Selected quad for the lemma: heaven_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
heaven_n	create_v	earth_n	new_a	11,986	5	7.3680	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56745	The mystery of the Christian faith and of the Blessed Trinity vindicated and the divinity of Christ proved in three sermons preach'd at Westminster-Abbey upon Trinity-Sunday, June the 7th, and September 21, 1696 / by the late Reverend William Payne ... ; in the press before his death, and by himself ordered to be published.	Payne, William, 1650-1696.	1697 (1697)	Wing P906; ESTC R35097	36,960	108

Nature from whence they Result and to which they peculiarly belong Now that Christ is Omnipotent appears from his making the World for nothing but Almighty Power could do that and produce all Things out of nothing which is what we mean by Creation Now the Scripture is positive that all things were made by him and that without him was not any thing made that was made Joh. 1.3 For by him were all things created that are in Heaven and that are in Earth visible and invisibe all things were created by him and for him Colos 1.16 and by him God made the World Heb. 1.2 To say all this is meant of a Spiritual Creation or of Christs making a new Gospel World and not a Natural is such an unnatural and ridiculous force and violence to the Words as not only Confutes but Exposes it self and makes the plainest words in Scripture even those that describe the Creation in Genesis and Christs Birth in St. Matthew and the whole Scripture History to be liable to be rarefied away by a strained and forced Allegory If Christ then Created all Things He is certainly God for he that Built or Made all Things is God according to the Apostles Argument Heb. 3.4 And if his Creating the World doth not prove him to be truly God then we cannot prove a God from the Creation and that undoubted Argument for the proof of a God must be given up which the Atheists will very much thank the Arrians for That Christ is Omnipresent appears by his Promise to his Disciples Mat. 18.25 that where two or three of them were gathered together in any part of the World there he was in the midst of them That he is Omniscient is testified by St. Peter Lord thou knowest all things Joh. 21.17 and that he knoweth the hearts of all Men and will judge all Men at the last Day That He is Eternal and was not only before Abraham but in the beginning before the World which is a Jewish Phrase for Eternity is plain also from Scripture notwithstanding all the little Cavils of our Adversaries If Christ then be the Omnipotent Maker of the World who upholdeth all things by the Word of his Power by whom all Things subsist who is an Omnipresent Omniscient and Eternal Being He is a God by Nature of whom we cannot have a higher Idaea and Conception only that He is not from himself or from none which belongs only to the Father from whom he received his Being and all the Perfections of it 5. The Divinity of Christ appears from our Praying to him and Worshipping him our invoking and Adoring him as we are Commanded to do in Scripture and as has bin Observed by the Christian Church in all Ages For nothing is an Object of Divine Worship but God or a Being that has the Divine Nature and Perfections Thou shalt Worship the Lord thy God and him only shalt thou serve is a standing Rule both of the Jewish and Christian Religion Deut. 6.13 Mat. 4.10 and of Natural too for the Glorious and Infinite Excellencies of the Divine Nature which cannot be Communicated to a Creature and wherever they are Communicated Constitute that Being a God these are the Ground of that Peculiar and Incommunicable Honour which we give to God and the Infinite distance between God and Created Beings who however Excellent yet are Infinitely below the supream and transcendent Excellencies of the Divine Nature makes Creatures uncapable of Divine Worship and makes it always unlawful in us and a robbing God of his Glory to give it them The Arrians therefore were alwayes accused by the Orthodox of Idolatry for Worshipping Christ and believing him to be a Creature though of the highest Order that could be And when Socinus had perswaded his Disciples to Dis-believe Christs Divinity Davidis and several of them rightly concluded that then he was not to be Worshipped and our late Sophisters seem inclined to agree with them in this finding it impossible to avoid the same Charge in Worshipping Christ as a Man though never so exalted that lyes against the Church of Rome for Worshipping Saints and Angels and the Virgin Mary and that they can no way come off but by the same distinctions of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sovereign and Inferior Worship which are equal but very weak Pleas to Defend Popery Paganism and Socinianism But how bold and rash an Assertion is it on the other side to deny that Christ is to be Worshipped when all the Angels are Commanded to Worship him Heb. 1.6 and when all Men are to Honour the Son even as they Honour the Father Joh. 5.20 and he that doth not thus Honour the Son Honoureth not the Father that sent him No pious and good Christians who own Christ to be their Saviour will ever be brought off from worshipping and praying to him and calling upon his name as the first Christians did Acts 9.14 21. and St. Stephen Acts 7.59 and St. Paul Acts 12.8 and the whole Christian Church afterwards Socinus was so sensible of this that he set himself most zealously to defend and assert both the Lawfulness and Necessity of it though many of his Followers have been against both But this is such a weight upon Socinianism as will help to sink it It can never free it self from one of those streights that will ruine and destroy it Either to throw off wholly the worship of Christ which is to throw off Christianity and which will never be born by any number of Pious Christians or to own that Idolatrous Principle That a Creature may be worship'd which will never be admitted by Protestants They who will not worship and pray to Christ cease to be Christians and they who do pray to him must own him to be Omnipresent Omniscient and Almighty to be able to grant their Requests to know their Hearts and to hear their Prayers and be present with them in all places and so to have those Divine Attributes and Perfections that belong only to God 6. And Lastly I might prove the Divinity of Christ from the Universal Consent and Belief of the Christian Church and from the Testimony of the greatest Adversaries to Christianity who alwayes supposed and charged this as the Sentiment of Christians that they held Christ to be God The Consent and Belief of the Christian Church is evident from its Creeds and its Prayers its Doctrine and its Practice in worshipping Christ and from its Zeal against all those early Hereticks that opposed this Doctrine and its determinations both in Private Synods and General Councils for the maintaining and asserting it It must be very strange that the whole Christian Church should be mistaken in a matter of this Importance and should have all along a False Object of Worship and when it was so zealous against all Idolatry and had so many Martyrs upon that score that it should bring in the same another way and worship a meer Creature It

in the Material World that lyes before us 2. In our own Minds and in Spiritual Beings 3. In Arts and Sciences 4. In Natural Religion 5. In Revelation or the other parts of it besides the Mystery of the Trinity and the Christian Faith 6. I shall add that the Socinians and other Adversaries to Mysteries run into greater Difficulties and Incomprehensible things in their Schemes than those they oppose But these and what remains upon the second General Head of Discourse to wit how we are to hold the Mystery of Faith in a pure Conscience I shall leave to the Afternoon THE MYSTERY OF THE Christian Faith AND OF THE Blessed TRINITY VINDICATED SERMON II. 1 TIM iii. 9. Holding the Mystery of the Faith in a pure Conscience I Proposed to Discourse from these words on these two things I. Why the Christian Faith is called a Mystery II. How we are to hold it in a pure Conscience The Christian Faith was a Mystery I have shewn upon three Accounts 1. As it was not knowable by Natural Reason without an Express and immediate Divine Revelation 2. As it was very Imperfectly and Obscurely revealed before the Gospel and the Coming of Christ 3. As it is Incomprehensible to our Reason and what we cannot fully Conceive and Apprehend even after it is clearly Revealed The Socinians and other Adversaries to Mysteries and to the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity are for Believing nothing which they cannot Comprehend and Understand and will admit nothing Mysterious in Christianity and therefore are for rejecting such Doctrines those especially of the Trinity as are so and will allow the Christian Faith to be a Mystery only in the two former Senses but not in the latter and they expose and ridicule all Mysteries and the believing things they do not understand as the most absurd and unreasonable Opinions as the believing only so many words without any sense or meaning as destroying the certain principles of Truth and Reason and unmanning our selves to become Christians and swallowing down the most monstrous Absurdities and Contradictions and calling them by the name of Faith and Mysteries I have shown that our Christian Faith even that of the Trinity is not liable to those Objections that by its being Incomprehensible we do not mean that we have no Knowledge or Conception at all of it or that it is only so many words without any sense or meaning understood by us or that it is contrary to any natural Truth or to any Principles of Reason known to us or that it implies a Contradiction or has any Inconsistencies in it but only that we cannot understand it fully and every thing that belongs to it that there is nothing else we know to which we can compare it nor have any perfect likeness or resemblance of it by any thing in visible Nature or in our own Minds that it is a Truth and an Object by it self made known to us purely by Revelation and such a Complex Idaea or Connexion of Idaeas that we have no other Idaea Similitude or Representation that exactly answers or comes perfectly up to and therefore it is Incomprehensible and Unconceivable by us and an Object too great and too big for our weak Reason and Imperfect Faculties fully to understand That there is something in it beyond all our Knowledge and all our Conceptions and yet that it is not upon that account to be rejected and disbelieved by us but since the Truth and Reality of it is made known and discovered to us by Revelation the Difficulty and Incomprehensibleness and Mysteriousness of the thing is not a sufficient Argument or Reason for our not believing it To Prove and Maintain this and to Defend the Mystery of our Christian Faith and the Doctrine of Mysteries in General I proposed to show and make out that there are a great many other things which are Mysterious and Incomprehensible to us and which we cannot fully Conceive or Understand and yet do no way doubt the Truth of them but Mankind are very well satisfied and assured about them As 1. In Visible Nature and in the Material World that lyes before us 2. In our own Minds and in Spiritual Beings 3. In Arts and Sciences 4. In Natural Religion 5. In Revelation I mean the other parts of it besides the Mystery of the Trinity and the Christian Faith 6. Lastly To these I shall add That the Socinians and other Adversaries to Mysteries have as many Difficulties and Incomprehensible Things in their Schemes as those they oppose 1. There are many things in Visible Nature and in the Material World which are Mysterious and Incomprehensible to us Indeed all Nature is full of Mystery and showes the admirable and incomprehensible Wisdom of its great Author and Contriver the Heavens above where are so many glorious Luminaries so many shining Worlds and new Earths so much bigger than ours so many Globes of Fire that are maintained we know not how that keep such exact Order and Distance to us and to one another and move in their Liquid Aether in such exact Lines by Causes unknown to us as if so many Intelligencies guided them rather than the whirling Streams of their own fluid Vortices The Earth also beneath where are so many Animals of such curious Make and Structure that the formation of them their Life Motion the Composition and Uses of all their Parts are things to be admired not comprehended by us where every Fly and Mite and Insect and every Spire of Grass we tread on is beyond all our Knowledge and Phylosophy to give a full account of and the greatest Theorist can no more understand all that belongs to 'em than he can make ' em These are sufficient Instances of the Imperfection of our Knowledge and of the Greatness of Gods we that know so little of them and of our selves how we live or how we move so much as a Finger how our Bodies were wonderfully formed and curiously wrought in the Womb and how Blood and Spirits make their brisk Sallies through every part and by such various Fermentations keep up Life and Heat in us and how the solid parts are nourished and increased by them and how every new Fibre and Muscle is woven and knit about them what an admirable Net-work and unaccountable Mechanism is in the Eye Brain Heart in every part and in the whole of us We that comprehend and understand so little of this and of our own bodily Nature how can we be supposed to understand and comprehend every thing that belongs to the Divine Nature and not be as much puzzled and confounded about the knowledge of that as we are about our own If we knew any thing perfectly it should be matter surely and what lies just before us and yet we know nothing of that but its outward accidents and a few of its qualities its colour and figure and hardness or softness or the like but its inward substance and what is the subject