Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	believe_v	church_n	reason_n	2,125	5	5.7482	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36090	A Discourse concerning the nominal and real trinitarians		1695 (1695)	Wing D1589; ESTC R29734	36,049	42

or of any others But then say I the Realists would cover such flat Impossibilities such gross Contradictions to common Sense in a Word such Monstrosities under the cloak of Mystery that they have infinitely more need of that wretched Blind than the Nominals who only by explaining their Terms which Custom and Law have imposed on them go a great way in fairly satissying all Difficulties and when they cannot perfectly account for them they make some small use of Mystery To understand this we must take a short view of the polite happy Things said by them both The Nominals teach there is but one numerical God or one God in Number who yet is three Persons That the Father is God the Son is God the H. Ghost is God yet all three are but one God one God in Number one self-same God They are perfectly aware this were equally Impossible and Ridiculous if 't were not dextrously interpreted and explained it would not be Mystery or Mysterious Truth but notorious Falshood and Absurdity they well know if wholly left in these Terms without an Explication Therefore they declare that by the term Persons and the words Father Son and Spirit they mean not with the Vulgar several subsisting Persons that is to say So many intellectual Substances with each his own particular Life Understanding Will and power of Action for they confess there is in God but one Substance Life Understanding Will Energy in number but three Persons in God are so many States or Respects or Properties or Relations or something equivalent to these of the same ore Divine intellectual Substance or Nature And in this Sense also according to the Nominals the words Father Son and Spirit when used of God are to be understood namely as Relations or States all of them sustained by one and the same subsisting Person or intellectual Substance not as in so many Subjects or as denominating variously three distinct Beings They show that so the Classical Authors both Greek and Latin spoke and as their Language was adopted by the Church in speaking of God with great Propriety so in process of Time the use of Words being much altered occasion was given to introduce the Heresy of the Realists who unlearnedly understanding the old Words in a novel Sense have brought into the Church three Gods instead of one Again they the Nominals say the second Person of the Trinity or of God was Incarnate in the Man Christ Jesus in such manner that thereby the Lord Christ is God as well as Man This also is called by that Mystical Name the Hypostatical or personal Union But they mean no more by it than this that God was as much and truly united to the Humanity as the Human Nature is capable of that is to say in a most extraordinary marvellous and to us unaccountable Manner When they say O God the Father have Mercy on us O God the Son O God the Holy Ghost have Mercy on us they intend not hereby three Objects of Worship or so many several Patrons and Helpers but only as these are so many Relations and Respects of the Deity either to himself or to us so they invocate him by these Distinctions or in these several Properties and Relations In short the whole Mystery consists in the Terms they use and scarce at all if at all in the Sense or things intended by those Terms which things or sense are received and imbraced by us the Unitarians for we admit the whole Doctrine as here declared and explained But 't is quite otherwise with the Realists their Non-sense is in the thing meant not in the Words or Terms They say there are three Divine subsisting Persons three infinite Spirits three omniscient Minds three distinct Almighties as distinct as so many Angels or Men each of them as truly properly adequately and perfectly God as each Man is a Man and each Angel an Angel and yet all of them are but one God This we confess is Mystery with a Witness the Mystery every one sees lies not in the Words and Terms but the thing it self is absurd and impossible to cry Mystery here is to profess that by Mystery we mean Contradiction and Impossibilities The Excuses they make for this Mystery are as mysterious or more mysterious than the Mystery for which they would apologize For to say these three most perfect Gods become one God by their mutual Accord and Love is as if you should pretend that by Love and Accord three Men are one Man And when they say they are one God by likeness or sameness of Nature and Properties and by being in one another they might equally say that two or more Angels because they have the same Nature and Properties and being Spiritual do immeate or are in one another are thereby one Angel These Explications of their Mystery are assuredly as great Mysteries as direct Contradictions to Reason and common Experience as the Doctrine it self of one God and three Divine subsisting Persons But why do the Realists expect that Mankind will be perswaded to accept such palpable abnegations of all consistent Sense for Mystery words that are hardly Sense or of either ambiguous or obscure meaning may be put off with some or other who care not for the Trouble of considering for Mystery but gross Contradictions obvious and notorious Non-sense will never be mistaken for Mystery 'T is true People may be constrained to profess it or to subscribe to it but they never believe it no not when through a long habit of Submission to the Commands of others they seem to themselves to believe it I doubt not that the Doctors of the Church of Rome seem to themselves to believe the Transubstantiation because having accustom'd themselves to submit to the Declarations of the Church they have never suffered any reluctance to arise in their Minds against any of those Declarations notwithstanding I am perswaded not a Man of them truly believes that Mystery were all Fears and Hopes and other blassing Interests removed they would presently perceive that in very Deed they believe it not their Reasons never assented to an impossible Proportion nor could assent but only as I said through a long habit of Submission they did not discern that they assented not to the Church's Declarations And this I believe is true also of all who pretend or seem to believe any other inconsistent or impossible Doctrines The Tritheism of the Realists not grounded on the H. Scripture BUT this once more 't is not on a probable or prudent Ground that the Realists sometimes pretend that the Tritheism they impose has such a Foundation in Holy Scripture that as on the one side to believe the Trinity in their Notion of it is a violence done to Reason so not to own and profess it would oblige them to as great a Violence and Disobedience to Holy Scripture I confess I have often wondred that Men so Learned and Discerning as very many of the Realists are