Sect. 22. XX. Lastly, the prophecies, which seem not intelligible, or not fulfilled, prove matter of difficulty and offence. These are the intrinsical difficulties of faith.

Sect. 23. II. The outward adventitious impediments to the belief of the christian faith are such as these: 1. Because many Christians, especially the papists, have corrupted the doctrine of faith, and propose gross falsehoods, contrary to common sense and reason, as necessary points of christian faith, as in the point of transubstantiation.

Sect. 24. II. They have given the world either false or insufficient reasons and motives, for the belief of the christian verity; which, being discerned, confirmeth them in infidelity.

Sect. 25. III. They have corrupted God's worship, and have turned it from rational and spiritual, into a multitude of irrational, ceremonious fopperies, fitted to move contempt and laughter in unbelievers.

Sect. 26. IV. They have corrupted the doctrine of morality, and thereby hidden much of the holiness and purity of the christian religion.

Sect. 27. V. They have corrupted church history, obtruding or divulging a multitude of ridiculous falsehoods in their legends and books of miracles, contrived purposely by Satan to tempt men to disbelieve the miracles of Christ and his apostles.

Sect. 28. VI. They make Christianity odious, by upholding their own sect and power, by fire, and blood, and inhuman cruelties.

Sect. 29. VII. They openly manifest that ambition and worldly dignities, and prosperity in the clergy, is their very religion; and withal pretend that their party, or sect, is all the church.

Sect. 30. VIII. And the great disagreement among Christians is a stumbling-block to unbelievers, while the Greeks and Romans strive who shall be the greatest; and both they, and many other sects, are condemning, unchurching, and reproaching one another.

Sect. 31. IX. The undisciplined churches, and wicked lives of the greatest part of professed Christians, especially in the Greek and Latin churches, is a great confirmation of infidels in their unbelief. b

Sect. 32. X. And it tempteth many to apostacy, to observe the scandalous errors and miscarriages of many who seemed more godly than the rest.

Sect. 33. XI. It is an impediment to Christianity, that the b Leg. Nazianz. Orat. 26 et 32.

richest, and greatest, the learned, and the far greatest number in the world, have been still against it.

Sect. 34. XII. The custom of the country, and tradition of their fathers, and the reasonings and cavils of men that have both ability, and opportunity, and advantage, do bear down the truth in the countries where infidels prevail.

Sect. 35. XIII. The tyranny of cruel, persecuting princes, in the Mahometan and heathen parts of the world, is the grand impediment to the progress of Christianity, by keeping away the means of knowledge.

And of this the Roman party of Christians hath given them an encouraging example, dealing more cruelly with their fellowChristians, than the Turks, and some heathen princes do; so that tyranny is the great sin which keepeth out the Gospel from most parts of the earth.

Sect. 36. III. But no impediments of faith are so great as those within us; as, 1. The natural strangeness of all corrupted minds to God, and their blindness in all spiritual things.

Sect. 37. II. Most persons in the world have weak, injudicious, unfurnished heads, wanting the common, natural preparatives to faith, not able to see the force of a reason, in things beyond the reach of sense.

Sect. 38. III. The carnal mind is enmity against the holiness of Christianity, and therefore will still oppose the receiving of its principles.

Sect. 39. IV. By the advantages of nature, education, custom, and company, men are early possessed with prejudices and false conceits against a life of faith and holiness, which keep out reforming truths.

Sect. 40. V. It is very natural to incorporated souls, to desire a sensible way of satisfaction, and to take up with things present and seen, and to be little affected with things unseen, and above our senses. с

Sect. 41. VI. Our strangeness to the language, idioms, proverbial speeches then used, doth disadvantage us as to the understanding of the Scriptures.

Sect. 42. VII. So doth our strangeness to the places and customs of the country, and many other matters of fact.

Sect. 43. VIII. Our distance from those ages doth make it necessary, that matters of fact be received by human report

с

Magni autem est ingenii, revocare mentem à sensibus, et cogitationem à consuetudine abducerc.— Cicero Tuscul. Qu. 1. 1. p. 222.

and historical evidence; and too few are well acquainted with such history.

Sect. 44. IX. Most men do forfeit the helps of grace by wilful sinning, and make atheism and infidelity seem to be desirable to their carnal interest, and so are willing to be deceived; and forsaking God, they are forsaken by him, fleeing from the light, and overcoming truth, and debauching conscience, and disabling reason, for their sensual delights.

Sect. 45. X. Those men that have most need of means and help, are so averse and lazy, that they will not be at the pains and patience to read, and confer, and consider, and pray, and use the means which are needful to their information ; settle their judgment by slight and slothful thoughts.

but

Sect. 46. XI. Yet are the same men proud and self-conceited, and unacquainted with the weakness of their own understandings, and pass a quick and confident judgment on things which they never understood; it being natural to men to judge according to what they do actually apprehend, and not according to what they should apprehend, or is apprehended by another.

Sect. 47. XII. Most men think it the wisest way, because it is the easiest, to be, at a venture, of the religion of the king and the country where they live; and to do as the most about them do, which is seldom best.

Sect. 48. XIII. Men are grown strangers to themselves, and know not what man is, or what is a reasonable soul; but have so abused their higher faculties, that they are grown ignorant of their dignity and use, and know not that in themselves which should help their faith.

Sect. 49. XIV. Men are grown so bad and false, and prone to lying themselves, that it maketh them the more incredulous of God and man, as judging of others by themselves.

Sect. 50. XV. The cares of the body and world do so take up the minds of men, that they cannot afford the matters of God and their salvation such retired, serious thoughts, as they do necessarily require.

Sect. 51. XVI. Too few have the happiness of judicious guides, who rightly discern the methods and evidences of the Gospel, and tempt not men to unbelief by their mistaken grounds and unsound reasonings. These are the impediments and difficulties of faith in the persons themselves who should believe.

CHAP. X.

The intrinsical Difficulties in the Christian Faith resolved.

OBJECT. 1. The doctrine of the Trinity is not intelligible or credible.

Answ. 1. Nothing at all in God can be comprehended, or fully known by any creatures. God were not God, that is, perfect and infinite, if he were comprehensible by such worms as we. Nothing is so certainly known as God, and yet nothing so imperfectly.

2. The doctrine of the Trinity in unity is so intelligible and credible, and so admirably apparent in its products, in the methods of nature and morality, that to a wise observer it maketh Christianity much the more credible, because it openeth more fully these excellent mysteries and methods. It is intelligible and certain that man is made in the image of God; and that the noblest creatures bear most of the impress of their Maker's excellency; and that the invisible Deity is here to be known by us, as in the glass of his visible works; of which the rational or intellectual nature is the highest with which we are acquainted. And it is most certain that in the unity of man's mind or soul, there is a trinity of essentialities, or primalities, (as Campanella calleth them;) that is, such faculties as are so little distinct from the essence of the soul as such, that philosophers are not yet agreed, whether they shall say, it is realiter, formaliter, relativè vel denominatione extrinseca. To pass by the three faculties of vegetation, sensation, and intellection; in the soul, as intellectual, there are the essential faculties of power, executive or communicative, ad extra; intellect and will, posse, scire, velle: and accordingly in morality or virtue, there is in one new creature or holy nature, wisdom, goodness, and ability or fortitude, and promptitude to act according to them; and in our relation to things below us, in the unity of our dominion or superiority, there is a trinity of relations, viz.,

d See part 1. c. 5. Pardon the repetitions here for the reasons after mentioned. See, before, in the margin of chap. 5, part 1, the Collection of Christopher Simpson, 'Of Trinity in Unity, in the Harmony of Musical Concordance, in the Division Violist.' p. 17.

* Read Campanella's Metaphysics,' and his 'Atheismus triumphatus,' of this.

we are their owners, their rulers, according to their capacity, and their end and benefactors. So that in the unity of God's image upon man, there is this natural, moral, and dominative image; and in the natural, the trinity of essential faculties; and in the moral, the trinity of holy virtues; and in the dominative, a trinity of superior relations.f

And though the further we go from the root, the more darkness and dissimilitude appeareth to us, yet it is strange to see even in the body, what analogies there are to the faculties of soul, in the superior, middle, and inferior regions; and in them, the natural, vital, and animal parts, with the three sorts of humours, three sorts of concoctions, and three sorts of spirits answerable thereto, and admirably united: with much more, which a just scheme would open to you. And, therefore, seeing God is known to us by this his image, and in this glass, though we must not think that any thing in God is formally the same as it is in man, yet, certainly, we must judge that all this is eminently in God; and that we have no fitter notions and names concerning his incomprehensible perfections, than what are borrowed from the mind of man. Therefore, it is thus undeniable, that God is in the unity of his eternal, infinite essence, a trinity of essentialities, or active principles, viz., power, intellect, and will; and in their holy perfections, they are omnipotency, omniscience or wisdom, and goodness; and in his relative supremacy is contained this trinity of relations, he is our Owner, our Rector, and our chief Good, that is, our Benefactor and our End.

And as in man's soul, the posse, scire, velle, are not three parts of the soul, it being the whole soul, quæ potest, quæ intelligit et quæ vult, and yet these three are not formaliter, or how you will otherwise call the distinction, the same; even so in God, it is not one part of God that hath power, and another that hath understanding, and another that hath will; but the whole Deity is power, the whole is understanding, and the whole is will. The whole is omnipotency, the whole is wisdom, and the whole is

* Richardus in Opuscul. ad S. Bernard. de appropriatis personarum, inquit, quod potentia, sapientia, et bonitas, sunt notissima quid sint apud nos, qui ex visibilibus invisibilia Dei per ea quæ facta sunt intellecta conspicimus: et quoniam in elementis, et plantis, et brutis reperitur potentia sine sapientia; et in homine et in angelo reperitur potentia, sed nou sine sapientia! Et in Lucifero reperitur potentia et sapientia, sine bonitate et charitate, seu bona voluntate: sed in homine bono, bonoque in angelo, non datur bona voluntas, nisi adsit posse et scire: igitur sunt tria hæc distincta; et posse est per se ut principale, sapientia est à potentia, et ab utrisque voluntas et amor.