1694. after truth; and of great assiduity in his application to whatsoever parts of learning he set himself to study.

Bred a Lu

turns Uni

He was the first and most considerable of those theran, and Unitarian writers, which have fallen under the anitarian. madversion of Dr. Bull; for he was before Sandius, and both Sandius and Mr. Gilbert Clerke have but copied in a manner after this learned Dantzicker, as also the rest have done, that have engaged on that side of the controversy. When he was between the age of thirty and forty, he set himself to examine into the pretensions of the several religions, professed by those among whom he lived: and when he was now seven and thirty years old, he wrote and printed a dissertation by way of question, Whether a Christian man were always obliged to learn and enquire? And about half a year after that, a discourse which he called, A short and true demonstration when and where the Holy Scripture ought to be properly and where figuratively explained and understood. Both these were published by him in the High Dutch, his own native language, with the Rules and Confession of zealous Christians. And when he was about forty years old, he published, in the same tongue, an historical account of the grounds of his quitting the opinion in which he had been first educated; for he had been bred a Lutheran. But upon this change of his religion, being obliged to leave his own country, he retired into Holland for security and convenience; where he became acquainted with Curcellæus, who hath been already mentioned: and there is added to his

z Bibliotheca Anti-Trinitariorum. Sandius.

famous Quaternio, a dissertation of this very Zuicker, 1694. but without his name, against Maresius, the great enemy both of Curcellæus and Blondel. The title of it is, Judicium de Johanna Papissa contra Maresium; in which he discovered a great fund of ecclesiastical learning, with that sagacity and penetration of judgment, which is required to make a critic. At or about the same time, he printed at Amsterdam his Irenicum Irenicorum, &c. or the Triple Rule of the Reconciler of modern Christians; the first of which is here established to be the universal reason of mankind, or sound sense; the second, the sacred Scriptures; and the third, catholic tradition, or testimonies of approved ecclesiastical writers. This made the greatest noise of all his writings, which were many, and drew several answers to it from learned men. It was published without a name: and the concealed author might not have been discovered, but that Sandius, who personally knew him, and was privy to the secret, resolved to make the world acquainted with this piece of news, so soon as it was safe to be done. The good Comenius, the last Bohemian bishop, was unhappily engaged in this controversy with Dr. Zuicker; whereby the cause did suffer not a little. Zuicker did unmercifully triumph over the honest old prelate, under the name of Irenico-mastix. There are no

less than three several vindications of his Irenicum, successively set forth by himself, against the attacks of Comenius, Hoornbechius, and others. So that there wanted still a solid confutation of this book,

Irenicum Irenicorum, seu Reconciliatoris Christianorum Hodiernorum norma Triplex; sana omnium hominum ratio, Scriptura Sacra, et Traditiones. Amsterd. 1658. 12mo.

1694. which had perverted many, and continued still to do mischief; the arguments of it being translated also, and new dressed up in our own tongue, that the infection of it might spread here: upon which Dr. Bull undertook this labour, and hath acquitted himself to the satisfaction of all that are capable of weighing without prejudice what he hath written. This Dr. Zuicker hath published several other books, both in Latin and in High and Low Dutch, upon variety of subjects, but chiefly in defence of the Unitarians. He died at Amsterdam in the year 1678, aged sixty-six years and ten months. Now to say somewhat of his sentiments, and particularly his Irenicum.

An account

He pretended, that the simplicity of the Gospel of someof, of Christ, according as it was believed by the anextravagant cient Nazarens, was first corrupted by Simon Magus

this doctor's

positions.

and his disciples: that the most primitive Christians, both Jewish and Gentile, believed in God the Father, as in the one only true God; and acknowledged not Jesus Christ in any other capacity, but according to his human generation only, till Platonism and Gnosticism crept into the church: that the disciples of this Simon first interpolated and changed the sound doctrine about God and Christ, which had been preached by the apostles of our Lord; and introduced another Christ, preexistent to, and distinct from him that was born of the Virgin Mary: that the eternal and divine generation of the Word was no better than a dream of the Simonians, destructive of the common notions of mankind, and of the truth of the Gospel, as built upon that man whom God hath anointed, and exalted to be a Saviour that the beginning at least of the

Gospel ascribed to St. John was never written by 1694. that apostle, but by some heretic out of the school of Simon that by the same Simonian heretics were forged certain verses under the name of Orpheus, making mention of the Voice or Word of the Father begotten by him before the world was created, and whom he consulted in the creation thereof; and that Justin Martyr, being imposed upon by these pretended Orphaic verses, as if they had verily been composed by Orpheus himself, and by him derived from Moses, had thence taken up his opinion concerning the generation of Christ from God the Father, before the foundation of the world, as the Mind, the Voice, the Reason of the Father, to the end the world might through his begotten Mind or Voice be brought forth, and that this divine offspring might descend to converse among men, and might at length become himself also a man: that besides the early perversion of the Gospel by the Simonian magic, and by the forgery of the Orphaic and Sibylline oracles, there were several other reasons that concurred to induce Justin and his followers to embrace so easily the opinion of the preexistence of Christ and his generation before all worlds; such as Justin's acquaintance with and affection for the Platonic philosophy, the memory of paganism not yet obliterated, some traces particularly in the minds of the Gentile converts, and prejudices in favour of the commonly received scheme for a plurality of gods not quite extinct; the ordinary custom of deifying great and extraordinary persons, and a sort of natural reluctance in all to the worshipping of any one who is no more than man. From all which he concluded, that the preexistence and divine generation

1694- of our Saviour was unknown to the apostles; and 1703. that it was an opinion which derived itself from Si

How Dr.
Bull was

mon Magus, but owed its growth and establishment to pagan philosophers embracing the Christian religion, and blending their philosophy with it; and therefore he laboured to expose to the utmost contempt the greatest man of his time among the heathen converts to Christianity, and one whose pen had served twice to stop the fury of two persecutions, by two famous Apologies which he wrote in behalf of the Christians; and to represent this very person who was of so great eminence among the pri mitive Christians and martyrs, and who lived in communion with the disciples of the apostles, as the principal corrupter of Christianity, and the intruder of a new Christ and a new Gospel, because he hath spoken so plainly of the preexistence and Godhead of Christ. Wherein he hath been followed by the author of the Judgment of the Fathers touching the Trinity, who hath taken out of his quiver the arrows which he hath shot against both the person and the doctrine of this blessed martyr; and by several others, who have written in defence of the ancient heretics and heresies, thereby to overthrow Dr. Bull's Defence of the Nicene Faith, and the - authority of his Ante-Nicene witnesses.

moved to write against Zuicker, and

LXX. No wonder therefore if Dr. Bull's zeal was

kindled against such writers as these, when he found, what he verily believed upon the strictest examination to be the true apostolical and catholic faith, and pied after the very pillar and foundation of the whole Gospel,

such as co

him.

b [Justin Martyr.]