ANIMADVERSIONS

ON

Grotius's APPLICATION OF THE FIFTY-THIRD CHAPTER OF ISAIAH TO THE PROPHET JEREMIAH.

[EXTRACT FROM A DISCOURSE.]

BUT how can this prophecy be made to agree to Jeremy? With what truth or propriety could he be said to have been exalted, to have been very high, to have been stricken for our transgressions, and to have had the iniquity of us all laid upon him? How could it be said of him, Who shall declare his generation? And that he should see his seed and prolong his days? And also that he should divide the spoil with the mighty? &c.

Why yes, says our expositor, he was exalted and very high, because the Chaldeans had him in admiration, which yet is more than we read of, and thanks to a good invention for it; though it must be confessed, that upon his being drawn out of the dungeon, he was something higher than he was before. In the next place he was stricken for transgression, and had our iniquities laid upon him, because by the injurious dealing of the Jews he was cruelly and unworthily used, as indeed all or most of the prophets were both before or after him. And then for that saying, Who

shall declare his generation? The meaning of that, we are told, is, Who shall reckon his years? for he shall live to be very aged; though yet we know no more of his age, but that he prophesied about forty years; whereas some others have prophesied much longer, and particularly Hoseu, who prophesied about fourscore. As for the other expression of seeing his seed, and prolonging his days, that we are taught must signify, that he should see many of his converts in Egypt, where he should live for a long time. Though yet we read not of any one of those converts, nor of any such prolonging his days there, but that it is a constant tradition of antiquity that he died an untimely, disastrous death, being knocked on the head in Egypt, by his wicked countrymen, with a fuller's club. And in the last place, for his dividing the spoil with the mighty, that we are informed was fulfilled in this, that Nebuzaradan, captain of the Chaldean host (as we find it in Jeremy xl. 5.) gave him a reward and some victuals, (that is to say, a small supply or modicum of meat and money for his present support,) and so sent him away: A worthy, glorious dividing the spoil indeed, and much after the same rate that the poor may be said to divide the spoil, when they take their shares of what is given them at rich men's doors.

So then we have here an interpretation, but as for the sense of it, that, for aught I see, must shift for itself. But whether thus to drag and hale words both from sense and context, and then to squeeze whatsoever meaning we please out of them, be not (as I may speak with some change of the prophet's phrase) to draw lies with cords of blasphemy, and nonsense, as it were, with a cart-rope, let any sober and impartial hearer or reader be judge. For whatsoever titles the itch of novelty and Socinianism has thought fit to dignify such immortal, incomparable, incomprehensible interpreters with, yet if these interpretations ought to take place, the said prophecies (which all before Gro

tius* and the aforesaid rabby Saadias, unanimously fixed, in the first sense of them, upon the sole person of the Messiah) might have been actually fulfilled, and consequently the veracity of God in the said prophecies strictly accounted for, though Jesus of Nazareth had never been born. Which being so, would any one have thought that the author of the book De veritate Religionis Christianæ, & De satisfactione Christi, could be also the author of such interpretations as these? No age certainly ever produced a mightier man in all sorts of learning than Grotius, nor more happily furnished with all sorts of arms, both offensive and defensive, for the vindication of the christian faith, had he not in his annotations too frequently turned the edge of them the wrong way.

*Having had the opportunity and happiness of a frequent converse with Dr. Pocock, (the late Hebrew and Arabic professor to the university of Oxon, and the greatest master certainly of the eastern languages and learning, which this or any other age or nation has bred,) I asked him (more than once, as I had occasion) what he thought of Grotius's exposition of Isaiah liii. and his application of that prophecy, in the first sense and design of it to the person of the prophet Jeremy? To which, smiling and shaking his head, he answered, Why, what else can be thought or said of it, but that in this, the opiniator over-ruled the annotator, and the man had a mind to indulge his fancy? This account gave that great man of it, though he was as great in modesty as he was in learning, (greater than which none could be,) and withal had a particular respect for Grotius, as having been personally acquainted with him. But the truth is, the matter lay deeper than so, for there was a certain party of men whom Grotius had unhappily engaged himself with, who were extremely disgusted at the book De satisfactione Christi, written by him against Socinus, and therefore he was to pacify (or rather satisfy) these men by turning his pen another way in his annotations, which also was the true reason that he never answered Crellius; a shrewd argument, no doubt, to such as shall well consider these matters, that those in the Low-Countries, who at that time went by the name of Remonstrants and Arminians, were indeed a great deal more.

ANIMADVERSIONS

ON

SHERLOCK'S VINDICATION OF THE TRINITY.

[FROM THE ELeventh and twelfth chapters.}

* *

*

Though in all controversies, how sharp soever on both sides, and just on one, there is still a duty, which every man owes both to decency and to himself, always obliging him to utter only such things as may become him to speak; yet, as to the adversary himself, it is, no doubt, a course justifiable beyond all exception, to take one's measures of treating him, from the measures he has allowed himself of dealing with others. And, as I hope, for my own, and the church's sake, to acquit myself as to the former part of the rule, so let my adversary take his lot as to the other. For I doubt not but to satisfy the world, (were it not superabundantly, from his own writings, satisfied already,) that he is a person of such an insufferable insolence both of style and temper, that all, that he has met with in the foregoing chapters, has by no means paid off his scores.

As to which, we shall first of all see him preferring himself before all the fathers, as much happier in giving an explication of the Trinity than they were; and this, in such a fleering, scoptical way, (scoptical I mean as to the fathers, but highly commendatory of himself,) that it would even turn one's stomach to read his fulsome expressions. For he tells us, and that with

the most profound humility, no doubt, (p. 101.) If that explication which I have given, be very consistent with, nay, be the true interpretation of that account the ancients give of a Trinity in Unity, I hope it will not be thought an unpardonable novelty, if I have expressed the same thing in other words, which give us a more clear and distinct apprehension of it, &c. No; for his comfort, no; to outdo all the fathers (if a man can do it) can be no fault at all. But before this be allowed him, I do here require him to name me but one (who acknowledges a Trinity) in the whole world, besides his own modest self, who ever preferred his explication of the Trinity for the happiness and intelligibility of it, before that given by the fathers. I say, let him produce me so much as one affirming this, if he can. So that, in short, the comparison here stands between the fathers and this author: And we see the pre-eminence given him above all the fathers by the sole and single judgment of one doctor, and that doctor is himself: Nay, and (which is more) to put the matter past all comparison between him and them for the future, he tells us, that the fathers neither knew how to speak their own thoughts of the Trinity, nor indeed so much as to conceive of it aright, by reason of the grossness of their imaginations: Whereas, if they had but conceived of it, and expressed themselves about it, as he has done, all would have been plain, easy, and intelligible. And as for Gregory Nyssen, (from whom he had quoted more than from all the rest of the fathers together,) he gives him a cast of his temper at last, (p. 119.) and sends him away with this rap over the pate, that he could not tell what to make of him and his reasonings; for that, in his judgment, he destroyed all principles of individuation. And in this manner we have him pluming himself, clapping his wings, and crowing over all the fathers; for which, and his quarrelsome, domineering nature together, most think, it is high time, that his comb were cut.