agree, that nothing but an absolute equality and coor"dination in God the Father and the Son, can make

them two Gods; and that the real subordination of the "Son to the Father preserves the Church from Poly"theism," (p. 100.) In the next page, you appeal to "Athanasius for the sense of the Nicene and Post-Nicene "Fathers," and to Hilary and Basil, in order to clear your doctrine from the charge of Tritheism; little imagining that these good and great men have a condemned your doctrine, as Polytheism and Paganism, over and over; as all know, that are any thing conversant in their works. Well: but what have they said to countenance your notion? This only; that unity of principle clears the Church's doctrine from the charge of Tritheism. Not your doctrine, not the Arian doctrine; but the Catholic doctrine. For since equality of nature, and unity of principle too, are both requisite; the Catholics admitting the former (as their adversaries well knew) had nothing farther needful to insist upon, in answer to the charge of Tritheism, but the latter. Unity of principle and sameness of nature together might make two Persons one God, (according to the unanimous opinion of the ancients,) but not either of them alone.

But now, in respect to the Arian (that is, your) doctrine, the pretence of unity of principle is perfectly absurd. The Son is supposed a creature of the Father's: if his being of, or from, the Father, in this sense, makes him one God with the Father, it will follow, that angels, or men, or even things inanimate, are one God with the Father also. Indeed, to do you justice, you do not so much as pretend, that unity of principle, or any thing else, can make him one God with the Father. Which is enough to show, how very widely you differ from the ancients, in the main point of all. They thought it necessary to assert, that Father and Son were both one God. So Irenæus, Athenagoras, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, Origen,

■ Athanas. Orat. iii. p. 565, 566. Hilar. p. 916. Basil. Ep. lxx. p. 863. Hom. xxvii. p. 601, &c.

Hippolytus, Lactantius, and even Eusebius himself, after some debates upon it: as may appear from the testimonies before referred to: and of the Post-Nicene Catholic writers, in general, every body knows how they contended for it. They thought that the divinity of the Son could not be otherwise secured, and Polytheism at the same time avoided, than by asserting Father and Son to be one God; and they thought right. But what do you do? Or how can you contrive to clear your scheme? We ask if the Son be God, as well as the Father? You say, Yes: how then is there but one God? Your answer is, The Father is supreme, and therefore he, singly, is the one God. This is taking away what you gave us before, and retracting what you asserted of the Son. If supremacy only makes a Person God, the Son is no God, upon your principles: or, if he is God notwithstanding, then Father and Son are two Gods. Turn this over, as often as you please, you will find it impossible to extricate yourself from it. You can say only this; that you do not admit two supreme Gods. This is very true: no more did the Pagan Polytheists, nor the idolatrous Samaritans, nor others condemned in Scripture for Polytheism. You stand pretty fair upon the principles of philosophy; and are not guilty of any manifest error in metaphysics, upon this article. But you are such a Tritheist, as, upon Scriptureprinciples, and upon the principles of the Catholic Church, both before and after the Nicene Council, must stand condemned. Your belief of the Fathers being for you, in this particular, is pure fancy and fiction; owing, I suppose, to your seeing only some pieces of them in Dr. Clarke. You can find but very little among the ancients, which either directly or indirectly favours your notion of a supreme and a subordinate God. They condemned it

b Qu. ii. p. 16.

N. B. I do not say that the Ante-Nicene writers would have called the Arian doctrine Tritheism; perhaps, blasphemy rather. But they would have charged it with Paganism, (see Tertullian above, p. 39.) which comes to the same with what the Post-Nicene said of it.

implicitly, in their disputes with the Pagans, all along: and no sooner was it started in the Church, but the Catholics were alarmed at it; and immediately condemned it as reviving of creature-worship, and restoring Gentilism, and Pagan Polytheism. Two Gods, a greater and a less, a supreme and an inferior, no Scripture, no sound reason, no good Catholic ever taught; no church would have endured. A separate God from the Supreme, an inferior created God, would not only have been looked upon as Polytheism and contradiction, considered in itself; but as heresy and blasphemy, if understood of God and Christ.

To conclude this head: if we understand the word God in the strict sense, it is ridiculous to charge the Arian scheme with plurality of Gods. But, if it be understood in the loose popular sense, or in your own sense of it, it is equally ridiculous to deny it. Mr. Nye, who, you know, has studied this controversy much and long, and is no friend either to the truly Catholic scheme or yours, condemning both as Tritheism, is pleased however so far to give the preference to the former, as to declare, that "the Arian heresy is only a more absurd and "less defensible Tritheism d." Of all the four schemes which have been followed, the Sabellian, Catholic, Arian, and Socinian; the Sabellian only, which entirely ungods the Son, (that is, by denying him any distinct divine personality, and admitting only a human personality, viz. of the man Christ,) and annihilates the Holy Ghost, stands perfectly clear of any appearance of Polytheism. The Catholic appears chargeable, but really is not so: the Arian and Socinian both appear so, and are so; wherefore a charge of Tritheism must come from them with a very ill grace. For, was the charge really just, and were we weak enough to assert three coordinate Gods; yet even that could not be more repugnant to the whole drift, scope, and tenor of the sacred writ, than the admitting a plurality of Gods, great and little, sovereign and inferior,

d Explicat. of the Articles of Div. Unity, p. 91.

infinite and finite, uncreated and created, to receive our addresses, and to be the objects of our love, faith, hope, confidence, and religious adoration.

QUERY XXIII.

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 untying it; and is in effect to say, they are not set forth as divine Persons in Scripture. 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?

YOU are pleased to say, that "had the author at all "understood Dr. Clarke's books, he would not have "offered these considerations, they are such gross mis"takes," (p. 105.) It might be very pardonable to mistake the Doctor, who deals much in general and ambiguous terms; and I am the more excusable, as mistaking on the tender and candid side. I must own to you, I was not then aware, that the Doctor had denied Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, to be one God. I did not apprehend, he would scruple to call them all together one God; because that would be manifestly excluding Son and Holy Ghost from the one Godhead; and then our dispute about his meaning would be perfectly at an end. I should have been very unwilling to make so home a charge as that upon him but since you are a friend, and declare in public that this is his meaning, so it shall be hereafter. And now, I will not ask how three Persons can be one God, upon the Doctor's principles; but I will put the question thus: How can it be true (upon the Doctor's principles) that every Person of the Trinity is God; and true likewise, that there is but one God? The question or difficulty being thus fairly stated, I conceive that my reasoning against the other will, in the main, hold good against this too; only mutatis mutandis. Now then, clear me up this difficulty in the Doctor's scheme, and free it from self-contradiction, if you are able. I have been searching diligently several pages of your answer, to see if I might