sons in the Godhead, the second or third is not excluded from being good by this text, any more than the first. What if the Son derives his goodness (the Father only being the original, absolute, underived good, avroayatov)? if he has it derived, he has it: and the question is not whence he has it, but whether he has it at all. Indeed it is probable enough that our Saviour only spoke ad hominem, and corrected the querist for giving him a title peculiar to God, when he apprehended him to be only a man. "You give me a title which belongs to God alone: "do you therefore think there is something in me "more than human? or that the Father dwelleth "in me? This you ought to believe, if you conceive "that title truly to belong to me; since there is but "one that is good; that is, God." Our author begins with saying, that "this text was understood by "all the ancients, as spoken of God the Father," &c. Be it so and how did they understand it of the Father? so as to exclude the Son from being good? Yes, he will say, from being the original, supreme, underived good: that is, from being the Father himself. No wonder that they should exclude the Son from being good in this sense. However, this is not making him good only in some low and inferior sense, as he seems to intimate by saying that "the attribute of goodness cannot belong to the Son "in the same high and absolute sense in which it is "ascribed to the Father," &c. For it belongs to him in the same high sense, only not in the same high underived manner: which was all the Fathers meant. I am weary of examining his ancients, he

t

Whitby on the place: see also Dr. Trapp's Doctrine of the Trinity, p. 109, 110.

racks them so cruelly, and yet, after all, can force them to say so little to his purpose. He quotes Justin Martyr, as applying it to the Father: Dr. Whitby urged this before, and Dr. Waterland replied as follows;-" You should have added, as Jus"tin does in the same place, that Christ was a "worm, and no man, the scorn of men, and the "outcast of the people: and then the reader would "have seen plainly what Justin was talking about"." This writer has not a word to rejoin. He quotes Clemens Alexandrinus; who is as express against him as any thing can possibly be, as appears by what Dr. Waterland has produced out of him: Clemens says, "the Father of all things is alone per"fect; immediately adding, For in him is the Son, " and in the Son the Father." And in another place, "he observes, that no one is good, but the Father; adding presently after, that the God of the uni"verse is one only, good, just Creator, the Son in "the Father, to whom be glory," &c. He takes no notice, is silent, replies not a syllable; but crawls on in his own way, as deaf as the adder that stoppeth her ears, and will not so much as hearken to those who would direct him better. And does he expect to be heard with attention, or answered with respect? Having thus, as he thinks, proved the Son to be inferior in goodness, he proceeds to another text, to shew that he is inferior in knowledge; viz. Matt. xxiv. 36. Here we might say, that the exclusive terms extend not to the Son, who is proved

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u Answer to Whitby, p. 58, 59.

* Second Defence, p. 66, 67. For Origen, (whom he likewise quotes,) the reader may consult Second Defence, p. 45, 111; Farther Defence, p. 101.

from other texts to be omniscient: but then he will argue from Mark xiii. 32. that the Son is excluded by name. The question then will be, in what capacity? as Son of God, or only as Son of man? Our author indeed sneers at this distinction, and calls it absurd and Cerinthian. But it is never the worse for that; with this distinction must stand or fall the Christian religion. We say then, and it has been proved, that Christ is considered here only as to his human nature; with respect to his divine, both he and the Holy Ghost (who on the other supposition would in all probability have been mentioned after the angels) know all things. His rendering odeis, no person, will stand him in no stead: he makes the terms being and person all along equivalent; and if he be in the right in so doing, there is no manner of difference by which of them

dels is translated. But the church has agreed to call those persons whom she will not allow to be called beings; and in her sense of the word person, no person is a wrong translation of odels in this place, which has no concern at all with personality, and is only intended to exclude what we call other beings, that is, persons entirely separate and divided. But the knowledge of the day of judgment, he says, was revealed to Christ" after his exaltation," &c. "The Book of the Revelation is therefore call

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ed, the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God "gave unto him, chap. i. 1. And what had been obscurely revealed to Daniel was more fully and clearly revealed to Christ, as the reward of his

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y See Dr. Waterland's Sermons, p. 268, &c.; Second Defence, p. 234, &c.; Dr. Trapp's Doctrine of the Trinity, p. 113, &c.

"sufferings and redemption of us. Rev. v. 1-9." Now if he would give us leave to make use of that absurd Cerinthian distinction, this comment might do; but otherwise there is not a word of truth in it. The truth is this; in respect of Christ's mediatorial capacity the revelation is given by God to Christ, to be communicated by Christ to the church. All things are transmitted from God the Father through Christ to man; and man through Christ ascends up to God the Father. The text therefore is not expressive of our Lord's illumination, but of the method or order of ours. "That the ancients under"stood the Son in the text to be Christ in his high"est capacity," he will prove, he says, from Irenæus and Origen. The question is, did they understand him to be ignorant in his highest capacity? Will he prove the affirmative of that from Irenæus and Origen ? No; but he will bring some stale things out of them, dissembling and concealing, as usual, what has been replied". And "to shew how low he can "descend in reason and argument," he quotes a scrap out of Dr. Waterland's First Defence, without taking the least notice of what the doctor says in his Second, in answer to the very cavil which he is here trumping up again. Dr. Waterland did allege and prove that the ancients taught, that Father and Son are equal in knowledge b; and yet, he cries, this would have been saying something; as if it was not said. He repeats a passage of Basil, and

z See Defence, p. 104, &c.; Second Defence, p. 235, &c.; and Mr. Alexander's Essay, p. 129, &c. For Irenæus, and for Origen, Defence, p. 111; Second Defence, p. 239.

a Compare Defence, p. 106; and Second Defence, p. 236, 238. b Defence, p. 109-112.

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gives a false turn to it by ill rendering; and then concludes this article with a most romantic assertion, that "the moderate Athanasians themselves "did not teach that the Son was equal to the Father "in absolute divine perfections," &c. but what he means by "moderate Athanasians,” and by " absolute "divine perfections," is hard to determine: he has very likely some evasion in one of those expressions. The next text which he considers is John xiv. 28. My Father is greater than I. A text which, he pretends, somebody "should blush to read;" but he ought to blush first for misrepresenting them, as maintaining that the Father is not, in any respect, greater than the Son: whereas they really tell him of two or three respects in which the Father is greater: greater in respect of natural order, and greater in respect of economical office; not to branch the matter here into any further particulars. That the Father is greater than Christ only as to his human natured, is an interpretation which he derides as "low and mean;" but he may please to vindicate his own, in some degree, from the same imputation. Be Christ as exalted a being as they please, yet while they make him a being different from the one true God, and even created by him, to affirm that God is greater, will be true indeed, but no great thing to say: God is infinitely greater, and

c For Basil, see Defence, p. 108; Second Defence, p. 237. d It is evident from the context, that Christ is speaking of his ascension into heaven, where as God he always is, and to which therefore he ascended only as man; and consequently this “low " and mean" interpretation may be the right one of this passage, and was understood to be so by several of the Fathers. See An Answer to Dr. Clarke and Mr. Whiston, &c. p. 56.