"the Father, but hath it communicated from the 1685. "Father, so as the Father alone hath that divine " nature from himself, or from no other besides, but "the Son from the Father; and consequently, that "the Father is the fountain, original, and principle " of the divinity, which is in the Son. 2. The "catholic writers, both they that were before, and "they that were after the council of Nice, have " unanimously declared God the Father to be greater "than the Son; even according to his divinity: yet " this not by nature indeed, or by any essential per"fection which is in the Father, and is wanting in "the Son; but only by fatherhood, or his being the " author and original; forasmuch as the Son is from "the Father, not the Father from the Son. 3. The "doctrine of the subordination of the Son to the "Father, as to his origination and principiation, "the ancients thought to be most useful, and even

altogether necessary to be known and believed, that " by this means the Godhead of the Son might be " so asserted, as that the unity of God, nevertheless, " and the divine monarchy might still be preserved " inviolate. Forasmuch as notwithstanding the name " and nature are common to two, that is, to the Fa"ther and to the Son, yet because one is the princi"ple of the other, from whom he is propagated, and " that by internal not external production; it thence " followeth, that God may rightly be said to be but "one God. And the same ancients believed more

66

over, that the very same reason did hold likewise " as to the Godhead of the Holy Ghost." This is the sum of his doctrine, concerning the divine mo

1685. narchy and subordination in the blessed Trinity, so as not to lessen either the consubstantiality or coeternity of the Son and Spirit with the Father. For though he maintained that there are in the Deity three really distinct hypostases or persons, he no less strenuously insisteth, that there is and can be but one God; first, because there is but one fountain or principle of the Godhead, viz. The FATHER, who

The doc

trine of the

only is [Αὐτόθεος] God of and from himself, the council of SON and HOLY GHOST deriving from him their Nice vindi- divinity: and then because the Son and HOLY GHOST are so derived from the fountain of the divimodern Au-nity, as not to be separate or separable from it, but totheans. always to exist therein most intimately united.

cated by Mr. Bull against the

Under each of these three last theses there are some considerable observations made by our author, from the catholic doctors of the church, both before and after the rise of Arianism; without a thorough understanding of which, it will be impossible ever to settle this matter to satisfaction. In treating the first of them, he hath learnedly and solidly confuted the unreasonable and uncatholic notion of the moderns, which maketh the Son a self-dependent principle of divinity, (and by consequence another God,) by asserting and defending, that he might properly be called Αὐτόθεος, as well as the Father is, and that he is truly God of himself, and not God of God, as the Nicene Fathers confess him. This opinion was first of all started by Calvin, against the judgment of the catholic church to this very day, and even of the first reformers, Luther and Melancthon, as Petavius and our author have sufficiently shewn. It was

afterwards dressed up and vindicated by m Danæus, 1685. and after him by several others of the Calvinistical school; whose main argument was this, that Christ must have been God of himself, or else he could not be God at all; because the notion of God supposeth self-existence. This opinion was very much opposed about the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century by Arminius, in an epistolary dissertation on this subject to one Vytenbogard, in his declaration made before the States of Holland, in his Apology against the one and thirty Articles, and lastly, in a letter to the prince Palatine's envoyée to the States General. But the prejudices which many entertained against him were so violent, as none of his arguments could get to be heard by them, who were so bigotted to their master, and to his private opinions, as not to be able to bear any thing which might grate but never so little upon the esteem they had for him, and for theses, which were looked upon by them as so many evangelical discoveries. This seems to be the true state of the matter; whence this controversy was still kept up by some of the more zealous antiremonstrants, notwithstanding the great weight of evidence brought for the old catholic doctrine against them in this article.

Some went so far as even to ridicule the Nicene creed upon this account, and to call the Fathers who composed it a parcel of "fanatics, for styling therein Christ, God of God, Light of light, &c. And some ran also hence into Sabellian explications of this

1685. mystery, even to the taking away of all distinction of hypostases in the Godhead, as by our author hath been well observed : Bellarmin and Petavius have been too severe however upon Calvin for this mistake; but P Possevin still more so, by whom it is named the Heresy of the Autotheans; and the founder of it, the new Tritheist. But there is none, after all, to be compared with a certain 9 Austrian Jesuit, the author of a book called Symbola tria, who hath been at the pains to collect several passages out of Calvin's Institutions, and his Explication of the perfidiousness of Valentinus Gentilis, that he might compare them with some passages of the Alcoran, asserting God to be a Being of himself necessarily existing, to whom it is impossible to receive or borrow his essence from another; and thence most uncharitably concludeth, that Mahomet and Calvin must both have had the same wicked design. Episcopius and Curcellæus have been much more modest and candid in animadverting on this novel opinion, and establishing the communicability of the divine nature and essence from the Father to the Son, ac

cording to the faith of the catholic church.

His candid And even the zeal of Mr. Bull hath not here hin

treatment of dered him from treating with esteem the author of

Calvin on this account.

so dangerous an opinion, while at the same time he is confuting it, for the sake of some laudable qualifications which he discerned in him, and was endeavouring to excuse him as well as the matter could bear, against the insults of the most learned writer

P Lib. de Sectariorum Atheismis cap. vi. p. 13. edit. Colon. 1586. a Syınbola tria CATHOLICUM, CALVINIANUM, LUTHERANUM omnia ipsis eorum verbis expressa. Quirinus Cnoglerus Austrius recensuit et notis illustravit, Colon. 1622.

of his whole order, so famous for learning. This de- 1685. serveth the more to be taken notice of, because some of the expressions of that author are so very harsh, with respect to the present point, and did seem to border so nearly upon what his enemies have accused him of, as made Mr. Bull's ears almost to tingle, and caused him to break out after this manner; Horresco hæc referens, &c. that is, " " While I am telling "these things, I have an horror upon me; and "therefore I most seriously exhort the pious and " studious youth, that they take heed of that spirit " from which such effects as these have proceeded. "We owe much indeed to that great man, for his " excellent service in purging the church of Christ " from popish superstition. But far be it from us " that we should receive him for our master, or that " we should swear to his words; or lastly, that we " should be afraid freely to remark, as there shall be " cause for so doing, his manifest errors, and his new " and singular determinations, against the catholic " consent of antiquity." In which words our author hath so fully and clearly expressed his true sense, and a generous liberty of mind, and given withal such a prudent caution and advice to all young students in divinity, as nothing farther need, I suppose, be added to clear him from an imputation, which some have injuriously cast upon him, of having infamously broken the cartel of honour and civility, by his treatment of them of the opposite side.

LVIII. In his handling the second thesis, Mr. Bull He defends hath shewn, that he had examined the holy Fathers of nature.