deified garlic and onions were wiser. But what will not men assert in defence of a forlorn and baffled cause! It is not many ages since a learned man took it into his head to assert, that "worshipping "the host of heaven, sun, moon, and stars, as the "only supreme God, so as to exclude all apprehen"sions of a spiritual and invisible Godhead, was the "true and only notion of idolatry." Put now to this our author's "true and only notion of two Gods," viz. that they must be " two equally supreme Gods," and between them they prove that there was never any such thing as idolatry or polytheism in the world. Besides, if "two Gods" and "two supreme Gods" be the same thing, I am not able to see how Christ can be God at all upon our author's principles, who has been labouring twenty years to prove that the Son is not supreme God. He seems to intimate that he thinks it absurd that the Son should be "the same "God" with the Father, "with whom" he was in the beginning; "the same God" with him who made all things" by him," p. 74. This, I suppose, he looks upon as equivalent to saying, that God was with himself, &c. But this, he knows, creates no difficulty to catholics, who contend for a distinction of Persons; which doctrine of theirs is not in any great danger from such quibbles as these. The Son is not the same Person with the Father, though he must be the same God. But, continues he, "Dr. Water"land himself does not really mean that the Son is "the same God, i. e. the same individual Being, or

66

Agent, with the Father; he makes him as much a "distinct acting substance or agent as his opposers "do.”—And "his adversaries-suppose as close and "intimate an union between the Father and the Son,

"as Dr. Waterland does or can do." Why then are they his opposers and his adversaries? But how does Dr. Waterland make the Son "as much a d "tinct acting substance," &c. when he maintains that Father and Son are two "equal, united, inse "parable Persons, in one substance:" and his posers hold that they are two separate substances. divided from each other, one inferior to the other, and, in short, Creator and creature? And how do "they suppose as close and intimate an union," &c. when all the union which they allow is, that of love, concord, and power, and Dr. Waterland contends for the closest and most intimate in the world, even an unity of (what his adversaries very absurdly call metaphysical) substance? But are creature and Creator so united, or can they be? one omnipresent, the other not; one subsisting where the other is not'; one essentially infinite, and necessarily present to all things equally, the other determined and circumscribed by that portion of matter to which he is united". But this writer continues-"two "Gods, howsoever united, are as much two Gods as "if not united."-Who can resist a demonstration worked up to the evidence of an identical proposition? two Gods are two Gods. If they be two Gods, then they are two Gods; but we say that they are not two Gods for this very reason, because they are united; because they have one divine substance, one Godhead. He therefore only begs the question, instead of proving any thing against Dr. Waterland, who has often shewn that union is sufficient to make

t See Dr. Waterland's Sermons, p. 146, 147.

"See a Dissertation on Matter and Spirit; just published by John Jackson, p. 55, 56.

sameness. However, on the other hand, two divine Persons, not united, but disparate and divided, a great God and a little God, (the Arian hypothesis,) certainly make two Gods y. "This charge," he says, "his (Dr. Waterland's) adversaries are clear of." But they cannot clear themselves of it without contradicting the common sense of mankind, by maintaining that two Gods must be two supreme Gods; and then who will not be "clear of this charge?" As to the other charge of their making the Son a creature, it has been considered above: only it is pleasant to take notice of his humour in retorting the charge upon Dr. Waterland. He is in the right to bring the doctor over, if he can; his cause will thrive the better for it. But pray how does the "doctor make the Son a creature?" Why," he de"nies the Son to be unoriginated," and therefore, " if "there is no medium between the one supreme un"originated God and a creature," the doctor, who denies the Son to be the former, must make him the latter. The whole strength of this acute argument lies in the equivocalness and ambiguity of the terms2. When Dr. Waterland denies the Son to be unoriginate, he does not by that intend to deny his necessary existence, but his self-existence, that he is unbegotten or autódeos; that is, in short, the Father himself, whose peculiar and personal character this is. But to do our author's cause any service, the doctor must deny the unoriginateness of the Son in the sense of necessary existence; which he does not, but asserts equally with respect to all the three di

× Second Defence, p. 324, 394, 447.

y Defence, p. 5, 6; Second Defence, p. 29.

* See First and Second Defences under Query XIII.

vine Persons. There is no medium between necessary existence, which Dr. Waterland ascribes to the Son, and precarious existence, which he always denies of him; and therefore does not make him a creature. But there is what we may call a medium between the unoriginated self-existence of the Father and a creature, and that is the peoTevova pick povoyers, as Alexander of Alexandria expresses himself, the only-begotten Son, who is God of God. But the Arian medium is the strangest that ever was heard of, and in reality coincides with one of the extremes. But Alexander has been considered above; so have the very passages of Origen and Eusebius (here again trumped up) by Dr. Waterland'; to whom he never pretends to rejoin any thing; designing, I suppose, his pamphlet not so much for an answer to any of the doctor's writings, as for a libel upon the doctor himself. The learned are well enough acquainted with the argument drawn from Oeds and Oeds, God with the article, and God without: and, as for others, I entirely agree with him, that they cannot clearly understand the force of it. With regard to the third verse, he says he will shew, that the ancients "unanimously understood "the Word, or Christ, to be the ministerial Agent, "who, in the creation of the world, acted in sub"ordination and obedience to the sovereign will and "command of the Father, as the supreme God of the "universe." Here he makes a great show of the Fathers, which I do not think myself obliged to examine; as their sentiments in general, and many of

a

Defence, p. 68, 69, &c.; Second Defence, p. 183, &c. Compare Answer to Whitby, p. 24; Second Defence, p. 69, 109, 186, &c.

the particular passages here alleged, have been considered by the learned writer so often referred to b. A remark or two however I may offer, before I to another text.

pass

For Origen's orthodoxy, with respect to the article of Christ's divinity, Dr. Waterland, he says, "is a "voucher." But how a voucher? what for every passage which this gentleman can bring as Origen's, though in reality perhaps spurious, or corrected in his later writings? In the main he has been abundantly vindicated; but is most to be depended upon in his famous piece against Celsus. Let our author's quotation then, out of his Commentary on John, be compared with what Dr. Waterland has produced out of this later and more correct piece, and which side, pray, will have the advantaged? He next quotes Clemens Alexandrinus; " And it is "well known," he says, "that he believed the Son "to be a creature." On the contrary it is well known, that he believed the Son to be God in such a manner, as to attribute to him those very titles, which our modern Arians would appropriate to the

b How both Ante-Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers asserted and understood this matter, may be seen in Dr. Waterland's Sermons, p. 72, &c.; Defence, p. 184; Second Defence, p. 384, &c.; Mr. Alexander's Essay, p. 141, &c. And if Post-Nicenes, such as Basil, Cyril, and bishop Bull, (the three last quoted by our author,) spoke in this manner of the Son, why may not Ante-Nicenes be supposed to do the same, without designing any thing thereby in favour of the conclusion aimed at by this writer? So that all his learning here is mere impertinence.

Defence, p. 197, 258, &c.; Second Defence, p. 68, 347-352; Answer to Whitby, p. 80.

d Answer to Whitby, p. 24; Second Defence, p. 45, 69, 109, 188; Third Defence, p. 101.