THE MYSTERY OF THE Christian Faith AND OF THE Blessed TRINITY VINDICATED AND THE Divinity of Christ PROVED. In Three SERMONS. Preached at Westminster-Abbey upon Trinity-Sunday, June the 7th, and September 21. 1696. By the Late Reverend WILLIAM pain, D. D. In the Press before his Death, and by himself ordered to be Published. LONDON, Printed for Richard Cumberland at the Angel in St. Paul's Churchyard. 1697. MUNIFICENTIA REGIA. 1715. GEORGIUS D.G. MAG. ●●●●ET ●●● REX ●D. portrait of George I J. Pine sculp University of Cambridge bookplate THE MYSTERY OF THE Christian Faith AND OF THE Blessed TRINITY VINDICATED. SERMON I. 1 TIM. iii. 9 Holding the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience. THIS Advice which is here given to Deacons, does almost equally concern all Christians; for tho' here are some Duties peculiar to the Ministers of Religion, relating to their Office, yet the common Duties of Christianity are bound upon Them and the People with equal ties and obligations. So that every Christian is under the same engagements to be a Good Man, to live as Virtuously and Religiously, and to perform all the Duties of our common Christian Religion, as either a Presbyter or a Deacon, both which, some think, are meant here; Faith and a Good Conscience are to be kept or held by All, and he is not a Christian whole's go, or makes Shipwreck of either. The Christian Faith though it be a Mystery, yet is not as the Heathen Mysteries, to be a Secret kept up and concealed from the Vulgar, and known only to the Priests, to the Mystae and Adepti, by a sort of Disciplinâ Arcani, but is by the Gospel Revelation discovered and communicated to All: All Catechumen are to be Taught and Instructed in it, All who are Baptised are to profess it, and all the Fideles are to understand and to keep it, as the Faith once delivered to them by Christ and his Apostles, and by the Church and Holy Scriptures. The believing Christ to be the Messiah, and Sent of God, is not the only Fundamental Article of Christianity as some would have it, for if it were, all the Heretics in the Apostolic and after Ages had come up to it, against whom notwithstanding St. John in his Epistles, and other Canonic Writers speak so much as well as St. Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius and the earliest Writers who renounced both the Faith and the Communion of those Heretics, notwithstanding, they owned Christ to be the Messiah; so that this was not a sufficient Faith for a Christian, as such. But it may be asked, Are ordinary Christians then to believe the Mysterious, and Abstruse Doctrines of Christianity? Such as the Trinity, the Divinity and Incarnation of Christ, and the like, which are so difficult, and unintelligible that the most Learned cannot understand them or agree about them; are these to be accounted Fundamental and Essential Articles of Faith necessary to be believed by the meanest and most ordinary Capacities, which are so puzzling and so intricate to the highest? I Answer, Whatever is Essential and Fundamental to Christianity, and as such is plainly Revealed by God, upon which the Peculiar Faith, Hope and Worship of it is built, however incomprehensible and Mysterious it is, which shall be considered immediately, is to be believed by every Christian; as, that God sent his only Son into the World, and that we are Redeemed by him, and that we are to place our Hopes, Trust and Confidence in him for Salvation, and that we are to Worship him, and Pray to him, and to Honour him, even as we Honour the Father. This which is the Peculiar Scheme and Character of Christianity, and necessarily supposes Christ's Divinity, and that he is not a Creature; and also the Divinity of the Holy Ghost the Comforter and the Sanctifier, and so consequently a Divine Trinity, this is as necessary to be believed by every one as Christianity, for it is the very make and peculiar oeconomy of Christianity, as 'tis distinct from Natural Religion. This Faith with a Good Life, or a Life answerable to the Rules and Precepts of the Gospel is necessary to make and constitute a good Christian. To ask whether a good Life will not save a Man without this Faith, is to be answered with the same question, or one much like it, Whether such a good Life will save a Man without believing Christianity. They are both necessary to a Christian, who is thus to hold the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience. I shall from the words Consider these two General Things. I. Why the Christian Faith is called a Mystery? II. How we are to hold it in a pure Conscience? I. Why the Christian Faith is called a Mystery? Which it is upon Three Accounts. 1. As it was not knowable by Natural Reason without an Express and Immediate Divine Revelation. 2. As it was very obscurely and imperfectly Revealed before the Gospel, and the coming of Christ. 3. As it is Incomprehensible to our Reason and what we cannot fully conceive and Apprehend even after it is clearly Revealed. 1. As it is not knowable by Natural Reason without an Express and Immediate Divine Revelation. For thus that God should have a Son, an Eternal, only begotten Son, of the same Nature and Likeness with himself, and that he should send this his Son into the World to become a Man, to take on him our Nature, and be made Flesh, that so he might die for us, and be a Sacrifice for our Sins, and Save and Redeem Mankind according to this Mysterious Method, Oeconomy and Dispensation of the Gospel, this is what Reason could never have found out, nor any thing but the Infinite Wisdom, and no less Infinite Goodness of God have contrived. That there is a God, an Invisible Maker of the World, a First Cause of All Things, this Reason and the Light o● Nature teaches us, and the invisible things of him from the Creation are plainly seen by the things he hath made, even his Eternal Power and Godhead. His Power and Wisdom and Goodness are sufficiently manifest to our Thoughts and Reason by the admirable Structure and the commodious and beautiful and orderly contrivance of the World and all the things that are in it, and we can know most of his Attributes and Essential Perfections from Reason and the plain deductions and consequences of it, but that this Infinite and Almighty and All-sufficient God, who had all possible perfections in himself, and all Perfections sufficient to his own Happiness and Self-enjoyment, and to the Needs and Necessities of his Creatures, and to all the Purposes of Creation and Providence, that he should beget a Son, another Divine Person and Being like himself, and communicate the same Divine Nature and Godhead to him that belonged to himself, this which the Scripture Revelation acquaints us with, is so far from being known by Reason, that That staggers at it, and asks two bold questions about it, How this can be? And to what purpose it is? And Mahomet in his Alcoran * Azoarâ 12. cap. Helmon. in Alcoran. Nec Christum Deum adorare confessus est (sc. Mahomet.) ne forte duos Deos adorare deprehenderetur. Cantacuzen. in Mahomet. Orat. 3. offers several reasons against it, among which this is one, That God and his Son would make two Gods, and that they must worship only one God. These Reasons, I think may be fairly answered, but Reason itself could nor have known or collected this either from the Divine fecundity, or from any Natural Perfection or Property of God knowable by the Light of Nature, 'tis only Revelation acquaints us with it, and lets us at the same time see the admirable ends and uses and purposes of this, if not for the designs of Creation and Providence, yet for the Redemption of the World by this Son of God, which is a work as great and as Divine if not more so than the other two. 'Tis the peculiar Character, Frame and Scheme of Christianity to reveal this Mystery fully to us, this adorable Mystery of Divine Love and Wisdom, God's Saving Lost and undone Mankind by his Son Jesus Christ; Reason could not have discovered this, nor can it now penetrate into all the deep Counsels of the Divine Govenment, and hidden Reasons of the Divine Wisdom which made this either absolutely necessary, or to be sure the most fit and convenient Method to Save and Redeem Mankind. This is such a Mystery of State, such a Secret of the Heavenly and Divine Policy and Management, that whether God could have Effected and Accomplished this any other way is unknown to us, and our Reason must cry out upon the Thoughts of it, O the Depth of the Riches both of the Wisdom and Knowledge of God, Rom. 11.33. how unsearchable are his Judgements, and his ways past finding out. Further, The Christian Revelation discovers to us another Divine Person besides the Son, to wit, the Holy Ghost, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son, and who was sent by them in a Visible and extraordinary manner, and was to be the Comforter and Paraclete, as Christ the Redeemer and Saviour; and was to Sanctify, and Fit, and Qualify all Christians for that Salvation which Christ had Purchased and Obtained for them, without whom Christianity could not have been spread and established in the World, nor in the Hearts of Men, and who was therefore to bear a Peculiar and Distinct part and Office in the Accomplishing the great work of our Redemption, which was to be Performed by the Father's sending his Son, and both sending the Holy Ghost, to Perfect and Effect this Great Thing; and This is the Constitution, the Frame, the Faith of Christianity, as a Religion distinct from Natural, and which is such a Mystery as could not have been found out by Natural Light and Reason without an immediate Divine Revelation, for it was not any Natural Property of the Divine Nature, so far as we know, to have a Son and a Holy Spirit, nor did the Purposes of Creation and Providence require this, and therefore the Deists and others think more than one Divine Person, and one Infinite Being Unnecessary; and as far as Reason alone goes, neither the Truth nor the Necessity of more would appear, but Revelation, and especially the Christian acquaints us with God's having a Son, and a Holy Spirit, distinct Persons from himself; the one Begotten of him and so his only Son, the other proceeding from him and the Son both, and these two still in the Father, naturally and inseparably united to him as to the Fountain of their Being. One with him in the same Divine Nature and Essence, and All Three together Accomplishing, Effecting and Perfecting the Redemption of Mankind and bearing distinct parts in that Great and Blessed Work. 2. As Reason could not have known or found out any thing of this, so the Revelation of it was at first very Obscure and Imperfect; there being only some smaller Glimpses, and lesser manifestations of it, and those covered with Types and shadows, and Prophetic Symbols, through which the Fathers saw as through a Glass darkly, and beheld the Promises of the Messiah yet afar off, so that the Jewish Law and Dispensation, though it wholly pointed at this thing, and Christ was the end of it, yet was but a Shadow of these good things to come, and Moses had a vail over his face, by which the Children of Israel could not see to the end of their own Typical Institution, till the vail was taken away in Christ. And the Mystery which was kept secret since the World began a 2 Cor. 3.14. , which had been hid from Ages and Generations b Rom. 16.25. , and which in other Ages was not made known unto the Sins of Men c Col. 1.26. , was by the Gospel revealed and manifest and made known to all men, to the Gentiles as well as to the Jews d Eph. 3.5. . Adam immediately after his Fall had this Mystery of Gods sending the Messiah into the World for the Salvation of Mankind promised and revealed to him in those words, The Seed of the Woman shall break the Serpent's head, Gen. 3.15. And no doubt he transmitted this great and comfortable Tradition to all his Posterity, and there seem to be the broken remains and Characters of it in some parts of the Religion of all Mankind, especially in the general if not Universal Custom of Sacrifices, and the secret Cabala and mysterious design seems to run through the Gentile Theology, which was a corruption of the Patriarchal Religion, from whence some Marks and Footsteps of this Original Mysterious Tradition were preserved and continued among the Gentiles, as appears in the Prophecies of Balaam of Old, and the Sibyls afterwards, and in the Notion of a Trinity among the Platonists and others, which outdoes any thing to be found about that matter in any Jewish Writer, and must come from some Ancient Cabala, and Traditionary Account of it. How far the Jews had a knowledge and belief of it, we want their Writings to acquaint us, though in some of those we have, there are remarkable intimations of it, as in the Caldee Paraphrase the Messiah is often called the Mamra Jehovae, the Word of God, the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as St. John calls him, and there, and in the Jerusalem Targum, he is represented as a substantial Word, and as a Divine Person; and several of their Rabbis interpret that of 110 Psalms, The Lord said unto my Lord, of the Messiah; and so that of Jeremy 23. where he is called the Lord, or Jehovah our Righteousness; and they often speak of their Emanations from the Kedem, or Essence of the Ancient of days; and in their Prayers and Liturgies, particularly in a Collect used at the Feast of Tabernacles, God is invoked as Sanctified with three Sanctifications; and in a Famous Book among them, called The Gate of Righteousness, this Sanctification is called a Mystery, whereby, they say, is meant the Procession of the Emanations from the Corona, which is the Mystery in Isa. 6.3. Holy, Holy, Holy. Galatinus, and Voisin, and other Rabbinical Writers, produce many such Instances out of the Jewish Writers to this purpose, notwithstanding which I doubt the Notion of the Messiah as a Divine Person, and as the Son of God in our Sense, was lost among all the latter Jews, who looked upon him only as a Temporal Prince, and an Earthly Monarch; and though in many places of the Old Testament, and especially in the Book of Psalms, there are several Proofs and Authorities for the belief of a Trinity, and the Messiah's being a Divine Person, yet there is nothing in their Revelation that has any Evidence of it equal to that of the Gospel, and therefore notwithstanding all imperfect and obscure Revelations of it before, it is called there a Mystery, which hath been hid from Ages and Generatiins, but is now made manifest, Colos. 1.26. Which was kept secret since the World began, but now is made manifest, Rom. 16.26. Which in other Ages was not made known unto the Sons of men, as it is now revealed unto us, Eph. 3.6. Our Socinian Adversaries will allow the Christian Faith to be a Mystery upon these two Accounts I have mentioned. And I must confess the word Mystery is generally used in Scripture in these Senses; but it is not so much the Word as the Thing we are to Consider, namely, whether there be any Truths in Religion Incomprehensible to our Reason? And this is the Third Reason why I would have the Christian Faith called a Mystery which they so much Expose and Ridicule, and which I shall endeavour to Defend as it contains, 3. Something Incomprehensible and unconceivable, and unaccountable to our Reason and Understanding, even after it is the most fully and clearly revealed by the Gospel. By which I do not mean that we have no Idea, Conception or Knowledge at all of what we do believe concerning it, for than it would be just such a Mystery as it is to those who know nothing at all of it, a Thing perfectly unknown, a Nullity, a Nonentity, which is no manner of Object of our Faith, and concerning which we can neither affirm or deny any things not have any Persuasion or Dissuasion about it. The Trinity would then be only an empty word, or sound without any meaning, or signification, like the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 among the unlearned Greek Scribes, mentioned by St. Hierome, Epist. 136. put for the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, but we know very well what is meant by those words of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, or Spirit, though to connect, and unite those Ideas, and to make such Propositions out of those Terms as are agreeable to Faith may be a difficulty. 2. Yet neither are we so to join, and unite those Ideas nor to make any such Propositions out of those Terms, as shall be inconsistent with themselves, and destroy, and contradict one another, as to say that they are One, and that they are Three in the same respect, the same sense, and consideration. The doing this, or endeavouring to do it, has wretchedly perplexed our Christian Faith, and made it be called by its Enemies, a Mystery of Nonsense, Absurdity and Contradiction, and exposed it as such to our Heretical Adversaries; whereas had we gone no farther than Scripture, the only Rule of our Faith in this matter, and held with that, that to us there is One God the Father, One God, 1 Cor. 8.6. Eph. 4.6. John 17.3. and Father of all, who is above all, and had we known him the only true God; as Christ calls him, not exclusively, but eminently, and by way of Excellency, and Prerogative, by which the Name and Title of God is peculiarly praedicate of God the Father in Scripture, Calvin in Protheses Valent. Gent. as Calvin ingenuously delivers it, to use his own words, Ingenue tradimus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dei nomen Patri proprie ascribi: And another Protestant Divine his Follower, Zanchius de tribus Elohim, L. 5. C. 5. Patrem sic vocari (Vnum & solum Deum) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quia totius est Deitatis fons, which is the great Reason given by the Fathers of the Divine Unity, and in this the * Peculiaritèr & 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 tribuitur Patri nomen Dei. Ravanell. Bibl. v. Deus & Persona. Papists agree with them. Had we considered this plain Scriptural account, and observation that one God is spoken, and praedicate of the Father, and meant of him, when it is said both in the Old Testament, and the New. The Lord thy God is One God, Deut. 6.4. Mark 12.32. and there is none other but he, or besides him; we had not given occasion for that objection of our Adversaries, against our Faith, of its implying a Contradiction, or of its setting up more Gods than one. The One God whom we Pray to in the Lord's Prayer, and in other Christian Offices, and Addresses, whom we profess to believe in, in our Creed, and whom the Scripture calls so, is God the Father Almighty; and he hath an only begotten Son, of the same Nature and Essence with himself, who is the brightness of his Glory, and the express Image of his Person; and there is also an Holy Spirit proceeding from both, and sent by both, who hath the Characters, and Attributes of Divinity plainly ascribed to him, and who is joined with the Father, and the Son in the Office of Christian Baptism, and in the Form of Christian Blessing, and against whom the most high, and unpardonable Sin may be committed. This is our Christian Faith which as it lies in the Scripture has no contradiction in it, that I know of, nor do the several terms whereof it consists destroy, or oppose one another. These three are one, is the only thing in Scripture, or in our Faith that sounds as a Contradiction, and in one, and the same sense it must be owned such a downright contradiction, that it cannot be true, some would therefore suspect, and throw out that passage, and are very willing to find some Copies of the Bible without it, it being the only place of Scripture that says this, but our Saviour says, He, and his Father are one, John 10.30. and three may be one as well as two. We must therefore consider the true sense, and meaning of the words, which was not to teach us a new way of numbering, or to destroy the nature of numbers, no more than when it is said Man, and Wife are One, Christ, and Believers are One, and the many hundred Converts to Christianity were of one Heart, and of one Soul; there are several sorts of Unity, there is an Unity of Consent, and agreement which may be amongst a great many, of Power, and Authority which may be possessed and executed by several Persons, who may be all one General, Admiral, Chancellor, and even one Sovereign, and Royal Monarch. A great many Individuals may be one in Nature, and Essence as all Mankind are, hence the Distinction of a Specifical and Numerical Unity, and of a Specifical and Numerical Essence, though I take Essence to be a common Nature, or General Idea, taking in several things at one view, and that there is no such thing as particular Essence, distinct from particular Being's; so that there is no multiplication of Essence in several Divine Persons, or Being's. Now as to those three being One, it may be meant in any way whatever, so far as those words alone import; but there are other places of Scripture, and there is a connexion, and analogy of our Faith from all places compared together, which oblige us to believe that the Son, and Holy Ghost have the same Divine Nature and Essence with the Father, derived, and communicated to them, Eternally, Permanently, and Perpetually, and that they are in the Father, as in the Fountain of their Being; and are naturally, and inseparably united to him, and that he is the self-existent, Unoriginated Principle, the Root and Fountain of the other two, and therefore they are One with him, because though having real Being's, and subsistences of their own, yet they are from him, and in him. But still it will be objected, that each of them is God; the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, and then there must be Three Gods, and yet but One God; which brings the contradiction still upon us. I Answer; The One God is spoken of God the Father in Scripture as I have shown you; and as a great many * Ignat. Irenae. Athanas. Greg. Naz. Euseb. Novat. Hilar. Ambrose, Austin, Calv. Zanchy, Comen. Petau. Bull. etc. , and particularly Bishop * Art. 1. Pearson upon the Creed, observes, That the Name of God taken absolutely is often in Scripture spoken of the Father, and is (in many places) to be taken particularly of the Father, and from hence, says he, he is styled One God, the True God, the Only True God; and this he says further, is a most necessary Truth to be acknowledged for the avoiding multiplication, and Plurality of Gods. He laying the Unity mainly here as I have done; so that though the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; which they are not often called in Scripture, which rather reserves, and gives the name of God absolutely and peculiarly to the Father * Observandum est quod plerumque Paulus suis Epistolis no nen Dei Patri tribuit in Novo Testamento plerumque tantum prima persma vocatur Deus. Flac. Illyric. Clavis Scripturae in verbo Deus. ; as, God loved the World, God sent his Son, and the like; yet neither of them are meant by that one God which the Scripture speaks of, when it speaks peculiarly of the Father. They indeed having the Divine Nature, and the Divine Attributes and Perfections belonging to them, may each of them be properly called God, and the Divinity does certainly and truly belong to each of them, but then the Word God is not taken always in one, and the same Sense, but it is sometimes meant of one Person, and sometimes of another, or of all, being taken either Essentially or Personally, as all Divines own; and generally if not always in Scripture taken absolutely, and spoken so of one God, it is meant of God the Father, which may give us such an account of the Trinity, and of the Unity, Vbi enim est diversa significatio non estcontradictio Affirmantis & negantis, Aequivocatio enim impedit contradictionem. Aquin. Sum. P. 1. Qu. 13. as may take off all the charge of a contradiction since they are not one, & three, nor is each of them God, and all of them God, or one God in the same respect, sense, and meaning of the words, but in different. Those Terms being not always taken in the same adequate Univocal Sense, but are used often Equivocally. The Father is the only self-existent, unoriginated Being, the Cause, and Root, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the other two as the Ancients often call him, and so is the most absolutely Perfect Being, and God in the highest Sense, and the Scriptures, Creeds, and Christian Offices call him so absolutely and by way of Eminence, and Prerogative. The Son is produced of the Father and so is not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or God, in that Sense as the Father who is from none, but is God of God, and is very God, as having the Divine Nature, and Perfections belonging to him but Communicated and derived from the Father, as the Holy Ghost from both. 3. As by our Faiths being Mysterious, and Incomprehensible, and Unaccountable to our Reason, I do not mean that ' its Ideas, or Terms destroy one another, or imply a contradiction which is to make it contrary to itself, so neither is it contrary to any certain Principle of Reason, nor to any Natural Truth whatsoever known to us, If it were it could not be true, for one Truth cannot be contrary to another, and what is true by Nature, cannot be false by Revelation, for then God the Author of both and the God of Truth would lie and contradict himself. There are common notions, Principles of Reason, and some Natural Truths known by Sense, and Experience which we are as certain of as of our Being's, and which are the Foundations of all Knowledge, and which we have such evidence of, that to give them up would be to run into boundless Scepticism, and own nothing to be True, or False, but that God hath made us of such faculties, that we might be deceived in every thing, now Revelation can by no means destroy these, as that the whole is greater than a part, that one is not three, nor three one in the same respect, and meaning, that a Body cannot be in two places at once, that our Senses are true, and the like, and therefore Transubstantiation cannot be true, nor can that be the Sense of those words, this is my Body, but now in the Trinity there is nothing contrary to any Natural Truth or to any Principle of Reason, for that God should have a Son of the same Nature, and Divinity with himself, and that an Eternal Spirit should proceed from both, tho' it be a Truth by itself, and of pure, and immediate Revelation which our Reason could not have found out from any known Property of the Divine Nature, nor from any Reason, and Necessity in the thing itself, yet there is nothing in it contrary to the Natural Notion of a God, or to any other certain Principle of Truth, or Reason: The only thing that can be pretended is that of the Divine Unity, which is thought to be such a Natural Notion as to be inconsistent with any more Divine Persons then one, and therefore has been objected against the Trinity by all the Adversaries of this Doctrine, by the Jews, and Mahometans, by the Samosatenians, the Photinians, the Arrians, the Macedonians, and the Socinians who have all charged it with Tritheism, and Polytheism, contrary to the Divine Unity, but this has been from not understanding, what the Divine Unity was and wherein it truly consisted according to the Scriptural account I have given of it, which wholly takes off this Objection; There are several things I own in the Blessed Trinity Incomprehensible to our Reason, and Unconceivable, and Unaccountable to our Finite Understandings, when they are employed about so great, and Infinite an Object, which is too big for them, and so much above them, As why, and how an Infinite, All-sufficient God should produce an Eternal Son, and Communicate the same Nature to him with himself, whether this were by a voluntary, or a necessary Production, and Emanation, and how the Procession of the Holy Ghost differs from the Generation of the Son any otherwise, than as that was an Emanation from both, and not from the Father alone, and how three such Infinite Persons are so distinct from one another, as not to be confounded, or be the same, tho' Omnipresent, and in the same Infinite Vbi; and tho' so Inseparably united, yet the one to take flesh, and be Incarnate, and not the other; These, and other things relating to this Mystery of our Christian Faith, are I say Incomprehensible, Unconceivable, and Unaccountable to our Reason, by which I mean only that we can compare 'em to nothing else that we certainly know, that we have no perfect, or absolute likeness of them in any thing else, that we have no adequate Idea simple, or complex, no similitude, or Representation of any such thing in our minds from any thing else in Nature, but that 'tis a Truth purely known, and manifested by Revelation, joining together, and connecting such Ideas concerning God, and so presenting them to the mind as united together under one view, and so compounded, and complicated with one another that tho' they do not disagree, nor are contrary to one another yet we see not perfectly their agreement, or connection, but have only an obscure, and general, and confused view, and conception of them, as we have a sight of such Objects, which are too high, or too remote for our eye thoroughly to ken, and yet we see them tho' not by the naked Eye, yet by the help of a glass, or Telescope so as to be satisfied of the Truth of them. Revelation is as a Telescope, and our Reason, and Understanding is as the Eye, which could not by its naked Power discern, or find out those high Objects, and supernatual Truths of our Christian Faith, but now by Revelation they are discovered to us, and our Reason, and Understanding as the Organ without which we cannot see, or believe any thing, does plainly see, and discern them, but it is as through a glass darkly, as having something of Cloud, and darkness about them, or as we see the Sun which is an object too dazzling, and illustrious to look fully upon with our weak Eyes: The Sun with ' its coeval light, and heat, is an usual resemblance of the sacred Trinity, and is the best material one that is in Nature, but light, and heat are but qualities, and motions, not substantial Things, and are though not divided from the Sun, yet without it, and not in it; so the fountain, River, and streams are but imperfect, partial Resemblances, as having the same water in all, and not being cut off, or separated from the Fountain; but all material likenesses must fail when applied to Spiritual things; Our own Soul is the best Image of God, and without it we should not know what God, or Wisdom, or any of his Perfections were, the two faculties of Understanding, and Will are the most like to the Divine 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and Wisdom, and to the Divine Spirit, power, and Energy, and in allusion to these the Schoolmen would have the Son to be begotten per Intellectum, by a direct act of the Divine Mind conceiving an Idea of ' its Self, and the Holy Ghost to proceed by a reflection per amorem, by an active Love of itself upon such a Conception: But these men have been the most rash, and bold explainers of the Trinity, which is a Truth, and an Object by itself, to which nothing else is perfectly like, and of which we can have no Comparative knowledge, nor no complete, and adequate Idea, or Comprehension; for the two sacred Originated Persons are not two faculties, but two substantial Persons, and Real Being's, the Scripture ascribing as distinct Properties, Relations, Attributes, Characters, Acts, and Operations to each of them as to any other distinct Persons and Being's whatsoever, as the Son to be begotten of the Father, to be sent into the World by the Father, to pray to the Father, and mediate with the Father. Now the same Being and Person cannot be Father, and Son to itself, beget, and be begotten of itself, send, and be sent by itself, pray to, and mediate with itself, and the like may be said as to the Spirit; These are not therefore like one, and the same mind, with two faculties, or two acts, or operations, or only as variously considered two ways, nor are they one thing, or one Being diversified only with three Names, Titles, Offices, Characters, Capacities, Respects, or any three differences whatever belonging to one Person, or Being, but three true, proper, real, Divine Persons, The One the Father, the other the Son, the third the Spirit of both. Now nothing in our own minds, or in visible Nature is perfectly like these, or to which we can compare them, or from whence we can draw a Similitude, Representation, or Idea of them, and therefore they are Incomprehensible, and Unconceivable by us, for 'tis by Comparison, and likeness we chief know, and conceive things, and 'tis hard to distinguish between Knowledge, Conception, and Imagination; so that what some persons cannot imagine, or cannot have a picture or likeness of in their Fancy, and Imagination, they say they cannot conceive, and therefore some pretend they can have no Conceptions of a Spiritual Substance, and others no Idea of the Trinity, nor even of God, by which they mean they cannot have a Picture or Idea, or likeness of these things in their Imagination; but we know, and believe, and are well assured of a great many things without that; as of all Mathematical and Metaphysical Verities about abstracted things; of all Axioms, and Common Notions; of all Demonstrations about Lines and Numbers; of all things not Corporeal, as Time, Motion; the Acts and Operations of our own Minds, such as Understanding, Choosing, Suspending, Doubting, and the like; all which we know by Reason, and can reason about, though we can have no Pictures, or imaginary Idaea's of them, or any other likenesses of them. I shall show for the Defence of Mysteries, and of the Mystery of the Trinity, and the Christian Faith, that there are a great many other things which are Incomprehensible, and unconceivable to us, concerning which we are well assured, and have no doubt of them, and this in several Particulars. 1. In visible Nature, and in the Material World that lies before us. 2. In our own Minds, and in Spiritual Being's. 3. In Arts, and Sciences. 4. In Natural Religion. 5. In Revelation, or the other parts of it besides the Mystery of the Trinity, and the Christian Faith. 6. I shall add that the Socinians, and other Adversaries to Mysteries, run into greater Difficulties, and Incomprehensible things in their Schemes, than those they oppose. But these, and what remains upon the second General Head of Discourse, to wit, how we are to hold the Mystery of Faith in a pure Conscience, I shall leave to the Afternoon. THE MYSTERY OF THE Christian Faith AND OF THE Blessed TRINITY VINDICATED. SERMON II. 1 TIM. iii. 9 Holding the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience. I Proposed to Discourse from these words on these two things. I. Why the Christian Faith is called a Mystery? II. How we are to hold it in a pure Conscience. The Christian Faith was a Mystery, I have shown upon three Accounts. 1. As it was not knowable by Natural Reason without an Express and immediate Divine Revelation. 2. As it was very Imperfectly and Obscurely revealed before the Gospel, and the Coming of Christ. 3. As it is Incomprehensible to our Reason, and what we cannot fully Conceive and Apprehend even after it is clearly Revealed. The Socinians, and other Adversaries to Mysteries, and to the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, are for Believing nothing which they cannot Comprehend and Understand, and will admit nothing Mysterious in Christianity; and therefore are for rejecting such Doctrines, those especially of the Trinity, as are so, and will allow the Christian Faith to be a Mystery only in the two former Senses but not in the latter; and they expose and ridicule all Mysteries, and the believing things they do not understand as the most absurd and unreasonable Opinions, as the believing only so many words without any sense or meaning, as destroying the certain principles of Truth and Reason, and unmanning ourselves to become Christians, and swallowing down the most monstrous Absurdities and Contradictions, and calling them by the name of Faith and Mysteries. I have shown that our Christian Faith, even that of the Trinity is not liable to those Objections; that by its being Incomprehensible we do not mean that we have no Knowledge or Conception at all of it, or that it is only so many words without any sense or meaning understood by us, or that it is contrary to any natural Truth, or to any Principles of Reason known to us, or that it implies a Contradiction, or has any Inconsistencies in it; but only that we cannot understand it fully, and every thing that belongs to it; that there is nothing else we know to which we can compare it, nor have any perfect likeness or resemblance of it by any thing in visible Nature or in our own Minds; that it is a Truth and an Object by itself, made known to us purely by Revelation, and such a Complex Idaea or Connexion of Ideas that we have no other Idea, Similitude or Representation that exactly answers or comes perfectly up to, and therefore it is Incomprehensible and Unconceivable by us, and an Object too great and too big for our weak Reason and Imperfect Faculties fully to understand. That there is something in it beyond all our Knowledge and all our Conceptions, and yet that it is not upon that account to be rejected and disbelieved by us; but since the Truth and Reality of it is made known and discovered to us by Revelation, the Difficulty and Incomprehensibleness and Mysteriousness of the thing is not a sufficient Argument or Reason for our not believing it. To Prove and Maintain this, and to Defend the Mystery of our Christian Faith, and the Doctrine of Mysteries in General, I proposed to show and make out that there are a great many other things which are Mysterious and Incomprehensible to us, and which we cannot fully Conceive or Understand, and yet do no way doubt the Truth of them, but Mankind are very well satisfied and assured about them. As, 1. In Visible Nature, and in the Material World that lies before us. 2. In our own Minds, and in Spiritual Being's. 3. In Arts and Sciences. 4. In Natural Religion. 5. In Revelation, I mean the other parts of it besides the Mystery of the Trinity, and the Christian Faith. 6. Lastly, To these I shall add, That the Socinians, and other Adversaries to Mysteries, have as many Difficulties and Incomprehensible Things in their Schemes as those they oppose. 1. There are many things in Visible Nature, and in the Material World, which are Mysterious and Incomprehensible to us. Indeed all Nature is full of Mystery, and shows the admirable and incomprehensible Wisdom of its great Author and Contriver; the Heavens above, where are so many glorious Luminaries, so many shining Worlds and new Earth's so much bigger than ours, so many Globes of Fire that are maintained we know not how, that keep such exact Order and Distance to us and to one another, and move in their Liquid Aether in such exact Lines by Causes unknown to us, as if so many Intelligencies guided them rather than the whirling Streams of their own fluid Vortices: The Earth also beneath, where are so many Animals of such curious Make and Structure, that the formation of them, their Life, Motion, the Composition and Uses of all their Parts are things to be admired, not comprehended by us; where every Fly, and Mite, and Insect, and every Spire of Grass we tread on, is beyond all our Knowledge and Philosophy to give a full account of; and the greatest Theorist can no more understand all that belongs to 'em than he can make 'em. These are sufficient Instances of the Imperfection of our Knowledge, and of the Greatness of Gods; we that know so little of them and of ourselves, how we live or how we move so much as a Finger; how our Bodies were wonderfully form, and curiously wrought in the Womb; and how Blood and Spirits make their brisk Sallies through every part, and by such various Fermentations keep up Life and Heat in us, and how the solid parts are nourished and increased by them, and how every new Fiber and Muscle is woven and knit about them; what an admirable Network, and unaccountable Mechanism is in the Eye, Brain, Heart; in every part, and in the whole of us. We that comprehend and understand so little of this, and of our own bodily Nature, how can we be supposed to understand and comprehend every thing that belongs to the Divine Nature, and not be as much puzzled and confounded about the knowledge of that, as we are about our own. If we knew any thing perfectly, it should be matter surely, and what lies just before us; and yet we know nothing of that but its outward accidents and a few of its qualities, its colour and figure, and hardness or softness, or the like, but its inward substance, and what is the subject and Substratum of these accidents and qualities we know nothing of. How the parts of Matter are united, what makes them so close and inseparable in a solid Stone or Diamond more than in a heap of Sand, whither rest and juxta position, or what hooks and fastenings ties them together is unknown to us; whether the parts of matter are divisible or indivisible, is such a puzzling Problem, that both sides have a Demonstration though it be for a plain Contradiction. Light is the clearest object of our Senses, and yet our Knowledge of that is very dark and obscure; we know not how it darts itself in a moment from Heaven to Earth, and how it causes Vision in the Eye, and how so vast a number of Objects are received into that small Room at once, and make their several motions, and draw all their Pictures there; indeed how any of our Senses perceive these Objects, and how we have such Conceptions and Phantasms raised in us by them, which are not in the Objects themselves, (for Bitter and Sweet, Pain and Pleasure, Heat and Cold is not in any of them, nor any thing like them, but only in ourselves) and by what secret Powers they excite those Sentiments is as unaccountable as it is obvious. We must resolve all these things, and all the Phoenomina of Nature into the will and appointment of the first cause, thither we must bring and there we must leave all the Laws of Matter and Motion: We can trace them all thither, and we can go no farther, but must stop at these incomprehensible bounds and limits of all our Natural Knowledge. 2. If we rise higher and look beyond Matter, and consider what we know of Spiritual Being's, and of the Intellectual World, we shall find that to be a dark Hades, and as unintelligible to us. We know indeed that there must be something above Matter; and that Wisdom, and Thoughts, and Contrivance, which every where appear in the Fabric of the World, and in the Structure of our own and every Animals Body, must proceed not from rambling Atoms, and from senseless and heedless matter but from a Wise Mind and an Understanding Being; and we feel and perceive in ourselves something that is above body, that thinks and reflects and considers, that reasons and discourses and deduces one thing from another, and determines itself, and acts freely, and moves our Bodies as it pleases and stops their motion, and has an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and is sensible of Pain or Pleasure from things past or future which Body and Matter cannot be, and this is what we call our Soul; and we know it by these Properties, and have as much an Idea of it as of Body, Thinking being as certain and well known to us as Extension, but what is the Essence or Substance or inward Constitution of what thinks or is extended, this we are equally ignorant of; and how this Spiritual Substance came into the Body, whether it was infused by God upon an immediate Creation, or Emaned and propagated from the Parent's Soul, which was an old Opinion of the Easterns, the Syrians, and Arabians, and of many others, and does no way infer its Corporeity, by what Vital Charm or Congruity it is united to it, by what nexus it is so joined and fastened to Matter, as not to be released from it when it pleases; this is unconceivable and unintelligible to us. Why are we therefore so afraid and unwilling to believe the Mysteries of the Divine, the highest Spiritual Nature, when we have so many in our own which is the lowest? Why is the Divine Generation of the Son so incredible, when so many Wife and Learned Persons * As St. Hierome tells us Tom. 2. Ep. 82. have been of Opinion that even Humane Souls are generated, and this without any discerption or division of parts which belongs not to Spiritual Being's? Why is the Incarnation of Christ, or the Divine Natures being united to the Humane thought more unintelligible than the Soul being United to the Body without any commensuration of parts or equal Extension? And why is the Sacred Trinity Condemned as so absurd a Mystery, or three Divine Persons so inseparably united together, when so many Philosophers of old have thought that every Man had three Immaterial Principles or Souls in him; the Rational, the Sensitive, and the Vegetative; though of late we have held that these Three are One. Is not the Mind one pure Act or Energy? and yet it has three Faculties in it of Understanding, Will and Memory, which are not the same, and yet belong to one Soul. 3. There are a great many things in Arts and Sciences which are Unconceivable and Unintelligible to those who are the best skilled in them, and especially to others who are not. Thus in Physics, in Mathematics, in Chemistry, in Astronomy, in Navigation, and other Sciences, how many strange and extraordinary and wonderful things are there which those who are ignorant would hardly believe, and to those who know them they are Incomprehensible. I might produce a great many Instances from all of them, but shall only touch upon a few. Who would not have thought the Loadstone a very Mysterious thing, and the Pixis Nautica when first found out, and who does not think them so still, and who can give a full account of them by striate Particles and the Magnetism of the Earth, which is going very little further than to an occult quality. And a great many such occult qualities and unaccountable Appearances there are in Nature, and Philosophy, which are much like Mysteries in Religion and in Revelation, which when our knowledge is improved we shall know better. The Flux and Reflux of the Sea continues to be so still for any Hypothesis that can perfectly solve it. The Circulation of the Blood through the whole Body was not long ago thought to be so, and the Periods of Agues and Fevers is still acknowledged to be one. The believing there were Antipodes was not many Ages ago thought to be Heresy, Aventin. Annal. Anno 745. and Virgilius a Bishop in Germany was condemned for it by Pope Zachary in the 8th. Century. The Philosophers Stone has been greatly talked of, and will be acknowledged a Mystery though so many have pretended to it, and even though it were found out. And to one who has lived always in the Hot Countries, and under the Torrid Zone. the having Water turned into Ice, and a River congealed into a Solid Rock, will be as Incredible a Mystery; so likewise to have a Transparent Glass made out of Sand and an opac Body, and a Plant, as they say, raised out of its Ashes by the Power of Chemistry. The Power of Numbers, and the performances of Algebra, and many Problems in Mathematics may pass for Magical to a great many, as they have done always to the ignorant; and some of them are unaccountable and Incomprehensible to those who know and can demonstrate them; as the Infinite Division of Numbers in Decimal Fractions; the Case of asymptotes. How two Lines may be so drawn, as always to approach and come nearer one another, and yet never touch one another, tho' drawn in infinitum. The like Instances might be given of other Mysteries in Arts and Sciences, which are as Incredible and Unreasonable to those who do not know them, as any Mysteries in Religion, and yet are certainly true, and unquestionably believed by those who do, and yet to them a great many of them may be Incomprehensible. 'Tis only Ignorance and want of Knowledge makes them seem unreasonable and incredible; the more we improve in those Arts, the more we shall see the Truth of them, and have no doubt about them. And so it is in the Mysteries of Religion; 'tis the shallowness and weakness of our Faculties makes them difficult and incomprehensible to us: When we come to know God better, especially in another World, these revealed Truths concerning his Nature will be better understood and comprehended by us, though now to deny and disbelieve them after they so are fully revealed because they are Incomprehensible, is as if an Ignorant Person should call in question all Truths of those Arts and Sciences which he does not understand, and which are Incomprehensible to him. 4. There are Incomprehensible Truths in Natural Religion as well as in Revelation, and in the Mystery of the Christian Faith. God who is known by Nature, and whose Being and Perfections are the great objects of natural Religion, is as Incomprehensible and as much too big for our finite Reason and Faculties fully to Comprehend as any of the Articles of Revealed Religion or Christian Faith. His 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Self-Existence is such a thing as our Thoughts are wholly lost about when we consider of it, and yet something must be self-existent even by the Atheistic hypothesis. So something must be Eternal, and yet let any man try his thoughts about Eternity, Infinite Duration, or Infinite Succession, and see how they are swallowed up in those deeps of Speculation? Let him conceive if he can Eternity without Succession, and Immensity without Extension, and clear himself from that Contradiction, if applied to any thing but God, that what is past or future is yet present, that he now exists, to morrow, and that a thousand years ago his Duration was the same as now, and nothing is added to it, he may improve these into as puzzling and incomprehensible difficulties if he pleases, as any thing about the Trinity. What shall we think of that inextricable Difficulty of God's prescience of all Humane Actions by which they are certain, and yet of our Liberty by which they are contingent, when it is as hard to make those two Consistent as to make Father and Son to be one, and yet we must do so, or else rob God of one of his greatest Perfections, or else rob Man of his Will and Freedom, and so destroy all Moral Good and Evil. Since there are then so many Mysteries and Incomprehensible Truths even in Natural Religion, which our Deists I hope do sincerely believe, and which is owned to be the foundation of all other, why should we wonder at those which are not much greater in Revelation, and in the Mystery of Christian Faith. The Creation of the World out of nothing is as Inconceivable and as Mysterious as the Generation of the Son from the Father, and one Infinite Being is as much too big for our Finite Understandings to Comprehend as Three, and his Attributes and Perfections are as hard to be distinguished, and as irreconcilable with the simplicity of the Divine Nature as multiplicity of Persons. His Justice and his Mercy, his Power, Wisdom and Goodness are no more the same as conceived by us; but excite as truly different Ideas in us as his being a Father, and begetting a Son, and having a holy Ghost proceeding from him; but yet the three Persons are more than three Attributes, and the same person cannot be Father and Son to himself as he is Just and Merciful to us; nor is it only three Considerations, Capacities, or Titles of one Being, but three proper and distinct Persons that constitute the Sacred Trinity. But we may as well conceive a monad emaning or producing two from itself, as Creating all things out of nothing, and being as Infinite as himself and the World both, and as having three several Attributes distinct in themselves, and not Confounded or Identified with one another. 5. There are other Truths in Revelation as Incomprehensible and Unconceivable as this of the Trinity, or the Mystery of Christian Faith. To mention nothing else, those many Miracles which are the proof and demonstration of the Divine Revelation, and which must be acknowledged by all those who admit it, and are not at all questioned by our Socinian Adversaries, these are as Incomprehensible and Unintelligible to us as any Articles of our Faith; they are matters as much above our Reason and do as much exceed all other things we know, and all the likenesses and compositions of any thing we are acquainted with in Nature, as the Trinity or any thing else in Revelation. The Divine Power is no more limited to do those things only which we can conceive, than the Divine Veracity to Reveal those things only which we can Comprehend, and yet we are to believe both. If we could conceive fully how the one was done, we might do it ourselves; and if we could comprehend perfectly how the others are true, and how those several Ideas are connected and agree together, we might compound them ourselves; and so God would not be more Powerful or more Wise than Man is. Our Finite Understanding is no more able to comprehend all that God does, than our Finite Power to effect every thing that he can. Miracles are as much above us as to Facts, and as much Mysteries as to the Laws of Matter and Motion and the known properties of Bodies, as Revealed Articles are above us as to Truths and known principles of Reason, and as to any other comparative Ideas and representations of things which are Familiar to us, and which we are well acquainted with. Our Adversaries may therefore as well deny all Miracles, as being Unconceivable and Incomprehensible to their Reason, and as Mysterious Facts which are very much above Nature, and above all our Conceptions, as the Mysteries of Faith, and the Principles of Revealed Religion such as the Blessed Trinity, upon this very score and account; and may for the same Reason discard all revelation and all natural Religion, which I fear is the design of some of them, but I hope not of the greatest part. Lastly, I proposed to show that there are as many Difficulties and more Mysteries in their sense; that is Inconsistencies and Absurdities in the Socinian Scheme and System of Opinions than in the Orthodox Faith they oppose. Thus to make a mere Man a God, to exalt a Creature to such a Degree as to be capable of Divine Worship, to pray to him and trust in him as a God, and hope for Salvation from him, and yet to believe him to be only a Man is an Absurdity so gross, so contrary to all Notions of God and a Creature, and confounding all this Infinite distance and difference between them, and so destroying all the Reasons and arguments of giving Divine Worship to God only, and such a Principle of Paganism and Idolatry so directly contrary to Christianity that nothing is comparable to it, were it never so true, but which with the greatest falseness they object to the contrary side. It does highly aggravate and increase this difficulty and absurdity, and no way lessen and abate it, to ascribe as they do all the Divine Perfections of Almighty Power and Infinite Goodness and Virtual Omnipresence to this mere Man and born Creature, which is not only robbing God of his Incommunicable Attributes, and giving his Glory to Another, but taking away all the strongest Arguments for proving God to be Almighty and All-perfect by making a man to be so, and therefore capable to make and Create the World as well as God himself; for if he is capable of such Perfections as belong to God, he is capable of doing the same things, and so of taking his Work out of his hands, and then we cannot prove a God from the Creation, since a man a Creature, if as powerful and as perfect as God, which they make Christ to be under this consideration, may be able also to effect; and Redemption is a Greater and a more Glorious work then Creation, and if that may be accomplished by a mere man, and we can owe our Salvation to him as such, than we own more thanks and greater praises and acknowledgements, and more gratitude to him, to the Lord that bought us than we do even to the Lord that made us. I might Instance in a great many other Particulars, but I must proceed to The Second General Head of Discourse, How we are to Hold the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience: By which these several Things may be employed, 1. That out of Regard to the Revelation, and out of Conscience of believing whatever God reveals to us, we firmly assent to it, and bring our Understandings to comply with it, notwithstanding the Difficulty and Mysteriousness of the Thing. 2. That we do not out of Vanity or Singularity, or from any faults of the Will or Sinister Ends and Designs pervert or corrupt or deny this Mystery of Faith. 3. That we hold and maintain it with Christian and Good Tempers. 4. With a Good Life in General, and with a Conscience so pure as to be void of all sin and wilful wickedness. 1. That out of regard to, etc. Otherwise we take away both the Truth and the Authority of Divine Revelation, Christianity not Mysterious. pag. 38. and make it with a late Author, Not a motive of Assent but only a means of Information. Or as he further words it, Not a Ground of our Persuasion, or a Reason we have to believe a Thing, as if we were to receive it only because revealed; which he will not allow, but only from the evidence in the thing itself, and the clear Conception we form of it. If so, then Revelation is only to lay such things before us, and we are to judge of the Truth of them ourselves; and the truth of things depends not upon the Revelation, nor is our belief of them to be resolved into that, but into our own Conceptions, so that we are not to believe them because the God of Truth reveals them, but because we have other reasons to know they are true. This is setting aside the Infallibility and Authority of Divine Revelation, and Judging the matter over again by our own Reason, and making that Superior to it: So that if what God reveals be never so clear and plain, and the sense and meaning of the Words be never so evident, yet if there be not an Evidence in the thing, and it do not carry its own Conviction in it, and we have not a perspicuous and distinct Conception of it, than we have not Reason to believe it as true. At this rate Revelation must never go beyond our Natural Knowledge, and let God say or reveal what he pleases to us, yet we are not bound to believe it barely upon his Word, without some further reason or some other ground of persuasion from the thing itself. This is a most Arrogant and Impudent treating of God and the Holy Scriptures, and barring them from revealing any thing, and excusing us from believing it, if we have not some further ground and reason for it. But surely God is true, and his Word to be Credited for itself alone without any further Security or Evidence of the thing itself; and if we are once satisfied about the Revelation, and do own that to be true, we are not to demur to the plain sense and meaning of it, though there be no other Evidence in the thing, nor any other ground of persuasion for the Truth of it but only that; and sure we are as much bound to bring our Reason and Understandings to submit to the Truth of what God says, as our Wills to the Obedience of what he Commands; though we have no other reason for the Truth of the one or the goodness of the other, and though both may seem very difficult to us: Else we make ourselves, and not God, Judges of what is true and false, and either prejudge a thing not to be true, whatever he says of it, and so prevent any Revelation about it, or else Judge it over again by other Measures, and condemn and reject it if it comport not with those, and be not conformable and agreeable to our Reason and Conceptions of things, though we know nothing of it but by Revelation, and that both clear, and evident, and undoubted. 2. Our holding the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience, implies That we do not Pervert, Corrupt, or Deny it out of any Vanity and Vainglory, Singularity, or Affectation of Novelty, or out of any corrupt Inclination and fault of the Will, or any Sinister and by-end whatsoever. Most Heresies have proceeded from some such Causes as these, and therefore are by the Apostle called the works of the Flesh, Gal. 5.20. The Error having had its first Rise and Original, not so much from the Weakness and Infirmity of the Understanding, as from the strength and Obstinacy, the Corruption and Depravity of the Will, and it has had its chief tincture of Malignity and poison from this root of Bitterness and from this corrupt fountain from whence it sprung and arose. A proud and conceited opinion of men's being Wiser not only than their Teachers, but than the whole Christian Church; and a natural itch after Novelty and Curiosity, and the pleasing vanity of being Singular and Remarkable, or of being the Heads of a Party, and giving the Name and Denomination to a New Sect of Followers, this has made a great many in former and latter Ages set up for new Opinions in opposition to the Ancient Faith, and endeavour to pull that down that they might erect Trophies of vainglory to themselves upon the ruins of it. It is not so easy always, nor so well indeed, for others to judge this of them; but if they would judge themselves, and search impartially into their own Hearts, they would find the Truth and meaning of what the Apostle says, Tit. 3.11. That such an Heretic is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 condemned of himself, and best knows and is Conscious to himself of the undue and faulty Reasons, and the sinister and by-ends and designs which were the secret Springs and corrupt Causes of his Heresy, of his Espousing such a singular and Novel Opinion out of a spirit of Contradiction, or a proud Conceitedness of his own Parts, Wisdom or Learning above others, or perhaps for some more Worldly and Carnal Reasons to serve a Party or carry on an Interest, according to the Character the Apostle gives of such an Heretic of old, 1 Tim. 6.4, 5. He is proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, rail, evil surmisings, perverse Disputing of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is Godliness: And who for filthy Lucre's sake taught things which they ought not; as he charges them in another place, Tit. 1.11. And in our days I doubt some men's opposing the Faith, and others contending about it, is more contending for this World and some Interests in it, then for any thing else; Envy and Emulation and a Competition about those being more at the bottom of some Disputes among us, than a Zeal for the Faith, falsely so called, and only hypocritically pretended: But this if it prove not a Corrupting the Faith, is to be sure not Holding it in a pure Conscience. For, 3. We must hold this Mystery of Faith with a Christian good Temper, and not lose that whilst we are contending for the other, nor let our Contentions grow so warm and intemperate, so fierce and cruel as to forget and violate the plain Morals of Christianity, whilst we are over-earnestly disputing for the Faith of it, or perhaps only for some false and mistaken, or at best some useless Opinions, and overnice and subtle Controversies about it. This has been the fault of those who have contended more for Victory than Truth, and more for their own Credit and Vainglory than the Christian Faith; who though they may be in the right, as 'tis ten to one that they are not, for Truth seldom dwells with such a Spirit of Rage, and Pride, and Passion, but rather with a quite other Temper, yet they greatly deserve the Cause they so unduly manage: And as they never are like to convince their Adversaries, so they give others just ground to suspect that they apply want of better Reason and stronger Arguments with weak and impotent Calumny, and with undecent and unbecoming Reflections. This is as Criminal and as Unchristian as the Error or the Heresy they are so zealous against; and 'tis to be doubted 'tis rather a false Fire and an Hypocritical Zeal, not for the Cause of God so much as their own; and that this is kindled not from the Altar but some other place, and blown up by some private pique and sinister designs, that thus blazes out to such an outrageous degree as to consume and destroy not only its Adversaries, if it were in its power, but even the most vital and substantial parts of Christianity, Peace, Love and Charity, and contends for the Christian Faith with such a most Diabolical and Unchristian Temper. This is very far from the Spirit of Christ and Christianity; and however precious the Faith be, yet the Apostle tells us, 1 Cor. 13.2. if we had all Faith, and understood all Mysteries and all Knowledge, yet without Charity we are nothing, however great we may be in our own Thoughts; and such a zeal of sourness and bitterness, as it is generally without Knowledge, so it is always without Religion; and though it hold the Mystery of the Faith, and do not rather pervert and corrupt it, yet to be sure this also is not, according to the Apostles advice, in a pure Conscience. Lastly, This implies holding it with a good Life in general, and with a Conscience so pure as to be free from all Sin, and all wilful Wickedness: For what does the most Pure and Orthodox Faith signify, if our Lives are Heretical and Unchristian? For there is no Heresy so damnable and destructive, and so contrary to Christianity, as a bad Life, and living by Principles of Immorality, and no Orthodoxy is comparable to a good Life and a Christian Conversation. God will sooner forgive a great many Errors which may proceed from weakness of Judgement and want of Information, and be joined with probity and sincerity of Mind, rather than one Act of wilful Wickedness and Immorality, which is committed always against the Light of a Mans own Conscience as well as against the Light of the Gospel, and where there can be no pretence or plea of Ignorance to excuse it. Christian Faith, in the whole compass of it, is designed to be a powerful and operative Principle upon our Hearts and Lives, to be a Seed that is not to be sowed in barren ground, but to grow up in all the privileges of Holiness and Righteousness, and to produce not only the Leaves of a formal Profession, and the Blossoms of Christian Faith, but the sound and substantial Fruit of all Christian and Divine Virtues. This Faith is not only to float in our Heads, and overflow our Tongues, but to sink down into our Hearts, and become the Vital Principle of a truly Pious, and Holy, and Virtuous Life. Christianity is not only to teach us a new scheme and set of Opinions, and to make new Articles of Faith for us, but to make us walk in newness and holiness of Life, to set the best Precepts of Morality, and lay the best Models of Virtue before us, and engage us to follow them by the greatest Arguments and the strongest Obligations; and if our Faith do not engage and prevail upon us to do this, it will be so far from saving us that it will only more highly condemn us, and increase and double our Eternal Damnation. Which God of his Infinite Mercy prevent, through Jesus Christ our Merciful Redeemer. THE DIVINITY OF CHRIST PROVED. SERMON III. JOHN x. 36. Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? THIS is the Defence of our Blessed Saviour against the Charge of the Jews, who were enraged at his saying, that he was the Son of God; for that it seems he had said of himself by the words of my Text; and that he and his Father were one, v. 30. So that they took up stones to stone him as guilty of Blasphemy, because being a Man, he made himself God, v. 33. There were some Heretics of old, and are so now in our days, who call themselves Christians, but are much of the Jews Opinion, and think Christ is but a mere Man, or a Creature, and that he is not the Son of God in a true and proper sense, nor One with the Father as to the Divine Nature; though they do not like the Jews, take up stones to throw at Christ, as challenging this to himself, yet they are if not so angry yet more disingenuous than they upon one account, that they deny the true sense and meaning of Christ's words, as he spoke and understood them, which the Jews fairly acknowledged, and accused him upon it. The Jews owned the words of Christ in his, and in a right sense, but denied the truth of the thing; the Arrians and Socinians deny both the truth of the thing, and the true meaning of the words. Now 'tis a matter of very great importance to be satisfied in both, to know and believe that that great Person, whom we call our Saviour, in whom we put our trust, and confidence, and hopes of Salvation, whom we worship and pray to, to whom we devote ourselves in our Baptism, and at other times, that he is not a mere Man or Creature, but as he said of himself, the Son of God in a proper sense, and one with the Father, as having the same Divine Nature and Essence and Perfection with him that begot him, and so a proper object both of our Faith, Hope and Worship, which he could not be without both Internal and External Idolatry if he were not thus God, and the Son of God, and One with the Father in respect of the same Divine Nature with his Father. It shall be my business at present to Prove this, after I have made a few General Remarks upon this passage, and these words of our Saviour. The First of which shall be this, That the Jews understood our Saviour in this sense; they supposed and concluded that he made himself God, by saying, That he was One with the Father and the Son of God; for this was all we know he said: He did not say directly and expressly that he was God, so far as appears by the account given by the Evangelist. And a great Man observes, Cardinal. Cusa in Cribrat. Alcoran. lib. 1. cap. 11. Cardinal Cusa, Christus Filium Dei se nominavit (& Deum Patrem) & non Deum, cum nominatio Dei sit nominatio Patris Christi. And an Eminent Protestant, Flaccius Illyricus, agrees with him, Flac. Illyric. Clavis Scripture. in verbo Deus. In Novo Testamento plerumque prima Persona vocatur Deus, & plerumque Paulus in suis Epistolis nomen Dei Patri tribuit. But to be one with God, was to be understood to have one Nature with him; and to be the Son of God was to have this Divine Nature communicated to him from God the Father, and so to be God, or to make himself God, or assert and declare himself to be so in that sense. Thus the Jews took our Saviour's words, and thus understood him; and they probably had very great and particular Reason so to do from the Phrases and Expressions then in use, and from some Learned Writings or Authors of Credit among them at that time, 'tis certain they immediately put this sense upon them: And this was the Ground and Reason of their charge of Blasphemy against Christ, that he made himself God by making himself one with the Father and the Son of God; and no doubt this was the true sense and meaning and import of our Saviour's words, according as they understood them, especially. 2. Because our Saviour did not deny this, nor any way disown this sense of them, nor say any thing to show they were mistaken in the sense of his words, or to correct and undeceive them. Now he would certainly have done this both to have corrected their Error, and to have defended himself against their Charge, had it not been true, that he made himself God by those words of his, as they understood them. Had his words been to be taken in the sense which our Socinian Adversaries would now put upon them, That he was One with the Father only by Consent and Agreement and not by Nature, and the Son of God only by Adoption and Favour, or upon the account of his extraordinary Human Birth, his Resurrection from the Dead, his Mediatorial Office, and great Authority to which he was advanced after his Ascension, though it had been a strange Prolepsis to have called himself so then upon the three last accounts, and not as the True, Proper and Natural Son of God, our Saviour's words had then given no ground or occasion for such a Charge as they laid against him, and he might easily have took it off, and vindicated himself by telling them, that they mistook his words, and that he did not mean them in the sense in which they falsely understood them; and this no doubt he would have done, had it been truly so, and had not their sense of them been true and allowed by our Saviour. It would have been hardly consistent with his Sincerity and Probity, his Integrity and Honesty as a Man, if he had not been God too as he was the Son of God and One with the Father, to let the Jews understand his words in such a wrong sense, and lay such a high Charge of Blasphemy against him upon it, and not to say any thing to show they were mistaken, and to correct their Error, and to prevent their Sin, and to vindicate and defend himself; for otherwise it will look as if he had been willing to let their Mistake pass, though he knew it to be so, and to assume to himself the Vanity of being thought to be God, and by his words to make himself such, tho' he had never said it or thought it, but knew the contrary; which is an intolerable Reflection upon the meek and humble Jesus; and not only upon the Truth of his Divinity, but even his Honesty as a Man. 3. The Argument which our Saviour used to defend himself against their Charge. This does not invalidate (as our Adversaries imagine) the truth of his being One with the Father by Nature, and the proper Eternal Son of God: 'Tis this at the 34, 35, 36. Ver. Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I have said, ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken: Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God? These were called Gods in the stile of the Jewish Scriptures, and particularly Psal. 82.2. who were called by God to be his immediate Ministers and Officers, as Moses and other Magistrates; therefore whoever used that Name was not, according to them, to be charged presently with Blasphemy, much less he whom the Father hath sanctified, chosen and appointed to the great Office of Messiah, and then sent him into the World to execute it. Whether there be any force in what some observe (a) Quod alii ad humanium tantum Naturam restringunt ego extendo ad totam Christi Personam, nam ex tribus Persnis in Coelo hic unus fuit selectus ad hoc Officium Mediatoris. Zanch. de trib. Eloh. p. 124. that the Father chose him the Second Person of the Trinity rather than the Third; and that there is also an Emphasis in the words, And sent him into the world, after he was first sanctified and appointed by God the Father in Heaven, where he was before his Natural Begotten Son (b) Maldonat. in loc. , and afterwards sent into the World. This I shall not insist on, but only allow that this was Argumentum ad homines, as we say, such as Christ thought the fittest and properest to offer at that time to those gross, and stupid, and ignorant Jewish Accusers, and that was indeed only a minori ad majus, whereby he designed only to wipe off the blackest and foulest parts of this Charge, but not to inform and instruct them so fully and perfectly in a Truth they could not bear, and were not prepared then to receive; however he would not deny, but did own and acknowledge their Charge of his making himself God, in their sense: And if this be not proved from these words of his here, yet it is no way disproved, any more than when he was asked, whither he were the Christ or Messiah, his not answering directly proves that he was not; or his not instructing his Disciples so fully about his Crucifixion or Resurrection, proved he was not to Die or to Rise again. Neither the Jews nor the Disciples themselves could bear some Truths at first, nor the full opening the Mystery of the Gospel all at once; nor had Christ dispatched all the work of his Life, nor was then willing to die, or be stoned by them for a direct Charge of Blasphemy. And therefore though he did not deny the Charge, which he would have done had it been false, yet he avoided it and defended himself against it, as far as his Infinite Wisdom thought then prudent and convenient. But there are other places and other Arguments to prove Christ's Divinity to us, his being one with the Father in Nature, and the Natural and Eternal Son of God; which I shall now produce, and then show the usefulness and necessity of this Doctrine. I shall not produce all, but only select some that are the most plain and considerable. The First shall be his Title and Character here given by himself; The Son of God, and his making God his Father, which is to be meant in a proper and most excellent and natural sense, upon the account of his Divine and not his Humane Nature, or any thing belonging to that, as he was the Son of God antecedently to his being born of the Virgin, being begotten of the Father from all Eternity, and having his Divine Being from the Father, of the same Nature with himself. For tho' the Title of the Son of God is given to others in Scripture, and to Christ himself upon other accounts; as God calls the Children of Israel his Son, and his Firstborn, Exod. 4.22. as being in a state of Favour and Covenant with him. And Christians are thus more especially the Adopted Sons, and the Children of God, in the Scripture stile. And Christ himself is called the Son of God upon several other accounts; as upon his Extraordinary Humane Birth and Conception by the Holy Ghost, Luke 1.35. upon account of his Resurrection, his being the Firstborn or First-begotten from the Dead; St. Paul applying to him the words of David in the second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee; upon this very account, Acts 13.33. and as afterwards upon his Ascension, he was made Heir of all things, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, Col. 1.15. The firstborn and heir of the whole Creation. But there is a higher Ground and Reason than all these of this great Character given to Christ in Scripture, the Son of God, namely, his Eternal Divine Generation, his being begotten of the Father in his own Likeness and Image, and having his Divine Nature communicated to him; for this is the first and most proper Notion of a Son, Another Person or Being, for nulla res generat seipsam, as St. Austin says, de Trin. l. 1. c. 1. produced or begotten in the same Nature and Likeness with its Father or Producent. That Christ was thus generated of the Father, and of the Substance of the Father, and not Created or Made, 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as the Arrians held, and that he was the Son of God, and God his Father, in this proper and excellent sense, as the Christian Church has always declared and believed, so the Scripture bears witness to it in all those places where it calls Christ God, and ascribes the Divine Nature and Divine Perfections to him, as I shall show it does, and says he was in the beginning before the World, or from all Eternity with God; and that he was in the Form of God, and thought it not robbery to be equal with God; i. e. as having the same Nature with him, which must be by that Communication of it which we call Generation; for he had not this from himself, or from none, but from another, who is therefore called his Father: But on this Head I insist, only upon the propriety of those phrases, his being the Son of God, and God being his Father; which are to be understood in the proper, literal and natural meaning, as all persons would understand them when spoken of a Humane Father and Son, and so they are to be taken when there is not a Connotation or a particular Reason expressed to denote an improper and Metaphorical use of them: And there is one word frequently used in Scripture, which I think is a sufficient proof of this, and that is when Christ is called not only the Son, but the only Son, and the only begotten Son of God, as John 1.14. John 3.16. 1 John 4.9. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, is a verbal signifying as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, or unigenitus, is one who has no partner or sharer in that Sonship which is ascribed to him; but Christ, as an adopted Son, has many Brethren, and therefore it must be meant of that Divine Generation and Sonship which belongs to him alone; and God by sending his only begotten Son intended to express his utmost Love to Mankind, and to that purpose St. John uses the phrase, God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son: But nothing raises this Love so high as his sending his own Natural Son, a Person of the highest Dignity next to himself, and one of the same Divine Nature with himself, whereas if he were only an Adopted Son, or a Son upon the other accounts only, neither the Love of the Father, nor the Condescension of the Son would appear in such Great Characters as the Scripture designedly sets them out by. I have insisted longer on this Title of Son, and only begotten Son, because they are the only words in the Apostolic, and the oldest Creeds, to express the belief of Christ's Divinity, thereby designing to answer a great Objection of our Adversaries. I shall be more brief on the rest. 2. As Christ is called the Son of God, so he is called God also in Scripture in several places, John 1.1. The Word was with God, and the Word was God. My Lord and my God, John 20.28. God blessed for ever, Rom. 9.5. And in others, especially those taken from the Old Testament, and applied to Christ in the New. Now what can our Adversaries say to this? Sometimes they say, The Word is not meant of Christ: But that is so undeniable in some places that they cannot but own it: And therefore they say, Christ, though having only the Humane and not the Divine Nature is called God in a certain sense, viz. by Office as Moses and other Magistrates, who were the Ministers, and Deputies, and Ambassadors of God, and upon that account have that Name sometimes attributed to them; and Christ by having that extraordinary Office of Messiah, and that extraordinary Power over all things committed to him as Mediator, after his Ascension, is upon this account they say, God, and may be called God, and the True God, and the most High God, as Socinus, Stichlingius, Smalcius, Ruarus, and others of them speak, but still they deny that Christ is God by Nature, or that he has the True Divine Nature, the same with the Father, belonging to him, but only as a Man he is made and exalted to be a God by being advanced to an extraordinary Power and Authority over all other Creatures, but this leaves him still in the rank and order of Creatures; nay, makes him a God of a mere Man, a Late not an Eternal God, One who had no Being before he was Born of the Virgin, and no Divinity till after his Resurrection and his Ascension into Heaven; so that they may date his 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, and know exactly how many Years and Days he has been God in their Ridiculous, Blasphemous and Heathenish Sense of the word God: But God is an Eternal, Infinite, All-perfect Being, who was, and is, and is to come, whose Existence is Necessary and not Contingent, Eternal and not of Yesterday, who has the True Divine Essence and Nature, and the Incommunicable Excellencies and Perfections belonging to it. And in this sense Christ is God and True God, and God by Nature, as I shall prove evidently from Scripture. He is not indeed God the Father, or God from none; 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, in that sense we believe in One God the Father Almighty, and to us there is but One God the Father, as the Apostle speaks, 1 Cor. 8.6. and Christ is the Son of this God the Father, who had his Being and Nature from him, but he is God of God, very God of very God, as the Nicene Creed expresses it, has the Divine Nature and Divine Perfections Naturally belonging to him, and in that Sense is true God. This I shall prove further. 3. From his being joined with the Father in the Baptismal Office, and in the Christian Form of Benediction, as we have them, Mat. 28 19 1 Cor. 13.14. Now can we think that Christ and the Holy Ghost would be joined together in both those with the Father, if they were only Creatures though of the highest Dignity and Quality, and were not truly God and of the same Nature Honour and Dignity with the Father. We may as well and much better suppose that a Charter of Privileges should be Granted in the name of the King and of two of his greatest Subjects, or Homage Sworn to them and to the King both together, and that they should be joined in the same Royal and Sovereign Acts of Favour, and have the same acknowledgements and Oaths of Fidelity made to them, as that God the Father should be joined with two mere Creatures in such Solemn Religious acts of Christianity: Baptism is the Highest and most Solemn Devoting, and Dedicating ourselves to God, and professing the Christian Faith by the special and distinguishing Characters of it, as containing the Belief of Father, Son and Holy Ghost; which are the Fundamental 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Christianity, as distinct from natural and Jewish Religion: Now to do this to Creatures, or in the name of Creatures as well as God, would be a strange anomally and unaccountable absurdity. The Jews indeed were Baptised into Moses in the Cloud, and in the Sea, 1 Cor. 20.2. as our Adversaries often remind us; but this was only Mystically and Figuratively and almost into the Religion delivered by Moses; they were not Devoted to Moses, but to the God of Israel, nor were Baptised in the name of the God of Israel and of Moses joined together, as Christians are in the name of Father, Son and Holy Ghost; nor was there ever any Benediction given in the name of Moses, or of Abraham, and the like, but only in the name of God, the God of Israel; who would not give his Glory to another, nor allow any Creatures to be his Rivals, or share with him in the most Religious Acts of Homage and Fealty, and in the incommunicable rights tenders and acknowledgements of Divine Honour paid to Him, or in the Grants and Donations of special Favour that flowed and issued from himself alone. So that I take this Form of Christian Baptism, and Christian Blessing to be a very strong Evidence to all but perverse Unbelievers of the Divinity, both of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, who are thus joined with the Father in very short and solemn Forms, as of equal Honour, Power and Dignity with him, to whom Christians are alike to Devote themselves, and to expect like Blessings and Favours from all of them. 4. The Divinity of Christ is fully proved and Demonstrated from such Divine Acts, and operations, such Divine Excellencies, Attributes and Perfections as belong only to God and the Divine Nature, and which are expressly ascribed to Christ in the Holy Scriptures, as to Create and make the World to be Omnipotent, Omnipresent, Omniscient, Eternal, and the like: The Notion we have of a God, is a being endued with these Infinite Persections, which cannot belong to a Finite and Limited Creature however excellent, unless we confound the Idaea's of Finite and Infinite of God and a Creature, and bring the one down so low, or raise the other so high as to make no difference between them. These are the proper Attributes, Properties and Excellencies of the Divine Nature; and he that hath these must have the Divine Nature, from whence they Result, and to which they peculiarly belong. Now that Christ is Omnipotent, appears from his making the World; for nothing but Almighty Power could do that, and produce all Things out of nothing, which is what we mean by Creation: Now the Scripture is positive that all things were made by him; and that without him was not any thing made that was made, Joh. 1.3. For by him were all things created that are in Heaven, and that are in Earth, visible and invisibe,— all things were created by him, and for him. Colos. 1.16. and by him God made the World, Heb. 1.2. To say all this is meant of a Spiritual Creation, or of Christ's making a new Gospel World, and not a Natural, is such an unnatural and ridiculous force and violence to the Words, as not only Confutes, but Exposes itself, and makes the plainest words in Scripture, even those that describe the Creation in Genesis, and Christ's Birth in St. Matthew, and the whole Scripture History to be liable to be rarefied away by a strained and forced Allegory. If Christ then Created all Things, He is certainly God, for he that Built or Made all Things is God according to the Apostles Argument, Heb. 3.4. And if his Creating the World doth not prove him to be truly God, than we cannot prove a God from the Creation, and that undoubted Argument for the proof of a God must be given up, which the Atheists will very much thank the Arrians for. That Christ is Omnipresent appears by his Promise to his Disciples, Mat. 18.25. that where two or three of them were gathered together in any part of the World, there he was in the midst of them. That he is Omniscient is testified by St. Peter, Lord thou knowest all things, Joh. 21.17. and that he knoweth the hearts of all Men, and will judge all Men at the last Day. That He is Eternal and was not only before Abraham, but in the beginning before the World, which is a Jewish Phrase for Eternity, is plain also from Scripture, notwithstanding all the little Cavils of our Adversaries: If Christ then be the Omnipotent Maker of the World, who upholdeth all things by the Word of his Power, by whom all Things subsist, who is an Omnipresent, Omniscient and Eternal Being, He is a God by Nature of whom we cannot have a higher Idea and Conception, only that He is not from himself or from none, which belongs only to the Father from whom he received his Being, and all the Perfections of it. 5. The Divinity of Christ appears from our Praying to him and Worshipping him, our invoking and Adoring him as we are Commanded to do in Scripture, and as has been Observed by the Christian Church in all Ages. For nothing is an Object of Divine Worship but God; or a Being that has the Divine Nature and Perfections, Thou shalt Worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve, is a standing Rule both of the Jewish and Christian Religion, Deut. 6.13. Mat. 4.10. and of Natural too; for the Glorious and Infinite Excellencies of the Divine Nature, which cannot be Communicated to a Creature, and wherever they are Communicated Constitute that Being a God; these are the Ground of that Peculiar and Incommunicable Honour which we give to God, and the Infinite distance between God and Created Being's, who however Excellent, yet are Infinitely below the supreme and transcendent Excellencies of the Divine Nature makes Creatures uncapable of Divine Worship, and makes it always unlawful in us, and a robbing God of his Glory to give it them. The Arrians therefore were always accused by the Orthodox of Idolatry for Worshipping Christ, and believing him to be a Creature, though of the highest Order that could be: And when Socinus had persuaded his Disciples to Christ's Divinity, Davidis, and several of them rightly concluded that then he was not to be Worshipped; and our late Sophisters seem inclined to agree with them in this, finding it impossible to avoid the same Charge in Worshipping Christ as a Man, though never so exalted, that lies against the Church of Rome for Worshipping Saints and Angels, and the Virgin Mary; and that they can no way come off, but by the same distinctions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sovereign and Inferior Worship, which are equal, but very weak Pleas to Defend Popery, Paganism and Socinianism. But how bold and rash an Assertion is it on the other side, to deny that Christ is to be Worshipped, when all the Angels are Commanded to Worship him, Heb. 1.6. and when all Men are to Honour the Son, even as they Honour the Father, Joh. 5.20. and he that doth not thus Honour the Son, Honoureth not the Father that sent him. No pious and good Christians, who own Christ to be their Saviour will ever be brought off from worshipping and praying to him, and calling upon his name as the first Christians did, Acts 9.14, 21. and St. Stephen, Acts 7.59. and St. Paul, Acts 12.8. and the whole Christian Church afterwards. Socinus was so sensible of this that he set himself most zealously to defend and assert both the Lawfulness and Necessity of it, though many of his Followers have been against both. But this is such a weight upon Socinianism as will help to sink it. It can never free itself from one of those straits that will ruin and destroy it, Either to throw off wholly the worship of Christ, which is to throw off Christianity, and which will never be born by any number of Pious Christians, or to own that Idolatrous Principle, That a Creature may be worshipped, which will never be admitted by Protestants. They who will not worship and pray to Christ cease to be Christians; and they who do pray to him, must own him to be Omnipresent, Omniscient and Almighty, to be able to grant their Requests, to know their Hearts, and to hear their Prayers, and be present with them in all places, and so to have those Divine Attributes and Perfections that belong only to God. 6. And Lastly, I might prove the Divinity of Christ from the Universal Consent and Belief of the Christian Church, and from the Testimony of the greatest Adversaries to Christianity, who always supposed and charged this as the Sentiment of Christians, that they held Christ to be God. The Consent and Belief of the Christian Church is evident from its Creeds, and its Prayers, its Doctrine and its Practice in worshipping Christ, and from its Zeal against all those early Heretics that opposed this Doctrine and its determinations both in Private Synods and General Councils for the maintaining and asserting it. It must be very strange that the whole Christian Church should be mistaken in a matter of this Importance, and should have all along a False Object of Worship, and when it was so zealous against all Idolatry, and had so many Martyrs upon that score, that it should bring in the same another way, and worship a mere Creature. It must be very arrogant in our Adversaries to oppose themselves to the Belief of the whole Primitive Church, and to disagree with all those Holy Men and Learned Writers whom we call the Fathers, who have transmitted Christianity and this Doctrine down to us; and this Socinus even frankly and openly owns, Patres omnes ab ipsis dissentire, in his Answer to Wiekus, (Tom. 2. Resp. ad 2 Cap. Wieki Clas. 7. c. 9 p. 618.) and says, Haec authoritatum & testimoniorum ex Patribus & Concilii congeries, nullas vires habet, praesertim adversus nos, qui ab istis Patribus & Conciliis, quae extant nos dissentire non diffitemur. This was said with great freedom but greater insolence, his followers have had more cunning and less Honesty than to own this. It is not proper at this time and place to prove what their Master owns, and to prove the Divinity of Christ from the Ancient Church, and from the universal suffrage of its Writers in all Ages, that has been done beyond all possibility of an Answer from the boldest Pretender. But our very Enemies have all along bore witness to this Truth, that the Christians believed and worshipped Christ as a God; so says Pliny in his Letter to Trajan, that the Christians met and sang a Hymn to Christ as to God; and Celsus charges the Christians with worshipping Christ as a new God; and Julian writ to this purpose to Photinus, agreeing with him that Christ was but a Man against the Church's Doctrine of a Galilean God, as he blasphemously speaks; so Lucian in his Philopatris exposes the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉, as the God of Christians; and Mahomet all along through his Alcoron, finds fault with the Christians for believing and worshipping Christ as God, whom he owns to be a Prophet, and a great Man sent of God, as well as Socinus. The Christians would have disowned this charge had it not been true, especially when in the hands of their Enemies and under Persecution for it, when they might have escaped Death, and the greatest Tortures and Sufferings had they been Socinians, and denied Christ's Divinity. They had none of their subtle distinctions of a God by Nature and a God by Office to help them out, but they believed Christ to be as true a God by Nature as he was a Man; and they took God in the true and plain sense for a Divine Almighty Being, who was to be worshipped by them, and that Christ was such an one as well as a Man. This was the Doctrine they were taught by the Church, and by the Scriptures, and that all Christians believed, till the Subtleties of Arrius, Eunomius, Artius, and others, and the greater Subtleties of the Schoolmen afterwards in making One to be Three and Three One, and the as great Subtleties of the Socinians in opposing them darkened, and obscured the plain Christian Doctrine, which we are Baptised into, of Father, Son and Holy Ghost; and that the Son who was born of the Virgin, and died for us, and risen again, and was Christ the Saviour of Mankind, that he was also the Son of God, and the only begotten of God the Father, who had the same Divine Nature with him, and so was God, and to be worshipped and prayed to. The Usefulness and Necessity of which Doctrine I should come now to show had I time. In a word, I take all Christian Faith, and Hope, and Worship to depend upon it, and even Christianity itself as it is a distinct Religion from Natural, and as it obliges us to such peculiar Articles of Faith as well as to such common Rules of Morality. If Christ be not God, and have not the Divine Nature belonging to him, but be only a Man, as he is not to be worshipped, as I have shown, so how we trust and hope and believe in him for Salvation, and put such a full confidence in a Creature that it would not be greater if he were a God. A poor finite Creature, like ourselves, is not a fit object of our hope and trust for so great a matter as an Infinite Divine Being, who has all Power and all Goodness. The great God may exalt, if he pleases, any of us, or any other Man, to as much Power and Dignity, as the Socinians say he has done Christ, and they may have been made their own Saviour's, or Saviour's to all the World, in the Socinian Notion, as well as he; but surely none but a God, no Man or Creature could be the Redeemer and the Saviour of Mankind. Our Redemption is a greater Work than our Creation, and the Lord that bought us deserves as great Thanks and Gratitude, Praise, Honour and Acknowledgement from us, as he that Made us; and therefore we should necessarily run into Idolatry, if he were not God also. Can this great and Mysterious Work have been accomplished any other way than by the Son of God, a God Incarnate and made Flesh, the Divine Wisdom which does nothing in vain would in all likelihood have found out an easier and a cheaper Method, and not have been at the expense of such a Miraculous, such an Extraordinary, such a Mysterious way, as Men and Angels are astonished at when they look into the mighty depth and profound greatness of it. God the Father shown his utmost Love to Mankind, and exhausted the Riches of his Mercy to Sinners, in sending his Son, his only begotten Son into the World to save us, and his Son showed the greatest Condescension and utmost Humiliation and emptying of himself, thus to come into the World and become a Man; but had he been only a Man where had the Mystery of this been? This great Love of the Father, and this Condescension of the Son, on both which the Scripture lays such a particular weight and Emphasis, had been lost and sunk and dwindled into very little, and had all its mighty Figures and Characters, in which it is represented in Scripture, abated, lessened and diminished, if Christ had been only a Creature and a meerman, and had not been truly and properly the Son of God, begotten of him from all Eternity as well as of the Virgin afterwards, and One with the Father in respect of his Divine Nature and Original. To him, God blessed for ever, be all Honour and Worship, Praise, Glory and Thanksgiving, now and for evermore, Amen. FINIS.