With these Arians,^ as was said, do our Socinians refuse communion, and will not be called after their name : not that their profession is better than theirs, or that they have much to blame in what they divulge, though they agree not with them in allowing a pre-existing nature to Christ be- fore his incarnation; but that srencration of men having made themselves infamous to posterity by their wickedness, perjiu'ies, crafts, and bloody cruelties, and having been pursued by eminent and extraordinary judg- ments from God, they are not willing to partake of the prejudices which they justly lie under.
From the year GOO, for divers ages, we have little noise of these men's abominations, as to the person of Christ, in the world. Satan had some- thing else to busy himself about.
A design he had in liand that was like to do him more service tlian any of his former attempts. Having, thei'efore, tried his utmost in open 0]ipo- sition to the person of Christ (the dregs of the poison thus shed abroad infecting in some measure a great part of the east to this day), by a way ne\er before heard of, and which Christians were not exercised with nor in any measure aware of, he subtilely ruins and overtlnows all his offices and the whole benefit of his mediation, and introduceth secretly a new worship from that wdiich lie appointed, by the means and endeavours of men ]ire- tending to act and do all that they did for the advancement of his kingdoni and glory. And therefore, whilst the fatal ai)0stasy of the western world, under the Roman antichrist, was contriving, carrying on, and heightening, till it came to its discovery and ruin, he stirs not at all with his old engines, which had brought in a revenue of obedience to his kingdom in no measure
' "Ariaai Christo divinum cultum non tribuerunt. Atqui longe praestat Trinitarium esse quam Cliristo diviuuni cultum uon tribuere. Inio Triiiitarius (nieo quidem judicio) iriodo alioqui Chiisti prreccpta cons-ervet, nee ulla ratione eos perscqnatur, qui Trinitarii lion sunt sed potius cum ipsis Iraterne conferrc, ac vciitatem inquirere non recuset, nierito Cbristianus dici debet. Qui vero Cbristum divina ratione non edit, is nullo niodo Cbristianus dici potest : Quocirca non est dubitandum, quin Deo minus di.spli- cuerunt Homo-ousiani Trinitarii, quam vnlsrus Arianorum. Quid itjitur mirum, si cum totus fere orbis t'bri.stianus in basduas (ut ita dicam) factiones divisus esset, Deus visi- onibus et miraculis testari voluisset utram ipsarum viam salutis vcl adbuc retineret, vel jam abjecissct. Addc Arianos accrrimc tunc persccutos fuisse miseros llomo-ousianos, idque diu et variis in locis: quare nierito se Deus Arianis iratum ostendit." — Socin. ad ■\Veik, p. 452.
16 THE PREFACE TO THE READER
proportionable to tliis, which by tliis new device he found ciccruing to him. But when the appointed time of mercy was come, tliat God would visit his people with light from above, and begin to unravel the mystery of ini- quity, whose abominations had destroyed the souls of tliem that embraced it, and whose cruelty had cut off the lives of thousands Avho had opposed it, by the Eeformation, eminently and successfully begun and carried on from tlie year 1517, Satan perceiving that even this his great master- piece of deceit and subtilty was like to fail him, and not to do him that service which formerly it had done, he again sets on foot his first design, of opjnigning the eternal deity of the Son of God, still remembering that the ruin of his kingdom arose from the Godliead of his person and the efficacy of his mediation. So, then, as for the first three hundred years of the pro- fession of the name of Christ in the world, he had variously opposed the Godhead of our blessed Saviour, by Simon Magus, Ebion, Cerinthus, Paulas Samosatenus, J\Iarcus, Basilides, Valentinus, Calarbasus, Marcion, Pliotiiuis, Thoodotus, and others; and from their dissipation and scattering, having gathered them all to a head in Arius and his abomination, — which some- times with a mighty prevalency of force and violence, sometimes more sub- tilely (putting out by the way the several branches of Macedonianism, Nestorianism, Eutychianism, all looking the same way in their tendency tlierewith), — he managed almost for the space of the next three hundred years ensuing; and losing at length that hold, he had spent more than double that space of time in carrying on his design of the great anti- christian papal apostasy ; being about the times before mentioned most clearly and eminently discovered in his wicked design, and being in danger to lose his kingdom, which he had been so long in possession of, intend- ing if it were possible to retrieve his advantage again, he sets on those men who had been instrumental to reduce the Christian religion into its pri- mitive state and condition with those very errors and abominations where- with he opposed and assailed the primitive professors thereof, — if they will have the apostles' doctrine, they shall have the opposition that was made unto it in the apostles' times : his hopes being possibly the same that formerly they were (but assuredly Christ will prevent him) ; — for as whilst the professors of the religion of Jesus Christ were spiritual, and full of the power of that religion they did profess, they defended the truth thereof, either by suflering, as under Constantius, Valens, and the Goths and Vandals, or by s])iritual means and weapons; so when they w'ere carnal, and lost the life of the gospel, yet endeavouring to retain the truth of the letter thereof, falling on carnal, politic ways for the supportment of it, and the suppressing of what opposed it, Satan quickly closed in with them, and aecomjilished all his ends by them, causing them to Avalk in all those ways of law, policy, blood, cruelty, and violence, for the destruction of the truth, "vvhich they fia'st engaged in for the rooting out of errors and heresies. " Hand ignota loquor." Those wdio ha^■e considered the occasions and ad- vantages of the bishop of Rome's rise and progress know these things to be so. Perhaps, I say, he might have thoughts to manage the same or the like design at the beginning of the Reformation, Avhen, with great craft and subtilt}^ he set on foot again his opposition to the person of Christ; which being the business chiefly under consideration, I shall give some brief account thereof.