FROM REASON, FROM THE SCRIPTURES, Br JOSEPH PRIESTLEY, LL. D. F. R. S. THE THIRD EDITION. BIRMINGHAM, PRINTED BY PEARSON AND ROLLASON. MDCCLXXXVII. 17880 IN ADVERTISEMENT. N writing this small piece I have two objects. One is a cheap and extenfive circulation; and the other to ferve as a guide to thofe perfons who may wish to preserve upon their minds a juft idea of the place and value of any particular argument, in a miscellaneous controverfy; and to enable them to judge how far any particular advantage in argumentation affects the merits of the question in debate. 7.44.56 Lrecial A GENERAL VIEW, &c. I. Arguments from Reason against the Trinitarian Hypothefis. T HAT the doctrine of the trinity could ever have been fuggefted by any thing in the courfe of nature (though it has been imagined by fome perfons of a peculiarly fanciful turn, and previously perfuaded of the truth of it) is not maintained by any perfons to whom my writings can be at all useful. I fhall therefore only addrefs myfelf to those who believe the doctrine on the fuppofition of its being contained in the fcriptures, at the fame time maintaining, that, though it is above, it is not properly contrary to reafon; and I hope to make it fufficiently evident, either that they do not hold the doctrine, or that the opinion of three divine perfons conftituting one God is strictly speaking an abfurdity, or contradi&tion; and that it is therefore incapable of any proof, even by miracles. With this view, I fhall recite in order all the distinct modifications of this doctrine, and shew that, upon any of them, there is either no proper unity, in the divine nature, or no proper trinity. A If, сперхаў 5713 Arguments from Reason If, with Dr. Waterland, and others who are reckoned the strictest Athanafians (though their opinions were not known in the time of Athanafius himself) it be fuppofed that there are three perfons properly equal, and that no one of them has any fort of fuperiority over the reft, they are, to all intents and purposes, three diftin&t Gods. For if each of them, feparately confidered, be poffeffed of all divine perfections, fo that nothing is wanting to complete divinity, each of them must be as properly a God as any being poffeffed of all the properties of man mult be a man; and therefore three perfons poffeffed of all the attributes of divinity must be as properly three Gads as three perfons poffeffed of all human attributes must be three men." Thefe three perfons, therefore, must be incapable of any strict or numerical unity. It must be univerfally true, that three things to which the fame definition applies can never make only one thing to which the fame definition applies. And when by the words thing, being, or perfon we mean nothing more than, logically fpeaking, the fubject, or fubfiratum of properties or attributes, it is a matter of indifference which of them we make use of. Each of thefe three perfons may have other properties, but they must be numerically three in that refpect in which the fame definition applies to them. If, therefore, the three perfons agree in this circumftance, that they are each of them perfect God, though they may differ in other refpects, and have peculiar relations to each other, and to us, they must ftill be three Gods; and to fay that they are only one God is as much a contradiction, as to say that three men, though they differ from one another 26 as much as three men can do, are not three men, but only one man. If it be faid, with the Antenicene Fathers, and with bishops Pearfon and Bull, among the modern English writers, that the Father is the fountain of deity, and that the fon is derived from him, whether neceffarily or voluntarily, whether in time or from eternity, they cannot be of the fame rank: but the father will be poffeffed of an original, a real, and proper fuperiority to the Son; who will be no more than an effect of the Father's exertion of his powers, which is to all intents and purposes, making the Son to be a production or creature of the Father; even though it fhould be fuppofed with the antients that he was created out of the fubftance of the Father, and without taking any thing from him. Moreover, as upon this fcheme the Son was never capable of giving birth to another perfon like himself, he must have been originally inferior in power to the Father, the fource from which he himself sprung. On this fcheme, therefore, there is no proper equality between thefe divine persons; and the Antenicene Fathers did not pretend that there was, but diftinguished the Father by the epithet of avlove, God of himself, and the Son by the inferior title of De en Dex, God of God, or a derived God. If it be faid that there is only one intelligent fupreme mind, but that it exerts itfelf three different ways, and has three different modes of action, or operation (which was the opinion of Dr. Wallis, and that which was generally afcribed to the ancient Sabellians) with refpect to one of which the fame divine Being was called the Father, to another the Son, and A 3 anothe |