"If divine power and dominion be derived and exercised. "partially, temporarily," or in " certain emergencies only, "it makes the Persons to be, and to be styled Gods; not "by nature, but by grace." Your notion of dominion making God to be God, has been sufficiently exposed in the former parts. I need only ask here, what was God before the creatures were made? Or did he then commence God, by nature, when he created the universe, and began to have dominion over it? The Doctor appears to be in the utmost perplexity, how to account for the Son's being called God, Joh. i. 1. He is forced to quit his notion of dominion. Sometimes it is because he was in μoppy e after the creation, and m sometimes because he was partaker of divine power and glory (he knew not how to say dominion) before the creation: and sometimes nμеTоxã TÕS AUTODÉOU JEÓTYTos. So that now we have the Doctor's own authority for contradicting him, if he tells us again, that the word God is always a word of office. When he was considering the Son as God before the creation, he should have thought a little farther, that the Father was then also God, and should have told us in what sense he was so. But to proceed: give me leave to observe here, that the Son is God, not by nature, but by grace, in consequence of your own principles. Being a creature, and finite, he can exercise the divine power and dominion no otherwise than partially; and since he did not exercise the divine power and dominion to the utmost, before his resurrection, he exercised it only in certain emergencies; and since the exercise began then, and is to end after the day of judgment, it is barely temporary: and so, by your own characters, you make him God, by grace, like angels, magistrates, and prophets; only his dominion is larger, and for a longer period of time: this is your God by nature. But you are very excusable for not doing what it is ridiculous, at first sight, even so much as to pretend to. For 1 Script. Doctr. p. 73. ed. 2. Ibid. p. 73. m Ibid. p. 240. cd. 2. how should the Son be God by nature, upon your principles, when the Father himself, whatever his metaphysical nature may be, (which the Doctor allows not to come into consideration,) is GOD by office only; might not have been God at all, if he had pleased to make no creatures; and may cease to be God, in the Scripture-sense of the word, whenever he will, by letting all things drop into their primitive nothing. Now unless nature and office signify the same, it is not easy to conceive, upon the Doctor's principles, how any Person can be God, by nature, at all. You say, " if the divine powers and domi"nion be derived to, and exercised by a nature, person, "or intelligent substance, UNIVERSALLY," (which is impossible to suppose in a finite creature,)" PERMA"NENTLY," (which is contrary to your own supposition of a kingdom which is to have an end,) "UNALTER"ABLY," (though an alteration is presumed in respect of the Son, and might be supposed even in respect of the Father himself;) if these things be so; that is, if contradictions be true, what then? Then "such a Being, or Person, is God-by nature," &c. And this you give us as "the true meaning of Gal. iv. 1." But, I hope, we shall have more respect for an inspired Apostle than to father any such meaning upon him. For the true sense and import of it, I refer you to the P learned gentleman, who has so well defended this text against Dr. Clarke. You add, "Had not the Scriptures this sense of the word "God, they could not be intelligible or reconcileable," (p. 113.) But are you well assured that you understand whatever is intelligible or reconcileable? "The metaphy"sical definition," you say, " cannot be the only Scrip"ture-sense of the term God." You allow then that it may be the principal, though not the only Scripturesense; which I am glad to hear from you. The learned Doctor will not admit the metaphysical sense to be 9 ever 66 • Script. Doctr. p. 243, 296. alias 210, 263. Reply, p. 301. True Script. Doctr. continued, p. 73, &c. aScript. Doctr. p. 296. Reply, p. 119, 290. the Scripture-sense of the term God. The metaphysical sense, he expressly says, is "never intended;" but the "constant usage of Scripture" is different. "The word "God, in Scripture, is ALWAYS a relative word of office:" which though the Doctor has no proof of, nor ground for, nor is himself well satisfied in; yet he knew why he said it, having very good prudential reasons for it. For, if the metaphysical sense be ever intended, when the word God is spoken of the Father, no good reason can be assigned why it should not be so always, when spoken of the same Person: and if this be the current and most usual sense of the word God, in Scripture, we shall have a fair handle to prove that it was intended in the same sense, when spoken, in such and such circumstances, of the Son: or, at least, the Doctor will have little or no pretence left, upon his principles, for saying that the Son is truly and properly God. You observe, that the metaphysical definition of one self-existent, underived, independent, supreme Being, would exclude the Son, who is derived. This is the sum of your argument, and clearer than you have put it. But I must observe to you, that this definition, or something like it, hath long passed current with men who believed a Trinity of divine Persons, and were never apprehensive of any such consequence as you would draw from it. It is properly a definition of the Tò Osov, the divine nature, abstracting from the consideration of the distinction of Persons, which is the usual method that the Schoolmen and others have taken; and there the words self-existent, underived, independent, are not considered as personal, but essential characters. Necessarilyexisting, uncreated, immutable, all-sufficient, are what they mean in that definition: otherwise it is a definition of the Person of the Father only, singly considered. But if, instead of metaphysics, (which must always be content to stand corrected by Gospel Revelation,) we choose to take our definition of God from Scripture, then that of Me ▾ Deus est essentia spiritualis, intelligens, verax, bona, pura, justa, misericors, liberrima, immensæ potentiæ, et sapientiæ, Pater æternus qui Filium lancthon, which I have put into the margin, will be more full and complete. QUERY XXV. 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? 66 YOU tell me, in answer, that it is "not clear that the "Ante-Nicene Church professed the notion of INDIVI"DUAL consubstantiality:" that "the objector cannot produce one single passage in all Catholic Ante-Nicene antiquity, which proves an INDIVIDUAL OF NUMERI"CAL consubstantiality in the three divine Persons." This answer is scarce becoming the gravity of a man, or the sincerity of a Christian, in so serious and weighty an argument. Did I speak of individual consubstantiality? or, if I had, could I mean it in your sense? I ask, whether the Fathers believed the three Persons to be one substance; and do affirm that they did, universally. You answer, that they did not assert the three Persons to be one Person; which is the constant sense you make of individual. And here you would make a show, as if the objector had been mistaken, and as if you contradicted him when all resolves into a trifling equivocation, and you really contradict him not at all. That present scholastic notion, as you call it, of three Persons being one Person, Hypostasis, or Suppositum, is nowhere present, that I know of, amongst any that own a Trinity: neither is it the scholastic notion; as any man may see, that will : imaginem suam ab æterno genuit, et Filius imago Patris coæterna, et Spiritus Sanctus procedens a Patre et Filio. Melanct. Loc. Theolog, de Deo. but look into the Schoolmen, and read with any judgment. Individual has been generally owned, but not in your sense; and numerical too, but in a sense very different from what you pretend to oppose it in: and therefore, to be plain with you, this way of proceeding, in an important controversy, is neither fair towards your adversaries, nor sincere towards the readers; but, at best, is only solemn trifling. You know, or you know little in this controversy, that all the Fathers, almost to a man, either expressly or implicitly, asserted the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. Call it individual, or call it specific; that is not now the question. They unanimously maintained that the Son was not of any created or mutable substance, but strictly divine; and so closely and nearly allied to the Father's Person, (in a mysterious way above comprehension,) that the substance of the Son might be justly called the Father's substance, both being one. And this is all that ever any sober Catholic meant by individual or numerical; as I have often observed. Is not this sufficient to urge against Dr. Clarke and you, who make the Son of an inferior substance, differing entirely in kind from the Father's; in short, à creature, though you care not to speak it in broad terms? This is what you have not so much as one Catholic Post-Nicene or Ante-Nicene writer to countenance you plainly in. The main of your doctrine, the very points wherein your scheme is contained, and on which it turns, and which distinguish you from the present orthodox, stand condemned by all antiquity. Do you imagine all this is to be turned off, only by equivocating upon the word numerical; or by throwing out the term scholastic, to make weak persons believe, that we have borrowed our doctrine from the Schoolmen only? No: we know, and you may know, if you please to examine, that, as to the main of our doctrine of the blessed Trinity, we have the universal Church, as high as any records reach, concurring with To them we appeal, as well as to the Scriptures, us. |