PART THE FIRST.

Which is to show that you have not been able to take off what I had charged upon you.

The Charge was contained under two heads.

1. General fallacies, running through your whole book, entitled Disquisitiones Modestæ.

2. Particular defects, viz. misquotations, misconstructions, misrepresentations, &c.

I do not add the epithets of gross, egregious, or the like, as you are pleased to do, (Reply, p. 100.) because, if I can prove the facts, the reader may be left to judge how gross or how egregious any misconstructions, misrepresentations, &c. are: and because those and the like. epithets or decorations, are then only useful, when a writer lies under the unhappy necessity of endeavouring to make up in words what he wants of proof. But to come directly to the matter in hand, I must begin with the charge of general fallacies, which were three, and which I shall take in their order.

1. The first general fallacy charged upon you, was, your making essence and person to signify the same. One individual or numerical essence you every where interpret to a Sabellian sense; understanding by it one individual Hypostasis or real Person. In your Reply, you admit (p. 5.) that the same numerical intellectual essence is, with you, equivalent to same person: so that the fact charged upon you stands good, by your own confession.

Now then, let us see whether you have dealt fairly and justly with Bishop Bull. I observed what influence this one principle, or postulatum, of yours must have upon the state of the general question; and indeed upon your whole thread of reasoning quite through your book. For, if it appears that you have set out upon a false ground, you must of course blunder all the way, running into a perpetual ignoratio elenchi, (as the Schools call it,) that is,

See my Defence, vol. i. 283.

disputing besides the question: which, under pretence and show of confuting Bishop Bull, is really nothing else but confuting an imagination of your own. The question with Bishop Bull was, whether the Ante-Nicene Fathers believed the Son to be of an eternal, uncreated, and strictly divine substance. But with you it is, whether they believed him to be the same numerical intellectual essence (that is, as you interpret it, Person) with the Father. Thus you have changed the very state of the general question, and must of course argue all along wide of the point. So, when you come to particular authors, you still pursue the same mistake that you began with. You state the question relating to Barnabas (Disquis. Mod. p. 7.) thus; Whether he makes Father and Son one numerical essence: which is the same with you, as to ask, whether he makes them the same Person. The question is stated the same way, in respect of Hermas b, Clemens of Rome, Justin Martyrd, and others. With this kind of grave impertinence you go on confuting Bishop Bull, without so much as attacking him; while the main weight and force of your reasonings (when they really have any) falls not upon any thing which he has asserted, but upon quite another thing, which you have been pleased to invent for him. It is now time to hear what you have to say in defence of this peculiar piece of management. Your excuses for it are reducible to three heads. 1st, That you did not know what Bishop Bull meant. 2dly, That you had interpreted numerical essence as all the present orthodox do, whose cause Bishop Bull is supposed to have espoused. 3dly, That numerical essence does and must signify what you pretend, and nothing else. Though I have not taken your own words, yet, I think, I have here given your full sense; and more distinctly and clearly than you have done. I am next to examine your excuses, one by one.

1. You did not know what Bishop Bull meant, or in

b Disquisit. Modest. p. 9. VOL. II.

⚫ Ibid. p. 12.

Ibid. p. 25.

P

what sense he maintained the consubstantiality. So you pretend in your book, and repeat it in your Reply, that you are "not certain whether he" (the Bishop) "pleaded "for a numerical or specific unity of essence;" taking it for granted that every numerical Unity is such as you have described; and that there is no medium between numerical, in your sense, and specific; that is, no medium between Sabellianism and Tritheism. This indeed is the πρῶτον ψεῦδος, the prime falsehood which you set out with, and proceed upon; and which makes all your discourses on this head confused, and wide of the point. But of this more presently. As to Bishop Bull, if you had not sagacity enough to perceive what he meant, you might however easily and certainly have known, that he did not mean what you are pleased to put upon him; because he has plainly, frequently, and constantly denied numerical Unity, in the sense of personal identity. His intent was not to prove that the Fathers were Sabellians, (as your way of opposing him every where supposes,) but that they were not Arians. This you could not but know, if you know any thing: and therefore the method and way which you pitched upon, of writing against his book, was, to say the least of it, very unfair and disingenuous. You would have your readers believe that you have confuted the Bishop, when in reality, after granting you all that you have been able to prove, it is not to the purpose, is no confutation of what the Bishop has asserted, but of another proposition which the Bishop himself had disowned, as much as you can do. The charge therefore of mistaking the question stands good against you; and, what is more, wilful mistaking, since you could not be ignorant that Bishop Bull did not intend to assert numerical Unity in that sense wherein you oppose it. This is sufficient for me in defence of my charge. But for the clearer apprehension of Bishop Bull's meaning in relation to this matter, I will next cite you some of his own words.

• Modest. Disquis. p. 31, Præf.

f Reply, p. 7.

As concerning the specific Unity of Persons in the "blessed Trinity, such as is the union of supposita, or "persons, among things created, (for instance, of three "men, Peter, Paul, and John, which are separate from "one another, and do not any way depend upon each "other as to their essence,) this the Fathers of the first

66

ages never dreamed of. They acknowledged a very "different union of the divine Persons, such as there is no "pattern of, no resemblance perfectly answering to it, "whereby to illustrate it, among created beings. They "explain the matter thus: that God the Father is, as I "said, the Head and Fountain of divinity, from whom "the Son and Holy Ghost are derived, but so derived as "not to be divided from the Father's Person, but they "are in the Father, and the Father in them, by a certain "wepixwgnois, or inhabitation, so called, as I have shown.

at large. Defens. Fid. Nic. sect. iv. lib. 4. Petavius him"self contends that from this epixwpnois, inhabitation, a "numerical Unity may be inferred, Petav. lib. iv. cap. 16. "It is certainly manifest that this explication can no way "consist with the Arian hypothesis: and it is also mani"fest that Tritheism is excluded by it, and the Unity of "the Godhead made consistent with a real distinction of "Persons."

Thus far Bishop Bull, in his answer to Gilbert Clarkes. He speaks much to the same purpose also in his Defence of the Nicene Faith h. "As to numerical Unity of sub"stance of Father and Son, (which Huetius says was de"nied by Origen,) I can make it evident that Origen ac

knowledged that Unity as far as any of the earlier "Fathers, and even Athanasius himself acknowledged it: "that is, Origen believed the Father, Son, and Holy "Ghost, though really three Persons, yet to have no "divided or separate existence, (as three men have,) but "to be intimately united and conjoined one with another, "and to exist in each other, and (as I may so speak) to

Bull, Posth. Works, p. 1004.

Bull. Def. Fid. Nic. p. 130,

"pervade and permeate one another by an ineffable wegi66 xúpnos, which the Schoolmen call inhabitation: from "which inhabitation, Petavius asserts that a numerical 66 Unity must necessarily be inferred."

From this account of Bishop Bull, it is evident that he neither admitted specific Unity, nor numerical in your sense: and therefore it was very artificial of you to say that you knew not which of the two he intended, as if he must have meant one, when it is so plain that he meant neither, but utterly denied both. He did indeed assert, as you see, numerical Unity, but not in your sense, not in the Sabellian sense of personal identity.

2. The second excuse you make for your impertinent manner of opposing Bishop Bull without contradicting him is, that you interpreted numerical essence as all the present orthodox do, whose cause Bishop Bull is supposed to espouse. So you tell us in the Preface to Modest Disquisitions', that you dispute against the consubstantiality, in no other than the numerical sense, as asserted by all the orthodox. Now, supposing it were certainly true, (as it is certainly false,) that all, who at present pass for orthodox, understood numerical essence in the same sense as you oppose it in; yet would it not be fair towards Bishop Bull, to put that sense upon him which he so fully and so constantly disowns and disclaims. All that you should have done in this case, should have been to have observed, that Bishop Bull's book is nothing to the purpose of the present orthodox, who are all Sabellians, inasmuch as he has only shown that the Fathers were not Arians, has not proved that they were Sabellians. And you might have took notice on this occasion, how weak and inconsistent all the orthodox are, in receiving and applauding Bishop Bull's book, a book which has proved nothing which can serve their purpose; a book which is so far from asserting Sabellianism, that is, orthodoxy, (as it is called,) that it rather stands in di

i Whitby, Disq. Mod. p. 32. Præf. Reply, p. 4.