Sect.  I. .

Some new philosophers will tell you that the notion of a spirit or an immaterial substance is a contradiction; for by substance they understand nothing but matter, and then an immaterial substance is immaterial matter, that is, matter and no matter, which is a contradiction; but yet this does not prove an immaterial substance to be a contradiction, unless they could first prove that there is no substance but matter; and that they cannot conceive any other substance but matter, does not prove that there is no other.

Certainly not:  but if not only they, but Dr. Sherlock himself and all mankind, are incapable of attaching any sense to the term substance, but that of matter, ­then for us it would be a contradiction, or a groundless assertion.  Thus:  By ‘substance’ I do not mean the only notion we can attach to the word; but a somewhat, I know not what, may, for aught I know, not be contradictory to spirit!  Why should we use the equivocal word, ‘substance’ (after all but an ’ens logicum’), instead of the definite term ‘self-subsistent?’ We are equally conscious of mind, and of that which we call ‘body;’ and the only possible philosophical questions are these three: 

1.  Are they co-ordinate as agent and re-agent;

2.  Or is the one subordinate to the other, as effect to cause, and which is the cause or ground, which the effect or product;

3.  Or are they co-ordinate, but not inter-dependent, that is, ’per harmonium praestabilitam’.

Ib. .

  Now so far as we understand the nature of any being, we can certainly
  tell what is contrary and contradictious to its nature; as that
  accidents should subsist without ‘their subject’, &c.

That accidents should subsist (rather, exist) without a subject, may be a contradiction, but not that they exist without this or that subject.  The words ‘their subject’ are ‘a petitio principii’.

Ib.

  These and such like are the manifest absurdities and contradictions of
  Transubstantiation; and we know that they are so, because we know the
  nature of a body, &c.

Indeed!  Were I either Romanist or Unitarian, I should desire no better than the admission of body having an ‘esse’ not in the ‘percipi’, and really subsisting, ([Greek:  auto to chraema]) as the supporter of its accidents.  At all events, the Romanist, declaring the accidents to be those ordinarily impressed on the senses ([Greek:  ta phainomena kai aisthaeta]) by bread and wine, does at the same time declare the flesh and blood not to be the [Greek:  phainomena kai aisthaeta] so called, but the [Greek:  noumena kai auta ta chraemata].  There is therefore no contradiction in the terms, however reasonless the doctrine may be, and however unnecessary the interpretation on which it is pretended.  I confess, had I been in Luther’s place, I would not have rested so much of my quarrel with the Papists on this point; nor can I agree with our Arminian divines in their ridicule of Transubstantiation.  The most rational doctrine is perhaps, for some purposes, at least, the ’rem credimus, modum nescimus’; next to that, the doctrine of the Sacramentaries, that it is ‘signum sub rei nomine’, as when we call a portrait of Caius, Caius.  But of all the remainder, Impanation, Consubstantiation, and the like, I confess that I should prefer the Transubstantiation of the Pontifical doctors.

Ib. .

The proof of this comes to this one point, that we may have sufficient evidence of the being of a thing whose nature we cannot conceive and comprehend:  he who will not own this, contradicts the sense and experience of mankind; and he who confesses this, and yet rejects the belief of that which he has good evidence for, merely because he cannot conceive it, is a very absurd and senseless infidel.

Here again, though a zealous believer of the truth asserted, I must object to the Bishop’s logic.  None but the weakest men have objected to the Tri-unity merely because the ‘modus’ is above their comprehension:  for so is the influence of thought on muscular motion; so is life itself; so in short is every first truth of necessity; for to comprehend a thing, is to know its antecedent and consequent.  But they affirm that it is against their reason.  Besides, there seems an equivocation in the use of ‘comprehend’ and ‘conceive’ in the same meaning.  When a man tells me, that his will can lift his arm, I conceive his meaning; though I do not comprehend the fact, I understand ‘him’.  But the Socinians say; ­We do not understand ‘you’.  We cannot attach to the word ‘God,’ more than three possible meanings; either,

1.  A person, or self-conscious being;

2.  Or a thing;

3.  Or a quality, property, or attribute.

If you take the first, then you admit the contradiction; if either of the latter two, you have not three Persons and one God, but three Persons having equal shares in one thing, or three with the same attributes, that is, three Gods.  Sherlock does not meet this.

Let me repeat the difficulty, if possible, more clearly.  The argument of the philosophic Unitarians, as Wissowatius, who, mistaken as they were, are not to be confounded with their degenerate successors, the Priestleyans and Belshamites, may be thus expressed.  By the term, God, we can only conceive you to suppose one or other of three meanings.

1.  Either you understand by it a person, in the common sense of an intelligent or self-conscious being; ­or,

2. a thing with its qualities and properties; ­or,

3. certain powers and attributes, comprised under the word nature.

If we suppose the first, the contradiction is manifest, and you yourselves admit it, and therefore forbid us so to interpret your words.  For if by God you mean Person, then three Persons and one God, would be the same as three Persons and one Person.  If we take the second as your meaning, as an infinite thing is an absurdity, we have three finite Gods, like Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who shared the universe between them.  If the latter, we have three Persons with the same attributes; ­and if a Person with infinite attributes be what we mean by God, then we have either three Gods, or involve the contradiction above mentioned.  It is unphilosophic, by admission of all philosophers, they add, to multiply causes beyond the necessity.  Now if there are three Persons of infinite and the same attributes, dismiss two, and you lose nothing but a numerical phantom.”

The answer to this must commence by a denial of the prémisses ‘in toto’:  and this both Bull and Waterland have done most successfully.  But I very much doubt, whether Sherlock on his principles could have evaded the Unitarian logic.  In fact it is scarcely possible to acquit him altogether of a ‘quasi-Tritheism’.

Sect.  II. .

  ’For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge
  every Person by himself to be God and Lord’; ­

(That is, by especial revelation.)

  ’So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, There are three
  Gods, or three Lords.’

That is, by the religion contained in, and given in accompaniment with, the universal reason, ’the light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world’.

Ib. .

This Creed (Athanasian) does not pretend to explain how there are three Persons, each of which is God, and yet but One God, (of which more hereafter,) but only asserts the thing, that thus it is, and thus it must be if we believe a Trinity in Unity; which should make all men, who would be thought neither Arians nor Socinians, more cautious how they express the least dislike of the Athanasian Creed, which must either argue, that they condemn it, before they understand it, or that they have some secret dislike to the doctrine of the Trinity.

The dislike commonly felt is not of the doctrine of the Trinity, but of the positive anathematic assertion of the everlasting perdition of all and of each who doubt the same; ­an assertion deduced from Scripture only by a train of captious consequences, and equivocations.  Thus, A.:  “I honour and admire Caius for his great learning.”  B.:  “The knowledge of the Sanscrit is an important article in Caius’s learning.”  A.:  “I have been often in his company, and have found no reason for believing this.”  B.:  “O! then you deny his learning, are envious, and Caius’s enemy.”  A.:  “God forbid!  I love and admire him.  I know him for a transcendant linguist in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and modern European languages; ­and with or without the Sanscrit, I look up to him, and rely on his erudition in all cases, in which I am concerned.  And it is this perfect trust, this unfeigned respect, that is the appointed criterion of Caius’s friends and disciples, and not their full acquaintance with each and all particulars of his superiority.”  Thus without Christ, or in any other power but that of Christ, and (subjectively) of faith in Christ, no man can be saved; but does it follow, that no man can have Christian faith who is ignorant or erroneous as to any one point of Christian theology?  Will a soul be condemned to everlasting perdition for want of logical ‘acumen’ in the perception of consequences? ­If he verily embrace Christ as his Redeemer, and unfeignedly feel in himself the necessity of Redemption, he implicitly holds the Divinity of Christ, whatever from want or defect of logic may be his notion ‘explicite’.

Ib. .

‘But the whole three Persons are co-eternal, and co-equal’.  And yet this we must acknowledge to be true, if we acknowledge all three Persons to be eternal, for in eternity there can be no ’afore, or after other’.

It must, however, be considered as a serious defect in a Creed, if excluding subordination, without mentioning any particular form, it gives no hint of any other form in which it admits it.  The only ‘minus’ admitted by the Athanasian Creed is the inferiority of Christ’s Humanity to the Divinity generally; but both Scripture and the Nicene Creed teach a subordination of the Son to the Father, independent of the Incarnation of the Son.  Now this is not inserted, and therefore the denial in the assertion ‘none is greater or less than another’, is universal, and a plain contradiction of Christ speaking of Himself as the co-eternal Son; ‘My Father is greater than I’.  Speaking of himself as the co-eternal Son, I say; ­for how superfluous would it have been, a truism how unworthy of our Lord, to have said in effect, that “a creature is less than God!” And after all, Creeds assuredly are not to be imposed ’ad libitum’ ­a new Creed, or at least a new form and choice of articles and expressions, at the pleasure of individuals.  Now where is the authority of the Athanasian Creed?  In what consists its necessity?  If it be the same as the Nicene, why not be content with the Nicene?  If it differs, how dare we retain both? If the Athanasian does not say more or different, but only differs by omission of a necessary article, then to impose it, is as absurd as to force a mutilated copy on one who has already the perfect original.  Lastly, it is not enough that an abstract contains nothing which may not by a chain of consequences be deduced from the books of the Evangelists and Apostles, in order for it to be a Creed for the whole Christian Church.  For a Creed is or ought to be a ‘syllepsis’ of those primary fundamental truths that are, as it were, the starting-post, from which the Christian must commence his progression.  The full-grown Christian needs no other Creed than the Scriptures themselves.  Highly valuable is the Nicene Creed; but it has its chief value as an historical document, proving that the same texts in Scripture received the same interpretation, while the Greek was a living language, as now.

Sect.  III. .

If what he says is true:  ’He that errs in a question of faith, after having used reasonable diligence to be rightly informed, is in no fault at all’; how comes an atheist, or an infidel, a Turk, or a Jew, to be in any fault?  Does our author think that no atheist or infidel, no unbelieving Jew or heathen, ever used reasonable diligence to be rightly informed? If you say, he confines this to such points as have always been controverted in the churches of God, I desire to know a reason why he thus confines it?  For does not his reason equally extend to the Christian Faith itself, as to those points which have been controverted in Christian Churches?

And the Notary might ask in his turn:  “Do you believe that the Christians either of the Greek or of the Western Church will be damned, according as the truth may be respecting the procession of the Holy Ghost? or that either the Sacramentary or the Lutheran? or again, the Consubstantiationist, or the Transubstantiationist?  If not, why do you stop here?  Whence this sudden palsy in the limbs of your charity?  Again, does this eternal damnation of the individual depend on the supposed importance of the article denied?  Or on the moral state of the individual, on the inward source of this denial?  And lastly, who authorized either you, or the pseudo-Athanasius, to interpret Catholic faith by belief, arising out of the apparent predominance of the grounds for, over those against, the truth of the positions asserted; much more, by belief as a mere passive acquiescence of the understanding?  Were all damned who died during the period when ’totus fere mundus factus est Arianus’, as one of the Fathers admits?  Alas! alas! how long will it be ere Christians take the plain middle road between intolerance and indifference, by adopting the literal sense and Scriptural import of heresy, that is, wilful error, or belief originating in some perversion of the will; and of heretics, (for such there are, nay, even orthodox heretics), that is, men wilfully unconscious of their own wilfulness, in their limpet-like adhesion to a favourite tenet?”

Ib. .

  All Christians must confess, that there is no other name given under
  heaven whereby men can be saved, but only the name of Christ.

Now this is a most awful question, on which depends whether Christ was more than Socrates; for to bring God from heaven to reproclaim the Ten Commandments, is ‘too too’ ridiculous.  Need I say I incline to Sherlock?  But yet I cannot give to faith the meaning he does, though I give it all, and more than all, the power.  But if that Name, as power, saved the Jewish Church before they knew the Name, as name, how much more now, if only the will be not guiltily averse?  Any miracle does in kind as truly bring God from heaven as the Incarnation, which the Socinians wholly forget, as in other points.  They receive without scruple what they have learned without examination, and then transfer to the first article which they do look into, all the difficulties that belong equally to the former:  as the Simonidean doubts concerning God to the Trinity, and the like.

Ib. .

The Eclectic Neo-Platonists (Sallustius and others,) justified their Polytheism on much the same pretext as is in fact involved in the language of this page; [Greek:  polloi men en de mia theotaeti].  This indeed seems to me decisive in favour of Waterland’s scheme against this of Sherlock’s; ­namely, that in the latter we find no sufficient reason why in the nature of things this intermutual consciousness might not be possessed by thirty instead of three.  It seems a strange confounding [Greek:  heteron geneon] to answer, “True; but the latter only happens to be the fact!” ­just as if we were speaking of the number of persons in the Privy Council.

Ib. .

‘Notes’.  By keeping this faith ‘whole and undefiled’, must be meant that a man should believe and profess it without adding to it or taking from it. First, for adding.  What if an honest plain man, because he is a Christian and a Protestant, should think it necessary to add this article to the Athanasian Creed; ­’I believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be a divine, infallible and complete rule both for faith and manners’.  I hope no Protestant would think a man damned for such addition; and if so, then this Creed of Athanasius is at least an unnecessary rule of faith.

‘Answer’.  That is to say, it is an addition to the Catholic Faith to own the Scriptures to be the rule of faith; as if it were an addition to the laws of England to own the original records of them in the Tower.

This Notary manages his cause most weakly, and Sherlock ‘fibs’ him like a scientific pugilist.  But he himself exposes weak parts, as in .  The objection to the Athanasian Creed urged by better men than the Notary, yea, by divines not less orthodox than Sherlock himself, is this:  not that this Creed adds to the Scriptures, but that it adds to the original ‘Symbolum Fidei’, the ‘Regula’, the ‘Canon’, by which, according to the greater number of the ’ante’-Nicene Fathers, the books of the New Testament were themselves tried and determined to be Scripture.  Now this ‘Symbolum’ was to bring together all that must be believed, even by the babes in faith, or to what purpose was it made?  Now, say they, the Nicene Creed is really nothing more than a verbal explication of the common Creed, but the clause in the Athanasian (’which faith’, &c.), however fairly deduced from Scripture, is not contained in the Creed, or selection of certain articles of Faith from the Scriptures, or not at least from those preachings and narrations, of which the New Testament Scriptures are the repository.  Might not a Papist plead equally in support of the Creed of Pope Pius:  “The new articles are deduced from Scripture; that is, in our opinion, and that most expressly in our Lord’s several and solemn addresses to St. Peter.”  So again Sherlock’s answer to this paragraph from the Notes is evasive, ­for it is very possible, nay, it is, and has been the case, that a man may believe in the facts and doctrines contained in the New Testament, and yet not believe the Holy Scripture to be either divine, infallible, or complete.

Sect.  IV. .

We know not what the substance of an infinite mind is, nor how such substances as have no parts or extension can touch each other, or be thus externally united; but we know the unity of a mind or spirit reaches as far as its self-consciousness does, for that is one spirit, which knows and feels itself, and its own thoughts and motions, and if we mean this by ‘circum-incession’, three persons thus intimate to each other are numerically one.

The question still returns; have these three infinite minds, at once self-conscious and conscious of each other’s consciousness, always the very same thoughts?  If so, this mutual consciousness is unmeaning, or derivative; and the three do not cease to be three because they are three sames.  If not, then there is Tritheism evidently.

Ib. .

St. Paul tells us, 1 Cor. i.  ’That the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God’.  So that the Holy Spirit knows all that is in God, even his most deep and secret counsels, which is an argument that he is very intimate with him; but this is not all:  it is the manner of knowing, which must prove this consciousness of which I speak:  and that the Apostle adds in the next verse, that the Spirit of God knows all that is in God, just as the spirit of a man knows all that is in man:  that is, not by external revelation or communication of this knowledge, but by self-consciousness, by an internal sensation, which is owing to an essential unity.  ’For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him; even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.’

It would be interesting, if it were feasible, to point out the epoch at which the text mode of arguing in polemic controversy became predominant; I mean by single texts without any modification by the context.  I suspect that it commenced, or rather that it first became the fashion, under the Dort or systematic theologians, and during the so called Quinquarticular Controversy.  This quotation from St. Paul is a striking instance: ­for St. Paul is speaking of the holy spirit of which true spiritual Christians are partakers, and by which or in which those Christians are enabled to search all things, even the deep things of God.  No person is here spoken of, but reference is made to the philosophic principle, that can only act immediately, that is, interpenetratively, as two globules of quicksilver, and co-adunatively.  Now, perceiving and knowing were considered as immediate acts relatively to the objects perceived and known: ­’ergo’, the ‘principium sciendi’ must be one (that is, homogeneous or consubstantial) with the ‘principium essendi quoad objectum cognitum’.  In order therefore for a man to understand, or even to know of, God, he must have a god-like spirit communicated to him, wherewith, as with an inward eye, which is both eye and light, he sees the spiritual truths.  Now I have no objection to his calling this spirit a ‘person,’ if only the term ‘person’ be so understood as to permit of its being partaken of by all spiritual creatures, as light and the power of vision are partaken of by all seeing ones.  But it is too evident that Sherlock supposes the Father, as Father, to possess a spirit, that is, an intellective faculty, by which he knows the Spirit, that is, the third co-equal Person; and that this Spirit, the Person, has a spirit, that is, an intellective faculty, by which he knows the Father; and the ‘Logos’ in like manner relatively to both.  So too, the Father has a ‘logos’ with which he distinguishes the ’Logos’; ­and the ‘Logos’ has a ‘logos’, and so on:  that is to say, there are three several though not severed triune Gods, each being the same position three times ‘realiter positum’, as three guineas from the same mint, supposing them to differ no more than they appear to us to differ; ­but whether a difference wholly and exclusively numerical is a conceivable notion, except under the predicament of space and time; whether it be not absurd to affirm it, where interspace and interval cannot be affirmed without absurdity ­this is the question; or rather it is no question.

Ib. .

Nor do we divide the substance, but unite these three Persons in one numerical essence:  for we know nothing of the unity of the mind, but self-consciousness, as I showed before; and therefore as the self-consciousness of every Person to itself makes them distinct Persons, so the mutual consciousness of all three divine Persons to each other makes them all but one infinite God:  as far as consciousness reaches, so far the unity of a spirit extends, for we know no other unity of a mind or spirit, but consciousness.

But this contradicts the preceding paragraph, in which the Father is self-conscious that he is the Father and not the Son, and the Son that he is not the Father, and that the Father is not he.  Now how can the Son’s being conscious that the Father is conscious that he is not the Son, constitute a numerical unity?  And wherein can such a consciousness as that attributed to the Son differ from absolute certainty?  Is not God conscious of every thought of man; ­and would Sherlock allow me to deduce the unity of the divine consciousness with the human?  Sherlock’s is doubtless a very plain and intelligible account of three Gods in the most absolute intimacy with each other, so that they are all as one; but by no means of three persons that are one God.  I do not wonder that Waterland and the other followers of Bull were alarmed.

Ib. .

Even among men it is only knowledge that is power.  Human power, and human knowledge, as that signifies a knowledge how to do anything, are commensurate; whatever human skill extends to, human power can effect:  nay, every man can do what he knows how to do, if he has proper instruments and materials to do it with.

This proves that perfect knowledge supposes perfect power:  and that they are one and the same.  “If he have proper instruments:” ­does not this show that the means are supposed co-present with the knowledge, not the same with it?

Ib.

For it is nothing but thought which moves our bodies, and all the members of them, which are the immediate instruments of all human force and power:  excepting mechanical motions which do not depend upon our wills, such as the motion of the heart, the circulation of the blood, the concoction of our meat and the like.  All voluntary motions are not only directed but caused by thought:  and so indeed it must be, or there could be no motion in the world; for matter cannot move itself, and therefore some mind must be the first mover, which makes it very plain, that infinite truth and wisdom is infinite and almighty power.

Even this, though not ill-conceived, is inaccurately expressed.

Ib. .

There is no contradiction that three infinite minds should be absolutely perfect in wisdom, goodness, justice and power; for these are perfections which may be in more than one, as three men may all know the same things, and be equally just and good:  but three such minds cannot be absolutely perfect without being mutually conscious to each other, as they are to themselves.

Will any man in his senses affirm, that my knowledge is increased by saying “all” three times following?  Is it not mere repetition in time?  If the Son has thoughts which the Father, as the Father, could not have but for his interpenetration of the Son’s consciousness, then I can understand it; but then these are not three Absolutes, but three modes of perfection constituting one Absolute; and by what right Sherlock could call the one Father, more than the other, I cannot see.

Ib. .

And yet if we consider these three divine Persons as containing each other in themselves, and essentially one by a mutual consciousness, this pretended contradiction vanishes:  for then the Father is the one true God, because the Father has the Son and the Holy Spirit in himself:  and the Son may he called the one true God, because the Son has the Father and the Holy Ghost in himself, &c.

Nay, this is to my understanding three Gods, and Sherlock seems to have brought in the material phantom of a thing or substance.

Ib. .

But if these three distinct Persons are not separated, but essentially united unto one, each of them may be God, and all three but one God:  for if these three Persons, ­each of whom [Greek:  monadikos], as it is in the Creed, singly by himself, not separately from the other divine Persons, is God and Lord, are essentially united into one, there can be but one God and one Lord; and how each of these persons is God, and all of them but one God, by their mutual consciousness, I have already explained.

­“That is, ­if the three Persons are not three;” ­so might the Arian answer, unless Sherlock had shown the difference of separate and distinct relatively to mind.  “For what other separation can be conceived in mind but distinction?  Distinction may be joined with imperfection, as ignorance, or forgetfulness; and so it is in men: ­and if this be called separation by a metaphor from bodies, then the conclusion would be that in the Supreme Mind there is distinction without imperfection; and then the question is, whence comes plurality of Persons?  Can it be conceived other than as the result of imperfection, that is, finiteness?

Ib. .

  Thus each Divine Person is God, and all of them but the same one God;
  as I explained it before.

O no! asserted it.

Ib. -9.

This one supreme God is Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, a Trinity in Unity, three Persons and one God.  Now Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, with all their divine attributes and perfections (excepting their personal properties, which the Schools call the ‘modi subsistendi’, that one is the Father, the other the Son, and the other the Holy Ghost, which cannot be communicated to each other) are whole and entire in each Person by a mutual consciousness; each feels the other Persons in himself, all their essential wisdom, power, goodness, justice, as he feels himself, and this makes them essentially one, as I have proved at large.

Will not the Arian object, “You admit the ‘modus subsistendi’ to be a divine perfection, and you affirm that it is incommunicable.  Does it not follow therefore, that there are perfections which the All-perfect does not possess?” This would not apply to Bishop Bull or Waterland.

Sect.  V. .

St. Austin in his sixth book of the Trinity takes notice of a common argument used by the orthodox fathers against the Arians, to prove the co-eternity of the Son with the Father, that if the Son be the Wisdom and Power of God, as St. Paul teaches (1 ‘Cor’. i.) and God was never without his Wisdom and Power, the Son must he co-eternal with the Father. But this acute Father discovers a great inconvenience in this argument, for it forces us to say that the Father is not wise, but by that Wisdom which he begot, not being himself Wisdom as the Father:  and then we must consider whether the Son himself, as he is God of God, and Light of Light, may be said to be Wisdom of Wisdom, if God the Father be not Wisdom, but only begets Wisdom.

The proper answer to Augustine is, that the Son and Holy Ghost are necessary and essential, not contingent:  and that ‘his’ argument has a still greater inconvenience, as shewn in note .

Ib. pp. 110-113.

But what makes St. Gregory dispute thus nicely, and oppose the common and ordinary forms of speech?  Did he in good earnest believe that there is but one man in the world?  No, no! he acknowledged as many men as we do; a great multitude who had the same human nature, and that every one who had a human nature was an individual man, distinguished and divided from all other individuals of the same nature.  What makes him so zealous then against saying, that Peter, James and John are three men?  Only this; that he says man is the name of nature, and therefore to say there are three men is the same as to say, there are three human natures of a different kind; for if there are three human natures, they must differ from each other, or they cannot be three; and so you deny Peter, James, and John to be [Greek:  homoousioi], or of the same nature; and for the same reason we must say that though the Father be God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, yet there are not three Gods, but [Greek:  mia theotaes], one Godhead and Divinity.

Sherlock struggles in vain, in my opinion at least, to clear these Fathers of egregious logomachy, whatever may have been the soundness of their faith, spite of the quibbles by which they endeavoured to evince its rationality.  The very change of the terms is suspicious.  “Yes! we might say three Gods” (it would be answered,) “as we say and ought to say three men:  for man and humanity, [Greek:  anthropos] and [Greek:  anthropotaes] are not the same terms; ­so if the Father be God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, there would be three Gods, though not [Greek:  treis theotaetes], ­that is, three Godheads.”

Ib. -16.

Gregory Nyssen tells us that [Greek:  theos] is [Greek:  theataes] and [Greek:  ephoros], the inspector and governor of the world, that is, it is a name of energy, operation and power; and if this virtue, energy, and operation be the very same in all the Persons of the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, then they are but one God, but one power and energy. The Father does nothing by himself, nor the Son by himself, nor the Holy Ghost by himself; but the whole energy and operation of the Deity relating to creatures begins with the Father, passes to the Son, and from Father and Son to the Holy Spirit; the Holy Spirit does not act anything separately; there are not three distinct operations, as there are three Persons, [Greek:  alla mia tis ginetai agathou Boulaematos kinaesis kai diakosmaesis]; ­but one motion and disposition of the good will, which passes through the whole Trinity from Father to Son, and to the Holy Ghost, and this is done [Greek:  achronos kai adiaretos], without any distance of time, or propagating the motion from one to the other, but by one thought, as it is in one numerical mind and spirit, and therefore, though they are three Persons, they are but one numerical power and energy.

But this is either Tritheism or Sabellianism; it is hard to say which.  Either the [Greek:  Boulaema] subsists in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and not merely passes through them, and then there would be three numerical [Greek:  Boulaemata], as well as three numerical Persons:  ‘ergo’, [Greek:  treis theoi ae theatai] (according to Gregory Nyssen’s shallow and disprovable etymology), which would be Tritheism:  or [Greek:  hen ti ginetai Boulaema], and then the Son and Holy Ghost are but terms of relation, which is Sabellianism.  But in fact this Gregory and the others were Tritheists in the mode of their conception, though they did not wish to be so, and refused even to believe themselves such.

Gregory Nyssen, Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus and Damascen were charged with “a kind of Tritheism” by Petavius and Dr. Cudworth, who, according to Sherlock, have “mistaken their meaning.”  See pp. 106-9, of this “Vindication.”

Ib. .

For I leave any man to judge, whether this [Greek:  mia kinaesis Boulaematos], this one single motion of will, which is in the same instant in Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, can signify anything else but a mutual consciousness, which makes them numerically one, and as intimate to each other, as every man is to himself, as I have already explained it.

Is not God conscious to all my thoughts, though I am not conscious of God’s?  Would Sherlock endure that I should infer:  ‘ergo’, God is numerically one with me, though I am not numerically one with God?  I have never seen, but greatly wish to see, Waterland’s controversial tracts against Sherlock.  Again:  according to Sherlock’s conception, it would seem to follow that we ought to make a triad of triads, or an ennead.

1.  Father ­Son ­Holy Ghos.  Son ­Father ­Holy Ghos.  Holy Ghost ­Son ­Father.

Else there is an ‘x’ in the Father which is not in the Son, a ‘y’ in the Son which is not in the Father, and a ‘z’ in the Holy Ghost which is in neither:  that is, each by himself is not total God.

Ib. .

But however he might be mistaken in his philosophy, he was not in his divinity; for he asserts a numerical unity of the divine nature, not a mere specific unity, which is nothing but a logical notion, nor a collective unity, which is nothing but a company who are naturally many:  but a true subsisting numerical unity of nature; and if the difficulty of explaining this, and his zeal to defend it, forced him upon some unintelligible niceties, to prove that the same numerical human nature too is but one in all men, it is hard to charge him with teaching, that there are three independent and co-ordinate Gods, because we think he has not proved that Peter, James, and John, are but one man.  This will make very foul work with the Fathers, if we charge them with all those erroneous conceits about the Trinity, which we can fancy in their inconvenient ways of explaining that venerable mystery, especially when they compare that mysterious unity with any natural unions.

So that after all this obscuration of the obscure, Sherlock ends by fairly throwing up his briefs, and yet calls out, “Not guilty!  ’Victoria’!” And what is this but to say:  These Fathers did indeed involve Tritheism in their mode of defending the Tri-personality; but they were not Tritheists: ­though it would be far more accurate to say, that they were Tritheists, but not so as to make any practical breach of the Unity; ­as if, for instance, Peter, James, and John had three silver tickets, by shewing one of which either or all three would have the same thing as if they had shewn all three tickets, and ‘vice versa’, all three tickets could produce no more than each one; each corresponding to the whole.

Ib.

I am sure St. Gregory was so far from suspecting that he should be charged with Tritheism upon this account, that he fences against another charge of mixing and confounding the ‘Hypostases’ or Persons, by denying any difference or diversity of nature, [Greek:  hos ek tou mae dechesthai taen kata physin diaphoran, mixin tina ton hypostaseon kai anakuklaesin kataskeuzonta], which argues that he thought he had so fully asserted the unity of the divine essence, that some might suspect he had left but one Person, as well as one nature in God.

This is just what I have said, .  Whether Sabellianism or Tritheism, I observed is hard to determine.  Extremes meet.

Ib. .

Secondly, to this ‘homo-ousiotes’ the Fathers added a numerical unity of the divine essence.  This Petavius has proved at large by numerous testimonies, even from those very Fathers, whom he before accused for making God only collectively one, as three men are one man; such as Gregory Nyssen, St. Cyril, Maximus, Damascen; which is a demonstration, that however ‘he might mistake’ their explication of it, from the unity of human nature, they were far enough from Tritheism, or one collective God.

This is most uncandid.  Sherlock, even to be consistent with his own confession, Se. , ought to have said, “However he might mistake their ‘intention’, in consequence of their inconvenient and unphilosophical explication;” which mistake, in fact, consisted in taking them at their word.

Ib.

Petavius greatly commends Boethius’s explication of this mystery, which is the very same he had before condemned in Gregory Nyssen, and those other Fathers. ­That Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are one God, not three Gods:  ‘hujus conjunctionis ratio est indifferentia’:  that is, such a sameness of nature as admits of no difference or variety, or an exact ‘homo-ousiotes’, as he explains it. Those make a difference, who augment and diminish, as the Arians do; who distinguish the Trinity into different natures, as well as Persons, of different worth and excellency, and thus divide and multiply the Trinity into a plurality of Gods.  ’Principium enim pluralitatis alteritas est.  Praeter alteritatem enim nec pluralitas quid sit intelligi potest’.

Then if so, what becomes of the Persons?  Have the Persons attributes distinct from their nature; ­or does not their common nature constitute their common attributes?  ‘Principium enim, &c.’

Ib. .

That the Fathers universally acknowledged that the operation of the whole Trinity, ‘ad extra’, is but one, Petavius has proved beyond all contradiction; and hence they conclude the unity of the divine nature and essence; for every nature has a virtue and energy of its own; for nature is a principle of action, and if the energy and operation be but one, there can be but one nature; and if there be two distinct and divided operations, if either of them can act alone without the other, there must be two divided natures.

Then it was not the Son but the whole Trinity that was crucified:  for surely this was an operation ‘ad extra’.

Ib. .

But to do St. Austin right, though he do not name this consciousness, yet he explains this Trinity in Unity by examples of mutual consciousness.  I named one of his similitudes before, of the unity of our understanding, memory, and will, ‘which’ are all conscious to each other; that we remember what we understand and will; we understand what we remember and will; and what we will we remember and understand; and therefore all these three faculties do penetrate and comprehend each other.

‘Which’!  The ‘man’ is self-conscious alike when he remembers, wills, and understands; but in what sense is the generic term “memory” conscious to the generic word “will?” This is mere nonsense.  Are memory, understanding, and volition persons, ­self-subsistents?  If not, what are they to the purpose?  Who doubts that Jéhovah is consciously powerful, consciously wise, consciously good; and that it is the same Jéhovah, who in being omnipotent, is good and wise; in being wise, omnipotent and good; in being good, is wise and omnipotent?  But what has all this to do with a distinction of Persons?  Instead of one Tri-unity we might have a mille-unity.  The fact is, that Sherlock, and (for aught I know) Gregory Nyssen, had not the clear idea of the Trinity, positively; but only a negative Arianism.

Ib. .

He proceeds to shew that this unity is without all manner of confusion and mixture, for the mind that loves, is in the love. And the knowledge of the mind which knows and loves itself, is in the mind, and in its love, because it loves itself, knowing, and knows itself loving:  and thus also two are in each, for the mind which knows and loves itself, with its knowledge is in love, and with its love is in knowledge.

Then why do we make tri-personality in unity peculiar to God?

The doctrine of the Trinity (the foundation of all rational theology, no less than the precondition and ground of the rational possibility of the Christian Faith, that is, the Incarnation and Redemption), rests securely on the position, ­that in man ’omni actioni praeit sua propria passio; Deus autem est actus purissimus sine ulla potentialitate’.  As the tune produced between the breeze and Eolian harp is not a self-subsistent, so neither memory, nor understanding, nor even love in man:  for he is a passive as well as active being:  he is a patible agent.  But in God this is not so.  Whatever is necessarily of him, (God of God, Light of Light), is necessarily all act; therefore necessarily self-subsistent, though not necessarily self-originated.  This then is the true mystery, because the true unique; that the Son of God has origination without passion, that is, without ceasing to be a pure act:  while a created entity is, as far as it is merely creaturely and distinguishable from the Creator, a mere ‘passio’ or recipient.  This unicity we strive, not to ‘express’, for that is impossible; but to designate, by the nearest, though inadequate, analogy, ­’Begotten’.

Ib. .

As for the Holy Ghost, whose nature is represented to be love, I do not indeed find in Scripture that it is any where said, that the Holy Ghost is that mutual love, wherewith Father and Son love each other:  but this we know, that there is a mutual love between Father and Son:  ’the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hands’. ­John ii.  ’And the Father loveth the Son, and sheweth him all things that himself doeth’.-John ; and our Saviour himself tells us, ’I love the Father’. ­John xi.  And I shewed before, that love is a distinct act, ’and therefore in God must be a person:  for there are no accidents nor faculties in God.’

This most important, nay, fundamental truth, so familiar to the elder philosophy, and so strongly and distinctly enunciated by Philo Judaeus, the senior and contemporary of the Evangelists, is to our modern divines darkness and a sound.

Sect.  VI. pp. 147-8.

  Yes; you’ll say, that there should be three Persons, each of which is
  God, and yet but one God, is a contradiction:  but what principle of
  natural reason does it contradict?

Surely never did argument vertiginate more!  I had just acceded to Sherlock’s exposition of the Trinity, as the Supreme Being, his reflex act of self-consciousness and his love, all forming one supreme mind; and now he tells me, that each is the whole Supreme Mind, and denies that three, each ‘per se’ the whole God, are not the same as three Gods!  I grant that division and separation are terms inapplicable, yet surely three distinct though undivided Gods, are three Gods.  That the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are the one true God, I fully believe; but not Sherlock’s exposition of the doctrine.  Nay, I think it would have been far better to have worded the mystery thus: ­The Father together with his Son and Spirit, is the one true God.

“Each ‘per se’ God.”  This is the [Greek:  proton mega pseudos] of Sherlock’s scheme.  Each of the three is whole God, because neither is, or can be ‘per se’; the Father himself being ‘a se’, but not ‘per se’.

Ib. .

For it is demonstrable that if there be three Persons and one God, each Person must be God, and yet there cannot be three distinct Gods, but one.  For if each Person be not God, all three cannot be God, unless the Godhead have Persons in it which are not God.

Three persons having the same nature are three persons; ­and if to possess without limitation the divine nature, as opposed to the human, is what we mean by God, why then three such persons are three Gods, and will bethought so, till Gregory Nyssen can persuade us that John, James, and Peter, each possessing the human nature, are not three men.  John is a man, James is a man, and Peter is a man:  but they are not three men, but one man!

Ib. .

I affirm, that natural reason is not the rule and measure of expounding Scripture, no more than it is of expounding any other writing.  The true and only way to interpret any writing, even the Scriptures themselves, is to examine the use and propriety of words and phrases, the connexion, scope, and design of the text, its allusion to ancient customs and usages, or disputes.  For there is no other good reason to be given for any exposition, but that the words signify so, and the circumstances of the place, and the apparent scope of the writer require it.

This and the following paragraph are excellent.  ‘O si sic omnia’!

Ib. .

Reconcile men to the doctrine (of the Trinity), and the Scripture is plain without any farther comment.  This I have now endeavoured; and I believe our adversaries will talk more sparingly of absurdities and contradictions for the future, and they will lose the best argument they have against the orthodox expositions of Scripture.

Good doctor! you sadly over-rated both your own powers, and the docility of your adversaries.  If so clear a head and so zealous a Trinitarian as Dr. Waterland could not digest your exposition, or acquit it of Tritheism, little hope is there of finding the Unitarians more persuadable.

Ib. .

Though Christ be God himself, yet if there be three Persons in the Godhead, the equality and sameness of nature does not destroy the subordination of Persons:  a Son is equal to his Father by nature, but inferior to him as his Son:  if the Father, as I have explained it, be original mind and wisdom, the Son a personal, subsisting, but reflex image of his Father’s wisdom, though their eternal wisdom be equal and the same, yet the original is superior to the image, the Father to the Son.

But why?  We men deem it so, because the image is but a shadow, and not equal to the original; but if it were the same in all perfections, how could that, which is exactly the same, be less?  Again, God is all Being: ­consequently there can nothing be added to the idea, except what implies a negation or diminution of it.  If one and the same Being is equal to the Father, as touching his Godhead, but inferior as man; then it is + ‘m-x’, which is not = + ‘m’.  But of two men I may say, that they are equal to each other.  A. = + courage-wisdom.  B. = + wisdom-courage.  Both wise and courageous; but A. inferior in wisdom, B. in courage.  But God is all-perfect.

Ib. .

  So born before all creatures, as [Greek:  prototokos] also signifies,
  ‘that by him were all things created’.

’All things were created by him, and for him, and he is before all things’, (which is the explication of [Greek:  portotokos pasaes ktiseos], begotten before the whole creation’, and therefore no part of the creation himself.)

This is quite right.  Our version should here be corrected. [Greek:  Proto] or [Greek:  protaton] is here an intense comparative, ­’infinitely before’.

Ib. .

  That he ’being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal
  with God’, &c. ­Phil. i, 9.

I should be inclined to adopt an interpretation of the unusual phrase [Greek:  harpagmon] somewhat different both from the Socinian and the Church version: ­“who being in the form of God did not ’think equality with God a thing to be seized with violence’, but made, &c.”

Ib. .

Is a mere creature a fit lieutenant or representative of God in personal or prerogative acts of government and power?  Must not every being be represented by one of his own kind, a man by a man, an angel by an angel, in such acts as are proper to their natures? and must not God then be represented by one who is God?  Is any creature capable of the government of the world?  Does not this require infinite wisdom and infinite power?  And can God communicate infinite wisdom and infinite power to a creature or a finite nature?  That is, can a creature be made a true and essential God?

This is sound reasoning.  It is to be regretted that Sherlock had not confined himself to logical comments on the Scripture, instead of attempting metaphysical solutions.

Ib. pp. 161-3.

I find little or nothing to ‘object to’ in this exposition, from pp. 161-163 inclusively, of ‘Phil’. i, 9.  And yet I seem to feel, as if a something that should have been prefixed, and to which all these considerations would have been excellent seconds, were missing.  To explain the Cross by the necessity of sacrificial blood, and the sacrificial blood as a type and ’ante’-delegate or pre-substitute of the Cross, is too like an ‘argumentum in circulo’.

Ib. .

And though Christ be the eternal Son of God, and the natural Lord and heir of all things, yet ‘God hath’ in this ‘highly exalted him’ and given ‘him a name which is above every name, that at’ (or in [Greek:  en]) ‘the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven’, &c. ­Phil. i, 10, 11.

Never was a sublime passage more debased than by this rendering of [Greek:  en] by ‘at’, instead of ‘in’; ­’at’ the ‘phenomenon’, instead of ‘in’ the ‘noumenon’.  For such is the force of ‘nomen’, name, in this and similar passages, namely, ‘in vera et substantiali potestate Jesu’:  that is, [Greek:  en logo kai dia logou], the true ‘noumenon’ or ’ens intelligibile’ of Christ.  To bow at hearing the ‘cognomen’ may become a universal, but it is still only a non-essential, consequence of the former.  But the debasement of the idea is not the worst evil of this false rendering; ­it has afforded the pretext and authority for un-Christian intolerance.

Ib. .

’The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son’. ­John .  Should the Father judge the world he ‘must’ judge as the maker and sovereign of the world, by the strict rules of righteousness and justice, and then how could any sinner be saved?

(Why?  Is mercy incompatible with righteousness?  How then can the Son be righteous?)

  But he has committed judgment to the Son, as a mediatory king, who
  judges by the equity and chancery of the Gospel.

This article required exposition incomparably more than the simple doctrine of the Trinity, plain and evident ‘simplici intuitu’, and rendered obscure only by diverting the mental vision by terms drawn from matter and multitude.  In the Trinity all the ‘Hows’? may and should be answered by ‘Look’! just as a wise tutor would do in stating the fact of a double or treble motion, as of a ball rolling north ward on the deck of a ship sailing south, while the earth is turning from west to east.  And in like manner, that is, ‘per intuitum intellectualem’, must all the mysteries of faith be contemplated; ­they are intelligible ‘per se’, not discursively and ‘per analogiam’.  For the truths are unique, and may have shadows and types, but no analogies.  At this moment I have no intuition, no intellectual diagram, of this article of the commission of all judgment to the Son, and therefore a multitude of plausible objections present themselves, which I cannot solve ­nor do I expect to solve them till by faith I see the thing itself. ­Is not mercy an attribute of the Deity, as Deity, and not exclusively of the Person of the Son?  And is not the authorizing another to judge by equity and mercy the same as judging so ourselves?  If the Father can do the former, why not the latter?

Ib. .

And therefore now it is given him to have life in himself, as the Father hath life in himself, as the original fountain of all life, by whom the Son himself lives:  all life is derived from God, either by eternal generation, or procession, or creation; and thus Christ hath life in himself also; to the new creation he is the fountain of life:  ‘he quickeneth whom he will’.

The truths which hitherto had been metaphysical, then began to be historical.  The Eternal was to be manifested in time.  Hence Christ came with signs and wonders; that is, the absolute, or the anterior to cause and effect, manifested itself as a ‘phenomenon’ in time, but with the predicates of eternity; ­and this is the only possible definition of a miracle ‘in re ipsa’, and not merely ‘ad hominem’, or ‘ad ignorantiam’.

Ib. .

His next argument consists in applying such things to the divinity of our Saviour as belong to his humanity; ’that he increased in wisdom, &c.: ­that he knows not the day of judgment’; ­which he evidently speaks of himself as man:  as all the ancient Fathers confess.  In St. Mark it is said, ’But of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels that are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father’.  St. Matthew does not mention the Son:  ’Of that day and hour knoweth no man, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only’.

How much more politic, as well as ingenuous, it had been to have acknowledged the difficulty of this text.  So far from its being evident, the evidence would be on the Arian side, were it not that so many express texts determine us to the contrary.

Ib.

Which shows that the Son in St. Matthew is included in the [Greek:  oudeis] none, or no man, and therefore concerns him only as a man:  for the Father ‘includes the whole Trinity’, and therefore includes the Son, who seeth whatever his Father doth.

This is an ‘argumentum in circulo’, and ‘petitio rei sub lite’.  Why is he called the Son in ‘antithesis’ to the Father, if it meant, “no not the Christ, except in his character of the co-eternal Son, included in the Father?” If it “concerned him only as a man,” why is he placed after the angels?  Why called the ‘Son’ simply, instead of the Son of Man, or the Messiah?

Ib.

  [Greek:  Oudeis] is not [Greek:  oudeis anthropon], but, ‘no one’:  as in
  John .  ‘No one hath seen God at any time’; that is, he is by
  essence invisible.

This most difficult text I have not seen explained satisfactorily.  I have thought that the [Greek:  aggeloi] must here be taken in the primary sense of the word, namely, as messengers, or missionary Prophets:  Of this day knoweth no one, not the messengers or revealers of God’s purposes now in heaven, no, not the Son, the greatest of Prophets, ­that is, he in that character promised to declare all that in that character it was given to him to know.

Ib. .

When St. Paul calls the Father the One God, he expressly opposes it to the many gods of the heathens.  ’For though there be that are called gods, &c. but to us, there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him’:  where the ‘one God’ and ‘one Lord and Mediator’ is opposed to the many gods and many lords or mediators which were worshipped by the heathens.

But surely the ‘one Lord’ is as much distinguished from the ‘one God’, as both are contradistinguished from the ‘gods many and lords many’ of the heathens.  Besides ‘the Father’ is not the term used in that age in distinction from the gods that are no gods; but [Greek:  Ho épi panton theos].

Ib. .

  ‘The Word was with God’; that is, it was not yet in the world, or not
  yet made flesh; but with God. ­’John’ .  So that to be ‘with God’,
  signifies nothing but not to be in the world.

’The Word was with God.’

Grotius does say, that this was opposed to the Word’s being made flesh, and appearing in the world:  but he was far enough from thinking that these words have only a negative sense:  for he tells us what the positive sense is, that with God is [Greek:  para to patri], with the Father, and explains it by what Wisdom says, ‘Prov’. vi.  ‘Then I was by him, &c.’ which he does not think a ‘prosopopoeia’, but spoken of a subsisting person.

But even this is scarcely tenable even as Greek.  Had this been St. John’s meaning, surely he would have said, [Greek:  en theo], not [Greek:  pros ton theon], in the nearest proximity that is not confusion.  But it is strange, that Sherlock should not have seen that Grotius had a hankering toward Socinianism, but, like a ‘shy cock’, and a man of the world, was always ready to unsay what he had said.

  “that it should not be lawful for any man to publish or compose
  another Faith or Creed than that which was defined by the Nicene
  Council.”

Ed.]