Ruler, or Lord, or even Creator, (according to Prov. viii.) or any thing coming under the notion of office, (the Father being ever looked upon as first in order, and, in virtue thereof, the Fountain of every office, according to his own voluntary appointment,) yet you will never find it said by the ancients, that the Father constituted Christ a God, or appointed him to be God. Which observation is highly deserving your special notice; as it may discover to you a fundamental flaw in your hypothesis, and may show that you have took a great deal of pains with the ancients, upon a very wrong view, and (give me leave to add) to very little purpose. Had you found ever an ancient testimony, declaring that Christ was constituted God over all, you would have done something: the rest are impertinent, and come not up to your point. The word God was never looked upon as a word of office or dominion, but of nature and substance: and hence it is, that the ancients never speak of Christ's being constituted God. One use indeed you may make of your observation from Hippolytus, that warroxpάTwp, though it be often in the LXX the rendering of Lord of hosts, yet the Fathers sometimes used it in a lower sense, such as comes not up to the strength of the Hebrew: and therefore I readily acknowledge to you, that such passages of the Fathers as style Christ @avrongáτwp, are not pertinently alleged to prove him to be the Jehovah in the strict sense of that name, according to those Fathers. But enough of this. Upon the whole, it may appear that you have not been able to take off the force of Rom. ix. 5.

PHIL. ii. 6.

My argument from this text runs thus: He that was in the form of God, that is, naturally Son of God, and God, and as such equal with God, is God in the same high sense as the Father himself is; and since God is one, the same God. To this you only reply, (p. 14.) that "nothing

• See my fifth Sermon.

"can be more directly against me" than this text. Which decretory sentence, void of all proof, and coming from a man fallible as myself, deserves no farther notice. You have a great deal more upon this text from p. 50 to p. 64. but put together in so confused a manner, with a mixture of foreign matters, that I shall not spend time in pursuing you; but refer the reader to my fifth Sermon upon this very text: where all that you have material is already answered, or obviated. Your incidental pleas and pretences relating to Novatian, and other ancients, will be answered in their place. I proceed to another text.

66

HEB. i. 3.

My argument here is, that he who is " the brightness of his Father's glory, and the express image of his per"son," cannot reasonably be supposed to be excluded among the nominal Gods. But if he be not excluded, he is included in the one supreme God. Therefore, &c. Now, in page the fourteenth, you are content only to say, which I can as easily gainsay, that this text is directly against me. But you resume it again, p. 65. out of method; and thither I must attend you. There you talk much of by his Son, and by whom, and of the Father's being his God: which kind of reasoning I have sufficiently answered above. But you add, that "the image of the one supreme God cannot be himself that one supreme God, "whose image he is." But what mean you by the words "that supreme God?" Plainly, "that supreme Father, "who is God:" and thus I readily allow, that he cannot be himself that very Person whose express image he is. But why do you thus perpetually quibble with the phrase "that supreme God;" as if there were two Gods, this and that, and making the supreme God a name for one Person only? This, you must be sensible, is taking the main point for granted; and poorly begging of the question: which is a thing beneath the character of an able disputant. To proceed: I had been pressed with a passage of Eusebius, relating to this text; and I returned a clear

and full answer to it in my Defence, vol. i. p. 13, 14. You bring another passage out of Eusebius, in his Demonstratio Evang. though you know that even Bishop Bull, who otherwise is a defender of Eusebius, yet makes no account of what he wrote before the Nicene Council: as neither do I. I shall not therefore give myself the trouble of attending you, as often as you fill your margin with that author. I had said however, what was true, in relation to the passage brought against me before, that by dúo ovcía, Eusebius might mean no more than what Pierius, Methodius, Alexander, and Tertullian, meant by the like expressions; that is, two Persons. To which you reply, (p. 68.) that I, " by adding what the ancient writers "constantly disclaimed," (viz. an equality of supreme authority in the two Persons,)" do necessarily make, what "they never did, two supreme Gods, however inseparable "or undivided, as to their substance." But you are under a double mistake; first, in imagining that the ancients did not acknowledge an "equality of supreme authority," as much as I do; and next, in fancying that they and I (for the charge affects both, or neither) thereby make two "supreme Gods." The ancients, and I conformable thereto, always suppose a headship, or priority of order of the Father, referring his consubstantial Son to him as his head. And "this origination in the divine Paternity" (as Bishop Pearson speaks P) "hath anciently been looked upon as "the assertion of the Unity: and therefore the Son and "Holy Ghost have been believed to be but one God with "the Father; (N. B.) because both from the Father, who " is one, and so the Union of them." If you ask how the authority, or dominion, (for so I understand you here, and not as authority sometimes signifies Paternity, and auctor

P Pearson on the Creed, p. 40.

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Φύσις δὲ τοῖς τρισὶ μία, θεός· ἕνωσις δὲ ὁ πατὴς ἐξ δ καὶ πρὸς ὅν ἀνάγεται τὰ ἑξῆς. οὐχ ὡς συναλείφεσθαι, ἀλλ' ὡς ἔχεσθαι. Greg. Naz. Orat. xxxii. p. 520.

In illa quippe una substantia Trinitatis, Unitas est in origine, æqualitas in prole, in caritate autem Unitatis æqualitatisque communio. Fulgent. ad Monim. lib. ii. cap. 11. p. 37.

is Pater;) I say, if you ask how it can be supreme in both, if it be original here, and derivative there; I answer, because it is the same in both, only existing in a different manner: neither are there two dominions or two sovereignties, any more than two essences, substances, or Gods. The question from whence the Son's dominion is, is one point, and how great, or how high, is quite another. If you ask from whence the Son's dominion is, I say from the Father, as his essence also is: if you ask from whence the Father's dominion is, I say, from none, as I say also of his essence. But if you ask me, what, or how great, or how high; I say equal 9 in both, and indeed one undivided same, just as the essence is. Thus your charge of two Gods, which you so frequently repeat, through your abounding in false metaphysics, is proved a fallacy, and a groundless calumny.

You proceed to examine my authorities for my construction of Heb. i. 3. one by one. This being but a very small and incidental part of the controversy, I could be content to pass it over, for fear of being tedious to the reader. But I will endeavour to be as short as possible. You begin with rebuking me for citing Origen out of Athanasius; who lived, you say, above a hundred years after Origen's death. It was not quite a hundred when Athanasius wrote the piece from whence I cited the pas

Equalem ergo Patri credite Filium; sed tamen de Patre Filium, Patrem vero non de Filio. Origo apud illum, æqualitas apud istum. August. Serm. cxl. tom. 5. p. 681.

Quod si dixeris, eo ipso major est Pater Filio, quia de nullo genitus genuit tamen æqualem; cito respondebo, imo ideo non est major Pater Filio, quia genuit æqualem, non minorem. Originis enim quæstio est, quis de quo sit; æqualitatis autem, qualis aut quantus sit. August. tom. viii. p. 718.

Cum sit gloria, sempiternitate, virtute, regno, potestate, hoc quod Pater est; omnia tamen hæc non sine auctore, sicut Pater, Deus ex Patre tanquam Filius, sine initio et æqualis habet: et cum ipse sit omnium caput, ipsius tamen caput est Pater. Ruffin. in Symb.

Cum Pater omnia quæ habet gignendo dedit, æqualem utique genuit, quo»niam nihil minus dedit: quomodo ergo tu dicis, quia ille dedit, ille accepit, ideo æqualem Filium Patri non esse; cum eum cui data sunt omnia et ipsam æqualitatem videas accepisse? August, contr. Maxim, lib. ii. cap. 14. p. 707.

sage. But no matter. I question whether you can bring any thing of Origen's, that is of better, or indeed so good authority; considering how carefully Athanasius's Works have been preserved, how negligently most of Origen's, and how much they have been corrupted; as the best critics allow. Will you produce me any MSS. of Origen, above the age of Athanasius? Or will you assure us that later scribes were more faithful in copying than he? To pass on; you think however that the passage cited from Origen is "nothing to my purpose;" it does not show that the Son is the one supreme God. But it shows enough to infer it, though it does not directly say it. It shows that, in Origen's opinion, the image must be perfectly like the prototype; both alike invisible, and like eternal1: so far he is express; and his premises infer a great deal more, by parity of reason. Wherefore Origen, in his book against Celsus, carries the argument up to a formal equality in greatness. His words ares, "The God and Fa"ther of all is not, according to us, the only one that is

great. For he hath imparted even his greatness to his "only begotten, begotten before the creation: that he "being the image of the invisible God, might keep up "the resemblance of the Father, even in greatness. For "it was not possible for him to be (if I may so speak) a "commensurate and fair image of the invisible God, with"out copying out his greatness."

Now to me it seems, that this and the other passage of Origen are both very much to my purpose. For Origen was never weak enough to imagine that there were two Gods, equal in invisibility, in eternity, in greatness: but that the Father and Son, thus equal to each other,

• Εἰ ἔστιν εἰκὼν τῦ θεοῦ τοῦ ἀοράτου, ἀόρατος, εἰκών. ἐγὼ δὲ τολμήσας προσθείην ἄν, ὅτι καὶ ὁμοιότης τυγχάνων τε πατρὸς, οὐκ ἔσιν ὅτε οὐκ ἦν. Οrig. apud Athan. p. 233.

5 Οὐ μόνος δὲ μέγας καθ' ἡμᾶς ἐστιν ὁ τῶν ὅλων θεὸς καὶ πατής· μετέδωκε γὰρ ἑαυτῶ καὶ τῆς μεγαλειότητος τῷ μονογενῶν καὶ πρωτοτόκῳ πάσης κτίσεως· ἵν ̓, εἰκὼν αὐτὸς τυγχάνων τῇ ἀοράτε θεοῦ, καὶ ἐν τῷ μεγέθει σώζῃ τὴν εἰκόνα τοῦ πατρός· οὐ γὰρ οἷοντ ̓ ἦν εἶναι σύμμετρον (ἵν ̓ ὕτως ὀνομάσω) καὶ καλὴν εἰκόνα τᾷ ἀοράτε θεᾶ, μὴ καὶ τὰ μεγέθες παριςᾶσαν τὴν εἰκόνα. Orig. contr. Cels. p. 323.