Erasmus has given occasion, both to friends and foes, to consider .j him an Antitrinitarian. He says that Phil. ii. 6, was the principal text urged by the orthodox fathers against the Arians; but that it really proves nothing against them. On Eph. v. 5, he observes that the word God, when used absolutely by the writers of the New Testament, always means the Father. In his Scholia on Jerome's Epistles, he denies that the Arians were heretics; and in a Letter to Bilibaldus, he says, with a frankness quite uncommon in that age, that he could have adopted the Arian opinions, if they had received the sanction of the Church.(1) Yet he vindicated himself against the charge of Arianism, in his Apology against certain Spanish Monkt.(2) That he is rightly classed, by the Ministers of Poland and Transylvania, among those of the early reformers, who were instrumental "in inculcating a knowledge of the true God and Christ," abundantly appears from the following remarks, which occur in the Preface Dedicatory to his edition of Hilary.(3) "Possibly some may wonder, that whilst men are labouring by so many books, with so much diligence and pains, with so many arguments and fine sentences, and with so many anathemas and curses, to induce us to believe the Son to be very God, of the same essence, or, as Hilary sometimes loves to speak, of the same kind and nature with the Father, (which the Greeks express by the word ,) and equal to him in power, wisdom, goodness, eternity, immortality, and in all other things; there should, in the mean time, be hardly any mention made of the Holy Ghost, notwithstanding that the whole dispute about the epithet of 'very God,' and that concerning the sameness of essence and the equality, relate as much to the Holy Ghost as to the Son: and even that Hilary nowhere writes, that the Holy Ghost is to be invoked, nor ever ascribes to him the name of God; only he says indeed in one or two places, that those who were so bold as to call the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, three Gods, were declared by the Synods to be in the wrong: whether he thought the Son at that time ought to be more exalted, whose human nature was the occasion that it was not so readily allowed, that he who was a man was likewise God, and whom the Arians attempted to bereave of his Godhead, when as yet no dispute was started concerning the Holy Ghost; or whether it was, continues he, an effect of piety of those primitive Christians, that though they devoutly worshiped God, yet they durst not pronounce of him anything but what was plainly expressed in the sacred writings; in which indeed the name of 'God' is sometimes ascribed to the Son, but nowhere explicitly to the Holy Ghost; though the religious curiosity of the orthodox has since discovered by proper arguments, and deductions from Scripture, that whatever was ascribed to the Son belonged to the Holy Ghost, excepting the properties of the persons: but by reason of the unfathomable depths of divine matters, they scrupled to ascribe the name of 'God' to the latter. They maintained, that it was not lawful to speak of such things in other words than what the Scripture itself uses, and the public authority of the Church teaches. They had read of 'the Holy Ghost' or 'Spirit;' they had read of 'the Spirit of God:' they had likewise read of 'the Spirit of Christ.' They had learned out of the Gospel, that the Holy Ghost was not separated from the Father and the Son; for there they read that the Apostles baptized in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The communion of the three persons is likewise still retained in the solemn prayers and collects, derived to us from the most ancient usage of the Church, which are drawn up briefly, and at the same time learnedly; in which the Father is addressed through the Son, and in the unity of the Holy Ghost. The Father is very often stiled 'God,' the Son sometimes, but the Holy Ghost never in express words. I do not mention these things to render dubious what the authority of the Fathers has taught us out of Scripture; but only to shew how great caution the ancients used in the mention of divine matters, even when they treated them with more reverence than we do, who are grown so bold as to prescribe to the Son how he ought to honour his mother. We presume to call the Holy Ghost 'very God, proceeding from the Father and the Son,' which it seems the ancients for a long time did not dare to do; and yet we do not scruple to drive him too often, by our impiety, from the temples of our souls; just as if we believed that 'the Holy Ghost' was nothing else but a vain name. Thus also most of the Fathers who honoured the Son with the most religious veneration, were yet afraid to stile him Homusion, or of the very same substance, because they never meet with that expression in the Scriptures. And thus was the Church more advanced, in the first age, in purity of life, than in the nice science of Divinity."' The above observations certainly had their effect in smoothing the way for Antitrinitarianism; and to many of the expressions contained in them the advocates of Erasmus's orthodoxy on the subject of the Trinity have felt themselves compelled to apply the epithet "very remarkable."

(1) A Brief History of the Unitarians, called also Socinians. 1687, Sm. 8vo. p. 31; 2nd Edition, 1691, 4to. p. 11.

(2) Erasmi Opera, Tom. IX. p. 831.

(3) Divi Hilarii Fictavorum Episcopi Lucubrationes per Erasmum Roterodamum non mediocribus Sudoribus emendate. In Officina Frobeniana apud inclytam Basileam. Anno M.D.XXJII. Mense Feb. Fol.— See also, Epistolarum D. Erasmi Koterodami. Libri xxxi. Loud. 1642, Fol., L. xxviii. Epist. 8, p. 1638.

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