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SECT. 6.] IN THE COUNSEL OF GOD. * 47
fool;” and well refutes it from these words of God himself, Gen. ix. 6, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed; for in the image of God made he man,” with other considera- tions of the text. R. Saadias would have it that God spake these words p21 sno by, “secundum consuetudinem regum ;” or pwd pain 3n2d pow 35, as Aben Ezra, “the plural number, which is the custom of kings.” This we have already rejected, and must yet further call it into examination as it is managed by the Socinians.
But plainly the introduction of this style is comparatively modern, and which nothing but usage or custom hath given reverence or majesty unto. , Joseph Kimchi would have it that God speaks unto himself, or the earth, or the four elements; for as the soul of man was to be immediately created by God, so his body was to be from the earth, by a contemperation of the principles and qualities of it. And this man falls on the-rock which he principally aims to avoid, —namely, an appearance of polytheism; for he makes the earth itself to be a god, that hath a principle of operation in itself, with a will and understanding whereby to exert it. Some of them affirm that in these words God consulted nbyn Sw sxdnna, “ with his family above,”—that is, the angels; which Aben Ezra on the place princi- pally inclines unto. This must afterwards be distinctly examined. Others say it is God and 12% m3, “his house of judgment.” 3n> om yosy oY NON YT MD DY IIT Any Ind xb ow nN, says Kishi on the place ;—“If it had been written, ‘ Let me,’ or ‘I will make man,’ he had not taught us that he spake unto his house of judgment, but unto himself;” whereof he shows the danger, from the expressions in the plural number. Hence some learned men have supposed that of old by “God and his house of judgment,” they intended the persons of the holy Trinity, the Father, Word, and Spirit; but the explication which they frequently give of their minds herein will not allow us so to judge, at least as unto any of their post-Talmudi- cal masters.
Other vain and foolish conjectures of theirs in this matter shall not repeat. These instances are sufficient as to my present inten- tion; for hence it is evident into what uncertainties they cast them- selves who are resolved upon an opposition unto the truth. They know not what to fix upon, nor wherewith to relieve themselves. Although they all aim at the same end, yet what one embraceth another condemns, and those that are wisest reckon up all the con- jectures they can think of together, but fix on no one as true or as deserving to be preferred before others; for error is nowhere stable or certain, but fluctuates like the isle of Delos, beyond the skill of men or devils to give it a fixation. And thus much also of their sense was necessary to be expressed, that it might appear whence
48 ORIGINAL OF THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST [EXERC. XXVII.
and from whom the Socinians and those who syneretize with them in an opposition unto these testimonies given unto the Trinity do borrow their exceptions. Little or nothing have they to offer for the supportment of their cause but what they have borrowed from those avowed enemies of our Lord Jesus Christ.
7. I shall not in this instance collect the sentiments of the Soci- nians out of several of their writers, but take up with him who was one of the first that made it his professed design to elude all the testimonies of the Scriptures which are usually pleaded in the de- fence of the doctrine of the Trinity. This is Georgius Enjedinus, whose writings, indeed, gave the first countenance unto the Anti- trinitarian cause. And I shall the rather deal with him, because his perverse discourses, which were almost worn out of the world, are lately revived by a new edition, and are become common in the hands of many. Besides, indeed, there is little or nothing material added in this cause by his followers unto his sophistical evasions and exceptions, though what he came short of in the New Testament, being prevented by death, is pursued in his method by Felbinger. The title of his book is, “ Explicationes locorum Veteris et Novi Tes- tamenti, ex quibus Trinitatis dogma stabiliri solet;” whereof this under consideration is the second. To the argument from hence for a plurality of persons in the same divine essence, he gives sundry exceptions, mostly borrowed from the Jews, invented by them out of their hatred to the Christian faith. And both sorts of these men do always think it sufficient unto their cause to give in cavilling exceptions unto the clearest evidence of any divine testimony, not regarding to give any sense of their own which they will abide by as athe true exposition of them.
He therefore first pleads: “Si ex hoc loquendi formula numerus et natura Dei venanda et colligenda est, dicimus primo, Non plus esse Trinitariis in hoc dicto ad tres Deitatis personas stabiliendas preesidii, quam gentibus et omnibus idololatris, ad sua multiplicia et numero carentia numina confirmandum. Illud enim ‘ Faciamus ad nostram,’ etc. tam potest ad decem, centum, mille, quam ad tria referri, neque quidquam est futilius et ineptius quam sic argumen- tari. Hic dicuntur esse multi; ergo sunt tres, nam possunt esse viginti, triginta, quinquaginta, ete. Ergo siquid roboris in hoe ar- gumento est, hoc tantum concludit Deos esse multos. Absit autem a nobis, certe abest a Mose ista prophanitas, ut multitudinem deo- rum, sacrarum literarum testimonio introducamus aut stabiliamus.”