shall we do to be saved 'T was that which in Judaea brought multitudes daily into the Church of such as should be saved and enabled S. Paul to preach the Gospel fully from Jerusalem and round about unto Illyricum and that with extraordinary success and gave Tertullian in the Second Century a just ground to boast of the vast multitudes of Christians in every quarter of the Roman Empire And to this day the same blessed Jesus is the only rational hope of all that dwell on the earth and of those that remain on the broad Sea To conclude this explication of the Text this same Jesus after he had done and suffered so much for our sakes while he converst with and blest his Disciples Luke 24.51 he was parted from them and carried up into heaven He had at last that Petition answered which in the days of his flesh he put up to his Father Now O Father glorifie thou me with thine own self John 17.5 with the glory which I had with thee before the world was And if it was glorious for Elijah to be carried up to Heaven in his fiery chariot while Elisha was a spectator of his translation how much more glorious was it when our Saviour in the open view of all his followers had the clouds themselves humbly bowing to his feet to raise him thither where he sits continually at the right hand of his Father making intercession for us miserable sinners Having thus given the true interpretation of the Text take its full meaning together in this Paraphrase S. Paul still speaking to and instructing Timothy as in this Verse he does It 's not without great Reason that I have given thee who art thy self a Bishop in it such directions about those whom thou art to admit as Ministers in the Church of God That Religion our blessed Master has bequeathed to us has nothing in it but what is Holy and Pure too pure to be touch'd with unclean hands and not fit for every unlearned and presuming Novice to meddle with The whole Body of our Faith is founded upon such things as are infinitely true but of so sublime and surprising a Nature that the strongest Humane Reason can never wholly comprehend them all let me but name them as reveal'd and all mankind will soon agree that the most soaring and capacious Soul must falter in its enquiries after them The eternal Son of God God equal with his Father the great Creator of all things rather than perishing man should be eternally lost resolv'd to atone divine vengeance with his own sufferings and since without blood there could be no remission and the immense Divinity could not suffer so He took flesh and blood our weak and passible nature upon himself and in our nature offered himself a sacrifice to his Father for us This glorious Sacrifice produc'd the great effect and reconciled our angry Judge but that undertaking was too great for man tho' so deeply concern'd to believe the chasm between an holy God and polluted man too wide and hideous
to have carried Mens sins or to have born them in his own Body at the place of Execution and it would be absurd and ridiculous to apply any such passages to him and yet as they say the Sins of Men were the cause of the death of those Victims offered to Almighty God by the Sinners and in the same manner were the cause of our Saviour's Death so the same Sins may truly be said to have been the cause of the death of St. Stephen and every Martyr yet the former Expressions being inapplicable to them and they contributing nothing to the Remission of Mens sins Christ onely being that Lamb of God who takes away the Sins of the World those Scriptural Expressions concerning the Death of Christ must signifie a great deal more than bare Dying upon Common Reasons can amount to But to answer this they tell us that whereas God proclaims himself Exod. 34.7 a God keeping Mercy for thousands forgiving Iniquities Transgressions and Sins according to the Hebrew Original it ought to be bearing or carrying Iniquities c. which is the same attributed here unto Christ and yet we cannot say that God as there named has satisfied for any sins therefore neither can Christ have satisfied for sins notwithstanding any such passages concerning him but this the Ancients easily answered by asserting our Jesus the Son of God to have been that very Being so often and emphatically called God who all along convers'd with the Israelites during their wandrings in the Wilderness as I formerly shewed and that Testimony given to their Opinion by St. Paul when dehorting the Corinthians from several Sins by the example of those Israelites 1 Cor. 10.9 he inserts Neither let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted i. e. the same Christ and were destroyed of Serpents where Moses tells us they tempted God when they fell under that Judgment therefore that God was Christ therefore he really did converse with Israel in those days otherwise he could not have been tempted that Testimony for any thing I have yet seen may pass for unanswerable But with all respect to their Critical Skill we must assert they are mistaken the Hebrew word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from whence 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the cited Text not signifying to carry in its primary acceptation but levare to ease or to take away Marin Brinxia in verbo and so Marinus in his Arca Noe translates this very Text by levare or tollere and so God when he pardons or forgives sins is rightly said to ease Men of that burthen they bear or to take them away and consequently our translating the word by forgiving is true and agreeable to the general sense of Interpreters hence the Authors of the Septuagint Translation as good Criticks as our Socinians render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taking away not carrying Sins and they could scarce be suspected of being Athanasians no more could the Chaldee Paraphrast who interprets it by those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 leaving or remitting Iniquity the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 never signifying Carriage or any thing of that Nature but only leaving or remitting with what else may be genuinely deduced from that Interpretation Vid. Castel Lex Hept in verbo so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Syriack Version signifies leaving remitting pardoning sparing but no where signifies supporting or carrying the Samaritans use 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a word signifying easing and pardoning too the Arabic 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 taking or driving as a flying Enemy is driven away by a pursuing Army So that for them because in a foreign sense the Hebrew word sometimes signifies to carry to interpret it so in this place contrary to the sense of all the World beside themselves is absurd and only shews what mean Shifts they are put to to find some Parallels to their abusive Constructions of Plain Scripture As for the Evangelists application of that Text Isa 53 4. He hath born our griefs and carried our sorrows to our Saviour Matth. 8.17 upon healing all the sick that were brought to him he only applies that to a particular there which really is of a general Import therefore what he applies to the removal of bodily Diseases St. Peter applies to Sins the Diseases of the Soul our Saviour visibly and openly removing the former as a sign of his removing the latter but not doing both in the same manner he cured bodily Distempers by a Word a Touch an Application of outward though seemingly unpromising Means but removing the Distempers of the Soul only by his Death and so by his blood cleansing us from all Sin satisfying his Father for all our Sins by his shedding of it purging our Souls from all the Filthiness and Corruption of Sins by the Application of it and by Faith in it and that Blood-shedding of our Saviour as tending to his Death prov'd it's infinite Price and Value so often taken notice of in Scripture by being equivalent to those Punishments Divine Justice might and must have laid upon Transgressours the Socinians indeed say He takes away our sins i. e. He makes a shew as if he died and bore the Punishment due to our Sins eorum quasi poenam in se recepit so putting a sham upon the World pretending or seeming to do what he never did from which if the World were convinced of the Truth of what they assert it would be very hard to persuade them that he did by such seeming Means eos à vera eorum poena exsolvere discharge Mankind really from those certain Punishments attending upon Sin so for that further put off That our Saviour may justly be said to procure Salvation for us by his Death because by that Obedience show'd to his Father in dying at his Command he had all Power conferred upon him both in heaven and earth and so had power to forgive our Sins and to confer eternal Life upon us It 's against Reason to believe it for all Power in Heaven and in Earth is infinite Power infinite Power must have an infinite Subject to reside in Christ being meer Man can be no such infinite Subject therefore no such Power can be confer'd on him on account of his Obedience for he cannot receive an impossible Reward but that infinite Power being essential to him as an infinite and eternal Spirit his Humane Nature as united to that is made Partaker of that infinite Power and consequently Christ God and Man can indeed bestow on us those mighty Blessings To fix in our Minds the Notion of Christ's Satisfaction for our sins the more we are told by the Apostle as I formerly cited him That we are justified freely by his Grace Rom. 3.24 25 26. through the Redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood to declare his Righteousness for the Remission of sins to declare at this time his
soever he can understand of it is in a state of damnation The wonderful wisdom and goodness of Almighty God appears in this as acting in the most difficult case and in the kindest manner but to suppose the wisdom and the goodness of God in so prodigious effects should not surpass our discursive faculty is absurd as reducing divine perfections to humane rules but it never can be unbecoming to an ordinary Christian to express himself in these things as the Apostle does in what relates to them O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! Româ—â— 33. how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out where Schlicktingius himself tells us his judgments are unsearchable Quod eorum causam ac rationem illa ipsa nemo perscrutari possit because none can find out either the cause or reason of God's judgments or the judgments themselves and afterwards Idem ille qui solus haec potest facere Schlickt in locum solus etiam potest cognoscerè He alone can understand these things who can do them that is onely God yet these considerations should be no discouragement to any from improving their reason even in matters of faith since tho' reason can never in this life comprehend them all yet many of those things which appear very strange uncouth or mysterious to a young unexperienced Christian are very clear and intelligible to those who have their senses exercised As the very doctrine of the Cross absurd and foolish to a novice appears so necessary to one experienc't in Christianity that he knows not how to reconcile it to true sound reason without it since Philosophy aims at something of that nature and Christianity if truly asserted must infinitely transcend Philosophy in the excellence and usefulness of its instructions Maximus therefore answers well to that objection of Hereticks against the use of reason in matters of a Divine nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. But there are some things in them which transcend our understanding I own it but let us learn this too from Scripture that there are some things to be searcht after by our reason because they are attainable For as it argues no piety to be prying into every thing so it argues as little to look into nothing what we adore we all know vid. Vedelii rationale Theol p 766. according to that Text we know what we worship but to enquire how great what his nature 〈◊〉 how or where he exists is direct madâ—â—â—â—â— our Rule therefore with respect to chosen â—â—â—â—hs reveal'd must be this Not onely to believe what 's laid down there because we understand it but because we believe it as laid down there therefore to endeavour to understand it so reason comes into its proper place it owns its imperfections and its powers both it puts it self into the way of divine assistance and grows capable every moment of improvement towards perfection But we conclude That this perfection is not compleatly attainable till all our enquiries after happiness are compleated in the enjoyment of it as the good Christian is ever growing in grace so he 's ever growing in the knowledge of Jesus Christ which knowledge despises not the use of reason but considers it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Strem. l. 6. as Clemens of Alexandria calls it as the lowest step of the ladder of Christian philosophy the lowest step indeed but yet a step which they that would clime higher must make use of and if they would but carefully observe how in all Christian improvements reason has still its share that it grows stronger and stronger in its aspiring after what 's good that faith it self as it finds reason treading in its footsteps grows more vigorous and unconquerable that yet at best there are a great many clouds hanging upon it arising from that mortal and declining state we are in in this world These observations would reduce the extravagant hopes of some in this life and excite in them the more earnest longings after the perfections of a better and who when he sees the glorious image of his Maker blotted and defaced and knows there is a time to come when it shall be restored to its pristine integrity would not think it extreamly reasonable to long for that season Faith and Hope and Charity are Christian Graces the wings if I may so call them on which the divinely originated Soul soars towards Heaven yet great and necessary as they are the two first expire with mortality the last immortal Charity survives beyond the limits of time Heb. 11.1 For Faith which is by the Apostle described as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen can have no place when we come to enjoy all we long for in the beatisick vision we are to live by faith while on earth that bearing us up above all those troubles and perplexities which attend us but those are all past and not to be repeated by all the malice of Hell it self when we come to the Celestial Canaan that land of everlasting rest And as for Hope it respects futurity and somewhat greater than we yet enjoy but as that Apostle argues Hope that is seen is not hope for what a man sees Rom. 8.14 or is in possession of for that 's the meaning of the phrase why does he yet hope for In Heaven we see and are in possession of unallay'd bliss we hoped for it here we have it there so Hope having no farther object dyes too but Charity survives still The life of Heaven is nothing but peace and joy and love all other passions which distract the Soul have had their periods before all that promote its blessed state continue still but let Charity bear never so glorious a Character Reason meerly Humane in that glorious state outvies it still and comprehends it as the greater does the less We see there beyond possibility of contradiction the reason of all God's dispensations towards Mankind those intricate providences which have so puzled our Intellectuals here below will then be plain and intelligible nay fully and actually understood by all the Souls of just Men made perfect all the unfitnesses of a corrupt carcase will be then removed and a glorified body answer readily and naturally all the motions of the glorified Soul And since we look upon knowledge as the end and perfection of the rational Soul we may be assur'd that in a state of bliss it shall have attain'd that perfection 1 Cor. 13.12 for as St. Paul teaches us We now see through a glass darkly but then face to face now we know in part but then shall we know even as also we are known and as St. John agreeably with him though it does not yet appear what we shall be for we see but darkly now and in part yet we know that when our Lord shall appear at last 1 Joh. 3.2 we shall be like
obscure to contend with But here learning and study a strict familiarity with God's Word and an exercised experience carry the Christian Priest thro' a great many vexatious enquiries and a modest consultation with others who are blest with such qualifications tends much to the settlement of dubious minds but after all these are properly no mysteries for the rules of Scripture by which such inquiries are ultimately determined are very plain and obvious to every understanding their nature being like that of a Light in a dark place which serves to guide and direct Travellers in the way they should go but the occasion of these doubts is the misapplication of rules to matter of fact the misapprehension or misrepresentation of circumstances c. wherein the distempers of the Soul are much like the diseases of the body if the Patient can give a just and rational account of those parts about him which are griev'd and how he finds himself the Physician easily understands the disease and is able to apply the proper medicines but if the Patient gives a broken and uncertain account of his condition even a skilful Physician may grosly mistake the disease and its remedy to the Patient's ruine so when doubting Christians understand not the state of their own Souls nor the first motives or occasions of their fears or where they are afraid or ashamed to lay open themselves with all sincerity to him from whom they expect relief it 's not to be wondred at if excellent advices fail of their proper effect whereas a true insight into a Man's self makes the greatest seeming difficulties easily and certainly determinable As for matters of Faith they are of another nature and tho' matters of practice so far as practice is religious depend upon what the Christian believes altogether and are so very plain as I shew'd before yet those objects of faith are so far beyond the reach of reason as it is from Earth to Heaven nay that very faith without which as we are sufficiently assur'd it 's impossible to please God though it be inherent in the pious Soul is absolutely mysterious and inexplicable We feel the prodigious force of it in those acts whereby it raises the Soul to a contemplation of Divine things but it is as the Prophets of old felt the inspiring energy of the sacred Spirit when they spoke what it dictated but could give no account of the methods of its operation in them the Apostle when he tells us of it that it's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. 11.1 the substance of things hoped for and that it 's 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the argumental evidence of things not seen tho' he gives us doubtless an authentick description of that necessary grace yet shows the unintelligible nature of it by his very expressions for what difference is there among Learned Men and how much pains taken to clear the meaning of this description It imports indeed that true faith is of so efficacious a nature that tho' it have respect onely to things which are at a distance yet it represents them to the Soul so plainly and so powerfully that the Soul reaps equal satisfaction from that distant view as it would from an immediate possession Meginhardus the German Monk writes well of it when he says Faith is called the substance of things hoped for by a figure not that it 's really their proper substance but because that faith which works by love by which the just live and by which power is given to us that we should be call'd and really be the Sons of God that faith in the troublesome pilgrimage of this life meditates on the reward of eternal happiness with so firm and certain an hope Vt in corum cordibus qui charitate quae per spiritum sanctum in eis diffusa est dilatantur Vid. Dictericum in voce jam nunc per ineffabile desiderium ea faciat subsistere that even at this time by that ineffable ardency of desire they are possest with it makes them subsist in their hearts who have hearts enlarged with that charity or Love which is pour'd into them by the holy Spirit and Jaeobus Capellus in our Criticks explains the same Apostolical expression thus Fiducia est velut in statione manens ac rem promissam expectans cum animi submissione habénsque simul vim statuminandi sperantem sistendi rem speratam i. e. This faith is a confidence well fixt and setled waiting for the thing promised with a due submission of mind and having a force in it self sufficient to support him that hopes and to bring to hand the thing hoped for Again it 's the evidence of things not seen therefore out-going humane reason in this life for if humane reason were clear enough to prove to us those things undeniably which we expect in a future state there would then be no need of any other evidence at least we should not by the Apostle be referr'd to an evidence naturally more obscure when reason that by which we do or should most commonly act could give us what was much more plain and obvious but our reason being notoriously defective in the case our firm belief that there is an Heaven of joys and an Hell of woes to be met with hereafter is an argument not to be answer'd that there are really such things for the Soul of Man is not easily carried out of it self into violent longings after a meer phantastical good nor is it ordinarily terrified with apprehensions of Mormoes or bug-bears but where it runs out most into fabulous or figurative expressions of its expectations there 's somewhat real and sound in the bottom so those that talk of infernal Judges in Hell and various kinds of sensible pains to be there felt and of Furies torturing Souls c. all agree certainly in that that vengeance does certainly attend ill actions and that tho' Men may escape plausibly in this world they shall certainly suffer terribly in the next tho' they cannot make a tolerable conjecture how a guilty Spirit should suffer to such extremity In the same manner those that tell us of Elysian fields adorn'd with variety of beautiful Flowers blest with a serene Air and a continual Spring where those that have done well happy in each others society shall live in undisturb'd pleasures beyond the reach of fates malice or times consumption All such prove their certain belief that there is and shall be a reward for the righteous that is an unallay'd felicity to be attain'd but what a kind of felicity that is which is infinite and eternal who can tell nay who would value them as the Saints do if they could possibly comprehend them No it is because eye hath not seen nor ear heard nor has it entred into the heart of man to conceive how great those things are which God has prepared for those that love him Therefore the holy and the wise are always panting after those enjoyments
have been very great in Adam by his fall yet they were not so great in him as in the rest of his posterity and Adam having a right apprehension of that promise concerning the seed of the woman without which right apprehension he could have derived very little comfort from it to fix in his own mind and in the mind of his posterity the true meaning of that promise he offer'd as soon as without prejudice to the multiplication of Creatures he could such Sacrifices as might shadow out the promised redemption and make so early a faith in the promised seed that Lamb who was slain from the beginning of the world appear and really be rational nor was there any need of divine institution or command in the case where original reason yet retain'd so much strength and vigour And whereas some learned Men have written whole discourses to prove that Men were allowed to eat flesh before the flood Vid Maii Hist animal sacror l. 1. c. 2. p. 32 c. I am so far from being convinced by what I have met with to that purpose building my contrary opinion on that vast difference between God's commission given to Adam Gen. 1.29 30. and that given afterwards to Noah Gen. 9.2,3,4 that I conclude one of the violences the Gigantick race were afterwards guilty of was their transgressing their first limits in that matter and that Adam seeing living Creatures fixt in an higher state as being exempted from that servility to which Plants and Fruits and the Herb of the field was subjected and yet observing a certain Dominion over those nobler Creatures invested in himself he concluded he could no way more rationally exercise his government nor express his expectations of a Saviour than by killing of those Creatures not for his own luxury but to offer them in Sacrifice to that God whom he had before so ingratefully offended Thus Gods power and Mans necessity were acknowledged both in one and the same Sacrifice I conclude farther in relation to the first custome of offering beasts in Sacrifice that what Reason taught Adam to do God set his Seal to and approved it by sending fire from Heaven to consume it which was an unquestionable evidence of God's acceptance an encouragement to Adam to proceed in that course and to his posterity to imitate him And this I am the more confirm'd in because I find both Jewish and Christian Writers generally concluding that the visible difference which God put between the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel was that he consumed Abel's with fire from heaven but not Cain's by which means Cain was able to judge of his brothers acceptance and his own rejection and he might be the more certain in his judgment because he had often seen his Father's offerings so consumed before That Adam was a Priest in his own family as every Father is and that Cain and Abel were so in theirs and the rest of the ancient Patriarchs is unquestionable but when upon the World's encrease Men began to unite into larger Societies private and family devotions or religious observances were not look'd upon as sufficient to shew mens deference to the supreme Lord of all things God was to be reconciled and rendred propitious to publick Societies as well as to private members of such Societies which considerations in process of time were the occasion that particular bodies or numbers of Men were set apart to attend more peculiarly on the services of Religion which bodies of Men took care to settle the methods of those services wherein according to the clearness of their understandings those methods were more or less obscure or incoherent God taking a peculiar care of the seed of Abraham taught them not to leave off sacrificing but to order their Sacrifices in so holy a manner as might best agree to that end for which they were appointed i. e. to foresignifie that great mystery of the worlds redemption by the sacrifice of the death of Christ But the Devil Tyrannizing over the greater part of the world beside and under the same religious pretexts of atoning an angry God and acknowledging his sovereignty soon converted all that worship and those Sacrifices intended to the true God to himself So that great enemy of Souls got to himself the name of God he was adored as the author of all good and revered as the executor of vengeance upon all wicked Men He made use of diverse artifices to maintain his usurpation among the rest he made special use of ignorance as the mother of Devotion a principle which the Church of Rome has made great use of of later years to the same purpose his Priests urged by interest were excellent Agents in his curst designs and by his direction loaded every part of Idolatry with such a Mass of Mystick rites and Ceremonies necessarily so lest their lewdness and scandalous nature should have made them generally odious that it was impossible for the greatest part of Mankind to see through the clouds and dust they had rais'd about themselves with these Mysteries all the whole rabble of Deities were continually accoutred all which false Gods were but one Devil who assum'd so many names to himself partly that he might the better suit himself to the various humours of Men partly that he might entrench as much as possible upon that honour due to Almighty God by assuming all the Divine Attributes to himself and partly that if he happen'd to lose that Honour he had usurpt under one name he might at least preserve it under another Hence arose the strange rites of Isis Osiris so much celebrated among the Aegyptians the Eleusinian so famous over all Greece among the Athenians wherein so strange an obscurity was affected that the very Rules and Orders for their publick performance were unknown to common worshipers and not under pain of death to be divulged to any unless initiated for five years together in them which course of initiation once past there seems to have been no great fear the initiated should make them publick the world at worst not having been bad enough to have approv'd such abominations But the Religion of Sacrifices went farther and those who were sensible how just God's anger was against the World for Sin concluded the most precious Offerings must needs be the most acceptable to God for their expiation therefore they came to pitch upon Humane Sacrifices thinking a rational Soul the most proper 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or ransome for a rational Soul Hence grew those Enthusiastick extravagancies of the Priests of Baal who when they found their God deaf to all their invocations and insensible of their Sacrifices and themselves derided for their folly by Elijah 1 Kings 18.26 27 28. They cried aloud and cut themselves after their manner with Knives and Lancers till the blood gush'd out upon them And that was pretty fair for their own personal zeal but this was not enough therefore in a pressing extremity we
For those rites continued will move the world to belive that the Messias is not yet come that the Faith so long profest in him as if he were come is vain that He who once pretended to that name only impos'd upon the world and was no better than a cheat and that therefore the Jewish Religion is and ought to be still in its full force Now this will appear very absurd and unreasonable to any one who has seriously weighed all those arguments brought to prove that Jesus Christ was the Son of the living God and therefore could be no Impostor and therefore must be that Messias he declar'd himself to be which being true it will follow that our Saviours coming must of necessity put an end to so much of the Jewish Law as was not co-incident with that of Nature and consequently not perpetually obliging That many of the Jews themselves ever look'd upon their Law as of a mutable nature in it self is proved sufficiently by Raymundus Martini in his Pugio fidei against the Jews and that it could never be more properly actually chang'd than by the Messias appears in him who proves from Jewish writers themselves that the Messias the King shall be greater than Moses nay greater than the ministring Angels and therefore the fittest for such a work and as he shews their own gloss in the Midrasch Koheleth upon that of Solomon Eccles 11.8 Pugionis fidei p. 3. dist 3. c. 20 tells us That every Law of all people whatsoever every Law that a man can learn in this world is all but vanity in comparison of the Law of the Messias Things of a less perfect and lasting nature must then vanish when that appears which is more perfect and eternal Whatsoever therefore crosses that end for which God sent his Son into the world and retains mysteries now altogether insignificant as being fully accomplished that cannot be pleasing to God and consequently the present Religion of the Jews cannot be the true Religion There are indeed some mysterious truths in which all Religions agree viz. The existence of a God his spirituality invisibility incomprehensibility c. they all agree That his Providence governs all things in the world however trifling and inconsiderable they may appear in the eyes of the world that He hears sees knows understands every thing tho' they know not how according to the objection of Atheists to reconcile such things to his want of eyes ears soul or any other parts which are all inconsistent with a spiritual being All agree together in granting the present state of Man very wretched and deplorable in looking upon him yet as capable of happiness provided a sutable mean for its procurement could be found out and in expectation of some proper help for that purpose These things being agreeable to the general sence of mankind and being the original reasons of mens putting themselves into a religious course must still be approved by every one and every one of these that Religion setled in the world by our Saviour and his Apostles does advance yet more plainly and confirm more strongly to the world And whatsoever mysterious truths it farther propounds they are all so far intelligible by every one as may serve sufficiently to confirm those first principles whatsoever is farther to be seen in them is what moves mankind to lay aside all brutish malicious and unmanly humour as the meditation upon that extraordinary love of God to mankind of God the Father in sending his only Son into the world to dy for it of God the Son in leaving the bosom of his blessed Father and in our nature and for our sake suffering that bitter and scandalous death upon the Cross of God the Holy Ghost in pursuing us continually with his influences and assistances and so working in us to will and to do according to God's good pleasure this meditation naturally runs into that Apostolical conclusion Joh. 4.11 if God thus loved us then ought we also to love one another If we contemplate our own monstrous demerits our aversion to every thing that is good our inclination to every thing that is evil and so offensive to God our ingratitude for mercies receiv'd our unfruitfulness under the means of grace and Salvation presented to us our natural enmity to God and goodness And if withal we seriously consider that all those forementioned favours are conferr'd on us in a state of obstinate enmity the inference is easie as our Lord has laid it down Matth. 5.44 That we should love our enemies bless them that curse us do good to them that hate us and pray for them that despitefully use us and persecute us If again we think on that wonderful mercy of God whereby for the merits of the blessed Jesus he 's pleased to forgive us our sins those natural bars between us and heaven the consequence we must of course draw from thence is that of the Apostle That we should be kind Eph. 4.32 tender hearted forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven us Thus we see what excellent influence these very truths the nature and reasons of which are above the reach of our groveling minds may have upon us If we proceed and reflect upon the purity and holiness of that God with whom we have to do that he 's a Being who cannot endure sin who punishes it for its odious nature even in his dearest children all those mysteries reveal'd to us in the Gospel are so far by any fair consequence from perverting our minds that they give us all the motives imaginable 1 Pet. 1.15 that as he who has called us is holy so should we be holy in all manner of conversation A man may be a good heathen and yet a filthy Sodomite a through-pac'd Jew and yet be blind hard-hearted carnal but a man cannot be a true Christian but he 'l endeavour to avoid all appearance of evil Jude 2â— and to keep himself unspotted from the world he 'l live in a continual abhorrence of whatsoever may prejudice his soul or pollute his body and knowing that he is not his own James â—â— but that he 's bought with a price he 'l follow that advice he 'l endeavour to glorifie God in his body and in his spirit which are gods 1 Cor. 6. â—â— and to go no farther than what I had instanced in before a man that meditates on that account the Apostles and Evangelists have given us of the appearance of the Son of God in the flesh and on the ends and designs of such his appearance he 'l never spend his time idly about types and shadows when he is invited to embrace the substance he 'l study to conform himself to the Doctrine of the Gospel to be so far as belongs to a meer man a perfect imitator of all those excellent virtues so apparent in our Saviour during his converse with the world he 'l carefully avoid all
taken away but strongly confirm'd the necessity of obedience to God's Laws whether written or natural which was as we have before observ'd the general intent of Religion and agreeable to those notions the World commonly had of it Since for the better carrying on this end Mysteries are so very advantageous to religion as to make Men have reverend apprehensions of it upon account of its incomparable Excellencies in its causes and effects and upon account of the weakness and shallowness of their own understandings since all these particulars are true it 's likewise absolutely necessary that the Christian the onely true Holy pure Religion should be built upon such a foundation as might appear to all Men upon the strictest inquiry beyond all doubt or controversie Mysterious inexplicable incomprehensible Nor could it be an impertinent labour to clear this truth because it totally ruines all the pretences of the Socinians that after the Revelation once made of the great fundamentals of our Faith there could remain nothing of so obscure a nature but that we by the pure strength of our own reason might be able to comprehend it In short that though it be true that Scripture as sufficient for that purpose is and ought to be the sole rule of Faith yet reason ought to be the rule of Scripture Reason as it now stands loaded with all the miserable consequences of sin reason so blind as without the extraordinary light of holy Scriptures to be wholly unable to lead a Man to Eternal life it obviates their assertions that the true ancient Catholick Interpretation of this and other Texts of Scripture that speak of the eternal Divine nature of the Son of God or of that glorious Trinity subsisting in the Father Son and Holy Ghost is false and unreasonable meerly because it introduces an unintelligible incarnation and unity of the Divine and Humane nature in Christ a Mysterious co-essentiality of God the Father God the Son and God the Holy Ghost c. notwithstanding all those glorious revelations God has made of himself in Scripture For if it be certainly true that Religion in it's general notion cannot subsist unless built upon a mystick foundation and that therefore Christian Religion in particular cannot subsist without it then it will follow that the continuing Mystick nature of the great Articles of our Faith can create no prejudice in any person whatsoever against our Religion on their account since especially it will remain impossible to draw any genuine consequences from those mysteries but what will be so far from impeaching that they will strongly confirm and re-inforce all those duties relating to God or man which are laid upon us by the natural or written Law and it will follow farther that the Socinians themselves by their endeavours to level all the Articles of our Faith the great saving principles of the Gospel to impair'd reason or by endeavouring to leave Christiany naked of all Mysteries do what in them lies to disannul all the Religion of Christians to take away all the use and advantage of the Gospel leaving the world so involv'd in Atheism or in meer Deism at this time very little to be preferr'd before the other Having done now with the positive assertion our next work is with all exactness and humility to consider the illustration of this Proposition in the severals laid down by the Apostle which altogether afford us the whole sum and substance of the Gospel for all that glad tydings sent from Heaven to Earth for the comfort of mankind consists in this That for their sakes to procure their Salvation God was manifest in the flesh justified in the spirit seen of Angels preach'd unto the Gentiles believ'd on in the world receiv'd up into glory all which particulars tho' the full prosecution of the first be all our present task are incomprehensible mysteries yet as well worth our enquiring into as the Apostles writing them who without doubt would never have laid the weight of piety or godliness or true Religion upon those grounds had they not been worth our looking into or their truth worth our vindicating from all the attacks of prejudiced opinionative or haeretical men It 's true a late author tells us Naked Gospel p 34. c. 1. l. 20. That to dispute concerning a Mystery and at the same time to confess it a mystery is a contradiction as great as any in the greatest mystery the expression is worth our remark for the boldness and absurdity it contains It 's bold not to say impious to insinuate so broadly in a discourse where Christianity's concern'd that all great Mysteries are made up of or at least contain contradictions what have we then nothing at all Mysterious in Scripture what 's that love between the blessed Jesus and his Spouse the Church so admirably character'd in the book of Canticles can our Author find nothing Mysterious in all those adumbrations of ineffable love or can he easily give us a Catalogue of the Contradictions there the real Contradictions I mean for things that are of no mysterious nature at all on any other account may seem to contain somewhat contradictory but seeming contradictions are not real Can he fathom every thing relating to Daniel's weeks Men of a great deal of learning industry and sobriety have taken a great deal of pains to explain the mystery of them and have scarce yet given the world satisfaction were not the Vision mysterious it would be more easily clear'd but because it is not must it therefore be contradictious to it self or to make a yet closer instance the nature of a God can He or any Socinian make it comprehensible to humane understandings or else will the very notion of a God imply a contradiction He must be a very new fangled Son of the Church of England who will assert that but why must it imply a contradiction to dispute or discourse about or to enquire into a confest mystery That God was manifest in the flesh is true we believe that every circumstance relating to his Incarnation as laid down in Scripture is true according to the genuine and common interpretation of such words whereby these circumstances are express'd we believe too That as they are true we may dispute about them and clear them from all that Sophistry whereby some subtle men would fain baffle us out of them is no uncouth or irrational opinion yet after all we take the whole account of this Incarnation as laid down in Scripture to be a very great mystery But where lyes the Contradiction either in believing it a mystery or in defending it as such This truth that God was manifest in the flesh is as before intimated that upon the literal truth of which the whole Salvation of mankind depends How he should have been so is to all mankind mysterious and incomprehensible yet may we without any contradiction explain defend prove and draw inferences from it Hear what a Bishop of our own a genuine
before it was a sure sign of some extraordinary Person intended it gives us the very name proper to our Jesus as he was the Son of God Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a Son Isai 7.14 and shall call his name Immanuel where the thing foretold is so much a miracle that it cannot be believed to have occurr'd more than once in the World nay the prodigiousness of the thing has made some great pretenders to reason endeavour to weaken the very authority of Scripture it self from the impossibility of the thing foretold And the Jews have endeavour'd to affix a large sense upon the Text as if no more was meant than barely That a Woman should be with Child and so the miracle is wholly taken away But all these little stratagems of unbelievers have fail'd and the very Name added would convince considerate Men of some great thing design'd since a meer Man or one coming into the World according to the ordinary course of nature could not be truly call'd Immanuel or God with us This declaration of the Evangelical Prophet as He 's justly call'd is soon follow'd by another of the same nature For unto us a Child is born Isai 9 6 7. unto us a Son is given and the Government shall be upon his shoulders and his name shall be call'd Wonderful Counseller the mighty God the everlasting Father the Prince of peace of the increase of his Government there shall be no end upon the Throne of David and upon his Kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever In all which the Prophet seems to write a perfect History of things past he speaks with that assurance and confidence as if he had seen that hope of Israel born into the World and wholly ecstatick in his contemplation of so infinite a blessing bestow'd on the World he fixes such Titles upon him as were compatible with no meer man nay he makes him God an Infinite an everlasting God the Vniversal Monarch of Earth and Heaven yet leaves him drest in flesh and blood at last a Child born a Son given to us miserable perishing Creatures But Isaiah's reflections on the promised Saviour are so many as not to be instanced in more particularly we may just name that Isai 11.1 And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse and a branch shall grow out of his roots And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him the spirit of wisdom and understanding the spirit of Counsel and might the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord with righteousness shall he judge the poor and reprove with equity for the meek of the Earth and he shall smite the Earth with the rod of his mouth and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked and more to that purpose which St. Paul in his discourse to the Antiochians in Pisidia alludes to And that again Acts 13.22 22 24. The voice of him that crieth in the Wilderness Prepare ye the way of the Lord make streight in the desert an high-way for our God every Valley shall be exalted and every Mountain and Hill shall be made low and the crooked shall be made streight and the rough places plain â—â—i 40.3.4 5. and the glory of the Lord shall be reveal'd and all flesh shall see it together for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it which John the Baptist applies to himself and his Master Joh. 1.23 Such is the whole fifty-third Chapter a compleat though compendious Chronicle of our Saviour from his Cradle to his Tomb happily read by the Aethiopian Eunuch since from thence the Evangelist Philip took occasion to preach to him Jesus Acts 8.34 35. Such that The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted to proclaim liberty to the Captives and the opening of the Prison to them that are bound Isai 61.1 2. Luk. 4.17 18 19. to proclaim the acceptable Year of the Lord and the day of vengeance of our God apply'd to himself by our Saviour Agreeably to these Predictions the Prophet Jeremy foretels Behold the days come saith the Lord that I will raise to David a righteous branch and a King shall reign and prosper Jerem. 23.5 6. and shall execute judgment and righteousness in the Earth in his days Judah shall be saved and Israel shall dwell safely and this is the name whereby he shall be call'd The Lord our righteousness Which is again repeated by him Jer. 33.15 16. To the same purpose Ezekiel I will save my Flock and they shall be no more a prey and I will set up one Shepherd over them and he shall feed them even my servant David he shall feed them and he shall be their Shepherd and I the Lord will be their God Ezek 34.22 23 24. and my servant David a Prince among them I the Lord have spoken it Which is repeated and enlarged Ezek. 37. 21 ad fin Daniel yet more plainly I saw in the night visions and behold one like the Son of Man came with the Clouds of Heaven and came to the Ancient of days and they brought him near before him And there was given him dominion and glory and a Kingdom Dan. 7.13 14. that all People Nations and Languages should serve him his dominion is an everlasting Dominion which shall not pass away Rev. 14 14. and his Kingdom that which shall not be destroy'd Which St. John alludes to not to mention any thing of Daniel's weeks Micah gives us that Thou Bethlehem Ephratah though thou be little among the thousands of Judah Mica 5.2 yet out of thee shall he come forth to me that is to be ruler in Israel Matt. 2.6 whose goings forth have been from of old from everlasting which those Priests Herod afterwards enquired of could remember very well And lastly Malachi as plain as any Mat. 3.1 Behold I will send my messenger and he shall prepare the way before me and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddainly come to his Temple even the Messenger of the Covenant whom ye delight in behold he shall come saith the Lord of hosts These are a few of that very great number of Prophecies which rais'd the expectation of the Jews for the appearance of a Saviour whom they expected as a mighty temporal Prince not considering that the things foretold of him were beyond the atchievments of the greatest Potentate in the world For to be the great messenger of that Covenant which was between God and his people and at the same time the God whom they sought and whose their Temple was who yet were taught to worship only the true God to be the glory of a private town as of Bethlehem yet of an eternal original with respect to the time past
drooping soul above all the gay prospects of a flattering world above all the dangers generally attending despised piety to make Men sit loose to all those exterior blessings they meet with in this world and to account all things but as loss and dung in comparison of that Salvation wrought for them by Jesus to make them scorn the rack and wheel and smile at flames and lingring tortures and all this only upon the credit of a future happy state for the purchace of Crowns and kingdoms invisible to all eyes but those of faith and this too when all such sufferings and inconveniences might be avoided by a few short words and some little inconsiderable actions these atchievements are far beyond the most ambitious thoughts of meer mortal Creatures beyond their most aspiring hopes tho' influenced by those united powers which acted so vigorously in all the several Prophets of foregoing Ages It 's extremely derogatory to God's justice and wisdom to imagine that Man who was not able to support himself in his innocent state when once attack'd by a slight temptation tho' there were then no defects of any kind in his intellectuals should be able now when every faculty in him is weakned and perverted by the spreading infection of sin to work his own redemption or should God have ordered a greater price to have been paid for satisfaction for sin when a lower would have effected it or have sent a partaker of the eternal Godhead to take upon him and suffer in humane nature for the worlds crimes when an inferiour person might have compassed the great design as well Nor had the benefit conferr'd upon us been so valuable had God only wrought that for us which had he not done we could as easily have wrought for our selves But the case was otherwise fallen Man was now in a state of damnation perfect innocence and compleat satisfaction for inveterate guilt must retrieve him from Hell but fallen Man was incapable of any such innocence or satisfaction Angels who had sin'd were incapable of pity who had not sin'd were incapable of merit their Creation from nothing and their support in original sinlesness were benefits so great that all their chearful attendances on coelestial services were too little to requite he must therefore be somewhat greater and more perfect than either Men or Angels who undertook the mighty work who was in a capacity of meriting and not under a necessity of mercy which only the eternal Son of God could be he alone who was of himself impeccable could fully satisfie the utmost pretensions of infinite justice who was a voluntary in his exinanition or humiliation and sufferings and who needed no sacrifices for his own sins could perfectly atone the wrath of God and therefore he took Man's cause into his own hand and came in our nature bringing Salvation along with him then Natures Laws justly yielded to him who was the God of Nature the Heavens then declared the glory of God and the firmament shewed his handy work the faith of pious Men was vigorously re-inforc'd by the full and miraculous accomplishment of antient Prophecies and Promises and Angels themselves own'd it an honour to be the first Evangelists To prove that Jesus Christ was and could be no other than the Son of God we come to consider the intent and design of that Doctrine introduced by him and by his Apostles and Ministers preached to the world in his name where we are to observe That as the writings of the Old and New Testament are to be the great standard of whatsoever is at this day published to the world as the will of God so before the writing of the Gospel the Law of Moses and of the Prophets was the true and certain Test by which all Doctrines were to be tryed and as the Apostle writes to the Galatians Gal. 1.8 Tho' we or an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel unto you than that ye have received let him be accursed So had Jesus whom we conclude the Messias gone about to propagate any other kind of Doctrines than what the Prophets had before or than what was in every point agreeable to their precepts and rules instead of being the worlds Saviour he had proved himself an accursed impostor and therefore when the Jews thought to take the advantage of him on this very score he prevents them with that open declaration Think not that I am come to destroy the Law or the Prophets I am not come to destroy but to fulfil Matth. 5.17 18 19. for verily I say unto you till heaven and earth pass one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the Law till all be fulfilled whosoever therefore shall break one of these least Commandments and shall teach men so he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven i. e. That he shall be of no esteem or value at all in the true Church of God But whosoever shall do and teach them the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven Luk. 10.25 26 27 28. Agreeably to this when the Lawyer stood up and tempted him and said Master what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life Christ goes not about to give him any new rules of life but referr'd him to the old what is written in the Law says he how readest thou And when the Lawyer had answered Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and with all thy mind and thy neighbour as thy self which was the real summary of the Mosaic Moral Law as our Saviour himself elsewhere informs us Christ replyes upon him Thou hast answered well This do and thou shalt live Now if life i. e. life eternal were to be obtained by the practising according to Legal instructions there was no need of prescribing any new way of obtaining that everlasting happiness and therefore when Christ gives us that parable of the rich Man and Lazarus and introduces the tormented rich Man supplicating that Lazarus might be sent to forewarn his five brethren lest they also should come into the same terrible place Luke 16.17 ad fin Abraham tells him they have Moses and the Prophets let them hear them and to shew the fulness of their writings for reforming of sinners Abraham upon his farther importunity subjoyns If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither will they believe tho' one rose from the dead By which passage our Saviour plainly informs us that even himself and his own Gospel after his resurrection would never take any place where Moses and the Prophets were despised before the Law being the Gospels foundation and preparing the devout soul for it's entertainment for Christ still took notice of what we ought to consider That truth is always agreeable to it self and consequently the God of truth must be so too and therefore if the writers of the Old Testament were inspired
was so indisputably innocent Again to aim wholly at the extirpation of vice of all sin and wickedness and the promoting and recommending of virtue and goodness carries the highest purity and sanctity along with it If miscarriages in government and trespasses upon humane Laws produce terrible convulsions of state and unexpected revolutions in political affairs of which at this day we live to see unaccountable instances it 's easie to infer from thence that encroachments upon the Laws of God and nature must have the same influence upon general affairs and create strange disorders in the World and mightily prejudice all the bonds of humane Society It naturally excites God's vindictive justice and makes him scatter vengeance every where it creates nothing but mutual distrusts and jealousie of one another among men so that they grow like Wolves or Devils in their mutual animosities and injuries As these things are the consequence of wickedness so they are certain proofs and indications of the prevalence of Sin in any place or Nation they show a general infection to have spread it self in a very corrupt people and therefore he that endeavours to purge out the malignant humours of men labouring under such pernicious distempers employs himself in the purest and most desirable work since he endeavours onely to reconcile guilty nature to an incensed God and waspish and ill humour'd Men to one another A full and rigid execution of Laws against impudent vices may keep some under by its terror and make them at least seek the darkest corners for the perpetrating of villanies but it represents not Sin a whit the more in its native ugliness nor gives any ordinary satisfaction that Sin is exceeding sinful for it 's easie enough to conclude that God and Men may prohibit and punish such or such an action out of their own arbitrariness to shew their own absolute and uncontroulable power upon which account though Force may restrain them for a while yet there remain in perverted minds some strange Gustos of delight in finding opportunities to do what they are forbidden and which they conclude may be things good enough notwithstanding such prohibitions but when vice is delineated truly by Instructors appointed for that purpose who are neither afraid nor asham'd to speak Truth when they find Sin decried by solemn and weighty arguments more than by authority where on the other hand they find virtue and goodness described fairly as it deserves recommended by earnest and gentle perswasives set out with all its circumstantial beauties discover'd in its happy effects with relation both to earthly and heavenly influences when they see blessings shour'd down from Heaven upon them and their very Enemies at peace with them when they see how all this onely propounds a pure and unmixed goodness in Devotions towards God and in Converse among Men such Observers have nothing to say for themselves in case they chuse the worst part they cann't pretend so much as to excuse themselves that they embrace evil not voluntarily but by mistake and sub specie boni since vice and virtue ly both unveil'd and naked before them Or they must acknowledge themselves onely to be resolutely wicked to be so because they will be so which puts them easily past all hopes of pity or of Pardon But since devotion and ordinary converse were so exceedingly deprav'd and since the wisest among meer Men had made so many attempts for reforming them and yet had been so miserably mistaken in their measures to that end as to convince them of the impossibility of such atchievments from their hands when one person howsoever despicable and mean in his outward appearances could reassume the forsaken design and not onely assume but apparently accomplish it laying down such Rules as if exactly follow'd must necessarily restore all things to an absolute perfection when Men observe all his instructions to agree closely among themselves and with the ancient authentick methods of doing well and all concurring still in the same center of Vniversal Sanctity it must be necessarily concluded That the Vndertaker was somewhat more than Man that nothing less than infinite holiness and wisdom could effect such things which being yet apparently effected by One who was a true Man that true Man must withall be acknowledged the Son of God And whereas the generality of inquisitive Men in their searches after truth and wisdom always observed strange deficiencies in humane reason whereby antient wise men broke into so many several divisions in their inquiries after the Chief good whereas they found that none could lay down a fair project for pursuit of That but that presently he was assaulted by whole Armies of adversaries and all projects found absurd and unprofitable for acquiring that they aim'd at When the Gospel of our Saviour came to be divulged tho' it met with adversaries enough they were all too weak to inval date its strength and reason It was neither the juggling fair-tongu'd Pharisee nor the absurd and ambitious Saducee nor the wrangling Sophister nor the Sceptical or cunning Philosopher nor the undermining Heretick that were able to ruine the reputation of the Christian Doctrine but it still grew upon them tho' they were cruelly assisted by earthly powers and indeed made use of all the roughest means for the extirpation of the Professors of the Gospel And what was very considerable tho' the great promoters of Religion after the Apostles and their immediate Successor's times neither had the gift of languages nor had much of the learned education of those Ages yet they were able having truth on their side to baffle all the learning of the great wise men among both Jews and Pagans which could never have happened had not what they preached and defended been highly rational For keen adversaries who pretended to the greatest acuteness of Wit and Sence would never have quitted arguments that had been stronger for the sake of meer cant and impertinent jangling But indeed the common scope of the inquiries of wise men being to discover what was really the greatest degree of humane happiness and the highest and chiefest good by which they confest somewhat Lost and tho' possibly to be retrieved yet not without the greatest difficulties imaginable there was no proposition made by any for the full discovery and attainment of that Good but it was eagerly listned to and the probabilities on all sides being duly weighed and the effects of the several propositions being carefully consider'd Christianity gain'd the victory whose effects were the most considerable whose Professors the most innocent whose promises were the most excellent and punctual and whose rules the most general intelligible and unquestionable Pagans and Jews if they were not wilfully ignorant could not but see all those principles of reason which themselves pretended to extremely advanc'd by this doctrine introduced by Christ for whereas they were wont to decry pride and haughtiness of spirit arrogance and contempt of others very earnestly its true the
fellow Servant a Creature and order'd him to worship God i. e. the Supreme Being then that must be a Rule to Angels too and they might not adore or worship a Creature no more than the Apostle might therefore the Son of God was no Creature since they are commanded to worship him therefore He must be God for we know of no intermedial power between a Creator and a Creature We are to worship the Lord our God Mat. 4.10 and him onely are we to serve as our Saviour himself alledges but We are to worship the Son of God Angels are to do so too therefore the Son of God is God And since we are gotten into this first Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews we may add in evidence of our assertion that other quotation Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the Earth Ps 102.25 and the Heavens are the work of thy hands Heb. 1.10 c. they shall perish but thou remainest and they all shall wax old as doth a garment and as a vesture shalt thou change them and they shall be changed but thou art the same and thy years shall not fail which Text is so home to the proof of the Divinity of the Son of God that Schlicktingius twists and winds himself every way to evade its force in his Commentary on the place and after all does but Magno conatu magnas nugas agere as the Comedian he makes a great stir to no purpose He finds fault with the Author of the Epistle If He says he design'd to perswade us Christ was the most high God why did he not say so without any farther circumstance the matter had been then past dispute But we suppose it is so plain as nothing can be more already it 's as plain as those words he 'd prescribe could have made it to All but men of perverse wits who wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction for if as He owns none but the Supreme God could be the Maker of Heaven and Earth and the Creation of Heaven and Earth be here by the Apostle ascribed to the Son then the inevitable consequence which the Heretick would have had laid down at first is that the Son is the Supreme God or God equal with the Father And whereas the main foundation of the Arrian and Socinian Heresie is as Sandius another of that tribe owns that there was a time when the Son was not if the Son of God was indeed the Creator of all things then he was before all things and consequently before time it self and so their foundation is apparently false for he that had a Being before time was must of necessity be Eternal But Schlicktingius would perswade us that of the whole Text produced by the Apostle onely the sence of the last words is to be referr'd to Christ and that it 's quoted onely to prove that the Dominion of Christ shall not expire but with the abolition of all things Schlicktingius in locum Quod Regni Christi quod nunc in terris administrat terminus cum inimicorum ejus omnium abolitione quos Coeli Terrae ruina involvet sit conjunctus are his words That the end of Christ's Kingdom which he administers in this World is joyn'd with the utter abolition of all his Enemies who shall be at once involv'd in the ruines of the Universe As for the first part of the quotation he makes it altogether impertinent but that the Apostle took the Text whole as it lay because he knew the Hebrews to whom he wrote were in no danger of interpreting the Creation of the World as referring to Christ whom they knew well enough to be no other than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a meer Man and no more and adds that had the Apostle design'd any more by that Text it had been altogether beside his purpose But here I conclude our Adversary mistook the Apostle's meaning wilfully which is this Writing to the Jews his first design is to convince them of the Messiahship of Christ whom they knew to be a Man they had seen evidences enough of that in what he did and suffer'd among them they had seen him crucified dead and buried so that they could not dream of his having onely a fantastick body being onely an apparition as some Hereticks afterwards asserted a phantasm or a Spirit had no flesh and bones as they saw him have The Hebrews were so certain of this that they would believe him to be no more than a Man a man weak and inconsiderable a perfect cheat pretending to the noble character of being their long expected Messiah but no way answering that Character having appear'd in no such glory as the Prophets had foretold and having wrought no deliverance for Israel according to their reasonable expectations Now to convince them of their Error he asserts Christ to have been the Son of God v. 2. He proves the Messiah was to be so from their own Books v. 5. He asserts Him to have been the express Image of God's Person the brightness of his glory the Vpholder of all things by his power v. 3. That the Messiah was to be so he proves from his superiority to Angels v. 6 7. Nay he asserts him to be God and proves the Messiah was to be so v. 8 9 10 c. In the Epistle afterwards he shews the accomplishment of the Legal Types in him with the excellency of his office in every respect particularly of his Priesthood the conclusion of all which to them is this That if the Types of the Law were accomplisht in him which they could judge of by comparing the Law with his Actions if He were the Son of God as himself asserted and proved he then could be no cheat how meanly soever he appear'd in the world but was capable of being the Messiah and having own'd himself to be so since he was incapable of deceit He really was that Messiah they expected and had wrought a Deliverance greater and more valuable than they dream'd of not only for them but for all the World and to make good this Truth the applying the Creation of all things to him was not impertinent God made the Worlds by his Son v. 2. of this Chapter Therefore he by whom the worlds were made had a being himself before they were made which is what St. John asserts of the Word which was God John 1.1 3. All things were made by Him and without Him was nothing made that was made all which consider'd it 's no wonder the Psalmist prescribed so to the Church Hearken O Daughter and consider and incline thine ear forget also thine own people and thy Father's house so shall the King greatly desire thy beauty Psal 45.10 11. for he is thy Lord God and worship thou him He that was God was really and lawfully to be worshipped The next place I shall urge is that of the Prophet Isaiah Isai 9.6 Vnto us a
Christ nor Elias nor that Prophet but he answered positively too to their General question v. 19-23 that He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness Prepare ye the way of the Lord make his paths streight as saith the Prophet Esaias Now the Baptist being so very much reverenc'd and so mightily followed as he was his answer could not but be spread about through all Judaea and the expectations of Men be the more rais'd because the person there prophesied of by Isaias was to be the forerunner of the Messias he therefore being come the other could not be far behind Besides if we interpret the Gospel of the glad tydings of Salvation brought to all mankind the Evangelists expression will be untrue For not to mention the Promise to our first Parents and those afterwards repeated to the Patriarchs and frequently declared and enlarged upon by the Prophets that of the Angel to Zacharias the Father of S. John Baptist and that of the same Angel to the blessed Virgin and they were â—â—â—â—einly tydings of great joy and the real beginnings of that which is peculiarly stiled the Gospel both these were before the very conception of our Saviour therefore He as a meer man was not or had no being in the beginning of the Gospel and doubtless the Evangelist here in the beginning of his History taking up the very expressions of Moses in the beginning of Genesis and using his very words as translated by the Septuagint supposed his Readers would take his words in the same sence as they understand those of Moses and so in the beginning in both places signifies as much as before there was any thing existent so before any thing but the eternal God himself had a being God out of nothing produced all things and so before any thing God excepted had a being the Word was therefore that Word was God because God only could exist in the beginning or before the Creation of all things and thus the Evangelist says something peculiar of Christ and what might really set him above the Baptist or blessed Angels or any other Creatures whatsoever Otherwise the Apostle according to the Socinian fancy would have taken pains to prevent an Objection never brought at such a time too as never any Man could have rais'd it for he wrote his Gospel according to all accounts about the 90th year of our Saviour toward the end of his own very long life and when the Gospel was spread in all quarters and Heresies had gotten a great footing in the Church when that Objection about John Baptist would have appeared nonsensical and ridiculous Whereas had he design'd his Master's honour or the advantage of mankind he would have made haste and have pen'd his Gospel very early when such poor objections might have appeared with some countenance But it follows In the beginning the Word was with God this seems to prove very plainly that if the Word here spoken of be indeed the Son of God he had a being before he was visible in our Nature and that above or in Heaven or in the peculiar place of the Divine presence which granted is enough to destroy all the Socinian Doctrine of Christ's being a meer Creature or a Man like one of us and no more That Christ really had such a Being antecedent to his Incarnation we have reason to believe on the authority of concurrent Texts of Scripture for so our Saviour calls himself before the cavilling Jews John 6.51 That Bread which came down from Heaven But if he came down from heaven He must first have been there and that at least some time before he told them so The Jews in general nay his own Disciples thought this a very hard saying an expression that was very hard to be understood and so it was to those who were wholly taken up with carnal thoughts our Saviour cures their amazement or incredulity with a strange intimation What and if you should see the Son of man ascend up into heaven v. 61 62. This question plainly enough asserts that he had been with God before they converst with him here on earth and this Socinus himself acknowledges for he knew not how to disengage himself from the force of this and that yet more astonishing declaration of our Saviour to Nicodemus No man hath ascended up to heaven Joh. 3.13 but He that came down from heaven even the Son of Man which is in heaven which expression according to the Socinian Rational way of exposition as they call it is meer riddle or contradiction but according to the Catholick Faith concerning the eternal generation of the Son of God is easie and intelligible to every man For if it were God that was manifest in the flesh and continued the same eternal God still He might in his divine nature always be with his Father and yet in his Humane Nature be conversant among Men at the same time But tho' Socinus and his followers sometimes own the literal truth of these expressions they cannot hold true to what they allow for one while they 'd change it's nature and make it figurative So Jesus Christ was in heaven by the divine raptures or meditations of his Soul Explic. loc S Script Op. v 1. p. 146. or he was in heaven by that perfect knowledge he had of all divine matters thus Socinus himself But he quits it at last and flyes to that wonderful discovery filium hominis verè propriè de coelo descendisse in coelo fuisse That the Son of Man was truly and properly in heaven and descended from thence before he discours'd these things with the Jews But would you know how it was as S. Paul who tho' but a meer Man was caught up into the third heavens 2 Cor. 12.2 3 4. into Paradise and heard unspeakable words which it â—s not lawful for a man to utter so the blessed Jesus was taken up bodily into heaven and there was conversant some time with God and was there as in a School taught those things he was afterwards to preach and do in the world Would you know when It was say some when he was twelve years old and his parents mist him at their return from Jerusalem and after three days found him among the Doctors Wolzog. in Jo. c. 3. v. 13. Wolzogenius supposes it during the forty days fast in the wilderness for whereas Socinus thinks it highly fit that as Moses the type was with God upon the Mount that he might there learn those Laws and Ordinances he was to deliver to the Israelites so it was very reasonable Christ the Antitype should have some such like converse with God for the same purpose in a nobler place therefore this Author to carry on the parallel the farther would pitch it on that time to which the Evangelists allot forty days because Moses was the same space of time in the Mount and this was the great Invention of Laelius Socinus
but never yet did any inspired Writer call Holy Men Men converted from the vanities of this World from all the Lusts and Follies attending it never did they call such by the name of Worldly Men But is not this a very hard shift to chop and change so often in so very short a sentence Whereas if we believe as we ought that this Habitable World and all things therein were created at first out of nothing by the Son of God the sence will be easie enough that God the Son was in this World this World the Universal fabrick of which his own hand had made and yet the World so far as capable of sence and knowledge understood it not or were not able to distinguish between the Creator and a meer Creature That we should believe the Son of God made all things at first the Scripture seems to take a great deal of care for so S. Paul teaches us that God created all things by Jesus Christ Ephes 3.9 but much more fully Coloss 1.15 16. Where giving thanks to God the Father who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son he describes that Son thus He is the image of the Invisible God the first-born of every Creature for by him were all things created that were in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisible whether they be Thrones or Dominions or Principalities or Powers all things were created by him and for him and he is before all things and by him all things consist and the Author of the Epistle is acknowledged to apply that of the Psalmist to our Saviour Heb. 1.10 Thou Lord in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the Earth and the Heavens are the works of thy hands A man would be apt to think these Texts were very plain and positive yet here too they 'l make their impious attempts for All things in heaven and in earth must mean only Angels and Men be it so how come the Angels to be renewed by the Word They will not say the fallen Angels were reduced to a state of Salvation S. Jude will contradict them there who tells us Jude v. 6. The Angels which kept not their first state but left their own habitation God hath reserved in everlasting chains under darkness to the judgment of the great day They cannot say the Good Angels were so restored or renewed for they were created absolutely happy and they had not lost that happiness and our Saviour himself asserts that He came not to call the Righteous but sinners to repentance that the Whole need not a Physician but those that are Sick The words then are as they sound to us they are general and whereas the Apostle particularises in Thrones and Dominions c. after those general words all things visible and invisible it 's only to supply us with an argument à Majori ad Minus that if even those superiour happy Beings who might seem almost to be above the rank of Creatures if they yet ow'd their first originals to the hand of the Son of God how much more may we conclude the visible or grosser parts of the Universe might owe their beginnings to his power Indeed the design of the Apostle is to set before our eyes in the beginning of his Gospel the wonderful Condescension of the Son of God on behalf of miserable sinners so to work in us a due fence of what we owe to so infinite a goodness and a forward readiness to accept Salvation from so all-sufficient a hand upon the terms propounded i. e. Faith and Obedience but what Topic could the Holy Pen-Man better begin his design with than from that of Christ's being God blessed for ever or from all eternity from his existing always in the glorious presence of his Almighty Father and being infinitely blest in himself as being One and equal with his Father for a compleat and every way perfect Vnion or Identity can only be between equals The Evangelist proves this eternal Greatness by that sufficient argument of his being the great and sole Creator of all things This God this Creator of all things appeared upon Earth where even those who were the Work of his hands were grown to that Blindness through the greatness of their Sins and the corruption of their natures that tho' the whole Creation long'd for the glorious day of his appearance Yet all the Worl'd seem'd utterly unable to discover him this glorious and eternal Word yet assumed Humane Nature that he might be Visible to the eye of the World and that he might be able to offer himself a Sacrifice for the Sins of the World that he might atone his Father's just anger and reconcile us to him by his own most precious blood To this end He underwent all the inconveniences ordinarily attending Mankind and it was a severe beginning of his debasement or humiliation for our sakes that whereas he honour'd the Nation of the Jews by being born among them and whereas out of particular commiseration for that poor lost people he made himself first known among them and Preach'd and did Miracles that they might the better understand him yet after all he came to his own but his own received him not i. e. the generality of that Nation rejected him but those who did receive him were empower'd by him to become the Sons of God they were so influenced assisted supported and dignified by his Sacred Spirit that they attained the Spirit of Adoption whereby they were able to cry Abba Father or to call upon God with that confidence and security which a dearly loved Son may have in an indulgent and well pleased Father He was such because that Holy Lamb to whom John the Baptist gave his testimony did really take away the Sins of the World and this Lamb whose nature and goodness was so little understood appear'd yet especially after his Resurrection when their minds were opened to his Disciples full of Grace and Truth they beholding his glory as the glory of the only Begotten Son of God such lustre would appear in him to the true believers eyes through the thick veil of his flesh and all the dismal clouds of his unparallel'd sufferings Now this glory which the Apostles saw in Christ must be somewhat capable of distinguishing him from others he might have appear'd as a Son of God at large in the same sense as all those who live piously are called the Sons of God but that would not at all have answer'd to what the Evangelist tells us his Glory made him appear i. e. the only begotten Son of God begotten of God in such a manner as never any meer Creature could be glorious in such a Manner as no meer Man was ever capable of but if he could be no Creature he could be nothing but God there being no Intermedial Essence between the Creator and the Creature If then it be the distinguishing Character of
the Almighty that he has had a being from eternity that he is God that He has made all things and that there is nothing made but what is made by him that He has made the World that He has created all things visible and invisible whether in heaven or in the earth that He has founded the Earth and the Heavens are the work of his hands if all these things are the Characters of the most high God Our Saviour justly wears them all He was in the beginning before all things He was then with God He was God all things were made by him and nothing without him He made the World and all things in it whether visible or invisible c. therefore he was the most high God notwithstanding which exalted nature he was pleas'd to manifest himself in the flesh or to become flesh which could be no diminution of his eternal glory infinity being absolutely incapable of any such lessening The Godhead was not converted into flesh as the Athanasian Creed expresses it i. e. by taking our Nature the Son of God did not cease to be God but he took the manhood into God that which was limited and finite into that which was infinite Thus have I very largely insisted on this beginning of S. John's Gospel it being such a discourse as asserts the Divine Nature of the Son with the greatest clearness and the most of circumstance of all others and therefore the whole body of the Socinians level all their skill and strength against it knowing very well that a conquest here gain'd would go a great way to make them victorious in every quarter In the next place Our Saviour discoursing with the Jews who were always seeking occasion to quarrel both his words and actions when we may assure our selves that if he had but the discretion of an ordinarily prudent Man he would have spoken with the greatest caution in the World Joh. 10.30 He then tells them without any limitation or allay I and my father are one Schlicktin in locum Hoc Christi dictum ad essentiam trahere nugari est says Schlicktingius roundly It 's perfect fooling to infer an essential unity between the Father and the Son from these words of Christ Mirum est hunc locum urgeri à quibusdam Enjed. in locum ex eo velle eandem Patris Filii essentiam colligere says Enjedine It 's strange that some should urge this place and conclude from it that the Essence of God the Father and of God the Son is the same and he alledges Beza and Calvin and Bucer as all declaring that it 's no proof in the case but it 's not what Men of great names say or boldly assert but the reasons why they say so or so that we much respect and therefore we cannot overpass this particular Text. The Jews as we find in the verses before came about our Saviour and require he 'd tell them plainly whether He were the Christ or not The Question in it self was reasonable and might merit a direct answer and doubtless would have had it had it been propounded with that ingenuity and sincerity which became those who were prepared to receive the Gospel But our Saviour who knew the malice of the Question refers them to what he had said before and the wonderful Works which he had done among them They knew what the Prophets had foretold should be done by the Messias They saw what He did and They heard in whose name he pretended to do what he did it was easie for them to compare his present actions with the antient Prophecies and to find out whether there was any thing prejudicial to God's glory or Man's happiness in all those miracles he had done among them But they not being his Sheep nor submitting themselves to his conduct who was the Good Shepherd they had not Honesty or Prudence enough to examine and weigh things impartially and therefore stumbled at noon day They could not see how the Innocence of his life where they could convince him of no Sin how the purity of his Doctrine which he uttered so as never Man did before him how the greatness of his Miracles which were unquestionable and extremely kind did prove beyond contradiction of any but those who were wilfully mad that He could be no Impostor no Cheat as they imagin'd Had they been his Sheep they 'd have listned to him and have been safe for all those were so who followed him He would give them eternal life and no man could take them out of his hand for his Father who gave them him was greater than all Therefore no man could pluck them out of his hand but He and his Father were One therefore none could pluck them out of his hand therefore He too was greater than all This would seem to the natural consequence of the Words and it 's certain the Jews thought it was so for they presently took up stones to stone him i. e. to give him that death which was the peculiar punishment of the Blasphemer and such they took him for for when Christ reproached their baseness v. 33. and ask'd for which of his good works they stoned him they readily answer They stoned him not for a good work but for blasphemy because that He being a Man made himself God This they thought they concluded very reasonably because he had said I and my Father am One Well did our Saviour in his reply tell them they were mistaken that he meant no such thing by those words that his meaning only was that He and his Father were both of one mind exactly agreeing in that kind intention of preserving his Sheep from perishing did he make any such plea Not at all but he sharply reproves their folly in challenging him as a Blasphemer for those words and takes up an argument against them from that passage of the Psalmist I have said ye are gods v. 34 35 36. If he call them gods to whom the word of God came says our Lord and the Scripture cannot be broken say ye of hi◠whom the father hath sanctified and sent into the World Thou blasphemest because I sai◠I am the Son of God i. e. If earthly Princes deserve the name of Gods because they are God's Vicegerents or if Angels carry that name because they are the Ministers of God◠glory would not that title much more justly belong to the Son of God made flesh sanctified from the womb of his mother and sent from heaven to be the Saviour of the world he must then by the very force of this argument be greater than either the greatest of Men or the holiest of Angels but what middle Being is or can there be between Angelick substances and the Deity that should be above Angels and yet not God We 'l allow then that for Two to be One is often used for that unity or agreement of mind which our adversaries speak of but we
among other things tells us Isa 44.17 He that had just made the golden Image falls down and worships it and prays unto it and says Deliver me for thou art my God Doubtless the Engraver and Carver c. would readily plead for themselves they look'd upon their Images but as Symbols of a real Deity or places of residence for more Spiritual Beings or at most but as subordinate Gods yet all this will not excuse them from the charge of Idolatry for God first declaring of himself that He is the true God that He is the living God and an everlasting king Jer. 10.10 11. at whose wrath the earth should tremble and the nations should not be able to abide his indignation adds farther The Gods that have not made the heavens and the earth even they shall perish from the earth and from under these heavens that 's then the characteristick or the test of a true God the making of the heavens and of the earth on which reason begin we our Creed with that I believe in God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth and whosoever it is who has not made Heaven and earth in that same sense in which the Prophet here speaks He 's an Idol and all those are guilty of Idolatry who put any confidence in him Vid Martial l. 5. Epig. 8. Suet. in Domit. c. 13. And such were Caligula and Domitian those proud Emperours who knew not how to sit down with an inferior title to that Domini Deique nostri of our Lord and our God and very Heathens themselves thought this was assuming divine Honours to themselves and such as were no way becoming mortal men But I know the Socinians allow those who are made Gods by Men to be Idols but those who are made by Almighty God himself are not so Neque enim unus ille deus falsos deos facit homines hoc faciunt says Schlicktingius for he who is the one supreme God does not make false Gods they are only Men who do so hence according to them Kings and Princes are true Gods because they are constituted by God himself to represent his own person to the world but to this we answer never King upon earth but only such as those before-named Caligula or Domitian pretended to such a name nor were there ever any but sordid Parasites and flatterers who offer'd to call them their Lords and their Gods Alexander the Great himself tho' foolish and ambitious to be called the Son of Jupiter yet could not but expose their baseness who complyed with his mad fancy when he saw the blood trickling from a wound he had received and ask'd them whether that were like the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which Homer made to fall from his Gods They allege on their own behalf that passage in the Psalmist Thy Throne O God is for ever and ever Psal 45.6 which say they is there spoken of Solomon which we as positively deny and are assured they can never prove God by his Prophets is not wont to tell downright falsehoods as he must do if this were to be so applyed for which way shall we make it out that Solomon's Throne was everlasting when all the glories of it sunk in his immediate Successor which way shall the Sceptre of his kingdom be made a right Sceptre whose immediate Successor and several after him have that character in Scripture that they did that which was evil in the sight of the Lord What great and terrible things were those which were done by the sword of peaceable Solomon who was to be no man of blood no conqueror o◠what worship do we ever read was paid by Pharaoh's daughter or any other of his numerous wives and concubines to Solomon and the Holy Ghost directly applies these words to Jesus Christ the Son of God without the least mention of Solomon Beside this then they have no Text which looks like any thing of ascribing those names My Lord and my God to any created being whatsoever and when they have said all they can Christ himself must be an Idol to Thomas and to all those who own him at any time to be their Lord and their God if it be not He who has made the Heavens and the Earth according to the Letter Princes may be Metaphorical Gods but they are not set up for humane Adorations Men and Angels are to adore the Son of God therefore he 's no Metaphorical God and we need beg no pardon for saying it 's not in the power of an Almighty God to create or make a true or an eternal God or another being Almighty as himself it 's Nonsence to talk of Monarchs subordinate one to another or of Monarchs co-ordinate with one another in the same territory and it 's plain nonsence to tell us Christ is a subordinate God to his Father or that there can be two supreme Gods over all blessed for ever Therefore when the Apostle calls his master My God and my Lord his meaning must be that the Son of God is the true God one God coessential co-eternal with his Father From hence then we proceed to Rom 9.5 Of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came who is God over all blessed for ever Amen The character here is very high the Text plain and it may justly be concluded those must adventure very boldly who can elude its force If we look into the occasion of the words we there find the Apostle expressing an extraordinary affection to his Countrey-men being willing to become a curse for his brethren his kinsmen according to the flesh whose condition he commiserates the more because of those extraordinary privileges they had before enjoyed for there is no greater aggravation of misery than to have made a great many fair steps towards happiness and to have fallen short of it at last These privileges they had enjoyed were extraordinary they were Israelites so God's proper or peculiar inheritance beyond all other nations whatsoever To them pertained the adoption or they were adopted to be the Sons of God and are called so in the Old Testament to them appertain'd the glory of God's peculiar presence among them owning them for his people and delivering them gloriously with a mighty hand and stretched out arm from their cruel enemies To them belonged the Covenants the two Tables written with the Finger of God himself the giving of the Law that Law Moral Political and Ceremonial which made their Religious Ordinances their Civil Government and their Manners far superiour to those of all other Nations to them belonged the service of God the only true external form or method of worship and the Promises for all the Prophets among those severe menaces they denounced against Israel for their Sins yet always brought the Promises of a Messias a Redeemer to come to comfort them their 's were the Fathers all those Men so eminent for their favour with God such as Abraham Isaac
is Man but as none question his bearing the name of the Son of God so every one knew that he bore the name of Jesus and that it had been beyond contradiction prov'd that he was the Christ his Relative name then of the Son of God his Humane name of Jesus his Name of office as Christ being all equally known it was certainly free to the Apostle to speak of him by any of those names and we see that those together with that of our Saviour our High-Priest our King our Mediator c. are all indifferently used by the Apostles in their writings without any kind of diminution of our Saviour's dignity or detraction from his eternal divinity Abundance more Texts might be added but these are sufficient on this head We come now to the third Head propounded from whence to prove That the blessed Jesus was really God manifest in the flesh 1 Tim. 3.16 comm 2. God equal and co-essential with his father and that is from those Actions done by him during his own converse on Earth or in his name after his Ascension into Heaven where again we shall not be so curious as to examine every particular but only some of the more remarkable The Socinians themselves would have him be in the form of God only on this account because all the parts of nature seem'd to obey him as their Lord and Master the Prophets too had commanded them before but some things were done by our Saviour of so singular a nature as the greatest of the Prophets could pretend to nothing of that kind Thus when Jacob was afraid of Esau he wrestled with God in Prayer and God turn'd the heart of Esau towards his brother and took off those barbarous and revengeful thoughts he had entertained before so Jacob escaped his fury Moses when terrified with the anger of the king of Aegypt fled for it and sav'd himself and so Elijah himself was forced to flight that he might escape the feminine rage of Jezebel and the rest of the Prophets how great and considerable soever had only flight or sufferings to prepare for It was otherwise with our Saviour for when he had enraged the people of Nazareth by speaking what was true and necessary to them and they resolv'd to put an effectual end to His preaching who could flatter them no better they thrust him out of the City they lead him to be sure with Guard strong and numerous enough to the brow of the Hill on which their City was built their design was to cast him down headlong not to perswade him to cast himself down Luke 4.29 30. as the Devil would have had him done from the Pinacle of the Temple they resolved to ease him of that trouble and to do it violently and cruelly themselves We read of no relenting among them none who went about to perswade them to give over so barbarous and unjust a design but our Saviour in the open croud past through the midst of them and went his way there was no flight before no calling fire down from heaven now no other sudden consternation among them but what appear'd in their countenances when they miss'd him whom they thought they had held fast enough We meet not with any interposition of Angels no blindness laid upon them as a penalty but He went from amongst them they no more able to oppose his Motions than a Man in a dream would be able to fight a Duel with a waking and terrible adversary here then Almighty power shew'd it self even in the Man Christ Jesus he shew'd his enemies how invisible how every way indiscernible Humane Nature assumed into the Divine must necessarily be The Turks perhaps taking their hint from this passage tell us that when our Saviour was led to be crucified he vanished in the same surprising manner out of their hands and left them only to exercise their rage upon one of his Judges of whom they say that he resembled Christ in an extraordinary manner An humane body acted meerly by a rational soul must of necessity be perceptible by those who compassed it round and could they once have been sensible of his motions it had been easie to have stayed him but where a divine Power interpos'd it was impossible for any to observe or at least to observe with a capacity to hinder his moving Virgil tells us how Venus wrapt her son Aeneas with his companion Achates in a misty robe but he brings him on the stage of Carthage in the same invisible circumstances and therefore there were no offers to hinder him going where he would but when he was once seen his Mother her self was not able to muffle him up so from humane eyes as that he should fall into no danger Therefore Homer makes both Mars and Venus the last not visible at the time to be wounded by Diomedes when he was so very eager in pursuit of the Trojans This then in our Saviour prov'd his rank yet higher than that of Man his Power greater and more effectual as working of it self so upon humane Spirits that either they could not discern him at all or had no power to shew their displeasure tho' never so violent and revengeful before there needed no Angel here to stop the Lyons mouths his Will without any outward expression of it was suffient And thus he shew'd a Power equally Divine when meerly by asking the Officers who came with that Traitor Judas to take him whom they sought and telling them that He himself was the Person John 18.5 6. they went backwards and fell to the ground it must certainly be a strange and terrible power that from the mildest words could produce such amazing effects Men bred up to blood and slaughter are not wont to be affrighted with one anothers looks or words but God even in the still small voice is to be fear'd We must necessarily conclude that he who was the Son of God who was his only Son that Son to whom he gave so extraordinary a testimony that in him he was well pleased we must conclude that this Son would take all occasions to advance the honour of his Father that He 'd not only forbid others doing any thing that might detract from it but he 'd be above all things careful not to do any thing of so impious a complexion himself As this was a duty incumbent upon every servant of God so we find the Prophets always careful in the case and therefore prefacing all those Miracles they wrought with solemn Prayers and with the name of that God from whom all their miracle-working power was derived Moses seems to have fail'd a little only in the point when he was to bring water out of the rock for the Israelites but Moses sin'd nor could the reasonableness of his zeal excuse him from a severe punishment on that account But if we run over the general Histories of our Saviour's miracles we find Him for ought is upon record
whom we believe is the Son and Messenger of God who being the Word before had sometime appear'd in the resemblance of fire sometimes in the form of Angels now at last by the Will of God was made Man for the sake of mankind and for their sakes suffered whatsoever Jewish cruelty and malice could inflict upon him who while they own'd it was God the Creator and maker of all things who spake to Moses in the bush and yet He that there spoke was the Son the Angel the Messenger of God indeed they laid themselves open to that just reproof of our Lord that they neither knew the Father nor the Son We argue too from hence that if it were our Christ who appear'd to Moses in the Bush as Justine affirms and Scripture sufficiently evidences if it were our Christ what name soever he might be call'd by he then was pre-existent or had a real being before he was conceived in the womb of the blessed Virgin therefore he could be no meer Man unless the Socinians can find out the way to satisfie the question of Nicodemus by asserting positively that a Man a meer Man may be born when he is old that he may literally enter again into his mothers womb and be born a-new and can prove it when they have asserted it He could be no Angel that 's denyed in Scripture the Apostle assures us Heb. 2.16 He took not upon him the nature of Angels a speech very idle if he had been an Angel originally if therefore he neither was a meer Man nor a created Angel he was and must be the supreme God Again the same Justine in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew Dial. cum Tryph. Jud. p. 267. l. B. C. when Trypho urges him with his absurd assertion That Christ was God before all ages and yet had condescended to become Man Justine answers him The truth would not therefore be lost if he should fail in his proofs that Christ was the Son of the world's Creator and that he was God because however it had been foretold by the Prophets that he should be so but if I do not prove that He had a being before and then condescended to become Man and took flesh according to his Father's design and determination p. 275. dcinceps it 's only proper to conclude that I am a weak disputant not that he who bore that Character is not the Christ When Trypho afterwards bids him prove that there was or could be another God besides the maker of the Universe the Martyr stumbles not at the proposition but proceeds to prove the thing by that instance of the Lord before whom Abraham stood when the two Angels went forwards towards Sodom and falls again upon the forementioned instance of Christ speaking to Moses in the Bush by both which he proves that the Son is God as well as the Father is God and yet he asserts not two Gods but one God because if two or three Beings are partakers of one divine Nature they must of consequence be one God the divine Nature being indivisible and incapable of degrees or diminution After a large discourse with the Jew he tells him that in the several arguments he had brought he had sufficiently proved that Christ was Lord and God and the Son of God who had appear'd both as a Man p. 357. D. and as an Angel in the burning Bush and at the destruction of Sodom And Trypho all along looks upon him as engag'd in that design of proving Christ to be God not by a figure but in reality He concludes the Scriptures were very express in their evidence that that Christ who had suffered so much at the Jews hands was to be worshipped and was God had he not prov'd the last well that He was God to have asserted the first that he ought to be worshipped would have sounded very harshly in the ears of a Jew But even Trypho himself who thought it prodigious and incredible that God should be born and should condescend to become Man tho' none of the most tractable persons in the world was brought to Agrippa's condition by the zealous Martyr and almost perswaded to be a Christian About the same time lived S. Irenaeus Bishop of Lyons in France one who had been a Hearer of blessed Polycarp who had been himself an Hearer of the Apostles He had certainly the advantage of knowing what was sound and true Doctrine with relation to our Saviour and that from very authentick hands his writings were originally Greek as himself was by Birth tho' employed to preach the Gospel in the parts of France but those Originals are almost all lost and we must necessarily content our selves with their Translation This excellent Father then tells us first what the general Faith of the Church is That the Church believes in one God Iren. adv Haer. l. 1. c. 2. the Father Almighty maker of Heaven and Earth c. and in one Jesus Christ the Son of God incarnate for our Salvation and in the Holy Ghost who among other things has taught us that according to the good pleasure of the invisible Father every knee of things in Heaven and of things on Earth and of things under the Earth should bow to Jesus Christ our Lord our God our Saviour and our King and that every tongue should confess to him and this passage we have in the genuine original and it seems satisfactory enough as to the Faith of the French Church in those days and doubtless was look'd upon by him as the Faith generally embraced by all the true professors of Christianity C. 3. and indeed so he assures us in the following chapter of the same book That the Church spread through the whole world diligently maintains this Faith and observes it as exactly as if they all inhabited in one house they believe it as if they had all one heart and one soul and with a wonderful consent preach it as it were with one mouth We then are safe enough while we believe Jesus Christ to be God since holy Martyrs nay the whole Church of God believed the same truth so long since and making it a part of their publick Creed declared their judgment that so to believe was necessary to eternal Salvation Having afterwards told us what the Apostles have preached and how they have prov'd Him true and that there was no falshood in him he proceeds in the next chapter thus Therefore neither our Lord himself nor the Holy Ghost nor the Apostles would have called any one God absolutely and definitively unless he had really been true God nor would they have called any one Lord in his own person l. 3. c. 6. but only Him who is Lord of all things God the Father and his Son and so he proceeds to enumerate several Texts wherein the name of God and Lord is indifferently given to both the Father and the Son and elsewhere he teaches us c. 18.
not consubstantial with Men in his Divinity c. Where it 's observable those Fathers use the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Consubstantial 50. years and more before the Nicene Council and Eusebius of Caesarea in his before-cited Epistle to his Diocese owns it was an expression used by some 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Forhesii Inst Theol Hist l. 1. c. 4. by some antient Bishops and Writers a thing either not observed or strangely forgotten by some modern Authors This Confession of the Antiochian Council was confirm'd in the Synodical Epistle of the Council of Constantinople afterwards and so made theirs The Council of Nice gives us this Creed We believe in God the Father Almighty maker of all things visible and invisible and in one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God begotten of his Father and the only begotten i. e. of the substance of his Father God of God light of light very God of very God begotten not made being of one substance with the Father by whom all things were made both that are in heaven and those that are on the earth who for us Men and for our Salvation came down from Heaven and was made flesh and became Man After the Council of Constantinople the second General Council reduced that of Nice to that Form which we now make use of in the Communion Service A Confession of Faith so full and so plain that so long as that 's retain'd and faithfully believed the Socinian Heresie can never get any considerable advantage against us the consideration of which has occasioned some late struglings of an heretical party to get that Creed as well that called the Athanasian expunged out of our Liturgy To this agrees Their Council-book sent to the Bishop of Rome and other Italian Bishops assembled together at Rome and to the same agreed before them Athanasius that great standard of the true Faith against the Arians in his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or exposition of the Faith extant among his other works and to the same we may joyn that excellent Confession of Faith appointed to be used on particular days in our Liturgy under the name of the Athanasian Creed sound and orthodox but not of so great Antiquity And thus have we shewn at large what the Doctrine of the Primitive Church was with respect to our Saviour's divinity long before the Bishops of Rome pretended to the mighty name of the Universal Bishop or could carry on any ambitious design by altering the Faith every where receiv'd in the Church this Primitive Faith is what the Church of England and with her all the Body of the reformed Churches hold as I shew'd before and which even the Church of Rome it self dares not attack nor shall the gates of Hell ever prevail against it Amen And thus have we done with our fourth evidence of the real Divinity of the Son of God viz. the Faith of the Primitive Church We proceed to the Fifth and last which we propounded to that purpose and we shall now prove that Jesus Christ is true and perfect God from that common and every way approved practice of adoring and presenting our Prayers to him This adoring and praying to Christ is a duty so properly incumbent on all persons who hope for Salvation through his name that the Socinians themselves in the Racovian Catechism in answer to that question Quid sentis de iis Hominibus qui Christum nec invocandum nec adorandum censent Catech. Racov. l. 6. c. 1. p 92. What think you of those men who conclude that Christ is neither to be called upon nor worshipped they thus reply Since those are certainly Christians who acknowledge Jesus to be the Christ or that heavenly King of an Holy people and therefore worship him in a Divine manner and scruple not to call upon his name on which account we formerly described Christians as such who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ it 's easie to understand that those who will not do so are not yet Christians tho' they may otherwise profess the name of Christ and pretend to adhere to his Doctrine In this we have the Great Prophets of that Party declaring how essential praying to Christ is to Christianity and this their witness is true but in the mean time we cannot but sverely reflect upon their Impudence who will first make us believe that our blessed Saviour is no more than a meer Man and then would perswade us either that we ought or may call upon him in our Prayers or Worship him but that we may have the fairer view of their folly and madness in this particular we shall lay down this Argument All that Divine Worship is Idolatry which is paid to any Being but him who is the true God None of that Divine Worship is Idolatry which is paid to Jesus Christ Therefore Jesus Christ is the true God Where by Divine Worship we mean that Worship either inward or outward which by the Laws of God or nature is ascribed and appropriated to the supreme Being The true God then is that supreme or sovereign Being and by Idolatry I mean such an application of that true Divine Worship belonging to the supreme Being to any Creatute or created Being as is forbidden by the first or second Commandment in the Decalogue from whence alone the true notion of Idolatry or regular and properly applyed Divine Worship can be taken I assert then That all that Divine worship which is paid to any Being besides the true God is plain Idolatry the excellency of nature in any of those things which may be the Objects of our adorations make no difference or abatement of guilt in the case He 's as much an Idolater who worships a wise Man or a great publick Benefactor or a Man Deified as he who worships a stock or a stone and he breaks the holy Commandment as notoriously who pays those adorations to a good Angel which belong to Almighty God as he that pays them to the Devil for the noblest Created Being in the Universe is no more able to answer the true ends of all Divine Worship than the most contemptible Creature we can cast our eyes on and God expresses as great a jealousie of his own honour when it 's taken from him to be given to the purest of his Creatures as when it 's misapplyed in a grosser manner When God commands Israel what the Law of Nature must necessarily have prescribed before Not to have any other Gods before his face he made no Reservation of any right of appointing another God to himself but excluded all other Deities were they made or subordinate or co-ordinate or under what character soever they might be made the objects of our Worship And when He requir'd they should not make to themselves any graven Image nor the likeness of any thing either in heaven above or in earth beneath or in the waters under the earth that they should not bow down to
them nor worship them he excluded every Creature from a capacity of receiving divine Honours whatsoever was capable of being represented by any figure or image if it was worshipped was an Idol the Creature represented was so as well as the representation and invisibility as well as any other attribute is ascribed to the true God as a peculiarity whereby we might know him to be the only proper object of our Worship by both these precepts our Saviour is perfectly shut out from being the subject of Divine Honours as he is suppos'd by the Socinians to be a God in subordinacy to his Father and as he is a Creature and capable as other Creatures be of being represented by a material Image which is wholly inconsistent with a true Divinity For tho' the Socinians allow our Saviour to be the Son of God in a peculiar manner by reason of his being begotten in the Womb of the Virgin by the Holy Ghost or as they call it by the influence of Almighty God this does not at all put him out of the rank of the Creatures nor does that Glory and Honour and Immortality which they suppose his Father to have adorned him with after his resurrection make him a God who was before a Man for all these things are reserved too in a just proportion for all such as die in the true Faith of Christ by which they too in their turns must necessarily be Gods tho' because their proportion of honour is suppos'd inferiour to that of Christ they must be Gods of an inferiour rank and quality but this Collation of dignity effects nothing at all and the Socinian distinction between a God made by the supreme God and a God made by Men comes to nothing at all The Poets Divinity in that point is better and more rational than theirs Qui fingit sacros auro vel marmore vultus Non facit ille Deos Qui rogat ille facit He who represents a Divine face in gold or marble makes it not a God but he who prays to it makes it such So if God render the body of our Lord never so illustrious that makes him not a God but the presenting of Humane supplications to him makes him one so that Christ by that means comes to be a God made so by Man as well as any other Idol whatsoever is therefore according to the Socinians own principle Christ being a meer Man if he be prayed to must be an Idol There can be no true God but He who is the Creator of all things nor does it lye within the reach of omnipotence it self to make a Creature a Creator therefore either Christ must be the Creator of all things or else he cannot be true God He remains a meer Creature still and all those adorations presented to him by the Christian World are notorious and damnable Idolatry The common notion of Idolatry confirms this so S. Cyprian tells us according to the notion he had of it Idololatria committitur cum Divinus honor alteri datur Idolatry is then committed when that Honour which belongs to God is given to another Gregory Nazianzen gives us this definition of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Idolatry is a transposition of divine worship from the maker to the thing made from God the Creator of all things to the Creature Therefore so long as our Saviour is really but a Creature which he must be if he be not the eternal God so long all that Worship paid to him according to this antient notion is Idolatry Now let a Socinian if he please impeach those of the Roman Communion as Idolaters we 'l agree with him and we really believe them to be so but there 's no Argument which can properly be made use of against that Church to convince them of Idolatry by reason of their praying to Angels or departed Saints from which practice they have been sufficiently and undeniably proved to be Idolaters but the same will hold good against these The strength of all Arguments against Rome lying in that That they transfer the Honour only due to the Creator to a Creature which is as true of all those who pay divine Worship to our Saviour if he be no more than a Creature The Gods who have not Created all things who have not Created Heaven and Earth shall perish from the earth and from under the Heaven as we alledged from the Prophet before but according to the Socinians our Lord did not make the Heaven and the Earth Therefore tho' they say he is True God at the same time they say He is not The true God He must be one of those Gods which must so perish A conclusion which our Adversaries either must deny or fairly renounce all their pretences which indeed are but weak at best to Christianity Divine Honours cannot be lawfully offered or Prayers lawfully presented to any created Being but upon supposition of some defect in the Creator for a positive Command from him to that purpose could it be suppos'd would not be enough for a Divine Command open and plain cannot make that which in its own nature is Evil to be good things morally good or evil are eternally so and that from that consideration that their moral goodness or illness flows from their agreement with or contradiction to the Divine Nature Now what was once contradictory to the divine Nature God himself cannot make agreeable to it because He cannot change his own Nature which yet must be if that which being abstractedly considered was a sin against him should now under the same abstracted consideration 1 Tim. 3.16 be no longer so therefore we are sure God himself cannot command any thing that is morally evil but diverting that â—orship which belongs to the Creator of all things from him to his own Creature let that Creature be what it will is morally evil it 's Idolatry therefore God cannot command it therefore he cannot give or have given Christians any positive or open Command to Worship our Saviour if he be a meer Creature because that 's translating that Worship due only to the true God to the Creature To suppose any defect in the Creator is blasphemous if there can be yet any just reason or apparent necessity of Mens addressing themselves to any Being which is but their fellow Creature for the attainment of that for which they were wont to apply themselves only to the supreme Being or Creator before it must be asserted but where there is all Perfection concluded to reside in that Sovereign Being to whom it 's granted on all hands that Divine Worship is due there 's no kind of necessity that we should apply our selves to any Intermedial Power or go round about when we may have a direct access to the throne of grace While we own Christ to be the True God as his Father is of the same eternal Nature whatsoever obliges us in our necessities to call upon the True God obliges to call upon
tho' it were an inward grace a strengthning of the Soul which they requir'd of him Again when the Disciples were with him on ship-board and during his quiet sleep just sinking by the violence of an angry tempest they in a fright wake their Master and cry out to him Lord save us we perish Mat. 8.25 If our Saviour was a meer Man the Disciples acted with much less sence than Jonah's Mariners who every one in the storm called upon their Gods for help and summoned sleeping Jonas not to save them by His Power but to joyn with them in calling upon his God For was it ever heard before that when a Ship was just sinking or running upon a rock the ship's Crew ran to some poor ignorant Passenger to beg their security from him The Mariners tho' convinced that he was an extraordinary Person made no such application to Saint Paul in a parallel danger it 's God alone who can command the Seas and Winds his permissive Word makes them ruffle the Universe and put Nature into a Consternation the same Word lays them still as in their first Originals ere uncorrupted Nature knew any thing terrible or dangerous In the case before us our Saviour answered them not as that King of Israel did the Woman If the Lord help thee not what can I do But He arose and rebuked the Winds and the Sea and there was a great calm Nature in its greatest hurry own'd his Divine Authority only his Disciples stumbled upon the Question ver 27. What manner of Man is this that even the Winds and the Sea obey him They talked like Men beside themselves with Fear they called upon him for Help as if they had believed him to be God they reflected upon that Deliverance he had given them as if he had been no more than Man but he takes no notice of any error they were in in their first Devotions but by his Mercy encouraged them to do the same again upon a like occasion What the Disciples did here in a storm at Sea that Saint Stephen the first Martyr for Christianity did in a more violent storm of Persecution on Land for when he came to his last Agonies when it was the proper season for a good Man to exert the utmost vigor of his Faith and Charity then for himself and with respect to his own Soul he prays Acts 7.59 Lord Jesus receive my Spirit The frequent expiring Ejaculation of Holy Saints and Martyrs after him Compare now this with that assertion of the wise Man concerning Death Eccles. 12 7. Then shall the Dust return to Earth as it was and the Spirit shall return to God who gave it and the consequence will be either that our Lord Jesus Christ was the great Author or Creator and Giver of the Rational Soul or else that this Holy Martyr then when filled in an extraordinary manner with the Holy Ghost in his extreme hours when commonly Mens apprehensions of futurity are most Clear and Rational talk'd in a very Impertinent and sinful manner to devote his Soul to him who could have no right to it if he were a meer Creature and to forget his God Franciscus Davidis would have us believe here that Stephen did not call upon Jesus Christ but upon God the Father and that we should translate the expression O thou Lord of Jesus receive my Spirit but this Socinus has strongly confuted tho' upon their common Principle of our Saviour's being a meer Creature Franciscus undertakes the much more rational part However here his subterfuge is nothing worth It was Jesus the Son of God He who bore that proper name of Jesus from his Circumcision for whose sake Stephen was now persecuted to Death by the malicious Jews it was the same Jesus whom he saw at the right hand of God when the Heavens opened to give him such a view of future Glory prepared for Martyrs as might support and encourage him under his sufferings it was to him therefore that Stephen applyed himself and sitted himself for a glorious and happy Exit by that admirable Resignation But neither did Saint Stephen stop there but as the utmost effort of a dying Martyr's Charity He adds this to his former ejaculation ver 60. Lord lay not this sin to their charge He certainly designed exemplary Charity in this and to imitate his dying Saviour who prayed his Father to forgive his Murderers for they knew not what they did But the Martyr's enemies would have had little reason to have admir'd his Charity had he presented his Prayers for them to one who had no power to forgive them and the Jews would be as ready now to make the Objection as heretofore Who can forgive sins but God only And if God to whom vengeance belongeth in whose sight the Death of his Saints is precious would certainly avenge the blood of his Saints and Martyrs upon their Persecutors to what purpose was it to pray to him to forgive them who not being the most high God himself could have no Power to forgive those who had sin'd against the most high God so as to give them any security but above all He could never have hoped for any acceptance at the hand of God in any Petition whatsoever had he now in his last extremity been guilty of Idolatry Saint Paul had been made partaker of extraordinary Revelations had been snatch'd up into the third heavens where he had seen and heard things not lawful for a Man to utter 2 Cor. 1â— 7 8 9. indeed things unspeakable lest He should have been exalted above measure thro' the abundance of those Revelations there was given to him a thorn in the flesh the messenger of Satan to buffet him This was a very severe humiliation and Saint Paul was sensible of it and at first as appears by the Text very uneasie under it Saint Paul knew well enough that the best remedy for all calamities was Prayer that Prayers presented to the true God with a sincere heart could not return unfruitful but Saint Paul presently applyes himself to Christ For this cause I besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from me says he and He said unto me my Grace is sufficient for thee for my strength is made perfect in weakness By the Lord here the Socinians themselves understand our Lord Jesus and therefore alledge this Text as a proof of Pious Mens praying to Christ Now had Saint Paul prayed to Christ for Assistance and Relief in such a case where only the Supreme God could really help him if that Christ were a meer Creature then such a Prayer must be Idolatrous and such Service be called Idolatry wherein the Creature was rather worshipped than the Creator and Christ a Creature must as Lucifer of old have endeavoured to set himself up for a rival God and prosecute a separate Interest of his own and manage and assist his servants in a way of opposition to the most high God and
for our comfort the first Christians are free from any such folly and all the several sorts of Hereticks through all ages have freed them from any such Imputation They did nothing but what was agreeable to the Will of God They took care not to provoke him whom they knew to be a consuming fire to jealousie by setting up a meer Creature in competition with him The Christians in that time shew'd their extreme hatred of Idolatry in that all the allurements and terrors in the world could not possibly draw them to it in other instances If they would but have thrown a little Incense into the Fire burning on an Idols Altar If they would but have made the smallest condescension to some admired Heathen Deity they might have been blest both with Impunity and Rewards And sure it could be imputed to nothing but a ridiculously perverse humour to refuse all kinds of submission to Creature-Gods meerly because they were Creatures and yet at the same time themselves to Worship or Pray to a Creature of their own setting up We find not but that the Jews were more tractable and so more reasonable in the point when they had once gotten the gusto of Idolatry in the Golden Calf and had the fetters of religious Elders and Governors knock'd off their heels they stood out at nothing but were ready to worship any little Idol any of their neighbours recommended to them And other Idolatrous Nations the Romans in particular thought it but reasonable that when they had set up some Gods for themselves according to their own humours they should compile all the Divinities they could and secure themselves if not by the quality at least by the multiplicity of their Gods But when the Jews were once truly purged from their Idolatrous humours by severe and terrible Judgments they would never more at their utmost peril admit of the least umbrage of it And the converted Gentiles would have dyed a thousand deaths rather than have brought such a scandal upon Christianity as to have retained or advanced any thing that might have laid them open to the reproaches of the Jews or have seduced or perverted their Brethren We no where find the Apostles or any Apostolick men ever vindicating that Worship they offered to our Lord with that pretence that they went to him only as â— Mediator of Intercession as the Roman distinction is or that they might not press too rudely upon God without addressing in the first place to some Favourite servant We never find them arguing that they only Pray to Christ that He might pray for them tho' he always does so as being the sole Mediator between God and Man nor do they ever defend their Practice by that Allegation that they do not terminate their adorations upon Christ but upon his Father the contrary would easily have been prov'd against them from their own Writings Yet after all they were not Idolaters they did not give that Honour to a meer Creature which belonged only to the Creator therefore that Christ to whom they made their addresses was not a meer Creature Yet as he was Man He could be no more than a meer Creature therefore He was more than Man therefore He was God the true and Almighty God the great Creator of all things and thus have we made good our Argument that Jesus Christ was true God equal with his Father from that otherwise indefensible practice of Worshipping him or Praying determinately to him as the Giver of all good Gifts equally with his Father If he be own'd to be the One true God we can have no scruples no fears of offending upon us in Praying to him and expressing all the Signs of external religious adorations towards him If he be not own'd to be the One true God then there 's no argument which either a Socinian or any Other can bring to prove the lawfulness of Praying to him as God but it will equally serve either Papists in their praying to Images Saints or Angels or Pagans in Praying to their confest Idols and therefore the Socinians themselves fairly confess with respect to those Texts before-cited where Christians are known by that character of calling on the name of Christ That those Words do so comprehend all that divine Worship which is exhibited to Christ by his faithful people that they describe it by that one the most considerable part of it namely beging assistance from him in our Prayers Cum necesse sit eum cujus nomen invoces pro Deo competente sensu colere Since it 's necessary to Worship him as God in some fit sence whose name you call upon in Prayer but there is no other fit sence in which we can call upon him as God but that which makes him the true the eternal God Therefore if he may be called upon as God without Idolatry He must be that true that eternal God We have at last by God's assistance gone through these several heads of Discourse from which we propounded at first to prove That Jesus Christ the Son of God was God equal with his Father or the true the eternal God We have prov'd this from those several accounts of his Appearance and his Nature laid down in the Old Testament namely that it was He who appeared to and convers'd with Abraham before the fatal destruction of Sodom and that He there bore the name Jehovah the name of God incommunicable to any other That it was He whose Throne the Psalmist declared to be for ever and ever That it was He who laid the Foundations of the Earth and that the Heavens were the work of his hands after whose decay and perishing He yet should continue beyond the reach of time That Christ our Lord should be that Child that Son given us in time on whose shoulders the Government should be laid that He should be the wonderful Counsellor the mighty God the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace That He should be the Righteous Branch springing up to David whose name should be the Lord our Righteousness And finally that He the blessed Jesus should be that Ruler of Israel who should be born in Bethlehem Ephrata whose goings forth have been of old from everlasting We have proved the same assertion from those several Declarations our Saviour has made concerning himself and his Disciples afterwards concerning him in the New Testament as namely that of Saint Matthew of the Angel's prediction to Joseph to which the Evangelist applies the Prophecy that our Saviour Incarnate should be called Immanuel or God with us That of our Lord joyning himself in equal rank with his Father in the Institution of Baptism ordering it to be performed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost We have proved that our Saviour was that Word which was in the beginning which was with God which was God by whom all things were made visible and invisible in Heaven and upon Earth that according to
our Saviour himself He and his Father were One that it was He whom Saint Thomas upon a sufficient Conviction declared to be his Lord and his God that according to Saint Paul He is God over all blessed for ever and that according to the same Apostle He being in the Form of God thought it no Robbery to be equal with God yet took upon himself the Form of a Servant for our sakes These proofs I explain'd enlarged upon and vindicated them from their Sophistry who would have them look'd upon as proofs insufficient of the Divinity of the Son of God We prov'd the same thing then by those Actions done by himself and in his own Name during his converse upon Earth and done by his Apostles in His Name after his Ascension into Heaven For instance from his passing insensibly through the multitude who led him to the brow of an Hill designing to cast him headlong down from thence From his making the Souldiers who came with Judas to seize him to fall down with barely answering them what they desired and in the kindest and most satisfactory manner From his commanding Lazarous in his own Name to come forth of his Grave after four days burying From his Apprehension of virtue going out of him to heal the Woman with the bloody Issue tho' only touching the Hem of his Garment From his calling those that were weary and heavy laden with their sins to come to him and promising them rest for their Souls upon so doing From his Forgiving sins in an authoritative manner his searching the Heart trying the Reins and according to Saint Peter Knowing all things From his Promising and sending the Holy Ghost and giving it first of all with his Breath opening the Understanding of the Disciples and sending them abroad with a Commission equivalent to that which himself had received from his Father and in conclusion from his Disciples Baptising Preaching and doing Miracles wholly in his Name and by Faith in him From this Head we proceeded to prove our Doctrine that Christ was God equal with his Father from the Faith of the Primitive Church where we confin'd our selves in our Disquisition principally to those Fathers who wrote before the starting of the Arrian Controversie So for the Greek Church we gave you an account of what Clemens the Roman Bishop in his Epistles to the Corinthians of what Saint Ignatius Bishop of Antioch in his several Epistles of what Justine Martyr in his two Apologies and in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew and Irenaeus in his books against Heresies and Clemens Alexandrinus in his Admonition to the Gentiles and in his Stromata and what Origen in his books against Celsus furnishes us with in evidence of our Saviour's Divine Nature Then for the Latin Church we gave you the sence of what Tertullian St. Cyprian Bishop of Carthage Arnobius and Lactantius have written from whence we descended to Creeds framed by Gregory Thaumaturgus by Felix the first of that name Bishop of Rome by the First and Second Councils at Antioch summoned on the account of Paulus Samosatenus and the Circular Epistle of the Latter from the circular Letters of Alexander Bishop of Alexandria and so from the Epistle and Creed of the Nicene and Constantinopolitane general Councils with the remarkable suffrages of Constantine the Great the first Christian Emperor and Eusebius of Caesarea one much suspected of Arrianism himself but a famous Writer of Church-History Having done with this we prov'd last of all that no true Divine Worship was due to any meer Creature or could be paid to any such without Idolatry That true Divine Worship yet was paid to our blessed Lord by his Apostles and first Followers without Idolatry therefore that our Saviour in consequence could be no meer Creature Thus far we had proceeded and concluded all our works of that nature at an end and our selves at liberty to prosecute our intended discourse farther But Ill Men taking advantage of that Liberty now indulged them a Liberty always fruitful of Errors and Innovations give us yet more Work and a necessary care to prevent that Poyson they scatter from spreading too far amongst those who profess Christianity in these Nations And here we have two mighty Pretenders to Piety and Reason One of which undertakes the Patronage of long exploded Arrianism the Other of the more refined Socinianism and both with old Arguments and it may be some new Finenesses attack the Divinity of our Saviour It 's no small happiness that such Men take up such different Opinions to maintain for by that means One is somewhat of an Antidote against the Other and by these differences between themselves in so weighty a matter Wise and Considerate Christians will learn to believe neither of them As for what our Socinian pleads considering what we asserted in the beginning of our Discourse viz. That Jesus Christ our Saviour is the Son of God which We with all sound Christians understood in a natural sence and that that very Notice inferr'd a co-essentiality of the Son with the Father as it does among Men where the Son is of the same Nature with the Father which begets him we thought we had reason but the Socinians have found us out a way of Filiation or Sonship of being the begotten nay the Only begotten Son of God without any such Essential Relation thus the Racovian Catechism speaking concerning the Original of Christ's being called or being the Son of God tells us He is so First Because He was conceived of the Holy Ghost and being born of a Virgin without the concurrence of a man he had no other Father but God and this Wissowatius in his note upon that passage tells us ought to be observed as the first reason mentioned in Scripture why Christ is the Son of God in opposition to those who found that relation upon his eternal Generation of his Father Secondly Christ says the Catechism is the Son of God because as He himself teaches us He was sanctified by the Father i. e. He was separated from the rest of mankind in a singular manner and besides the perfect holiness of his Life furnished with Divine Wisdom and Power Cat. Raco sect 4. c. 1. p. 24. He was employed by the Father to execute the Office of an Ambassadour with a supreme Authority among Men Thirdly Christ was the Son of God because He was rais'd from the Dead by God and so begotten of him again by this means becoming like God in Immortality and Fourthly Christ is the Son of God because He is invested by God with supreme Authority and Command over all things Our Country man Lushington a great Patron of Socinianism in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews On the Hebrews c. 1. p. 23. reckons up the grounds of Christ's being the Son of God to the same number He 's the Son of God says He First by his Conception Secondly by his Function Thirdly by his Institution being
long'd for Death though in its most dreadful shape was never half so terrible to them as such a Disappointment in the midst of all their Pains not Victors in the fam'd Olympick Games not young Generals after mighty and unexpected Victories were possest with a more exulting Joy than those triumphant Saints on their Natalitial days for such they accounted those times of their Sufferings then happy Visions pleas'd their parting Souls and an expiring Stephen could see the Heavens opened and the Son of Man his glorious Redeemer sitting at the right-hand of God Flames were to them so many Beds of Roses Racks and Wheels like yielding Down or soft as Fanning Briezes on a Summer's Evening no Mournings no Complaints were heard no Tears were seen among them but Songs of Joy and Praise and Triumph were the Exercise of their suffering Hours and their aspiring Souls mounted on them as on Seraphic Wings to Abraham's Bosom and what was the original Ground and Reason of all these Joys but only the certain Goodness of their Cause the extraordinary Assistances of their King and Saviour and an infallible Assurance of God's Love to them and consequently of their future and eternal Happiness Rom. 8.18 They reckoned that the Sufferings of the present time were not worthy to be compared to the Glory which should be revealed in them and therefore Heb. 11.35 though they were tortured yet they accepted not of Deliverance that they might obtain a better Resurrection and all this was agreeable to the Doctrine of the Cross as laid down by the Apostles in Scripture here then was the Faith and Patience the Courage and Resolution of the Saints these were indeed to be imitated the Spirit and Power they acted with was wholly Divine and irresistible but if after all this gallant Prospect of the noble Army of Martyrs we turn our Looks upon the dying Jesus or his behaviour of himself under his Sufferings things will look very differently we find in him all the evidences of Fear and Sorrow and cruel Apprehensions of that Death he was to undergo His Soul was exceeding sorrowful even to death he beg'd of his Father if it were possible that that bitter Cup might pass from him and though he concluded his Prayer with that resigning Expression nevertheless not my will but thy will be done yet he repeated his deprecatory Prayer three times to shew how earnest and real he was in his Requests his Fear and Earnestness produced that Bloody Sweat and brought down the Angel from Heaven to strengthen him all these were Prefaces to his Sufferings of a very disagreeable Nature to the sacred Ambition of his own martyr'd Followers when he was in the Agonies of Death he was so far from any Triumphant Expression on the occasion that he vented his sorrowful Spirits in that despondent Cry My God my God why hast thou forsaken me we cannot pretend the Blessed Jesus at this time was under any alienation of Mind under any distraction of Spirit by reason of the extremity of his Pains we have shewn before that many suffered much greater Cruelties for his sake than the pains of the Cross amounted to consider it only as the Roman Method of putting Slaves to death and even Pagan Philosophers have suffered much more to the World's eye voluntarily and involuntarily without any such inward distemper as Anaxarchus and Calanus the Indian the former being beaten to pieces in a Mortar by Nicocreon the Cyprian Tyrant the latter walking gravely into the Fire prepared for that purpose before Alexander the Great and there Philosophizing seriously and rationally till his Breath was stopt by Smoke and Flames and our Saviour shew'd as great a Mastery of his own Thoughts and as undisturbed Apprehensions of things when upon the Cross as at other times as in refusing Gall and Vinegar in discoursing with the penitent Thief in taking care for his blessed mourning Mother c. we cannot pretend it was the Delicacy of our Saviour's Body who being conceiv'd in an extraordinary Manner was accompanied with a preternatural Tenderness for we know its the Soul that sees in the Eyes feels in the several Members hears in the Ears suffers in every bleeding Wound the Body without its Activity being only a stupid and insensible Lump of Earth and the Soul of our Saviour being according to the Confession of all of a Nature far exalted above the common Standard of Mankind having no Guilt to clog it no Sin to render it uneasie and therefore could not be but far above any groveling Earthy Thoughts infinitely sensible of the Advantages of Death to those that died in God's Favour and therefore would more perfectly despise all the Effects of humane Rage or Malice we cannot say our Saviour was the first that suffered under the Inhumanity of Persecutors so many of the Prophets had been brought to violent Deaths before not to mention that Persecution the faithful Jews underwent from the Tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes it cannot be alledged that Sufferings were the more heavy and insupportable to our Saviour because he was conscious of his own Purity and Innocence such a Conscience of inward Integrity must needs be the most comfortable Circumstance in the World for a dying Man such an Innocent being infallibly certain of eternal Rest and Happiness in a future World and it was among other things a clear Sense of their peace being made with God which those who are holy and harmless can never want that made those eminent Servants of God so eager to be Martyrs knowing it was better for them to be dissolv'd and to be with God than to linger upon Earth though compassed about with all the Grandeur and Felicity a state of Infirmity can be susceptible of nor can it be supposed that the Ingratitude and Baseness of the Jews among whom he had preached and for whose Conviction he had done so many mighty Miracles could work upon him so much as to press him with such exceeding Sorrows it 's true indeed Ingratitude to Benefactors is a Crime it 's a very pungent Thought to Men in Adversity to see those on whom they have laid the greatest Obligations stand among their Enemies and promote their Ruine and it 's further true that never were any Generation of Men more unworthy or more insensible of the most powerful Obligations than the Jews contemporary with our Saviour but after all this granted why should our Lord at that time more particularly pray to his Father that the bitter Cup might pass from him when he had all along through the whole course of his Life found the Jews as ill inclin'd to him as then but only wanting proper Opportunities to shew it or why should the Blessed Jesus cry out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me only because the Jews had repay'd his Goodness with Ingratitude and Cruelty besides this was the Case of our Lord's Disciples and Followers as well as of himself they preached among both Jews
which it was impossible they should be expiated and to put them to extraordinary Troubles and Expence for those things by which in themselves they could reap no good and which further had no respect to any thing that could advantage them the Jewish Rabbins therefore always understood by such Expiations the Transferring of that Punishment due to One upon some Other to whom it was not due whence that Wish Vid. Buxtorfii Lex Talmud in voce 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 May those Chastisements which I undergo be expiatory or satisfie for Rabbi such a one and his Children and again Let thy Expiation be upon us and let us suffer in thy room whatsoever thou oughtest to suffer and Rabbi Moses ben Maimon commenting on that Phrase used by one May I be an Expiation for them tells us it 's as much as to wish that He might be a Redemption Oughtr de Sacrif l. 2 c. 6. p. 336 or the Redemption-Price or the Ransome for them and it 's a mode of Speaking whereby is express'd an extraordinary Love to this the Apostle St. Paul alludes when he wishes he might be Anathema Rom. 9.3 Gal. 3.13 for or in the room of his Countreymen and our Lord really was made a Curse for us or in our stead and so became indeed an Expiation or a Propitiation for our Sins We allow it may be true that He who is once reconciled may remit what he pleases of his Right but he must be reconciled first now that infinite Justice essential to Almighty God could not be reconciled to Man without a compleat Satisfaction and yet he may be said justly to abate of the Rigour of his Right who will accept of a Satisfaction offer'd which he 's not bound to do as among Men it 's wholly at the determination of the Supreme Power whether they will execute the Malefactor himself or accept of the Punishment of some other who voluntarily offers himself to die for the Malefactor Justice may if it please insist on the One and it 's no Injustice to accept the Other What the Socinians at last endeavour to avoid is that Agreement between the Legal expiatory Sacrifices and that of our Redeemer where they would fain impose on us a new Fancy of their own i. e. That our Saviour's Sacrifice was not compleated till he ascended into Heaven to present himself there before his Father and this they conclude from the custom of the High-priest's entring into the Holy of Holies with the Blood of the yearly Sacrifice offer'd for the Sins of the People We must certainly own that the High-priest did enter that Sacred place with Blood but we are to consider that there were other expiatory Sacrifices beside that which was offer'd once a Year and which prefigured the Suffering of our Lord in which no such Ceremony was used as all those Sacrifices offered by particular Offenders for those Sins they were personally guilty of they endeavouring by such means to make an Atonement for their Sins and these particular Sacrifices were compleat in themselves and procured Remission of Sins for the Offerer and were certain Types of that great Sacrifice afterwards to be offered and the Paschal Lamb it self of all others the most lively representation of that Lamb of God who in fulness of time was to die for the Sins of the World was killed and eaten without any such Circumstances as carrying the Blood of it into the most Holy place and the Annual Sacrifice was really offered when it was kill'd and afterwards burnt without the Camp Levit. 16.16 the End and Design of sprinkling the Blood of the Goat and of the Bullock upon and before the Mercy-seat was to make an atonement for the Holy place it self because of the Vncleanness of the Children of Israel and because of their Transgressions in all their sins as the Text teaches us i. e. though the Holy of Holies were the place of the more special Presence of God which render'd it venerable and glorious yet it being among Men who were very disobedient and rebellious it contracted somewhat of Uncleanness and Pollution from them a Pollution so infectious Psal 78.60 that it made God forsake his Tabernacle in Shilo even the Tent which he had pitched among Men it was on account of such Pollutions that God threatned Israel afterwards to destroy that House which was called by his Name and commands them Go ye now unto my place which was in Shiloh Jer. 7.12 14. where I set my Name at the first and see what I did to it for the Wickedness of my People Israel therefore will I do unto this place which is called by my Name wherein ye trust as I did to Shiloh i. e. I will make it a desolation for such was Shiloh made on the same reason This was then the case of the Holy of Holies and it stood in need of a formal Sanctification in the ceremonial way for the Wickedness of those who were concern'd about it now this Expiation of the Holy place had no relation to the Remission of Mens Sins as the devoting and killing and burning the Sacrifice had but the great Sacrifice there offered by the High-priest was that of Prayer and Supplication shadowed out in that Levit. 16.12 13. That he was to take with him into the most Holy place a Censer full of burning Coals of fire from off the Altar of the Lord and his hands full of sweet Incense beaten small and to put the Incense upon the fire before the Lord that the cloud of Incense might cover the Mercy-seat that was upon the Testimony that he might not die by all this signifying that Sinners appearing even before the Seat of Mercy without offering an Atonement to Heaven in the most humble and solemn Devotions can expect nothing but Ruines and Destruction and as we rationally conclude that the Priests were not wont to offer Sacrifices without Prayers in general so we conclude that even this Symbolical Ceremony was not perform'd without some Prayers and Ejaculations at least God's Priests being appointed under the Mosaic Law too not only to offer Sacrifices of several kinds but to offer up Prayers and Praises to God in the name of that People over whom they presided in Religious matters But now though we commonly look upon the Holy of Holies whether in the Tabernacle or in the Temple as an Emblem of Heaven being guided by the Apostle in the Epistle to the Hebrews yet we know that Heaven can be the Receptacle of nothing defil'd or impure therefore it can contract no Impurity from any thing in it or about it therefore our Saviour's Sacrifice was compleat in dying on the Cross for our Sins Heb. 9.12 but by his own Blood he entered into the most Holy that is into Heaven in his humane Nature or that Body in which he had suffered on Earth his free offering himself and freely sacrificing himself he being our Priest and Sacrifice
both at the same time opened him that entrance into Heaven but there as our great and never-dying High-priest he makes Intercession for us to his Father he presents to his Father's view those mighty Sufferings he had undergone on our Account which serving as a Memorial of that eternal Determination of the Deity for Man's Redemption has the same and greater Efficacy on our behalf than a Plea from divine Truth and Justice it self he being invested with that Almighty Power of bestowing those Blessings he has purchas'd for us and the Demonstrations of his Merits his Will and his Goodness being all one Act. It 's true the Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us Heb. 9.7 that the High-priest went not into the Holy place without Blood which he offered for himself and for the Errors of the people but how that was we have explained before since that Blood was made use of for purifying even the Holiest Place render'd impure by the Sins of the High-priest himself and by the Errors of the People Perhaps it would not be amiss to take some notice of those different Expiations of Sins in the Old and in the New Testament which the Socinians in their discourses concerning Christ's Priesthood tell us of i. e. That Legal Sacrifices were only appointed for such Crimes as were committed by Imprudence or Infirmity greater Offenders not being directed to make use of any but were doom'd to die for their Crimes whereas as they say the greatest of Sins provided Men persevere not in them but are truly penitent are expiated by the Sacrifice of Christ and this they prove from that of St. Paul Be it known unto you Act. 13.38 39. that through Christ is preach'd unto you the forgiveness of Sins and by him all that believe are justify'd from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses But here we are to consider that the Political as well as the Religious Laws of the Israelites being given at one time by Almighty God they are so blended together and made Dependents on one another that where an ordinary Sacrifice could not there the Death of the Offender himself might satisfie for the Crime committed A Sacrifice offer'd though by its Institution it were expiatory yet if the Sinner however ignorant or weak persisted in his Sin or approach'd the Altar of God without true Humility and Repentance for the Sin committed his Sin could not be pardoned on account of the Sacrifice offer'd but if such a Sinner did truly repent and amend his Errors his Offering was then accepted and not only temporary but eternal Judgments diverted from him for such Sacrifices typified the Sacrifice of Christ which was powerful to save us from both Worldly Punishments and the Damnation of Hell and as we have before observed the Virtue of those Sacrifices consisted wholly in that relation the Types had to their Antitype Now where the Jewish political Laws reach'd the Life of the Delinquent and took his Blood there it would have been an Impertinence to offer the Blood of other Creatures for him but it follows not but that the same Conditions of hearty Repentance and true Resolutions of amendment might procure the Offender's pardon from God though he suffered under the Rigour of the Sanguinary Laws and the daily Sacrifices were of some import with respect to such Criminals and the Blood of Christ though to be shed afterwards was available to the Salvation of such so a Terrour was struck upon Others by the Delinquent's outward Sufferings and Encouragement was given to the greatest Sinners to repent by the reasonable Hopes of their being pardoned by Heaven who yet were to suffer upon Earth And so we find among Christians in Christian Governments the Laws take notice of and animadvert upon notorious Sins some are punished by lighter Penalties some by Death it self yet the Prayers and Intercessions of the Church offer'd to God in the name of Christ may be and frequently are effectual to the Eternal Salvation of such Persons so justly suffering for their Crimes but for the Text alledged the Import of it is this That by the Sacrifice of Jesus Christ we are really and effectually freed from all Sins whereas the Ceremonies of the Law had no such intrinsic purging Power of themselves all their Validity depending wholly and onely on their Relation to this All sufficient Sacrifice of the Son of God But we are taught by these Innovators that this Sacrifice was not compleat till our Saviour enter'd Heaven Cat. Raco §. 7. p. 173. nor he possest of his High-Priesthood till that time yet at the same time they own Christ was a Priest when hanging on the Cross if he were a Priest he must be our High-priest for we meet with no Gradations in that Office of his in Scripture nor that by executing the Office of an inferiour Priest very well he purchas'd a title to an higher Dignity If he were an High-priest he was compleatly so else he was and he was not the High-priest at the same time but the Socinian Error in this matter lies in not distinguishing rightly of the Priests Offices the Apostle teaches us Heb. 5.1 2. That an High-priest taken from among men is ordained for men in things pertaining to God Now things pertaining to God are not only external Gifts and Sacrifices but those that are internal and Spritual too such as are Prayers and Supplications with respect to which it 's necessary an High-priest should have compassion on the Ignorant and on them who are out of the way for that he himself also is compassed with Infirmities a Sense of his own Wants is apt in any Man to raise a sympathizing Tenderness for others so that when he begs of God Pardon for his own Sins he may at the same time implore Divine Mercy for the Sins of others now the High-priest is compleatly such in doing both or either of these so upon the Cross our Saviour was our High-priest and his external expiatory Sacrifice was compleatly offered in Heaven interceding for us with his Father he there presents that Sacrifice shadow'd to us by what we commonly understand to be the meaning of Prayers and Supplications i. e. Christ in Heaven intercedes as powerfully and effectually for us as if he really did pray and supplicate as present on our behalf but that he should literally do so is unnecessary and not to be understood by his Intercession for us for he 's an Intercessor not only who prays and supplicates immediately for another or on his behalf but He 's one who by some extraordinary Action pleasing to him with whom he intercedes purchases a Power of doing that thing or shewing that Kindness to his Friends at all times by himself which without that purchace he must make continual and repeated Intreaties for such a Power has our Lord purchased for himself by offering himself a Satisfaction for the World's Sins in his Sufferings compleated