These are some few of the grounds of tliis aflirmation of ours concerning the simplicity of the essence of God ; which when Mr B. removes and answers, he may have more of them, which at present there is no necessity to produce.
From his being he proceeds to his subsistence, and expressly rejects his subsisting in three persons, name and thing. That this is no new attempt, no undertaking whose glory Mr B. may arrogate to himself, is known. Hitherto God hath taken thought for his own glory, and eminently con- founded the opposers of the subsistence of his essence in tliree distinct persons. Inquire of them that went before, and of the dealings of God with them of old. Wiiat is become of Ebion, Cerinthus, Paulus Samosatenus, Theodotus Byzantinus, Photinus, Arius, INIacedonius, etc.? Hath not God made their memory to rot, and their names to be an abomination to all generations 1 How they once attempted to have taken possession of the churches of God, making siaugliter and havoc of all that opposed them, hath been declared; but their place long since knows them no more. By the subsisting of God in any person, no more is intended than that person's being God. If that person be God, God subsists in that person. If you grant the Father to be a person (as the Holy Ghost expressly atfirnis him
TO HIS CATECHISM EXAMINED. 73
to be, Heb. i. 3) and to be God, you grant God to subsist in that person: that is all which by that expression is intended. Tlie Son is God, or is not. To say he is not God, is to beg that \Yhich cannot be proved. If he be God, he is the Father, or he is another person. If he be tlie Father, he is not the Son. That he is the Son and not the Son is sutRciently contradictory. If he be not the Father, as Avas said, and yet be God, he may have the same nature and substance with the Father (for of our God there is but one essence, nature, or being), and yet bo distinct from him. That distinction from him is his personality, — that property wliereby and from whence he is the Son. The like is to be said of tlie Holy Gliost. The thing, then, here denied is, that the Son is God, or tliat the Holy Ghost is God: for if they are so, God must subsist in three persons; of which more afterward. Now, is this not to be found in the Scriptures ? Is there no text affirming Christ to be God, to be one with the Father, or that the Holy Ghost is so ? no text saying, " There are three that bear record in heaven ; and these three are one?" none ascribing divine perfections, divine worsliip distinctly to either Son or Spirit, and yet jointly to one God ? Are none of these things found in the Scripture, that Mr B. thinks with one blast to demolish all these ancient foundations, and by his bare authority to deny the common faith of the present saints, and that wherein their pre- decessors in the worship of God are fallen asleep in peace? The proper place for the consideration of these things will farther manifest the abomi- nation of this bold attempt against the Son of God and the Eternal Spirit.
For the divine circumincession, mentioned in the next place, I shall only say that it is not at all in my intention to defend all the expressions that any men have used (who are yet sound in the main) in the unfolding of this great, tremendous mystery of the blessed Trinity, and I could heartily wish that they had some of them been less curious in their inquiries and less bold in their expressions. It is the thing itself alone whose faith I desire to own and profess ; and therefore I shall not in the least labour to retain and hold those things or words which may be left or lost without any prejudice thereunto.
Briefly ; by the barbarous term of " mutual circumincession," the school- men understand that which the Greek fathers called sfM'7n^i')(^dJ^rjSig, whereby they expressed that mystery, which Christ himself teaches us, of " his being in the Father, and the Father in him," John x. 38, and of the Father's dwelling in him, and doing the works he did, chap. xiv. 10, — the distinction of these persons being not hereby taken away, but the dis- junction of them as to their nature and being.
The eternal generation of the Son is in the next place rejected, that he may be sure to cast down every thmg that looks towards the assertion of his deity, whom yet the apostle affirms to be " God blessed for ever," Horn. ix. 5. That the Word, which " in the beginning was" (and therefore is) " God," is " the only begotten of the Father," the apostle affirms, John i. 14. That he is also " the only begotten Son of God" we have other plenti- ful testimonies, Ps. ii. 7; John iii. 16 ; Acts xiii. 33; Heb. i. 4-G; — a Son so as, in comparison of his sonship, the best of sons by adoption are ser- vants, Heb. iii. 5, 6 ; and so begotten as to be an only Son, John i. 14 ; though, begotten by grace, God hath many sons, James i. 18. C*hrist, then, being begotten of the Father, hath his generation of the Father ; for these are the very same things in words of a diverse sound. The only question here is, whether the Son have the generation so often spoken of from eternity or in time, — whether it be an eternal or a temporal generation from whence he is so said to be " begotten." As Christ is a Son, so by him