through the corruption of men, it too generally fails of that blessed effect, yet in its own nature it is apt and fitted to produce it, and would do so, if its most strict precepts of peace and love, and most powerful motives and arguments to enforce that excellent virtue, were duly regarded and attended to. So here the Spirit, i. e. the fruits and graces of the Spirit within us, are said to testify and witness to and with "our spirits, that we are the children of God;" because in themselves wherever they are, they are a sufficient evidence of our adoption; and if by this Spirit we are not actually assured of it, it is because our own spirits are not rightly fitted and disposed to receive that evidence. So that all true Christians, even those disconsolate ones, have in themselves "the witness of the Spirit," which St. Paul speaks of, i. e. they have that habitual grace, which is a certain argument or testimony of their being "the children of God;" but they do not at present discern it, through the weakness and indisposition of their minds, and too often of their bodies also; which indisposition the good and gracious God will some time or other, sooner or later, remove: and the same Divine Spirit, which implanted that grace in them, will in due time illuminate their understandings, to perceive and see that blessed work of God within themselves.

And now to conclude this discourse: the best advice that can be given upon the whole matter is this; Let us carefully mind our duty which the word of God hath laid before us, and then leave our comfort to our good and gracious God, who will certainly dispense it in such measure as He sees best and fittest for us. There is many a one who might have been in a much more comfortable state of mind than he is, if he had minded his comfort less and his duty more; if he had studied more the pleasing of God, than the pleasure, peace, and satisfaction of his own mind; if he had laboured more to be a true obedient child of God, than to know that he is so. Do not therefore, as the manner of some is, lie down whining and crying for comfort and assurance, in the mean while neglecting thy duty; but rise up in the name and strength of God, and set thyself in good earnest to thy duty; honestly study to know and do the will of God; take heed of defiling thy conscience with any wilful sin; call upon God for His grace by constant and daily prayer; and

in this way of well-doing commit thy soul to the goodness and mercy of God in Christ Jesus; and whilst thou dost so, be assured thou art safe, and canst never miscarry. For it is as certain that God is good and gracious, as that He is, and that therefore He will never cast off those who thus cast themselves upon Him. Remember that ordinarily an abundant comfort is the reward of a fruitful piety, and therefore endeavour to “grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ"."

In a word, persist and persevere in thy duty, and thou canst not fail of that comfort which is convenient for thee; and to be sure, what is wanting in thy joy and comfort here, shall with infinite advantage be made up hereafter, in that "fulness of joy, and those pleasures which are at God's right hand for evermore."

u 2 Pet. iii. 18.

DISCOURSE IV.

THE CONSUBSTANTIALITY AND COETERNITY OF THE SON OF GOD WITH GOD THE FATHER, ASSERTED; OR, SOME FEW ANIMADVERSIONS ON A TREATISE OF MR. GILBERT CLERKE, ENTITLED, ANTE-NICENISMUS; SO FAR AS THE SAID AUTHOR PRETENDS TO ANSWER DR. G. BULL'S DEFENCE OF THE NICENE FAITH, &c.

Animadversions on the Preface.

THE author in his Preface gives a summary, but clear, account of his opinion, and in a much better method than he has observed in the Treatise itself; where, having in the first place taken notice, "that the Trinitarians of all kinds, and of whatsoever Church, whether Protestants, or Papists, assert with great confidence, and would be thought firmly to believe, that they have all the Fathers, from the times of the Apostles and downwards, on their side, in the article of the Trinity;" hereupon subjoins, "That the Unitarians, who hold with Socinus, are the only persons that have ingenuity enough openly to profess, that the ancient writers do not wholly concur with them, and do therefore fly to the Holy Scriptures as their only refuge. And yet they justly value themselves upon it, that the Doctors of the three first centuries held the Father alone, and none else, to be that Supreme God, above Whom there is none other God, and so were of the same opinion with themselves."

Whereto I answer, that those early Doctors of the Church, as I have often noted in my former writings, did by way of distinction commonly call God the Father, as He is the Father, and the Head and Fountain of the Divinity, the "Supreme," or "Most High" God, and even the "One" God. But I have

also observed, at the same time, that these same Fathers nevertheless did constantly acknowledge the true and undoubted Divinity of the Son of God, as has been fully declared in the fourth section of my Defence of the Nicene Faith, concerning the Son's Subordination to the Father, as to His Source and Original. Where I have shewn at large, that not only the ante-Nicene Fathers, but all their successors likewise, and the very schoolmen confessed that subordination. And in the Nicene Creed itself, composed against the Arians, this same subordination is freely enough declared. For so that Confession begins, "We believe in one God the Father Almighty," &c. Yet it presently follows, "and in one Jesus Christ, born of the Father, the only-begotten, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God," &c. So that the author of Ante-Nicenismus betrays his own either ignorance or impudence, when he writes thus; "I find that Dr. Bull in his fourth section, De Subordinatione, has given me up a great part of the question." For I have given up nothing in the fourth section, but what all Catholics have always granted; nothing that may be of any advantage to the cause either of the Socinians or of the Arians. The first position of that section, on which those that follow have their dependence, is this, "That decree of this Council of Nice, wherein it is determined that the Son of God is God of God, has had the consent and approbation of the Catholic Doctors who have written, both before, and after that Council. For they have all taught with one mouth, that the Divine nature and perfections belong to the Father and the Son, not collaterally, or by way of coordination, but subordinately; as much as to say, the Son has one and the same Divine nature with the Father, but communicated by the Father; namely, so as that the Father alone has that Divine nature of Himself, or from none else, but the Son has it from the Father; whence the Father is the Fountain, Source, and Original of the Divinity that is in the Son." Let Mr. Clerke and his party once confess, that the Son has the same Divine nature in common with the Father, and we Catholics will have no farther controversy with them.

Immediately after, in his Preface, he adds, "Moreover they

have learned from Eusebius, and others, That a great number, if not the majority, of the Bishops in the two first centuries, had taught that Christ as to His Essence was but man; and throughout those ages the simple truth might be safely discovered to a people that were inquisitive after it, without the charge of that horrible guilt of blasphemies, which later writers, out of a wicked zeal, not to say cunning craftiness, have thundered against them without blushing. But that most foolish pretence of the Artemonites, I have largely confuted and exploded, in my late disputation against Daniel Zuicker, &c. whereto I refer the reader.

And again, in the same Preface, he has had the confidence to write, "That any Son of God was begotten before all ages, not to say from all eternity, is what all [the Unitarians] do with one accord deny, they do also with one accord profess continually to dispute against those primitive Divines, even before the Council of Nice, who have taken up their notions concerning the Son of God, not from the Scriptures, but from their own imaginations, and the school of Plato, and have obtruded it, thus unhappily taken up, as matter of faith to the people; forasmuch as the Church being adorned and furnished with philosophical Doctors, by their unhappy assistance, did hereupon depart from the simplicity of the faith, according to the Divine predictions. Justin Martyr valued himself upon his skill in the Platonic philosophy. And in his second Apology he pleads, that Plato had learned of Moses, that the whole frame of the universe was made and formed by the Word of God. Thus," says he, "these men put on Christ, but in such a manner, as however not to put off Plato." Let the understanding reader observe the countenance and singular impudence of the man. He is not ashamed openly to avow, that he and his companions do, and that continually, contradict, not only the present Catholic Church, but also the Divines of the first ages. He does not stick most abominably to slander those holy men, of whom even the greater part sealed the Christian faith with their blood, as though they had embraced their notion of the Son of God, not from the Scriptures, but from their own imaginations, and what they had been taught in 4 Apol. i.

e Lib. v. c. 28.