ewide of the purpose, to prove what nobody denies, namely, a subordination, in some sense, of the Son to the Father; could he have found but one plain text against his eternity or consubstantiality, the points in question?

QUERY XXI.

211

Whether he be not forced to supply his want of Scriptureproof by very strained and remote inferences, and very uncertain reasonings from the nature of a thing confessedly obscure and above comprehension; and yet not more so than God's eternity, ubiquity, prescience, or other attributes, which we are obliged to acknowledge for certain truths?

QUERY XXII.

214

Whether his (the Doctor's) whole performance, whenever he differs from us, be any thing more than a repetition of this assertion, that being and person are the same, or that there is no medium between Tritheism and Sabellianism? Which is removing the cause from Scripture to natural reason, not very consistently with the title of his book.

QUERY XXIII.

230

Whether the Doctor's notion of the Trinity be more clear and intelligible than the other?

The difficulty in the conception of the Trinity is, how three

Persons can be one God.

Does the Doctor deny that every one of the Persons, singly, is God? No: Does he deny that God is one? No: How then are three one?

Does one and the same authority, exercised by all, make them one, numerically or individually one and the same God? That is hard to conceive how three distinct Beings,

according to the Doctor's scheme, can be individually one God, that is, three Persons one Person.

If therefore one God necessarily signifies but one Person, the consequence is irresistible; either that the Father is that one Person, and none else, which is downright Sabellianism; or that the three Persons are three Gods.

Thus the Doctor's scheme is liable to the same difficulties with the other.

There is indeed one easy way of coming off, and that is, by saying that the Son and Holy Spirit are neither of them God, in the Scripture-sense of the word. But this is cutting the knot, instead of unlying it; and is in effect to say, they are not set forth as divine Persons in Scrip

ture.

Does the communication of divine powers and attributes from Father to Son and Holy Spirit, make them one God, the divinity of the two latter being the Father's divinity? Yet the same difficulty recurs; for either the Son and Holy Ghost have distinct attributes, and a distinct divinity of their own, or they have not: if they have, they are (upon the Doctor's principle) distinct Gods from the Father, and as much as finite from infinite, creature from Creator; and then how are they one? If they have not, then, since they have no other divinity, but that individual divinity, and those attributes which are inseparable from the Father's essence, they can have no distinct essence from the Father's; and so (according to the Doctor) will be one and the same Person, that is, will be names only.

Q. Whether this be not as unintelligible as the orthodox notion of the Trinity, and liable to the like difficulties: a communication of divine powers and attributes, without the substance, being as hard to conceive, nay, much harder, than a communication of both together?

QUERY XXIV.

243

Whether Gal. iv. 8. may not be enough to determine the dis

pute betwixt us; since it obliged the Doctor to confess, that Christ is fby nature truly God, as truly as man is by nature truly man?

He equivocates, indeed, there, as usual. For, he will have it to signify that Christ is God by nature, only as having, by that nature which he derives from the Father, true divine power and dominion: that is, he is truly God by nature, as having a nature distinct from, and inferior to God's, wanting & the most essential character of God, self-existence. What is this but trifling with words, and playing fast and loose?

QUERY XXV.

262

Whether it be not clear from all the genuine remains of antiquity, that the Catholic Church before the Council of Nice, and even from the beginning, did believe the eternity and consubstantiality of the Son; if either the oldest creeds, as interpreted by those that recite them; or the testimonies of the earliest writers, or the public censures passed upon heretics, or particular passages of the ancientest Fathers, can amount to a proof of a thing of this nature?

QUERY XXVI.

268

Whether the Doctor did not equivocate or prevaricate strangely, in saying, h" The generality of writers before "the Council of Nice were, in the whole, clearly on his "side:" when it is manifest, they were, in the general, no farther on his side, than the allowing a subordination amounts to; no farther than our own Church is on his side, while in the main points of difference, the ETERNITY and CONSUBSTANTIALITY, they are clearly against him? that is, they were on his side, so far as we acknowledge him to be right, but no farther.

QUERY XXVII.

276

Whether the learned Doctor may not reasonably be sup

Reply, p. 81.

$ Ibid. p. 92.

h Answer to Dr. Wells, p. 28.

posed to say, the Fathers are on his side, with the same meaning and reserve as he pretends our Church forms to favour him; that is, provided he may interpret as he pleases, and make them speak his sense, however contradictory to their own: and whether the true reason, why he does not care to admit the testimonies of the Fathers as proofs, may not be, because they are against him? 299

QUERY XXVIII.

Whether it be at all probable, that the primitive Church should mistake in so material a point as this is; or that the whole stream of Christian writers should mistake in telling us what the sense of the Church was; and whether such a cloud of witnesses can be set aside without weakening the only proof we have of the canon of Scripture, and the integrity of the sacred text ?

QUERY XXIX.

323

Whether private reasoning, in a matter above our comprehension, be a safer rule to go by, than the general sense and judgment of the primitive Church, in the first three hundred years; or, supposing it doubtful what the sense of the Church was within that time, whether what was determined by a council of three hundred bishops soon after, with the greatest care and deliberation, and has satisfied men of the greatest sense, piety, and learning, all over the Christian world, for one thousand four hundred years since, may not satisfy wise and good men

now?

QUERY XXX.

326

Whether, supposing the case doubtful, it be not a wise man's part to take the safer side; rather to think too highly, than too meanly of our blessed Saviour; rather to pay a modest deference to the judgment of the ancient and modern Church, than to lean to one's own understanding?

336

QUERY XXXI.

Whether any thing less than clear and evident demonstration, on the side of Arianism, ought to move a wise and good man, against so great appearances of truth on the side of orthodoxy, from Scripture, reason, and antiquity; and whether we may not wait long before we find such demonstration?

Postscript to the first edition.

340

347