* OLx Iv VXV; /"a^'AOv Iv havoia KiTrai h tt.\r.6iKi, — Greg. NaZ.
TO HIS CATECHISM EXAMINED. 67
pose, alloAvs expositions of Scripture, or else I am sure he condemns him- self in Avhat he practises. His book is, in his own thoughts, an exposition of Scripture. That this cannot be done without varying the words and literal expressions thereof, I suppose will not be questioned. To express the same thing that is contained in any place of Scripture with such other words as may give light unto it in our understandings, is to ex- pound it. This are Ave called to, and the course of it is to cantinue whilst Clirist continues a church upon the earth. Paul spake nothing, for the substance of the things he delivered, but what was written in the prophets ; that he did not use new expressions, not to be found in any of the pro- phets, will not be proved. But there is a tw^ofold evil in these expressions : " That they are invented to detect and exclude heresies, as is pretended." If heretics begin first to wrest Scripture expressions to a sense never received nor contained in them, it is surely lawful for them who are willing to " contend for the faith once delivered to the saints" to clear the mind of God in his word by expressions and terms suitable thereunto ;^ neither have heretics carried on their cause without the invention of new words and plirases.
If any shall make use of any words, terms, phrases, and expressions, in and about religious things, requiring the embracing and receiving of those words, etc., by others, without examining either the truth of wdiat by those words, phrases, etc., they intend to signify and express, or the propriety of those expressions themselves, as to their accommodation for the signify- ing of those things, I plead not for them. It is not in the power of man to make any word or expression, not ^rirSig found in the Scrijiture, to be canonical, and for its own sake to be embraced and received. ^ But yet if any word or phrase do expressly signify any doctrine or matter contained in the Scripture, though the word or phrase itself be not in so many letters found in the Scripture, that such word or phrase may not be used for the explication of the mind of God I suppose will not easily be proved. And this we farther grant, that if any one shall scruple the receiving and owning of such expressions, so as to make them the way of professing that which is signified by them, and yet do receive the thing or doctrine which is by them delivered, for my part I shall have no con- test with him. For instance, the word o/MoovGiog was made use of by the first Nicene council to express the unity of essence and being that is in the Father and Son, the better to obviate Arius and his followers, Avith their ^v orav o\jK ^v, and the like forms of speech, nowhere found in Scripture, and invented on set purpose to destroy the true and eternal deity of the Son of God. If, now, any man should scruple the receiving of that word, but withal should profess that he believes Jesus Christ to be God, equal to the Father, one Avith him from the beginning, and doth not explain him- self by other terms not found in the Scripture, namely, that he was "made a God," and is " one Avith the Father as to Avill, not essence," and the like, he is like to undergo neither trouble nor opposition from me. We knoAv what troubles arose between the eastern and Avestern churches about the
' ''Hv oTdi ovK ^y, o/jiiiioiffKi;. Homo deificatus, etc., dixit Arius. 1. T/o» I? clx, ovtuv yiy'.)iritrfa,i. 2. ETwai Ton oti ovx h, etc. — Sozom. Ilist. Eccles. lib. i. cap. xiv. p. 215 ; Theod. Hist. lib. i. cap. ii. p. 3; Socrat. Scholast. Hist. lib. i. cap. iii. etc. Ov» iXtyt ya.f ivuriv Tov Xoyov thZ ©e/)? "^pi; aii^u-jtot, aWa, o\jo wnirTaffiii iXiyi, xoii Siaipuriv. Ei as xai av^fuiTov, xai Ssov aTixaXii rov XfnTTOv, aXXa. ovx trt u; ri/xti;, aXXa tyi ff^lffli, xai Tn oixiidtrii, XXTU TO Taura aXX>iXo;{ Uiia'xiiv oia t»jv uTtpSoXriv Tris (ptX'ia;. LeOHt. Ue Scct. dO
Nestorio. * Vide Calv. Instit. lib. L cap. xiii. ; Alting. Theol. Elenct. loc. de Deo.
63 THE PREFACE OF MR BIDDLE
words "hypostasis" and " persona," until they understood on each side that bv these different words the same thing was intended, and that u-roVrac/^ with the Greeks was not the same as '' substantia" with tlie Latins, nor " persona" with tlie Latins tlie same with TgoVwTov among the Greelcs, as to their application to the thing the one and the other expressed by these terms. That such "monstrous terms are brought into our religion as neither thev that invented them nor they that use them do understand," Mr B. may be allowed to aver, from the measure he hath taken of all men's under- standings, weighing them in his own, and saying, " Thus far can they go and no farther," "This thoy can understand, that they cannot;" — a preroga- tive, as we shall see in the process of this business, that he will scarcely allow to God himself without his taking much pains and labour about it. I profess, for my part, I have not as yet the least conviction fallen upon me that Mr B. is furnished with so large an understanding, whatever he insinuates of his own abilities, as to be allowed a dictator of what any man can or cannot understand. If his principle, or rather conclusion, upon which he limits the understandings of men be this, " What I cannot under- stand, that no man else can," he would be desired to consider that he is as yet but a young man, who hath not had so many advantages and helps for the improving of his understanding as some others have had ; and, be- sides, that there are some whose eyes are blinded by the god of this world, that they shall never see or understand the things of God, yea, and that God himself doth thus oftentimes execute his vengeance on them, for detaining his truth in unrighteousness.