That the Father, whose honour had been sufficiently secured under the Jewish dispensation, and could not but be so under the Christian also, &c.

The Greek: homooúsion itself might have been spared, at least out of the Creeds, had not a fraudulent abuse of good words brought matters to that pass, that the Catholic Faith was in danger of being lost even under Catholic language.

The Doctor's insinuating from the 300 texts, which style the Father God absolutely, or the one God, that the Son is not strictly and essentially God, not one God with the Father, is a strained and remote inference of his own.

The simplicity of God is another mystery. * * When we come to inquire whether all extension, or all plurality, diversity, composition of substance and accident, and the like, be consistent with it, then it is we discover how confused and inadequate our ideas are. * * To this head belongs that perplexing question (beset with difficulties on all sides), whether the divine substance be extended or no.

But taking advantage of the ambiguity of the word hypostasis, sometimes used to signify substance, and sometimes person, you contrive a fallacy.

Let me desire you not to give so great a loose to your fancy in divine things: you seem to consider every thing under the notion of extension and sensible images.

And our English Unitarians * * have been still refining upon the Socinian scheme, * * and have brought it still nearer to Sabellianism.

It is obvious, at first sight, that the true Arian or Semi-Arian scheme (which you would be thought to come up to at least) can never tolerably support itself without taking in the Catholic principle of a human soul to join with the Word.

Necessary existence is an essential character, and belongs equally to Father and Son.

The words Greek: ouch hôs genómenon he construes thus: "not as eternally generated," as if he had read Greek: gennômenon, supplying Greek: aïdíôs by imagination. The sense and meaning of the word Greek: genómenon, signifying made, or created, is so fixed and certain in this author, &c.

Et nos etiam Sermoni atque Rationi, itemque Virtuti, per quæ omnia molitum Deum ediximus, propriam substantiam Spiritum inscribimus; cui et Sermo insit prænuntianti, et Ratio adsit disponenti, et Virtus perficienti. Hunc ex Deo prolatum didicimus, et prolatione generatum, et idcirco Filium Dei et Deum dictum ex unitate substantiæ.

Tertull. Apol. c. 21.

He represents Tertullian as making the Son, in his highest capacity, ignorant of the day of judgment.

Exclamans quod se Deus reliquisset, &c. Habes ipsum exclamantem in passione, Deus meus, Deus meus, ut quid me dereliquisti? Sed hæc vox carnis et animæ, id est, hominis; nec Sermonis, nec Spiritus, &c.—Tertull. Adv. Prax. c. 26. c. 30.

It seems to me that if there be not reasons of conscience obliging a good man to speak out, there are always reasons of prudence which should make a wise man hold his tongue.

Greek: Ton alaethinòn kaì óntôs ónta Theòn, tòn tou Christou patéra. —Athanas. Cont. Gent.

The just and literal rendering of the passage is this: 'The true God who in reality is such, namely, the Father of Christ.'

Greek: Ouch ho poiaetàes tôn hólôn éstai Theòs ho tô Môsei eipôn autòn einai Theòn Abraàm, kaì Theòn Isaàk, kaì Theòn Iakôb.—Justin Mart. Dial. p. 180.

The meaning is, that that divine Person, who called himself God, and was God, was not the Person of the Father, whose ordinary character is that of maker of all things, but another divine Person, namely, God the Son. * * It was Justin's business to shew that there was a divine Person, one who was God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and was not the Father; and therefore there were two divine Persons.

Greek: Taeroito d' àn, hôs ho emòs lógos, ehis mèn Theòs, eis hèn aítion kaì Ghiou kaì Pneúmatos anapheroménôn. k.t.l.—Greg. Naz. Orat. 29.

We may, as I conceive, preserve (the doctrine of) one God, by referring both the Son and Holy Ghost to one cause, &c.

It is the property of the Divine Being to be unsearchable; and if he were not so, he would not be divine. Must we therefore reject the most certain truths concerning the Deity, only because they are incomprehensible, &c.?

The delivering over unto Satan seems to have been a form of excommunication, declaring the person reduced to the state of a heathen; and in the Apostolical age it was accompanied with supernatural or miraculous effects upon the bodies of the persons so delivered.

'A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject; knowing that he that is such, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself'.—Tit. iii. 10, 11.

Not every one that mistakes in judgment, though in matters of great importance, in points fundamental, but he that openly espouses such fundamental error. * * Dr. Whitby adds to the definition, the espousing it out of disgust, pride, envy, or some worldly principle, and against his conscience.

—as soon as the miraculous gifts, or gift of discerning spirits, ceased.

And what if, after all, spiritual censures (for of such only I am speaking,) should happen to fall upon such a person, he may be in some measure hurt in his reputation by it, and that is all. And possibly hereupon his errors, before invincible through ignorance, may be removed by wholesome instruction and admonition, and so he is befriended in it, &c.

—who are hereby forbidden to receive such heretics into their houses, or to pay them so much as common civilities. This precept of the Apostle may he further illustrated by his own practice, recorded by Irenaeus, who had the information at second-hand from Polycarp, a disciple of St. John's, that St. John, once meeting with Cerinthus at the bath, retired instantly without bathing, for fear lest the bath should fall by reason of Cerinthus being there, the enemy to truth.

They corrupted the faith of Christ, and in effect subverted the Gospel. That was enough to render them detestable in the eyes of all men who sincerely loved and valued sound faith.

—the doctrine of the Nicolaitans.

For if he who shall break one of the least moral commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven, (Mat. v. 19,) it must be a very dangerous experiment, &c.

Accordingly it may be observed, how the unbelievers caress and compliment those complying gentlemen who meet them half way, while they are perpetually inveighing against the stiff divines, as they call them, whom they can make no advantage of.