A Rational Vindication of the Catholic Faith:
A RATIONAL VINDICATION
OF THE CATHOLIC FAITH:
Being The First Part Of
A VINDICATION OF CHRIST’S DIVINITY;
Inscribed
To The Rev. Dr. Priestley.
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By John Fletcher,
Vicar Of Madeley, Salop.
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Left Imperfect By The Author, And Now Revised,
And Finished, At Mrs. Fletcher’s Request.
By Joseph Benson.
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“Unto what, then, were ye baptized?” Acts 14:9
PREFACE BY THE EDITOR.
1. IT seems necessary, here, to acquaint the reader that, as Dr. Priestley had asserted the doctrine of the trinity to be irrational, and that of our Lord’s divinity to have no foundation either in the Old Testament or the New; Mr. Fletcher, in opposition to these assertions, had intended this work to consist of three parts; the first containing a Rational Defence of the Catholic Faith, respecting the trinity and the divinity of our Lord; and the two last, a Vindication of the Prophets and Apostles, “from the antichristian service, (as Mr. Fletcher’s phrase is,) to which the doctor had pressed them.” But being unexpectedly called to his reward, he left them all in a very imperfect state. Even of this first part (which indeed seems to have been begun after the others) he had only written the introduction, the first letter, and four chapters; and of these the third and fourth seem not to have been quite finished.
2. I was in doubt, for some time, whether it would not be best just to correct the manuscripts and give them to the public in their unfinished state; especially as I could not learn, either from any hints left in writing, or from any thing he had said to Mrs. Fletcher or any one else, what plan Mr. Fletcher intended to have pursued in the farther prosecution of the subject. But after more maturely considering the matter, it appeared that this would by no means answer the end the pious author had in view in beginning this work, as he did not seem to have proceeded far enough to have formed what could be called a proper vindication of the doctrine of Christ’s divinity. It was judged necessary therefore to carry the argument at least a little farther, in order that the work might, in some tolerable degree, be complete. In doing this, as I could form no judgment concerning Mr. Fletcher’s intentions, I have been under the necessity of pursuing that plan which seemed most likely to answer the end proposed; endeavouring, however, to preserve such a connection between the part I have added and that which Mr. Fletcher had written, that the whole might appear one continued treatise, and not a kind of patchwork.
3. As to the style, indeed, the reader will doubtless observe a material difference between that which is Mr. Fletcher’s and what I have composed; and will regret that (with respect to this first part) he must take leave of so entertaining as well as instructive a writer as the ingenious author of the Checks, so early as at the conclusion of the fourth chapter, and join company with one much less able to mix the agreeable with the useful, and render a needful and profitable subject also pleasing. Truth, however, is of more consequence than the garb in which it appears; and in what I have written I have attended chiefly to that; and, therefore, have endeavoured, in imitation of the very pious and truly reverend author of these unfinished papers, to keep close to the Scriptures as my guide, and that both with respect to sentiment and expression. It seems to me to be a dangerous thing, especially in a subject of such importance, concerning which we can know nothing but by Divine revelation, to depart from the Bible, or to go a hair’s breadth farther than God hath therein plainly revealed, or than we can fairly infer from what he hath so revealed. I am fully persuaded that most of the errors and controversies which have darkened, perplexed, and divided the Church in all ages, respecting this matter, have arisen from a desire to be wise above what is written, not being contented with the information God hath seen fit to give us in his holy word, the sole rule of faith as well as practice.
4. It is undoubtedly a most desirable thing to know as much as we can concerning the person of our adorable Saviour, on whom all our hopes depend: but after all we can know, his person is and will remain a mystery. Of this the Scriptures fail not to give us warning. “Wherefore inquirest thou after my name? (says he, Judges 13:18,) seeing it is secret,” or wonderful as the word ylp also means. “His name,” says Isaiah 9:6, “shall be called alp wonderful, or secret.” “He hath a name written which no one knoweth but himself,” saith St. John. “No one knoweth the Son,” says the Lord Jesus, “but the Father, even as no one knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.” It is true, he has revealed himself in some degree by his apostles and prophets, and reveals himself still more, or rather gives us the true understanding of what he has revealed, by the inward illumination of his Spirit. But this respects his offices rather than his person: what he is to us and the rest of the creatures rather than what he is in himself. And to know this, viz. what he is to us, as it most concerns us, so it is the principal thing meant in Scripture by the “knowledge of Christ.”
5. And I may say the same concerning the knowledge of the Father and of the Holy Spirit. It does not consist in having abstracted and speculative ideas of the nature and attributes of God and the distinctions in the Divine essence; but is the beholding, (as St. Paul says, 2 Corinthians 3:18,) with open, anakekalummenw, with unvailed face, (the vail of unbelief being rent from our minds,) in the glass of his word and works, and especially in the person of his Son, “his glory,” so as to be “changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Surely he only knows the “God and Father of our Lord Jesus,” who being made his child by adoption and grace, and having the “Spirit of adoption sent into his heart, crying, Abba, Father,” so “beholds what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon him,” as to “love God who hath first loved him.” For “he that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love;” whereas “he that loveth,” and only he, is “born of God,” and “knoweth God.” He only knows the Lord Jesus who knows him as “the way, the truth, and the life;” as the way, through whom he “comes to the Father;” as the truth, whose testimony he fully receives and on whose veracity he absolutely depends; and the life, who has quickened his soul, dead in sin, and by his grace made him a “living branch” in himself the “living vine,” a living member in his mystical body, vitally united to the living head. And he only knows the Holy Spirit, who being born of him and possessed of his witness and his fruits, even “love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, fidelity, meekness, temperance,” is become a “temple of the Holy Ghost, a habitation of God through the Spirit.”
6. On the other hand, if this be wanting, whatever speculative knowledge we may have of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and of their natures and relations to each other, we are properly unacquainted with the Christian doctrine of the trinity, and have not received that real benefit from it which the revelation of it was designed to produce. Nay, and for any spiritual or saving advantage we derive from it, it might as well not have been revealed to us. Thus Dr. Jeremiah Taylor, “He that goes about to speak of the mystery of the trinity, and does it by words and names of man’s invention, talking of essences and existences, hypostases and personalities, priorities in co-equalities, &c, and unity in pluralities; may amuse himself and build a tabernacle in his head, and talk something he knows not what; but the good man that feels the power of the Father, and to whom the Son is become “wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,” and in whose heart the love of the Spirit of God is shed abroad,—this man, though he understands nothing of what is unintelligible, yet he alone truly understands the Christian doctrine of the trinity.” (Jeremiah Taylor on John 7:17.)
7. The apostle teaches us the true knowledge and use of this doctrine, and at the same time informs us who they are that understand it aright, when, Ephesians 2:18, he says, “Through him,” viz. Christ, the only Mediator between God and man, “we both [Jews and Gentiles] have access by one Spirit unto the Father.” But when this is not our experience; when we do not approach or have not access to the Father, through him and by the Spirit; when we are strangers to the influence of the Holy Spirit upon the soul, and of consequence are devoid both of true repentance and saving faith, which are both of the operation of God; see Colossians 2:12, 13;—when, though we have “free liberty to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, in that new and living way which he hath consecrated for us through the vail,” that is to say, “his flesh,” and have “a great High Priest over the house of God;” yet we do not use our liberty, and “draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience,” as well as “our bodies washed with pure water;” when we do not “believe in Christ, with our heart unto righteousness,” so as to be “justified by faith in Christ,” find “peace with God,” and obtain “the love of God shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us,”—then is the whole doctrine of Christ concerning the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost hid from us, or abused by us.
8. There is indeed one mystical body of Christ, but we do not belong to it, are not members of it; one Spirit, but we have not received him, he does not dwell in us, does not quicken and renew our souls; there is one Lord, but we are not subject to him, he does not reign in and over us, and therefore he is not our Lord; one faith in that one Lord, even a “faith working by love, purifying the heart, and overcoming the world,” but we have it not; one baptism, but we are not baptized with it, or if we have had the sign, have not had the “thing signified thereby,” even a “death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness;” there is one God and Father of all, who in and through that one Lord, and by that one Spirit, “is above all, and,through all, and in all” real believers; but he is not our Father, nor are we his children, nor do we worship him “in spirit and in truth.”
9. This I apprehend is that ignorance or denial of the blessed trinity, which is most to be dreaded, because most destructive. It leaves the soul in its fallen and disordered state, immersed in sin, and exposed to wrath; an “alien from the commonwealth of Israel, a stranger to the covenant of promise, having no [lively, well grounded] hope, without Christ and without God in the world:” it leaves it devoid of the true “grace of Christ,” the real “love of God,” and ennobling and comforting “communion of the Holy Ghost.” Such, not having received the “Spirit of Christ, are none of his;” and not belonging to Christ, not “having the Son, they have not the Father,” and not having the Father, have neither “the true God nor eternal life.” “He that hath the Son,” indeed, “hath life,” but he that hath not the Spirit, as we have just seen, hath not the Son, and therefore “hath not life,” but abideth in death spiritual, and is in the high road to death eternal. Nor will his pretended regard to the Father save him: for “he that honoureth not the Son,” especially in his mediatorial character and in the offices he sustains for a lost world; he that believeth not on him with a living faith, as “made of God unto him wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, honoureth not the Father,” who hath appointed him to execute those offices and bear those characters for our salvation.
10. I said with a living faith, for it is not a cold, languid, lifeless assent to the truths of the Gospel that will save us; nor such a dependence on Christ and on the promises of God through him, as being neither preceded by repentance nor accompanied with love, leaves the soul as a withered branch upon a tree, or a dead member in a body. But the faith that is effectual to salvation is a lively, vigorous, active, and powerful principle, which, coming to Jesus, and confiding in him, unites the soul to him, so that it derives out “of his fulness grace upon grace,” and becomes fruitful in every holy temper, word, and work.
11. By this faith we receive Christ in all his offices and characters. Viewing him as a “Teacher come from God,” the “prophet like unto Moses,” whom on pain of eternal destruction we are commanded to hear, whose every word is veracity and truth, whose doctrine is as infallible as it is extraordinary; with the simplicity and teachableness of little children, we sit at his feet, and with humble reverence and dutiful submission, we hear and receive the gracious words that proceed out of his mouth, desiring above all things to be doers of the word, as well as hearers. Considering him as the “High Priest of our profession, a great High Priest passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God; a Priest for ever, after the order of Melchisedec, who, by one offering of himself, once made, hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified, and who, when he had by himself purged our sins, for ever sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high, expecting till his enemies be made his footstool:” considering him (I say) in his priestly office, “delivered for our offences, raised for our justification,” and appearing in the presence of God, as our Advocate and Intercessor, we come with boldness to a throne of grace, and thus “obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.” By the help of this grace, he who is thus made of God unto us “wisdom and righteousness,” is also made of God unto us “sanctification and redemption:” he who is heard with submissive reverence as a “Prophet,” and relied on with loving confidence as a “Priest,” is also received with obedient loyalty as a “King.” His kingdom of “righteousness, peace, and, joy,” is set up in our hearts, and his “holy, just, and good laws,” are made the rule of our lives from day to day. He reigns in and over us; his love is the principle, his will the rule, and his glory the end of our words and actions; and we “live no longer to ourselves, but to him that died for us, and rose again.”
12. Thus, being “in Christ, we are new creatures, old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given [to his apostles and servants] the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them: for he hath made him to be sin [viz. a sin offering] for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,” might be justified, and made righteous through him. Though, therefore, in time past, we might be “foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another; yet the kindness and love of God our Saviour toward man appearing, not by works of righteousness which we had done, but according to his mercy, he saved us—by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost, shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Saviour, that being justified by his grace we might be made heirs, according to the hope of eternal life.” Thus the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are acknowledged in their several offices and characters, and each performs his proper work in saving our lost souls. We worship “one God” in and through “one Mediator,” by the inspiration and aid “of one Spirit,” without perplexing ourselves with curious inquiries after, and vain reasonings about, what we can no more know in this world, than a child in its infancy can understand how the several offices, powers, and prerogatives of the king, lords, and commons, constitute one supreme and legislative authority in Great Britain. And with the simplicity of a child, and the loyalty of a good subject of the King of heaven, who commands our hearts, and governs our lives in and through his Son, and by his Spirit, we confess with our lips, what we believe with our hearts, that though in the Church and in the world there are diversities of gifts, it is the same Spirit from whom they all proceed; and though there are differences of administrations or offices to be sustained by the servants of Christ, it is the same Lord that appoints them all; and though there are diversities of operations or effects produced, it is the “same God who worketh all in all through that Lord, and by that Spirit.”
13. It is true, some acquaintance with the persons, as well as offices of the sacred Three, into whose name we have been baptized, is very desirable, and indeed, absolutely needful, to lay a foundation for that Christian experience and practice, those devout and benevolent affections, and holy and righteous actions, so necessary in order to our pleasing God here, or enjoying him hereafter. And, in particular, it seems impossible we should apply to Christ, even in his mediatorial character, in which character he is most frequently held forth to us in Scripture, without considering him as “God manifest in the flesh,” a person in whom dwells “all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” For what benefit can we derive from a mediator, at least, an invisible mediator, a mediator in heaven, who is a mere man, or a mere creature, circumscribed in his being, and confined in his presence and operations? Who can have no access to us, nor we to him; can neither see, nor hear, nor help us; and to whom, as being unseen, and at a distance, we can neither signify our wants, nor with any confidence look up for a supply of them? A mediator, who cannot be present with us at all times, and in all places, in private and in public, at home and abroad, by sea and by land, night and day, in England and in China, throughout the habitable globe? Surely omnipresence and omniscience, at least, yea, and omnipotence too, are necessary to the character of a complete mediator—a mediator between God and all mankind. And such is the mediator in whom we trust: “Where two or three (says he) are met in my name, I am there in the midst of them. Lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the world: behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me: all the Churches shall know that I am he that searcheth the reins and the heart.”
14. Not that his human nature (for he is “perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting”) can be thus present in all places, and acquainted with all things. This is not supposed, I believe, by any. No: these manifestly Divine perfections are ascribed to the “eternal Word” of the Father, the indwelling Deity, to which his humanity is joined by a close and indissoluble union, and by which alone he is every where present, acquainted with every thing, has all power in heaven and earth, and will judge men and angels at the last day.
15. Accordingly, those that deny this perfect, everlasting union of Deity with manhood, do, in general, also deny his mediation, and consider him merely in the character of a “Teacher sent from God,” who, by his doctrine and example, directs us in the will of God, and in the way to his kingdom, but who neither made any atonement for our sins, nor intercedes for our souls. Nay, and if they follow Dr. Priestley, they will not put any great confidence in him, even in the character of a Prophet, persuaded that he was liable to err, even in that respect. Thus every ground of hope being withdrawn, even the hope of a sure guide to heaven, and all intercourse cut off between God and man, they naturally disbelieve all visitations of supernatural grace, all influences of the Spirit of God upon the soul, and therefore deny the Father, Son, and Spirit, in every sense in which they could be profited by them, having, in fact, neither God, nor Saviour, nor Comforter.
16. It being, therefore, manifestly necessary that we should believe Christ to be “Immanuel, God with us,” God “manifest in the flesh,” omnipresent, and omniscient, I have the more willingly suffered myself to be prevailed upon to revise the following sheets, and make such additions to them as may afford sufficient proof of that important point of Christian doctrine. I wish the difficult task had been committed to an abler hand. But Mrs. Fletcher and her friends having assigned it to me, I have endeavoured, to the utmost of my power, that the work might not be entirely unworthy of the public eye. As I have made it my care fairly to represent Mr. Fletcher’s sentiments on the weighty subject under consideration, so I have in general retained his language; rather choosing to let some expressions pass, which probably, had he lived to put the finishing hand to this work, he would have corrected himself, than to alter what he might design to stand. Mr. Fletcher’s friends, I knew, would prefer what was his to any thing I could substitute in the place of it: and, as I should have thought it a crime to misrepresent his sentiments, so I did not think I could mend his style, which, in general, is most pure and excellent. I have not, indeed, thought myself under any obligation to publish all the papers he hath left on this part of the subject, some of them being loose and unconnected paragraphs, and not capable of being introduced here: but what I have been able to bring into any proper connection with the rest, and what seemed calculated to prove or illustrate the doctrine under consideration, I have published, and the public may be sure they are not mistaken in receiving as Mr. Fletcher’s what is presented to them as his.
J. BENSON.
HULL, November 15, 1788.
INTRODUCTION.
1. THE catholic Church is openly attacked, in our day, by enemies so much the more dangerous as they are friends to some of her doctrines, and, as to many things, highly commendable in their moral conduct, putting to the blush the loose livers who acknowledge a trinity. Thus they persuade the world, that their incessant attacks upon the distinguishing doctrines of Christianity are directed by virtue itself.
2. Those who cordially believe in the Father, in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost, are publicly treated as gross idolaters, because “at the name of Jesus they bow the knee, and call for salvation upon the only name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved,” Philippians 2:10, and Acts 4:12. We are even invited to come out of the Church of England, as if she were mystic Babylon, because she directs us to call upon the Son, as we do upon the Father; an act of worship which the enemies of our Lord’s divinity consider as “idolizing” Christ, if we may judge of them by their learned champion, who says, in his Appeal to the Professors of Christianity, “If the Trinitarians think a point of conscience not to go to mass in Popish Churches, because in their opinion it is idolizing a piece of bread, you ought to make a point of conscience not to worship with them, because, in your opinion, it is idolizing a man, who is just as improper an object of worship, as a piece of bread.” Thus “the Lord of glory” is put on a level with a piece of bread; and doing the chief work of a Christian, “calling upon the Lord Jesus” for salvation, is compared to the worshipping of an idol, which hath not so much life and sense as a dog.
3. So incessant have these onsets been of late, that we might fear for the catholic Church, if the Lord had not promised that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against her,” and that “all things shall work together for good to them that love him.” But, comforted and encouraged by these promises, we may be confident, that even the repeated attacks of Dr. Priestley against our Lord’s divinity will show the strength of “the Rock of ages,” as billows, which incessantly beat upon a rock that breaks them all, show their own weakness, and the solidity of the rock against which they foam and dash themselves.
4. In the meantime, new modes of attack will render new methods of defence necessary; for God forbid that Christ’s worshippers should be less ready to confess him as their Lord and their God, than the despisers of his divinity are to degrade him into a mere man! The learned archdeacon of St. Alban’s, the Monthly Reviewers, the Rev. Messrs. Ryland and Shepard, &c, have already stood forth in defence of the catholic faith: and, in the author’s judgment, they have done it so effectually, that when he saw their publications, he laid these papers aside as needless: and if he now resumes them at the desire of some friends, it is merely upon considering that Dr. Horsley and his judicious allies having chiefly written for the learned, some farther remarks, suited to persons of all ranks and capacities, might have their use also.
5. The Lord needs no man’s pen to support his divinity, which supports the pillars of earth and heaven: nevertheless, as he once used the voice of an ass to check a prophet’s madness, and that of a cock to stop an apostle’s imprecations, he may, (if he condescend to bless these sheets,) soften, by them, the prejudices of a philosopher. But the principal end, which the author proposes, by sending them to the press, is to confirm his own faith, and that of the unprejudiced reader, by scattering the mists of some growing errors, and by collecting the beams of Christ’s divine glory, which lie diffused in the sacred pages.
6. It is humbly hoped that the friends of the pure Gospel will not (under pretence that they hate controversy) be afraid to increase their light, and to warm their devotion, at a fire made up of coals taken from the altar of sacred truth. No man’s time was ever lost, no believer’s love was ever injured, by reading St. John’s Gospel or his epistles, in which our Lord himself, and his loving disciple, carry on against the scribes and the Pharisees, against the Jews and the Gnostics, the very same controversy which we now maintain against the Unitarians and the philosophers of the present age.
7. In the meantime, let no one be surprised that men, noted for their learning and virtue, should be permitted to enforce their errors so publicly, and with such apparent sincerity. Providence has its wise ends. There must be heresies among us, that they who are approved may be made manifest. Light and darkness, truth and error, the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge, must be set before us, that we may stretch out our hand, according to our choice, and be judged according to the works of our faith, or those of our unbelief. Add to this, that, by God’s overruling providence, error often whets the edge of truth, manifests its solidity, and makes its sparkling glories break forth with greater advantage: thus, in a picture, the shades heighten the surprising effect of the fights; and truth never appears so transcendently bright, as when the blackness of error, like a foil, sets it off in our sight. What is chaff to the wheat, before the winnowing fan? And what are thorns to the fire?
8. Truth is a devouring flame, and will one day consume all the bulwarks of wood, hay, and stubble, which are raised to stop its progress. Dr. Priestley pictures out this power of truth, in the fine frontispiece of his Disquisitions. There he sets before us wooden scaffolds all on fire while a temple of marble, adorned with pillars of silver, gold, and precious stones, stands the conflagration. “The application of this scene (says he) is sufficiently obvious:” for he fondly supposes that his philosophical and historical Disquisitions are the fire of truth, burning up the doctrine of the soul’s immortality, of the divinity of Christ, and of the trinity; which doctrines he compares to wood, hay, and stubble. Far from thinking, as he does, about his frontispiece, to us “it is sufficiently obvious,” that the catholic faith is the fire, which, sooner or later, will burn up Materialism, Socinianism, and antichristian philosophy, like thorns, briers, and chaff.
9. Judicious reader, come and see who mistakes in a point of such vast importance. Providence has given you two lights, reason and revelation: take the hint of the doctor’s frontispiece; bring them near, and use them instead of touch-stones. Touch the adamantine pillars of truth, and they shall shine. Touch the mountains of error, which bear the Socinian temple, and they shall smoke. Touch the stately dome, and it shall blaze. Nor let a mistaken respect for the learned architect make you spare the wall, if it be daubed with untempered mortar. When the whole shall come down, the builder shall gain more than tongue can tell: for if he lose a little of his reputation, he will get a soul and a Saviour, yea, an immortal soul, and a Divine Saviour, to whom, with the rapturous joy of St. Matthew, St. Thomas, and St. Stephen, he will say, “Emmanuel, God with us, My Lord, and my God!” I shall not die like a brute; I have a soul! Lord, save it to the uttermost, save it for ever! “Into thy hands I commit it, for thou hast redeemed it, O Lord, thou God of truth.” May it be the sincere wish of the reader, as it is of the author, that all who name the name of Christ, may soon agree in such an evangelical confession; and that the names of Unitarian, and Trinitarian, may for ever be lost in the sweeter names of Christian and brother!