on earth ought to bear teftimony to him by our union together in the ftrictest bond of concord and charity, as the bleffed are all united together in the kingdom of glory. Thus we honour the holy Trinity by faith, by fanctity of life, and by union or concord of our hearts. We must honour him likewife by our perpetual homages of praise, adoration and love. The bleffed choirs above make this their uninterrupted folemnity and occupation to endless ages, to adore and praife him, finging without intermiffion, what Ifaiah heard the feraphims fweetly repeating, "Holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of Hofts, all the earth is full of his glory," Ifa. vi. 3. With them all faint-like fouls, and all the pure fpoufes of God on earth are employed night and day in jointly founding forth his praifes. Shall we be flothful in this exercife, and not unite daily our hearts and voices with theirs, with the greatest ardour we are capable of, redoubling our fervour on this great folemnity? In this fpirit let us alfo offer up all our actions to the honour and glory of the adorable Trinity, begging that we may always accomplish his holy will. Let us frequently interrupt our daily actions, by some fervent doxology, fuch as that contained in the ufual form of the fign of the cross, or that adopted by the church against the Arian herefy: "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, "and to the Holy Ghoft: As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever fhall be; world without end. Amen." That is, may all honour and glory be, with the most perfect facrifice and annihilation of us and of all creatures, to the Father, and infinite Lord of all things; to the coeternal and confubftantial Son, our most merciful Redeemer; and to the Holy Ghost, the great Comforter and Sanctifier of our fouls; as was from the divine perfons, to each other from all eternity, by their infinite love and repofe in their own perfections; and from the beginning of time, and the moment of their creation, by the good angels, and all faithful fervants of God; and as is now moft profoundly paid him by all the bleffed fpirits, and by the church militant on earth, and will be, by us all through his mercy, with all our ftrength and powers to all Eternity. Amen, Amen. . After having rendered our homages to the holy Trinity, we must next confider that we are bound to refer to this fame facred Trinity, all that we are, our whole being, our life, and all our actions. To understand this obligation, we have but to call to mind, that we were baptized in the name of the Trinity, and born fpiritually in the church: that we then made made a folemn profeffion of acknowledging him for our God of whom alone we depend; our first beginning and our Fast end; and that we owe him love, thanksgiving and obedience. Let us then now afresh consecrate ourselves to this bleffed Trinity, and offer all our powers to him; our memory, our understanding and our will; begging the Father to efface out of our memory all images of vanity, to engrave in it the image of his divine prefence only: the Son to enlighten the darkness of our understanding, and conduct us in the path of falvation by the light of faith, and of knowledge of his eternal truth: the Holy Ghoft to fanctify our will by his fervent and conftant love, that nothing may be able to feparate us from him, in time or eternity. Amen. CHA P. III. Of the Adverfaries of the FAITH of the bleffed TRINITY. HE faith of the church in this fundamental mystery of religion, the devil has, from the beginning, employed all his artifices to pervert. In the very times of the apoflles, Cerinthus, an Anticchian Jew, pretended that Jefus was a mere man, that the Chrift defcended upon him in his baptifm, and left him before his paffion; for he diftinguifhed Jefus and Chrift as two perfors (1). Ebion allo about the fame time, taught that Chrift was a mere man (2). With a view in part to confute these two herefiarchs, St. John wrote his gofpel (3), which he begins by afferting that the Word was before all ages, true God, with and in the Father (4), confequently a diftinct perfon, in the fame undivided nature. Then by faying that the Word was made flesh, he overthrew the impiety of Cerinthus, and precondemned the herefy of Neftorius, establishing the whole Catholic doctrine of the incarnation. In the time of pope Victor, about the end of the second century, Theodotus of Byzantium a leather-dreffer or currier, having denied Chrift before the perfecutors, to extenuate his guilt, renewed the herefy of Ebion, denying Chrift to be God, or to have had any being before (1) S. Iren. 1. i. c. 26. S. Epiph. Hær. 28. Tert. de Præfer. c. 48. S. Aug. de Hær. c. 8. Euf. Hift. 1. iii. (2) S. Iren. 1. i. c. 20. S. Epiph. Hær. 20. Euf. I. iii. c. 27. See Le Clerc. Hift. Ecclef. ad An. 72. Tillem. T. ii. Illig. Diff. de Hæref. Sæc. i. c. 6. Le Quien, Diff. in op. S. Joan. Damafc. (3) S. Jerom Cat. Vir. Ill. c. 9. S. Iren. (4) John i. 1. 1. iii. c. 13. p. 257. before he was made man (5), for which he was excommunicated by pope Victor; and his herefy was confuted by Caius, a Roman prieft, and other Catholics, by the concur ring teftimony of all that had gone before them from the time of the apostles. Theodotus cut out of the fcriptures all those texts, in which the divinity of Chrift is mentioned. He had a difciple called Theodotus the banker, who pretending that Chrift was inferior to Melchifedec gave birth to the heresy of the Melchifedecians. Artemas or Artemon (6), renewed the fame herefy: And Paul of Samofata, the impious bishop of Antioch, protected by Zenobia, queen of the Eaft, in 262, propagated this blafphemy with great tumults; but was immediately condemned by the council of Antioch, and by the whole church. So evidently repugnant to the holy fcriptures, and to the unanimous faith and tradition of the whole church in thofe early ages, was this blafphemous herefy, that it was every where condemned, fo foon as it ever fhewed its head; and the Theodotians faw they could not fupport it at any rate, without curtailing great part of the New Teftament. Nevertheless, fuch progrefs it has made in our times under the name of Socinianifm, as to threaten to fwallow up great part of the Proteftant churches. Arius, the author of the Arian herefy, by fubtle artifices foftened his error in fuch manner as not to correct or feem fo openly to contradict the fcriptures, as the Theodotians or ancient Socinians did; he even appealed to the facred Oracles, explained by his private interpretation; and admitted in appearance, fome kind of an incarnation. He loudly extolled the dignity of Chrift as the firft-born of all creatures, greater than and produced before all the Angels, and the inftrument by which the Father created all other things; yet blafphemously taught that he was a creature, produced out of nothing, and that there was a duration from eternity, in which he had no being. Arius broached this herefy at Alexandria, about the year 319; It was condemned by the general council of Nice, in 325: The few that remained obftinate in their error were banifhed by the emperor Conftantine. Eufebius, bishop of Nicomedia, then the imperial city, the most powerful and crafty patron of this herefy, was obliged to diffemble it, and fubfcribed to the council: Arius himself in 330, pretended to make a recantation, and was recalled from his banishment. And from the time I i (5) S. Epiph. Hær. 54. Theodoret. Hær. fab. 1. ii. c. 5. Euf. hift. (6) Euf. Hift. I. v. c. 28. Theodoret, Hær, fab, 1. 1. iv. c. 28. ii. c. 4. Tr. 10. time of the council of Nice for above twenty years, fo long as Constantine reigned, the open profeffion of Arianism was utterly extinguished, though the abettors of this herefy ceased not, under various fubtleties and cloaks to disturb the church, and advance the intereft of their Sect. Conftantius fucceeded his father in 336, and in 340, upon the death of S. Alexander, bishop of Conftantinople, the canonical election of S. Paul was fet afide by the tyranny of the emperor, and Eufebius of Nicomedia tranflated to that fee, where he died in 342. He had propagated Arianifm, and left its abettors, who from him were called Eufebians, every where in power in the Eaft. These Eufebians were diffembling Arians of fo pliable a cast as to accommodate their terms and confeffions of faith to the circumstances of the times, and to the humour of those whose favour they courted. This being the character of their leader, a man long practifed in the maxims and arts of an ambitious, worldly courtier, Eufebius's fucceffor, Macedonius, whom the Arians intruded to the prejudice of S. Paul, the lawful bishop, fet up Semiarianifm. His herefy was divided into as many branches as it had heads. Some denied the Divinity of the Holy Ghost, but acknowledged the Confubftantiality of the Son. Others in much greater numbers called the Son like the Father, though not confubftantial or equal, but of an inferior diftinct nature μassows, like in substance, not iμoście, consubftantial. Of these many called Chrift eternal, and uncreated, and like the Father in all things. See their definitions in the council of Ancyra in 358, held by Bafil of Ancyra, Euftathius of Sebafte, and other heads of that party. Others among them denied the Eternity of the Son, and notwithftanding the high prerogatives they gave him, ranked him in the clafs of creatures formed out of nothing ἐκ τῶν μὴ ὄντων. The rank Arians after the death of their great mafter the diffembler Eufebius of Nicomedia, had at their head Theognis of Nice, Maris of Chalcedon, and in the West Urfatius, and Valens in Pannonia. Their blafphemies were carried to greater heights by Aetius, a prieft of Antioch in 347, his difciple Eunomius, a native of Cappadocia, and Eudoxius, who from the fee of Germanicia, intruded himfelf into that of Antioch, in 357, upon the death of the Arian Leontius, and Euzoius, one of his fucceffors in 361. These taught the Son to be in every refpe&t unlike the Father; whence they were called from the Greek word arou Ang 483 Anomaans, and from their leaders Aetians, and more frequently Eunomians. Both Arians and Semiarians were eternally mending their creeds, and again and again reforming their tenets every year and every moon, as S. Hilary reproached them. So rapid was the progrefs which the Arian heresy made, and fo wide did it fpread its devaftation, that the protection of God in fupporting his church, was never more visible than on that occafion. The eloquence and fubtle cunning and artifices of their crafty teachers, and the power of feveral emperors, and great kings of the Goths and Vandals, &c. gave it fuch ftrength as feemed to threaten destruction to the church itself, had it not been fecured by the promises of Christ. Yet this formidable herefy paffed like a thunderftorm, and after the entire converfion of the Lombards in the 7th century, not a shoot of Arianifm was left in the whole world. The enemy of man's falvation attacked also the mystery of the Bleffed Trinity by another oppofite herefy. Praxeas, a Phrygian, who had been a follower of Montanus, but detected the imposture of that herefiarch, and gave information thereof to Pope Victor, afterward revolting from the church, denied this fundamental myftery, and taught at Rome, about the year 250, that the perfons in the Trinity are in no refpect really diftin&t, and that the Son is really the Father; confequently that the Father was made man, and fuffered in Chrift. Whence his followers were called Patripaffians. His blafphemy was confuted by Tertullian at that time a Montanift. Noetus alfo, a native of Smyrna, taught the fame herefy in Leffer Afia, a little before Praxeas, about the year 240; and was excommunicated for the fame. He was confuted by S. Hippolitus. (1. contra Noet. T. ii. Op.). Sabellius alfo propagated the like heretical notions at Ptolemais, and in the higher Lybia, about the year 255; against whom S. Dionyfius of Alexandria wrote a zealous letter, in which some accused him of teaching God the Son to be a mere creature; but he cleared himself by his refutation and apology which he addreffed to S. Dionyfius, the holy pope of Rome. Sabellius gained more Profelytes than Noetus and Praxeas had done: And though he taught with them, that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghoft, are no more than different names in God, derived from different actions or effects, and that the Father is called the Son in the action of our redemption, and the Holy Ghost in our fanctification, yet he denied that the Father was crucified: By which he |