J. D. Our God is immutable without any shadow of turning by change, to whom all things are present, nothing past, nothing to come. But T. H. his God is measured by time, losing something that is past, and acquiring something that doth come every minute. That is as much as to say, that our God is infinite, and his God is finite; for unto that which is actually infinite, nothing can be added, neither time nor parts. Hear himself: Nor do I understand what derogation it can be to the Divine perfection, to attribute to it potentiality, that is in English, power (so little doth he understand what potentiality is) and successive duration. And he chargeth it upon us as a fault, that we will not have eternity to be an endless succession of time. How, successive duration, and an endless succession of time in God? Then God is not infinite, then God is older to-day than he was yesterday. Away with blasphemies! Before, he destroyed the ubiquity of God, and now he destroyeth his eternity.
T. H. I shall omit both here and henceforth his preambulatory, impertinent, and uncivil calumnies. The thing he pretends to prove is this. That it is a derogation to the Divine power to attribute to it potentiality (that is in English power) and successive duration. One of his reasons is, God is infinite, and nothing can be added to infinite, neither of time nor of parts: it is true. And therefore I said, God is infinite and eternal, without beginning or end, either of time or place; which he has not here confuted, but confirmed. He denies potentiality and power to be all one, and says I little understand what potentiality is. He ought therefore in this place to have defined what potentiality is: for I understand it to be the same with potentia, which is in English power. There is no such word as potentiality in the Scriptures, nor in any author of the Latin tongue. It is found only in School-divinity, as a word of art, or rather as a word of craft, to amaze and puzzle the laity. And therefore I no sooner read than interpreted it. In the next place he says, as wondering: How, an endless succession of time in God! Why not? God’s mercy endureth for ever, and surely God endureth as long as his mercy; therefore there is duration in God, and consequently endless succession of time. God who in sundry times and divers manners spake in time past, &c. But in a former dispute with me about free-will, he hath defined eternity to be nunc stans, that is an ever standing now, or everlasting instant. This he thinks himself bound in honour to defend. What reasonable soul can digest this? We read in Scripture, that a thousand years with God, is but as yesterday. And why? but because he sees as clearly to the end of a thousand years, as to the end of a day. But his Lordship affirms, that both a thousand years and a day are but one instant, the same standing now, or eternity. If he had showed an holy text for this doctrine, or any text of the book of Common Prayer (in the Scripture and book of Common Prayer is contained all our religion), I had yielded to him; but School-divinity I value little or nothing at all. Though in this he contradict also the School-men, who say the soul is eternal only a parte post, but God is eternal both a parte post, and a parte ante. Thus there are parts in eternity; and eternity being, as his Lordship says, the Divine substance, the Divine substance has parts, and nunc stans has parts. Is not this darkness? I take it to be the kingdom of darkness, and the teachers of it (especially of this doctrine, that God, who is not only optimus, but also maximus, is no greater than to be wholly contained in the least atom of earth, or other body, and that his whole duration is but an instant of time) to be either grossly ignorant or ungodly deceivers.
J. D. Our God is a perfect, pure, simple, indivisible, infinite essence; free from all composition of matter and form, of substance and accidents. All matter is finite, and he who acteth by his infinite essence, needeth neither organs nor faculties (id est, no power, note that), nor accidents, to render him more complete. But T. H. his God is a divisible God, a compounded God, that hath matter, or qualities, or accidents. Hear himself. I argue thus: The Divine substance is indivisible; but eternity is the Divine substance. The major is evident, because God is actus simplicissimus; the minor is confessed by all men, that whatsoever is attributed to God, is God. Now listen to his answer: The major is so far from being evident, that actus simplicissimus signifieth nothing. The minor is said by some men, thought by no man; whatsoever is thought is understood. The major was this, the Divine substance is indivisible. Is this far from being evident? Either it is indivisible, or divisible. If it be not indivisible, then it is divisible, then it is materiate, then it is corporeal, then it hath parts, then it is finite by his own confession. Habere partes, aut esse totum aliquid, sunt attributa finitorum. Upon this silly conceit he chargeth me for saying, that God is not just, but justice itself; not eternal, but eternity itself; which he calleth unseemly words to be said of God. And he thinketh he doth me a great courtesy in not adding blasphemous and atheistical. But his bolts are so soon shot, and his reasons are such vain imaginations, and such drowsy phantasies, that no sober man doth much regard them. Thus he hath already destroyed the ubiquity, the eternity, and the simplicity of God. I wish he had considered better with himself, before he had desperately cast himself upon these rocks.
But paulo majora canamus. My next charge is, that he destroys the very being of God, and leaves nothing in his place, but an empty name. For by taking away all incorporeal substances, he taketh away God himself. The very name, saith he, of an incorporeal substance, is a contradiction. And to say that an angel or spirit, is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect, that there is no angel or spirit at all. By the same reason to say, that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say there is no God at all. Either God is incorporeal; or he is finite, and consists of parts, and consequently is no God. This, that there is no incorporeal spirit, is that main root of atheism, from which so many lesser branches are daily sprouting up.
T. H. God is indeed a perfect, pure, simple, infinite substance; and his name incommunicable, that is to say, not divisible into this and that individual God, in such manner as the name of man is divisible into Peter and John. And therefore God is individual; which word amongst the Greeks is expressed by the word indivisible. Certain heretics in the primitive church, because special and individual are called particulars, maintained that Christ was a particular God, differing in number from God the Father. And this was the doctrine that was condemned for heresy in the first council of Nice, by these words, God hath no parts. And yet many of the Latin fathers, in their explications of the Nicene creed, have expounded the word consubstantial, by the community of nature, which different species have in their genus, and different individuals in the species; as if Peter and John were consubstantial, because they agree in one human nature; which is contrary, I confess, to the meaning of the Nice fathers. But that in a substance infinitely great, it should be impossible to consider any thing as not infinite, I do not see it there condemned. For certainly he that thinks God is in every part of the church, does not exclude him out of the churchyard. And is not this a considering of him by parts? For dividing a thing which we cannot reach nor separate one part thereof from another, is nothing else but considering of the same by parts. So much concerning indivisibility from natural reason; for I will wade no further, but rely upon the Scriptures. God is nowhere said in the Scriptures to be indivisible, unless his Lordship meant division to consist only in separation of parts, which I think he did not. St. Paul indeed saith (1 Cor. i. 13): Is Christ divided? Not that the followers of Paul, Apollos, and Cephas, followed some one part, some another of Christ; but that thinking differently of his nature, they made as it were different kinds of him. Secondly, his Lordship expounds simplicity, by not being compounded of matter and form, or of substance and accidents, unlearnedly. For nothing can be so compounded. The matter of a chair is wood; the form is the figure it hath, apt for the intended use. Does his Lordship think the chair compounded of the wood and the figure? A man is rational: does it therefore follow that reason is a part of the man? It was Aristotle deceived him, who told him that a rational living creature, is the definition of a man, and that the definition of a man was his essence; and therefore the Bishop and other Schoolmen, from this that the word rational is a part of these words, man is a rational living creature, concluded that the essence of man was a part of the man, and a rational man the same thing with a rational soul. I should wonder how any man, much more a doctor of divinity, should be so grossly deceived, but that I know naturally the generality of men speak the words of their masters by rote, without having any ideas of the things, which the words signify. Lastly, he calls God an essence. If he mean by essence the same with ens, τὸ ὄν, I approve it. Otherwise, what is essence? There is no such word in the Old Testament. The Hebrew language, which has no word answerable to the copulative est, will not bear it. The New Testament hath οὐσία, but never for essence, nor for substance, but only for riches. I come now to his argument in mood and figure, which is this, the Divine substance is indivisible. That is the major. Eternity is the Divine substance. That is the minor. Ergo, the Divine substance is indivisible. The major, he says, is evident, because God is actus simplicissimus. The minor is confessed, he thinks, by all men, because whatsoever is attributed to God, is God. To this I answered, that the major was so far from being evident, that actus simplicissimus signifieth nothing, and that the minor was understood by no man. First, what is actus in the major? Does any man understand actus for a substance, that is, for a thing subsisting by itself? Is not actus, in English, either an act or an action, or nothing? Or is any of these substance? If it be evident, why did he not explain actus by a definition? And as to the minor, though all men in the world understand that the Eternal is God, yet no man can understand that the eternity is God. Perhaps he and the Schoolmen mean by actus, the same that they do by essentia. What is the essence of a man, but his humanity; or of God, but his Deity; of great, but greatness; and so of all other denominating attributes? And the words, God and Deity, are of different signification. John Damascene, a father of the church, expounding the Nicene creed, denies plainly that the Deity was incarnate; but all true Christians hold that God was incarnate. Therefore God and the Deity signify divers things; and therefore eternal and eternity are not the same, no more than a wise man and his wisdom are the same; nor God and his justice the same thing: and universally it is false, that the attribute in the abstract is the same with the substance, to which it is attributed. Also it is universally true of God, that the attribute in the concrete, and the substance to which it is attributed, is not the same thing.
I come now to his next period or paragraph, wherein he would fain prove, that by denying incorporeal substance, I take away God’s existence. The words he cites here are mine: to say an angel or spirit is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no angel nor spirit at all. It is true also, that to say that God is an incorporeal substance, is to say in effect there is no God at all. What alleges he against it, but the School-divinity which I have already answered? Scripture he can bring none, because the word incorporeal is not found in Scripture. But the Bishop, trusting to his Aristotelian and Scholastic learning, hath hitherto made no use of Scripture, save only of these texts: 1 Cor. ix. 7: Who hath planted a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof; or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? and Rev. iv. 11: Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, honour, and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they were created: thereby to prove that the right of God to govern and punish mankind is not derived from his omnipotence. Let us now see how he proves incorporeity by his own reason without Scripture. Either God, he saith, is incorporeal or finite. He knows I deny both, and say he is corporeal and infinite: against which he offers no proof, but only, according to his custom of disputing, calls it the root of atheism; and interrogates me, what real thing is left in the world, if God be incorporeal, but body and accidents? I say there is nothing left but corporeal substance. For I have denied, as he knew, that there is any reality in accidents; and nevertheless maintain God’s existence, and that he is a most pure, and most simple corporeal spirit. Here his Lordship catching nothing, removes to the eternity of the Trinity, which these my grounds, he says, destroy. How so? I say the Trinity, and the persons thereof, are that one pure, simple, and eternal corporeal spirit; and why does this destroy the Trinity, more than if I had called it incorporeal? He labours here and seeketh somewhat to refresh himself in the word person; by the same grounds, he saith, every king hath as many persons as there be justices of peace in his kingdom, and God Almighty hath as many persons as there be kings. Why not? For I never said that all those kings were that God; and yet God giveth that name to the kings of the earth. For the signification of the word person, I shall expound it by and by in another place. Here ends his Lordship’s School-argument; now let me come with my Scripture-argument. St. Paul, concerning Christ (Col. ii. 9) saith thus: In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. This place Athanasius, a great and zealous doctor in the Nicene Council, and vehement enemy of Arius the heretic, who allowed Christ to be no otherwise God, than as men of excellent piety were so called, expoundeth thus: The fulness of the Godhead dwelleth in him bodily, (Greek σωματικῶς), id est θεϊκῶς, id est, realiter. So there is one Father for corporality, and that God was in Christ in such manner as body is in body. Again, there were in the primitive church a sort of heretics who maintained that Jesus Christ had not a true real body, but was only a phantasm or spright, such as the Latins call spectra. Against the head of this sect, whose name I think was Apelles, Tertullian wrote a book, now extant amongst his other works, intituled De Carne Christi; wherein after he had spoken of the nature of phantasms, and showed that they had nothing of reality in them, he concludeth with these words, “whatsoever is not body, is nothing.” So here is on my side a plain text of Scripture, and two ancient and learned Fathers. Nor was this doctrine of Tertullian condemned in the Council of Nice; but the division of the divine substance into God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost. For these words, God has no parts, were added, for explication of the word consubstantial, at the request of the dissenting Fathers, and are further explained both in Athanasius his creed, in these words, not three Gods but one God, and by the constant attribute ever since of the individual Trinity. The same words nevertheless do condemn the Anthropomorphites also; for though there appeared no Christians that professed that God had an organical body, and consequently that the persons were three individuals, yet the Gentiles were all Anthropomorphites, and there condemned by these words, God has no parts.
And thus I have answered his accusation concerning the eternity and existence of the Divine substance, and made it appear that in truth, the question between us, is whether God be a phantasm (id est, an idol of the fancy, which St. Paul saith is nothing) or a corporeal spirit, that is to say, something that has magnitude.
In this place I think it not amiss, leaving for a little while this theological dispute, to examine the signification of those words which have occasioned so much diversity of opinion in this kind of doctrine.
The word substance, in Greek ὑπόστασις, ὑποσταν, ὑποσταμενον, signify the same thing, namely, a ground, a base, any thing that has existence or subsistence in itself, anything that upholdeth that which else would fall, in which sense God is properly the hypostasis, base, and substance that upholdeth all the world, having subsistence not only in himself, but from himself; whereas other substances have their subsistence only in themselves, not from themselves. But metaphorically, faith is called (Heb. xi. 1) a substance, because it is the foundation or base of our hope; for faith failing, our hope falls. And (2 Cor. ix. 4) St. Paul having boasted of the liberal promise of the Corinthians towards the Macedonians, calls that promise the ground, the hypostasis of that his boasting. And (Heb. i. 3) Christ is called the image of the substance (the hypostasis) of his Father, and for the proper and adequate signification of the word hypostasis, the Greek Fathers did always oppose it to apparition or phantasm; as when a man seeth his face in the water, his real face is called the hypostasis of the phantastic face in the water. So also in speaking, the thing understood or named is called hypostasis, in respect of the name; so also a body coloured is the hypostasis, substance and subject of the colour; and in like manner of all its other accidents. Essence and all other abstract names, are words artificial belonging to the art of logic, and signify only the manner how we consider the substance itself. And of this I have spoken sufficiently in my Leviathan (vol. III. [page 672]). Body (Latin, corpus, σῶμα) is that substance which hath magnitude indeterminate, and is the same with corporeal substance; but a body is that which hath magnitude determinate, and consequently is understood to be totum or integrum aliquid. Pure and simple body, is body of one and the same kind, in every part throughout; and if mingled with body of another kind, though the total be compounded or mixed, the parts nevertheless retain their simplicity, as when water and wine are mixed, the parts of both kinds retain their simplicity. For water and wine can not both be in one and the same place at once.
Matter is the same with body; but never without respect to a body which is made thereof. Form is the aggregate of all accidents together, for which we give the matter a new name; so albedo, whiteness, is the form of album, or white body. So also humanity is the essence of man, and Deity the essence of Deus.