CHAPTER 1. Mr Biddle’s first chapter examined — Of the Scriptures. MR BIDDLE having imposed upon himself the task of insinuating his abominations by applying the express words of Scripture in way of answer to his captious and sophistical queries, was much straitened in the very entrance, in that he could not find any text or tittle in them that is capable of being wrested to give the least color to those imperfections which the residue of men with whom he is, in the whole system of his doctrine, in compliance and communion, do charge them withal: as, that there are contradictions in them, though in things of less importance; f130 that many things are or may be changed and altered in them; that some of the books of the Old Testament are lost; and that those that remain are not of any necessity to Christians, although they may be read with profit. Their subjecting them, also, and all their assertions, to the last judgment of reason, is of the same nature with the other. But it not being my purpose to pursue his opinions through all the secret windings and turnings of them, so [as] to drive them to their proper issue, but only to discover the sophistry and falseness of those insinuations which grossly and palpably overthrow the foundations of Christianity, I shall not force him to speak to any thing beyond what he hath expressly delivered himself unto.

This first chapter, then, concerning the Scriptures, both in the Greater and Less Catechisms, without farther trouble I shall pass over, seeing that the stating of the questions and answers in them may be sound, and according to the common faith of the saints, in those who partake not with Mr B.’s companions in their low thoughts of them, which here he doth not profess; only, I dare not join with him in his last assertion, that such and such passages are the most affectionate in the book of God, seeing we know but in part, and are not enabled nor warranted to make such peremptory determinations concerning the several passages of Scripture, set in comparison and competition for affectionateness by ourselves, CHAPTER 2. Of the nature of God. HIS second chapter, which is concerning God, his essence, nature, and properties, is second to none in his whole book for blasphemies and reproaches of God and his word.

The description of God which he labors to insinuate is, that he is “one person, of a visible shape and similitude, finite, limited to a certain place, mutable, comprehensible, and obnoxious to turbulent passions, not knowing the things that are future and which shall be done by the sons of men; whom none can love with all his heart, if he believe him to be ‘one in three distinct persons.’“ That this is punctually the apprehension and notion concerning God and his being which he labors to beget, by his suiting Scripture expressions to the blasphemous insinuations of his questions, will appear in the consideration of both questions and answers, as they lie in the second chapter of the Greater Catechism.

His first question is, “How many Gods of Christians are there?” and his answer is, “One God,” Ephesians 4:6; whereunto he subjoins secondly, “Who is this one God?” and answers, “The Father, of whom are all things,” 1 Corinthians 8:6.

That the intendment of the connection of these queries, and the suiting of words of Scripture to them, is to insinuate some thoughts against the doctrine of the Trinity, is not questionable, especially being the work of him that makes it his business to oppose it and laugh it to scorn. With what success this attempt is managed, a little consideration of what is offered will evince. It is true, Paul says, “To us there is one God,” treating of the vanity and nothingness of the idols of the heathen, whom God hath threatened to deprive of all worship and to starve out of the world. The question as here proposed, “How many Gods of Christians are there?” having no such occasion administered unto it as that expression of Paul, being no parcel of such a discourse as he insists upon, sounds pleasantly towards the allowance of many gods, though Christians have but one.

Neither is Mr B. so averse to polytheism as not to give occasion, on other accounts, to this supposal. Jesus Christ he allows to be a god. All his companions, in the undertaking against his truly eternal divine nature, still affirm him to be “Homo Deificatus” and “Deus Factus,” and plead “pro vera deitate Jesu Christi,” denying yet, with him, that by nature he is God, of the same essence with the Father; so, indeed, grossly and palpably falling into and closing with that abomination which they pretend above all men to avoid, in their opposition to the thrice holy and blessed Trinity. Of those monstrous figments in Christian religion which on this occasion they have introduced, of making a man to be an eternal God, of worshipping a mere creature with the worship due only to the infinitely blessed God, we shall speak afterward.

We confess that to us there is one God, but one God, and let all others be accursed. “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth,” let them be destroyed, according to the word of the Lord, “from under these heavens,” Jeremiah 10:11. Yet we say, moreover, that “there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one,” 1 John 5:7.

And in that very place whence Mr B. cuts off his first answer, as it is asserted that there is “one God,” so “one Lord” and “one Spirit,” the fountain of all spiritual distributions, are mentioned; which whether they are not also that one God, we shall have farther occasion to consider.

To the next query concerning this one God, who he is, the words are, “The Father, from whom are all things;” in themselves most true. The Father is the one God whom we worship in spirit and in truth; and yet the Son also is “our Lord and our God,” John 20:28, even “God over all, blessed for ever,” Romans 9:5. The Spirit also is the God “which worketh all in all,” 1 Corinthians 12:6,11. And in the name of that one God, who is the “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” are we baptized, whom we serve, who to us is the one God over all, Matthew 28:19. Neither is that assertion of the Father’s being the one and only true God any more prejudicial to the Son’s being so also, than that testimony given to the everlasting deity of the Son is to that of the Father, notwithstanding that to us there is but one God. The intendment of our author in these questions is to answer what he found in the great exemplar of his Catechism, the Racovian, two of whose questions are comprehensive of all that is here delivered and intended by Mr B. But of these things more afterward.

His next inquiry is after the nature of this one God, which he answers with that of our Savior in John 4:24, “God is a spirit.” In this he is somewhat more modest, though not so wary as his great master, Faustus Socinus, and his disciple (as to his notions about the nature of God) Vorstius. His acknowledgment of God to be a spirit frees him from sharing in impudence in this particular with his master, who will not allow any such thing to be asserted in these words of our Savior. His words are (Fragment. Disput. de Adorat. Christi cure Christiano Franken, p. 60), “Non est fortasse eorum verborum ea sententia, quam plerique omnes arbitrantur: Deum scilicet esse spiritum, neque enim subaudiendum esse dicit aliquis verbum ejsti< , quasi vox pneu~ma , recto casu accipienda sit, sed ajpo< koinou~ repetendum verbum zhtei~ quod paulo ante praecessit, et pneu~ma quarto casu accipiendum, ita ut sententia sit, Deum quaerere et postulare spiritum.”

Vorstius also follows him, Not. ad Disput. 3, p. 200. Because the verb substantive “is” is not in the original expressed (than the omission whereof nothing being more frequent, though I have heard of one who, from the like omission, 2 Corinthians 5:17, thought to have proved Christ to be the “new creature” there intended), contrary to the context and coherence of the words, design of the argument in hand insisted on by our Savior (as he was a bold man), and emphaticalness of significancy in the expression as it lies, he will needs thrust in the word “seeketh,” and render the intention of Christ to be, that God seeks a spirit, that is, the spirit of men, to worship him. Herein, I say, is Mr B. more modest than his master (as, it seems, following Crellius, who in the exposition of that place of Scripture is of another mind), though in craft and foresight he be outgone by him; for if God be a spirit indeed, one of a pure spiritual essence and substance, the image, shape, and similitude, which he afterwards ascribes to him, his corporeal posture, which he asserts (ques. 4), will scarcely be found suitable unto him. It is incumbent on some kind of men to be very wary in what they say, and mindful of what they have said; falsehood hath no consistency in itself, no more than with the truth. Smalcius in the Racovian Catechism is utterly silent as to this question and answer. But the consideration of this also will in its due place succeed.

To his fourth query, about a farther description of God by some of his attributes, I shall not need to subjoin any thing in way of animadversion; for however the texts he cites come short of delivering that of God which the import of the question to which they are annexed doth require, yet being not wrested to give countenance to any perverse apprehension of his nature, I shall not need to insist upon the consideration of them.

Ques. 5, he falls closely to his work, in these words, “Is not God, according to the current of the Scriptures, in a certain place, namely, in heaven?” whereunto he answers by many places of Scripture that make mention of God in heaven.

That we may not mistake his mind and intention in this query, some light may be taken from some other passages in his book. In the preface he tells you “That God hath a similitude and shape” (of which afterward), “and hath his place in the heavens” (that “God is in no certain place,” he reckons amongst those errors he opposes, in the same preface; of the same kind he asserteth the belief to be of God’s “being infinite and incomprehensible);” and, Cat. Less. p. 6, “That God glisteneth with glory, and is resident in a certain place of the heavens, so that one may distinguish between his right and left hand by bodily sight.” This is the doctrine of the man with whom we have to do concerning the presence of God. “He is,” saith he, “in heaven, as in a certain place.” That which is in a certain place is finite and limited, as, from the nature of a place and the manner of any thing’s being in a place, shall be instantly evinced. God, then, is finite and limited; be it so (that he is infinite and incomprehensible is yet a Scripture expression): yea, he is so limited as not to be extended to the whole compass and limit of the heavens, but he is in a certain place of the heavens, yea, so circumscribed as that a man may see from his right hand to his left; — wherein Mr B. comes short of Mohammed, who affirms that when he was taken into heaven to the sight of God, he found three days’ journey between his eye-brows; which if so, it will be somewhat hard for any one to see from his right hand to his left, being supposed at an answerable distance to that of his eye-brows. Let us see, then, on what testimony, by what authority, Mr B. doth here limit the Almighty and confine him to a certain place, shutting up his essence and being in some certain part of the heavens, cutting him thereby short, as we shall see in the issue, in all those eternal perfections whereby hitherto he hath been known to the sons of men.

The proof of that lies in the places of Scripture which, making mention of God, say, “he is in heaven,” and that “he looketh down from heaven,” etc.; of which, out of some concordance, some twenty or thirty are by him repeated. Not to make long work of a short business, the Scriptures say, “God is in heaven.” Who ever denied it? But do the Scriptures say he is nowhere else? Do the Scriptures say he is confined to heaven, so that he is so there as not to be in all other places? If Mr B. thinks this any argument, “God is in heaven, therefore his essence is not infinite and immense, therefore he is not everywhere,” we are not of his mind. He tells you, in his preface, that he “asserts nothing himself.” I presume his reason was, lest any should call upon him for a proof of his assertions. What he intends to insinuate, and what conceptions of God he labors to ensnare the minds of unlearned and unstable souls withal, in this question under consideration, hath been, from the evidence of his intendment therein, and the concurrent testimony of other expressions of his to the same purpose, demonstrated. To propose any thing directly in way of proof of the truth of that which he labors insensibly to draw the minds of men unto, he was doubtless conscious to himself of so much disability for its performance as to waive that kind of procedure; and therefore his whole endeavor is, having filled, animated, and spirited the understandings of men with the notion couched in his question, to cast in some Scripture expressions, that, as they lie, may seem fitted to the fixing of the notion before begotten in them. As to any attempt of direct proof of what he would hare confirmed, the man of reason is utterly silent.

None of those texts of Scripture where mention is made of God’s being in heaven are, in the coherence and dependence of speech wherein they lie, suited or intended at all to give answer to this question, or any like it, concerning the presence of God or his actual existence in any place, but only in respect of some dispensations of God and works of his, whose fountain and original he would have us to consider in himself, and to come forth from him there where in an eminent manner he manifests his glory.

God is, I say, in none of the places by him urged said to be in heaven in respect of his essence or being, nor is it the intention of the Holy Ghost in any of them to declare the manner of God’s essential presence and existence in reference to all or any place; but only by the way of eminency, in respect of manifestations of himself and operations from his glorious presence, doth he so speak of him. And, indeed, in those expressions, heaven cloth not so much signify a place as a thing, or at least a place in reference to the things there done, or the peculiar manifestations of the glory of God there; so that if these places should be made use of as to the proof of the figment insinuated, the argument from them would be a non causa pro causa. The reason why God is said to be in heaven is, not because his essence is included in a certain place so called, but because of the more eminent manifestations of his glory there, and the regard which he requires to be had of him manifesting his glory as the first cause and author of all the works which outwardly are of him. 3. God is said to be in heaven in an especial manner, because he hath assigned that as the place of the saints’ expectation of that enjoyment and eternal fruition of himself which he hath promised to bless them withal; but for the limiting of his essence to a certain place in heaven, the Scriptures, as we shall see, know nothing, yea, expressly and positively affirm the contrary.

Let us all, then, supply our catechumens, in the room of Mr B.’s, with this question, expressly leading to the things inquired after: — What says the Scripture concerning the essence and presence of God? is it confined and limited to a certain place, or is he infinitely and equally present everywhere?

Ans. “TheLORD your God, he is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath,” Joshua 2:11. “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? behold, the heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?” 1 Kings 8:27. “Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there,” etc., <19D907> Psalm 139:7-10. “The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool,” Isaiah 66:1, Acts 7:47,48. “Am I a God at hand, saith theLORD, and not a God afar off? Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the\parLORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith theLORD,” Jeremiah 23:23,24.

It is of the ubiquity and omnipresence of God that these places expressly treat; and whereas it was manifested before that the expression of God being in heaven doth not at all speak to the abomination which Mr B. would insinuate thereby, the naked rehearsal of those testimonies, so directly asserting and ascribing to the Almighty an infinite, unlimited presence, and that in direct opposition to the gross apprehension of his being confined to a certain place in heaven, is abundantly sufficient to deliver the thoughts and minds of men from any entanglements that Mr B.’s questions and answers (for though it be the word of the Scripture he insists upon, yet male dum recitas incipit esse tuum) might lead them into.

On that account no more need be added; but yet this occasion being administered, that truth itself, concerning the omnipresence or ubiquity of God, may be farther cleared and confirmed.

Through the prejudices and ignorance of men, it is inquired whether God be so present in any certain place as not to be also equally elsewhere, everywhere? Place has been commonly defined to be “superficies corporis ambientis.”

Because of sundry inextricable difficulties and the impossibility of suiting it to every place, this definition is now generally decried. That now commonly received is more natural, suited to the natures of things, and obvious to the understanding. A place is “spatium corporis susceptivum,” — any space wherein a body may be received and contained. The first consideration of it is as to its fitness and aptness so to receive any body: so it is in the imagination only. The second, as to its actual existence, being filled with that body which it is apt to receive: so may we imagine innumerable spaces in heaven which are apt and able to receive the bodies of the saints, and which actually shall be filled with them when they shall be translated thereunto by the power of God. Presence in a place is the actual existence of a person in his place, or, as logicians speak, in his ubi, that is, answering the inquiry after him where he is. Though all bodies are in certain places, yet per sons only are said to be present in them. Other things have not properly a presence to be ascribed to them; they are in their proper places, but we do not say they are present in or to their places.

This being the general description of a place and the presence of any therein, it is evident that properly it cannot be spoken at all of God that he is in one place or other, for he is not a body that should fill up the space of its receipt, nor yet in all places, taking the word properly, for so one essence can be but in one place; and if the word should properly be ascribed to God in any sense, it would deprive him of all his infinite perfections.

It is farther said that there be three ways of the presence of any in reference to a place or places. Some are so in a place as to be circumscribed therein in respect of their parts and dimensions, such are their length, breadth, and depth: so cloth one part of them fit one part of the place wherein they are, and the whole the whole; so are all solid bodies in a place; so is a man, his whole body in his whole place, his head in one part of it, his arms in another. Some are so conceived to be in a place as that, in relation to it, it may be said of them that they are there in it so as not to be anywhere else, though they have not parts and dimensions filling the place wherein they are, nor are punctually circumscribed with a local space: such is the presence of angels and spirits to the places wherein they are, being not infinite or immense. These are so in some certain place as not to be at the same time, wherein they are so, without it, or elsewhere, or in any other place. And this is proper to all finite, immaterial substances, that are so in a place as not to occupy and fill up that space wherein they are. In respect of place, God is immense, and indistant to all things and places, absent from nothing, no place, contained in none; present to all by and in his infinite essence and being, exerting his power variously, in any or all places, as he pleaseth, revealing and manifesting his glory more or less, as it seemeth good to him.

Of this omnipresence of God, two things are usually inquired after: 1. The thing itself, or the demonstration that he is so omnipresent; 2. The manner of it, or the manifestation and declaring how he is so present. Of this latter, perhaps, sundry things have been over curiously and nicely by some disputed, though, upon a thorough search, their disputes may not appear altogether useless. The schoolmen’s distinctions of God’s being in a place repletive, immensive, impletive, superexcedenter, conservative, attinctive, manifestative, etc. have, some of them at least, foundation in the Scriptures and right reason. That which seems most obnoxious to exception is their assertion of God to be everywhere present, instar puncti; but the sense of that and its intendment is, to express how God is not in a place, rather than how he is. He is not in a place as quantitive bodies, that have the dimensions attending them. Neither could his presence in heaven, by those who shut him up there, be any otherwise conceived, until they were relieved by the rare notions of Mr. B. concerning the distinct places of his right hand and left. But it is not at all about the manner of God’s presence that I am occasioned to speak, but only of the thing itself. They who say he is in heaven only speak as to the thing, and not as to the manner of it. When we say he is everywhere, our assertion is also to be interpreted as to that only; the manner of his presence being purely of a philosophical consideration, his presence itself divinely revealed, and necessarily attending his divine perfections; yea, it is an essential property of God. The properties of God are either absolute or relative. The absolute properties of God are such as may be considered without the supposition of any thing else whatever, towards which their energy and efficacy should be exerted. His relative are such as, in their egress and exercise, respect some things in the creatures, though they naturally and eternally reside in God. Of the first sort is God’s immensity; it is an absolute property of his nature and being. For God to be immense, infinite, unbounded, unlimited, is as necessary to him as to be God; that is, it is of his essential perfection so to be. The ubiquity of God, or his presence to all things and persons, is a relative property of God; for to say that God is present in and to all things supposes those things to be.

Indeed, the ubiquity of God is the habitude of his immensity to the creation. Supposing the creatures, the world that is, God is by reason of his immensity in-distant to them all; or if more worlds be supposed (as all things possible to the power of God without any absurdity may be supposed), on the same account as he is omnipresent in reference to the present world, he would be so to them and all that is in them.

Of that which we affirm in this matter this is the sum: God, who in his own being and essence is infinite and immense, is, by reason thereof, present in and to the whole creation equally, — not by a diffusion of his substance, or mixture with other things, heaven or earth, in or upon them, but by an inconceivable indistancy of essence to all things, — though he exert his power and manifest his glory in one place more than another; as in heaven, in Zion, at the ark, etc.

That this is the doctrine of the Scriptures in the places before mentioned needs no great pains to evince. In that, 1 Kings 8:27, the design of Solomon in the words gives light to the substance of what he asserted. He had newly, with labor, cost, charge, and wisdom, none of them to be paralleled in the world, built a temple for the worship of God. The house being large and exceedingly glorious, the apprehensions of all the nations round about (that looked on, and considered the work he had in hand) concerning the nature and being of God being gross, carnal, and superstitious, themselves answerably worshipping those who by nature were not God, and his own people of Israel exceedingly prone to the same abomination, lest any should suppose that he had thoughts of including the essence of God in the house that he had built, he clears himself in this confession of his faith from all such imaginations, affirming that though indeed God would dwell on the earth, yet he was so far from being limited unto or circumscribed in the house that he had built, that “the heaven and the heaven of heavens,” any space whatever that could be imagined, the highest heaven, could not, “cannot contain him;” so far is he from having a certain place in heaven where he should reside, in distinction from other places where he is not. “He is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath,” Joshua 2:11. That which the temple of God was built unto, that “the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain.” Now, the temple was built to the being of God, to God as God: so Acts 7:47, “But Solomon built him an house;” him, — that is, the Most High, — “who dwelleth not,” is not circumscribed, “in temples made with hands,” verse 48.

That of <19D907> Psalm 139:7-10 is no less evident; the presence or face of God is expressly affirmed to be everywhere: “Whither shall I go from thy face?

If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I go into hell, behold, thou art there” As God is affirmed to be in heaven, so everywhere else; now that he is in heaven, in respect of his essence and being, is not questioned.

Neither can that of the prophet Isaiah, <231601> chap. 66:1, be otherwise understood but as an ascribing of an ubiquity to God, and a presence in heaven and earth: “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool.”

The words are metaphorical, and in that way expressive of the presence of a person; and so God is present in heaven and earth. That the earth should be his footstool, and yet himself be so inconceivably distant from it as the heaven is from the earth (an expression chosen by himself to set out the greatest distance imaginable), is not readily to be apprehended. “He is not far from every one of us: for in him we live, and move, and have our being,” Acts 17:27,28.

The testimony which God gives to this his perfection in Jeremiah 23:23,24, is not to be avoided; more than what is here spoken by God himself as to his omnipresence we cannot, we desire not to speak: “Can any hide himself in secret places, that I shall not see him? saith theLORD. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith theLORD.” Still where mention is made of the presence of God, there heaven and earth (which two are comprehensive of, and usually put for the whole creation) are mentioned: and herein he is neither to be thought afar off nor near, being equally present everywhere, in the hidden places as in heaven; that is, he is not distant from any thing or place, though he take up no place, but is nigh all things, by the infiniteness and existence of his being.

From what is also known of the nature of God, his attributes and perfections, the truth delivered may be farther argued and confirmed; as, — 1. God is absolutely perfect; whatever is of perfection is to be ascribed to him: otherwise he could neither be absolutely self-sufficient, all-sufficient, nor eternally blessed in himself. He is absolutely perfect, inasmuch as no perfection is wanting to him, and comparatively above all that we can conceive or apprehend of perfection. If, then, ubiquity or omnipresence be a perfection, it no less necessarily belongs to God than it does to be perfectly good and blessed. That this is a perfection is evident from its contrary. To be limited, to be circumscribed, is an imperfection, and argues weakness We commonly say, we would do such a thing in such a place could we be present unto it, and are grieved and troubled that we cannot be so. That it should be so is an imperfection attending the limitedness of our natures. Unless we will ascribe the like to God, his omnipresence is to be acknowledged. If every perfection, then, be in God (and if every perfection be not in any, he is not God), this is not to be denied to him. 2. Again; if God be now “in a certain place in heaven,” I ask where he was before these heavens were made? These heavens have not always been.

God was then where there was nothing but God, — no heaven, no earth, no place. In what place was God when there was no place? When the heavens were made, did he cease this manner of being in himself, existing in his own infinite essence, and remove into the new place made for him? Or is not God’s removal out of his existence in himself into a certain place a blasphemous imagination? “Ante omnia Deus erat solus ipse sibi, et locus, et mundus, et omnia,” Tertul. Is this change of place and posture to be ascribed to God Moreover, if God be now only in a certain place of the heavens, if he should destroy the heavens and that place, where would he then be in what place? Should he cease to be in the place wherein he is, and begin to be in, to take up, and possess another? And are such apprehensions suited to the infinite perfections of God? Yea, may we not suppose that he may create another heaven? can he not do its. How should he be present there? or must it stand empty? or must he move himself thither? or make himself bigger than he was, to fill that heaven also? 3. The omnipresence of God is grounded on the infiniteness of his essence.

If God be infinite, he is omnipresent. Suppose him infinite, and then suppose there is any thing besides himself, and his presence with that thing, wherever it be, doth necessarily follow; for if he be so bounded as to be in his essence distant from any thing, he is not infinite. To say God is not infinite in his essence denies him to be infinite or unlimited in any of his perfections or properties; and therefore, indeed, upon the matter Socinus denies God’s power to be infinite, because he will not grant his essence to be, Cat. chap. 11 part 1. That which is absolutely infinite cannot have its residence in that which is finite and limited, so that if the essence of God be not immense and infinite, his power, goodness, etc., are also bounded and limited; so that there are, or may be, many things which in their own natures are capable of existence, which yet God cannot do for want of power. How suitable to the Scriptures and common notions ‘of mankind concerning the nature of God this is will be easily known. It is yet the common faith of Christians that God is ajperi>graptov kai< a]peirov . 4. Let reason (which the author of these Catechisms pretends to advance and honor, as some think, above its due, and therefore cannot decline its dictates) judge of the consequences of this gross apprehension concerning the confinement of God to the heavens, yea, “a certain place in the heavens,” though he “glister” never so much “in glory” there where he is.

For, (1.) He must be extended as a body is, that so he may fill the place, and have parts as we have, if he be circumscribed in a certain place; which though our author thinks no absurdity, yet, as we shall afterward manifest, it is as bold an attempt to make an idol of the living God as ever any of the sons of men engaged into. (2.) Then God’s greatness and ours, as to essence and substance, differ only gradually, but are still of the same kind. God is bigger than a man, it is true, but yet with the same kind of greatness, differing from us as one man differs from another. A man is in a certain place of the earth, which he fills and takes up; and God is in a certain place of the heavens, which he fills and takes up. Only some gradual difference there is, but how great or little that difference is, as yet we are not taught. (3.) I desire to know of Mr B. what the throne is made of that God sits on in the heavens, and how far the glistering of his glory doth extend, and whether that glistering of glory doth naturally attend his person as beams do the sun, or shining doth fire, or can he make it more or less as he pleaseth? (4.) Doth God fill the whole heavens, or only some part of them? If the whole, being of such substance as is imagined, what room will there be in heaven for any body else? Can a lesser place hold him 1 or could he fill a greater? If not, how came the heavens [to be] so fit for him? Or could he not have made them of other dimensions, less or greater? If he be only in a part of heaven, as is more than insinuated in the expression that he is “in a certain place in the heavens,” I ask why he dwells in one part of the heavens rather than another? or whether he ever removes or takes a journey, as Elijah speaks of Baal, 1 Kings 18:27, or is eternally, as limited in, so confined unto, the certain place wherein he is? Again; how cloth he work out those effects of almighty power which are at so great a distance from him as the earth is from the heavens, which cannot be effected by the intervenience of any created power, as the resurrection of the dead, etc. The power of God doubtless follows his essence, and what this extends not to that cannot reach. But of that which might be spoken to vindicate the infinitely glorious being of God from the reproach which his own word is wrested to cast upon him, this that hath been spoken is somewhat that to my present thoughts doth occur.

I suppose that Mr B. knows that in this his circumscription of God to a certain place, he transgresses against the common consent of mankind; if not, a few instances of several sorts may, I hope, suffice for his conviction.

I shall promiscuously propose them, as they lie at hand or occur to my remembrance. For the Jews, Philo gives their judgment. “Hear,” saith he, “of the wise God that which is most true, that God is in no place, for he is not contained, but containeth all. That which is made is in a place, for it must be contained and not contain.” And it is the observation of another of them, that so often as µwOqm; , a place, is said of God, the exaltation of his immense and incomparable essence (as to its manifestation) is to be understood. And the learned Buxtorf tells us that when that word is used of God, it is by an antiphrasis, to signify that he is infinite, illocal, received in no place, giving place to all. That known saying of Empedocles passed among the heathen, “Deus est circulus, cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nusquam;” and of Seneca, “Turn which way thou wilt, thou shalt see God meeting thee. Nothing is empty of him: he fills his own work.” “All things are full of God,” says the poet; and another of them: — “Estque Dei sedes nisi terrae, et pontus, et aer, Est coelum, et versus superos, quid quaerimus ultra:

Jupiter est quodcunque Tides, quocunque moveris.” f140 Of this presence of God, I say, with and unto all things, of the infinity of his essence, the very heathens themselves, by the light of nature (which Mr B. herein opposes), had a knowledge. Hence did some of them term him kosmopoiomind framing the universe,” and affirmed him to be infinite. “Primus omnium rerum desoriptionem et modum, mentis infinitae vi et ratione designari, et confici voluit,” says Cicero of Anaxagoras, Tull. de Nat. Deor. lib. 1:11; — “All things are disposed of by the virtue of one infinite mind.” And Plutarch, expressing the same thing, says he is nou~v kaqaronov pa~si , — “a pure and sincere mind, mixing itself, and mixed” (so they expressed the presence of the infinite mind) “with all things.” So Virgil, “ Jovis omnia plena,” — “All things are full of God,” (for God they intended by that name, Acts 17:25,28,29; and says Lactantius, “Convicti de uno Deo, cum id negare non possunt, ipsum se colere, afrmant, verum hoc sibi placere, ut Jupiter nominetur,” lib. 1:cap. 2.); which, as Servius on the place observes, he had taken from Aratus, whose words are: — Ek diomesqa topot a]ndrev ejw~men ArjrJhton mestai< de< diopwn ajgorai< mesth< de< qa>lassa Kai< lime>nev pa>nth de< diomeqa pa>ntev — giving a full description, in his way, of the omnipresence and ubiquity of God. The same Virgil, from the Platonics, tells us in another place: — “Spiritus intus alit, totamque infusa per artus Mens agitat molem.” — Aen. 6:726.

And much more of this kind might easily be added. The learned know where to find more for their satisfaction; and for those that are otherwise, the clear texts of Scripture cited before may suffice.

Of those, on the other hand, who have, no less grossly and carnally than he of whom we speak, imagined a diffusion of the substance of God through the whole creation, and a mixture of it with the creatures, so as to animate and enliven them in their several forms, making God an essential part of each creature, or dream of an assumption of creatures into an unity of essence with God, I am not now to speak.

CHAPTER 3. Of the drape and bodily visible figure of God. MR BIDDLE’ S question: — Is God in the Scripture said to have any likeness, similitude, person, shape?

The proposition which he would have to be the conclusion of the answers to these questions is this, That, according to the doctrine of the Scriptures, God is a person shaped like a man; — a conclusion so grossly absurd that it is refused as ridiculous by Tully, a heathen, in the person of Cotta (De Nat. Deer. lib. 1:6), against Velleius the Epicurean, the Epicureans only amongst the philosophers being so sottish as to admit that conceit. And Mr B., charging that upon the Scripture which hath been renounced by all the heathens who set themselves studiously to follow the light of nature, and, by a.strict inquiry, to search out the nature and attributes of God, principally attending to that safe rule of ascribing nothing to him that eminently included imperfection, hath manifested his pretext of mere Christianity to be little better than a cover for downright atheism, or at best of most vile and unworthy thoughts of the Divine Being. And here also doth Mr B. forsake his masters. Some of them have had more reverence of the Deity, and express themselves accordingly, in express opposition to this gross figment.

According to the method I proceeded in, in consideration of the precedent questions, shall I deal with this, and first consider briefly the scriptures produced to make good this monstrous, horrid assertion. The places urged and insisted on of old by the Anthropomorphites were such as partly ascribed a shape in general to God, partly such as mention the parts and members of God in that shape, his eyes, his arms, his hands, etc.; from all which they looked on him as an old man sitting in heaven on a throne, — a conception that Mr B. is no stranger to. The places of the first sort are here only insisted on by Mr B., and the attribution of a “likeness, image, similitude, person, and shape” unto God, is his warrant to conclude that he hath a visible, corporeal image and shape like that of a man; which is the plain intendment of his question. Now, if the image, likeness, or similitude, attributed to God as above, do no way, neither in the sum of the words themselves nor by the intendment of the places where they are used, in the least ascribe or intimate that there is any such corporeal, visible shape in God as he would insinuate, but are properly expressive of some other thing that properly belongs to him, I suppose it will not be questioned but that a little matter will prevail with a person desiring to emerge in the world by novelties, and on that account casting off that reverence of God which the first and most common notions of mankind would instruct him into, to make bold with God and the Scripture for his own ends and purposes. 1. I say then, first, in general, if the Scripture may be allowed to expound itself, it gives us a fair and clear account of its own intendment in mentioning the image and shape of God, which man was created in, and owns it to be his righteousness and holiness; in a state whereof, agreeable to the condition of such a creature, man ing created is said to be created in the image and likeness of God, — in a kind of resemblance unto that holiness and righteousness which are in him, Ephesians 4:23,24, etc.

What can hence be concluded for a corporeal image or shape to be ascribed unto God is too easily discernible. From a likeness in some virtue or property to conclude to a likeness in a bodily shape, may well befit a man that cares not what he says, so he may speak to the derogation of the glory of God. 2. For the particular places by Mr B. insisted on, and the words used in them, which he lays the stress of this proposition upon: the first two words are tWmD] and µl,x, ; both of which are used in Genesis 1:26. The word tWmD] is used Genesis 5:1, and µl,x, , Genesis 9:6; but neither of these words doth, in its genuine signification, imply any corporeity or figure. The most learned of all the rabbins, and most critically skillful in their language, hath observed and proved that the proper Hebrew word for that kind of outward form or similitude is raćTo ; and if these be ever so used, it is in a metaphorical and borrowed sense, or at ]east there is an amphiboly in the words, the Scripture sometimes using them in such subjects where this gross, corporeal sense cannot possibly be admitted: vj;n;Atmćj\ tWmd]Ki , — “Like the poison of a serpent,” Psalm 58:4.

There is, indeed, some imaginable, or rather rational, resemblance in the properties there mentioned, but no corporeal similitude. Vide Ezekiel 1:28, and 23:14 (to which may be added many more places), where if tWmD] shall be interpreted of a bodily similitude, it will afford no tolerable sense. ‘The same likewise may be said of µl,x, . It is used in the Hebrew for the essential form rather than the figure or shape; and being spoken of men, signifies rather their souls than bodies. So it is used, Psalm 73:20; which is better translated, “Thou shalt despise their soul,” than their “image.” So where it is said, Psalm 39:6, “Every man walketh in a vain show” (the same word again), however it ought to be interpreted, it cannot be understood of a corporeal similitude. So that these testimonies are not at all to his purpose. What, indeed, is the image of God, or that likeness to him wherein man was made, I have partly mentioned already, and shall farther manifest, chap. 6; and if this be not a bodily shape, it will be confessed that nothing can here be concluded for the attribution of a shape to God; and hereof an account will be given in its proper place.

The sum of Mr B.’s reasoning from these places is: “God, in the creation of the lower world and the inhabitancy thereof, making man, enduing him with a mind and soul capable of knowing him, serving him, yielding him voluntary and rational obedience; creating him in a condition of holiness and righteousness, in a resemblance to those blessed perfections in himself, requiring still of him to be holy as he is holy, to continue and abide in that likeness of his; giving him in that estate dominion over the rest of his works here below, — is said to create him in his own image and likeness, he being the sovereign lord over all his creatures, infinitely wise, knowing, just, and holy: therefore he hath a bodily shape and image, and is therein like unto a man.” “Quod erat demonstrandum.” ‘His next quotation is from Numbers 12:7,8, where it is said of Moses that he shall behold the “similitude of the LORD. ” The word is hn;WmT] ; which, as it is sometimes taken for a corporeal similitude, so it is at other times for that idea whereby things are intellectually represented. In the former sense is it frequently denied of God; as Deuteronomy 4:15, “Ye saw no manner of similitude,” etc. But it is frequently taken, in the other sense, for that object, or rather impression, whereby our intellectual apprehension is made; as in Job 4:16, “An image was before mine eyes,” namely, in his dream; which is not any corporeal shape, but that idea or objective representation whereby the mind of man understands its object, — that which is in the schools commonly called phantasm, or else an intellectual species, about the notion of which it is here improper to contend. It is manifest that, in the place here alleged, it is put to signify the clear manifestation of God’s presence to Moses, with some such glorious appearance thereof as he was pleased to represent unto him; therefore, doubtless, God hath a bodily shape.

His next quotation is taken from James 3:9, “Made after the similitude of God,” — Touwsin Qeou~ gegono>tav. Certainly Mr B. cannot be so ignorant as to think the word oJmoi>wsiv to include in its signification a corporeal similitude. The word is of as large an extent as “similitude” in Latin, and takes in as well those abstracted analogies which the understanding of man finds out, in comparing several objects together, as those other outward conformities of figure and shape which are the objects of our carnal eyes. It is the word by which the LXX. use to render the word tWmD] ; of which we have spoken before. And the examples are innumerable in the Septuagint translation, and in authors of all sorts written in the Greek language, where that word is taken at large, and cannot signify a corporeal similitude; so that it is vain to insist upon particulars.

And this also belongs to the same head of inquiry with the former, — namely, what likeness of God it was that man was created in, whether of eyes, ears, nose, etc., or of holiness, etc.

His next allegation is from Job 13:7,8, “Will ye accept his person?” wyn;p;h’ , pro>swpon aujtou~ , — an allegation so frivolous that to stand to answer it studiously would be ridiculous, 1. It is an interrogation, and doth not assert any thing. 2. The thing spoken against is proswpolhyi>a , which hath in it no regard to shape or corporeal personality, but to the partiality which is used in preferring one before another in justice. 3. The word mentioned, with its derivatives, is used in as great or greater variety of metaphorical translations than any other Hebrew word, and is by no means determined to be a signification of that bulky substance which, with the soul, concurs to make up the person of mare It is so used, Genesis 33:18, ynep]Ata, , — “Jacob pitched his tent before” (or “in the face of”) “the city.” It is confessed that it is very frequently translated pro>swpon by the LXX., as it is very variously translated by them; sometimes oJ ojfqalmo>v . See Jeremiah 38:26; Nehemiah 2:13; Job 16:16; Deuteronomy 2:36; Proverbs 27:23. Besides that, it is used in many other places for ajnti> e]nanti ajpe>nanti ejpa>nw ejnw>pion , and in many more senses. So that to draw an argument concerning the nature of God from a word so amphibological, or of such frequent translation in metaphorical speech, is very unreasonable.

Of what may be hence deduced this is the sum: “In every plea or contest about the ways, dispensations, and judgments of God, that which is right, exact, and according to the thing itself, is to be spoken, his glory not standing in the least need of our flattery or lying; therefore God is such a person as hath a bodily shape and similitude, for there is no other person but what hath so.”

His last argument is from John 5:37, “Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his shape,” — Ou]te ei+dov aujtou~ eJwra>kate . But it argues a very great ignorance in all philosophical and accurate writings, to appropriate ei+dov to a corporeal shape, it being very seldom used, either in Scripture or elsewhere, in that notion; — the Scripture having used it where that sense cannot be fastened on it, as in 1 Thessalonians 5:22, Apo< pantocesqe which may be rendered, “Abstain from every kind,” or “every appearance,” but not from every shape “of evil;” and all other Greek authors, who have spoken accurately and not figuratively of things, use it perpetually almost in one of these two senses, and very seldom if at all in the other.

How improperly, and with what little reason, these places are interpreted of a corporeal similitude or shape, hath been showed. Wherein the image of God consists the apostle shows, as was declared, determining it to be in the intellectual part, not in the bodily, Colossians 3:10, Endusa>menoi toon (a]nrqwpon) tomenon eijv epi>gnwsin kat eijko>na tou~ kti>santov aujto>n . The word here used, eijkw>n , is of a grosser signification than ei+dov , which hath its original from the intellectual operation of the mind; yet this the apostle determines to relate to the mind and spiritual excellencies, so that it cannot, from the places he hath mentioned, with the least color of reason, be concluded that God hath a corporeal similitude, likeness, person, or shape. f147 What hath already been delivered concerning the nature of God, and is yet necessarily to be added, will not permit that much be peculiarly spoken to this head, for the removal of those imperfections from him which necessarily attend that assignation of a bodily shape to him which is here aimed at. That the Ancient of Days is not really one in the shape of an old man, sitting in heaven on a throne, glistering with a corporeal glory, his hair being white and his raiment beautiful, is sufficiently evinced from every property and perfection which in the Scripture is assigned to him.

The Holy Ghost, speaking in the Scripture concerning God, cloth not without indignation suppose any thing to be likened or compared to him.

Maimonides hath observed that these words, Aph , Ira, etc., are never attributed to God but in the case of idolatry; that never any idolater was so silly as to think that an idol of wood, stone, or metal, was a god that made the heavens and earth; but that through them all idolaters intend to worship God. Now, to fancy a corporeity in God, or that he is like a creature, is greater and more irrational dishonor to him than idolatry. “To whom will ye liken God? or what likeness will ye compare unto him?” Isaiah 40:18. “Have ye not known? have ye not heard? hath it not been told you from the beginning? have ye not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is he that sitteth,” etc. “To whom then will ye liken me, or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One,” verses 21-23, 25.

Because the Scripture speaks of the eyes and ears, nostrils and arms of the Lord, and of man being made afar his likeness, if any one shall conclude that he sees, hears, smells, and hath the shape of a man, he must, upon the same reason, conclude that he hath the shape of a lion, of an eagle, and is like a drunken man, because in Scripture he is compared to them, and so of necessity make a monster of him, and worship a chimerA. f149 Nay, the Scripture plainly interprets itself as to these attribution unto God. His arm is not an arm of flesh, 2 Chronicles 32:8. Neither are his eyes of flesh, neither seeth he as man seeth, Job 10:4. Nay, the highest we can pretend to (which is our way of understanding), though it hath some resemblance of him, yet falls it infinitely short of a likeness or equality with him. And the Holy Ghost himself gives a plain interpretation of his own intendment in such expressions: for whereas, Luke 11:20, our Savior says that he “with the finger of God cast out devils;” Matthew 12:28, he affirms that he did it “by the Spirit of God,” intending the same thing. It neither is nor can righteously be required that we should produce any place of Scripture expressly affirming that God hath no shape, nor hands, nor eyes, as we have, no more than it is that he is no lion or eagle. It is enough that there is that delivered of him abundantly which is altogether inconsistent with any such shape as by Mr B. is fancied, and that so eminent a difference as that now mentioned is put between his arms and eyes and ours, as manifests them to agree in some analogy of the thing signified by them, and not in an answerableness in the same kind.

Wherefore I say, that the Scripture speaking of God, though it condescends to the nature and capacities of men, and speaks for the most part to the imagination (farther than which few among the sons of men were ever able to raise their cogitations), yet hath it clearly delivered to us such attributes of God as will not consist with that gross notion which this man would put upon the Godhead. The infinity and immutability of God do manifestly overthrow the conceit of a shape and form of God. Were it not a contradiction that a body should be actually infinite, yet such a body could not have a shape, such a one as he imagines. The shape of any thing is the figuration of it; the figuration is the determination of its extension towards several parts, consisting in a determined proportion of them to each other; that determination is a bounding and limiting of them: so that if it have a shape, that will be limited which was supposed to be infinite, which is a manifest contradiction. But the Scripture doth plainly show that God is infinite and immense, not in magnitude (that were a contradiction, as will appear anon) but in essence. Speaking to our fancy, it saith that “he is higher than heaven, deeper than hell,” Job 11:8; that “he fills heaven and earth,” Jeremiah 23:24; that “the heaven of heavens cannot contain him,” 1 Kings 8:27; and it hath many [such] expressions to shadow out the immensity of God, as was manifest in our consideration of the last query. But not content to have yielded thus to our infirmity, it delivers likewise, in plain and literal terms, the infiniteness of God: “His understanding is infinite,” <19E705> Psalm 147:5; and therefore his essence is necessarily so. This is a consequence that none can deny who will consider it till he understands the terms of it, as hath Been declared. Yet, lest any should hastily apprehend that the essence of God were not therefore neces. sadly infinite, the Holy Ghost saith, <19E503> Psalm 145:3, that “his greatness hath no end,” or is “inconceivable,” which is infinite; for seeing we can carry on our thoughts, by calculation, potentially in infinitum, — that is, whatever measure be assigned, we can continually multiply it by greater and greater numbers, as they say, in infinitum, — it is evident that there is no greatness, either of magnitude or essence, which is unsearchable or inconceivable besides that which is actually infinite. Such, therefore, is the greatness of God, in the strict and literal meaning of the Scripture; and therefore, that he should have a shape implies a contradiction. But of this so much Before as I presume we may now take it for granted.

Now, this attribute of infinity doth immediately and demonstratively overthrow that gross conception of a human shape we are in the consideration of; and so it cloth, by consequence, overthrow the conceit of any other, though a spherical shape. Again, — Whatever is incorporeal is destitute of shape; whatever is infinite is incorporeal: therefore, whatever is infinite is destitute of shape.

All the question is of the minor proposition. Let us therefore suppose an infinite body or line, and let it be bisected; either then, each half is equal to the whole, or less. If equal, the whole is equal to the part; if less, then that half is limited within certain bounds, and consequently is finite, and so is the other half also: therefore, two things which are finite shall make up an infinite; which is a contradiction.

Having, therefore, proved out of Scripture that God is infinite, it follows also that he is incorporeal, and that he is without shape.

The former argument proved him to be without such a shape as this catechist would insinuate; this, that he is without any shape at all. The same will be proved from the immutability or impassibility of God’s essence, which the Scripture assigns to him: Malachi 3:6, “I am the\parLORD; I change not” “The heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou endurest: they shall Be changed: but thou art the same,” <19A225> Psalm 102:25,26.

If he be immutable, then he is also incorporeal, and consequently without shape.

The former consequence is manifest, for every body is extended, and consequently is capable of division, which is mutation; wherefore, Being immutable, he hath no shape.

Mr B.’s great plea for the considering of his Catechism, and insisting upon the same way of inquiry with himself, is from the success which himself hath found in the discovery of sundry truths, of which he gives an account in his book to the reader. That, among the glorious discoveries made by him, the particular now insisted on is not to be reckoned, I presume Mr B. knoweth. For this discovery the world is beholding to one Audaeus, a monk, of whom you have a large account in Epiphanius, tom. 1:lib. 3, Haer. 70; as also in Theodoret, Lib. 4 Ecclesiastes Hist., cap. 10, who also gives us an account of the man and his conversation, with those that followed him. Austin also acquaints us with this worthy predecessor of our author, De Haer. cap. 1. He that thinks it worth while to know that we are not beholding to Mr B., but to this Audaeus, for all the arguments, whether taken from the creation of man in the image of God or the attribution of the parts and members of a man unto God in the Scripture, to prove him to have a visible shape, may at his leisure consult the authors above mentioned, who will not suffer him to ascribe the praise of this discovery to Mr B.’s ingenious inquiries. How the same figment was also entertained by a company of stupid monks in Egypt, who, in pursuit of their opinion, came in a great drove to Alexandria, to knock Theophilus the bishop on the head, who had spoken against them, and how that crafty companion deluded them with an ambiguity of expression, with what learned stirs ensued thereon, we have a full relation in Socrat. Ecclesiastes Hist. lib. 6:cap. 7. f151 As this madness of brain-sick men was always rejected by all persons of sobriety professing the religion of Jesus Christ, so was it never embraced by the Jews, or the wiser sort of heathens, who retained any impression of those common notions of God which remain in the hearts of men. The Jews to this day do solemnly confess, in their public worship, that God is not corporeal, that he hath no corporeal propriety, and therefore can nothing be compared with him. So one of the most learned of them of old:

Ou]te gamorfov oJ Qeopinon sw~ma , Phil de Opificio Mundi; — “Neither hath God a human form, nor does a human body resemble him.” And in Sacrifi. Abel: Oujde< ta< o[sa ajnqrw>poiv ejpi< Qeou~ kuriologei~tai kata>crhsiv de< ojnoma>twn ejsti< parhgorou~sa thran ajsqe>neian — “Neither are those things which are in us spoken properly of God, but there is an abuse of names therein, relieving our weakness.”

Likewise the heathens, who termed God nou~n , and yu>cwsin and pneu~ma , and dunamopoio>n or du>namin , had the same apprehensions of him. Thus discourses Mercurius ad Tatium, in Stobaeus, serm. 78: Qeosai de< ajdu>naton to< gamaton sw>mati shmh~nai ajdu>naton kai< to< te>leion tw~| ajtelei~ katalabe>sqai ouj dunato>n kai< to< aji`>dion tw~| ojligocroni>w| suggene>sqai du>skolon oJ me ejsti to< de< pare>rcetai kai< to< meqeia> ejsti to< de< uJpo< fantasi>av skia>zetai to< de< ajsqene>steron tou~ ijscurote>rou kai< to< e]latton tou~ krei>ttonov di>esthke tosou~ton o[son to< qnhtosh tou>twn dia>stasiv ajmauroi~ than ojfqalmoi~v memata qeata< glw>tth| de< ta< oJrata< lekta< to< de< ajsw>maton kai< ajfanetiston kai< mh>te ejx u[lhv uJpokei>menon uJpo< tw~n hJmete>rwn aijsqh>sewn katalhfqh~nai ouj du>natai Ennoou~maiv w=| ta>t ejnnoou~mai o\ ejxeipei~n ouj dunatov And Calicratides apud Stob., Serm. 83: To< de< e[n ejstin a]riston aujtonion a]fqarton ajrca> te kai< aijti>a ta~v tw~n o[lwn diakosma>siov Of the like import is that distich of Xenophanes in Clemens Alexan., Strom. 5: — Eijv Qeopoisi me>gistov .

Qu]te de>mav qnhtoi~sin oJmoi>i`ov oujde< no>hma . “There is one great God among gods and men, Who is like to mortals neither as to body nor mind.” Whereunto answers that in Cato: — “Si Deus est animus nobis ut carmina dicunt,” etc.

And A Eschylus, in the same place of Clemens, Strom. 5: — Cwrei~te qnhtw~n tokei .

Omoion aujtw~| sarkikonai . “Separate God from mortals, and think not thyself, of flesh, like him.” And Posidonius plainly in Stobaeus as above: O Qeon — “God is an intelligent fiery spirit, not having any shape.” And the same apprehension is evident in that of Seneca, “Quid est Deus? Mens universi. Quid est Deus? Quod vides totum, et quod non vides totum. Sic demure magnitude sua illi redditur, qua nihil majus excogitari potest, si solus est omnia, opus suum et extra et intra tenet. Quid ergo interest inter naturam Dei et nostram? Nostri melior pars animus est, in illo nulla pars extra animum.” Natural. Quaest. lib. 1. Praefat. It would be burdensome, if not endless, to insist on the testimonies that to this purpose might be produced out of Plato, Aristotle, Cicerco, Epictetus, Julius Firmicus, and others of the same order. I shall close with one of Alcinous, de Doctrina Platon. cap. 10 Atopon de< tov — “It is absurd to say that God is of matter and form; for if so, he could neither be simple, nor the principal cause.”

The thing is so clear, and the contrary, even by the heathen philosophers, accounted so absurd, that I shall not stand to pursue the arguments flowing from the other attributes of God, but proceed to what follows.

CHAPTER 4. Of the attribution of passions and affections, anger, fear, repentance, unto God — In what sense it is done in the Scripture. HIS next inquiry about the nature of God respects the attribution of several affections and passions unto him in the Scriptures, of whose sense and meaning he thus expresseth his apprehension: — Ques. Are there not, according to the perpetual tenor of the Scriptures, affections and passions in God, as anger, fury, zeal, wrath, love, hatred, mercy, grace, jealousy, repentance, grief, joy, fear?

Concerning which he labors to make the Scriptures determine in the affirmative. 1. The main of Mr Biddle’s design, in his questions about the nature of God, being to deprive the Deity of its distinct persons, its omnipresence, prescience, and therein all other infinite perfections, he endeavors to make him some recompense for all that loss by ascribing to him in the foregoing query a human visible shape, and in this, human, turbulent affections and passions. Commonly, where men will not ascribe to the Lord that which is his due, he gives them up to assign that unto him which he doth abhor, Jeremiah 44:15-17. Neither is it easily determinable whether be the greater abomination. By the first, the dependence of men upon the true God is taken off; by the latter, their hope is fixed on a false. This, on both sides, at present is Mr B.’s sad employment. The Lord lay it not to his charge, but deliver him from the snare of Satan, wherein he is “taken alive at his pleasure”! 2 Timothy 2:26. 2. The things here assigned to God are ill associated, if to be understood after the same manner. Mercy and grace we acknowledge to be attributes of God; the rest mentioned are by none of Mr B.’s companions esteemed any other than acts of his will, and those metaphorically assigned to him. f153 3. To the whole I ask, whether these things are in the Scriptures ascribed properly unto God, denoting such affections and passions in him as those in us are which are so termed? or whether they are assigned to him and spoken of him metaphorically only, in reference to his outward works and dispensations, correspondent and answering to the actings of men in whom such affections are, and under the power whereof they are in those actings?

If the latter be affirmed, then as such an attribution of them unto God is eminently consistent with all his infinite perfections and blessedness, so there can be no difference about this question and the answers given thereunto, all men readily acknowledging that in this sense the Scripture doth ascribe all the affections mentioned unto God, of which we say as he of old, Tau~ta ajnqrwpopaqw~v megontai qeoprepw~v de< noou~ntai .

But this, I fear, will not serve Mr B.’s turn. The very phrase and manner of expression used in this question, the plain intimation that is in the forehead thereof of its author’s going off from the common received interpretation of these attributions unto God, do abundantly manifest that it is their proper significancy which he contends to fasten on God, and that the affections mentioned are really and properly in him as they are in us.

This being evident to be his mind and intendment, as we think his anthropopathism in this query not to come short in folly and madness of his anthropomorphitism in that foregoing, so I shall proceed to the removal of this insinuation in the way and method formerly insisted on.

Mr B.’s masters tell us “That these affections are vehement commotions of the will of God, whereby he is carried out earnestly to the object of his desires, or earnestly declines and abhors what falls not out gratefully or acceptably to him.” I shall first speak of them in general, and then to the particulars (some or all) mentioned by Mr B.: — First, In general, that God is perfect and perfectly blessed, I suppose will not be denied; it cannot be but by denying that he is God. ( Deuteronomy 32:4; Job 37:16; Romans 1:25, 9:5; 1 Timothy 1:11, 6:16.) He that is not perfect in himself and perfectly blessed is not God. To that which is perfect in any kind nothing is wanting in that kind.

To that which is absolutely perfect nothing is wanting at all. He who is blessed is perfectly satisfied and filled, and hath no farther desire for supply. He who is blessed in himself is all-sufficient for himself. If God want or desire any thing for himself, he is neither perfect nor blessed. To ascribe, then, affections to God properly (such as before mentioned), is to deprive him of his perfection and blessedness. The consideration of the nature of these and the like affections will make this evident. 1. Affections, considered in themselves, have always an incomplete, imperfect act of the will or volition joined with them. They are something that lies between the firm purpose of the soul and the execution of that purpose. The proper actings of affections lie between these two; that is, in an incomplete, tumultuary volition. That God is not obnoxious to such volitions and incomplete actings of the will, besides the general consideration of his perfections and blessedness premised, is evident from that manner of procedure which is ascribed to him. His purposes and his works comprise all his actings. As the Lord hath purposed, so hath he done. “He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” “Who hath known his mind? or who hath been his counsellor? Of him, and through him, and to him, are all things.” ( Isaiah 14:24; Ephesians 1:11; Romans 11:33-36; Isaiah 40:18,14.) 2. They have their dependence on that wherewith he in whom they are is affected; that is, they owe their rise and continuance to something without him in whom they are. A man’s fear ariseth from that or them of whom he is afraid; by them it is occasioned, on them it depends Whatever affects any man (that is, the stirring of a suitable affection), in all that frame of mind and soul, in all the volitions and commotions of will which so arise from thence, he depends on something without him. Yea, our being affected with something without lies at the bottom of most of our purposes and resolves Is it thus with God, with him who is I AM? Exodus 3:14. Is he in dependence upon any thing without him? Is it not a most eminent contradiction to speak of God in dependence on any other thing? Must not that thing either be God or be reduced to some other without and besides him, who is God, as the causes of all our affections are? “God is in one mind, and who can turn him? what his soul desireth, that he doeth,” Job 23:13. 3. Affections are necessarily accompanied with change and mutability; yea, he who is affected properly is really changed; yea, there is no more unworthy change or alteration than that which is accompanied with passion, as is the change that is wrought by the affections ascribed to God.

A sedate, quiet, considerate alteration is far less inglorious and unworthy than that which is done in and with passion. Hitherto we have taken God upon his testimony, that he is the “LORD, and he changeth not,” Malachi 3:6; that “with him there is neither change nor shadow of turning;” — it seems, like the worms of the earth, he varieth every day. 4. Many of the affections here ascribed to God do eminently denote impotence; which, indeed, on this account, both by Socinians and Arminians, is directly ascribed to the Almighty. They make him affectionately and with commotion of will to desire many things in their own nature not impossible, which yet he cannot accomplish or bring about (of which I have elsewhere spoken); yea, it will appear that the most of the affections ascribed to God by Mr B., taken in a proper sense, are such as are actually ineffectual, or commotions through disappointments, upon the account of impotency or defect of power.

Corol. To ascribe affections properly to God is to make him weak, imperfect, dependent, changeable, and impotent.

Secondly, Let a short view be taken of the particulars, some or all of them, that Mr B. chooseth to instance in. “Anger, fury, wrath, zeal” (the same in kind, only differing in degree and circumstances), are the first he instances in; and the places produced to make good this attribution to God are, Numbers 25:3,4; Ezekiel 5:18; Exodus 32:11,12; Romans 1:18. 1. That mention is made of the auger, wrath, and fury of God in the Scripture is not questioned. Numbers 25:4, Deuteronomy 13:17, Joshua 7:26, Psalm 78:81, Isaiah 13:9, Deuteronomy 29:24, Judges 2:14, Psalm 74:1, 69:24, Isaiah 30:30, Lamentations 2:6, Ezekiel 5:15, Psalm 78:49, Isaiah 34:2, 2 Chronicles 28:11, Ezra 10:14, Habakkuk 3:8,12, are farther testimonies thereof. The words also in the original, in all the places mentioned, express or intimate perturbation of mind, commotion of spirit, corporeal mutation of the parts of the body, and the like distempers of men acting under the power of that passion. The whole difference is about the intendment of the Holy Ghost in these attributions, and whether they are properly spoken of God, asserting this passion to be in him in the proper significancy of the words, or whether these things be not taken ajnqrwpopaqw~v , and to be understood qeoprepw~v , in such a sense as may answer the meaning of the figurative expression, assigning them their truth to the utmost, and yet to be interpreted in a suitableness to divine perfection and blessedness 2. The anger , then, which in the Scripture is assigned to God, we say denotes two things: — (1.) His vindictive justice, or constant and immutable will of rendering vengeance for sin. So God’s purpose of the demonstration of his justice is called his being “willing to show his wrath” or anger, Romans 9:22; so God’s anger and his judgments are placed together, Psalm 7:6; and in that anger he judgeth, verse 8, And in this sense is the “wrath of God” said to be “revealed from heaven,” Romans 1:18; that is, the vindictive justice of God against sin to be manifested in the effects of it, or the judgments sent and punishments inflicted on and throughout the world. (2.) By anger, wrath, zeal, fury, the effects of anger are denoted: Romans 3:5, “Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance?” The words are, oJ ejpife>rwn thn , — “who inflicteth or bringeth anger on man;” that is, sore punishments, such as proceed from anger; that God’s vindictive justice. And Ephesians 5:6, “For these things cometh the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.” Is it the passion or affection of auger in God that Mr B. talks of, that comes upon the children of disobedience? or is it indeed the effect of his justice for this sin? Thus the day of judgment is called the “day of wrath” and of “anger,” because it is the day of the “revelation of the righteous judgment of God:” Romans 2:5, “After thy hardness,” etc. In the place of Ezekiel ( chap. 5:13) mentioned by Mr B., the Lord tells them he will,” cause his fury to rest upon them,” and “accomplish it upon them. I ask whether he intends this of any passion in him (and if so, how a passion in God can rest upon a man), or the judgments which for their iniquities he did inflict? We say, then, anger is not properly ascribed to God, but metaphorically, denoting partly his vindictive justice, whence all punishments flow, partly the effects of it in the punishments themselves, either threatened or inflicted, in their terror and bitterness, upon the account of what is analogous therein to our proceeding under the power of that passion; and so is to be taken in all the places mentioned by Mr B. For, — 3. Properly, in the sense by him pointed to, anger, wrath, etc, are not in God. Anger is defined by the philosopher to be, o]rexiv meta< lu>phv timwri>av fainome>nhv dia< fainome>nhn ojligwri>an , — “ desire joined with grief of that which appears to be revenge, for an appearing neglect or contempt.” To this grief, he tells you, there is a kind of pleasure annexed, arising from the vehement fancy which an angry person hath of the revenge he apprehends as future, — which, saith he, “is like the fancy of them that dream,” — and he ascribes this passion mostly to weak, impotent persona Ascribe this to God, and you leave him nothing else. There is not one property of his nature wherewith it is consistent. If he be properly and literally angry, and furious, and wrathful, he is moved, troubled, perplexed, desires revenge, and is neither blessed nor perfect. But of these things in our general reasons against the propriety of these attributions afterward. 4. Mr. B. hath given us a rule in his preface, that when any thing is ascribed to God in one place which is denied of him in another, then it is not properly ascribed to him. Now, God says expressly that “fury” or anger “is not in him,” Isaiah 27:4; and therefore it is not properly ascribed to him. 5. Of all the places where mention is made of God’s repentings, or his repentance, there is the same reason. Exodus 32:14, Genesis 6:6,7, Judges 10:16, Deuteronomy 30:9, are produced by Mr. B. That one place of 1 Samuel 15:29, where God affirms that he “knoweth no repentance,” casts all the rest under a necessity of an interpretation suitable unto it. Of all the affections or passions which we are obnoxious to, there is none that more eminently proclaims imperfection, weakness, and want in sundry kinds, than this of repentance. If not sins, mistakes, and miscarriages (as for the most part they are), yet disappointment, grief, and trouble, are always included in it. So is it in that expression, Genesis 6:6, “It repented theLORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” What but his mistake and great disappointment, by a failing of wisdom, foresight, and power, can give propriety to these attributions unto God? The change God was going then to work in his providence on the earth was such or like that which men do when they repent of a thing, being “grieved at the heart” for what they had formerly done. So are these things spoken of God to denote the kind of the things which he doth, not the nature of God himself; otherwise such expressions as these would suit him, whose frame of spirit and heart is so described: “Had I seen what would have been the issue of making man, I would never have done it. Would I had never been so overseen as to have engaged in such a business! What have I now got by my rashness? nothing but sorrow and grief of heart redounds to me.” And do these become the infinitely blessed God 6. Fear is added, from Deuteronomy 32:26,27. “Fear,” saith the wise man, “is a betraying of those succours which reason offereth;” — nature’s avoidance of an impendent evil; its contrivance to flee and prevent what it abhors, being in a probability of coming upon it; a turbulent weakness. This God forbids in us, upon the account of his being our God, Isaiah 35:4; “Fear not, O worm Jacob,” etc, chap. 41:14. Everywhere he asserts fear to be unfit for them who depend on him and his help, who is able in a moment to dissipate, scatter, and reduce to nothing, all the causes of their fear. And if there ought to be no fear where such succor is ready at hand, sure there is none in Him who gives it. Doubtless, it were much better to exclude the providence of God out of the world than to assert him afraid properly and directly of future events. The schools say truly, “Quod res sunt futurae, a voluntate Dei est (effectiva vel permissiva).” How, then, can God be afraid of what he knows will, and purposeth shall, come to pass? He doth, he will do, things in some likeness to what we do for the prevention of what we are afraid of. He will not scatter his people, that their adversaries may not have advantage to trample over them. When we so act as to prevent any thing that, unless we did so act, would befall us, it is because we are afraid of the coming of that thing upon us: hence is the reason of that attribution unto God. That properly He should be afraid of what comes to pass who knows from eternity what will so do, who can with the breath of his mouth destroy all the objects of his dislike, who is infinitely wise, blessed, all-sufficient, and the sovereign disposer of the lives, breath, and ways of all the sons of men, is fit for Mr. B. and no man else to affirm. “All the nations are before him as the drop of the bucket, and the dust of the balance, as vanity, as nothing; he upholdeth them by the word of his power; in him all men live, and move, and have their being,” and can neither live, nor act, nor be without him; their life, and breath, and all their ways, are in his hands; he brings them to destruction, and says, “Return, ye children of men;” ( Acts 15:18; 2 Samuel 22:16; Job 4:9; Psalm 18:15; Romans 1:25; Genesis 17:1; Romans 9:16-18, etc., 11:34-86; Isaiah 40:15; Hebrews 1:8; Psalm 33:9; Acts 17:24-28; Psalm 1. 8; Daniel 5:23; Psalm 90:8; Job 34:19.) and must he needs be properly afraid of what they will do to him and against him 7. Of God’s jealousy and hatred, mentioned from Psalm 5:4,5, Exodus 20:5, Deuteronomy 32:21, there is the same reason. Such effects as these things in us produce shall they meet withal who provoke him by their blasphemies and abominations. Of love, mercy, and grace, the condition is something otherwise: principally they denote God’s essential goodness and kindness, which is eminent amongst his infinite perfections; and secondarily the effects thereof, in and through Jesus Christ, are denoted by these expressions. To manifest that neither they nor any thing else, as they properly intend any affections or passions of the mind, any commotions of will, are properly attributed to God, unto what hath been spoken already these ensuing considerations may be subjoined: — (1.) Where no cause of stirring up affections or passions can have place or be admitted, there no affections are to be admitted; for to what end should we suppose that whereof there can be no use to eternity? If it be impossible any affection in God should be stirred up or acted, is it not impossible any such should be in him? The causes stirring up all affections are the access of some good desired, whence joy, hope, desire, eta, have their spring; or the approach of some evil to be avoided, which occasions fear, sorrow, anger, repentance, and the like. Now, if no good can be added to God, whence should joy and desire be stirred up in him? if no evil can befall him, in himself or any of his concernments, whence should he have fear, sorrow, or repentance? Our goodness extends not to him; he hath no need of us or our sacrifices, Psalm 16:2, 50:8-10; Job 35:6-8. “Can a man be profitable unto God, as he that is wise may be profitable to himself? Is it any pleasure to the Almighty, that thou art righteous? or is it gain to him, that thou makest thy ways perfect?” chap. 22:2, 3. (2.) The apostle tells us that God is “Messed for ever,” Romans 9:5; “He is the blessed and only Potentate,” 1 Timothy 6:15; “God allsufficient,” Genesis 17:1. That which is inconsistent with absolute blessedness and all-sufficiency is not to be ascribed to God; to do so casts him down from his excellency. But can he be blessed, is he all-sufficient, who is tossed up and down with hope, joy, fear, sorrow, repentance, anger, and the like? Doth not fear take off from absolute blessedness?

Grant that God’s fear cloth not long abide, yet whilst it doth so, he is less blessed than he was before and than he is after his fear ceaseth. When he hopes, is he not short in happiness of that condition which he attains in the enjoyment of what he hoped for? and is he not lower when he is disappointed and falls short of his expectation? Did ever the heathens speak with more contempt of what they worshipped? Formerly the pride of some men heightened them to fancy themselves to be like God, without passions or affections, Psalm 50:21; being not able to abide in their attempt against their own sense and experience, it is now endeavored to make God like to us, in having such passions and affections. My aim is brevity, having many heads to speak unto. Those who have written on the attributes of God, — his self-sufficiency and blessedness, simplicity, immutability, etc., — are ready to tender farther satisfaction to them who shall desire it, CHAPTER 5. Of God’s prescience or foreknowledge. HIS next attempt is to overthrow and remove the prescience or foreknowledge of God, with what success the farther consideration of the way whereby he endeavors it will manifest. His question (the engine whereby he works) is thus framed: — As for our free actions which are neither past nor present, but may afterward either be or not be, what are the chief passages of Scripture from whence it is wont to be gathered that God knoweth not such actions until they come to pass, yea, that there are such actions?

That we might have had a clearer acquaintance with the intendment of this interrogation, it is desirable Mr Biddle had given us his sense on some particulars, which at first view present themselves to the trouble of every ordinary reader; as, — 1. How we may reconcile the words of Scripture given in answer to his preceding query with the design of this. There it is asserted that God “understandeth our thoughts” (which certainly are of our free actions, if any such there are) “afar off;” here, that he knows not our free actions that are future, and not yet wrought or performed. 2. By whom is it “wont to be gathered” from the following scriptures that “God knoweth not our free actions until they come to pass.” Why doth not this “mere Christian,” that is of no sect, name his companions and associates in these learned collections from Scripture? Would not his so doing discover him to be so far from a mere Christian, engaged in none of the sects that are now amongst Christians, as to be of that sect which the residue of men so called will scarce allow the name of a Christian unto? f163 3. What he intends by the close of his query, “Yea, that there are such actions.” An advance is evident in the words towards a farther negation of the knowledge of God than what was before expressed. Before, he says, God knows not our actions that are future contingent; here, he knows not that there are such actions. The sense of this must be, either that God knows not that there are any such actions as may or may not be, — which would render him less knowing than Mr B., who hath already told us that such there be, — or else that he knows not such actions when they are, at least without farther inquiring after them, and knowledge obtained beyond what from his own infinite perfections and eternal purpose he is furnished withal. In Mr B.’s next book or catechism, I desire he would answer these questions also.

Now in this endeavor of his Mr B. doth but follow his leaders. Socinus in his Prelections, where the main of his design is to vindicate man’s free-will into that latitude and absoluteness as none before him had once aimed at, in his eighth chapter objects to himself this foreknowledge of God as that which seems to abridge and cut short the liberty contended for. He answers that he grants not the foreknowledge pretended, and proceeds in that and the two following chapters, laboring to answer all the testimonies and arguments which are insisted on for the proof and demonstration of it, giving his own arguments against it, chap. 11. Crellius is something more candid, as he pretends, but indeed infected with the same venom with the other; for after he hath disputed for sundry pages to prove the foreknowledge of God, he concludes at last that for those things that are future contingent, he knows only that they are so, and that possibly they may come to pass, possibly they may not. Of the rest of their associates few have spoken expressly to this thing. Smalcius once and again manifests himself to consent with his masters in his disputations against Frauzius, expressly consenting to what Socinus had written in his Prelections, and affirming the same thing himself, yea, disputing eagerly for the same opinion with him. f166 For the vindication of God’s foreknowledge, I shall proceed in the same order as before in reference to the other attributes of God insisted on, namely: — 1. What Mr B. hath done, how he hath disposed of sundry places of Scripture for the proof of his assertion, with the sense of the places by him so produced, is to be considered; 2. Another question and answer are to be supplied in the room of his; 3. The truth vindicated to be farther confirmed.

For the first: — In the proof of the assertion proposed Mr B. finds himself entangled more than ordinarily, though I confess his task in general be such as no man not made desperate by the loss of all in a shipwreck of faith would once have undertaken. To have made good his proceeding according to his engagement, he ought at least to have given us texts of Scripture express in the letter, as by him cut off from the state, condition, and coherence, wherein by the Holy Ghost they are placed, for the countenancing of his assertion: but here, being not able to make any work in his method, proposed and boasted in as signal and uncontrollable, no apex or tittle in the Scripture being pointed towards the denial of God’s knowing any thing or all things, past, present, and to come, he moulds his question into a peculiar fashion, and asks, whence or from what place of Scripture may such a thing as he there avers be gathered; at once plainly declining the trial he had put himself upon of insisting upon express texts of Scripture only, not one of the many quoted by him speaking one word expressly to the business in hand, and laying himself naked to all consequences rightly deduced from the Scripture, and expositions given to the letter of some places suitable to “the proportion of faith,” Romans 12:6. That, then, which he would have, he tells you is gathered from the places of Scripture subjoined, but how, by whom, by what consequence, with what evidence of reason, it is so gathered, he tells you not. An understanding, indeed, informed with such gross conceptions of the nature of the Deity as Mr B. hath labored to insinuate into the minds of men, might gather, from his collection of places of Scripture for his purpose in hand, that God is afraid, troubled, grieved, that he repenteth, altereth and changeth his mind to and fro; but of his knowledge or foreknowledge of things, whether he have any such thing or not, there is not the least intimation, unless it be in this, that if he had any such foreknowledge, he need not put himself to so much trouble and vexation, nor so change and alter his mind, as he doth. And with such figments as these (through the infinite, wise, and good providence of God, punishing the wantonness of the minds and lives of men, by giving them up to strong delusions and vain imaginations, in the darkness of their foolish hearts, 2 Thessalonians 2:10-12, so far as to change the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of a corruptible, weak, ignorant, sinful man, Romans 1:23), are we now to deal.

But let the places themselves be considered. To these heads they may be referred: — 1. Such as ascribe unto God fear and being afraid. Deuteronomy 32:26,27; Exodus 13:17; Genesis 3:22,23, are of this sort. 2. Repentance, 1 Samuel 15:10,11, ult. 3. Change, or alteration of mind, Numbers 14:27,30; 1 Samuel 2:30. 4. Expectation whether a thing will answer his desire or no, Isaiah 5:4.

Conjecturing, Jeremiah 36:1-3; Ezekiel 12:1-3. 5. Trying of experiments, Judges 3:l, 4; Daniel 12:10; 2 Chronicles 32:31. From all which and the like it may, by Mr B.’s direction and help, be thus gathered: “If God be afraid of what is to come to pass, and repenteth him of what he hath done when he finds it not to answer his expectation; if he sits divining and conjecturing at events, being often deceived therein, and therefore tries and makes experiments that he may be informed of the true state of things: then certainly he knows not the free actions of men, that are not yet come to pass.” The antecedent Mr B. hath proved undeniably from ten texts of Scripture, and doubtless the consequent is easily to be gathered by any of his disciples. Doubtless it is high time that the old, musty catechisms of prejudicate persons, who scarce so much as once consulted with the Scriptures in their composures, as being more engaged into factions, were removed out of the way and burned, that this “mere Christian” may have liberty to bless the growing generation with such notions of God as the idolatrous Pagans of old would have scorned to have received.

But do not the Scriptures ascribe all the particulars mentioned unto God?

Can you blame Mr B. without reflection on them? If only what the Scripture affirms in the letter, and not the sense wherein and the manner how it affirms it (which considerations are allowed to all the writings and speakings of the sons of men) is to be considered, the end seeming to be aimed at in such undertakings as this of Mr B., namely, to induce the atheistical spirits of the sons of men to a contempt and scorn of them and their authority, will probably be sooner attained than by the efficacy of any one engine raised against them in the world besides.

As to the matter under consideration, I have some few things in general to propose to Mr B., and then I shall descend to the particulars insisted on: — First, then, I desire to know whether the things mentioned, as fear, grief, repentance, trouble, conjecturings, making trials of men for his own information, are ascribed properly to God as they are unto men, or tropically and figuratively, with a condescension to us, to express the things spoken of, and not to describe the nature of God. If the first be said, namely, that these things are ascribed properly to God, and really signify of him the things in us intended in them, then to what hath been spoken in the consideration taken of the foregoing query, I shall freely add, for mine own part, I will not own nor worship him for my God who is truly and properly afraid of what all the men in the world either will or can do; who doth, can do, or hath done any thing, or suffered any thing to be done, of which he doth or can truly and properly repent himself, with sorrow and grief for his mistake; or that sits in heaven divining and conjecturing at what men will do here below: and do know that he whom I serve in my spirit will famish and starve all such gods out of the world.

But of this before. If these things are ascribed to God figuratively and improperly, discovering the kind of his works and dispensations, not his own nature or property, I would fain know what inference can be made or conclusion drawn from such expressions, directly calling for a figurative interpretation? For instance, if God be said to repent that he had done such a thing, because such and such things are come to pass thereupon, if this repentance in God be not properly ascribed to him (as by Mr B.’s own rule it is not), but denotes only an alteration and change in the works that outwardly are of him, in an orderly subserviency to the immutable purpose of his will, what can thence be gathered to prove that God foreseeth not the free actions of men? And this is the issue of Mr B.’s confirmation of the thesis couched in his query insisted on from the Scriptures 2. I must crave leave once more to mind him of the rule he hath given us in his preface, namely, “That where a thing is improperly ascribed to God, in some other place it is denied of him,” as he instances in that of his being weary; so that whatever is denied of him in any one place is not properly ascribed to him in any other. Now, though God be said, in some of the places by him produced, to repent, yet it is in another expressly said that he doth not so, and that upon such a general ground and mason as is equally exclusive of all those other passions and affections, upon whose assignment unto God the whole strength of Mr B.’s plea against the prescience of God doth depend: 1 Samuel 15:29, “Also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent: for he is not a man, that he should repent.”

The immutability of his nature, and unlikeness to men in obnoxiousness to alterations, are asserted as the reason of his not repenting; which will equally extend its force and efficacy to the removal from him of all the other human affections mentioned. And this second general consideration of the foundation of Mr B.’s plea is sufficient for the removal of the whole. 3. I desire to know whether indeed it is only the free actions of men that are not yet done that Mr B. denies to be known of God, or whether he excludes him not also from the knowledge of the present state, frame, and actings of the hearts of men, and how they stand affected towards him, being therein like other rulers among men, who may judge of the good and evil actions of men so far as they are manifest and evident, but how men in their hearts stand affected to them, their rule, government, and authority, they know not? To make this inquiry, I have not only the observation premised from the words of the close of Mr B.’s query being of a negative importance (“Yea, that there are such actions”), but also from some of the proofs by him produced of his former assertion being interpreted according to the literal significancy of the words, as exclusive of any figure, which he insisteth on. Of this sort is that of Genesis 22:1,2, 10-12, where God is said to tempt Abraham, and upon the issue of that trial says to him (which words Mr B., by putting them in a different character, points to as comprehensive of what he intends to gather and conclude from them), “Now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, from me.” The conclusion which Mr B. guides unto from hence is, that God knew not that which he inquired after, and therefore tempted Abraham that he might so do, and upon the issue of that trial says, “Now I know.” But what was it that God affirms that now he knew? Not any thing future, not any free action that was not as yet done, but something of the present condition and frame of his heart towards God, — namely, his fear of God; not whether he would fear him, but whether he did fear him then. If this, then, be properly spoken of God, and really as to the nature of the thing itself, then is he ignorant no less of things present than of those that are for to come. He knows not who fears him nor who hates him, unless he have opportunity to try them in some such way as he did Abraham. And then what a God hath this man delineated to us I How like the dunghill deities of the heathen, who speak after this rate! Doubtless the description that Elijah gave of Baal would better suit him than any of those divine perfections which the living, allseeing God hath described himself by. But now, if Mr B. will confess that God knows all the things that are present, and that this inquiry after the present frame of the heart and spirit of a man is improperly ascribed to him, from the analogy of his proceedings, in his dealing with him, to that which we insist upon when we would really find out what we do not know, then I would only ask of him why those other expressions which he mentions, looking to what is to come, being of the same nature and kind with this, do not admit of, yea call for, the same kind of exposition and interpretation.

Neither is this the only place insisted on by Mr B. where the inquiry ascribed unto God, and the trial that he makes, is not in reference to things to come, but punctually to what is present: Deuteronomy 8:2, 13:3, “TheLORD your God proveth you, to know whether ye love the\parLORD your God with all your heart and With all your soul;” 2 Chronicles 32:31, “God loft him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart;” and Philippians 4:6, “In every thing let your requests be made known unto God.”

Let Mr B. tell us now plainly whether he supposes all these things to be spoken properly of God, and that indeed God knows not our hearts, the frame of them, nor what in them we desire and aim at, without some eminent trial and inquiry, or until we ourselves do make known what is in them unto him. If this be the man’s mind (as it must be, if he be at any agreement with himself in his principles concerning these scriptural attributions unto God), for my part I shall be so far from esteeming him eminent as a mere Christian, that I shall scarcely judge him comparable, as to his apprehensions of God, unto many that lived and died mere Pagans.

To this sense also is applied that property of God, that he “trieth the hearts,” as it is urged by Mr B. from 1 Thessalonians 2:4; — that is, he maketh inquiry after what is in them; which, but upon search and trial, he knoweth not! By what ways and means God accomplisheth this search, and whether hereupon he comes to a perfect understanding of our hearts or no, is not expressed. John tells us that “God is greater than our hearts, and knoweth all things;” and we have thought on that account (with that of such farther discoveries as he hath made of himself and his perfections unto us) that he had been said to search our hearts; not that himself, for his own information, needs any such formal process by way of trial and inquiry, but because really and indeed he doth that in himself which men aim at in the accomplishment of their most diligent searches and exactest trials.

And we may, by the way, see a little of this man’s consistency with himself. Christ he denies to be God, — a great part of his religion consists in that negative, — yet of Christ it is said that “he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man,” John 2:24,25: and this is spoken in reference to that very thing in the hearts of men which he would persuade us that God knows not without inquiry; that is, upon the account of his not committing himself to those as true believers whom yet, upon the account of the profession they made, the Scripture calls so, and says they “believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did,” verse 23. Though they had such a veil of profession upon them that the Holy Ghost would have us esteem them as believers, yet Christ could look through it into their hearts, and discover and know their frame, and whether in sincerity they loved him and believed in his name or no; but this God cannot do without inquiry I And yet Christ (if we believe Mr B.) was but a mere man, as he is a “mere Christian.” Farther; it seems, by this gentleman, that unless “we make known our requests to God,” he knows not what we will ask. Yet we ask nothing but what is in our thoughts; and in the last query he instructs us that God knows our thoughts, — and doubtless he knows Mr B.’s to be but folly. Farther yet; if God must be concluded ignorant of our desires, because we are bid to make our requests known unto him, he may be as well concluded forgetful of what himself hath spoken, because he bids us put him in remembrance, and appoints some to be his remembrancers. But to return: — This is the aspect of almost one-half of the places produced by Mr B. towards the business in hand. If they are properly spoken of God, in the same sense as they are of man, they conclude him not to know things present , the frame of the heart of any man in the world towards himself and his fear, nay, the outward, open, notorious actions of men. So it is in that place of Genesis 18:21, insisted on by Crellius, one of Mr B.’s great masters, “I will go down now, and see” (or know) “whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me.” Yea, the places which, in their letter and outward appearance, seem to ascribe that ignorance of things present unto God are far more express and numerous than those that in the least look forward to what is yet for to come, or was so at their delivery. This progress, then, have we made under our catechist, if we may believe him, as he insinuates his notions concerning God: “God sits in heaven (glistering on a throne), whereunto he is limited, yea, to a certain place therein, so as not to be elsewhere; being grieved, troubled, and perplexed at the affairs done below which he doth know, making inquiry after what he doth not know, and many things (things future) he knoweth not at all.”

Before I proceed to the farther consideration of that which is eminently and expressly denied by Mr B., namely, “God’s foreknowledge of our free actions that are future,” because many of his proofs, in the sense by him urged, seem to exclude him from an acquaintance with many things present, — as, in particular, the frame and condition of the hearts of men towards himself, as was observed, — it may not be amiss a little to confirm that perfection of the knowledge of God as to those things from the Scripture; which will abundantly also manifest that the expressions insisted on by our catechist are metaphorical and improperly ascribed to God. Of the eminent predictions in the Scripture, which relate unto things future, I shall speak afterward. He knew, for he foretold the flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the famine in Egypt, the selling and exaltation of Joseph, the reign of David, the division of his kingdom, the Babylonish captivity, the kingdom of Cyrus, the return of his people, the state and ruin of the four great empires of the world, the wars, plagues, famines, earthquakes, divisions, which he manifestly foretold. But farther, he knows the frame of the hearts of men; he knew that the Keilites would deliver up David to Saul if he stayed amongst them, — which probably they knew not themselves, 1 Samuel 23:12; he knew that Hazael would murder women and infants, which he knew not himself, 2 Kings 8:12,13; he knew that the Egyptians would afflict his people, though at first they entertained them with honor, Genesis 15:13; he knew Abraham, that he would instruct his household, Genesis 18:19; he knew that some were obstinate, their neck an iron sinew, and their brow brass, Isaiah 48:4; he knew the imagination or figment of the heart of his people, Deuteronomy 31:21; that the church of Laodicea, notwithstanding her profession, was lukewarm, neither cold nor hot, Revelation 3:15. “Man looketh on the outward appearance, but theLORD looketh on the heart,” 1 Samuel 16:7. “He only knoweth the hearts of all the children of men,” 1 Kings 8:39. “Hell and destruction are before theLORD: how much more then the hearts of the children of men?” Proverbs 15:11. So also Proverbs 24:12; Jeremiah 17:9,10; Ezekiel 11:5; Psalm 38:9, 94:11; Job 31:4; Matthew 6:4,6,8; Luke 16:15; Acts 1:24, etc.

Innumerable other places to this purpose may be insisted on, though it is a surprisal to be put to prove that God knows the hearts of the sons of men.

But to proceed to that which is more directly under consideration: — The sole foundation of Mr B.’s insinuation, that God knows not our free actions that are future, being laid, as was observed, on the assignation of fear, repentance, expectation, and conjecturing, unto God, the consideration which hath already been had of those attributions in the Scripture and the causes of them is abundantly sufficient to remove it out of the way, and to let his inference sink thither whence it came. Doubtless never was painter so injurious to the Deity (who limned out the shape of an old man on a cloth or board, and, after some disputes with himself whether he should sell it for an emblem of winter, set it out as a representation of God the Father) as this man is in snatching God’s own pencil out of his hand, and by it presenting him to the world in a gross, carnal, deformed shape. Plato would not suffer Homer in his Commonwealth, for intrenching upon the imaginary Blessedness of their dunghill deities, making Jupiter to grieve for the death of Sarpedon, f171 Mars to be wounded by Diomedes, and to roar thereupon with disputes and conjectures in heaven among themselves about the issue of the Trojan war, though he endeavors to salve all his heavenly solecisms by many noble expressions concerning purposes not unmeet for a deity, telling us, in the close and issue of a most contingent after, Dioeto bolh> . Let that man think of how much sorer punishment he shall be thought worthy (I speak of the great account he is one day to make) who shall persist in wresting the Scripture to his own destruction, to represent the living and incomprehensible God unto the world trembling with fear, pale with anger, sordid with grief and repentance, perplexed with conjectures and various expectations of events, and making a diligent inquiry after the things he knows not; that is, altogether such an one as himself: let all who have the least reverence of and acquaintance with that Majesty with whom we have to do judge and determine. But of these things before.

The proposure of a question to succeed in the room of that removed, with a scriptural resolution thereof, in order to a discovery of what God himself hath revealed concerning his knowledge of all things, is the next part of our employment. Thus, then, it may be framed: — Ques. Doth not God know all things, whether past, present, or to come, all the ways and actions of men, even before their accomplishment, or is any thing hid from him? What says the Scripture properly and directly hereunto?

Ans. “ God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things,” 1 John 3:20. “Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do,” Hebrews 4:13. “TheLORD is a God of knowledge,” 1 Samuel 2:3. “Thou knowest my down-sitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, OLORD, thou knowest it altogether,” <19D902> Psalm 139:2-4. “Great is our Lord, and of great power: his understanding is infinite,” <19E705> Psalm 147:5. “Who hath directed the Spirit of theLORD, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and showed to him the way of understanding?” Isaiah 40:13,14. “There is no searching of his understanding,” verse 28. Romans 11:36, “Of him are all things;” and, “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world,” Acts 15:18, etc.

Of the undeniable evidence and conviction of God’s prescience or foreknowledge of future contingents, from his prediction of their coming to pass, with other demonstrations of the truth under consideration, attended with their several testimonies from Scripture, the close of this discourse will give a farther account.

It remains only that, according to the way and method formerly insisted on, I give some farther account of the perfection of God pleaded for, with the arguments wherewith it is farther evidenced to us, and so to proceed to what followeth: — 1. That knowledge is proper to God, the testimony of the Scripture unto the excellency and perfection of the thing itself doth sufficiently evince. “I cannot tell,” says the apostle: “God knoweth,” 2 Corinthians 12:2,3. It is the general voice of nature, upon relation of any thing that to us is hid and unknown, that the apostle there makes mention of: “God knoweth.” That he knoweth the things that are past, Mr B. doth not question. That at least also some things that are present, yea some thoughts of our hearts, are known to him, he doth not deny. It is not my intendment to engage in any curious scholastical discourse about the understanding, science, knowledge, or wisdom of God, nor of the way of God’s knowing things in and by his own essence, through simple intuition.

That which directly is opposed is his knowledge of our free actions, which, in respect of their second and mediate causes, may or may not be.

This, therefore, I shall briefly explain, and confirm the truth of it by Scripture testimonies and arguments from right reason, not to be evaded without making head against all God’s infinite perfections, having already demonstrated that all that which is insisted on by Mr B. to oppose it is spoken metaphorically and improperly of God.

That God doth foresee all future things was amongst mere Pagans so acknowledged as to be looked on as a common notion of mankind, So Xenophon tells us, “That both Grecians and barbarians consented in this, that the gods knew all things, present and to come.” And it may be worth our observation, that whereas Crellius, one of the most learned of this gentleman’s masters, distinguisheth between ejso>mena and me>llonta , affirming that God knows ta< ejso>mena , which, though future, are necessarily so, yet he knows not ta< me>llonta , which are only, says he, likely so to be. Xenophon plainly affirms that all nations consent that he knows ta< me>llonta . “And this knowledge of his,” saith that great philosopher, “is the foundation of the prayers and supplications of men for the obtaining of good or the avoiding of evil.” Now, that one calling himself a “mere Christian” should oppose a perfection of God that a mere Pagan affirms all the world to acknowledge to be in him would seem somewhat strange, but that we know all things do not answer or make good the names whereby they are called.

For the clearer handling of the matter under consideration, the terms wherein it is proposed are a little to be explained: — 1. That prescience or foreknowledge is attributed to God, the Scripture testifieth. Acts 2:23, Romans 8:29, 11:2, 1 Peter 1:2, are proofs hereof. The term, indeed (foreknowing), rather relates to the things known, and the order wherein they stand one to another and among themselves, than is properly expressive of God’s knowledge. God knows all things as they are, and in that order wherein they stand. Things that are past, as to the order of the creatures which he hath appointed to them, and the works of providence which outwardly are of him, he knows as past; not by remembrance, as we do, but by the same act of knowledge wherewith he knew them from all eternity, even before they were. Their existence in time and being, cast by the successive motion of things into the number of the things that are past, denotes an alteration in them, but not at all in the knowledge of God. So it is also in respect of things future. God knows them in that esse intelligibile which they have, as they may be known and understood; and how that is shall afterward be declared. He sees and knows them as they are, when they have that respect upon them of being future; when they lose this respect, by their actual existence, he knows them still as before. They are altered; his knowledge, his understanding is infinite, and changeth not. 2. God’s knowledge of things is either of simple intelligence (as usually it is phrased) or of vision. The first is his knowledge of all possible things; that is, of all that he himself can do. That God knows himself I suppose will not be denied. An infinite understanding knows throughly all infinite perfections. God, then, knows his own power or omnipotency, and thereby knows all that he can do. Infinite science must know, as I said, what infinite power can extend unto. Now, whatever God can do is possible to be done; that is, whatever hath not in itself a repugnancy to being. Now, that many things may be done by the power of God that yet are not, nor ever shall be done, I suppose is not denied. Might he not make a new world? Hence ariseth the attribution of the knowledge of simple intelligence before mentioned unto God. In his own infinite understanding he sees and knows all things that are possible to be done by his power, would his good pleasure concur to their production.

Of the world of things possible which God can do, some things, even all that he pleaseth, are future. f179a The creation itself, and all things that have had a being since, were so future before their creation. Had they not some time been future, they had never been. Whatever is, was to be before it wan All things that shall be to the end of the world are now future. How things which were only possible, in relation to the power of God, come to be future, and in what respect, shall be briefly mentioned. These things God knoweth also. His science of them is called of vision. He sees them as things which, in their proper order, shall exist. In a word, “scientia visionis,” and “simplicis intelligentise,” may be considered in a threefold relation; that is, “in ordine ad objectum, mensuram, modum:” — (1.) “Scientia visionis” hath for its object things past, present, and to come, — whatsoever had, hath, or will have, actual being. The measure of this knowledge is his will; because the will and decree of God only make those things future which were but possible before: therefore we say, “Scientia visionis fundatur in voluntate.” For the manner of it, it is called “Scientia libera, quia fundatur in voluntate,” as necessarily presupposing a free act of the divine will, which makes things future, and so objects of this kind of knowledge. (2.) As for that “scientia” which we call “simplicis intelligentiae,” the object of it is possible; the measure of it omnipotency, for by it he knows all he can do; and for the manner of it, it is “scientia necessaria, quia non fundatur in voluntate, sed potestate” (say the schoolmen), seeing by it he knows not what he will, but what he can do. Of that late figment of a middle science in God, arising neither from the infinite perfection of his own being, as that of simple intelligence, nor yet attending his free purpose and decree, as that of vision, but from a consideration of the second causes that are to produce the things foreknown, in their kind, order, and dependence, I am not now to treat. And with the former kind of knowledge it is, or rather in the former way (the knowledge of God being simply one and the same) is it, that we affirm him to know the things that are future, of what sort soever, or all things before they come to pass. 3. The things inquired after are commonly called contingent. Contingencies are of two sorts: — (1.) Such as are only so; (2.) Such as are also free. (1.) Such as are only so are contingent only in their effects: such is the falling of a stone from a house, and the killing of a man thereby. The effect itself was contingent, nothing more; the cause necessary, the stone, being loosed from what detained it upon the house, by its own weight necessarily falling to the ground. (2.) That which is so contingent as to be also free, is contingent both in respect of the effect and of its causes also. Such was the soldier’s piercing of the side of Christ. The effect was contingent, — such a thing might have been done or not; and the cause also, for they chose to do it who did it, and in respect of their own elective faculty might not have chosen it. That a man shall write, or ride, or speak to another person to-morrow, the agent being free, is contingent both as to the cause and to the effect. About these is our principal inquiry; and to the knowledge of God which he is said to have of them is the opposition most expressly made by Mr B. Let this, then, be our conclusion: — God perfectly knows all the free actions of men before they are wrought by them. All things that will be done or shall be to all eternity, though in their own natures contingent and wrought by agents free in their working, are known to him from eternity.

Some previous observations will make way for the clear proof and demonstration of this truth. Then, — 1. God certainly knows everything that is to be known; that is, everything that is scibile. If there be in the nature of things an impossibility to be known, they cannot be known by the divine understanding. If any thing be scibile, or may be known, the not knowing of it is his imperfection who knows it not. To God this cannot be ascribed (namely, that he should not know what is to be known) without the destruction of his perfection. He shall not be my God who is not infinitely perfect. He who wants any thing to make him blessed in himself can never make the fruition of himself the blessedness of others. 2. Every thing that hath a determinate cause is scibile, may be known, though future, by him that perfectly knows that cause which doth so determine the thing to be known unto existence. Now, contingent things, the free actions of men that yet are not, but in respect of themselves may or may not be, have such a determinate cause of their existence as that mentioned. It is true, in respect of their immediate causes, as the wills of men, they are contingent, and may be or not be; but that they have such a cause as before spoken of is evident from the light of this consideration: in their own time and order they are. Now, whatever is at any time was future; before it was, it was to be. If it had not been future, it had not now been. Its present performance is sufficient demonstration of the futurition it had Before. I ask, then, whence it came to be future, — that that action was rather to be than a thousand others that were as possible as it? for instance, that the side of Christ should be pierced with a spear, when it was as possible, in the nature of the thing itself and of all secondary causes, that his head should be cut off. That, then, which gives any action a futurition is that determinate cause wherein it may be known, whereof we speak. Thus it may be said of the same thing that it is contingent and determined, without the least appearance of contradiction, because it is not spoken with respect to the same things or causes. 3. The determinate cause of continent things, that is, things that are future (for every thing when it is, and as it is, is necessary), is the will of God himself concerning their existence and being; either by his efficiency and working, as all good things in every kind (that is, that are either morally or physically so, in which latter sense all the actions of men, as actions, are so); or by his permission, which is the condition of things morally evil, or of the irregularity and obliquity attending those actions, upon the account of their relation to a law, which in themselves are entitative and physically good, as the things were which God at first created. Whether any thing come to pass beside the will of God and contrary to his purpose will not be disputed with any advantage of glory to God or honor to them that shall assert it. That in all events the will of God is fulfilled is a common notion of all rational creatures. So the accomplishment of his “determinate counsel” is affirmed by the apostle in the issue of that mysterious dispensation of the crucifying of his Son. That of James 4:15, Eariov qelh>sh| , intimates God’s will to be extended to all actions, as actions, whatever. Thus God knew before the world was made, or any thing that is in it, that there would be such a world and such things in it; yet than the making of the world nothing was more free or contingent. f184 God is not a necessary agent as to any of the works that outwardly are of him. Whence, then, did God know this? Was it not from his own decree and eternal purpose that such a world there should be? And if the knowledge of one contingent thing be from hence, why not of all? In brief, these future contingencies depend on something for their existence, or they come forth into the world in their own strength and upon their own account, not depending on any other. If the latter, they are God; if the former, the will of God or old Fortune must be the principle on which they do depend. 4. God can work with contingent causes for the accomplishment of his own will and purposes, without the least prejudice to them, either as causes or as free and contingent. God moves not, works not, in or with any second causes, to the producing of any effect contrary or not agreeable to their own natures. Notwithstanding any predetermination or operation of God, the wills of men, in the production of every one of their actions, are at as perfect liberty as a cause in dependence of another is capable of. To say it is not in dependence is atheism. The purpose of God, the counsel of his will, concerning any thing as to its existence, gives a necessity of infallibility to the event, but changes not the manner of the second cause’s operation, be [it] what it will. That God cannot accomplish and bring about his own purposes by free and contingent agents, without the destruction of the natures he hath endued them withal, is a figment unworthy the thoughts of any who indeed acknowledge his sovereignty and power. 5. The reason why Mr B.’s companions in his undertaking, as others that went before him of the same mind, do deny this foreknowledge of God, they express on all occasions to be that the granting of it is prejudicial to that absolutely independent liberty of will which God assigns to men: so Socinus pleads, Praelect. Theol. cap. 8; thus far, I confess, more accurately than the Arminians. These pretend (some of them, at least) to grant the prescience of God, but yet deny his determinate decrees and purposes, on the same pretense that the others do his prescience, namely, of their prejudicialness to the free-will of man. Socinus discourses (which was no difficult task) that the foreknowledge of God is as inconsistent with that independent liberty of will and contingency which he and they had fancied as the predetermination of his will; and therefore rejects the former as well as the latter. It was Augustine’s complaint of old concerning Cicero, that “ita fecit homines liberos, ut fecit etiam sacrilegos” Cicero was a mere Pagan, and surely our complaint against any that shall close with him in this attempt, under the name of a “mere Christian,” will not be less just than that of Augustine. For mine own part, I am fully resolved that all the liberty and freedom that, as creatures, we are capable of is eminently consistent with God’s absolute decrees and infallible foreknowledge; and if I should hesitate in the apprehension thereof, I had rather ten thousand times deny our wills to be free than God to be omniscient, the sovereign disposer of all men, their actions, and concernments, or say that any thing comes to pass without, against, or contrary to the counsel of his will. But we know, through the goodness of God, that these things have their consistency, and that God may have preserved to him the glory of his infinite perfection, and the will of man not at all be abridged of its due and proper liberty.

These things being premised, the proof and demonstration of the truth proposed lies ready at hand in the ensuing particulars: — 1. He who knows all things knows the things that are future, though contingent) In saying they are things future and contingent, f187a you grant them to be among the number of things, as you do those which you call things past; but that God knows all things hath already been abundantly confirmed out of Scripture. Let the reader look back on some of the many texts and places by which I gave answer to the query about the foreknowledge of God, and he will find abundantly enough for his satisfaction, if he be of those that would be satisfied, and dares not carelessly make bold to trample upon the perfections of God. Take some few of them to a review: 1 John 3:20, “God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things.” Even we know things past and present. If God knows only things of the same kind, his knowledge may be greater than ours by many degrees, but you cannot say his understanding is infinite; there is not, on that supposition, an infinite distance between his knowledge and ours, but they stand in some measurable proportion. Hebrews 4:13, “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.” “Not that which is to come, not the free actions of men that are future,” saith Mr B. But to distinguish thus when the Scripture doth not distinguish, and that to the great dishonor of God, is not to interpret the word, but to deny it, Acts 15:8, “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” I ask, whether God hath any thing to do in the free actions of men? For instance, had he any thing to do in the sending of Joseph into Egypt, his exaltation there, and the entertainment of his father’s household afterward by him in his greatness and power? all which were brought about by innumerable contingencies and free actions of men. If he had not, why should we any longer depend on him, or regard him in the several transactions and concernments of our lives? “Nullum numen abest, f187b si sit prudentia: nos to, · Nos facimus, Fortuna, Deam.” If he had to do with it, as Joseph thought he had, when he affirmed plainly that” God sent him thither, and made him a father to Pharaoh and his house.,” Genesis 45:5-8, then the whole was known to God before, for “Known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world.” And if God may know any one free action beforehand, he may know all, for there is the same reason of them all Their contingency is given as the only cause why they may not be known, Now, every action that is contingent is equally interested therein. “A quatenus ad omne valet argumentum.”

That place of the psalm before recited, <19D902> Psalm 139:2-6, is express as to the knowledge of God concerning our free actions that are yet future. If any thing in the world may be reckoned amongst our free actions, surely our thoughts may; and such a close reserved treasure are they that Mr B. doth more than insinuate, in the application of the texts of Scripture which he mentioneth, that God knoweth them not when present without search and inquiry. But these, saith the psalmist, “God knoweth afar off,” — before we think them, before they enter into our hearts. And truly I marvel that any man, not wholly given up to a spirit of giddiness, after he had produced this text of Scripture to prove that God knows our thoughts, should instantly subjoin a question leading men to a persuasion that God knows not our free actions that are future; unless it was with a Julian design, to impair the credit of the word of God, by pretending it liable to self-contradiction, or, with Lucian, to deride God as bearing contrary testimonies concerning himself. 2. God hath, by himself and his holy prophets, which have been from the foundation of the world, foretold many of the free actions of men, what they would do, what they should do, long before they were born who were to do them. To give a little light to this argument, which of itself will easily overwhelm all that stands before it, I shall handle it under these propositions: — (1.) That God hath so foretold the free actions of men. (2.) That so he could not do unless he knew them, and that they would be, then when he foretold them. (3.) That he proves himself to be God by these his predictions. (4.) That he foretells them as the means of executing many of his judgments which he hath purposed and threatened, and the accomplishment of many mercies which he hath promised, so that the denial of his foresight of them so exempts them from under his providence as to infer that he rules not in the world by punishments and rewards.

For the first: — (1.) There needs no great search or inquiry after witnesses to confirm the truth of it; the Scripture is full of such predictions from one end to the other. Some few instances shall suffice: Genesis 18:18,19, “Seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him; for I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of theLORD, to do justice and judgment; that theLORD may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him.”

Scarce a word but is expressive of some future contingent thing, if the free actions of men be so before they are wrought. That “Abraham should become a mighty nation,’’ that “all the nations of the earth should be blessed in him,” that he would “command his children and his household after him to keep the ways of theLORD,” it was all to be brought about by the free actions of Abraham and of others; and all this “I know,” saith the Lord, and accordingly declares it. By the way, if the Lord knew all this before, his following trial of Abraham was not to satisfy himself whether he feared him or no, as is pretended.

So also Genesis 15:13,14, “And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; and also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance.”

The Egyptians’ affliction on the Israelites was by their free actions, if any be free. It was their sin to do it; they sinned in all that they did for the effecting of it. And, doubtless, if any men’s sinful actions are free, yet doth God here foretell “They shall afflict them.” Deuteronomy 31:16-18, you have an instance beyond all possible exception: “And theLORD said unto Moses, Behold, thou shalt sleep with thy fathers; and this people will rise up, and go a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, whither they go to be among them, and will forsake me, and break my covenant which I have made with them. Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God is not among us?” etc.

The sum of a good part of what is recorded in the Book of Judges is here foretold by God. The people’s going a whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land, their forsaking of God, their breaking his covenant, the thoughts of their hearts and their expressions upon the consideration of the evils and afflictions that should befall them, were of their free actions; but now all these doth God here foretell, and thereby engages the honor of his truth unto the certainty of their coming to pass. 1 Kings 13:2 is signal to the same purpose: “O altar, altar, behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that bum incense upon thee, and men’s bones shall be burnt upon then” This prediction is given out three hundred years before the birth of Josiah.

The accomplishment of it you have in the story, 2 Kings 23:17. Did Josiah act freely? was his proceeding at Bethel by free actions, or no? If not, how shall we know what actions of men are free, what not? If it was, his free actions are here foretold, and therefore, I think, foreseen. 1 Kings 22:28, the prophet Micaiah, in the name of the Lord, having foretold a thing that was contingent, and which was accomplished by a man acting at a venture, lays the credit of his prophecy (and therein his life, for if he had proved false as to the event he was to have suffered death by the law) at stake, before all the people, upon the certainty of the issue foretold: “And Micaiah said, If thou return at all in peace, theLORD hath not spoken by me. And he said, Hearken, O people, every one of you.”

Of these predictions the Scripture is full. The prophecies of Cyrus in Isaiah, of the issue of the Babylonish war and kingdom of Judah in Jeremiah, of the several great alterations and changes in the empires of the world in Daniel, of the kingdom of Christ in them all, are too long to be insisted on. The reader may also consult Matthew 24:5; Mark 13:6, 14:30; Acts 20:29; 2 Thessalonians 2:3,4, etc.; 1 Timothy 4:1; <550301> Timothy 3:1; 2 Peter 2:1; and the Revelation almost throughout. Our first proposition, then, is undeniably evident, That God, by himself and by his prophets, hath foretold things future, even the free actions of men. (2.) The second proposition mentioned is manifest and evident in its own light: What God foretelleth, that he perfectly foreknows. The honor and repute of his veracity and truth, yea, of his being, depend on the certain accomplishment of what he absolutely foretells. If his predictions of things future are not bottomed on his certain prescience of them, they are all but like Satan’s oracles, conjectures and guesses of what may be accomplished or not, — a supposition whereof is as high a pitch of blasphemy as any creature in this world can possibly arrive unto. (8.) By this prerogative of certain predictions in reference to things to come, God vindicates his own deity; and from the want of it evinces the vanity of the idols of the Gentiles, and the falseness of the prophets that pretend to speak in his name: Isaiah 41:21-24, “Produce your cause, saith theLORD; bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show us what shall happen: let them show the former things, what they be; or declare us things for to come. Show the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods. Behold, ye are of nothing.”

The Lord calling forth the idols of the Gentiles, devils, stocks, and stones, to plead for themselves, before the denunciation of the solemn sentence ensuing, verse 24, he puts them to the plea of foreknowledge for the proof of their deity. If they can foretell things to come certainly and infallibly, on the account of their own know]edge of them, gods they are, and gods they shall be esteemed. If not, saith he, “Ye are nothing, worse than nothing, and your work of nought; an abomination is he that chooseth you.” And it may particularly be remarked, that the idols of whom he speaketh are in especial those of the Chaldeans, whose worshippers pretended above all men in the world to divination and predictions. Now, this issue doth the Lord drive things to betwixt himself and the idols of the world: If they can foretell things to come, that is, not this or that thing (for so, by conjecture, upon consideration of second causes and the general dispositions of things, they may do, and the devil hath done), but any thing or every thing, they shall go free; that is, “Is there nothing hid from you that is yet for to be?”

Being not able to stand before this interrogation, they perish before the judgment mentioned. But now, if it may be replied to the living God himself that this is a most unequal way of proceeding, to lay that burden upon the shoulders of others which himself will not bear, bring others to that trial which himself cannot undergo, for he himself cannot foretell the free actions of men, because he doth not foreknow them, would not his plea render him like to the idols whom he adjudgeth to shame and confusion? God himself there, concluding that they are “vanity and nothing” who are pretended to be gods but are not able to foretell the things that are for to come, asserts his own deity, upon the account of his infinite understanding and knowledge of all things, on the account whereof he can foreshow all things whatever that are as yet future. In like manner doth he proceed to evince what is from himself, what not, in the predictions of any, from the certainty of the event: Deuteronomy 18:21,22, “If thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the\parLORD hath not spoken? When a prophet speaketh in the name of theLORD, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which theLORD hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him.” (4.) The fourth proposition, That God by the free actions of men (some whereof he foretelleth) doth fulfill his own counsel as to judgments and mercies, rewards and punishments, needs no farther proof or confirmation but what will arise from a mere review of the things before mentioned, by God so foretold, as was to be proved. They were things of the greatest import in the world, as to the good or evil of the inhabitants thereof, and in whose accomplishment as much of the wisdom, power, righteousness, and mercy of God was manifest, as in any of the works of his providence whatever. Those things which he hath [so] disposed of as to be subservient to so great ends, certainly he knew that they would be. The selling of Joseph, the crucifying of his Son, the destruction of antichrist, are things of greater concernment than that God should only conjecture at their event. And, indeed, the taking away of God’s foreknowledge of things contingent renders his providence useless as to the government of the world. To what end should any rely upon him, seek unto him, commit themselves to his care through the course of their lives, when he knows not what will or may befall them the next day? How shall he judge or rule the world who every moment is surprised with new emergencies which he foresaw not, which must necessitate him to new counsels and determinations? On the consideration of this argument doth Episcopius conclude for the prescience of God, Ep. 2, “ad Beverovicium de termino vitae,” which he had allowed to be questioned in his private Theological Disputations, though in his public afterward he pleads for it. The sum of the argument insisted on amounts to this: — Those things which God foretells that they shall certainly and infallibly come to pass before they so do, those he certainly and infallibly knoweth whilst they are future, and that they will come to pass; but God foretells, and hath foretold, all manner of future contingencies and free actions of men, good and evil, duties and sins: therefore he certainly and infallibly knows them whilst they are yet future.

The proposition stands or falls unto the honor of God’s truth, veracity, and power.

The assumption is proved by the former and sundry other instances that may be given.

He foretold that the Egyptians should afflict his people four hundred years, that in so doing they would sin, and that for it he would punish them, Genesis 15:13,14; and surely the Egyptians’ sinning therein was their own free action. The incredulity of the Jews, treachery of Judas, calling of the Gentiles, all that happened to Christ in the days of his flesh, the coming of antichrist, the rise of false teachers, were all foretold, and did all of them purely depend on the free actions of men; which was to be demonstrated. 3. To omit many other arguments, and to close this discourse: all perfections are to be ascribed to God; they are all in him. To know is an excellency; he that knows any thing is therein better than he that knows it not. The more any one knows, the more excellent is he. To know all things is an absolute perfection in the good of knowledge; to know them in and by himself who so knows them, and not from any discourses made to him from without, is an absolute perfection in itself, and is required where there is infinite wisdom and understanding. This we ascribe to God, as worthy of him, and as by himself ascribed to himself. To affirm, on the other side, — (1.) That God hath his knowledge from things without him, and so is taught wisdom and understanding, as we are, from the event of things, for the more any one knows the wiser he is; (2.) That he hath, as we have, a successive knowledge of things, knowing that one day which he knew not another, and that thereupon there is, — (3.) A daily and hourly change and alteration in him, as, from the increasing of his knowledge there must actually and formally be; and, (4.) That he sits conjecturing at events; — to assert, I say, these and the like monstrous figments concerning God and his knowledge, is, as much as in them lieth who so assert them, to shut his providence out of the world, and to divest him of all his blessedness, self-sufficiency, and infinite perfections. And, indeed, if Mr B. believe his own principles, and would speak out, he must assert these things, how desperate soever; for having granted the premises, it is stupidity to stick at the conclusion. And therefore some of those whom Mr B. is pleased to follow in these wild vagaries speak out, and say (though with as much blasphemy as confidence) that God doth only conjecture and guess at future contingents; for when this argument is brought, Genesis 18:19, “‘I know,’ saith God, ‘Abraham, that he will command his children and his household after him,’ etc, therefore future contingents may be certainly known of him,” they deny the consequence; or, granting that he may be said to know them, yet say it is only by guess and conjecture, as we do. And for the present vindication of the attributes of God this may suffice.

Before I close this discourse, it may not be impertinent to divert a little to that which alone seems to be of any difficulty lying in our way in the assertion of this prescience of God, though no occasion of its consideration be administered to us by him with whom we have to do. “That future contingents have not in themselves a determinate truth, and therefore cannot be determinately known,” is the great plea of those who oppose God’s certain foreknowledge of them; “and therefore,” say they, “doth the philosopher affirm that propositions concerning them are neither true nor false.” But, — 1. That there is, or may be, that there hath been, a certain prediction of future contingents hath been demonstrated; and therefore they must on some account or other (and what that account is hath been declared) have a determinate truth. And I had much rather conclude that there are certain predictions of future contingents in the Scripture, and therefore they have a determinate truth, than, on the contrary, they have no determinate truth, therefore there are no certain predictions of them. “Let God be true, and every man a liar.” 2. As to the falsity of that pretended axiom, this proposition, “Such a soldier shall pierce the side of Christ with a spear, or he shall not pierce him,” is determinately true and necessary on the one side or the other, the parts of it being contradictory, which cannot lie together. Therefore, if a man before the flood had used this proposition in the affirmative, it had been certainly and determinately true; for that proposition which was once not true cannot be true afterward upon the same account. 3. If no affirmative proposition about future contingents be determinately true, then every such affirmative proposition is determinately false; for from hence, that a thing is or is not, is a proposition determinately true or false. And therefore if any one shall say that that is determinately future which is absolutely indifferent, his affirmation is false; which is contrary to Aristotle, whom in this they rely upon, who affirms that such propositions are neither true nor false. The truth is, of propositions that they are true or false is certain. Truth or falseness are their proper and necessary affections, as even and odd of numbers; nor can any proposition be given wherein there is a contradiction, whereof one part is true and the other false. 4. This proposition, “Petrus orat,” is determinately true de praesenti, when Peter doth actually pray (for “quicquid est., dum est, determinate est”); therefore this proposition de future, “Petrus orabit,” is determinately true. The former is the measure and rule by which we judge of the latter. So that because it is true de presenti, “Petrus orat;” ergo this, de futuro, “Petrus orabit,” was ab aeterno true (ex parte rei). And then (ex parte modi) because this proposition, “Petrus orat,” is determinately true de praesenti; ergo this, “Petrus orabit,” was determinately true from all eternity. But enough of this.

Mr B. having made a sad complaint of the ignorance and darkness that men were bred up in by being led from the Scripture, and imposing himself upon them for “a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, and a teacher of babes,” doth, in pursuit of his great undertaking, in this chapter instruct them what the Scripture speaks concerning the being, nature, and properties of God. Of his goodness, wisdom, power, truth, righteousness, faithfulness, mercy, independency, sovereignty, infiniteness, men had before been informed by books, tracts, and catechisms, “composed according to the fancies and interests of men, the Scripture being utterly justled out of the way.” Alas! of these things the Scripture speaks not at all; but the description wherein that abounds of God, and which is necessary that men should know (whatever become of those other inconsiderable things wherewith other poor catechisms are stuffed), is, that he is finite, limited, and obnoxious to passions, eta “Thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?”

CHAPTER 6. Of the creation, and condition of man before and after the fall.

MR BIDDLE’S THIRD CHAPTER.

Ques. Were the heaven and earth from all eternity , or created at a certain time? and by whom?

Ans. Genesis 1:1. <010101> Q. How long was God a making them?

A. Exodus 20:11. Q. How did God create m an?

A. Genesis 2:7. Q. How did he create woman?

A. Genesis 2:21,22. Q. Why was she called woman A. Genesis 2:23. Q. What doth Moses infer from her being made a woman, and brought unto the man A. Genesis 2:24. Q. Where did God put man afiter he was created?

A. Genesis 2:8. Q. What commandment gave he to the man when he put him into the garden?

A. Genesis 2:16,17.

Q. Was the man deceived to eat of the forbidden fruit A. 1 Timothy 2:14.

Q. By whom was the woman deceived?

A. 2 Corinthians 11:9.

Q. How was the woman induced to eat of the forbidden fruit? and how the man?

A. Genesis 3:6.

Q. What effect followed upon their eating?

A. Genesis 3:7.

Q. Did the sin of our first parents in eating of the forbidden fruit bring both upon them and their posterity the guilt of hell-fire, deface the image of God in them, darken their understanding, enslave their will, deprive them of power to do good, and cause mortality? If not, what are the true penalties that God denounced against them for the said offense?

A. Genesis 3:16-19.

EXAMINATION.

Having delivered his thoughts concerning God himself, his nature and properties, in the foregoing chapters, in this our catechist proceeds to the consideration of his works, ascribing to God the creation of all things, especially insisting on the making of man. Now, although many questions might be proposed from which Mr B. would, I suppose, be scarcely able to extricate himself, relating to the impossibility of the proceeding of such a work as the creation of all things from such an agent as he hath described God to be, so limited both in his essence and properties, yet it being no part of my business to dispute or perplex any thing that is simply in itself true,and unquestionable, with the attendancies of it from other corrupt notions of him or them by whom it is received and proposed, I shall wholly omit all considerations of that nature, and apply myself merely to what is by him expressed. That he who is limited and finite in essence, and consequently in properties, should by his power, without the help of any intervening instrument, out of nothing, produce, at such a vast distance from him as his hands can by no means reach unto, such mighty effects as the earth itself and the fullness thereof, is not of an easy proof or resolution. But on these things at present I shall not insist. Certain it is that, on this apprehension of God, the Epicureans disputed for the impassibility of the creation of the world. f195 His first question, then, is, “Were the heaven and earth from all eternity, or created at a certain time? and by whom?” To which he answers with Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

Right. Only in the exposition of this verse, as it discovers the principal efficient cause of the creation of all things, or the author of this great work, Mr B. afterward expounds himself to differ from us and the word of God in other places. By “God” he intends the Father only and exclusively, the Scripture plentifully ascribing this work also to the Son and Holy Ghost, manifesting their concurrence in the indivisible Deity unto this great work, though, by way of eminency, this work be attributed to the Father, as that of redemption is to the Son, and that of regeneration to the Holy Ghost, from neither of which notwithstanding is the Father excluded.

Perhaps the using of the name of God in the plural number, where mention is made of the creation, in conjunction with a verb singular, Genesis 1:1, and the express calling of God our Creators and Makers, Ecclesiastes 12:1, <19E902> Psalm 149:2, Job 35:10, wants not a significancy to this thing. And indeed he that shall consider the miserable evasions that the adversaries have invented to escape the argument thence commonly insisted on must needs be confirmed in the persuasion of the force of it. Mr B. may haply close with Plato in this business, who, in his “Timaeus,” brings in his dhmiourgo>v speaking to his genii about the making of man, telling them that they were mortal, but encouraging them to obey him in the making of other creatures, upon the promise of immortality. “Turn you,” saith he, “according to the law of nature, to the making of living creatures, and imitate my power which I used in your generation or birth;” — a speech fit enough for Mr B.’s god, “who is shut up in heaven,” and not able of himself to attend his whole business.

But what a sad success this demiurgus had, by his want of prescience, or foresight of what his demons would do (wherein also Mr B. likens God unto him), is farther declared; for they imprudently causing a conflux of too much matter and humor, no small tumult followed thereon in heaven, as at large you may see in the same author. However, it is said expressly the Son or Word created all things, John 1:3; and, “By him are all things,” 1 Corinthians 8:6, Revelation 4:11. Of the Holy Ghost the same is alarmed, Genesis 1:2, Job 26:13, Psalm 33:6. Nor can the Word and Spirit be degraded from the place of principal efficient cause in this work to a condition of instrumentality only, which is urged (especially in reference to the Spirit), unless we shall suppose them to have been created before say creation, sad to have been instrumental of their own production. But of these things in their proper place.

His second question is, “How long was God in making them?” and he answers from Exodus 20:11, “In six days theLORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is.”

The rule I formerly prescribed to myself of dealing with Mr B. causes me to pass this question also without farther inquiry; although, having already considered what his notions are concerning the nature and properties of God, I can scarce avoid conjecturing that by this crude proposal of the time wherein the work of God’s creation was finished, there is an intendment to insinuate such a gross conception of the working of God as will By no means be suited to his omnipotent production of all things. But speaking of things no farther than enforced, I shall not insist on this query.

His third is, “How did God create man?” and the answer is, Genesis 2:7.

To which he adds a fourth, “How did he create woman?” which he resolves from Genesis 2:21,22.

Mr B., undertaking to give all the grounds of religion in his Catechisms, teacheth as well by his silence as his expressions. What he mentions not, in the known doctrine he opposeth, he may well be interpreted to reject. As to the matter whereof man sad woman were made, Mr B.’s answers do express it; but as to the condition and state wherein they were made, of that he is silent, though he knows the Scripture doth much more abound in delivering the one than the other. Neither can his silence in this thing be imputed to oversight or forgetfulness, considering how subservient it is to his intendment in his last two questions, for the subverting of the doctrine of original sin, and the denial of all those effects and consequences of the first breach of covenant whereof he spesks. He can, upon another account, take notice that man was made in the imago of God: but whereas hitherto Christians have supposed that that denoted some spiritual perfection bestowed on man, wherein he resembles God, Mr B. hath discovered that it is only an expression of some imperfection of God, wherein he resembles man; which yet he will as hardly persuade us of as that a man hath seven eyes or two wings, which are ascribed unto God also. That man was created in a resemblance and likeness unto God in that immortal substance breathed into his nostrils, Genesis 2:7, in the excellent rational faculties thereof, in the dominion he was intrusted withal over a great part of God’s creation, but especially in the integrity and uprightness of his person, Ecclesiastes 7:29, wherein he stood before God, in reference to the obedience required at his hands, — which condition, by the implanting of new qualities in our soul, we are, through Christ, in some measure renewed unto, Colossians 3:10,12, Ephesians 4:24, — the Scripture is clear, evident, and full in the discovery of; but hereof Mr B. conceive, not himself bound to take notice. But what is farther needful to be spoken as to the state of man before the fall will fall under the consideration of the last question of this chapter.

Mr B.’s process in the following questions is, to express the story of man’s outward condition, unto the eighth, where he inquires after the commandment given of God to man when he put him into the garden, in these words: — “Q. What commandment gave he to the man when he put him into the garden?”

This he resolves from Genesis 2:16,17. That God gave our first parents the command expressed is undeniable. That the matter chiefly expressed in that command was all or the principal part of what he required of them, Mr B. doth not go about to prove. I shall only desire to know of him whether God did not in that estate require of them that they should love him, fear him, believe him, acknowledge their dependence on him, in universal obedience to his will? and whether a suitableness unto all this duty were not wrought within them by God? If he shall say No, and that God required no more of them but only not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, I desire to know whether they might have hated God, abhorred him, believed Satan, and yet been free from the threatening here mentioned, if they had only forbore the outward eating of the fruit? If this shall be granted, I hope I need not insist to manifest what will easily be inferred, nor to show how impossible this is, God continuing God, and man a rational creature. If he shall say that certainly God did require that they should own him for God, — that is, believe him, love him, fear him, and worship him, according to all that he should reveal to them and require of them, — I desire to know whether this particular command could be any other than sacramental and symbolical as to the matter of it, being a thing of so small importance in its own nature, in comparison of those moral acknowledgments of God before mentioned; and to that question I shall not need to add more.

Although it may justly be supposed that Mr B. is not without some thoughts of deviation from the truth in the following questions, yet the last being of most importance, and he being express therein in denying all the effects of the first sin, but only the curse that came upon the outward, visible world, I shall insist only on that, and close our consideration of this chapter. His question is thus proposed: “Q. Did the sin of our first parents in eating of the forbidden fruit bring both upon them and their posterity the guilt of hell-fire, deface the image of God in them, darken their understandings, enslave their wills, deprive them of power to do good, and cause mortality? If not, what are the true penalties denounced against them for that offense?”

To this he answers from Genesis 3:16-19.

What the sin of our first parents was may easily be discovered from what was said before concerning the commandment given to them. If universal obedience was required of them unto God, according to the tenor of the law of their creation, their sin was an universal rebellion against and apostasy from him; which though it expressed itself in the peculiar transgression of that command mentioned, yet it is far from being reducible to any one kind of sin, whose whole nature is comprised in that expression. Of the effects of this sin commonly assigned, Mr B. annumerates and rejects six, sundry whereof are coincident with, and all but one reducible to, that general head of loss of the image of God; but for the exclusion of them all at once from being any effects of the first sin, Mr B. thus argues: “If there were no effects or consequences of the first sin but what are expressly mentioned, Genesis 3:16-19, then those now mentioned are no effects of it; but there are no effects or consequences of that first sin but what are mentioned in that place:” therefore those recounted in his query, and commonly esteemed such, are to be cashiered from any such place in the thoughts of men.

Ans. The words insisted on by Mr B. being expressive of the curse of God for sin on man, and on the whole creation here below for his sake, it will not be easy for him to evince that none of the things he rejects are not eminently inwrapped in them. Would God have denounced and actually inflicted such a curse on the whole creation, which he had put in subjection to man, as well as upon man himself, and actually have inflicted it with so much dread and severity as he hath done, if the transgression upon the account whereof he did it had not been as universal a rebellion against him as could be fallen into? Man fell in his whole dependence from God, and is cursed universally, in all his concernments, spiritual and temporal.

But is this indeed the only place of Scripture where the effects of our apostasy from God, in the sin of our first parents, are described Mr B. may as well tell us that Genesis 3:15 is the only place where mention is made of Jesus Christ, for there he is mentioned. But a little to clear this whole matter in our passage, though what hath been spoken may suffice to make naked Mr B.’s sophistry: — 1. By the effects of the first sin, we understand every thing of evil that, either within or without, in respect of a present or future condition, in reference to God and the fruition of him whereto man was created, or the enjoyment of any goodness from God, is come upon mankind, by the just ordination and appointment of God, whereunto man was not obnoxious in his primitive state and condition. I am not at present at all engaged to speak de modo, of what is privative, what positive, in original sin, of the way of the traduction or propagation of it, of the imputation of the guilt of the first sin, and adhesion of the pollution of our nature defiled thereby, or any other questions that are coincident with these in the usual inquest made into and after the sin of Adam and the fruits of it; but only as to the things themselves, which are here wholly denied. Now, — 2. That whatsoever is evil in man by nature, whatever he is obnoxious and liable unto that is hurtful and destructive to him and all men in common, in reference to the end whereto they were created, or any title wherewith they were at first intrusted, is all wholly the effect of the first sin, and is in solidum to be ascribed thereunto, is easily demonstrated; for, — (1.) That which is common to all things in any kind, and is proper to them only of that kind, must needs have some common cause equally respecting the whole kind: but now of the evils that are common to all mankind, and peculiar or proper to them and every one of them, there can be no cause but that which equally concerns them all; which, by the testimony of God himself, was this fall of Adam, Romans 5:12, 15-19. (2.) The evils that are now incumbent upon men in their natural condition (which what they are shall be afterward considered) were either incumbent on them at their first creation, before the sin and fall of our first parents, or they are come upon them since, through some interposing cause or occasion. That they were not in them or on them, that they were not liable or obnoxious to those evils which are now incumbent on them, in their first creation, as they came forth from the hand of God (besides what was said before of the state and condition wherein man was created, even “upright” in the Sight of God, in his favor and acceptation, no way obnoxious to his anger and wrath), is evident by the light of this one consideration, namely, that there was nothing in man nor belonging to him, no respect, no regard or relation, but what was purely and immediately of the holy God’s creation and institution. Now, it is contrary to all that he hath revealed or made known to us of himself, that he should be the immediate author of so much evil as is now, by his own testimony, in man by nature, and, without any occasion, of so much vanity and misery as he is subject unto; and, besides, directly thwarting the testimony which he gave of all the works of his hands, that they were exceeding good, it being evident that man, in the condition whereof we speak, is exceeding evil. 3. If all the evil mentioned hath since befallen mankind, then it hath done so either by some chance and accident whereof God was not aware, or by his righteous judgment and appointment, in reference to some procuring and justly-deserving cause of such a punishment. To affirm the first, is upon the matter to deny him to be God; and I doubt not but that men at as easy and cheap a rate of sin may deny that there is a God, as, confessing his divine essence, to turn it into an idol, and by making thick clouds, as Job speaks, to interpose between him and the affairs of the world, to exclude his energetical providence in the disposal of all the works of his hands. If the latter be affirmed, I ask, as before, what other common cause, wherein all and every one of mankind is equally concerned, can be assigned of the evils mentioned, as the procurement of the wrath and vengeance of God, from whence they are, but only the fall of Adam, the sin of our first parents, especially considering that the Holy Ghost doth so expressly point out this fountain and source of the evils insisted on, Romans 5:12, 15-19? 4. These things, then, being premised, it will quickly appear that every one of the particulars rejected by Mr B. from being fruits or effects of the first sin are indeed the proper issues of it; and though Mr B. cut the roll of the abominations and corruptions of the nature of man by sin, and cast it into the fire, yet we may easily write it again, and add many more words of the like importance.

The first effect or fruit of the first sin rejected by Mr. B. is, “its rendering men guilty of hell-fire;” but the Scripture seems to be of another mind, Romans 5:12, “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” That all men sinned in Adam, that they contracted the guilt of the same death with him, that death entered by sin, the Holy Ghost is express in. The death here mentioned is that which God threatened to Adam if he did transgress, Genesis 2:17; which that it was not death temporal only, yea not at all, Mr B. contends by denying mortality to be a fruit of this sin, as also excluding in this very query all room for death spiritual, which consists in the defacing of the image of God in us, which he with this rejects: and what death remains but that which hath hell following after it we shall afterward consider.

Besides, that death which Christ died to deliver us from was that which we were obnoxious to upon the account of the first sin; for he came to “save that which was lost,” and tasted death to deliver us from death, dying to “deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage,” Hebrews 5:15. But that this was such a death as hath hell-fire attending it, he manifests by affirming that he “delivers us from the wrath to come.” By “hell-fire” we understand nothing but the “wrath of God” for sin; into whose hands it is a fearful thing to fall, our God being a consuming fire. That the guilt of every sin is this death whereof we speak, that hath both curse and wrath attending it, and that it is the proper “wages of sin,” the testimony of God is evident, Romans 6:23. What other death men are obnoxious to on the account of the first sin, that hath not these concomitants, Mr B. hath not as yet revealed. “By nature,” also, we are “children of wrath,” Ephesians 2:3. And on what foot of account our obnoxiousness now by nature unto wrath is to be stated, is sufficiently evident by the light of the preceding considerations.

The “defacing of the image of God in us” by this sin, as it is usually asserted, is in the next place denied. That man was created in the image of God, and wherein that image of God doth consist, were before declared.

That we are now born with that character upon us, as it was at first enstamped upon us, must be affirmed, or some common cause of the defect that is in us, wherein all and every one of the posterity of Adam are equally concerned, besides that of the first sin, is to be assigned. That this latter cannot be done hath been already declared. He that shall undertake to make good the former must engage in a more difficult work than Mr B., in the midst of his other employments, is willing to undertake. To insist on all particulars relating to the image of God in man, how far it is defaced, whether any thing properly and directly thereunto belonging be yet left remaining in us; to declare how far our souls, in respect of their immortal substance, faculties, and consciences, and our persons, in respect of that dominion over the creatures which yet, by God’s gracious and merciful providence, we retain, may be said to bear the image of God, — is a work of another nature than what I am now engaged in. For the asserting of what is here denied by Mr B., concerning the defacing of the image of God in us by sin, no more is required but only the tender of some demonstrations to the main of our intendment in the assertion touching the loss by the first sin, and our present want, in the state of nature, of that righteousness and holiness wherein man at his first creation stood before God (in reference unto the end whereunto he was created), in uprightness and ability of walking unto all well-pleasing. And as this will be fully manifested in the consideration of the ensuing particulars instanced in by Mr B., so it is sufficiently clear and evident from the renovation of that image which we have by Jesus Christ; and that is expressed both in general and in all the particulars wherein we affirm that image to be defaced. “The new man,” which we put on in Jesus Christ, which “is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him,” Colossians 3:10, is that which we want, by sin’s defacing (suo more) of that image of God in us which we had in knowledge. So Ephesians 4:23,24, that new man is said to consist in the “renewing of our mind, whereby after God we are created in righteousness and holiness.” So, then, whereas we were created in the image of God, in righteousness and holiness, and are to be renewed again by Christ into the same condition of his image in righteousness and holiness, we doubt not to affirm that by the first sin (the only interposition of general concernment to all the sons of men) the image of God in us was exceedingly defaced. In sum, that which made us sinners brought sin and death upon us; that which made us liable to condemnation, that defaced the image of God in us; and that all this was done by the first sin the apostle plainly asserts, Romans 5:12,15, 17-19, etc.

To the next particular effect of sin by Mr B. rejected, “the darkening of our understandings,” I shall only inquire of him whether God made us at first with our understandings dark and ignorant as to those things which are of absolute necessity that we should be acquainted withal, for the attainment of the end whereunto he made us? For once I will suppose he will not affirm it; and shall therefore proceed one step farther, and ask him whether there be not such a darkness now upon us by nature, opposed unto that light, that spiritual and saving knowledge, which is of absolute necessity for every one to have and be furnished withal that will again attain that image of God which we are born short of. Now, because this is that which will most probably be denied, I shall, by the way, only desire him, — 1. To cast aside all the places of Scripture where it is positively and punctual]y asserted that we are so dark and blind, and darkness itself, in the things of God; and then, 2. All those where it is no less punctually and positively asserted that Christ gives us light, knowledge, understanding, which of ourselves we have not. And if he be not able to do so, then, 3. To tell me whether the darkness mentioned in the former places and innumerable others, and [of which mention is made], as to the manner and cause of its removal and taking away, in the latter, be part of that death which passed on all men “by the offense of one,” or by what other chance it is come upon us.

Of the “enslaving of our wills, and the depriving us of power to do good,” there is the same reason as of that next before. It is not my purpose to handle the common-place of the corruption of nature by sin: nor can I say that it is well for Mr B. that he finds none of those effects of sin in himself, nothing of darkness, bondage, or disability, or if he do, that he knows where to charge it, and not on himself and the depravedness of his own nature; and that because I know none who are more desperately sick than those who, by a fever of pride, have lost the sense of their own miserable condition. Only to stop him in his haste from rejecting the evils mentioned from being effects or consequences of the first sin, I desire him to peruse a little the ensuing scriptures; and I take them as they come to mind: Ephesians 2:1-3,5; John 5:25; Matthew 8:22; Ephesians 5:8; Luke 4:18; 2 Timothy 2:25,26; John 8:34; Romans 6:16; Genesis 6:5; Romans 7:5; John 3:6; 1 Corinthians 2:14; Romans 3:12; Acts 8:31; John 5:40; Romans 8:7; Jeremiah 13:23, etc.

The last thing denied is its “causing mortality.” God threatening man with death if he sinned, Genesis 2:17, seems to instruct us that if he had not sinned he should not have died; and upon his sin, affirming that on that account he should be dissolved and return to his dust, Genesis 3:19, no less evidently convinces us that his sin caused mortality actually and in the event. The apostle, also, affirming that “death entered by sin, and passed upon all, inasmuch as all have sinned,” seems to be of our mind. Neither can any other sufficient cause be assigned on the account whereof innocent man should have been actually mortal or eventually have died. Mr B., it seems, is of another persuasion, and, for the confirmation of his judgment, gives you the words of the curse of God to man upon his sinning, “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return;” the strength of his reason therein lying in this, that if God denounced the sentence of mortality on man after sinning, and for his sin, then mortality was not an effect of sin, but man was mortal before in the state of innocency. Who doubts but that at this rate he may be able to prove what he pleases A brief declaration of our sense in ascribing immortality to the first man in the state of innocency, that none may be mistaken in the expressions used, may put a close to our consideration of this chapter. In respect of his own essence and being, as also of all outward and extrinsical causes, God alone is eminently and perfectly immortal; he only in that sense hath “life and immortality.” Angels and souls of men, immaterial substances, are immortal as to their intrinsic essence, free from principles of corruption and mortality; but yet are obnoxious to it in respect of that outward cause (or the power of God), which can at any time reduce them into nothing.

The immortality we ascribe to man in innocency is only an assured preservation by the power of God from actual dying, notwithstanding the possibility thereof which he was in upon the account of the constitution of his person, and the principles thereunto concurring. So that though from his own nature he had a possibility of dying, and in that sense was mortal, yet God’s institution assigning him life in the way of obedience, he had a possibility of not dying, and was in that sense immortal, as hath been declared. If any one desire farther satisfaction herein, let him consult Johannes Junius’ answer to Socinus’ Prelections, in the first chapter whereof he pretends to answer in proof the assertion in title, “Primus homo ante lapsum natura mortalis fuit;” wherein he partly mistakes the thing in question, which respects not the constitution of man’s nature, but the event of the condition wherein he was created, and himself in another place states it better.” f203 The sum of the whole may be reduced to what follows: — Simply and absolutely immortal is God only: “He only hath immortality,” Timothy 6:16. Immortal in respect of its whole substance or essence is that which is separate from all matter, which is the principle of corruption, as angels, or is not educed from the power of it, whither of its own accord it should again resolve, as the souls of men. The bodies also of the saints in heaven, yea, and of the wicked in hell, shall be immortal, though in their own natures corruptible, being changed and preserved by the power of God. Adam was mortal as to the constitution of his body, which was apt to die; immortal in respect of his soul in its own substance; immortal in their union by God’s appointment, and from his preservation upon his continuance in obedience. By the composition of his body before his fall, he had a posse mori; by the appointment of God, a posse non mori; by his fall, a non posse non mori.

In this estate, on his disobedience, he was threatened with death; and therefore was obedience the tenure whereby he held his grant of immortality, which on his neglect he was penally to be deprived of. In that estate he had, — (1.) The immortality mentioned, or a power of not dying, from the appointment of God; (2.) An uprightness and integrity of his person before God, with an ability to walk with him in all the obedience he required, being made in the image of God and upright; (3.) A right, upon his abode in that condition, to an eternally blessed life; which he should (4.) actually have enjoyed, for he had a pledge of it in the” tree of life” He lost it for himself and us; which if he never had it he could not do. The death wherewith he was threatened stood in opposition to all these, it being most ridiculous to suppose that any thing penal in the Scripture comes under the name of “death” that was not here threatened to Adam; — death of the body, in a deprivation of his immortality spoken of; of the soul spiritually, in sin, by the loss of his righteousness and integrity; of both, in their obnoxiousness to death eternal; actually to be undergone, without deliverance by Christ, in opposition to the right to a better, a blessed condition, which he had. That all these are penal, and called in the Scriptures by the name of “death,” is evident to all that take care to know what is contained in them.

For a close, then, of this chapter and discourse, let us also propose a few questions as to the matter under consideration, and see what answer the Scripture will positively give in to our inquiries: — First, then, — Ques. 1 . In what state and condition was man at first created?

Ans. “God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them,” Genesis 1:27. “And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good,” verse 31. “In the image of God made he man,” chap. 9:6. “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man UPRIGHT,” Ecclesiastes 7:29. “Put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness,” Ephesians 4:24. “Put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him,” Colossians 3:10.

Q. 2. Should our first parents have died had they not sinned, or were they obnoxious to death in the state of innocency?

A. “And theLORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,” Genesis 2:16,17. “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,” Romans 5:12. “For the wages of sin is death,” chap. 6:23.

Q. 3. Are we now, since the fall, born with the image of God so enstamped on us as at our first creation in Adam?

A. “All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,” Romans 3:23. “Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man uptight; but they have sought out many inventions,” Ecclesiastes 7:29. “So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God,” Romans 8:8. “And you who were dead in trespasses and sins,” Ephesians 2:1. “For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another,” Titus 3:3. “The old man is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts,” Ephesians 4:22.

Q. 4. Are we now born approved of God and accepted with him, as when we were first created, or what is our condition now by nature? what say the Scriptures hereunto?

A. “We were by nature the children of wrath, even as others,” Ephesians 2:3. “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” John 3:3. “He that believeth not the Son, the wrath of God abideth on him,” verse 36. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” John 3:6.

Q. 4. Are our understandings by nature able to discern the things of God, or are they darkened and blind?

A. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned,” 1 Corinthians 2:14. “The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not,” John 1:5. “To preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind,” Luke 4:18. “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart,” Ephesians 4:18. “Ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord,” chap. 5:8. “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ,” Corinthians 4:6. “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true,” 1 John 5:20.

Q. 5. Are we able to do those things now, in the state of nature, which are spiritually good and acceptable to God?

A. “The carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be,” Romans 8:7. “You were dead in trespasses and sins,” Ephesians 2:1. “The imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth,” Genesis 8:21. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil,” Jeremiah 13:23. “For without me ye can do nothing,” John 15:5. “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God,” 2 Corinthians 3:5. “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing,” Romans 7:18.

Q. 6. How came we into this miserable state and condition?

A. “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me,” Psalm 51:5. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one,” Job 14:4. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” John 3:6. “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,” Romans 5:12.

Q. 7. Is, then, the guilt of the first sin of our first parents reckoned unto us?

A. “But not as the offense, so also is the free gift, For through the offense of one many be dead,” Romans 5:15. “And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation,” verse 16. “For by one man’s offense death reigned,” verse 17. “Therefore by the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation,” verse 18. “By one man’s disobedience many were made sinners,” verse 19.

Thus, and much more fully, doth the Scripture set out and declare the condition of man both before and after the fall; concerning which, although the most evident demonstration of the latter lies in the revelation made of the exceeding efficacy of that power and grace which God in Christ puts forth for our conversion and delivery from that state and condition before described, yet so much is spoken of this dark side of it as will render vain the attempts of any who shall endeavor to plead the cause of corrupted nature, or alleviate the guilt of the first sin.

It may not be amiss, in the winding up of the whole, to give the reader a brief account of what slight thoughts this gentleman and his companions have concerning this whole matter of the state and condition of the first man, his fall or sin, and the interest of all his posterity therein, which confessedly lie at the bottom of that whole dispensation of grace in Jesus Christ which is revealed in the gospel.

First. [As] for Adam himself, they are so remote from assigning to him any eminency of knowledge, righteousness, or holiness, in the state, wherein he was created, that, — 1. For his knowledge, they say, “He was a mere great baby, that knew not that he was naked;” so also taking away the difference between the simple knowledge of nakedness in innocency, and the knowledge joined with shame that followed sin. “Of his wife he knew no more but what occurred to his senses;” though the expressions which he used at first view and sight of her do plainly argue another manner of apprehension, Genesis 2:23. For “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he knew not the virtue of it;” which yet I know not how it well agrees with another place of the same author, where he concludes that in the state of innocency there was in Adam a real predominancy of the natural appetite, which conquered or prevailed to the eating of the fruit of that tree. f207 Also, that being mortal, he knew not himself to be so. The sum is, he was even a very beast, that knew neither himself, his duty, nor the will of God concerning him. 2. [As] for his righteousness and holiness, which, as was said before, because he was made upright, in the image of God, we ascribe unto him, Socinus contends in one whole chapter in his Prelections, “that he was neither just nor holy, nor ought to be so esteemed nor called.” f209 And Smalcius, in his confutation of Franzius’ “Theses de Peccato Originali,” all along derides and laughs to scorn the apprehension or persuasion that Adam was created in righteousness and holiness, or that ever he lost any thing of the image of God, or that ever he had any thing of the image of God beyond or besides that dominion over the creatures which God gave him. f210 Most of the residue of the herd, describing the estate and condition of man in his creation, do wholly omit any mention of any moral uprightness in him. f211 And this is the account these gentlemen give us concerning the condition and state wherein the first man was of God created: A heavy burden of the earth it seems he was, that had neither righteousness nor holiness whereby he might be enabled to walk before God in reference to that great end whereunto he was created, nor any knowledge of God, himself, or his duty.

Secondly. [As] for his sin, the great master of their family disputes that it was a bare transgression of that precept of “not eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil,” and that his nature was not vitiated or corrupted thereby: wherein he is punctually followed by the Racovian Catechism, which also giveth this reason why his nature was not depraved by it, namely, because it was but one act; — so light are their thoughts and expressions of that great transgression! f213 Thirdly. [As] for his state and condition, they all, with open mouth, cry out that he was mortal and obnoxious to death, which should in a natural way have come upon him though he had not sinned. But of this before.

Fourthly. Farther; that the posterity of Adam were no way concerned, as to their spiritual prejudice, in that sin of his, as though they should either partake of the guilt of it or have their nature vitiated or corrupted thereby; but that the whole doctrine of original sin is a figment of Austin and the schoolmen that followed him, is the constant clamor of them all. And indeed this is the great foundation of all or the greatest part of their religion. Hence are the necessity of the satisfaction and merit of Christ, the efficacy of grace, and the power of the Spirit in conversion, decried. On this account is salvation granted, by them, without Christ, a power of keeping all the commandments asserted, and justification upon our obedience. Of which in the process of our discourse.

Such are the thoughts, such are the expressions, of Mr B.’s masters concerning this whole matter. Such was Adam in their esteem, such was his fall, and such our concernment therein. He had no righteousness, no holiness (yea, Socinus at length confesses that he did not believe his soul was immortal); we contracted no guilt in him, derive no pollution from him. Whether these men are in any measure acquainted with the plague of their own hearts, the severity and spirituality of the law of God, with that redemption which is in the blood of Jesus, the Lord will one day manifest; but into their secret let not my soul descend.

Lest the weakest or meanest reader should be startled with the mention of these things, not finding himself ready furnished with arguments from Scripture to disprove the boldness and folly of these men in their assertions, I shall add some few arguments whereby the severals by them denied and opposed are confirmed from the Scriptures, the places before mentioned being in them cast into that form and method wherein they are readily subservient to the purpose in hand: — First. That man was created in the image of God, in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness, is evident on the ensuing considerations: — 1. He who was made “very good” and “upright,” in a moral consideration, had the original righteousness pleaded for; for moral goodness, integrity, and uprightness, is equivalent unto righteousness. So are the words used in the description of Job, <180101> chap. 1:1; and “righteous’’ and “upright” are terms equivalent, Psalm 33:1. Now, that man was made thus good and upright was manifested in the scriptures cited in answer to the question before proposed, concerning the condition wherein our first parents were created. And, indeed, this uprightness of man, this moral rectitude, was his formal aptitude and fitness for and unto that obedience which God required of him, and which was necessary for the end whereunto he was created. 2. He who was created perfect in his kind was created with the original righteousness pleaded for. This is evident from hence, because righteousness and holiness is a perfection of a rational being made for the service of God. This in angels is called “the truth,” or that original holiness and rectitude which “the devil abode not in,” John 8:44. Now, as before, man was created “very good” and “upright,” therefore perfect as to his state and condition; and whatever is in him of imperfection flows from the corruption and depravation of nature. 3. He that was created in the image of God was created in a state of righteousness, holiness, and knowledge. That Adam was created in the image of God is plainly affirmed in Scripture, and is not denied. That by the “image of God” is especially intended the qualities mentioned, is manifest from that farther description of the image of God which we have given us in the scriptures before produced in answer to our first question.

And what is recorded of the first man in his primitive condition will not suffer us to esteem him such a baby in knowledge as the Socinians would make him. His imposing of names on all creatures, his knowing of his wife on first view, etc., exempt him from that imputation. Yea, the very heathens could conclude that he was very wise indeed who first gave names to things. f218 Secondly. For the disproving of that mortality which they ascribe to man in innocency the ensuing arguments may suffice: — 1. He that was created in the image of God, in righteousness and holiness, whilst he continued in that state and condition, was immortal. That man was so created lies under the demonstration of the foregoing arguments and testimonies. The assertion thereupon, or the inference of immortality from the image of God, appears on this double consideration: — (1.) In our renovation by Christ into the image of God, we are renewed to a blessed immortality; and our likeness to God consisted no less in that than in any other communicable property of his nature. (2.) Wherever is naturally perfect righteousness, there is naturally perfect life; that is, immortality. This is included in the very tenor of the promise of the law: “If man keep my statutes, he shall live in them,” Leviticus 18:5. 2. That which the first man contracted and drew upon himself by sin was not natural to him before he sinned: but that man contracted and drew death upon himself, or made himself liable and obnoxious unto it by sin, is proved by all the texts of Scripture that were produced above in answer to our second question; as Genesis 2:17, 3:19; Romans 5:12,15, 17-19, 6:23, etc. 3. That which is beside and contrary to nature was not natural to the first man; but death is beside and contrary to nature, as the voice of nature abundantly testifieth: therefore, to man in his primitive condition it was not natural.

Unto these may sundry other arguments be added, from the promise of the law, the end of man’s obedience, his constitution and state, denying all proximate causes of death, etc; but these may suffice.

Thirdly. That the sin of Adam is not to be confined to the mere eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but had its rise in infidelity, and comprised universal apostasy from God, in disobedience to the law of his creation and dependence on God, I have elsewhere demonstrated, and shall not need here again to insist upon it. That it began in infidelity is evident from the beginning of the temptation wherewith he was overcome. It was to doubt of the truth or veracity of God to which the woman was at first solicited by Satan: Genesis 3:1,” Hath God said so?” pressing that it should be otherwise than they seemed to have cause to apprehend from what God said; and their acquiescence in that reply of Satan, without revolving to the truth and faithfulness of God, was plain unbelief. Now, as faith is the root of all righteousness and obedience, so is infidelity of all disobedience. Being overtaken, conquered, deceived into infidelity, man gave up himself to act contrary to God and his will, shook off his sovereignty, rose up against his law, and manifested the frame of his heart in the pledge of his disobedience, eating the fruit that was sacramentally forbidden him.

Fourthly. That all men sinned in Adam, and that his sin is imputed to all his posterity, is by them denied, but is easily evinced; for, — 1. By whom sin entered into the world, so that all sinned in him, and are made sinners thereby, so that also his sin is called the “sin of the world,” in him all mankind sinned, and his sin is imputed to them: but that this was the condition and state of the first sin of Adam the scriptures before mentioned, in answer to our seventh question, do abundantly manifest; and thence also is his sin called “the sin of the world,” John 1:29. 2. In whom all are dead , and in whom they have contracted the guilt of death and condemnation, in him they have all sinned, and have his sin imputed to them: but in Adam all are dead, 1 Corinthians 15:22, as also Romans 5:12,15, 17-19; and death is the wages of sin only, Romans 6:23. 3. As by the obedience of Christ we are made righteous, so by the disobedience of Adam we are made sinners: so the apostle expressly, Romans 5: but we are made righteous by the obedience of Christ, by the imputation of it to us, as if we had performed it, 1 Corinthians 1:30, Philippians 3:9; therefore we are sinners by the imputation of the sin of Adam to us, as though we had committed it, which the apostle also affirms. To what hath been spoken from the consideration of that state and condition wherein, by God’s appointment, in reference to all mankind, Adam was placed, namely, of a natural and political or federal head (of which the apostle treats, 1 Corinthians 15), and from the loss of that image wherein he was created, whereunto by Christ we are renewed, many more words like these might be added.

To what hath been spoken there is no need that much should be added, for the removal of any thing insisted on to the same purpose with Mr B.’s intimations in the Racovian Catechism; but yet seeing that that task also is undertaken, that which may seem necessary for the discharging of what may thence be expected shall briefly be submitted to the reader. To this head they speak in the first chapter, of the way to salvation, the first question whereof is of the import ensuing: — Q. Seeing thou saidst in the beginning that this life which leadeth to immortality is divinely revealed, I would know of thee why thou saidst so?

A. Because as man by nature hath nothing to do with immortality (or hath no interest in it), so by himself he could by no means know the way which leadeth to immortality. f220 Both question and answer being sophistical and ambiguous, the sense and intendment of them, as to their application to the matter in hand, and by them aimed at, is first to be rectified by some few distinctions, and then the whole will cost us very little farther trouble: — 1. There is, or hath been, a twofold way to a blessed immortality: — (1.) The way of perfect obedience to the law; for he that did it was to live therein. (2.) The way of faith in the blood of the Son of God; for he that believeth shall be saved. 2. Man by nature may be considered two ways: — (1.) As he was in his created condition, not tainted, corrupted, weakened, nor lost by sin; (2.) As fallen, dead, polluted, and guilty. 3. Immortality is taken either, (1.) Nakedly and purely in itself for an eternal abiding of that which is said to be immortal; or, (2.) For a blessed condition and state in that abiding and continuance. 4. That expression, “By nature,” referring to man in his created condition, not fallen by sin, may be taken two ways, either, — (1.) Strictly, for the consequences of the natural principles whereof man was constituted; or, (2.) More largely, it comprises God’s constitution and appointment concerning man in that estate.

On these considerations it will be easy to take off this head of our catechists’ discourse, whereby also the remaining trunk will fall to the ground.

I say, then, man by nature, in his primitive condition, was, by the appointment and constitution of God, immortal as to the continuance of his life, and knew the way of perfect legal obedience, tending to a blessed immortality, and that by himself, or by virtue of the law of his creation, which was concreated with him; but fallen man, in his natural condition, being dead spiritually, obnoxious to death temporal and eternal, doth by no means know himself, nor can know, the way of faith in Jesus Christ, leading to a blessed immortality and glory, Romans 2:7-10.

It is not, then, our want of interest in immortality upon the account whereof we know not of ourselves the way to immortality by the blood of Christ.

But there are two other reasons that enforce the truth of it: — 1. Because it is a way of mere grace and mercy, hidden from all eternity in the treasures of God’s infinite wisdom and sovereign will, which he neither prepared for man in his created condition nor had man any need of; nor is it in the least discovered by any of the works of God, nor by the law written in the heart, but is solely revealed from the bosom of the Father by the only-begotten Son, neither angels nor men being able to discover the least glimpse of that majesty without that revelation, John 1:18; Corinthians 2:7; Ephesians 3:8-11; Colossians 5. 2, 3; 1 Timothy 3:16. 2. Because man in his.fallen condition, though there be retained in his heart some weak and faint impressions of good and evil, reward and punishment, Romans 2:14,15, yet is spiritually dead, blind, alienated from God, ignorant, dark, stubborn; so far from being able of himself to find out the way of grace unto a blessed immortality, that he is not able, upon the revelation of it, savingly, and to the great end of its proposal, to receive, apprehend, believe, and walk in it, without a new spiritual creation, resurrection from the dead, or new birth, wrought by the exceeding greatness of the power of God. And on these two doth depend our disability to discover and know the way of grace leading to life and glory.

And by this brief removal of the covering is the weakness and nakedness of their whole ensuing discourse so discovered as that I shall speedily take it with its offense out of the way. They proceed: — Q. But why hath man nothing to do with (or no interest in) immortality?

A. Therefore, because from the beginning he was formed of the ground, and so was created mortal; and then because he transgressed the command given him of God, and so by the decree of God, expressed in his command, was necessarily subject to eternal death. f222 1. It is true, man was created of the dust of the earth as to his bodily substance; yet it is as true that moreover God breathed into him the breath of life, whereby he became “a living soul,” and in that immediate constitution and framing from the hand of God was free from all nextly disposing causes unto dissolution. But his immortality we place on another account, as hath been declared, which is no way prejudiced by his being made of the ground. 2. The second reason belongs unto man only as having sinned, and being fallen out of that condition and covenant wherein he was created. So that I shall need only to let the reader know that the eternal death, in the judgment of our catechists, whereunto man was subjected by sin, was only an eternal dissolution or annihilation (or rather an abode under dissolution, dissolution itself being not penal), and not any abiding punishment, as will afterward be farther manifest, They go on: — Q. But how doth this agree with those places of Scripture wherein it is written that man was created in the image of God, and created unto immortality, and that death entered into the world by sin, Genesis 1:26; Proverbs 2:23; Romans 5:12?

A. As to the testimony which declareth that man was created in the image of God, it is to be known that the image of God cloth not signify immortality (which is evident from hence, because at that time when man was subject to eternal death the Scripture acknowledgeth in him that image, Genesis 9:6, James 3:9), but it denoteth the power and dominion over all things made of God on the earth, as the same place where this image is treated of clearly showeth, Genesis 1:26. f223 The argument for that state and condition wherein we affirm man to have been created from the consideration of the image of God wherein he was made, and whereunto in part we are renewed, was formerly insisted on.

Let the reader look back unto it, and he will quickly discern how little is here offered to enervate it in the least; for, — 1. They cannot prove that man, in the condition and state of sin, doth retain any thing of the image of God. The places mentioned, as Genesis 9:6, and James 3:9, testify only that he was made in the image of God at first, but that he doth still retain the image they intimate not; nor is the inference used in the places taken from what man is, but what he was created. 2. That the image of God did not consist in any one excellency hath been above declared; so that the argument to prove that it did not consist in immortality, because it did consist in the dominion over the creatures, is no better than that would be which should conclude that the sun did not give light because it gives heat, So that, — 3. Though the image of God, as to the main of it, in reference to the end of everlasting communion with God whereunto we were created, was utterly lost by sin (or else we could not be renewed unto it again by Jesus Christ), yet as to some footsteps of it, in reference to our fellow-creatures, so much might be and was retained as to be a reason one towards another for our preservation from wrong and violence. 4. That place of Genesis 1:26, “Let us make man in our image, and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea,” etc., is so far from proving that the image of God wherein man was created did consist only in the dominion mentioned, that it cloth not prove that dominion to have been any part of or to belong unto that image. It is rather a grant made to them who were made in the image of God than a description of that image wherein they were made.

It is evident, then, notwithstanding any thing here excepted to the contrary, that the immortality pleaded for belonged to the image of God, and from man’s being created therein is rightly inferred; as above was made more evident.

Upon the testimony of the Book of Wisdom, it being confessedly apocryphal, I shall not insist. Neither do I think that in the original any new argument to that before mentioned of the image of God is added; but that is evidently pressed, and the nature of the image of God somewhat explained. The words are, Oti oJ Qeoa| kai< eijko>na th~v ijdi>av ijdio>thtov ejpoi>hsen aujto>n Fqo>nw| de< diabo>lou qa>natov eijsh~lqen eijv tosmon peria>zousi de< aujtonou meri>dov o]ntev . The opposition that is put between the creation of man in integrity and the image of God in one verse, and the entrance of sin by the envy of the devil in the next, plainly evinces that the mind of the author of that book was, that man, by reason of his being created in the image of God, was immortal in his primitive condition.

That which follows is of another nature, concerning which they thus inquire and answer: — Q. What, moreover, wilt thou answer to the third testimony?

A. The apostle in that place treateth not of immortality [mortality], but of death itself. But mortality differeth much from death, for a man may be mortal and yet never die. f224 But, — 1. The apostle eminently treats of man’s becoming obnoxious to death, which until he was, he was immortal; for he says that death entered the world by sin, and passed on all men, not actually, but in the guilt of it and obnoxiousness to it. By what means death entered into the world, or had a right so to do, by that means man lost the immortality which before he had. 2. It is true, a man may be mortal as to state and condition, and yet by almighty power be preserved and delivered from actual dying, as it was with Enoch and Elijah; but in an ordinary course he that is mortal must die, and is directly obnoxious to death. But that which we plead for from those words of the apostle is, that man, by God’s constitution and appointment, was so immortal as not to be liable or obnoxious to death until he sinned.

But they will prove their assertion in their progress.

Q. What, therefore, is the sense of these words, “that death entered into the world by sin?” A. This, that Adam for sin, by the decree and sentence of God, was subject to eternal death; and therefore all men, because (or inasmuch as) they are bern of him, are subject to the same eternal death. And that this is so, the comparison of Christ with Adam, which the apostle instituteth from verse 12 to the end of the chapter, doth declare. f225 1. Be it so that this is the meaning of those words; yet hence it inevitably follows that man was no way liable or obnoxious to death but upon the account of the commination of God annexed to the law he gave him. And this is the whole of what we affirm, — namely, that by God’s appointment man was immortal, and the tenure of his immortality was his obedience, and thereupon his right thereunto he lost by his transgression. 2. This is farther evident from the comparison between Christ and Adam, instituted by the apostle; for as we are all dead without Christ and his righteousness, and have not the least right to life or a blessed immortality, so antecedently to the consideration of Adam and his disobedience, we were not in the least obnoxious unto death, or any way liable to it in our primitive condition.

And this is all that our catechists have to plead for themselves, or to except against our arguments and testimonies to the cause in hand; which how weak it is in itself, and how short it comes of reaching to the strength we insist on, a little comparison of it with what went before will satisfy the pious reader.

What remains of that chapter, consisting in the depravation of two or three texts of Scripture to another purpose than that in hand, I shall not divert to the consideration of, seeing it will more orderly fall under debate in another place.

What our catechists add elsewhere about original sin, or their attempt to disprove it, being considered, shall give a close to this discourse.

Their 10th chapter is, “De liboro arbitrio;” where, after, in answer to the first question proposed, they have asserted that it is in our power to yield obedience unto God, as having free will in our creation so to do, and having by no way or means lost that liberty or power, their second question is, — Q. Is not this free will corrupted by original sin?

A. There is no such thing as original sin, wherefore that cannot vitiate free will, nor can that original sin be proved out of the Scripture; and the fall of Adam, being but one act, could not have that force as to corrupt his own nature, much less that of his posterity. And that it was inflicted on him as a punishment neither doth the Scripture teach, and it is incredible that God, who is the fountain of all goodness, would so do. f226 1. This is yet plain dealing; and it is well that men who know neither God nor themselves have yet so much honesty left as to speak downright what they intend. Quickly despatched! — “ There is no such thing as original sin.” To us, the denying of it is one argument to prove it. Were not men blind and dead in sin, they could not but be sensible of it; but men swimming with the water feel not the strength of the stream. 2. But doth the Scripture teach no such thing? Doth it nowhere teach that we, who were “created upright, in the image of God, are now dead in trespasses and sins, by nature children of wrath, having the wrath of God upon us, being blind in our understandings, and alienated from the life of God, not able to receive the things that are of God, which are spiritually discerned, our carnal minds being enmity to God, not subject to his law, nor can be; that our hearts are stony, our affections sensual; that we are wholly come short of the glory of God; that every figment of our heart is evil, so that we can neither think, nor speak, nor do that which is spiritually good or acceptable to God; that being born of the flesh, we are flesh, and unless we are born again, can by no means enter into the kingdom of heaven; that all this is come upon us by the sin of one man, whence also judgment passed on all men to condemnation?” Can nothing of all this be proved from the Scripture? These gentlemen know that we contend not about words or expressions. Let them grant this hereditary corruption of our nature, alienation from God, impotency to good, deadness and obstinacy in sin, want of the Spirit, image, and grace of God, with obnoxiousness thereon to eternal condemnation, and give us a fitter expression to declare this state and condition by in respect of every one’s personal interest therein, and we will, so it may please them, call it “original sin” no more. 3. It is not impossible that one act should be so high and intense in its kind as to induce a habit into the subject, and so Adam’s nature be vitiated by it; and he begot a son in his own likeness. The devils upon one sin became obstinate in all the wickedness that their nature is capable of. (2.) This one act was a breach of covenant with God, upon the tenor and observation whereof depended the enjoyment of all that strength and rectitude with God wherewith, by the law of his creation, man was endued. (3.) All man’s covenant good, for that eternal end to which he was created, depended upon his conformity to God, his subjection to him, and dependence on him; all which, by that one sin, he wilfully cast away for himself and posterity (whose common, natural, and federal head he was), and righteously fell into that condition which we have described. (4.) The apostle is much of a different mind from our catechists, Romans 5:15,16, etc., as hath been declared. 4. What is credible concerning God and his goodness with these gentlemen I know not. To me, that is not only in itself credible which he hath revealed concerning himself, but of necessity to be believed. That he gave man a law, threatening him, and all his posterity in him and with him, with eternal death upon the breach of it; that upon that sin he cast all mankind judicially out of covenant, imputing that sin unto them all unto the guilt of condemnation, seeing it is “his judgment that they who commit sin are worthy of death;” and that “he is of purer eyes than to behold evil,” — is to us credible, yea, as was said, of necessity to be believed. But they will answer the proofs that are produced from Scripture in the asserting of this original sin.

Q. But that there is original sin these testimonies seem to prove: Genesis 6:5, “Every cogitation of the heart of man is only evil every day;” and Genesis 8:21, “The cogitation of man’s heart is evil from his youth?” A. These testimonies deal concerning voluntary sin; from them, therefore, original sin cannot be proved. As for the first, Moses showeth it to be such a sin for whose sake God repented him that he had made man, and decreed to destroy him with a flood; which certainly can by no means be affirmed concerning a sin which should be in man by nature, such as they think original sin to be. In the other, he showeth that the sin of man shall not have that efficacy that God should punish the world for it with a flood; which by no means agreeth to original sin. f227 That this attempt of our catechists is most vain and frivolous will quickly appear; for, — 1. Suppose original sin be not asserted in those places, doth it follow there is no original sin? Do they not know that we affirm it to be revealed in the way of salvation, and proved by a hundred places besides? And do they think to overthrow it by their exception against two or three of them, when if it be taught in any one of them it suffices? 2. The words, as by them rendered, lose much of the efficacy for the confirmation of what they oppose which in the original they have. In the first place, it is not, “Every thought of man’s heart,” but, “Every imagination or figment of the thoughts of his heart.” The “motus primo primi,” the very natural frame and temper of the heart of man, as to its first motions towards good or evil, are doubtless expressed in these words.

So also is it in the latter place.

We say, then, that original sin is taught and proved in these places; not singly or exclusively to actual sins, not a parte ante , or from the causes of it, but from its effects. That such a frame of heart is so universally by nature in all mankind, and in every individual of them, as that it is ever, always, or continually, casting, coining, and devising evil, and that only, without the intermixture of any thing of another kind that is truly and spiritually good, is taught in these places; and this is original sin. Nor is this disproved by our catechists; for, — 1. “Because the sin spoken of is voluntary, therefore it is not original,’’ will not be granted. (1.) Original sin, as it is taken peccatum originans, was voluntary in Adam; and as it is originatum in us is in our wills habitually, and not against them, in any actings of it or them. (2.) The effects of it, in the coining of sin and in the thoughts of men’s hearts, are all voluntary; which are here mentioned to demonstrate and manifest that root from whence they spring, that prevailing principle and predominant habit from whence they so uniformly proceed. 2. Why it cloth not agree to original sin that the account [is] mentioned, verse 6, of God’s repenting that he had made man, and his resolution to destroy him, these gentlemen offer not one word of reason to manifest. We say, — (1.) That it can agree to no other but this original sin, with its infallible effects, wherein all mankind were equally concerned, and so became equally liable to the last judgment of God; though some, from the same principle, had acted much more boldly against his holy Majesty than others. (2.) Its being in men by nature doth not at all lessen its guilt. It is not in their nature as created, nor in them so by nature, but is by the fall of Adam come upon the nature of all men, dwelling in the person of every one; which lesseneth not its guilt, but manifests its advantage for provocation. 3. Why the latter testimony is not applicable to original sin they inform us not. The words joined with it are an expression of that patience and forbearance which God resolved and promised to exercise towards the world, with a non obstante for sin. Now, what sin should this be but that which is “the sin of the world”? That actual sins are excluded we say not; but that original sin is expressed and aggravated by the effects of it our catechists cannot disprove. There are many considerations of these texts, from whence the argument from them for the proof of that corruption of nature which we call original sin might be much improved; but that is not my present business, our catechists administering no occasion to such a discourse. But they take some other texts into consideration: — Q. What thinkest thou of that which David speaks, Psalm 51:7, “Behold, I shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me?” A. It is to be observed that David doth not here speak of any men but himself alone, nor that simply, but with respect to his fall, and uses that form of speaking which you have in him again, Psalm 58:3. Wherefore original sin cannot be evinced by this testimony. f228 But, — 1. Though David speaks of himself, yet he speaks of himself in respect of that which was common to himself with all mankind, being a child of wrath as well as others; nor can these gentlemen intimate any thing of sin and iniquity, in the conception and birth of David, that was not common to all others with him. Any man’s confession for himself of a particular guilt in a common sin doth not free others from it; yea, it proves all others to be partakers in it who share in that condition wherein he contracted the guilt. 2. Though David mentions this by occasion of his fall, as having his conscience made tender and awakened to search into the root of his sin and transgression thereby, yet it was no part of his fall, nor Was he the less conceived in sin and forth in brought ever more or iniquity for that fall; which were ridiculous to imagine. He here acknowledges it upon the occasion of his fall, which was a fruit of the sin wherewith he was born, James 1:14,15, but was equally guilty of it before his fall and after. 3. The expression here used, and that of Psalm 58:3, “The wicked are estranged from the womb, they go astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies,” exceedingly differ. Here, David expresses what was his infection in the womb; there, what is wicked men’s constant practice from the womb. In himself, he mentions the root of all actual sin; in them, the constant fruit that springs from that root in unregenerate men. So that, by the favor of these catechists, I yet say that David doth here acknowledge a sin of nature, a sin wherewith he was defiled from his conception, and polluted when he was warmed, and so fomented in his mother’s womb; and therefore this place cloth prove original sin.

One place more they call to an account, in these words: — Q. But Paul saith that “in Adam all sinned,” Romans 5:12.

A. It is not in that place, “In Adam all sinned;” but in the Greek the words are ejf w=| , which interpreters do frequently render in Latin in quo, “in whom,” which yet may be rendered by the particles quoniam or quatenus, “because,” or “inasmuch,” as in like places, Romans 8:3, Philippians 3:12, Hebrews 2:18, 2 Corinthians 5:4. It appeareth, therefore, that neither can original sin be built up out of this place. f229 1. Stop these men from this shifting hole, and you may with much ease entangle and catch them twenty times a day: “This word may be rendered otherwise, for it is so in another place,” — a course of procedure that leaves nothing certain in the book of God. 2. In two of the places cited, the words are not ejf w=| , but ejn w=| , Romans 8:3, Hebrews 2:18. 3. The places are none of them parallel to this; for here, the apostle speaks of persons or a person in an immediate precedency; in them, of things. 4. But render ejf w=| by quoniam, “because,” or “for that,” as our English translation doth, the argument is no less evident for original sin than if they were rendered by “in whom.” In the beginning of the verse the apostle tells us that death entered the world by the sin of one man, — that one man of whom he is speaking, namely, Adam, — and passed upon all men: of which dispensation, that death passed on all men, he gives you the reason in these words, “For that all have sinned;” that is, in that sin of that one man whereby death entered on the world and passed on them all. I wonder how our catechists could once imagine that this exception against the translation of those words should enervate the argument from the text for the proof of all men’s guilt of the first sin, seeing the conviction of it is no less evident from the words if rendered according to their desire.

And this is the sum of what they have to offer for the acquitment of themselves from the guilt and stain of original sin, and for answer to the three testimonies on its behalf which themselves chose to call forth; upon the strength whereof they so confidently reject it at the entrance of their discourse, and in the following question triumph upon it, as a thing utterly discarded from the thoughts of their catechumens. What reason or ground they have for their confidence the reader will judge. In the meantime, it is sufficiently known that they have touched very little of the strength of our cause, nor once mentioned the testimonies and arguments on whose evidence and strength in this business we rely. And for themselves who write and teach these things, I should much admire their happiness, did I not so much as I do pity them in their pride and distemper, keeping them from an acquaintance with their own miserable condition.

CHAPTER 7. Of the person of Jesus Christ, and on what account he is the Son of God.

MR BIDDLE’S FOURTH CHAPTER.

Ques. How many Lords of Christians are there, by way of distinction from that one God?

Ans. Ephesians 4:5.

Q. Who is that one Lord?

A. 1 Corinthians 8:6.

Q. How was Jesus Christ born?

A. Matthew 1:18; Luke 1:90-35.

Q. How came Jesus Christ to be Lord, according to the opinion of the apostle Paul?

A. Romans 14:9.

Q. What saith the apostle Peter also concerning the time and manner of his being made Lord?

A. Acts 2:32,33,36.

Q. Did not Jesus Christ approve himself to be God by his miracles; and did he not those miracles by a divine nature of his own, and because he was God himself? What is the determination of the apostle Peter in this behalf?

A. Acts 2:22, 10:38.

Q. Could not Christ do all things of himself; and was it not an eternal Son of God that took flesh upon him., and to whom the human nature of Christ was personally united, that wrought all his works? Answer me to these things in the words of the Son himself.

A. John 5:19,20,30, 14:10.

Q. What reason doth the Son render why the Father did not forsake him and cast him out of favor? Was it because he was of the same essence with him, so that it was impossible for the Father to forsake him or cease to love him?

A. John 8:28,29, 15:9, 10.

Q. Doth the Scripture account Christ to be the Son of God because he was eternally begotten out of the divine essence, or for other reasons agreeing to him only as a man? Rehearse the passages to this purpose.

A. Luke 1:30,32,34,35; John 10:36; Acts 13:32,33; Revelation 1:5; Colossians 1:18; Hebrews 1:4,5, 5:5; Romans 8:29.

Q. What saith the Son himself concerning the prerogative of God the Father above him?

A. John 14:28; Mark 13:32; Matthew 24:36.

Q. What saith the apostle Paul?

A. 1 Corinthians 15:25,28, 11:3, 3:22, 23.

Q. Howbeit, is not Christ dignified as with the title of Lord, so also with that of God, in the Scripture?

A. John 20:28.

Q. Was he so the God of Thomas as that he himself in the meantime did not acknowledge another to be his God?

A. John 20:17; Revelation 3:12.

Q. Have you any passage of the Scripture where Christ, at the same time that he hath the appellation of God given to him, is said to have a God?

A. Hebrews 1:8,9.

EXAMINATION.

The aim and design of our catechist in this chapter being to despoil our blessed Lord Jesus Christ of his eternal deity, and to substitute an imaginary Godhead, made and feigned in the vain hearts of himself and his masters, into the room thereof, I hope the discovery of the wickedness and vanity of his attempt will not be unacceptable to them who love him in sincerity. I must still desire the reader not to expect the handling of the doctrine of the deity of Christ at large, with the confirmation of it and vindication from the vain sophisms wherewith by others, as well as by Mr B., it hath been opposed. This is done abundantly by other hands. In the next chapter that also will have its proper place, in the vindication of many texts of Scripture from the exceptions of the Racovians. The removal of Mr B.’s sophistry, and the disentangling of weaker souls, who may in any thing be intricated by his queries, are my present intendment. To make our way dear and plain, that every one that runs may read the vanity of Mr B.’s undertaking against the Lord Jesus, and his kicking against the pricks therein, I desire to premise these few observations: — 1. Distinction of persons (it being an infinite substance) doth no way prove difference of essence between the Father and the Son. Where Christ, as mediator, is said to be another from the Father or God, spoken personally of the Father, it argues not in the least that he is not partaker of the same nature with him. That in one essence there can be but one person may be true where the substance is finite and limited, but hath no place in that which is infinite. 2. Distinction and inequality in respect of office in Christ doth not in the least take away equality and sameness with the Father in respect of nature and essence. A son of the same nature with his father, and therein equal to him, may in office be his inferior, his subject. 3. The advancement and exaltation of Christ as mediator to any dignity whatever, upon or in reference to the work of our redemption and salvation, is not at all inconsistent with that essential ajxi>a , honor, dignity, and worth, which he hath in himself as “God blessed for ever.” Though he humbled himself and was exalted, yet in nature he was one and the same, he changed not. 4. The Scripture’s asserting the humanity of Christ with the concernments thereof, as his birth, life, and death, doth no more thereby deny his deity, than, by asserting his deity, with the essential properties thereof, eternity, omniscience, and the like, it denies his humanity. 5. God’s working any thing in and by Christ, as he was mediator, denotes the Father’s sovereign appointment of the things mentioned to be done, not his immediate efficiency in the doing of the things themselves.

The consideration of these few things, being added to what I have said before in general about the way of dealing with our adversaries in these great and weighty things of the knowledge of God, will easily deliver us from any great trouble in the examination of Mr B.’s arguments and insinuations against the deity of Christ; which is the business of the present chapter.

His first question is, “How many Lords of Christians are there, by way of distinction from that one God?” and he answers, Ephesians 4:5, “One Lord.”

That of these two words there is not one that looks towards the confirmation of what Mr B. chiefly aims at in the question proposed, is, I presume, sufficiently clear in the light of the thing itself inquired after.

Christ, it is true, is the one Lord of Christians; and therefore God, equal with the Father. He is also one Lord in distinction from his Father, as his Father, in respect of his personality, in which regard them are three that bear record in heaven, of which he is one; but in respect of essence and nature “he and his Father are one.” Farther; unless he were one God with his Father, it is utterly impossible he should be the one Lord of Christians.

That he cannot be our Lord in the sense intended, whom we ought to invocate and worship, unless also he were our God, shall be afterward declared. And although he be our Lord in distinction from his Father, as he is also our mediator, yet he is “the same God” with him “which worketh all in all,” 1 Corinthians 12:6. His being Lord, then, distinctly in respect of his mediation hinders not his being God in respect of his participation in the same nature with his Father. And though here he be not spoken of in respect of his absolute, sovereign lordship, but of his lordship over the church, to whom the whole church is spiritually subject (as he is elsewhere also so called on the same account, as John 13:13; Acts 7:59; Revelation 22:20), yet were he not Lord in that sense also, he could not be so in this. The Lord our God only is to be worshipped. “My Lord and my God,” says Thomas. And the mention of “one God” is here, as in other places, partly to deprive all false gods of their pretended deity, partly to witness against the impossibility of polytheism, and partly to manifest the oneness of them who are worshipped as God the Father, Word, and Spirit: all which things are also severally testified unto.

His second question is an inquiry after this Lord, who he is, in these words, “Who is that one Lord?” and the answer is from 1 Corinthians 8:6, “Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.” The close of this second answer might have caused Mr B. a little to recoil upon his insinuation in the first, concerning the distinction of this “one Lord” from that “one God,” in the sense by him insisted on. Who is he “by whom are all things” (in the same sense as they are said to be “of” the Father)? who is that but God? “He that made all things is God,” Hebrews 3:4. And it is manifest that he himself was not made by whom all things were made: for he made not himself, nor could so do, unless he were both before and aider himself; nor was he made without his own concurrence by another, for by himself are all things. Thus Mr B. hath no sooner opened his mouth to speak against the Lord Jesus Christ, but, by the just judgment of God, he stops it himself with a testimony of God against himself, which he shall never be able to rise up against unto eternity.

And it is a manifest perverting and corrupting of the text which we have in Grotius’ gloss upon the place, who interprets the ta< pa>nta referred to the Father of all things simply, but the ta< pa>nta referred to Christ of the things only of the new creation, there being not the least color for any such variation, the frame and structure of the words requiring them to be expounded uniformly throughout: “But to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” “The last expression, ‘And we by him,’ relates to the new creation; ‘ All things,’ to the first.” But Grotius follows Enjedinus in this as well as other things. f232 His inquiry in the next place is after the birth of Jesus Christ; in answer whereunto the story is reported from Matthew and Luke: which relating to his human nature, and no otherwise to the person of the Son of God but as he was therein “made flesh,” or assumed the “holy thing” so born of the Virgin, Luke 1:35, into personal subsistence with himself, I shall let pass with annexing unto it the observation before mentioned, namely, that what is affirmed of the human nature of Christ doth not at all prejudice that nature of his in respect whereof he is said to be “in the beginning with God,” and to be “God,” and with reference whereunto himself said, “Before Abraham was I am,” John 1:1,2, 8:58; Proverbs 8:22, etc.

God “possessed him in the beginning of his way,” being then his “onlybegotten Son, full of grace and truth.” Mr B. indeed hath small hopes of despoiling Christ of his eternal glory by his queries, if they spend themselves in such fruitless sophistry as this: — “Q. 4. How came Jesus Christ to be Lord according to the opinion of the apostle Paul?” The answer is, Romans 14:9. “Q. 5. What saith the apostle Peter also concerning the time and manner of his being made Lord? — A. Acts 2:32,33,36.”

Ans. 1. That Jesus Christ as mediator, and in respect of the work of redemption and salvation of the church to him committed, was made Lord by the appointment, authority, and designation of his Father, we do not say was the opinion of Paul, but is such a divine truth as we have the plentiful testimony of the Holy Ghost unto. He was no less made a Lord than a Priest and Prophet, of his Father. But that the eternal lordship of Christ, as he is one with his Father, “God blessed for ever,” Romans 9:5, is any way denied by the asserting of this lordship given him of his Father as mediator, Mr B. wholly begs of men to apprehend and grant, but doth not once attempt from the Scripture to manifest or prove. The sum of what Mr B. intends to argue hence is: Christ “submitting himself to the form and work of a servant unto the Father, was exalted by him, and had ‘a name given him above every name;’ therefore he was not the Son of God and equal to him.” That his condescension unto office is inconsistent with his divine essence is yet to be proved. But may we not beg of our catechist, at his leisure, to look a little farther into the chapter from whence he takes his first testimony concerning the exaltation of Christ to be Lord? perhaps it may be worth his while. As another argument to that of the dominion and lordship of Christ, to persuade believers to a mutual forbearance as to judging of one another, he adds, verse 10, “We shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ.” And this, verse 11, the apostle proves from that testimony of the prophet Isaiah, chap. 45:23, as he renders the sense of the Holy Ghost, “As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.” So that Jesus Christ our Lord is that Jehovah, that God, to whom all subjection is due, and in particular that of standing before his judgment-seat. But this is overlooked by Grotius, and not answered to any purpose by Enjedinus, and why should Mr B. trouble himself with it? 2. For the time assigned by him of his being made Lord, specified by the apostle, it doth not denote his first investiture with that office and power, but the solemn admission into the glorious execution of that lordly power which was given him as mediator. At his incarnation and birth, God affirms by the angel that he was then “Christ the Lord,” Luke 2:11. And when “he brought his first-begotten into the world, the angels were commanded to worship him;” which if he were not a Lord, I suppose Mr B. will not say they could have done. Yea, and as he was both believed in and worshipped before his death and resurrection, John 9:38, 14:1, which is to be performed only to the Lord our God, Matthew 4:10, so he actually in some measure exercised his lordship towards and over angels, men, devils, and the residue of the creation, as is known from the very story of the Gospel, not denying himself to be a king, yea, witnessing thereunto when he was to be put to death, Luke 23:3, John 18:37, as he was from his first showing unto men, chap. 1:49. “Q. 6. Did not Jesus Christ approve himself to be God by his miracles; and did he not those miracles by a divine nature of his own, and because he was God himself? What is the determination of the apostle Peter in this behalf? — A. Acts 2:22, 10:38.”

The intendment of Mr B. in this question, as is evident by his inserting of these words in a different character, “By a divine nature of his own, and because he was God himself,” is to disprove or insinuate an answer unto the argument taken from the miracles that Christ did to confirm his deity.

The naked working of miracles, I confess, without the influence of such other considerations as this argument is attended withal in relation to Jesus Christ, will not alone of itself assert a divine nature in him who is the instrument of their working or production. Though they are from divine power, or they are not miracles, yet it is not necessary that he by whom they are wrought should be possessor of that divine power, as “by whom” may denote the instrumental and not the principal cause of them. But for the miracles wrought by Jesus Christ, as God is said to do them “by him,” because he appointed him to do them, as he designed him to his offices, and thereby gave testimony to the truth of the doctrine he preached from his bosom as also because he was “with him,” not in respect of power and virtue, but as the Father in the Son, John 10:38; so he working these miracles by his own power and at his own will, even as his Father doth, chap. 5:21, and himself giving power and authority to others to work miracles by his strength and in his name, Matthew 10:8, Mark 16:17,18, Luke 10:19, there is that eminent evidence of his deity in his working of miracles as Mr B. can by no means darken or obscure by pointing to that which is of a clear consistency therewithal, — as is his Father’s appointment of him to do them, whereby he is said to do them “in his name,” eta, as in the place cited, of which afterward. Acts 2:22, the intendment of Peter is, to prove that he was the Messiah of whom he spake; and therefore he calls him “Jesus of Nazareth,” as pointing out the man whom they knew by that name, and whom, seven or eight weeks before, they had crucified and rejected. That this man was “approved of God,” he convinces them from the miracles which God wrought by him; which was enough for his present purpose. Of the other place there is another reason; for though Grotius expounds these words, Oti oJ QeoGod was with him,” “God always loved him, and always heard him, according to Matthew 3:17” (where yet there is a peculiar testimony given to the divine sonship of Jesus Christ) “and John 11:42,” yet the words of our Savior himself about the same business give us another interpretation and sense of them. This, I say, he does, John 10:37,38, “If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not. But if I do, though ye believe not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.” In the doing of these works, the Father was so with him as that he was in him, and he in the Father; not only ejnerghtikw~v , but by that divine indwelling which oneness of nature gives to Father and Son.

His seventh question is exceeding implicate and involved: a great deal is expressed that Mr B. would deny, but by what inference from the scriptures he produceth doth not at all appear. The words of it are, “Could not Christ do all things of himself; and was it not an eternal Son of God that took flesh upon him, and to whom the human nature of Christ was personally united, that wrought all these works? Answer me to these things in the words of the Son himself. — A. John 5:19,20,30, 14:10.”

The inference which alone appears from hence is of the same nature with them that are gone before. That Christ could not do all things of himself, that he was not the eternal Son of God, that he took not flesh, is that which is asserted; but the proof of all this doth disappear. Christ being accused by the Jews, and persecuted for healing a man on the Sabbath-day, and their rage being increased by his asserting his equality with the Father (of which afterward), John 5:17,18, he lets them know that in the discharge of the office committed to him he did nothing but according to the will, commandment, and appointment, of his Father, with whom he is equal, and doth of his own will also the things that he doth; so that they had no more to plead against him for doing what he did than they had against him whom they acknowledged to be God: wherein he is so far from declining the assertion of his own deity (which that he maintained the Jews apprehended, affirming that he made himself equal with God, which none but God is or can be, for between God and that which is not God there is no proportion, much less equality) as that he farther confirms it, by affirming that he “doeth whatever the Father doeth, and that as the Father quickeneth whom he will, so he quickeneth whom he will.” That redoubled assertion, then, of Christ, that he can do nothing of himself, is to be applied to the matter under consideration. He had not done, nor could do, any work but such as his Father did also; it was impossible he should, not only because he would not (in which sense to< ajbou>lhton is one kind of those things which are impossible), but also because of the oneness in will, nature, and power, of himself and his Father, which he asserts in many particulars. Nor doth he temper his speech as one that would ascribe all the honor to the Father, and so remove the charge that he made a man equal to the Father, as Grotius vainly imagines; for although as man he acknowledges his subjection to the Father, yea, as mediator in the work he had in hand, and his subordination to him as the Son, receiving all things from him by divine and eternal communication, yet the action or work that gave occasion to that discourse being an action of his person, wherein he was God, he all along asserts his own equality therein with the Father, as shall afterward be more fully manifested.

So that though in regard of his divine personality as the Son he hath all things from the Father, being begotten by him, and as mediator doth all things by his appointment and in his name, yet he in himself is still one with the Father as to nature and essence, “God to be blessed for evermore.” And that it was “an eternal Son of God that took flesh upon him,” eta, hath Mr. B. never read that “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was God,” that “the Word was made flesh;” that “God was manifested in the flesh;” and that “God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law?” of which places afterward, in their vindication from the exceptions of his masters.

His eighth question is of the very same import with that going before, attempting to exclude Jesus Christ from the unity of essence with his Father, by his obedience to him, and his Father’s acceptation of him in the work of mediation; which being a most ridiculous begging of the thing in question, as to what he pretends in the query to be argumentative, I shall not farther insist upon it.

Q. 9. We are come to the head of this discourse, and of Mr B.’s design in this chapter, and, indeed, of the greatest design that he drives in religion, namely, the denial of the eternal deity of the Son of God; which not only in this place directly, but in sundry others covertly, he doth invade and oppose. His question is, “Doth the Scripture account Christ to be the Son of God because he was eternally begotten out of the divine essence, or for other reasons agreeing to him only as a man?

Rehearse the passages to this purpose.” His answer is from Luke 1:31-35; John 10:36; Acts 13:32,33; Revelation 1:5; Colossians 1:18; Hebrews 1:4,5, 5:5; Romans 8:29; most of which places are expressly contrary to him in his design, as the progress of our discourse will discover.

This, I say, being the head of the difference between us in this chapter, after I have rectified one mistake in Mr B.’s question, I shall state the whole matter so as to obviate farther labor and trouble about sundry other ensuing queries. For Mr B.’s question, then, we say not that the Son is begotten eternally out of the divine essence, but in it, not by an eternal act of the Divine Being, but of the person of the Father; which being premised, I shall proceed.

The question that lies before us is, “Doth the Scripture account Christ to be the Son of God because he was eternally begotten out of the divine essence, or for other reasons agreeing to him only as a man? Rehearse the passages to this purpose.”

The reasons, as far as I can gather, which Mr B. lays at the bottom of this appellation, are, — 1 . His birth of the Virgin, from Luke 1:30-35. 2. His mission, or sending into the world by the Father, John 10:36. 3. His resurrection with power, Acts 13:32,33; Revelation 1:5; Colossians 1:18. 4. His exaltation, Hebrews 5:5; Romans 8:29.

For the removal of all this from prejudicing the eternal sonship of Jesus Christ there is an abundant sufficiency, arising from the consideration of this one argument: If Jesus Christ be called the “Son of God” antecedently to his incarnation, mission, resurrection, and exaltation, then there is a reason and cause of that appellation before and above all these considerations, and it cannot be on any of these accounts that he is called the “Son of God;” but that he is so called antecedently to all these, I shall afterward abundantly manifest. Yet a little farther process in this business, as to the particulars intimated, may not be unseasonable.

First, then, I shall propose the causes on the account whereof alone these men affirm that Jesus Christ is called the “Son of God.” Of these the first and chiefest they insist upon is his birth of the Virgin, — namely, that he was called the “Son of God” because he was conceived of the Holy Ghost.

This our catechist in the first place proposes; and before him, his masters.

So the Racovians, in answer to that question, “Is therefore the Lord Jesus a mere man?” answer, “By no means: for he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin; and therefore from his birth and conception was the Son of God, as we read in Luke 1:35;” — the place insisted on by the gentleman we are dealing withal.

Of the same mind are the residue of their companions. So do Ostorodius and Voidovius give an account of their faith in their “Compendium,” as they call it, “of the Doctrine of the Christian Church flourishing now chiefly in Poland.” “They teach,” say they, “Jesus Christ to be that man that was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin; besides and before whom they acknowledge no only-begotten Son of. God truly existing. Moreover, they teach him to be God, and the only-begotten Son of God, by reason of his conception of the Holy Ghost,” etc. Smalcius hath written a whole book of the true divinity of Jesus Christ; wherein he hath gathered together whatever excellencies they will allow to be ascribed unto him, making his deity to be the exurgency of them all. Therefore is he God, and the Son of God, because the things he there treats of are ascribed unto him! Among these, in his third chapter, which is “Of the conception and nativity of Jesus Christ,” he gives this principal account why he is called the “Son of God,” even from his conception and nativity. “He was,” saith he, “conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born of the Virgin Mary; because of which manner of conception and nativity he was by the angel called the ‘Son of God,’ and so may really be called the ‘natural Son of God,’ because he was born such. Only, Jesus Christ was brought forth to light by God his Father without the help of man.” f237 The great master of the herd himself, from whom, indeed, the rest do glean and gather almost all that they take so much pains to scatter about the world, gives continually this reason of Christ’s being called the “Son of God” and his “natural Son.” “I say,” saith he, “that Christ is deservedly called the ‘natural Son of God,’ because he was born the Son of God, although he was not begotten of the substance of God. And that he was born the Son of God another way, and not by the generation of the substance of God, the words of the angel prove, Luke 1:35. Therefore, because that man, Jesus of Nazareth, who is called Christ, was begotten not by the help of any man, but by the operation of the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother, he is therefore, or for that cause, called the ‘ Son of God.’” So he against Weik the Jesuit. He is followed by Volkelius, lib. 5 cap. 11 p. 468; whose book, indeed, is a mere casting into a kind of a method what was written by Socinus and others, scattered in sundry particulars, and whose method is pursued and improved by Episcopius.

Jonas Schlichtingius, amongst them all, seems to do most of himself. I shall therefore add his testimony, to show their consent in the assignation of this cause of the appellation of the “Son of God,” ascribed to our blessed Savior. “There are,” saith he, “many sayings of Scripture which show that Christ is in a peculiar manner, and on an account not common to any other, the Son of God; but yet we may not hence conclude that he is a Son on a natural account, when besides this, and that more common, another reason may be given which hath place in Christ. Is he not the Son of God on a singular account, and that which is common to no other, if of God himself, by the virtue and efficacy of the Holy Spirit, he was conceived and begotten in the womb of his mother?” f239 And this is the only buckler which they have to keep off the sword of that argument for the deity of Christ, from his being the proper Son of God, from the throat and heart of that cause which they have undertaken. And yet how faintly they hold it is evident from the expressions of this most cunning and skillful of all their champions: “There may another reason be given, which is the general evasion of them all from any express testimony of Scripture. “The words may have another sense, therefore nothing from them can be concluded;” whereby they have left nothing stable or unshaken in Christian religion; and yet they wipe their mouths, and say they have done no evil.

But now, lest any one should say that they can see no reason why Christ should be called the” Son of God” because he was so conceived by the Holy Ghost, nor wherefore God should therefore in a peculiar manner, and more eminently than in respect of any other, be called the “Father of Christ,” to prevent any objection that on this hand might arise, Smalcius gives an account whence this is, and why God is called the “Father of Christ,” and what he did in his conception; which, for the abomination of it, I had rather you should hear in his words than in mine. In his answer to the second part of the refutation of Socinus by Smiglecius, cap. 17, 18, he contends to manifest and make good that Christ was the “Son of God according to the flesh,” in direct opposition to that of the apostle, “He was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son of God,” etc., Romans 1:3,4. He says then, cap. 18, p. 156, “Socinus affirmat Deum in generatione Christi vices patris supplevisse.”

But how, I pray? Why, “Satis est ad ostendendum, Deum in generatione Christi vices viri supplevisse, si ostendatur Deum id ad Christi generationem adjecisse, quod in generatione hominis ex parte viri ad hominem producendum adjici solet.” But what is that, or how is that done? “Nos Dei virtutem in Virginis uterum aliquam substantiam creatam vel immisisse, aut ibi creasse affirmamus, ex qua juncto eo, quod ex ipsius Virginis substantia accessit, verus homo generatus fuit. Alias enim homo ille, Dei Filius a conceptione et nativitate proprie non fuisset,” cap. 17 p. 150.

Very good; unless this abominable figment may pass current, Christ was not the Son of God. Let the reader observe, by the way, that they cannot but acknowledge Christ to have been, and to have been called, the “Son of God” in a most peculiar manner. To avoid the evidence of the inference from thence, that therefore he is God, of the same substance with his Father, they have only this shift, to say he is called the “Son of God’ upon the account of that whereof there is not the least tittle nor word in the whole book of God, yea, which is expressly contrary to the testimony thereof; and unless this be granted, they affirm that Christ cannot be called the “Son of God.” But let us hear this great rabbi of Mr B.’s religion a little farther clearing up this mystery: — “Necessitas magna fuit, ut Christus ab initio vitae suae esset Deo Filius, qualis futurus non fuisset nisi Dei virtute aliquid creatum fuisset, quod ad constituendum Christi corpus, una cum Mariae sanguine concurrit. Mansit autem nihilominus sanguis Mariae Virginis purissimus, etiamsi cum alio aliquo semine commixtus fuit.

Potuit enim tam purum, imo porius semen, a Deo creari, et proculdubio creatum fuit, quam erat sanguis Mariae. Communis denique sensus et fides Christianorum omnium, quod Christus non ex virili semine conceptus sit; primum communis error censendus est, si sacris literis repuguet: Deinde id quod omnes sentiunt, facile cum ipsa veritate conciliari potest, ut scilicet semen illud, quod a Deo creatum, et cum semine Mariae conjuncture fuit, dicatur non virile, quia non a viro profectum sit, vel ex viro in uterum Virginis translatum, ut quidam opinantur, qui semen Josephi translatum in Virginis uterum credunt,” cap. 18, p. 158.

And thus far are men arrived: Unless this horrible figment may be admitted, Christ is not the Son of God. He who is the “true God and eternal life” will one day plead the cause of his own glory against these men.

I insist somewhat the more on these things, that men may judge the better whether in all probability Mr B., in his “impartial search into the Scripture,” did not use the help of some of them that went before him in the discovery of the same things which he boasts himself to have found out.

And this is the first reason which our catechist hath taken from his masters to communicate to his scholars why Jesus Christ is called the “Son of God.” This he and they insist on exclusively to his eternal sonship, or being the Son of God in respect of his eternal generation of the substance of his Father.

The other causes which they assign why he is called the “Son of God” I shall very briefly point unto. By the way that hath been spoken of, they say he was the Son of God, the natural Son of God. But they say he was the Son of God before he was God. He grew afterward to be a God by degrees, as he had those graces and excellencies and that power given him wherein his Godhead doth consist. So that he was the Son of God, but not God (in their own sense) until a while after; and then when he was so made a God, he came thereby to be more the Son of God. But by this addition to his sonship he became the adopted Son of God; as, by being begotten, as was before revealed, he was the natural Son of God. Let us hear Smalcius a little opening these mysteries. “Neither,” saith he, “was Christ God all the while he was the Son of God. To be the Son of God is referred to his birth, and all understand how one may be called the “Son of God” for his birth or original. But God none can be (besides that one God), but for his likeness to God. So that when Christ was made like God, by the divine qualities which were in him, he was most rightly so far the Son of God as he was God, and so far God as he was the Son of God. But before he had obtained that likeness to God, properly he could not be said to be God.” f240 And these are some of those monstrous figments which, under pretense of bare adherence to the Scripture, our catechist would obtrude upon us:

First, Christ is the Son of God; then, growing like God in divine qualities, he is made a God; and so becomes the Son of God. And this, if the man may be believed, is the pure doctrine of the Scripture! And if Christ be a God because he is like God, by the same reason we are all gods in Mr B.’s conceit, being all made in the image and likeness of God; which, says he, by sin we have not lost.

But what kind of sonship is added to Christ by all these excellencies whereby he is made like to God? The same author tells us that it is a sonship by adoption, and that Christ on these accounts was the adopted Son of God. “If,” saith he, “what is the signification of this word adoptivus may be considered from the Scripture, we deny not but that Christ in this manner may be called the ‘adopted Son of God,’ seeing that such is the property and condition of an adopted son that he is not born such as he is afterward made by adoption. Certainly, seeing that Christ was not such by nature, or in his conception and nativity, as he was afterward in his succeeding age, he may justly on that account be called the ‘adopted Son of God.’“ Such miserable plunges doth Satan drive men into whose eyes he hath once blinded, that the glorious light of the gospel should not shine into them! And by this we may understand, whatever they add farther concerning the sonship of Christ, that all belongs to this adopted sonship; whereof there is not one tittle in the whole book of God.

The reasons they commonly add why in this sense Christ is called the “Son of God” are the same which they give why he is called “God.” “He is the only-begotten Son of God,” say the authors of the Compendium of the religion before mentioned, “because God sanctified him, and sent him into the world, and because of his exaltation at the right hand of God, whereby he was made our Lord and God.” f242 If the reader desire to hear them speak in their own words, let him consult Smalcius, De Vera Divinit. Jes. Christ, cap. 7, etc.; Socin. Disput. cum Erasmo Johan. Rationum quatuor antecedent. Refut. Disput. de Christi Natura, pp. 14, 15; Adversus Weikum, pp. 224, 225, et passim; Volkel.

De Vera Relig. lib. 5 cap. 10-12.; Jonas Schlicht. ad Meisner., pp. 192, 193, etc.; especially the same person fully and distinctly opening and declaring the minds of his companions, and the several accounts on which they affirm Christ to be, and to have been called, the “Son of God,” in his Comment on the Epistle to the Hebrews, pp. 16-20, as also his Notes upon Vechnerus’ Sermon on John 1 p. 14, etc.; Anonym. Respon. ad Centum Argumenta Cichorii Jesuitae, pp. 8-10; Confessio Fidei Christianae, edita nomine Ecclesiarum in Polonia, pp. 24, 25.

Their good friend Episcopius hath ordered all their causes of Christ’s filiation under four heads: — 1. The first way (saith he) whereby Christ is in the Scripture kat ejxoch, called the “Son of God,” is in that as man he was conceived of the Holy Ghost, and born of a virgin. And I doubt not (saith he) but that God is on this ground called eminently the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 2. Jesus Christ by reason of that duty or office which was imposed on him by his Father, that he should be the king of Israel promised by the prophets, is called the “Son of God.” 3. Because he was raised up by the Father to an immortal life, and, as it were, born again from the womb of the earth without the help of any mother. 4. Because being so raised from death, he is made complete heir of hie Father’s house, and lord of all his heavenly goods, saints, and angels. f243 The like he had written before, in his Apology for the Remonstrants, cap. 2 sect. 2.

Thus he, evidently and plainly from the persons before named. But yet, after all this, he asks another question, — “Whether, all this being granted, there do not yet moreover remain a more eminent and peculiar reason why Christ is called the ‘Son of God’?” He answers himself: “There is, — namely, his eternal generation of the Father, his being God of God from all eternity;” which he pursues with sundry arguments, and yet in the close disputes that the acknowledgment of this truth is not fundamental, or the denial of it exclusive of salvation! So this great reconciler of the Arminian and Socinian religions, whose composition and unity into an opposition to them whom he calls Calvinists is the great design of his Theological Institutions; and such at this day is the aim of Curcellaeus and some others. By the way, I shall desire (before I answer what he offers to confirm his assignation of this fourfold manner of filiation to Jesus Christ) to ask this learned gentleman (or those of his mind who do survive him) this one question, Seeing that Jesus Christ was from eternity the Son of God, and is called so after his incarnation, and was on that account in his whole person the Son of God, by their own confessions, what tittle can he or they find in the Scripture of a manifold filiation of Jesus Christ in respect of God his Father? or whether it be not a diminution of his glory to be called the Son of God upon any lower account, as by a new addition to him who was eternally his only-begotten Son, by virtue of his eternal generation of his own substance Having thus discovered the mind of them with whom we have to do, and from whom our catechist hath borrowed his discoveries, I shall briefly do these two [three?] things: — I. Show that the filiation of Christ consists in his generation of the substance of his Father from eternity, or that he is the Son of God upon the account of his divine nature and subsistence therein, antecedent to his incarnation.

II. That it consists solely therein, and that he was not, nor was called, the Son of God upon any other account but that mentioned; and therein answer what by Mr B. or others is objected to the contrary.

III. To which I shall add testimonies and arguments for the deity of Christ, — whose opposition is the main business of that new religion which Mr B. would catechise poor unstable souls into,rain the vindication of those excepted against by the Racovians.

I. For the demonstration of the first assertion, I shall insist on some few of the testimonies and arguments that might be produced for the same purpose: — 1. He who is the true, proper, only-begotten Son of God, of the living God, he is begotten of the essence of God his Father, and is his Son by virtue of that generation; but Jesus Christ was thus the only, true, proper, only-begotten Son of God: and therefore he is the Son of God upon the account before mentioned. That Jesus Christ is the Son of God in the manner expressed, the Scripture abundantly testifieth: “Lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” Matthew 3:17; “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,” chap. 16:16, John 6:69.

Which [latter] place in Matthew is the rather remarkable, because it is the confession of the faith of the apostles, given in answer to that question, “Whom say ye that I the Son of man am?” They answer, “The Son of the living God;” and this in opposition to them who said he was “a prophet, or as one of the prophets,” as Mark expresses it, chap. 6:15, — that is, only so. And the whole confession manifests that they did in it acknowledge both his orifice of being the Mediator and his divine nature or person also. “Thou art the Christ.” These words comprise all the causes of filiation insisted on by them with whom we have to do, and the whole office of the mediation of Christ; but yet hereunto they add, “The Son of the living God,” expressing his divine nature, and sonship on that account. “And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life,” 1 John 5:20. “He spared not his own Son,” Romans 8:32. “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,” John 1:14. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him,” verse 18. “He said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God,” John 5:18. “God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son,” John 3:16. “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only-begotten Son into the world,” 1 John 4:9. “Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee,” Psalm 2:7, etc.

All which places will be afterward vindicated at large.

To prove the inference laid down, I shall fix on one or two of these instances: — 1. He who is i]diov uiJo>v , the “proper son” of any, is begotten of the substance of his father. Christ is the proper Son of God, and God he called often i]dion Pate>ra , his “proper Father.” He is properly a father who begets another of his substance; and he is properly a son who is so begotten.

Grotius confesseth there is an emphasis in the word i]diov , whereby Christ is distinguished from that kind of sonship which the Jews laid claim unto. Now, the sonship they laid claim unto and enjoyed, so many of them as were truly so, was by adoption; for “to them pertained the adoption,” Romans 9:4. Wherein this emphasis, then, and specially of Christ’s sonship, should consist, but in what we assert of his natural sonship, cannot be made to appear. Grotius says it is “because the Son of God was a name of the Messiah.” True, but on what account? Not that common [one] of adoption, but this of nature, as shall afterward appear.

Again; he who is properly a son is distinguished from him who is metaphorically so only; for any thing whatever is metaphorically said to be what it is said to be by a translation and likeness to that which is true.

Now, if Christ be not begotten of the essence of his Father, he is only a metaphorical Son of God by way of allusion, and cannot be called the proper Son of God, being only one who hath but a similitude to a proper Son; so that it is a plain contradiction that Christ should be the proper Son of God, and yet not be begotten of his Father’s essence. Besides, in that 8th of the Romans, the apostle had before mentioned other sons of God, who became so by adoption, verses 15, 16; but when he comes to speak of Christ in opposition to them, he calls him “God’s own” or proper “Son,” — that is, his natural Son, they being so only by adoption. And in the very words themselves, the distance that is given him by way of eminence above all other things doth sufficiently evince in what sense he is called the “proper Son of God:” “He that spared not his own Son, how shall he not with him give us all things?” 2. The only-begotten Son of God is his natural Son, begotten of his essence, and there is no other reason of this appellation. And this is farther clear from the antithesis of this “only-begotten’ to “adopted.” They are adopted sons who are received to be such by grace and favor. He is onlybegotten who alone is begotten of the substance of his father; neither can any other reason be assigned why Christ should so constantly, in way of distinction from all others, be called the “only-begotten Son of God.” It were even ridiculous to say that Christ were the only-begotten Son of God and his proper Son, if he were his Son only metaphorically and improperly. That Christ is the proper, only-begotten Son of God, improperly and metaphorically, is that which is asserted to evade these testimonies of Scripture. Add hereunto the emphatical, discriminating significancy of that voice from heaven, “This is he, that well-beloved Son of mine;” and that testimony which in the same manner Peter gave to this sonship of Christ in his confession, “Thou art the Son of the living God;” and the ground of Christ’s filiation will be yet more evident. Why the Son of the living God, unless as begotten of God as the living God, as living things beget of their own substance? But of that place before. Christ, then, being the true, proper, beloved, only-begotten Son of the living God, is his natural Son, of his own substance and essence. 3. The same truth may have farther evidence given unto it from the consideration of what kind of Son of God Jesus Christ is. He who is such a son as is equal to his father in essence and properties is a son begotten of the essence of his father. Nothing can give such an equality but a communication of essence. Then, with God, equality of essence can alone give equality of dignity and honor; for between that dignity, power, and honor, which belong to God as God, and that dignity or honor that is or may be given to any other, there is no proportion, much less equality, as shall be evidenced at large afterward. And this is the sole reason why a son is equal to his father in essence and properties, because he hath from him a communication of the same essence whereof he is partaker. Now, that Christ is such a Son as hath been mentioned, the Scripture abundantly testifies. “My Father,” saith Christ, “worketh hitherto, and I work.

Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God,” John 5:17,18. Verse 17, having called God his Father in the particular manner before mentioned, and affirmed to himself an equal nature and power for operation with his Father, the Jews thence inferred that he testified of himself that he was such a Son of God as that he was equal with God.

The full opening of this place at large is not my present business; the learned readers know where to find that done to their hand. The intendment of those words is plain and evident. Grotius expounds Ison eJautolawful for him to do what was so to God, and that he was no more bound to the Sabbath than he; which,” saith he, “was a gross calumny.” So verse 19, these words of our Savior, “The Son can do nothing of himself but what he seeth the Father do” (wherein the emphasis lies evidently in the words ajf eJautou~ , for the Son can do nothing of himself but what the Father doth, seeing he hath his essence, and so, consequently, will and power, communicated to him by the Father), he renders to be an allusion to and comparison between a master and scholar; as the scholar looks diligently to what his master doth, and strives to imitate him, so was it with Christ and God; — which exposition was the very same with that which the Arians assigned to this place, as Maldonate upon the place makes appear. That it was not an equal licence with the Father to work on the Sabbath, but an equality of essence, nature, and power between Father and Son, that the Jews concluded from the saying of Christ, is evident from this consideration, that there was no strength in that plea of our Savior of working on the Sabbath-day because his Father did so, without the violation of the Sabbath, unless there had been an equality between the persons working. That the Jews did herein calumniate Christ or accuse him falsely, the Tritheists said, indeed, as Zanchius testifies; and Socinus is of the same mind, whose interest Grotius chiefly serves in his Annotations: but the whole context and carriage of the business, with the whole reply of our Savior, do abundantly manifest that the Jews, as to their conclusion, were in the right, that he made himself such a Son of God as was equal to him. For if in this conclusion they had been mistaken, and so had calumniated Christ, there be two grand causes why he should have delivered them from that mistake by expounding to them what manner of Son of God he was: — First, Because of the just scandal they might take at what he had spoken, apprehending that to be the sense of his words which they professed. f249 Secondly, Because on that account they sought to slay him; which if they had done, he should by his death have borne witness to that which was not true. They sought to kill him because he made himself such a Son of God as by that sonship he was equal to God; which if it were not so, there was a necessity incumbent on him to have cleared himself of that aspersion, which yet he is so far from, as that in the following verses he farther confirms the same thing.

So he “thought it not robbery to be equal with God,” Philippians 2:6. It is of God the Father that this is spoken, as the Father, as appears in the winding up of that discourse: Verse 11, “That every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” And to him is Christ equal; and therefore begotten of his own essence.

Yea, he is such a Son as is one with his Father: “I and my Father are one,” John 10:30; which the Jews again instantly interpret, without the least reproof from him, that h