Chapter II.
Of the nature of God.
His second chapter, which is concerning God, his essence, nature, and properties, is second to none in his whole book for blasphemies and reproaches of God and his word.
The description of God which he labours to insinuate is, that he is “one person, of a visible shape and similitude, finite, limited to a certain place, mutable, comprehensible, and obnoxious to turbulent passions, not knowing the things that are future and which shall be done by the sons of men; whom none can love with all his heart, if he believe him to be ‘one in three distinct persons.’ ”
That this is punctually the apprehension and notion concerning God and his being which he labours to beget, by his suiting Scripture expressions to the blasphemous insinuations of his questions, will appear in the consideration of both questions and answers, as they lie in the second chapter of the Greater Catechism.
His first question is, “How many Gods of Christians are there?” and his answer is, “One God,” Eph. iv. 6; whereunto he subjoins secondly, “Who is this one God?” and answers, “The Father, of whom are all things,” 1 Cor. viii. 6.
That the intendment of the connection of these queries, and the suiting of words of Scripture to them, is to insinuate some thoughts against the doctrine of the Trinity, is not questionable, especially being the work of him that makes it his business to oppose it and laugh it to scorn. With what success this attempt is managed, a little consideration of what is offered will evince. It is true, Paul says, “To us there is one God,” treating of the vanity and nothingness of the idols of the heathen, whom God hath threatened to deprive of all worship and to starve out of the world. The question as here proposed, “How many Gods of Christians are there?” having no such occasion administered unto it as that expression of Paul, being no parcel of such a discourse as he insists upon, sounds pleasantly towards the allowance of many gods, though Christians have but one. Neither is Mr B. so averse to polytheism as not to give occasion, on other accounts, to this supposal. Jesus Christ he allows to be a god. All his companions, in the undertaking against his truly eternal divine nature, still affirm him to be “Homo Deificatus” and “Deus Factus,”1 and plead “pro vera deitate Jesu Christi,” denying yet, with him, that by nature he is God, of the same essence with the Father; so, indeed, grossly and palpably falling into and closing with that abomination which they pretend above all men to avoid, in their opposition to the thrice holy and blessed Trinity. Of those monstrous figments in Christian religion which on this occasion they have introduced, of making a man to be an eternal God, of worshipping a mere creature with the worship due only to the infinitely blessed God, we shall speak afterward.
We confess that to us there is one God, but one God, and let all others be accursed. “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth,” let them be destroyed, according to the word of the Lord, “from under these heavens,” Jer. x. 11. Yet we say, moreover, that “there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost; and these three are one,” 1 John v. 7. And in that very place whence Mr B. cuts off his first answer, as it is asserted that there is “one God,” so “one Lord” and “one Spirit,” the fountain of all spiritual distributions, are mentioned; which whether they are not also that one God, we shall have farther occasion to consider.
To the next query concerning this one God, who he is, the words are, “The Father, from whom are all things;” in themselves most true. The Father is the one God whom we worship in spirit and in truth; and yet the Son also is “our Lord and our God,” John xx. 28, even “God over all, blessed for ever,” Rom. ix. 5. The Spirit also is the God “which worketh all in all,” 1 Cor. xii. 6, 11. And in the name of that one God, who is the “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,” are we baptized, whom we serve, who to us is the one God over all, Matt. xxviii. 19. Neither is that assertion of the Father’s being the one and only true God any more prejudicial to the Son’s being so also, than that testimony given to the everlasting deity of the Son is to that of the Father, notwithstanding that to us there is but one God. The intendment of our author in these questions is to answer what he found in the great exemplar of his Catechism, the Racovian, two of whose questions are comprehensive of all that is here delivered and intended by Mr B.2 But of these things more afterward.