Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	beget_v	father_n	son_n	1,941	5	6.0880	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A59822	The distinction between real and nominal trinitarians examined and the doctrine of a real Trinity vindicated from the charge of Tritheism : in answer to a late Socinian pamphlet, entituled, The judgment of a disinterested person, concerning the controversie about the Blessed Trinity, depending between Dr. S--th, and Dr. Sherlock.	Sherlock, William, 1641?-1707.	1696 (1696)	Wing S3294; ESTC R19545	58,708	90

Question has been very warmly debated whether the Son is that Wisdom wherewith the Father is Wise. Those Fathers who affirm this Question usually alledge these two Arguments that the Eternity of the Son cannot be otherwise proved but by this That he is the Eternal Wisdom of the Father and that otherwise we must suppose Two Wisdoms in God which is so absurd to a late learned Ecclesiastical Historian that he concludes his Dissertation concerning this Question with these Words The Father neither is nor can be actually Wise but by the Word or Son I. Cabassutius Notit Eccl. p. 120. correct 119. let the Reader now judge of all the rest by this That this Question was disputed I own But he has assign'd a very false and a very absurd Occasion for it for had this been the received Faith of the Catholick Church that the Son is only the immanent Act of reflex Wisdom in God what Occasion had there been for this Dispute whether the Son is that Wisdom by which the Father is Wise that is the personal Wisdom of the Father for who ever disputed whether immanent Acts were Personal or no And therefore this very Dispute proves that they did not believe the Son to be a meer immanent Act. But though they did dispute among themselves in what Sence Christ is called the Wisdom of God and the Power of God and whether Christ be that Wisdom wherewith the Father is Wise and in what Sence the Father may be said to beget his own Wisdom and how the Son can be said to be sapientia de sapientia Wisdom of Wisdom if the Father in his proper Person be not Wisdom but only the Begetter of Wisdom with many other Questions as we see in St. Austin lib. VI. de Trin. Yet they never divided upon this Point but did universally agree that the Father in his own proper Person is Original Mind and Wisdom and that the Son in his own proper Person is begotten Wisdom even the Essential Wisdom of God not that personal Wisdom wherewith the Father is Wise but Wisdom truly and properly begotten of Original Wisdom Living Subsisting Wisdom distinct in Person from the Father who is Original Wisdom but perfectly the same one undivided Essence and therefore not Essentially Two but One and the same Wisdom which is the Wisdom of the Father So that though there was some Dispute about the true Signification of such Expressions yet here was no Division among the Catholicks who all agreed on that Side of the Question which directly contradicts this Author's Catholick Faith of immanent Acts. The true Occasion of this Dispute as St. Austin tells us in the same Place was this that some of the Fathers I think he might have said all the Nicene Fathers in their Disputes with the Arians and Eunomians about the Eternal Generation of the Son or Word used this Argument that God was never 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without his Word or Wisdom not that they had no other Argument to prove the Eternity of the Son as this Author represents it but that they thought this a very good one Now the Force of this Argument seemed to be this that God is always Wise and therefore that Person who is the Word and Wisdom of God must have always been with him as Eternal as God is And to make this a good Argument the necessary Consequence seemed to be That the Person of the Son who is the begotten Word and Wisdom of the Father is the personal Wisdom of the Father that Wisdom wherewith the Father is Wise And the Difficulty of this was how this begotten Wisdom which is a distinct Person from the Person of the Father should be that Wisdom whereby the Person of the Father is Wise how they justified this Argument and yet avoided such Absurdities is too long now to account for those who please may consult St. Austin for it but I hope every one sees that both the Reason of this Question the Nature of those Difficulties it was incumbered with and their Determination of the Point are all direct Contradictions to what this Author alledged it for And now let us hear what our Author 's learned Cabassutius says but what the World will say of him when they hear what Cabassutius says let other guess This learned Historian takes Notice of this Dispute and gives the same Account of it which I have now done and vindicates that Argument of the Catholick Fathers for the Eternity of the Son because he is the Wisdom of the Father that were he not Eternal the Father could not be always Wise from the Exception of St. Austin This he does by a Distinction borrowed from Aquinas that those who taught the Son to be the Wisdom of the Father are to be understood not in a formal but causal and illative Sence For though the Son as a Son is not that Wisdom wherewith the Father is Wise let out Author first observe that yet he is necessarily united with it and arises from it So that the Son is not the personal Wisdom of the Father but is begotten of his Father's Wisdom and inseparably united to it and therefore is the Wisdom of God Wisdom of the Father's Wisdom and inseparable from it which are Two One of One and indivisibly and inseparably One. But let us hear his Reason for this For the Wisdom which is in the Father is not a Habit or Faculty or Power as it is in created Beings but a pure and simple Act. What is now become of his immanent Act by which he tells us Original Mind must be Wise for if he believes his learned Historian Original Mind is a pure simple Act it self and therefore not Wise by immanent Acts of reflex Wisdom which suppose Habits and Faculties and Powers and have no Place in a pure simple Act that if the Son be only an Immanent Act of reflex Wisdom he will never find his second Person in a pure and simple Act. The Historian proceeds Every Act of Wisdom and Understanding necessarily includes its Terminus or Effect and that is what we call Word or in Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which St. Cyril very well understood where he tells us that Mind is never without its Word and St. Thomas saies that tho' commonly things receive their Denomination from their Forms as White from Whiteness Man from Humanity yet sometimes they are denominated from their Effects as a Tree is called Florid from the Flowers it produces though that be not the Form of it and thus the Fathers rightly concluded against Arius that the Father neither was nor could be actually Wise without his Word and only begotten Son Our Author renders it but by the Word or Son directly Contradictory both to the Argument and Words of Cabassutius for by signifies the formal Cause and is so intended by him that the Father is Wise by the Son by that immanent Act of reflex Wisdom which he calls the Son

tho' one would wonder how Original Mind and Wisdom should be Wise by reflex Wisdom which is but a secondary Wisdom which supposes a first and therefore as one would guess could not make the first wise but Cabassutius only says that the Father is not actually wise without the Son that is as he explains it without begetting that Eternal Word and Wisdom which is the Person of the Son I shall make no Remarks on this let the World judge of the skill or the honesty of this Author What he adds about Emanations is just to the same Tune The Eternal Generation of the Substance of the Father was by the Nicene Council represented by Light of Light and the Co-eternity of the Son with the Father by the Co-existence of Emanatory Causes and their Effects as of the Sun and its Rays which are as old as the Sun The Author like other Socinians thinking of nothing but Body and bodily and corporeal Emanations falls presently a demonstrating Let A. B. C. be three infinite Substances if B. and C. infinite Substances emane from A. an infinite Substance also it is self-evident that the two infinite Substances must exhaust and thereby in the end annihilate one infinite Substance This is a notable Demonstration as to corporeal Substances for if the whole flow out of it self it is certain it must cease to be what it was and become another Whole if it be not a Contradiction that the same Whole should flow out of it self and become another Whole which in Bodies could make no other Change in a Whole but a Change of Place for let a Whole emane if that be not Nonsense for a corporeal Whole to emane and go where it will it is it self and the same Whole still And I think it is no better Sense to talk of exhausting an infinite Substance for nothing can be exhausted but what is finite unless what is infinite can have an end and an exhausting Emanation of an infinite Substance is no better Sense than the rest for it necessarily supposes an infinite Substance with divisible Parts which may be separated from it self and from each other which I take to be a Contradiction to the very Notion of Infinity It is certain that such Emanations as exhaust their Subject can be only bodily Emanations for Bodies only have divisible and separable Parts that I defie the most absurd self-contradicting Trinitarian in the World to put so many Absurdities and Contradictions into one Sentence as he has done in this One infinite Substance whether corporeal or incorporeal can never eternally supply two infinite Substances the two infinite Substances by continual Emanations must needs dry up the One that was their Fountain To talk of an infinite corporeal Substance which he here supposes is absurd and unphilosophical for nothing can be infinite which has Parts for what is infinite by Nature can never be finite and yet if such a supposed infinite Body were divided in the middle as all Bodies may be divided this infinite corporeal Substance would prove two finite Substances for each of them would have one End where their Substance was divided to talk of such Emanations from incorporeal Substances which have no divisible Parts as can dry up an infinite Fountain which must be by a Partition and Division of Substances is another Contradiction and to dry up an infinite Fountain as I observed before is another and to supply infinite Substances by such Emanations which cannot be infinite if they want any supply is a fourth very good one But allowing this Author to rejoice in such refined Speculations I would desire to know who those are who attribute the Eternal Generation of the Son and Procession of the Holy Spirit to such eternal corporeal Effluxes and Emanations as will endanger the exhausting and drying up the infinite Fountain of the Deity If there be any such Men they are arrant Hereticks I assure him for the Catholick Fathers abhorred the thoughts of all such Emanations They did not indeed scruple the use of such Words as Emanation Probole Exition and the like whereby they signified that the Son was truly and in a proper sense of his Father's Substance and a real distinct Person from the Person of the Father but they expresly rejected all corporeal Effluxes all Division and Separation of the Father's Substance and taught that the Son is begotten whole of whole perfect God of perfect God by a real Communication but not a Transfusion of Substance not ad extra without as Creature-Generations are but within his Father as the Word is inseparable from the Mind whose Word it is So that our Author disputes here without any other Adversary but his own gross Imaginations and he may triumph securely and demonstrate these corporeal exhausting dying Emanations out of Countenance and the Realists no farther concerned than to look on and see the Event of the Combate or to wish him better employed If he would have effectually baffled these Realists he should have proved that God could not communicate his own Nature and Substance to the Son Whole of Whole without such an Emanation of his Substance as divides it from it self and separates one part of it from another as it is in bodily Exhalations This would effectually have confuted a substantial Generation for all Men grant that the Divine Substance can't be divided and this was the Objection of the Arians against the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the Son 's being begotten of the Substance of the Father but the Catholick Fathers asserted a real substantial Generation without a Division of Substance and taught them to distinguish between the Generation of Body and Spirit And whoever considers how a finite created Mind can communicate its Thoughts to another which when perfectly communicated are perfectly the same whole and entire in both and but one and the same Thought though in two Minds may conceive that an infinite Mind which is a pure and simple Act infinitely more simple and indivisible than Thought it self may be able to communicate its self more perfectly than a finite Mind can communicate its Thoughts and if it can it must communicate it self whole and entire and as indivisibly as a Thought and subsist distinctly perfectly One and the same in Two SECT V. The Fourth and Fifth Arguments against a Real Trinity Answered IV. TO proceed his next Argument against the Realists is this That all Explications by which 't is endeavour'd to shew how three infinite intellectual Substances three Almighty Spirits and Minds may be one God are manifestly Deficient Now suppose this true that no Man can give a perfect Account of the Unity of the Divine Nature in Three Distinct Infinite Divine Persons must we therefore deny either the Trinity or Unity both which we say are expresly taught in Scripture because we cannot fully comprehend so Sublime and Venerable a Mystery They pay greater Deference than this to the Evidence of Sense they will believe