If there was a “tacit determination in favour” of any thing, it was not Dr. Clarke's doctrine, but his person. They call his interpretations of scripture arbitrary, his passages offensive, his assertions heretical. And he, that would infer from hence that they tacitly determined in favour of his scripture doctrine, must do it by such laws of inference, as no logic will countenance, or common sense endure.

In the mean time, the clergy may perhaps learn from hence how to shew favours and indulgence for the future, when they see what use is made of them, and what conclusions are drawn from them. There seem to be some small hopes alive in the nation, that the convocation may sometime be allowed to sit and act again. If they should, it becomes not me to suggest any thing to my superiors: but they may perhaps think it becomes their character, and is incumbent upon them to consider, that whatever lenity may be extended to the doubts or mistakes of candid and modest inquirers, yet abandoned and flagrant heresy, when it grows boisterous, and bold, and insolent, and outrageous, is not to be connived at. They may perhaps think that the doctrine of the church, which they have all most solemnly subscribed, should not be publicly affronted, and branded with the infamous and odious names of tritheism and Sabellianism; that no man should be suffered with impunity to call it a "gross, "irreligious, antichristian error;" "a fictitious doctrine," "a heathen system, an unreasonable, im“pious, antichristian hypothesis ;""an atheistical “and diabolical doctrine," and "a monstrous system "of the worst heresies mixed and confounded to

66

"gether, destructive of all science and religion, and "necessarily ending in atheism 7." They may perhaps think it an aggravation of the writer's guilt, that he himself has subscribed, and continues to enjoy the benefit of that subscription, to the doctrine of that church, which he thus reproaches: and that it is a further aggravation still, that, not content with this, he is for turning the censures of the church upon its own orthodox members, and, in effect, for unchurching the church itself". "There is "in this (I cannot but think) something so presumptuous, and infamously assuming in a man, "who is in his circumstances, and who is so deservedly, above all others, liable to every censure "that is due to the teachers of false doctrine, the "deluders of Christians, and the promoters of contention, strife, and division, as is unparalleled, and "even amazing."

66

66

66

It is no wonder, that he who has made this attempt upon "the most eminent and learned body of "the clergy," should make the like upon an eminent prelate. This is a stale device with them; the reader may see more of it in the Memoirs of Dr. Clarke's Life. Every man that they think will be an honour to their cause, they are resolved, per fas et nefas, to press him into it. This artifice was handsomely exposed, some years ago, in the Free Thinker, by Phileleutherus Lipsiensis b. It was his design too, totum orbem civitate donare, to make all the world free of his party; though one might see, by the very air of his performance, as well as

y P. 1, 39, 62, 130, 132, 133. b Remarks, part ii. p. 51.

z P. 22, 25, 62. a P. 62.

of our Country Clergyman's, that they were conscious all the world was against them.

Seni nostro fidei nihil habeo.

Dr. Waterland had argued in his Importance, &c. that they who believe Christ to be God, and honour him as such, ought not to communicate, and that guilt is contracted by communicating with those who, by what they call inferior worship, do manifestly dishonour and degrade him c. What now does our author reply to this? does he deny that Christians ought to renounce communion with such men as dishonour and degrade their God and Saviour? that he dares not. But he would persuade us that he and his party, good men! are guilty of no such practice. "How do they dishonour Christ," says he, "who honour him with every high title ascribed to "him in scripture d?" Now here I would beg leave to ask this gentleman, in the first place, how they can be said to honour Christ "with every high title "ascribed to him in scripture," whose practice notoriously it is, to take from him every high title which they possibly can, by any methods of forced and unnatural construction, however "ascribed to him in

66

scripture," and appropriate it to the person of the Father? For example, the high title of over all, God blessed, Rom. ix. 5: and that of true God, 1 John v. 20: and that of Almighty, Rev. i. 8. (not to mention several more,) they do endeavour, by false and perverse criticism, to take away from God the Son, and to appropriate to God the Father: even the bare title of God they cannot allow the

C

e Importance, &c. p. 38, 42.

d P. 9.

e The high titles ascribed to Christ in scripture may be seen in Dr. Waterland's Sermons, p. 197-233.

Son, without much qualifying and restriction. They "refuse him not the title of God, though, to be sure, "not in Dr. Waterland's sense, of his being the one "God of Christians f," &c. that is, his being one God with the Father.

Secondly, Suppose they did (as they evidently do not) give him “ every high title ascribed to him "in scripture," yet they might not be worthy to be communicated with, notwithstanding that: for what are scripture titles and scripture terms without scripture ideas? And if, at the same time that they give our Saviour any "high title ascribed to him in "scripture," they are sure to explain away its high (and indeed almost any intelligible) meaning, they are as much heretics, and as much to be refused communion, as in the former case. That this is their constant way, I appeal to any man conversant in their writings.

Thirdly, How do they honour Christ, who make him a creature? Our author is mighty angry at this charge; but, like men in passion, he only hurts himself, and proves the very charge he rails at. He is not "one of those creatures which God made by "him h." No, sir; nobody ever accused you of making a creature of him in that sense. "Are there

then other creatures besides those which were "made by the Wordi?" Upon your principles we must give a new division of being, somewhat different from the common one. Whatever is, is either God or the creatures: creatures are either such as were immediately made by God himself, or mediately, by the instrumentality of other creatures. Of

h Ibid.

i Ibid.

f P. 9.

8 P. 76.

the former sort we know but of one, viz. that Being called the Son of God; who was his inferior agent or instrument in making all other creatures, the Holy Spirit not excepted. But if we make the Son a creature, "how contradictory is it to charge" us "at the same time with making him another God?" It is contradiction enough, that's true; but look you to that. Contradiction as it is, you hold it; and therefore the inconsistency lies not in your adversary's charge, but in your own doctrine, which is actually that of a creature-god. In short, our author makes a creature of the Son with a witness; for it is his avowed principle, that he is mutable and passible in his highest capacity. He was once a God, in some low sense or other, and then he ceased to be so for a time, and then became God again in a higher sense than before. P. 73, 74. And in pages 63, 64, &c. he contends all along, that the Aóyos or Word is passible. If so, one may the less wonder at Dr. Clarke's reply to a question, asked him in a private disputation at his own house, viz. "Whether a "true God can be destroyed, or not?" To which he answered, "I know not k." Fine divinity this, to come from the mouths of Christian divines!

Quanto rectius hic?

How much better instructed were the heathens! Nos Deum, nisi sempiternum, intelligere qui possumus? says a philosopher in Tully. But our author's divine persons, like the divine persons in the

i Christian Liberty, &c. p. 129. Mr. Whiston, in lord Nottingham's Answer, p. 3. asserts the same.

* See a book entitled an Answer to Dr. Clarke, and Mr. Whiston, &c. p. 3.

De Natura Deorum, lib. i.