About the Trinity, Notice – Publishers advertisement 2
ADVERTISEMENT.
THE Letter to the Clergy of both Vniversities, came not to my Sight, or Notice, till some hours after the last Sheet of this Discourse was brought me from the Press; I have not time therefore to say much to it, nor yet should say more than I do had I never so much. The Author seems to think what he was now doing, as to the Enquiry, superfluous, because he said it was so fully done by an ab…er Hand, &c. In the mean time he was …n ill case, that he was neither able to write to any purpose, nor be silent: A most deplorable double Impotency? But he hath notwithstanding his Modesty, shown a double Ability, to invent and make an Hypothesis of his own Fingers Ends, and then most dexterously to combat that Shadow. Three inadequate Gods, is indeed (to use his own Phrase) his own Invention, constantly disavow'd by the Enquirer, who, with the generality of Trinitarians, calls the three Subsistents in the Godhead, God; being each of them necessarily existent, but none of them alone exclusively, a God.
What Art he hath is shewn in fighting this his own Figment. As also that of Parts of the Deity, other than conceptible, which no Man can avoid. So we have his Dream of a third part of a God, about which he so learnedly raves in his Dream, as to disprove, as effectually, any God at all. For I appeal to what Sense he hath left himself, whether Power alone be God exclusive of Wisdom and Goodness? Then 'tis an inadequate, or a not compleat Notion of God, then by his profound reasoning, not eternal. No more are Father, Son, and Holy Ghost Parts, unless you be enamoured of the Bull, impartible Parts, that never were parted, nor ever can be. As what are necessarily united (tho unconfounded) cannot without Nonsense and Contradiction, be said to be parted. His Fiction, that what is from the eternal Father by necessary Emanation, cannot be eternal, but must have a beginning, is of the same stamp. He did not need when he writ, to have abandoned all Logick and common Sense, that would have told him relata sunt simul naturâ. His so confidently taking it for granted on all Hands, that all Infinites are equal, shews his little compass of Thought, and how unacquainted he is with the Difficulties of a Controversy, wherein yet he will be so over-meddlesome. Qui pauca respicit, &c. But who so bold as—? I leave him to compound that Difference with his abler Considerator, Whether one Inch and two Inches be equal? and so bid him good night.
FINIS.
BOOKS written by the Reverend Mr. JOHN HOWE.
1. THE Blessedness of the Righteous: The Vanity of this Mortal Life, on Psal. 17. ver. 15. and Psal. 89. 47.
2. Delighting in God.
3. Living Temple.
4. Self-dedication discoursed in the Anniversary Thanksgiving of a Person of Honour for a great Deliverance.
5. Of Thoughtfulness for the Morrow. With an Appendix concerning the immoderate Desire of fore-knowing things to come.
6. Of Charity in reference to other Mens Sins.
7. The Redeemer's Tears wept over lost Souls, in a Treatise on Luke 19. 41, 42. With an Appendix, wherein somewhat is occasionally discoursed concerning the Sin against the Holy Ghost, and how God is said to will the Salvation of them that perish.
8. A Funeral Sermon for that Faithful and Laborious Servant of Christ, Mr. Richard Fairclough, (who deceased July 4. 1682. in the sixty first Year of his Age.)
9. A Sermon directing what we are to do after a strict Enquiry whether or no we truly love God.
10. A Funeral Sermon for Mrs. Esther Sampson, the late Wife of Henry Sampson, Dr. of Physick, who died Nov. 24. 1689.
11. The Carnality of Religious Contention. In two Sermons Preach'd at the Merchants Lecture in Broadstreet.
12. A Calm and Sober Enquiry concerning the Possibility of a Trinity in the Godhead.
13. A Letter to a Friend concerning a Postscript to the Defence of Dr. Sherlock's Notion of the Trinity in Unity, relating to the Calm and Sober Enquiry upon the same Subject.
BOOKS Printed for Tho. Parkhurst, at the Bible and Three Crowns, the lower End of Cheapside.
A Body of Practical Divinity, consisting of above one hundred seventy six Sermons on the lesser-Catechism composed by the Reverend Assembly of Divines at Westminster: With a Supplement of some Sermons on several Texts of Scripture. By Thomas Watson, formerly Minister at St. Stephen's-Walbrook, London.
A Paraphrase on the New Testament, with Notes, Doctrinal and Practical. By plainness and brevity fitted to the Use of Religious Families, in their daily Reading of the Scriptures; and of the younger and poorer sort of Scholars and Ministers, who want fuller Helps. With an Advertisement of Difficulties in the Revelations. By the late Reverend Mr. Richard Baxter.
Six hundred of Select Hymns and Spiritual Songs collected out of the Holy Bible. Together with a Catechism, the Canticles, and a Catalogue of Vertuous Women. The Three last hundred of Select Hymns collected out of the Psalms of David. By William Barton, A. M. late Minister of St. Martins in Leicester.
Spiritual Songs: Or Songs of Praise to Almighty God upon several Occasions. Together with the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's: First turn'd, then paraphased in English Verse. By John Mason.
End of the text · John Howe, About the Trinity (1695)