audroisse, quæ hâc sic aut acutior, aut verior, quece magis divinum quid sapiat, et a Deo ipso patefactam fuisse præ se ferat. Hoc profecto affirmare ausim, cum Deus illi viro (Lælio scil.) permulta aliis prorsus tunc temporis incognita patefecerit, vix quidquam inter illa omnia esse, quod hâc interpretatione divinius videri queat. Socin. contra Eras. Johan. p. 505. cited by Dr. Edwards in his Preservative against Socinianism, Part iv. p. 84, where the reader may see an account at large of its manifold and unparalleled absurdities, all blasphemously fathered upon the spirit of truth. The process made use of in educing this marvellous construction is worth observing. First, the word Abraham is perverted from a proper name into an appellative, so that it doth not denote the person of Abraham, but the privilege and blessing implied in the changing of his name. 2. The word yvela is altered from denoting the substantial formation and existence of Abraham, into an accidental capacity, or spiritual mutation, whereby he was made, not a man, like all others at their birth, but an allegorical father of many nations. The word, by which our Saviour expressed his own real and substantial existence, is made, in like manner, to denote his office of Messiah.

3.

And

And lastly, instead of a plain, direct, affirmative proposition, the words are asserted to contain a monition and commination, of which not one syllable is either expressed or implied, or was ever imagined to be by any human creature till the days of Lælius Socinus; who thinking his own private judgment too slender a foundation for all these wonderful things to rest upon, pretended to receive them by immediate revelation from heaven. The union of heresy and enthusiasm, which appears upon this occasion, is worthy of admiration; but I must return now to our Author.

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Concerning the first cause, he affirms, that every thing which exists besides that, which way soever it is brought into being, whe"ther it be begotten, emanated, created, or spoken forth, it must proceed from, and owe its existence to, the wILL as well as power of that first cause." There is nothing in the Scripture to authorize any such supposition, as this of the Son of God owing his existence to the power of the first cause, For by the application of the name Jehovah to him, he is existence itself; and the New Testament having taught us, that he is the Power, as well as the Wisdom of God; then if we admit this author's principles, we shall have the absurd

H 3

1

absurd doctrine, that the Power of God is created by the Power of God. However, to make this appear plausible, he adds, in a note, the opinion of Athanasius, who (as he tells us) " acknowledges it to be impious to say that "God the Father was necessitated to act, "even when he begat the Son; and allows "also, that neither the Son nor the Holy

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Spirit are the first cause; but the Father "alone, and that the Son and Holy Spirit "were both caused1." In all this, he studiously avoids the word creature; though he takes care to express the same thing in other words, as the Arians always did: for which reason, Athanasius, in that very page, to part of which the author refers us, thus appeals to his readers" How manifest is their craft "and equivocation! for while they are "ashamed to call him (Christ) the work of "God, or a creature, they devise other modes "of speech, introducing the term WILL, and

saying, that unless he existed by the will "of God, God was necessitated to have a "Son against his will. But (adds he) ye impious men, who pervert every thing for the "sake of your heresy, who pretends to ascribe

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i Ibid.

Vol. I. p. 512.

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necessity

"necessity to God?" And this is his method of acknowledging it to be impious to say, that God the Father was necessitated to act; which expression, as it stands together with the context, appears in a light extremely different from what it does in the author's reference to it.

It is true, Athanasius does speak of the Father as a cause, but not in the author's sense of a first cause. "He begets the Son

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(saith he) and sends forth the Spirit, and therefore, we call the Father a cause1;" but still he applies the term only to the begetting of the Son, and the procession of the Spirit, both of which are the terms of the Scripture. That the relation between any of the persons of the Godhead, is the same as that between the cause and the effect, or the work and the maker of it, is what Athanasius constantly denies; and to shew that the relation does not subsist in time but in eternity, he uses the present tense, and not the past, as this writer is pleased to do in translating his words.

1 Γεννᾶ μὲν τὸν Υιόν· ἐκπορεύει δὲ καὶ τὸ πνευμα τὸ ἅγιον καὶ διὰ τέτο λέγεται ὁ Πατήρ αιτι.

V. II. ρ. 443.

In the course of his Essay, he hath screwed up the doctrine of an attractive power in matter to such a ridiculous height, that the great Newton, who generally expressed himself with much caution and reserve, and left his attraction open to a physical solution, and to the test of future experiments, would have owed him small thanks for the puerility of his spéculations, as I may be allowed to call it without offence. I will extract, from this part of his theory, such passages as will enable us to form a judgment of it." When we see a "stone descend to the ground-the cause of "that motion must be some spirit or other"since as nothing can act where it is not, that

power whereby any body continues in mo→ ❝tion, is as much the effect of some conco¬ "mitant spirit, as the power which first put "it in motion ".-The tendency of one body "towards another, is from the attractive "force of some spirit, which attractive power

being in proportion to the quantity of mat"ter, makes the difference of weight or gra"vity in bodies ".-Every particle of active

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or attractive matter must be directed in its "motions by some spirit, united to that mat