in London. He published in the same year an an- swer to the treatise of Dr. Dodwell " On the Soul," in which that divine contends that it is not imroortid until made so by baptism. Several rejoinders follow- ed on each side. His patron. Dr. More, next procured for him the rectorship of St. James's and a chaplaincy to Queen Anne, which induced him to take his degree of D.D. In 1712 appeared his Scripture Doctrine of the Trvnitg^ a work which involved him for the remain- der of his life in a controversy, in which his principal adversary was Dr. Waterland. A full account of the controversy may be found in Van Mildert*s Life of Waterkmd (see also Wateblakd). The Lower House of Convocation, in 1714, complained to the bishops of the heterodox and dangerous teodenby of its Arian tenets, and Clarke was prevailed upon to apologize, and to declare his intuition not to write any more upon the Trinity. A circumstantial account of this proceeding is given in the Apology for Dr. Clarke^ 1714. " Clarke's views were, in reality, a reproduction of the Origenistic and High-Arian doctrine of subordina- tion, as dbtinguished from the Athanasian. His posi- tions were the following : The supreme and only God is the Father — the sole origin of all being, power, and authority. ' Concerning Uie Father, it would be the highest blasphemy to affirm that he could possibly have become man, or that he could possibly have suf- fered'in any sense, in anysupposition, in any capacity, in any circumstance, in any state, or in any nature whatever.' With the Father there has existed *from the beginning' a second divine Person, who is called his Word or Son ; who derives his being or essence, and all his attributes, frtmi the Father, not by mere necessity of nature, but by an act of the Father's optional vilL It is not certain whether the Son existed from all eternity, or only before all worlds ; neither is it cer- tain whether the Son was begotten from the same es- sence with the Father or made out of nothing. * Both are worthy of censure who, on the one hand, affirm that the Son was made out of nothing, or, on the oth- er, affirm that he is the self - existent substance.' Clarke will not be positive upon these points, because of the danger of presuming to be able to define the particular metaphysical manner of the Son's deriving his essence from the Father. With the Father a third Person has also existed, deriving his essence from him through the Son. This Person has higher titles as- cribed to him than to any angel, or other created be- ing whatsoever ; but is nowhere called God in Scrip- ture, being subordinate to the Son, both by nature and by the will of the Father. The error of Clarke orig- inated in his failure to discriminate carefully betn-een the essence and the hypostasis. Henfe, in quoting from the Scriptures and the fiithers, he refers to the essential nature phraseology that implies subcrdina- tion, and which was intended by those employing it to apply only to the hypostatical character. He even cites such high Trinitarians as Athanasius and Hilary as holding and teaching that the subordination of the Son to the Father relates to the Son's essence. The term ' nnbegotten' he also held, as did the Arians, to be a synonym with 'uncreated,' so that the term * begotten' must necessarily signify * created.' Thus, misconceiving the Nicene use of these two terms, he endeavors to prove that the Nicene Trinitarians taught that the Father alone possesses necessary existence, while the Son exists contingently. But both of these terms, as we have seen, were limited by the Council of Nice to the Person, and have no relation to the es- sence. The essence, as such, neither begets nor is begotten. They merely indicate the peculiar manner in which the first and second hypostasis participate in one and the same eternal substance or nature. In this use of the terms, consequently, * begotten' signi- fies * uncreated' as much as does * unbegotten.' The Begotten Son is as necessarily existent as the Unbe- gotten Father, because the essence is the seat and
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sonree of necessary existence, and this is possessed alike by both— in the instance of the first Person by paternity, and of the second by filiation" (Shedd, Hit- tary ofCkrigtkm Doctrine^ i, 886-888).
'* The point on which Clarke's philosophical fame chiefly rests, and to which he devoted a very consider- able portion of his life, was his controversy apon Ub- ertjf and Neoemty—9, controversy in which he stood opposed to Leibnitz and Collins, and by which he en- deavored to overturn, finally, the fatalistic conclusions of Spinozism. Throughout this contest, the victory in which was claimed on both sides, Clarke maintained most powerfully the doctrine of Free-will, and, accord- ingly, here also manifested his opposition to the phi- losophy which tends to merge the idea of self either into that of nature or of God. Of the three fhn- dunental conceptions, therefore, fh>m which all phi- losophy springs, those of finite self and the infinite held in the writings of Clarke by fiir the most promi- nent place, so that we may properly regard him as the chief representative of the idealistic tendency during the age immediately succeeding Locke, as Cudworth was during the age that immediately preceded him" (Morell, HiMtory of Modem Pkihiophf, pt. i, ch. ii, § 2).