Selected quad for the lemma: knowledge_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
knowledge_n	darkness_n	glory_n	shine_v	2,497	5	9.0823	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52431	Reason and religion, or, The grounds and measures of devotion, consider'd from the nature of God, and the nature of man in several contemplations : with exercises of devotion applied to every contemplation / by John Norris ...	Norris, John, 1657-1711.	1689 (1689)	Wing N1265; ESTC R19865	86,428	282

Light not unto me but to thy greatness and goodness be the Praise and the Glory For 't is thy Word thy Eternal Word that is a Lantern unto my feet and a light unto my paths The Lord is my light and my salvation and it is he that reacheth Man Knowledge I will therefore thank the Lord for giving me warning my reins also chasten me in the night-season Lighten my Darkness thee I beseech O Father of Lights and shine upon me more and more with the Brigthness of thy glory O send out thy light and thy truth that they may lead me and bring me unto thy holy Hill and to thy dwelling Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant and teach me thy Statutes O let the Angel of thy Presence go always before me in this my Pilgrimage and grant that I may always attend and give heed to his Counsel and Direction that so walking in thy Light here I may for ever live and for ever rejoyce in the full and open Light of thy Countenance hereafter Amen Contemplation III. Of Man consider'd as an Amorous Creature I. TRuth and good Employ the whole capacity of Man who seems to be purely designed and made for the contemplation of the former and for the desire and fruition of the latter Having therefore consider'd Man as an Intelligent Creature or as he is a Contemplator of Truth I shall now proceed to consider him as an Amorous Creature or as he is a desirer of Good. II. The management of this subject ingages me upon the consideration of these four things First What love or desire is or wherein the general Nature of it does consist Secondly That Love or Desire is in Man or that Man is an Amorous Being Thirdly Whence Man has this Affection or what is the proper cause of it Fourthly and lastly After what manner this Affection has it self or how it stands proportion'd to that cause III. Now as to the First I say that the general nature of Love consists in a motion of the Soul towards good But this I have sufficiently explained in a distinct Treatise upon this occasion to which I shall chuse rather to refer my Reader than to trouble him or my self with needless repetitions IV. As to the Second That there is such a motion in Man I need say no more but that we are intimately conscious of it as much as we are of the motion of our Heart or Lungs or of any other Physical Impression in or about us All therefore that I shall further insist upon shall be the two last things First What is the proper cause of this motion in Man. And Secondly After what peculiar manner this motion has it self or stands proportioned to that cause To these two Enquiries I shall confine my present Contemplation V. As to the cause of this motion in Man which we call Love or Desire I consider that it must be the same that is the cause of all the Physical motion in the Universe Now Physical motion is resolv'd into a double cause an occasional cause and an efficient cause The occasional cause of Physical motion is emptiness or vacuity For in that which is absolutely full there can be no motion because of the Impenetrability of Bodies The efficient cause of Physical motion is either particular or universal The particular is the pressure or impulse of particular Bodies one against another The universal is no other than God himself who in the Creation of the World as the Cartesian Philosophy rightly supposes dispenced a certain portion of motion and rest to matter which he still preserves the same by his Almighty Power So that if one part of matter cease to be moved so much motion as was in that is transferred to another part And if the motion of one decreases or be diminished it is compensated in another And so the same measure of motion is always conserved in the Universe And unless God be supposed to be the Author of motion 't will be impossible to give any account of the Original of it For neither can Bodies move themselves nor can they be moved by one another on to Infinity We must therefore at last come to a first Mover unmoved which is God. And so Aristotle calls God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first Mover unmoved VI. And thus in the same Proposition the motion of Love is also resolvable into a double cause an occasional cause an an efficient cause The occasional cause of this motion as of the other is emptiness or vacuity For Love or Desire is founded upon Indigence and Self-insufficiency of the Soul which having not within it self enough to content it is forced to go out of it self for supplies And so Aristotle in his Ethics 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Desire is the fulfilling of Indigence And accordingly we find that the more weak and indigent any Person is still the more abounding in desire Thus Children are more profuse in their desires than Adult Persons Women than Men and the Sick more than those who are in Health This is well shadowed forth in Iotham's Parable wherein the Bramble is represented as more ambitious than either the Olive-tree Fig-tree or the Vine For he presently accepted of that Empire which they had all declined Where there is no Indigence there is no room for Desire and accordingly God who is an absolutely full Being can no more admit of desire than a place that is absolutely full can admit of motion VII As to the efficient cause of this Moral motion it is also double as in Physical Motion It is either Particular or Universal The particular efficient cause are particular goods whether Sensual or Intellectual Which act upon the Soul and answer to the pressure or impulse of particular Bodies in Natural motion The Universal efficient cause is the Universal Good or God whom we suppose to have imprinted a certain stock of motion upon the Intellectual World as he did upon the Natural Which he also conserves and maintains by his Omnipotence as he does the other VIII For I consider that there is the same necessity of a first Mover in Moral as there is in Natural motions And upon the very same grounds But now t is impossible that there should be any other first Mover besides God. And therefore whatever intermediate causes there may be of this motion it must at last be resolved into an impression of God upon our Souls whom therefore I call the Vniversal efficient cause of Love. IX And so much for the cause of this motion in Man. I come now to consider the last Enquiry namely after what peculiar manner this motion has it self or how it stands proportioned to its cause I do not mean its occasional cause that being not so properly a cause as a condition but its efficient cause Now this being double Particular and Universal Good the question in more explicite terms will be after what

consider that by how much the more our Mind is raised to the Contemplation of Spiritual things by so much the more we always abstract from sensibles But now the highest and last term of Contemplation is the Divine Essence Whence it follows necessarily that the Mind which sees the Divine Essence must be totally and thoroughly absolv'd from all commerce with the Corporeal Senses either by Death or some extatical and rapturous Abstraction So true is that which God said to Moses Thou can'st not see my face for there shall no man see me and live Exod. 33.20 IV. So far therefore are we from deriving any Idea of God from our Senses that they are our greatest Impediment in Divine Contemplations So great that we cannot any other way clearly apprehend the Essence of God while we are lodg'd in the Prison of our Senses God cannot give us a distinct view of himself while we hold any commerce with our Senses For he that knows exactly what proportion our present condition bears to his own Divine Glories has told us That no Man shall see him and live We must therefore for ever despair of conceiving the Divine Essence clearly and distinctly not only from our Senses but even with them V. Not that there is any darkness or obscurity in God. No God is the most knowable Object in himself For he is the First Being and therefore the First Truth and therefore the First Intelligible and consequently the most Intelligible One Apostle says that he dwells in light and another that he is light and that there is no darkness at all in him God therefore consider'd in his own Nature is as well the most Intelligible as the most Intelligent Being in the World. VI. The difficulty therefore arises not from the obscurity of the Object but from the disproportion of the Faculty For our Understandings stand affected to the most manifest Objects as the Eye of a Bat to the light of the Sun as the Philosopher observes in his Metaphysics God dwells in light as the Apostle says but then 't is such as no Man can approach unto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he inhabits unapproachable light or a Light which cannot be come at not for its distance for he is not far from every one of us but for its brightness The very Angels are forc'd to veil their faces when they see it but for Mortals they cannot so much as come nigh it The short is God is too Intelligible to be here clearly understood by an Imbody'd understanding and too great a Light hinders vision as much as Darkness VII But tho' we cannot here have a clear and distinct knowledge either of God or our Selves yet we may know so much of both as may serve the ends of Piety and Devotion We may by attending to that general Idea of God which is by himself imprinted on our Minds learn to unfold many of the Perfections of his Glorious and Invisible Essence and tho' we cannot see his face and live yet his back-parts we know were once seen by a Mortal capacity and so may be again And for our selves tho' God has not given us any Idea of our own Souls yet the powers and operations the condition circumstances and accidents of our Nature are things that may fall within the Sphere of Human consideration And from both these we may derive Measures for our due behaviour towards the Great God. And this is the design of the present Contemplations viz. to consider so much of the nature of God and the nature of Man as may afford sufficient Grounds and Measures for true Piety and Devotion VIII By Devotion here I do not meerly understand that special disposition or act of the Soul whereby we warmly and passionately address our selves to God in Prayer which is what is commonly meant by Devotion but I use the word in a greater Latitude so as to comprehend under it Faith Hope Love Fear Trust Humility Submission Honour Reverence Adoration Thanksgiving in a word all that Duty which we owe to God. Nor by this acceptation do I stretch the word beyond what either from its rise it may or by frequent use among the Learned it does signifie Devotion is a devovendo from devoting or giving up ones self wholly to the Service of another And accordingly those among the Heathens who deliver'd and consign'd themselves up to Death for the safety of their Country were call'd Devoti And so in like manner for a Man to give up himself wholly and intirely to the Service of God and actually to demean himself towards him in the conduct of his life as becomes a Creature towards his Creator is Devotion And in this Latitude the word is used by Aquinas who defines Devotion to be A will readily to give up ones self to all those things which belong to the Service of God. IX This is what I here understand by Devotion and of which I intend in the following Contemplations to assign the Grounds and Measures from the Nature of God and the Nature of Man. But before I proceed to inforce and direct Devotion from these two particular Subjects of Contemplation I think it not improper to consider a little by way of preparation how much Contemplation or Meditation in general contributes to the advantage of Devotion X. They that make Ignorance the Mother of Devotion cannot suppose Contemplation any great friend to it For the more a Man Contemplates the more he will know and the wiser he grows the less apt upon their supposition he will be for Devotion But I would ask the Men of this fancy this one Question Is Devotion a Rational thing or is it not If not Why then do they recommend Ignorance or any thing else in order to it For it may as well nay better be let alone But if it be a Rational thing then they must either say that the more a Man considers the less he will discover the Reasons of it or that the more he discovers the Reasons of it the less he will be persuaded to the practice of it Both which propositions are absurd and ridiculous enough to be laught at but too ridiculous to be seriously refuted XI But to shew how much Contemplation serves to the advantage of Devotion we need only consider that Devotion is an act of the Will that the Object of the Will is good apparent or good understood and consequently that every act of the Will is influenc'd and regulated by consideration Devotion therefore is as much influenc'd by consideration as any other act of the Will is And therefore I cannot but admire at the Disposers of the Angelical Hierarchies for making the Seraphim excel in Love and Devotion and the Cherubim in Knowledge As if Knowledge were not the best preparative for Devotion XII I deny not but that Knowledge and Devotion often go assunder and the Wisest are not always the Devoutest But then this is not owing to the natural