This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1723 Excerpt: ... telling me, that eternal Generation docs not imply Necessary-existence, nay, that it is contradictory to it. Let us hear your Reason. Generation is anAE, and all Actions spring from theW ill only j and an Act of the Will (that is, Free Choice) cannot be necessary, p. zfi. Your Argument is undoubtedly just, according to your own novel Sense of the Word AH. But it is ridiculous to imagine, that giving new Names to old 'truths can ever alter their Mature. Either argue against Generation being an AH in the old Sense of Ail, or confess your Trifling in bringing the whole to a Dispute about Words, and Names only. In the old Sense of Ait Generation is an Ail: In your novel Sense of Ail it is not: And where areyou now, but where you at first set out? You tell me, after the modest Pleader (to whom I briefly replied in a Preface) that I have not been able to produce one Jingle Passage out of any one Ante-niccne Writer ( you should have added Poft-nicene too, it being equally true of all the Fathers) wherein the Son is affirmed to have emaned, or been emitted, from the Father, by Neceslity of Nature Will you please to show me, where either Scripture, or Fathers, (Post-nicene, or Ante-nicene) ever said, that God the Father existed by Necessity of Nature. They have never said it tho' they have, in other Terms, asserted the same Thing, which we now mean by Necessity of Nature: And This may also be the Case as to the necessary Generation of the Son: And it certainly is so. To clear This momentous Point I shall here show. 1. Why, neither Father, nor Son, were ever said, by the Antients, to exist by Necessity of Nature, but the contrary. 2. I mall show that the Antients, notwithstanding, believed the very same Thing which we now differently express; namely the Necessar..