A64989:95
The foundation of God standeth sure, or, A defence of those fundamental and so…
The foundation of God standeth sure, or, A defence of those fundamental and so generally believed doctrines of the Trinity of persons in the unity of the divine essence, of the satisfaction of Christ, the second person of the real and glorious Trinity, of the justification of the ungodly by the imputed righteousness of Christ, against the cavils of W.P.J. a Quaker in his pamphlet entitled The sandy foundation shaken &c. : wherein his and the Quakers hideous blasphemies, Socinian and damnably-heretical opinions are discovered and refuted ... / by Thomas Vincent.The foundation of God standeth sure, or, A defence of those fundamental and so generally believed doctrines of the Trinity of persons in the unity of the divine essence, of the satisfaction of Christ, the second person of the real and glorious Trinity, of the justification of the ungodly by the imputed righteousness of Christ, against the cavils of W.P.J. a Quaker in his pamphlet entituled The sandy foundation shaken &c. : wherein his and the Quakers hideous blasphemies, Socinian and damnably-heretical opinions are discovered and refuted ... / by Thomas Vincent.
London : s.n., 1668
Chapter 6: Ananswer to part of the 10, the 12, 13, 14, and 15 pages of W. P's Pamphlet, which he i…
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
But allowing W. P. to draw his argument from those places, which do prove the unity of God; though God be declared and believed to be but one, it will not follow that the Divine nature doth not subsist in three persons; the Scripture indeed doth hold him forth as one God, but there it speaketh of his essence; and yet withal doth elsewhere sufficiently declare that in this one essence there are three distinct persons; therefore we profess our belief of the Holy three (persons) as well as the Holy one God, and both according to the plain Scripture before urged for proof hereof, 1 Joh. 5. 7. There are three that bare record in Heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. But this distinction of one God and three persons so plainly signified in that Scripture, W. P. most impudently and blasphemously calleth impertinent: and the reason he giveth is, because God was not declared and believed incompletely, or without his subsistence, nor did require homage from his creatures as an incomplete and abstracted being, &c. which is a most egregions non sequitur, besides that he fasteneth that on us which neither we nor any Orthodox Christian ever yet affirmed, viz: that God was ever declared or believed incompletely without his subsistence, or as an incomplete and abstracted Being; ⟨p. 42⟩we know no such thing as the essence of God without a subsistence; we know the Divine nature only in the three persons, not abstracted from them, or being any way out of them, and so God is not manifested or worshipped without that which is absolutely necessary to himself, namely without his subsistence: but the Divine essence is worshipped as subsisting in the three persons, and so the blessed Trinity is not our nor any mans fiction (as he impiously speaks,) but this foolish and absurd notion is his own fiction, or the fiction of some of his Socinian brethren.
But allowing W. P. to draw his argument from those places, which do prove the unity of God; though God be declared and believed to be but one, it will not follow that the Divine nature doth not subsist in three persons; the Scripture indeed doth hold him forth as one God, but there it speaketh of his essence; and yet withal doth elsewhere sufficiently declare that in this one essence there are three distinct persons; therefore we professe our beleif of the Holy three (persons) as well as the Holy one God, and both according to the plain Scripture before urged for proof hereof,