ful and worthy returns for it; especially by well using it to the greatest purposes, for which it was bestowed, of enabling us to serve God, of preserving us from sin, of conducting us to eternal salvation. Let us earnestly invite this holy guest unto us, by our prayers unto him who hath promised to bestow his Spirit upon those which ask it, to impart this living stream to every one which thirsteth af. ter it ; let us willingly receive him into our hearts, let us treat him with all kind usage, with all humble observance. Let us not exclude him by supine neglect or rude resistance; let us not grieve him by our perverse and froward behaviour toward him; let us not tempt him by our fond presumptions or base treacheries; let us not quench his heavenly light and heat by our foul lusts and passions: but let us admit gladly his gentle illapses; let us hearken to his faithful suggestions; let us comply with his kindly motions; let us demean ourselves modestly, consistently, and officiously toward him: that we may so do, God of his infinite mercy grant unto us, through Jesus Christ our Lord; to whom, with the same Holy Spirit, for ever be all glory and praise. Amen. O God, the strength of all them that put their trust in thee, mercifully accept our prayers; and because, through the weakness of our mortal nature, we can do no good thing without thee, grant us the help of thy grace, that in keeping of thy commandments we may please thee both in will and deed, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Luke xi. 13; John vii. 37, 38, 39. A DEFENCE OF THE BLESSED TRINITY. TRINITY SUNDAY, 1663. Φύσει μὲν ἅπας λόγος σαθρὸς καὶ εὐκίνητος, καὶ διὰ τὸν ἀντιμαχόμενον λόγον ἐλευθερίαν οὐκ ἔχων· δ δὲ περὶ Θεοῦ τοσούτῳ μᾶλλον, ὅσῳ μεῖζον τὸ ὑποκείμενον, καὶ ὁ ζῆλος πλείων, καὶ ὁ κίνδυνος χαλεπώτερος· καὶ γὰρ νοῆσαι χαλεπὸν, καὶ ἑρμηνεῦσαι αμήχανον, καὶ ἀκοῆς κεκαθαρμένης ἐπιτυχεῖν ἐργωδέστερον.—Greg. Naz. Orat. 26. COLOSS. iii. 2.-Set your affections on things above.* FOR understanding this apostolical prefirst the act, qoorsi (which rendered, to cept, two particulars must be considered: set our affections;) then the object, & avo, things above: these we briefly shall explain. also according to common use, denote an The word gooveir doth primarily, and advertency, or intent application of the mind upon any object: of the mind, that is, of a man's soul, especially of its raof understanding, will, affection, activity: tional part; so as to include the powers whence it may imply direction of our understanding to know; of our will to choose and embrace; of our affection to love, desire, relish; of our activity to pursue any good (real or apparent) which is proposed according to which most of the thing) I do take the word, supcomprehensive sense (suiting the nature posing that St. Paul doth enjoin us to employ all our mental faculties in study, choice, passion, endeavour upon supernal things. The ù vo (things above) may be so taken as to import all things relating to our spiritual life here, or our future state hereafter; the which do either actually subsist above in heaven, or have a final reference thither: so they may comprise-1. The substantial beings, to whom we stand related, owe respect, perform duty; 2. The state and condition of our spiritual life here, or hereaf ter, as we are servants and subjects of God, citizens of heaven, candidates of immortal happiness; 3. Rules to be ob * Φρονεῖτε τὰ ἄνω. served, qualities to be acquired, actions to be performed, means to be used by us, in regard to the superior place and state. Of these things, the incomparably principal and supreme, the rò лoάvo, is the ever most glorious and blessed Trinity; to the minding of which this day is peculiarly dedicated, and the which indeed is always the most excellent, most beneficial, most comfortable object of our contemplation and affection; wherefore upon it I shall now immediately fix my discourse. The sacred Trinity may be considered, either as it is in itself wrapt up in unexplicable folds of mystery; or as it hath discovered itself operating in wonderful methods of grace towards us. As it is in itself, it is an object too bright and dazzling for our weak eye to fasten upon, an abyss too deep for our short reason to fathom: I can only say, that we are so bound to mind it, as to exercise our faith, and express our humility, in willingly believing, in submissively adoring those high mysteries which are revealed in the holy oracles concerning it, by that Spirit itself, which searcheth the depths of God, and by that only Son of God, who residing in his Father's bosom, hath thence brought them forth, and expounded them to us, so far as was fit for our capacity and use: and the lectures so read by the eternal wisdom of God, the propositions uttered by the mouth of truth itself, we are obliged with a docile ear, and a credulous heart, to entertain. That there is one Divine Nature or Essence, common unto three Persons incomprehensibly united, and ineffably distinguished; united in essential attributes, distinguished by peculiar idioms and relations; all equally infinite in every divine perfection, each different from other in order and manner of subsistence; that there is a mutual inexistence of one in all, and all in one; a communication without any deprivation or diminution in the communicant; an eternal generation, and an eternal procession, without precedence or succession, without proper causality or dependence; a Father imparting his own, and the Son receiving • Ἐκεῖνος ἐξηγήσατο, John i. 18. John x. 38; xiv. 10; xvii. 21. his Father's life, and a Spirit issuing from both, without any division or multiplication of essence: these are notions which may well puzzle our reason in conceiving how they agree, but should not stagger our faith in assenting that they are true; upon which we should meditate, not with hope to comprehend, but with dispositions to admire, veiling our faces in the presence, and prostrating our reason at the feet of wisdom so far transcending us. There be those who, because they cannot untie, dare to cut in sunder these sacred knots; who, because they cannot fully conceive it, dare flatly to deny them; who, instead of confessing their own infirmity, do charge the plain doctrines and assertions of holy scripture with impossibility. Others seem to think they can demonstrate these mysteries by arguments grounded upon principles of natural light; and express it by similitudes derived from common experience. To repress the presumption of the former, and to restrain the curiosity of the latter, the following considerations (improved by your thoughts) may perhaps. somewhat conduce. 1. We may consider, that our reason is no competent or capable judge concerning propositions of this nature: Our breast (as Minutius speaketh) is a narrow vessel, that will not hold much understanding;* it is not sufficient, nor was ever designed, to sound such depths, to descry the radical principles of all being, to reach the extreme possibilities of things. Such an intellectual capacity is vouchsafed to us as doth suit to our degree (the lowest rank of intelligent creatures), as becometh our station in this inferior part of the world, as may qualify us to discharge the petty businesses committed to our management, and the facile duties incumbent on us: but to know what God is,† how he subsisteth, what he can, what he should do, by our natural perspicacity, or by any means we can use, further than he pleaseth to reveal, doth not suit to the meanness of our condition, or the narrowness of our *Nobis ad intellectum pectus angustum est, &c.-Min. Felix. † Τὸν μὲν οὖν ποιητὴν, καὶ πατέρα τοῦδε τοῦ παντὸς εὑρεῖν τε ἔργον, καὶ εὗροντα εἰς πάντας ἀδύνατον Aéys.-Plato in Tim. capacity; these really are the most ele-heavens, the highest and top of all wisvated sublimities, and the abstrusest sub- dom; man's as the earth, beneath which tilties that are, or can be, in the nature of there is no degree, but that of hell and things he that can penetrate them, may darkness: we therefore in this respect erect his tribunal any where in the world, are unfit to determine concerning things and pretend justly that nothing in heaven so exceedingly sublime and subtile. or earth is exempted from his judgment. 2. We may consider, that not only the But, in truth, how unfit our reason is to imperfection of our reason itself, but the exercise such universal jurisdiction, we manner of using it, doth incapacitate us may discern by comparing it to our to judge about these matters. Had we sense it is obvious that many beasts do competent skill to sail in this deep ocean, (by advantage of a finer sense) see, hear, yet we do want a gale to drive us, smell things imperceptible to us and and a compass to steer our course by were it not very unreasonable to con- therein; we have not any firm grounds clude that such things do not exist, or to build our judgment on, or certain rules are in themselves altogether insensible, to square it by. We cannot effectually because they do not at all appear to us? discourse or determine upon any subject, Is it not evident that we ought to impute without having principles homogeneous their imperceptibility (respecting us) to and pertinent thereto (that are 1 the defect of our sense, to its dullness and 1 avreveia, cognate and congruous to grossness, in regard to the subtilty of the subject-matter, as the philosopher those objects? Even so many proposi- speaketh) upon which to found our artions in themselves, and in regard to the gumentation. Now all the principles we capacity of higher understandings (for can have are either originally innate to there are gradual differences in under- our minds, or afterward immediately instanding, as well as in sense), be true fused by God, or by external instruction and very intelligible, which to our infe- from him disclosed to us, or acquired rior reason seem unintelligible, or re- by our experience, and observation of pugnant to the pre-notions with which things incurring our sense; or framed by our soul is imbued; and our not discern- our reason, comparing those means; ing those truths may argue the blindness of which the three former sorts are most and weakness of our understanding, not arbitrarily communicated and both for any fault or inconsistency in the things number and kind depend upon the free themselves; nor should it cause us any-pleasure of him, who distributeth them wise to distrust them, if they come recommended-to our belief by competent authority. To such purposes indeed the holy scripture frequently doth vilify our reason and knowledge: Every man (saith Jeremiah) is brutish in knowledge. The Lord (saith the Psalmist) knoweth the thoughts of men (of wise men, as St. Paul quoteth it), that they are vanity. Vain man (saith he in Job) would be wise, though man be born like a wild ass's colt; that is, however we affect to seem wise, yet to be dull as an ass, to be wild as a colt, is natural to us. My thoughts (saith God in the prophet) are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways: for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. God's wisdom is as the Jer. x. 14; Psal ciii. 14; 1 Cor. iii. 20; Job xi. 12. d Isa. lv. 8, 9. according to a measure suitable to each man's occasions, estimated by himself. How many those are, and how far they may qualify us to judge or discourse about those transcendent matters, is hard to define; but most certainly they never can clash with one another; no light in any manner imparted by God can obscure the doctrine declared by him, no doctrine can thwart principles instilled by him. The latter sorts appertain only to material and sensible objects; which therefore can only enable us to deduce, or to examine conclusions relating to them; and being applied to things of another kind, are abused, so as to become apt to produce great mistakes: as, for instance, most ancient philosophers observing that the changes and vicissitudes in nature were generally by the same matters undergo * Ως ἑκάστῳ Θεὸς ἱμέριζε μέτρον, Rom. xii. 3. • Annal. i. 7. 3. We may consider the weakness and shortness of our reason, even about things most familar and easy to us; the little or ing several alterations, or putting on differ- | from principles revealed by God's Spirit, ent shapes; and that bodies once being in the sole master of spiritual science; so rest did usually consist in that state, until also as to express them not ev diduxiois by impulse of other bodies they were put ανθρωπίνης σοφίας λόγοις, in terms devised into motion; did thence frame such axi- by human wisdom, but in such as the Hooms, or principles of discourse, Ex ni- ly Spirit hath suggested; for yuxus hilo nihil fit; and Quicquid movetur, ab aroganos, a man endowed merely with alio movetur: which propositions, sup-common sense (or natural reason) cannot posing them true in relation to the pres- dézeσbai, apprehend, or perceive those ent conditions and powers of sensible things of God, which only the Spirit of things, yet were it unlawful to stretch God doth know. To improve and press them unto beings of another kind and which consideration further, nature (to beings immaterial and insensible), or to infer thence generally, that in the utmost possibility of things there is not any creative or any self-motive pow-nothing we by our utmost diligence can er: even as from the like premises it would be vain to conclude, that there be no other beings subsistent beside those which strike our senses, or discover themselves by sensible effects. In like manner, it cannot be reasonable, out of principles drawn from ordinary experience, about these most low and imperfect things, to collect, that there can be no other kind of unions, of distinctions, of generations, of processions, than such as our own gross sense doth represent to us :* reason itself more forcibly doth oblige us to think that to sublimer beings there do pertain modes of existence and action, unions and distinctions, influences and emanations, of a more high and perfect kind, such as our coarse apprehension cannot adequate, nor our rude language express; which we, perhaps, have no faculty subtile enough to conceive distinctly, nor can attain any congruous principles, from which to discourse solidly about them. To judge of these things, if we will not, against the philosopher's rule, ustubaireiv els ho yéros, shift kinds, or use improper and impertinent arguments, we must compare spiritual things with spiritual, so as to draw conclusions about spirituals only attain to know, concerning their intrinsic * Id quod Deus est, secundum id quod est nec humano sermone edici, nec humanis auribus percipi, nec humanis sensibus colligi potest.-Novat. de Trin. cap. 7.-'ropácaper χὰρ, ὡς ἡμῖν ἐφικτον, ἐκ τῶν ἡμετέρων τὰ τοῦ Θεοῦ.Naz. Or. 37, de Sp. S. † Cum quæritur quid tres, magna inopia hu-ophy about a gnat, or a worm, debate and manum laborat eloquium; dictum est tamen tres Personæ, non ut illud diceretur, sed ne taceretur.-Aug. de Trin. 5, 9.- Kiptov ovopa TWV VonTwv kai dowμárwv ovdiv.—Naz. Grat. 45, (ad Evagr.) † Πνευματικὰ πνευματικοῖς συγκρίνειν. 1 Cor. ii. 13. decide (beyond what is taught us from above) concerning the precise manner of divine essence, subsistence, or generation? I do (saith Chrysostom) eat meats; * Κενούσθω σοι τὸ φιλότιμον ἐν ἀκινδύνοις. Gteg. Naz. Or. 26. | so exact figure, so fragrant smell, so delicate taste, so lively colour; by what engines it attracteth, by what discretion it culleth out, by what hands it mouldeth, its proper aliment; by what artifice it doth elaborate the same so curiously, and incorporate it with itself? What virtue could we imagine in nature able to digest an earthy juice into the pellucid clear but how they are divided into phlegm, into blood, into juice, into choler, I am ignorant; these things, which every day we see and taste, we do not know; and are we curious about the essence of God?* We are (as Aristotle, himself no dunce, no idiot, doth confess) but owl-eyed, noòs τὰ τῇ φύσει φανερώτατα πάντων, in regard to things naturally most evident, and palpable; and can we be such Lyn-ness of crystal, into the invincible firmceus's, as to see through the furthest recesses of infinity? Hardly (saith the Wisdom of Solomon) do we guess aright of things upon the earth, and with labour do we find the things that are before us; but the things that are in heaven, who hath searched out? Yea, and the genuine Solomon himself, I said, I will be wise; but it was far from me: that which is far off, and exceeding deep, who can find it out? What is more remote, what more profound, than God's nature? who then can find it out? Sooner with our hands may we touch the extreme surface of the skies, sooner with our eyes may we pierce to the centre of the earth: so it is expressly told to us in Job: Canst thou by searching find out God? Canst thou find out the Almighty to perfection? It is as high as heaven; what canst thou do? deeper than hell; what canst thou know? 4. It may be considered, that we daily see and observe things, which, did not manifest experience convince us of their being, we should be apt to disbelieve their possibility; sense, no less than faith, doth present us with objects, to bare reason improbable and unconceivable; so that should we attend to the scruples injected thereby, we should hardly take things for possible which we behold existent; we should distrust the greatest evidence of sense, and by our logic put out our eyes. Who would be lieve, that, did he not every day see it; who can conceive how, although he seeth it, from a little dry, ill-favoured, insipid seed thrown into the earth, there shortly would rise so goodly a plant, endued with ness of a diamond? Who would not be |