FIVE LETTERS

TO

MR. STAUNTON.

SIR,

LETTER I.

ABOUT eight weeks ago, I had the favour of a letter from you, together with some papers relating to the subject of the Trinity. I have had no time since, more than to give them a cursory reading. But my month of waiting being September, when, probably, the Prince or young Princesses might be, as usual, at Hampton Court; I thought I might then take an opportunity of waiting upon you, and discoursing with you, before I enter into any epistolary correspondence. I am yet uncertain where the court will be in September. If you can inform yourself where the king's chaplains must wait the next month, I shall be obliged to you for acquainting me with it.

My hands, you must be sensible, are pretty full at present, in maintaining the Catholic cause (allow me so to call it) against the Arians; who seem to be now the most prevailing sect of the Anti-Trinitarians, Socinianism being almost grown obsolete amongst us. Your scheme seems to me to be Socinian in the main; only taking in the preexistence of Christ's human soul, excluding him from worship, and interpreting some texts in the Sabellian way, and not after Socinus. I know not whether my leisure will permit me to examine all the grounds upon which you go, and to give a particular answer to every difficulty you have to urge. But if, upon discoursing with you, the controversy, so far as concerns you, may be shortened, and reduced to two or three points which are most material; I may perhaps

find time hereafter to give you my thoughts upon them in writing. You will consider, in the meanwhile, that you are as much concerned to answer, I mean to yourself, the reasons which I have given for my persuasion, as to require answers to those reasons, which seem to you to favour your principles. The reasons, for instance, which I have given against the Sabellian construction of the first chapter of St. John, are of equal force against yours. And my arguments to prove Christ to be properly Creator, (not to mention several others to prove his Divinity, drawn from his titles, and attributes, and from the form of baptism,) directly strike at your hypothesis, as much as at the Arian. There are many great objections, as you see, lying against your principles; and there are some, not contemptible, against mine also. Weigh both equally, and balance them one against another: this will be the true method to form a right judgment. I believe you to be as sincere and impartial in your inquiries as most men are; making allowance for such prejudices as are often apt to steal upon any of us, without our perceiving it. I wonder a little how one that talks so well about suspending assent where there is not sufficient evidence, can prevail with himself to think that there is any prescription for your scheme of 500 years before the commencement of my scheme. The proof of this fact can never be made good. The contrary is plain and evident. I am in hopes that I have mistook your meaning: if I have, I ask your pardon. I shall add nothing more at present, but my thanks to you for your very civil manner of writing to me; assuring you, that so far as my leisure, abilities, or opportunities permit, I shall be ever ready to give you the best satisfaction I can in any thing relating to this controversy; being,

I CAN now acquaint you, that I shall not be in waiting at Kensington before the 16th of September. I intended to be

there at the beginning of the month; but my wife being ill, I have wrote to my brother chaplains to take care of the first fortnight and they will be so kind as to do it. I shall be very glad to see you at Kensington any time after the 16th. There are lodgings provided for the chaplains, as I well know, having so found it the last year. The lodgings are in or near the square: which is all that I remember of them.

I thank you for the favour of your last, and again ask your pardon for mistaking your meaning. I shall think my time there very agreeably and usefully spent in friendly debates upon so important a subject. Not that I think either of us shall be able thoroughly to discuss the main question, in a verbal conference, and without books at hand. But we may settle some preliminaries; may throw out several things as agreed on between both; and so prepare the way for a short and clear examination of the matter in debate, to be done afterwards by way of letter. In the interim, I am, with very true and sincere respect,

I HAVE had the favour of two letters from you, and am not unmindful of the promise I made to enter into an epistolary correspondence with you, as far as my leisure may permit, and provided the dispute may be brought into a narrow compass. I might reasonably decline all private conference, having sufficiently done my part in this controversy, till some or other shall undertake, in the same public way, to confute what I have publicly asserted. Yet since you have been pleased to apply yourself to me, with much civility, and with an air of strict sincerity, entreating me not to think it too great a task, though in respect of a single soul, to take particular notice of what you have publicly and privately advanced upon the subject; I shall

not scruple to comply with your desires, so far as may be sufficient to answer the end intended.

The points which, after our conference at Kensington, I promised to go upon, were these: 1. The interpretation of the first of St. John. 2. The question whether Christ be Creator. The point of worship. Under these three is contained all that is material; and upon these the main of the controversy turns. I must insist upon it with you, as a preliminary article, that you confine yourself, for the present at least, within these bounds; avoiding all wanderings and unnecessary diversions, attending to one point only at a time, and contentedly suffering it to be distinctly and fully debated, before we proceed to any new one. You are first to be upon the defensive, and to bear the part of a respondent. You shall have your turn to object afterwards (if we continue our correspondence) what you please to my scheme; but, for the present, you are only to defend your

own.

These things premised, I shall now begin with your interpretation of St. John. You construe the words eòs v ó Aóyos, God was reason or wisdom. To which I object as follows:

1. The article ó before Aóyos, and the want of the article o before eòs, make one presumption against your interpretation. Please to observe St. John's manner of expressing himself elsewhere, ó còs aɣáñŋ éσtìv, “God is love," twice, 1 John iv. 8, 16. ¿ Oeòs pôs ¿σti, "God is light,” 1 John i. 5. Now these are just such propositions as that of yours, God was wisdom: wherefore had St. John intended it, he would have expressed it thus; o Oeds Aóyos v. This observation is of weight, not only because Θεὸς Λόγος ἦν. of St. John's manner of expressing himself, but also because the Greek idiom requires it. See Erasmus's comment upon the place, who was a good judge in such matters.

2. Another objection against your interpretation is this, that the Aóyos is the principal subject, the theme which the Apostle took to discourse on. He is there shewing what the Aóyos was, not what God the Father was. The Aóyos was in the beginning, the Aóyos was with God, the world was made by the same Aóyos, and so on. The whole first fourteen verses are, in a manner, little else but a description of the several powers and attributes of the Aóyos. Wherefore it is more natural and consonant to understand that the Apostle intended to tell us that the Aóyos was God, than vice versa: since the Apostle was recounting the

attributes of the Aóyos, his principal theme, not the attributes of God the Father.

3. I must not forget to add, that all antiquity has construed the words as we do. Now, whether you consider the ancients as the properest judges of the idiom of the language in or near their own times; or whether you consider them as faithful conveyers of the Apostle's meaning, (some having been his immediate disciples, as Ignatius; others having conversed with those that had been,) either way, the verdict of the ancients, especially in so noted and so important a passage of Scripture, ought to be of great weight, and indeed decisive; unless there appeared (as there does none) some plain reason or necessity, in text or context, for another construction. You seem indeed to lay some stress upon this consideration, that, in our way, we construe the words backwards. But this is slight. Would you call it construing backwards, if we rendered the first sentence, (èv àpxî îv ó Aóyos,) “ The Word was in the beginning?" It is not construing backwards, to render Tveûμа & eòs, “God is spirit:" John iv. 24. or to render μáprus yáp μov èorìv ó Œeòs, "God is my witness:" Rom. i. 9. Multitude of like examples may be given, where the different idioms of languages require that the sense should run under a different order of the words.

66

Your other observation, borrowed from Bishop Pearson, that the Evangelist makes "the last word of the former sentence the "first of that which follows," appears to be of very little moment. By this rule, the second verse should have begun with & Aóyos instead of oûtos. Or if you answer this by saying, that still ouros refers to the last word preceding, then by the same rule di avтoû, in the third verse, should refer to ròv eòv preceding. But enough of fancies: let us rather attend to dry criticism and strict reasoning.

I proceed to your construction of di avтoû, by it, or according to it, as in or by an exemplar. It is sufficient here to observe, that this construction is ungrammatical. The preposition dià cannot bear any such sense. The English particle by is indeed sometimes so used, but I want some example of any such use of the Greek diá. Give me one, at least, out of Scripture or I shall be content if you can produce me any either in sacred or profane writer.

Mr. Norris's speculations upon this head I am well acquainted with. They may pass for pretty fancies, and that is all. Allow