Ask yourselves, therefore, what you would be at, and with what
dispositions you come to this most sacred table?
In an age of colloquial idioms, when to write in a loose slang had
become a mark of loyalty, this is the only L'Estrange vulgarism I have
met with in Leighton.
Ib. Exhortation to the Students, p. 252.
Study to acquire such a philosophy as is not barren and babbling, but
solid and true; not such a one as floats upon the surface of endless
verbal controversies, but one that enters into the nature of things;
for he spoke good sense that said, "The philosophy of the Greeks was a
mere jargon, and noise of words."
If so, then so is all philosophy: for what system is there, the elements
and outlines of which are not to be found in the Greek schools? Here
Leighton followed too incautiously the Fathers.
Works of Leighton, 4 vols. 8vo. London 1819.
Ed.
Statesman's Manual
, p. 230. 2nd edit.
Friend
, III.
3d edit.
Ed
.
Contents / Index
Notes on Sherlock's Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity1
Sect. I. p. 3.
Some new philosophers will tell you that the notion of a spirit or an
immaterial substance is a contradiction; for by substance they
understand nothing but matter, and then an immaterial substance is
immaterial matter, that is, matter and no matter, which is a
contradiction; but yet this does not prove an immaterial substance to
be a contradiction, unless they could first prove that there is no
substance but matter; and that they cannot conceive any other
substance but matter, does not prove that there is no other.
Certainly not: but if not only they, but Dr. Sherlock himself and all
mankind, are incapable of attaching any sense to the term substance, but
that of matter,—then for us it would be a contradiction, or a
groundless assertion. Thus: By 'substance' I do not mean the only notion
we can attach to the word; but a somewhat, I know not what, may, for
aught I know, not be contradictory to spirit! Why should we use the
equivocal word, 'substance' (after all but an
ens logicum
),
instead of the definite term 'self-subsistent?' We are equally conscious
of mind, and of that which we call 'body;' and the only possible
philosophical questions are these three:
-
Are they co-ordinate as agent and re-agent;
-
Or is the one subordinate to the other, as effect to cause, and which
is the cause or ground, which the effect or product;
-
Or are they co-ordinate, but not inter-dependent, that is, per
harmonium præstabilitam.
Ib. p. 4.
Now so far as we understand the nature of any being, we can certainly
tell what is contrary and contradictious to its nature; as that
accidents should subsist without their subject, &c.
That accidents should subsist (rather, exist) without a subject, may be
a contradiction, but not that they exist without this or that subject.
The words 'their subject' are
a petitio principii
.
Ib.
These and such like are the manifest absurdities and contradictions of
Transubstantiation; and we know that they are so, because we know the
nature of a body, &c.
Indeed! Were I either Romanist or Unitarian, I should desire no better
than the admission of body having an
esse
not in the
percipi
, and really subsisting,
Greek: autò tò chraema
as tne
supporter of its accidents. At all events, the Romanist, declaring the
accidents to be those ordinarily impressed on the senses
Greek: tà phaínomena kaì aísthaeta
Greek: see previous image
by bread and wine, does at the same time
declare the flesh and blood not to be the
Greek: phaínomena kaì aísthaeta
so called, but the
Greek: noúmena kaì autà tà chráemata
see previous image
.
There is therefore no contradiction in the terms, however reasonless the
doctrine may be, and however unnecessary the interpretation on which it
is pretended. I confess, had I been in Luther's place, I would not have
rested so much of my quarrel with the Papists on this point; nor can I
agree with our Arminian divines in their ridicule of Transubstantiation.
The most rational doctrine is perhaps, for some purposes, at least, the
rem credimus, modum nescimus
; next to that, the doctrine of the
Sacramentaries, that it is
signum sub rei nomine
, as when we call
a portrait of Caius, Caius. But of all the remainder, Impanation,
Consubstantiation, and the like, I confess that I should prefer the
Transubstantiation of the Pontifical doctors.
Ib. p. 6.
The proof of this comes to this one point, that we may have sufficient
evidence of the being of a thing whose nature we cannot conceive and
comprehend: he who will not own this, contradicts the sense and
experience of mankind; and he who confesses this, and yet rejects the
belief of that which he has good evidence for, merely because he
cannot conceive it, is a very absurd and senseless infidel.
Here again, though a zealous believer of the truth asserted, I must
object to the Bishop's logic. None but the weakest men have objected to
the Tri-unity merely because the
modus
is above their
comprehension: for so is the influence of thought on muscular motion; so
is life itself; so in short is every first truth of necessity; for to
comprehend a thing, is to know its antecedent and consequent. But they
affirm that it is against their reason. Besides, there seems an
equivocation in the use of 'comprehend' and 'conceive' in the same
meaning. When a man tells me, that his will can lift his arm, I conceive
his meaning; though I do not comprehend the fact, I understand
him
. But the Socinians say;—"We do not understand
you
. We
cannot attach to the word 'God,' more than three possible meanings;
either,
-
A person, or self-conscious being;
-
Or a thing;
-
Or a quality, property, or attribute.
If you take the first, then you admit the contradiction; if either of
the latter two, you have not three Persons and one God, but three
Persons having equal shares in one thing, or three with the same
attributes, that is, three Gods. Sherlock does not meet this.
Let me repeat the difficulty, if possible, more clearly. The argument of
the philosophic Unitarians, as Wissowatius, who, mistaken as they were,
are not to be confounded with their degenerate successors, the
Priestleyans and Belshamites, may be thus expressed. "By the term, God,
we can only conceive you to suppose one or other of three meanings.
-
Either you understand by it a person, in the common sense of an
intelligent or self-conscious being; —or,
-
a thing with its qualities and properties; —or,
-
certain powers and attributes, comprised under the word nature.
If we suppose the first, the contradiction is manifest, and you
yourselves admit it, and therefore forbid us so to interpret your words.
For if by God you mean Person, then three Persons and one God, would be
the same as three Persons and one Person. If we take the second as your
meaning, as an infinite thing is an absurdity, we have three finite
Gods, like Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who shared the universe between
them. If the latter, we have three Persons with the same
attributes;—and if a Person with infinite attributes be what we mean by
God, then we have either three Gods, or involve the contradiction above
mentioned. It is unphilosophic, by admission of all philosophers, they
add, to multiply causes beyond the necessity. Now if there are three
Persons of infinite and the same attributes, dismiss two, and you lose
nothing but a numerical phantom."
The answer to this must commence by a denial of the premisses
in
toto
: and this both Bull and Waterland have done most successfully.
But I very much doubt, whether Sherlock on his principles could have
evaded the Unitarian logic. In fact it is scarcely possible to acquit
him altogether of a
quasi-Tritheism
.
Sect. II. p. 13.
For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge
every Person by himself to be God and Lord;—
(That is, by especial revelation.)
So are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say, There are
three Gods, or three Lords.
That is, by the religion contained in, and given in accompaniment with,
the universal reason,
the light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world
.
Ib. p. 14.
This Creed (Athanasian) does not pretend to explain how there are
three Persons, each of which is God, and yet but One God, (of which
more hereafter,) but only asserts the thing, that thus it is, and thus
it must be if we believe a Trinity in Unity; which should make all
men, who would be thought neither Arians nor Socinians, more cautious
how they express the least dislike of the Athanasian Creed, which must
either argue, that they condemn it, before they understand it, or that
they have some secret dislike to the doctrine of the Trinity.
The dislike commonly felt is not of the doctrine of the Trinity, but of
the positive anathematic assertion of the everlasting perdition of all
and of each who doubt the same;—an assertion deduced from Scripture
only by a train of captious consequences, and equivocations. Thus, A.:
"I honour and admire Caius for his great learning." B.: "The knowledge
of the Sanscrit is an important article in Caius's learning." A.: "I
have been often in his company, and have found no reason for believing
this." B.: "O! then you deny his learning, are envious, and Caius's
enemy." A.: "God forbid! I love and admire him. I know him for a
transcendant linguist in the Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and modern European
languages;—and with or without the Sanscrit, I look up to him, and rely
on his erudition in all cases, in which I am concerned. And it is this
perfect trust, this unfeigned respect, that is the appointed criterion
of Caius's friends and disciples, and not their full acquaintance with
each and all particulars of his superiority." Thus without Christ, or in
any other power but that of Christ, and (subjectively) of faith in
Christ, no man can be saved; but does it follow, that no man can have
Christian faith who is ignorant or erroneous as to any one point of
Christian theology? Will a soul be condemned to everlasting perdition
for want of logical
acumen
in the perception of consequences?
—If he verily embrace Christ as his Redeemer, and unfeignedly feel in
himself the necessity of Redemption, he implicitly holds the Divinity of
Christ, whatever from want or defect of logic may be his notion
explicite
.
Ib. p. 18.
But the whole three Persons are co-eternal, and co-equal. And
yet this we must acknowledge to be true, if we acknowledge all three
Persons to be eternal, for in eternity there can be no afore, or
after other.
It must, however, be considered as a serious defect in a Creed, if
excluding subordination, without mentioning any particular form, it
gives no hint of any other form in which it admits it. The only
minus
admitted by the Athanasian Creed is the inferiority of
Christ's Humanity to the Divinity generally; but both Scripture and the
Nicene Creed teach a subordination of the Son to the Father, independent
of the Incarnation of the Son. Now this is not inserted, and therefore
the denial in the assertion
none is greater or less than another
,
is universal, and a plain contradiction of Christ speaking of Himself as
the co-eternal Son;
My Father is greater than I
. Speaking of
himself as the co-eternal Son, I say;—for how superfluous would it have
been, a truism how unworthy of our Lord, to have said in effect, that "a
creature is less than God!" And after all, Creeds assuredly are not to
be imposed
ad libitum
—a new Creed, or at least a new form and
choice of articles and expressions, at the pleasure of individuals. Now
where is the authority of the Athanasian Creed? In what consists its
necessity? If it be the same as the Nicene, why not be content with the
Nicene?
it differs, how dare we retain both
? If the Athanasian
does not say more or different, but only differs by omission of a
necessary article, then to impose it, is as absurd as to force a
mutilated copy on one who has already the perfect original. Lastly, it
is not enough that an abstract contains nothing which may not by a chain
of consequences be deduced from the books of the Evangelists and
Apostles, in order for it to be a Creed for the whole Christian Church.
For a Creed is or ought to be a
syllepsis
of those primary
fundamental truths that are, as it were, the starting-post, from which
the Christian must commence his progression. The full-grown Christian
needs no other Creed than the Scriptures themselves. Highly valuable is
the Nicene Creed; but it has its chief value as an historical document,
proving that the same texts in Scripture received the same
interpretation, while the Greek was a living language, as now.
Sect. III. p. 23.
If what he says is true: He that errs in a question of faith, after
having used reasonable diligence to be rightly informed, is in no
fault at all; how comes an atheist, or an infidel, a Turk, or a
Jew, to be in any fault? Does our author think that no atheist or
infidel, no unbelieving Jew or heathen, ever used reasonable diligence
to be rightly informed? * * * If you say, he confines this to such
points as have always been controverted in the churches of God, I
desire to know a reason why he thus confines it? For does not his
reason equally extend to the Christian Faith itself, as to those
points which have been controverted in Christian Churches?
And the Notary might ask in his turn: "Do you believe that the
Christians either of the Greek or of the Western Church will be damned,
according as the truth may be respecting the procession of the Holy
Ghost? or that either the Sacramentary or the Lutheran? or again, the
Consubstantiationist, or the Transubstantiationist? If not, why do you
stop here? Whence this sudden palsy in the limbs of your charity? Again,
does this eternal damnation of the individual depend on the supposed
importance of the article denied? Or on the moral state of the
individual, on the inward source of this denial? And lastly, who
authorized either you, or the pseudo-Athanasius, to interpret Catholic
faith by belief, arising out of the apparent predominance of the grounds
for, over those against, the truth of the positions asserted; much more,
by belief as a mere passive acquiescence of the understanding? Were all
damned who died during the period when
totus fere mundus factus est
Arianus
, as one of the Fathers admits? Alas! alas! how long will it
be ere Christians take the plain middle road between intolerance and
indifference, by adopting the literal sense and Scriptural import of
heresy, that is, wilful error, or belief originating in some perversion
of the will; and of heretics, (for such there are, nay, even orthodox
heretics), that is, men wilfully unconscious of their own wilfulness, in
their limpet-like adhesion to a favourite tenet?"
Ib. p. 26.
All Christians must confess, that there is no other name given under
heaven whereby men can be saved, but only the name of Christ.
Now this is a most awful question, on which depends whether Christ was
more than Socrates; for to bring God from heaven to reproclaim the Ten
Commandments, is
too too
ridiculous. Need I say I incline to
Sherlock? But yet I cannot give to faith the meaning he does, though I
give it all, and more than all, the power. But if that Name, as power,
saved the Jewish Church before they knew the Name, as name, how much
more now, if only the will be not guiltily averse? Any miracle does in
kind as truly bring God from heaven as the Incarnation, which the
Socinians wholly forget, as in other points. They receive without
scruple what they have learned without examination, and then transfer to
the first article which they do look into, all the difficulties that
belong equally to the former: as the Simonidean doubts concerning God to
the Trinity, and the like.
Ib. p. 27.
The Eclectic Neo-Platonists (Sallustius and others,) justified their
Polytheism on much the same pretext as is in fact involved in the
language of this page;
Greek: polloì mèn en dè mia theótaeti
This
indeed seems to me decisive in favour of Waterland's scheme against this
of Sherlock's;—namely, that in the latter we find no sufficient reason
why in the nature of things this intermutual consciousness might not be
possessed by thirty instead of three. It seems a strange confounding
Greek: hetéron genéôn
to answer, "True; but the latter only happens to
be the fact!"—just as if we were speaking of the number of persons in
the Privy Council.
Ib. p. 28.
Notes. By keeping this faith whole and undefiled, must
be meant that a man should believe and profess it without adding to it
or taking from it. * * * First, for adding. What if an honest plain
man, because he is a Christian and a Protestant, should think it
necessary to add this article to the Athanasian Creed;—I believe
the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be a divine,
infallible and complete rule both for faith and manners. I hope no
Protestant would think a man damned for such addition; and if so, then
this Creed of Athanasius is at least an unnecessary rule of faith.
Answer. That is to say, it is an addition to the Catholic Faith
to own the Scriptures to be the rule of faith; as if it were an
addition to the laws of England to own the original records of them in
the Tower.
This Notary manages his cause most weakly, and Sherlock
fibs
him
like a scientific pugilist. But he himself exposes weak parts, as in p.
27. The objection to the Athanasian Creed urged by better men than the
Notary, yea, by divines not less orthodox than Sherlock himself, is
this: not that this Creed adds to the Scriptures, but that it adds to
the original
Symbolum Fidei
, the
Regula
, the
Canon
,
by which, according to the greater number of the
ante
-Nicene
Fathers, the books of the New Testament were themselves tried and
determined to be Scripture. Now this
Symbolum
was to bring
together all that must be believed, even by the babes in faith, or to
what purpose was it made? Now, say they, the Nicene Creed is really
nothing more than a verbal explication of the common Creed, but the
clause in the Athanasian (
which faith
, &c.), however fairly
deduced from Scripture, is not contained in the Creed, or selection of
certain articles of Faith from the Scriptures, or not at least from
those preachings and narrations, of which the New Testament Scriptures
are the repository. Might not a Papist plead equally in support of the
Creed of Pope Pius: "The new articles are deduced from Scripture; that
is, in our opinion, and that most expressly in our Lord's several and
solemn addresses to St. Peter." So again Sherlock's answer to this
paragraph from the Notes is evasive,—for it is very possible, nay, it
is, and has been the case, that a man may believe in the facts and
doctrines contained in the New Testament, and yet not believe the Holy
Scripture to be either divine, infallible, or complete.
Sect. IV. p. 50.
We know not what the substance of an infinite mind is, nor how such
substances as have no parts or extension can touch each other, or be
thus externally united; but we know the unity of a mind or spirit
reaches as far as its self-consciousness does, for that is one spirit,
which knows and feels itself, and its own thoughts and motions, and if
we mean this by circum-incession, three persons thus intimate
to each other are numerically one.
The question still returns; have these three infinite minds, at once
self-conscious and conscious of each other's consciousness, always the
very same thoughts? If so, this mutual consciousness is unmeaning, or
derivative; and the three do not cease to be three because they are
three sames. If not, then there is Tritheism evidently.
Ib. p. 64.
St. Paul tells us, 1 Cor. ii. 10. That the Spirit searcheth all
things, yea the deep things of God. So that the Holy Spirit knows
all that is in God, even his most deep and secret counsels, which is
an argument that he is very intimate with him; but this is not all: it
is the manner of knowing, which must prove this consciousness of which
I speak: and that the Apostle adds in the next verse, that the Spirit
of God knows all that is in God, just as the spirit of a man knows all
that is in man: that is, not by external revelation or communication
of this knowledge, but by self-consciousness, by an internal
sensation, which is owing to an essential unity. For what man
knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man which is in him;
even so the things of God knoweth no man but the Spirit of God.
It would be interesting, if it were feasible, to point out the epoch at
which the text mode of arguing in polemic controversy became
predominant; I mean by single texts without any modification by the
context. I suspect that it commenced, or rather that it first became the
fashion, under the Dort or systematic theologians, and during the so
called Quinquarticular Controversy. This quotation from St. Paul is a
striking instance:—for St. Paul is speaking of the holy spirit of which
true spiritual Christians are partakers, and by which or in which those
Christians are enabled to search all things, even the deep things of
God. No person is here spoken of, but reference is made to the
philosophic principle, that can only act immediately, that is,
interpenetratively, as two globules of quicksilver, and co-adunatively.
Now, perceiving and knowing were considered as immediate acts relatively
to the objects perceived and known:—
ergo
, the
principium
sciendi
must be one (that is, homogeneous or consubstantial) with
the
principium essendi quoad objectum cognitum
. In order
therefore for a man to understand, or even to know of, God, he must have
a god-like spirit communicated to him, wherewith, as with an inward eye,
which is both eye and light, he sees the spiritual truths. Now I have no
objection to his calling this spirit a 'person,' if only the term
'person' be so understood as to permit of its being partaken of by all
spiritual creatures, as light and the power of vision are partaken of by
all seeing ones. But it is too evident that Sherlock supposes the
Father, as Father, to possess a spirit, that is, an intellective
faculty, by which he knows the Spirit, that is, the third co-equal
Person; and that this Spirit, the Person, has a spirit, that is, an
intellective faculty, by which he knows the Father; and the
Logos
in like manner relatively to both. So too, the Father has a
logos
with which he distinguishes the
Logos
;—and the
Logos
has
a
logos
, and so on: that is to say, there are three several
though not severed triune Gods, each being the same position three times
realiter positum
, as three guineas from the same mint, supposing
them to differ no more than they appear to us to differ;—but whether a
difference wholly and exclusively numerical is a conceivable notion,
except under the predicament of space and time; whether it be not absurd
to affirm it, where interspace and interval cannot be affirmed without
absurdity—this is the question; or rather it is no question.
Ib. p. 68.
Nor do we divide the substance, but unite these three Persons in one
numerical essence: for we know nothing of the unity of the mind, but
self-consciousness, as I showed before; and therefore as the
self-consciousness of every Person to itself makes them distinct
Persons, so the mutual consciousness of all three divine Persons to
each other makes them all but one infinite God: as far as
consciousness reaches, so far the unity of a spirit extends, for we
know no other unity of a mind or spirit, but consciousness.
But this contradicts the preceding paragraph, in which the Father is
self-conscious that he is the Father and not the Son, and the Son that
he is not the Father, and that the Father is not he. Now how can the
Son's being conscious that the Father is conscious that he is not the
Son, constitute a numerical unity? And wherein can such a consciousness
as that attributed to the Son differ from absolute certainty? Is not God
conscious of every thought of man;—and would Sherlock allow me to
deduce the unity of the divine consciousness with the human? Sherlock's
is doubtless a very plain and intelligible account of three Gods in the
most absolute intimacy with each other, so that they are all as one; but
by no means of three persons that are one God. I do not wonder that
Waterland and the other followers of Bull were alarmed.
Ib. p. 72.
Even among men it is only knowledge that is power. Human power, and
human knowledge, as that signifies a knowledge how to do anything, are
commensurate; whatever human skill extends to, human power can effect:
nay, every man can do what he knows how to do, if he has proper
instruments and materials to do it with.
This proves that perfect knowledge supposes perfect power: and that they
are one and the same. "If he have proper instruments:"— does not this
show that the means are supposed co-present with the knowledge, not the
same with it?
Ib.
For it is nothing but thought which moves our bodies, and all the
members of them, which are the immediate instruments of all human
force and power: excepting mechanical motions which do not depend upon
our wills, such as the motion of the heart, the circulation of the
blood, the concoction of our meat and the like. All voluntary motions
are not only directed but caused by thought: and so indeed it must be,
or there could be no motion in the world; for matter cannot move
itself, and therefore some mind must be the first mover, which makes
it very plain, that infinite truth and wisdom is infinite and almighty
power.
Even this, though not ill-conceived, is inaccurately expressed.
Ib. p. 81.
There is no contradiction that three infinite minds should be
absolutely perfect in wisdom, goodness, justice and power; for these
are perfections which may be in more than one, as three men may all
know the same things, and be equally just and good: but three such
minds cannot be absolutely perfect without being mutually conscious to
each other, as they are to themselves.
Will any man in his senses affirm, that my knowledge is increased by
saying "all" three times following? Is it not mere repetition in time?
If the Son has thoughts which the Father, as the Father, could not have
but for his interpenetration of the Son's consciousness, then I can
understand it; but then these are not three Absolutes, but three modes
of perfection constituting one Absolute; and by what right Sherlock
could call the one Father, more than the other, I cannot see.
Ib. p. 88.
And yet if we consider these three divine Persons as containing each
other in themselves, and essentially one by a mutual consciousness,
this pretended contradiction vanishes: for then the Father is the one
true God, because the Father has the Son and the Holy Spirit in
himself: and the Son may he called the one true God, because the Son
has the Father and the Holy Ghost in himself, &c.