PREFACE.

HAVING formerly perused the "Theological Institutes of Episcopius," and made particular remarks upon the 2d sect. 34th ch. 4 book, " On the necessity of believing in the manner in which Jesus Christ was the Son of God;" I wrote my observations for my own private use, as the outlines of an answer to the arguments by which that learned man had endeavoured to prove, that the article concerning the divine generation of the Son of God our Saviour, from God the Father before the worlds, was not held, in the primitive churches, as necessary to salvation; that those churches received into their communion such as not only denied this very article, but who believed and taught, that Christ was a mere man, and had no existence before the Blessed Virgin. This short answer I have, at the request of some friends, considerably enlarged, and added three whole chapters; in which, if I mistake not, we have clearly refuted the opinion of Episcopius from the testimonies of the primitive fathers, and from ecclesiastical history.

My reason for publishing the work is shortly this:the numerous writings of impious men, in our own country, within these few years, which have boldly defended sometimes the Arian and sometimes the Samosatenian heresy. * * In these there is an attempt to undermine and

overturn, with full force, the chief article of our faith upon which the whole system of Christianity rests; namely, That of the Son of God, born of God the Father before all worlds, very God of very God, by whom all things were made, who, for our salvation, was incarnate and made man.' The censure which the eminent Zanchius pronounced upon the writings of Socinus, David, Blandrata, and others of the same school, in his day, may not unaptly be applied to those of this age. "I have, with great disgust, read the silly ravings of our modern Arians and Photinians; and I must confess, that they have nothing of that point which is to be found in the writings of the ancient heretics. Every thing is either loathsome repetition, or fresh absurdity.t That these vain men may not gain a triumph in seducing the unwary from the truth, by their wiles, some pious and learned persons in our own country have opposed their writings, and on that account deserve the favour and approbation of all good men.

Among these have arisen some as mediators of a pacificatory genius in this controversy, who have attempted to unite things of a contrary nature, and reconcile the Catholic church with heretics, i. e. Christ and Belial.Though these men profess, with the Catholic church, to believe (I wish, sincerely) in the truth of the article, that the Son is co-essential with God, yet they dispense with its necessity, for they think it sufficient if you believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God and Saviour of mankind; it is of no importance whether you think him a man and a creature, but by grace and adoption made a God, and promoted to divine honours; or whether he is truly by nature God. They defend their opinion with the arguments which Episcopius borrowed from Socinus. They

* See Mosheim's Ecclest. History, Cent. xvi. Lect. 3, part 2nd. + Epist. Dedicat. to his book de Tribus Elohim.

make a noise, and say, that the Nicene Fathers first established the consubstantiality of the Son, and rashly denounced an anathema against those who differed from them;-that the primitive church was much more mild, and, as became the most tender of mothers, nourished those in her bosom who believed that our Saviour was only a man. This they attempt to prove from the Creed, called that of the Apostles, and from a particular passage in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho. Of such gratuitous assertions, almost every page presents a proof.But that their attempts have been in vain, the following Tract will show.

Indeed the assertion of Episcopius, upon which they so rashly build, but which is undertaken to be refuted, is of such a nature, that he who is so daring as to support it, must either be a smatterer in the writings of the primitive Fathers and ecclesiastical history, or must certainly write against his own conscience. Charity forbids me to ascribe the latter to Episcopius. Was he then ignorant of eccle_ siastical antiquity? Certainly he cannot escape the censure of having acted with great temerity, who has pronounced so confidently in a matter of such moment, and with which he is superficially acquainted. He is guilty of libelling the Doctors, Bishops, Confessors, and Martyrs of the first ages, in representing them as quite indifferent about defending the principal article of the Christian religion. Thus the matter stands. This ingenious, and, in many respects, very learned man, must either not have consulted the writings of the primitive Fathers, or openly despised them. Hear his reply to Wading, the Jesuit, who had been boasting of Fathers and Councils, and you will have his opinion in his own words :-" I will "tell you what I think, once for all. You shall never compel me to that drudgery, friend Wading. I do "not seek honour from mean undertakings; neither do

"I envy the much reading and the capacious memory of "those who spend their time and labour in wandering "up and down in the wild mazes of fathers and councils. "I do not wish to pay so dear for repentance."* To pursue the laudable study and careful reading of the fathers is, doubtless, with him a contemptible undertaking. It is to seek honour for a grovelling performance; a loss of time and labour, and a work which will end in repentance. By and by, he, in a low way, endeavours to decry the authority and judgment of the fathers, and is angry at the very name given them. At length he concludes: This is the reason why I so lightly esteem them."

My sincere wish is, that he had spared the fathers and writers of the first three centuries; had he spent more time and study upon them, he would have been more useful to the church of Christ. He would not then have defended Arianism and Socinianism, by saying that their doctrine concerning the person of our Saviour was more an error than a heresy, if they were a deviation from the primitive churches. But all these churches had unanimously condemned that doctrine as a most pernicious and deadly heresy.

This, I think, you will see sufficiently proved in the present Dissertation, which may indeed be reckoned the finishing of my defence of the Nicene Creed, published some years ago. For as in that work I have vindicated the Nicene Creed from the calumnies of heretics, and fully shown that its doctrine is consonant with the faith of the Catholic church, for the first three centuries, and no reply that I know of has been made from the adversaries of the Holy Synod; so in this work I maintain and

Resp. ad Epist. Wading.