A letter to a friend concerning a postscript to the Defence of Dr. Sherlock's…A letter to a friend concerning a postscript to the Defense of Dr. Sherlock's…

But whereas he says the Dean allows but one Divine Essence, and one individual Nature in the Godhead repeated in three Persons, but without multiplication, as he says he had already explained it. This hath occasioned me to look back to that explanation, and if he thinks the allowing ⟨p. 8⟩but one Divine Essence, and one individual Nature in the Godhead, will agree with what the Dean hath said in his Vindication, I shall not envy him, nor (now) go about to disprove it. But I confess I see not how it can agree with what the Defender says in this his explanation it self, when p. 23. he tells us the Son is the living subsisting Image of the Father, and the Image and the Prototype can not be the same but must be two. No man is his own Image, nor is an Image the Image of it self. And he adds, this is so self evident, &c. But whereas the distinction all this while might be understood to be but modal, and that appears to be the Defenders present (what ever was the Deans former) meaning, that the three subsistences differ only in their different manner of subsisting, yet with this meaning his other words do little agree, for he plainly asserts a real distinction of three in the same individual numerical nature. And who did ever make a real ⟨p. 9⟩distinction to be but modal? More expressly he had said before p. 18. the Divine Nature is one individual nature, but not one single nature, for one single nature can be but one person whether in God or man.

But whereas he says the Dean allows but one Divine Essence, and one individual Nature in the Godhead repeated in three Persons, but without multiplication, as he says he had already explained it. This hath occasion'd me to look back to that explanation, and if he thinks the allowing ⟨p. 8⟩but one Divine Essence, and one individual Nature in the Godhead, will agree with what the Dean hath said in his Vindication, I shall not envy him, nor (now) go about to disprove it. But I confess I see not how it can agree with what the Defender says in this his explanation it self, when p. 23. he tells us the Son is the living subsisting Image of the Father, and the Image and the Prototype can not be the same but must be two. No man is his own Image, nor is an Image the Image of it self. And he adds, this is so self evident, &c. But whereas the distinction all this while might be understood to be but modal, and that appears to be the Defenders present (what ever was the Deans former) meaning, that the three subsistences differ only in their different manner of subsisting, yet with this meaning his other words do little agree, for he plainly asserts a real distinction of three in the same individual numerical nature. And who did ever make a real