measure I shall leave him and the Considerer to their Monsigneurisms and answer to the thing it self Whereas he says the Racovian Catechism denies the expiatory Virtue of the Sacrifice of Christ 't is so far from being true that this Catechism calls the Death and Oblation of Christ on the Cross Sacrificium piaculare an expiatory Sacrifice As for the first Writers of the Socinians whom also his Lordship accuses as denying that the Sacrifice of Christ was expiatory those first Writers he may please to know were the very Authors of the Racovian Catechism This Catechism which is an Abridgment and Defence of the Socinian Doctrine was first written by Smalcius and other first Writers and Preachers among the Socinians and has been improved by continual Additions till last of all it was published about 16 Years since by Benedict Wissowatius with the Annotations of all the most considerable Writers of the Socinian way But the Unitarians must needs be glad to hear his Lordship who so well understands the History of this Controversy refer us to Dr. Outram's Book as an applauded and generally-received Performance and containing the undoubted Doctrine of the Church of England concerning the Sacrifice of Christ For the Explication of the Doctrine of the Satisfaction first hinted by Grotius in his Notes on his Books de Jure Belli Pacis and again on the New Testament and more fully explained by Ruarus and Sclichtingius in their Epistles I say the Explication of the Doctrine of the Satisfaction by these leading Unitarians is so plainly asserted and so fully vindicated by Dr. Outram that 't is good News that the Church of England as his Lordship and I believe very truly assures us doth not only universally receive but applaud it Dr. Outram was as much an Unitarian in the Doctrine of the Trinity the Incarnation and the Satisfaction as the Compilers of the Racovian Catechism but to establish his Doctrine he saw it was necessary to set it on another Foundation and to express it in other Terms than Socinus and Crellius had done He no more believed that the Oblation of the Lord Christ on the Cross was an adequate Satisfaction to God's Justice for the Sins of Men than even Socinus or Crellius did Tho he contends that the Lord Christ underwent poenam vicariam i. e. a Punishment in our stead which Expression as it is intended by the more rigid Calvinists was disliked and opposed by Socinus and Crellius yet it never enter'd into his mind that Christ so suffered in our stead as to be consider'd by God as having our Guilt or as undergoing a Punishment equivalent thereto On which two Points and not on the Words in our stead as his Lordship imagines our whole Controversy with some others especially the Calvinist Writers turns In short his Lordship Dr. Outram and other Catholick Writers who approve not the Notions of some School-Divines and some rigid Calvinists believe neither more nor less concerning the Sacrifice by the Lord Christ than the Men of the Racovian way do All these alike consider our Saviour as well in the Sufferings of his whole Life and in his extraordinary Agonies in the Garden as in his Passion on the Cross as suffering for us and in our stead his Life and Death had both of 'em the expiatory Virtue which his Lordship thinks the Unitarians deny of both And all these no less agree against some Calvinists and divers Metaphysicians who follow the Schools that the Oblation made by Christ was not an adequate Satisfaction to God's Justice it was rather an Application to his Mercy They agree he did not so suffer in our stead as to take on him our Guilt or to undergo a Punishment equivalent to our Sins no nor to undergo Punishment properly so called but only in a popular Sense of the Word Punishment For Punishment properly so called is the Evil of Suffering inflicted on a guilty Person for the evil of doing but the Lord Christ having done no Evil nor being in any Sense a guilty Person he cannot properly be said to be punisht but to suffer And for the Suffering in our stead this also is rather tolerable and passable than proper but it may be well admitted in this Sense which is the Sense of the Catholick Church viz. that If the Lord Christ had not suffered we the actual Offenders should have been punisht Briefly his Lordship has imagin'd a Controversy where there is really none and while he is a Catholick he must continue an Unitarian In Answer to the Four Letters by Mr. H. De Luzancy To the Publisher SIR I Have read the 4 Letters of Mr. De Luzancy against the Unitarians and as you desire will make some Answer to them His Preface makes two Attacks telling them 1. The Consent of the whole Christian World must be a strong Inducement to a modest Unitarian to mistrust all his Arguments To oppose all that has been or is great and good in the Church of God is too much for the most presuming Disputant The Case then as Mr. L. states it is one side has Argument the other has Authority or Number The Side or Party that has nothing but Argument ought not to presume on their Reasons against the Authority of the whole World or as he corrects himself upon second Thoughts all that is great and good in the Church If Mr. L. has no better way of deciding these Controversies how do I fear they will never be ended The Unitarians will surely deny that all the Christian World or so much as all that is great and good in the Church is against them they will pretend that themselves are a part of the Christian World and for great and good they need not to say it of themselves the Ablest of their great and good Opposers have often said it of them They will say farther that in a Clash between Argument and Number the whole World and all that is great in it when weighed against but one Argument is as if you had put nothing at all into the Scale they will certainly abide by it that Argument can be repelled by nothing but Argument as Diamonds are cut only by Diamonds I advise Mr. L. who urges against us all the World to consider a little of this Passage which he will find in a Treatise in the 2d Tome of the Works of Athanasius They are to be pitied who judg of a Doctrine by the numbers of those who profess it Phineas Lot Noah St. Stephen had the Multitude against 'em yet what honest Man would not rather be of their side than of the World's When you object to me Multitude you do but show the great extent of Wickedness and the great number of the Miserable 2. His next Blow is that Faith and Reason are two things what is the Object of Faith cannot be the Object of Reason Nor is it sufferable to reject the Belief of the Mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation because our narrow
Lastly after all I believe tho the aforesaid Articles are all necessary to make a Man a Socinian yet the Belief of only one is enough to make a Man a Christian and that one Article is that Jesus is the Messias In which it is not included whether he be God or Man or whether he satisfied Divine Justice for our Sins by his Death but only that a Man of Nazareth was ordained and sent of God to be a Saviour I see all Mr. Edwards's Colts-teeth are not yet out of his Head he cannot forbear dealing sometimes in Railery and Wit but I must seriously desire him to name me any Socinian or Unitarian Writer that ever said no more is required to make a Christian but only that he believe that Jesus is the Messias The Truth of the matter is this Mr. Edwards has been lately very much foiled first by a Learned Gentleman then by a Divine of the Church of England upon this Question Whether it be of the Essence of a Christian as a Christian to assent to more than this one Article that Jesus is the Messias sent by God to instruct and save the World They do not doubt that 't is a Christian's Duty to learn by degrees all the other Articles of the Christian Creed and to believe them but if he hath attained or by occasion of Impediments of any sort that were not caused by his own Negligence or Perversness he can attain to no more Knowledg or Faith yet this one Article doth make him a Christian It doth not satisfy Mr. Edwards that upon all the Points in question they have declared themselves to be Anti-Socinians he resolves for all that they shall be Socinians and this Opinion which they maintain against him a new Article of the Socinian Creed It may be one way he thinks to reduce them to Silence if he calls their Opinion Socinianism and if after that they will not pull in their Horns in his next Book it shall be Irreligion or downright Atheism or at least Abnegation of Christianity or Popery his other Compliments to those whom he is pleased to attack I have now answered concerning all the Articles of our Religion with Sincerity without any the least disguise or reserved or unusual Meaning or Meanings And I am not sorry that Mr. Edwards almost constrained us to explain our selves concerning these Points For as unsincere and untrue as his Imputations are and as scurrilous as his manner of representing 'em and discoursing upon them sometimes is the Retortion or Answer here made will be judged by indifferent and discerning Persons to be home and satisfactory As to the Man himself Mr. Edwards has been serviceable to the common Christianity by some learned Books therefore I wish to him whatsoever Good himself desires to himself these Concertations between us notwithstanding In Answer to the Vindication of four Sermons of his Grace Archbishop J. Tillotson by my Lord the Bishop of Chichester HIS Lordship's Preface is for the bigger part of it an angry Perversion of the Respects paid to the Archbishop and other Persons of Dignity and Learning by the Author of the Considerations through his whole Answer to them But I doubt as to that we must always hold our selves content for in the Holy War against reputed Hereticks what in poor Laicks would be censured as want of Urbanity and Charity in Ecclesiasticks is the Zeal of thy House In one Place of his Preface his Lordship objects to the Considerer that there was a time when Paulus and Photinus Unitarian Archbishops flourished and their Followers abounded every where Well what then Why he will tell it us as a Secret they did not treat the Trinitarians as Fathers their Children but like tyrannical Judges Violences and Outrages Fire and Faggot were in Fashion among them Bishops were deposed exiled and slain and the whole Roman Empire put into a Combustion by these infamous Practices His Lordship does well to tell us this as a Secret for 't was never heard of till he published this Vindication of the Archbishop's Sermons I desire him to name the Authors from whom these Calumnies have been taken up and because I am perswaded he has none to cite I will adventure to say he cannot avoid the Imputation of too hasty taking up a Reproach Paulus and Photinus were indeed as his Lordship says Unitarian Metropolitans The former succeeded tho not immediately to the Apostle St. Peter in the Patriarchal Chair of Antioch The other was Primate of Illyricum It is true also what his Lordship adds that their Followers abounded every where In the time of the first Nicene Council or the Year 325. they had their Bishops and Presbyters their Deacons and Deaconesses like other Denominations and Sects of Christians as is intimated in the 19th Canon of that Council But they never were Persecutors but the persecuted Paul and Photinus were both of them ejected out of their Bishopricks Paul by a Pagan Emperor at the instance of a Council of Heretical Bishops who denied Homo-usios Photinus by an Arian Emperor at the Request of a Council of Bishops no less heretical for they contended for Homoi-usios And for their Followers the other Unitarians it never was in their Power to be Persecutors for they never were the prevailing Party but always lived sub Cruce they chearfully took up and imbraced the Cross in hopes to inherit the Promises Whereas his Lordship pretends that Fire and Faggot were in fashion when the Followers of Paulus and Photinus abounded and as he would have it thought prevailed every where 't is certain that sort of Church-Discipline was not known to the Antients whether Trinitarians or Unitarians it was not introduced till about the Year 1216 and was exercised first on the Albigenses by Dominic Founder of the Order of the Dominicans He concludes his Preface that he will not ask Pardon for what he has imputed to us that we have been great Persecutors even as far as Fire and Faggot And I answer when he proves his Imputations we will ask his Pardon and besides will most willingly undergo any Penalty or Shame how great soever The Body of his Lordship's Book is divided into two very unequal Sections the first concerning the Divinity of our Saviour the other concerning his Incarnation The Section concerning our Saviour's Divinity is part of it laid out in asserting the Authority of St. John's Gospel the rest on some Texts cited by the Archbishop either for the Divinity of our Saviour or for his Pre-existence I will first say something in general concerning the Blessed Trinity the Deity of our Saviour and his Incarnation and then make Application of it to his Lordship's Vindication Of the Trinity Divinity and Incarnation of the Lord Christ I Am perswaded that the Questions concerning the Trinity the Divinity of our Saviour and the Incarnation so long controverted between the Church and the Unitarians are a Strife mostly about Words and Terms not of Things and Realities And
allow the eternal Generation of the Logos Son or Wisdom he explains also the Incarnation or Divinity of our Saviour He makes the Incarnation of God in the human Nature to be such and to have like Effects as God's inhabiting the Cloud of Glory during some part of the Old-Testament Ages for this Cloud was worshipped he saith and he might have added is called God because of God in it But in his Letter he contends that the Indwelling of the Godhead in Christ was a vital Indwelling like that of the Soul in the Body and not an assisting Indwelling like that of Inspiration or the Gift of Tongues or of Miracles This must be candidly interpreted or it is the Apollinarian Heresy condemned in so many General Councils but I am perswaded he meant no Heterodoxy by a vital Indwelling He meant not that the Humanity lives by its Union with the Divinity which was the Doctrine of Apollinaris he intends only that the Humanity of the Lord Christ is entirely under the Impressions and Conduct of the Indwelling Divinity and receives constant Communications of Light and Impulse from it So I find him speaking at p. 107. And in the next Page thus The eternal WORD assumed the Man into an inward Oeconomy so as always to illuminate conduct and actuate it This is the clearest Thought we can have of the human Nature's subsisting by the Subsistence of the WORD that is of the Incarnation or Hypostatical Union This is far enough to be Orthodox but the Unitarians believe somewhat more they are a degree or two more Catholick and Orthodox They believe indeed with his Lordship not only that God did inspire our Saviour or so far communicated himself that the Lord Christ wrought Miracles by the Virtue that was always in him and not by a Power bestowed only occasionally and incidentally but that our Saviour's Humanity was constantly illuminated conducted and actuated by God in him and had unfading Communications of Light and Impulse from the Divinity he was entirely under the Impressions and Conduct thereof Yet as his Lordship also adds at p. 107. still leaving to the inferiour Mind to the rational Soul of Christ it s own Liberty and all its natural Powers And we reflect also on it that 't is with much more Justice and Propriety that our Saviour is called God on the account of such Indwelling of God than Moses or Solomon or even than Angels themselves who can be called Gods but only by Representation or at most on the account of God's assisting and inspiring them as occasion hapned to require But the Unitarians as I said believe somewhat more They do not appropriate the Incarnation to merely the WORD They hold that the whole Deity or Godhead dwelt in our Saviour all the Fulness of the Godhead as St. Paul speaks and not only the WORD dwelt in him bodily Not that the whole Essence of the Infinite God became commensurate to a finite Man or that there followed hereupon a real Communication of Idioms as some have heretically conceited which is in very deed a Revival of Eutychianism but only as God is every where whatsoever he is he is God perfect God in one Place in any Point of Space no less than in the whole interminable Extension of Place or Space This being the Unitarian Doctrine concerning the Incarnation hypostatical or personal Union and Divinity of our Saviour always believed and professed by 'em his Lordship had no Reason to snatch at so many Occasions of venting his Choler on the Considerer as if he were in danger of losing his Bishoprick by occasion of the Growth of Unitarianism which he mistakes to be a Departure from the Doctrine of the Catholick Church when 't is nothing but an Opposition to the Heresy of the Realists Of which this Prelate has made it appear he has not the least Tang. Of the Satisfaction as 't is stated in the Letter THE Unitarians differ somewhat from some other Catholicks in explaining the Doctrine of the Satisfaction but they approve of his Lordship's Notions concerning that Subject There are two Accounts given of the Satisfaction One of them supposes there was a Necessity that an adequate Satisfaction should be made to the Justice of God for the Sins of Men and that otherwise God could not dismiss us of the personal Punishment due by the Divine Law to our Sins The other supposes there was no Necessity of an adequate Satisfaction on our Behalf there being no such vindictive Justice essential to God whereby he is obliged to punish unless a full Satisfaction be given for Offences and Offenders The greater Number of the more learned Catholicks whether they be Protestants or Romanists hold the latter of these as well as the Unitarians do they believe It was neither necessary nor perhaps possible that a Satisfaction should be given to the Divine Justice every way equal to the eternal Punishment of an infinite Number of Sinners As my Lord of Sarum argues at p. 35. The Acts of Christ tho infinite in Value have not a strict Equality with all the Sins of so many Men every one of which is of infinite Guilt He confesses hereby that an adequate Satisfaction was not only not necessary but not possible in the nature of the thing unless there had been as many Redeemers not only as there are Sinners but as there are Sins But let us consider yet more particularly what his Lordship's Doctrine is He saith The Lord Christ was loaded with all the ill Usage that malicious Men could invent he suffer'd inexpressible Agonies both in Body and Mind and last of all was crucified But in all this he willingly offer'd himself to suffer upon our Account and in our stead which was so accepted by God that he not only raised him from the Dead and exalted him on High but gave to him even as he is Man all Power both in Heaven and Earth and offers also to the World Pardon of Sin Of this Account of the Satisfaction the Considerer said the Unitarians have ever professed it His Lordship in the Letter replies that the Racovian Catechism and the first Writers of the Socinians expresly deny the expiatory Virtue of the Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross but he owns that some Socinians are come off from that Error and do own the expiatory Virtue of that Sacrifice He adds that Dr. Outram's learned Performance on this Subject is universally applauded and acquiesced in and all he saith may be satisfied by Dr. Outram's Book what is the Doctrine generally received in the Church of England But as to the poor Wretch the Considerer he is a Stranger his Lordship pronounces to the History of this Controversy His Lordship frequently discovers his great Passion for the Considerer often bestows on him his formed Compliments and this particular Compliment I suppose has the Property of most other Compliments that is to say the Speaker knows 't is more than measure while he gives it for just
one all-perfect Spirit another part considers the Texts of Scripture that are objected by some against the Belief of the Unity of God or for a Trinity of all-perfect Spirits that is a Trinity of Gods To the Prints or Parts of Prints of the first sort Mr. L. has said nothing at all What he has said upon the other part of our Books tho we do not approve of it yet we might admit or tolerate his Interpretations if we certainly knew as I said but now what kind of Trinity he holds and in what Sense he believes the Divinity and Satisfaction of our Saviour If he directly says the Meaning of his Interpretations is that there are three eternal Minds three infinite Substances three all-perfect Spirits his Doctrine is condemned in terms as heretical and impious by the late Decree of the Heads of Colleges at Oxford in which University if I mistake not he was once a Student And if by the Divinity of our Saviour he intends that the second of three infinite Spirits became incarnate in the Humanity of Christ or that the Divinity was so incarnate that there followed a real and not only a nominal Communication of Idioms it is doubly heretical For the Catholick Church owns but one infinite Spirit And for a real Communication of Idioms whereby God actually physically or properly became a particular Man or a particular Man really became God Almighty 't is the Eutychian Heresy condemned in so many General Councils He is also an Eutychian if he pretends that when he finds or thinks he finds that our Saviour in Scripture is called God has an Omniscience or Omnipotence or an Omnipresence attributed to him or is said to have created or made all things I say he would be an Eutychian if he pretended to ascribe these things to the Person of our Saviour in any other Sense but this to God in him i. e. to God who did inhabit after an ineffable manner in the Humanity of Christ As to the Satisfaction if he will have it that Jesus Christ made an adequate Satisfaction and therefore in Equity not refusable to the Divine Justice for the Sins of Men he were best to consider the Computations of the Bishop of Salisbury to the contrary For us we believe with the Catholick Church that the Lord Christ did truly satisfy Almighty God for the Sins of Men not by paying our Debt to the Divine Justice but by his unblemish'd and perfect Life his willing and exemplary Death the which the Mercy of God accepted on our Behalf tho it was a refusable Payment This Sir is what I thought needful to be sent to you by way of Remarks on Mr. L. his four Letters which he was pleased to publish against the Unitarian Prints He has written after a civil and obliging manner I own that he may claim it as his due that we be ready upon all occasions to make to him like Returns Whether it were his Prudence or his Candor or both he was not I see willing to lose the Esteem of his Erudition and Wit by a snarling sordid and clownish way of Writing against us It may be he consider'd that Generosity and Gallantry in this kind is not only no Blemish or Hindrance to a Writer but serves to recommend his Performance to his very Opposers as well as to his Party and Friends Whereas he blames some of our Prints as deficient in point of Respect to some of our Antagonists he should first have read the Books to which those Prints make answer he would have seen there was a Provocation given that we could not with any Prudence but take some notice of it For it cannot escape a Man so discerning as Mr. L. is that there is a Patience which is the Vertue of a Christian and there is also a Patience which is the Vertue of an Ass On the Vindication by the Bp. of Worcester AND I have read Sir as you also desired the new Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity by the Bp. of Worcester I think what a Man can say of it who would speak in short is He has heartily chode with the Socinians for the Terms and has entirely yielded the things in question to the Unitarians He is such another Anti-Unitarian as our Father Wallis is an Anti-Socinian who made himself famous for almost a whole Year for his Vindication of the Athanasian Creed and his Letters and Sermons against Socinus and the Socinians and has been as remarkable ever since for a Discovery made upon him that himself is wholly Socinian in those very Sermons Letters and Vindication that he opposed to the Socinians 'T is a Mystery this that Men who give up Dr. Sherlock nay argue professedly against him and his Hypothesis of three infinite Substances three All-perfect Minds and Spirits 't is I say a Mystery that they should write Vindications also against us who are in no other Heresy as to these Matters but the Heresy of one infinite Substance one Eternal All-perfect Mind and Spirit Perhaps Father Wallis's Opposition was the Effect of weakning Age but his Lordship is not superannuated and he has read our Books and particularly makes divers Quotations out of the Discourse concerning the Nominal and Real Trinitarians where our Consent with the Catholick Church in the Articles of the Trinity and the Divinity of our Saviour is declared and cleared There was therefore some other reason why the Catelines fall to work against the Cethegi and 't is no hard matter to guess at it nay to ascertain it But of that hereafter The Structure of the Vindication is in the Form and Way of modern Sermons of the present Mode and Cut of the Church of all others as some think the worst The Speaker openly professes his Method that he will prove first then Secondly Thirdly then Fourthly and Fifthly After this Declaration comes the Subdivision or new Divisions of these Firsts Seconds Thirds c. and Lastly that well-known And now Beloved First of the First Men of Wit pretend it is not Method but Confusion for these Firsts Seconds Thirds having their Subdivisions into other Firsts Seconds Thirds and they again most commonly into farther Underling-Divisions about the middle of a Discourse but especially toward the end of it the Hearer or Reader is quite lost he knows not what Second Third or Fourth is meant or on what part of the Subject the Speaker or Writer now is But of all Imperfections Obscurity when a Doctrine is to be explained or a Point to be argued is the most offensive and ungrateful When a Man enters into most of the Books of the true Unitarians the Subject is so clear of it self that it seems as if one came into a well-furnisht Room hung round with radiant Lights which show every thing in it very distinctly and very agreeably A Man sees perfectly every Object and with this Advantage that the clear Light about it shows it more lustrous and more pleasing But on the other