ning riot with fancy and imagination) about matters infinitely surpassing human comprehension, you will make lamentable work of it. You may go on, till you reason, in a manner, God out of his attributes, and yourself out of your faith; and not know at last where to stop. For, indeed, all arguments, of this kind, are as strong for atheism, as they are against a Trinity: wherefore it concerns you seriously to reflect, what you are doing. This, and the like considerations, have made the wisest and coolest men very cautious how they listened to the rovings of wanton thought, in matters above human comprehension. The pretended contradictions, now revived by many, against the doctrine of the Trinity, are very old and trite. They were long ago objected to the Christians, by the heathen idolaters. They almost turned the heads of Praxeas, Noëtus, Sabellius, Manichæus, Paul of Samosata; not to mention Arius, Nestorius, Eutyches, and other ancient heretics. The Catholics were sensible of them but having well considered them, they found them of much too slight moment, to bear up against the united force of Scripture and tradition. The doctrine of the Trinity, with all its seeming contradictions, has stood the test, not only of what human wit could do, by way of dispute; but of all that rage and malice could contrive, through a persecution almost as bitter and virulent, as any that had ever been under heathen emperors. This is to me an additional confirmation, that the doctrine we profess is no such gross imposition upon the common sense and reason of mankind, as is pretended. It was neither force nor interest that brought it in; nor that hath since, so universally, upheld it: and men are not generally such idiots, as to love contradictions and repugnancies, only for humour or wantonness, when truth and consistency are much better, and may be had at as easy a rate. These reflections have carried me rather too far: but they may have their use among such readers as know little of the history of this controversy; or how long it had been buried; till it pleased some amongst us to call it up again,

and to dress it out with much art and finesse; to take the populace, and to beguile the English reader. Many things have fallen under this Query, which properly belonged not to it. But it was necessary for me to pursue you, what way soever you should take. You was more at liberty: my method is determined by yours.

QUERY XX.

Whether the Doctor need have cited 300 texts, a wide of the purpose, to prove what nobody denies, namely, a subordination, in some sense, of the Son to the Father; could he have found but one plain text against his eternity or consubstantiality, the points in question?

YOUR answer to this is very short, not to say negligent. You say, "if the Doctor's 300 texts prove a real "subordination, and not in name only, the point is gained "against the Querist's notion of individual consubstan"tiality; unless the same individual intelligent substance "can be subordinate to itself, and consubstantial with it"self." Here you are again doubling upon the word individual. The Querist never had such a notion as that of personal consubstantiality, which is ridiculous in the sound, and contradiction in sense; and yet you are constantly putting this upon the Querist, and honouring him with your own presumptions. Let me again show you, how unfair and disingenuous this method is. Do not you say that the same individual substance is present in heaven, and, at the same time, filleth all things? That it pervades the sun, and, at the same time, penetrates the moon also? I might as reasonably argue that you, by such positions, make the same individual substance greater and less than itself, remote and distant from itself, higher and lower than itself, to the right and to the left of itself, containing and contained, bounded and unbounded, &c. as you can pretend to draw those odd surprising consequences

Clarke's Reply, p. 7.

upon the Querist. Would not you tell me, in answer, that I misinterpreted your sense of individual, and took advantage of an ambiguous expression? Let the same answer serve for us; and you may hereafter spare your readers the diversion of all that unmanly trifling with an equivocal word. But enough of this matter. I might have expected of you, in your reply to this Query, one text or two to disprove the Son's eternity and consubstantiality, and to supply the deficiency of the Doctor's treatise: but since you have not thought fit to favour me with any, I must still believe that the Doctor's 300 texts, though very wide of the purpose, are all we are to expect; being designed, instead of real proof, to carry some show and appearance of it, that they may seem to make up in number what they want in weight. All that the learned Doctor proves by his 300 texts, or more, is only that the Son is subordinate to the Father: whether as a Son, or as a creature, appears not. However, the tacit conclusion which the Doctor draws from it, and insinuates carefully to his reader, is, that the Son is not strictly and essentially God; but a creature only. This inference we deny utterly; alleging that a subordination may be, and may be understood, between two persons, without the supposition of any inferiority of nature: but all the answer we can get to this is, that bnature and essence are obscure metaphysical notions; (which is neither true, nor to the purpose, nor consistently pleaded by one who builds so much upon self-existence, a metaphysical term, the word equivocal, and the notion sufficiently obscure.) And thus, as soon as the learned Doctor comes up to the pinch of the question, not being willing to own the force of what is urged, he very wisely dissembles it, and goes off in a mist of words.

I cannot but take notice, upon this occasion, of your charging us frequently, in an invidious manner, with the use we make of metaphysical terms. I know no reason

Reply, p. 17, 19, 21.

you have for it, except it be to anticipate the charge, as being conscious to yourselves how notoriously you offend in this kind. Any man, that is acquainted with the history of Arianism, knows that its main strength lay in logical and metaphysical subtilties. The faith of the Church was at first, and might be still, a plain, easy, simple thing; did not its adversaries endeavour to perplex and puzzle it with philosophical niceties, and minute inquiries into the modus of what they cannot comprehend. The first Christians easily believed that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in whose name they were baptized, and whom they worshipped, were equally divine; without troubling themselves about the manner of it, or the reconciling it with their belief in one God. As men generally believe that God foreknows every thing, and that man notwithstanding is a free agent, (scarce one perhaps in a thousand concerning himself how to reconcile these two positions, or being at all apprehensive of any difficulty in it;) so, probably, the plain honest Christians believed every Person . to be God, and all but one God; and troubled not their heads with any nice speculations about the modus of it. This seems to have been the artless simplicity of the primitive Christians, till prying and pretending men came to start difficulties, and raise scruples, and make disturbance; and then it was necessary to guard the faith of the Church against such cavils and impertinencies as began to threaten it. Philosophy and metaphysics were called in to its assistance; but not till heretics had shown the way, and made it in a manner necessary for the Catholics to encounter them with their own weapons. Some new terms and particular explications came in by this means; that such as had a mind to corrupt or destroy the faith, might be defeated in their purposes. It was needless to say that generation was without division, while nobody suspected or thought of any division in the case: but after heretics had invidiously represented the Catholics as asserting a division, it was high time for the Catholics to resent the injury, and to deny the charge. There was no occa

sion for the mentioning of three Hypostases, till such as Praxeas, Noëtus, and Sabellius, had pretended to make one Hypostasis an article of faith; drawing many very novel and dangerous consequences from their prime position. The ouoouσov itself might have been spared, at least out of the creeds, had not a fraudulent abuse of good words brought matters to that pass, that the Catholic faith was in danger of being lost, even under Catholic language. To return to our point: there would be no occasion now for distinguishing between subordination of order and of nature, were it not manifest how much the Catholic faith may be endangered by the endeavours of some, to slip one upon us for the other. Such as know any thing of fair controversy, may justly expect of you, that you support your cause, not by repeating and inculcating the word subordinate, (as if there was a charm in syllables, or men were to be led away by sounds,) but by proving, in a rational manner, that all subordination implies such an inferiority as you contend for. If this can be done, the Doctor's 300 texts (which are very good texts, and have undoubtedly an excellent meaning) may appear also to be pertinent to the cause in hand.

QUERY XXI.

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

TO the former part of the Query, you "answer directly "in the negative." To which I rejoin, that I still maintain the affirmative, and can readily make it good. The Doctor's insinuating from the 300 texts (which style the Father God absolutely, or the one God) that the Son is not strictly and essentially God, not one God with the Father,