The shield single against the sword doubled. To defend the righteous against the wicked. Whereby are waved those cuts and blows, which Mr Erbury deals to the righteous; and wherein also is shewed, that his now-new-light is no-light, but blackness of darkness. By Henry Niccols, minister of the word in South-Wales.

Answer.

Out of the dunghil of the Greek Church errours, hath this position been raised, who maintain the procession of the Ho∣ly Spirit from the Father alone, and hence arose the Schism betwixt the Eastern and Western Churches: To deny the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son is a grievous errour in Divinity, and would have grated the foundation, if the Greek Church had so denied the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son, as that they had made an inequality between the Persons; yet there are learned men that think the sense of the Greek Church was not so gross, as is imagined, and that A Filio, & per Filium, from the Son, and through the Son, is no real d••ff••rence, but a question in modo loquendi; they held that the Holy Ghost was not a Patre, & Filio, but a Patre, per Filium: However the Modern Socinians deny the Holy Ghost to be God, and a distinct Person from the Father. Socinus calls the Trinity Deum tripersonatum, ridiculum hu∣manae curiositatis inventum, Infaustus Socious omnium Haere∣ticorum audocissimus, saith Rivet. The Socinians this day deny the Godhead of Christ, and say, that all Grace in Christ, whe∣ther his active, or passive righteousness, was only to qualifie his Person, and to merit his own glorification, without any reference to us, unless as an Exemplar, or Pattern; yet Master Erbury calls them religious, and most learned men, pag. 35.

But when I think on the word of Christ, that there must be offences, Mat. 18.7. and on that of the Apostle, that there must be haeresies, I wonder the less at all this, and conclude, that as formerly, so now, the ground and original of this killing sin, haeresie, is a loftiness, and pride of Spirit, whereby we reject, what we cannot comprehend, and resolve to believe nothing that shall not be agreeable to our own judgments. This made insolent Spirits heretofore, and now also, to put their own glosses upon those more abstruse articles of our faith, which ought simply to be entertained, because God delivers them, and not accommodated by our own interpretations to the proportion of our shallow understandings: We are not to be∣lieve mens words, untill we understand them, but we are to believe the word of God, that we may afterward understand it: Paul tells the Ephesians, That after they believed, they were sealed with the Holy Spirit of Promise: And he that hath received his testimony, hath set to his Seal that God is true: This foolishness of believing, the worldly wise person derides, and disdains that to be the object of his faith, that is not first the object of his comprehension. What was the reason that Arrius said, that Christ was but a creature? but because he could not comprehend, that the Father begetting, and the Son begotten could be coeternal? Why did Sabellins say, That the Names Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, did not signifie three distinct Persons, but several appellations of one and the same person, betokening divers relations to the creature? but be∣cause he could not comprehend, how one, and the same in∣divisible nature, could subsist three several wayes; in the Fa∣ther begetting, in the Son begotten, in the Holy Ghost pro∣ceeding from the Father, and the Son: These, and the like Expositions of Gods unfathomable truths, are nothing, but the resolving of all that God hath revealed into our own ra∣tional conceits, unto which we are so wedded, that if any thing that God shall speak, doth exceed them, we wrest, and draw his straight rule unto our obliquity; setting truth on ten∣ter-hooks to reach our fancies: The mystery of the Trinity is necessarily to be believed of all that sh••ll be saved, but the perfect and full discovery of it is not attainable in this life: One saith well, Our quickest sight in the matters of the Trini∣ty, is but one degree above blindness.

Notes

• See Fuller, Hol. War.
• See Doctour Cheynels rise of Socinianism, c. 3.
• They also say, that the soul separated from the body, is either nothing, or at least, not capable of happiness, or misery.
• 1 Cor. 11.19.
• The Original and Seed of all heresies, and errours, are in mans heart na∣turally, with∣out a teacher, and therefore we should di∣strust our own knowledg, to lead us in the ma ters of God, and Re¦ligion, and on∣ly be directed by Gods holy word. Usher.
• Ephes. 1.13.
• John 3.33.
• Fuller.