Selected quad for the lemma: christian_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
christian_n	body_n	church_n	unity_n	1,412	5	9.5035	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A30563	An account of the Blessed Trinity argued from the nature and perfection of the Supream Spirit, coincident with the Scripture doctrine, in all the articles of the Catholick Creeds; together with its 1 mystical 2 fœderal 3 practical uses in the Christian religion, by William Burrough rector of Chynes in Bucks.	Burrough, William, b. 1639 or 40.	1694 (1694)	Wing B6058B; ESTC R214160	72,062	76

Nature tells us ch 6.14 and the Scripture affirms it Psal 51.12 Establish me with thy free Spirit which Spirit is the Fountain of all liberty Natural and Moral for where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty When the Scripture teaches that God swears by his own Life we are sure he therein doth no more than what he had a right to do and therefore he has his life in the disposal of his own will which he gages as he pleases and so all things stand in the infinite holiness of the most absolute free-will of God both by Natural and Supernatural Evidence 10. Lastly Nature teaches these three real distinct Subsistences are really Personal ch 7. and the Scripture owns it for Christ acknowledges the Holy Ghost hath Personal Rights but that he should not speak of himself but should take of that which was the Sons and shew it to the Disciples and presently thereupon informs us of the distinct Personal Rights of the Father and the Son all things that the Father hath are mine says the Son where we see though they all have right to the same things yet each hath his own distinct right here asserted according to that all thine are mine and mine are thine and therefore each of the three is a Person When St. Paul teaches that the Spirit does act dispose of and bestow things by the disposition of his own will this is what nothing but a Person can do nor can any other Person do so justly but the Owner or Lord of the things so disposed or bestowed I have thought for a Heathen Hierocles guess'd ingenuously that God did Create all the material substance of which the World was made or else he could not justly have framed the World because he would have medled with what was none of his own 11. Thus Nature by the reason of things and Scripture by the reason of speech do both teach the same Trinity in all Points the one by natural the other by instituted significancy Gods Works and Gods Word conspiring to assure us there is one God and three Persons For the Coincidence of the Rational and Scriptural account in all particulars I take to be the proper evidence of this truth because had the account been given upon an Hypothesis the coincidence of it with the Scripture had been only a proof of the good contrivance of its Maker but being all deduced from the very first Principles of Sense and Reason the Coincidence proves the truth of the thing it self and demonstrates there is no contrivance in it for where Nature leads there if no room left for invention but things must be taken as they are found in themselves The Arians begged a Days or a Minutes time for the making of their second and third God in this was a blunder in the device it self for a God cannot be made in less time than a Triangular Circle But I am not exposing their pretence in point of ingenuity but observing that when they say there are such made Gods without the evidence of Nature or Scripture this is Hypothesis and Fiction and therefore it will then be time enough to write serious Confutations of such imaginary Beings when it is become fashionable gravely to prove at large that Romances are not Histories 12. To the Divine Revelation of this Doctrine I might subjoyn the Authority of the Catholick Church whose Faith is delivered in our common Creeds and evince that these are perfectly conform to the Doctrine of the preceding Discourse but these being so well known I shall seem in the judgment of the intelligent Reader to write the same things over again out of meer formality Yet because the Adversaries do boast of their late attempts against the Athanasian Creed with such an insolence of glorying it is not amiss to remark particularly that there is no expression in all that Creed about the matter of the Trinity but what hath been above distinctly accounted for from Reason and Scripture what there concerns Christs Incarnation I shall consider afterwards I might also observe that the common Institusion of the Christian Schools giving an account of the Second Person from the Divine Wisdom and of the third from the Divine Love or Benevolence cannot be understood to differ from the main reason of what has here been taught So that besides the Divine Evidence Natural and Supernatural we have all that can be accounted Ecclesiastical Authority to confirm us in this Belief And as the Creeds and their Expositors so the form of Baptism in the Name of the Father of the Son and of the Holy Ghost which is the very Text that all the Creeds themselves were purely designed to expound and is of Divine Appointment and irrefragable Authority does as a foederal Rite give further confirmation of the Truth of this Doctrine But being to give an account of the Mystery of the Trinity what concerns the nature of the Trinity in that Stipulation shall be there considered with its Covenant-use in the Christian State CHAP. IX The Adversaries Interpretations of the Scriptures IN the mean time having before shewed how the Unitarians have dealt with the Evidence of Reason I must here observe how they use that of Authority For having resolved all the General Councils and the Christian Doctors and Schools into the number of Adversaries they disclaim all Ecclesiastical Authority and assume to themselves the right of being their own Judges which Office so assumed in consequence they are to execute without a deference to the Judgment of the main body of Christians and if they be haughty with defiance to it Their demur to the Authority of the Christian Church being somewhat extraneous to the Merits of this Cause I need not examine Though Protestants indeed allow it not to be a proper jurisdiction yet all sober Christians must confess that it hath an argumentative force next to that which is Divine But since these Men had rather want so great a confirmation of their Faith then not to please themselves even to themselves be it the Rights of God and of his Church cannot be vacated by such Judges as Create their own Office 2. Though these men do not formally disown the Divine Authority of the Bible yet they treat all the Scripture proofs of the Trinity with great contempt and that they might seen to do so with less absurdity they take no notice of the great accession which that sacred Evidence acquires by the concurrence of so many circumstances in such a great number of Testimonies and variety of Expressions which adds a mighty force to what they would have if they were only to be considered asunder as we experience in all sorts of Evidence which is given us of the Existence of things And yet even against the single Texts they have nothing to alledge but some Evasions which are manifestly so far fetched that if charity did not bid us hope better they would tempt us to suspect instead of a serious Paraphrase

save one that is God 12. Because this free Volition is a complacential Volition and is the Divine Moral goodness which is substantial C●p. 5.19 therefore the Divine Blessedness which is his being most highly pleased is also a substantial Blessedness and this also as such is an incommunicable Attribute 13. A Complacential Volition is Joy and Delight Now Mental Glory is the fulness o● Joy in the Mind exulting in the stability and compleatness of the Blessedness of its own Being Therefore the Divine Glory which is the same with the Divine Joy as the Divine Joy is the same with the Complacential Volition hath also a substantial Subsistence in God We confess that Goodness Blessedness Glory in God are substantial But unless there be three substantial Subsistences of the Godhead and the willed real Subsistence be the third I think we meerly say so but have no meaning 14. From hence we learn also that the Deity is a Being of the most absolute Liberty and that there is no necessity superiour to the Divine Will The Heathen Poetry and Mythology fastened their Deity as it were to a Stulp by the Chain of an uneluctable Fate Their Philosophers in pity let him loose from the Sculp but then the greater part of them taught him such a device of folding his hands and feet together himself semel dixit semper seq●itur that he had as little Liberty ever after as when he was b●und with the Chain But the Christians ever confessed their God to be most absolutely free believing that he is most freely what he is and does most freely what he does For he that worships one God in Trinity and Trinity in Unity in consequence he must not deny this absolute Freedom to be in God as may thus in short be seen There is no will but in a conscious life Cap. 2.11 Every Spirit is indued with a will Every will is naturally free Now no Subsistence of the Deity is it self unless in co-existence with the other two Cap. 2.9 Therefore since the third Subsistences of the Deity doth subsist by being freely willed all the Three Subsistences do freely subsist Cap. 6 5. Cap. 5.20 and so the Deity does wholly and eternally subsist and act by its own free choice 15. And yet there is no fear lest the Divine Nature should therefore become uncertain and contingent because it subsists wholly by its own free choice For seeing that Holiness in a Spirit is a plenary resolved unreserved complacential good will to the Supream Being and that God is most absolutely holy Cap. 5 1. he doth therefore with a Volition eternally unchanged and yet most absolutely free will the Subsistence of the Divine Being 16. From all which we must therefore conclude that the Universe of all being created and uncreated hath its sanction establishment sanctification preservation and persistence in the eternally inviolate Holiness of God To this sense do the Blessed Society sing continually Holy Holy Holy Lord God Omnipotent which was and is and is to come Thou art worthy O Lord to receive Glory and Honour and Power for thou hast created all things and fo● thy will they are and they were created Such is the Worship such is the God of Christians CHAP. VII Of the Personalities in the Deity THE Adversaries Opposition rather than any thing else makes it needful to shew these Three distinct real Subsistences of the Deity are Three Personalities For they imagine if there be Three several Persons and every one God then there are Three several Gods Even as amongst us if there be Three several Persons and every one a Man then there are Three several Men. Both parts of this Argument are mistakes This matter therefore I shall expedite in three Considerations before we proceed to the Scripture Evidence 1. Whatsoever is to be said about Personages amongst Men no Solocism can be charged on the Language of the Church for styling the Father Son and Holy Ghost Three Persons For it matters not what the word Person signifies when spoken of any other Subject since it is certain that constant use for above a thousand years in the Church hath fixed it to signifie nothing else than one of these three when we speak of the Divine Being For what all Men mean by a Voice when they speak of any particular matter that is the true and genuine signification of the word when applied to that matter whatever they mean by it when they are speaking of another subject and were it not so all the Languages of the World must be modell'd almost quite anew Should a Sea-man having a Country Nail maker and a Taylor aboard with him tell them after he had turned his Ship that he had just then made a Tack either of them might tell him it was no such matter the one because it had neither head nor point as all Tacks have and the other because it had never a stitch in it But I think such refined Wit would qualifie neither of them for a Doctor whatever the Lord Mayor may think of it upon the next vacancy for a Clown For in good earnest to me they seem not to observe what is the reason of the proper significancy of words who cavil at this Whether then there be three such distinct Subsistences of the Deity may indeed be inquired but whether they are to be styled Personalities needs no further search than to know whether the Christian Church hath so used to call them and this is a matter of fact evident beyond all dispute 2. What they assume about the reason of Personalities amongst Men is likewise a mistake For Cicero who best knew the sense of persona Englished person after a long discourse to that purpose tells us the quite contrary T●● ●●t ●●● 1. For says he Nature gives or as it were imposes upon every Man two persons and he himself assumes a third Here then is a Trinity of persons in every one Man from the condition of things in Nature wherefore whatever the Nature of a Personality is we are assured by the Soveraign Authority which this Man hath ever had in these matters that a single substance one rational Nature is not only capable of having but actually hath three Personalities and that every individual Man is no less than three persons and those three persons no more than one Man There is therefore no absurdity contradiction or the least incongruity in speech from the Nature of a Personage to affirm that one single Divine Nature or Substance is no more than One only God and that One God no less than Three Persons So that all the reproach that hath been cast upon the Church on this account has been owing not to its Doctrine but to the Scoptical Humour of the Adversaries ignorance or dissimulation For all Classical Latinists according with Cicero as is well known in this use of the word persona The Church for what concerns the expressions wherein she