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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	assume_v	divine_a	union_n	2,494	5	9.4017	5	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A64364	Of idolatry a discourse, in which is endeavoured a declaration of, its distinction from superstition, its notion, cause, commencement, and progress, its practice charged on Gentiles, Jews, Mahometans, Gnosticks, Manichees Arians, Socinians, Romanists : as also, of the means which God hath vouchsafed towards the cure of it by the Shechinah of His Son / by Tho. Tenison ...	Tenison, Thomas, 1636-1715.	1678 (1678)	Wing T704; ESTC R8	332,600	446

that great Wit to rail at Opinions without offering reasons for his contrary judgment and here he offereth two The First he taketh from those first words of the Epistle to the Hebrews God who at divers times and in divers manners spake to our forefathers by the Prophets hath in these last times spoken to us by his Son The Second he taketh from the second and third verses of the second Chapter in which the Holy Author preferreth the Gospel before the Law because the Law was given by Angels that is saith he by the Angel sustaining the person of God and for that reason mentioned by St. Steven in the singular number and by many more such spirits making up that glorious train but the Gospel by the Lord Jesus the Son of God Upon the seeming force of such Reasons I find Curcellaeus and others agreeing in the sentence of Grotius Now for the first Objection I may remove it out of the way by saying no more than that God spake formerly by his Son as his Logos or Minister and in the latter times by him as his Son Incarnate or as begotten by the Holy Ghost of the substance of the Blessed Virgin The same Author of the Epistle to the Hebrews saith of the Throne of Christ as Gods Logos that it was from everlasting and yet we well know that his Kingdom as Messiah Mediator Incarnate or the Word made flesh was but then at hand when his Harbinger John took upon him the Office of Baptist And Justin Martyr thought not himself in an error when he said That the Logos both spake by the Prophets things to come and also by himself being made subject to like infirmities with us The Word was Gods Minister before and under the Law but not in the same quality as under the Gospel In those times he spake not himself immediately for how can a Divine Subsistence be meerly of it self corporally vocal But he spake I conceive by some principal Angel assumed as hath been said without personal union assisted by him in a miraculous motion of the air or brain Under the Gospel he spake with his own mouth as having assumed human nature into unity of Person This word Person if I may make a digression of two or three lines deserveth not the clamour with which Socinians hoot at it especially when we consider it as now we do with relation to Christ as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Face or personating Shechinah of God They then that rightly distinguish betwixt Christ as Gods Word and Shechinah under the former Covenants and as Mediator and Gods Son incarnate under the Gospel will not much be perplexed with such places of Scripture as speak sometimes of Christs Praeexistence and oftner of his coming into the world in the fulness of time And thus much Monsieur le Blanc himself taketh notice of in his Theological Theses He there favoureth the opinion of Christs praeexistence He owneth him as the Minister of God of old but not properly as Mediator which he saith including Christs Priestly Office did of necessity require not only a mission of one Divine Person by another but a Divine Person incarnate Now from that which I have suggested in this answer to the first Objection of Grotius it will be a matter of small difficulty to infer a Reply unto his second For an assumed Angel being us'd by the Divine Logos as the immediate Minister of himself to the people and Christ speaking with his own mouth under the Gospel as God-man and the great mystery of the Gospel consisting in the manifestation of God in the flesh the Apostle had sufficient reason to prefer the Gospel before the Law We have before us a matter of lesser astonishment when we think of Divinity speaking by an Angel to which it is not vitally united than when we contemplate it as manifesting it self in the quality of God-man in unity of Person with human nature Such were the thoughts of St. Hilary of Poictiers who in our present Argument thus discourseth Then God only was seen in the shew of man He was not born Now he who was seen is also born For Athanasius he contendeth that Christ was call'd the Son long before he was incarnate and that Moses himself knew of the future Incarnation as well as he saw the present Appearance of the unincarnate Logos I conclude then notwithstanding these Objections That there is almost as good warrant for reading the Preface to the Decalogue in this manner Christ spake all these words and said as the ancient Saxon Prefacer had thus to read as he does that part of the fourth Commandment For in six days Christ made the Heaven and the Earth God who by his Logos gave all Physical Laws to Nature did also by the same Word give the Moral Law to Israel In the beginning of that Law saith St. Austin God prohibited the worship of any Image besides one the same with himself that is to say the Logos his Son whom Moses saw it being promised to him that God should apparently converse with him and that he should behold the similitude or Image or as the Seventy render it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Glory or glorious Shechinah of God Whether at the giving of the Law Moses saw the Shechinah in human figure his Text does not inform us yet it doth not necessarily follow that Moses or Aaron saw no figure because the people did not For there was much more danger in them who had had the education of slaves and who labour'd under gross and sensitive apprehensions than there was in Moses a Learned and Prudent person of abusing such similitude in the framing of Idols and one would think that at the receiving of the Tables he saw something in human figure for he is said to have seen the back-parts of God or his Shechinah or the shew of a man inverted or rather a less degree of luster in the Shechinah neither he nor any man living being able to behold the face or full luster of it which perhaps might then appear to the attending-Angels So that the desire of Moses was in effect like that of Eudoxus who desir'd to see the Sun just by him If it should have been granted he must have pay'd down his life as the expence of his curiosity And indeed the seeing of the Face of God in that sense was at that season the less necessary because God had just then made a promise of his Shechinah or presence in the Tabernacle to go along with him and to support him against the incredulity of the people to whose eyes such a Shechinah as they could bear was in wisdom to be accommodated Whilst Moses was beholding this Pattern in the Moant and receiving Laws from the Presence of God the people seeing neither as at his departure they had done the Glory of God in Clouds and Flame nor as in the

by the instance of the Brazen Serpent set up by one of Gods Vicegerents and upon its abuse destroyed by another and by that of the Cup of Joseph This Cup by which he Divined was probably an instrument used in some Sacrifice some drink-offering and in the use of which God vouchsafed him a Spirit of Prophesie with relation to the affairs of Egypt Now if the Egyptians afterward made use of this Cup or any other in form of it without any precept or promise from God Almighty and trusted in it as in the cause of Divination they then were Idolaters in this last kind of that impiety And this one would think was the Egyptian practice who readeth Lucian in his Book of Sacrifices and observeth him there deriding the Egyptians because they made 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or a drinking Pot a God And such a Cup may that be thought which is described in the hand of Isis in her Mystical Table rather than a Measure as Pignorius contendeth as likewise that mentioned by Arnobius in the right hand of Bacchus who often makes a Figure in the forementioned Table But this as it referreth to Joseph is but conjecture scarce so much as opinion I therefore dismiss it Yet I must not dismiss the Argument it self till I have further distinguished both concerning the Objects or Idols of that Honour which is given from God and the ways by which it is translated from the proper to the false Deity These Idols are either Personal Internal or External Objects By Personal Objects I mean the Idolaters themselves who become their own Statues and worship their very selves by the estimation they have of their Persons as Christs or of their Souls as real portions of the Essence of God the fancy of some followers of Plotinus of old who said Their Souls at death returned to the seminal Reason and of some Quakers at this time who say as Edward Burroughs the morning before he departed this Life That his Soul and Spirit was centred in its own being with God Internal Objects are the false Idea's which are set up in the fancy instead of God and his Divine perfections For he who fancieth God under the Idea of Indefinite Amplitude or Extension of matter or of Light or Flame or under the notion of an irresistible Tyrant and applies himself to him as such without the use of any visible external Statue or Picture is as certainly an Idolater as he who worshippeth a Graven Image for he giveth Divine Honour to an Idea which is not Divine Only here the Scene being internal in the Fancy the scandal of the sin is thereby abated External Objects are such which have a subsistence distinct from the Phantasms which are by motion impressed on the Brain And the Catalogue of these is a kind of Inventory of nature I will here give only a summary account of them for the particulars are endless Idolaters have worshipped Universal Nature the Soul of the World Angels the Souls of men departed either by themselves or in union with some Star or other Body They have likewise worshipped the Heavens and in them both particular Luminaries and Constellations the Atmosphere and in it the Meteors and Fowls of the Air the Earth and in it Man together with the accidents of which he is the subject such as Fortitude and Justice Peace and War And further on earth they have deified Beasts Birds Insects Plants Groves Hills artificial and artless Pillars and Statues Pictures and Hieroglyphics mean as that of the Scaribee it self resembling the Sun so many ways as Porphyrie fancieth together with divers fossils and terrestrial Fire They have furthermore adored the Water particularly that fruitful one of the Nile and in it the Fishes and Serpents and Insects as likewise the creatures which are doubtful Inhabitants of either Element such as the Crocodile in Egypt Kircher hath found the Temples of many of these Idols even in that polite Nation of China For he hath a Scheme containing the Temple of the Queen of Heaven the Temple of Heaven the Altar of Heaven the Temple of Demons and Spirits the Temple of the Planet Mars the Altar of the God of Rain the Altar of the King of Birds the Altar of the Earth the Temple of the President of Woods the Temple of Mountains and Rivers the Temple of the Spirit of Medicine the Temple of Gratitude and of Peace the Temple of the President of Mice and of the Dragon of the Sea Menander from Epicharmus summeth up the Idols of the World under these fewer heads of the Wind the Water the Sun the Earth the Fire But he is therefore deficient in his computation neither was it his purpose to make it accurate Thus the Image of God who made all things has as in a broken mirror been beheld without due attention in the several parts of the frame of the World and by the foolish Idolater distinctly adored And this adoration being used towards external Objects and not confined to mans secret thoughts hath with the more success and scandalous dishonour to God been propagated in the World And this remindeth me of the distinction which I designed also to make betwixt the ways by which Gods Honour is derived on creatures For it is either done by the inward estimation of the mind directing its intention in an Act or course of internal Worship or by the external signs of Religious Reverence It is done by both these together or by either of them apart There is no publick worship without manifest signs of it the heart in it self not being discern'd by mans eye but discovering it self by external tokens The Ifraelites saith St. Cyril worshipped the Calf and they did it by crying out these are thy gods f In them the mind and the outward signs of it went together But others by the meer outward shews of Adoration how unconcern'd soever they may have kept their minds have committed Idolatry Such as the Thurificati in the Primitive Church who believing the Gospel offered Incense before an Heathen Idol that being made a sign of their departure from Christianity and their approbation of Gentilism They thereby did an act of open dishonour to the true God and they used external means apt to incline others either to worship Idols instead of Him or to confirm them if they were already Idolaters in their detestable profaneness Such Idolaters it may be were some Englishmen who went to Sea with Mr. Davis in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth in order to the discovery of a North-West passage to Cataia China and East-India On the 29th of July in the year 1585 they discovered Land in 64 degrees and 15 minutes of Latitude bearing North-East from them They found this Land an heap of Islands on one of which they went on shoar There some few of the Natives made towards them and amongst that little herd of barbarous people one pointed first upwards wirh his

loud and plain a voice that he who is dull of hearing cannot mistake them unless he by obstinacy make himself deafer still and will not distinctly hear them In them we find this Prayer made by the pious King Hezekiah when he was distressed by Sennacherib O Lord of Hosts God of Israel that dwellest between the Cherubims Thou art the God even thou alone of all the Kingdoms of the Earth Thou hast made Heaven and Earth Incline thine ear O Lord and hear open thine eyes O Lord and see and hear all the words of Sennacherib who hath sent to reproach the living God Of a truth Lord the Kings of Assyria have laid wast all the Nations and their Countries and have cast their Gods into the fire for they were no gods but the work of mens hands wood and stone therefore they have destroyed them Now therefore O Lord our God save us from his hand that all the Kingdoms of the Earth may know that thou art the Lord even thou only Other places there are to the same purpose and amongst them these Let them the Nations or Gentiles give glory unto the Lord and declare his praise in the Islands The Lord shall go forth as a mighty man He shall prevail against his enemies I have declared and I have saved and I have shewed when there was no strange god among you therefore ye are my witnesses saith the Lord that I am God Yea before the day I was he I will work and who shall let it Thus saith the Lord the Redeemer I am the Lord your holy one the Creato●… of Israel your King He that raiseth you out of mean estate and ruleth over you Thus saith the Lord who maketh a way in the Sea and a path in the mighty waters Who would not fear thee O King of Nations The stock is a doctrine of vanities but the Lord is the true God he is the living God and an everlasting King Ask ye of the Lord rain in the time of the latter rain so the Lord shall make bright clouds and give them showers of rain to every one grass in the field For the Idols have spoken vanity The eyes of the Lord run to and fro through the whole Earth The King of Chaldea shall gather the captivity as the sand and shall scoff at Kings Then shall his mind change and he shall pass over and offend imputing this his power unto his god Art thou not he from everlasting O Lord my God mine Holy One we shall not die O Lord thou hast ordained them the Powers of Chaldea for judgment and O mighty God! Thou hast established them for correction Who hath f directed the Spirit of the Lord or being his counsellor hath taught him with whom took he counsel and who instructed him and taught him in the path of judgment Behold the Nations are as a drop of a bucket See here the Spirit of God asserting the Divinity of the one God of Israel against Idols by displaying his Wisdom and Power in the Natural and Political Government of the World But lest the evidence of these places should be weakened by any as Scriptures of the Old Testament relating to times before our Lord was actually made by the Eternal Father the King of the World I will add a few more which may tend to the preventing of such an Evasion Isaiah prophesying of the Baptist and of the blessed times of the Gospel introduceth that voice thus crying out to Jerusalem and Judah Behold your God Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand and his arm shall rule for him He shall feed his flock like a shepherd In the same Isaiah for I scarce seek further than that Evangelical Prophet the God of Israel repeateth this profession Before me there was no God framed neither shall there be after me Thus saith the Lord the King of Israel and his Redeemer the Lord of Hosts I am the first and I am the last and besides me there is no God And yet of the Logos the Socinians will profess as did Nathaniel Thou art the Son of God thou art the King of Israel and as doth the Book of the Revelation that he is Alpha and Omega the first and the last The God of Israel had said also in the foregoing Chapter I even I am the Lord and besides me there is no Saviour Is there a God besides me yea there is no God I know not any Yet of the Logos Socinians and Arians make confession in the words of St. John saying That he was in the beginning with God the Father The design of all these places ought not in reason to be baffled by saying with confidence these two things First That the Power which Christ had was given him by God and in order to his Glory Secondly That it is not unlawful but our duty to worship a Creature by Gods command though without his permission it be Idolatry If Christ had not been more than a creature God would not have enjoined us so high a Worship of Him neither would it have been consistent with his incommunicable Omnipotence and Wisdom to have given him all power in Heaven and in Earth This as Athanasius speaketh were to turn his Humane Nature into a second Almighty The Logos was so before all Worlds and ceased not to be so by assuming the Humane Nature into Unity of Subsistence To say then that Christ is a Creature yet made such a God who can hear all Prayers supply all wants give all Graces needful to his Body the Church know all the secrets of all Thoughts not directed to him govern and judg with Wisdom all the World and to Worship him under this Divine Notion what is it else than the paying an homage to a presumed Creature which is due only to the one very God for what apprehensions greater than these do we entertain concerning the true God when we call upon him confide in him or revere him He then that meeteth such an Inscription in Racovia as he may find often in Misna in this manner D. O. S. and at length Deo Omnipotenti Sacrum and meant of Christ to whom in the Verses set underneath the application is particularly made How must he expound it He must either interpret it of Christ Transubstantiated as 't were by their fancy into the Father or worshipped like Neptune in the D. M. at Rome in the quality of the true God whilst he is confessed to be but a Creature For they will own but one God in nature and person and yet will give to Christ not acknowledged as a coeternal Subsistence that which belongeth in eminent manner to his Idea His Idea sure it is for that Being appeareth to our mind as the best and greatest which with such mighty Goodness Power and Wisdom governs the insensible sensible rational and Christian World I end this Chapter with the

the people And it would be very strange if they should herein have been defective seeing the very Heathens were not We worship not said they the very Images themselves but those whom they represent and to whose names they are sacred H. T. in his Manual called the Abridgment of Christian Doctrine proposeth this Question to his Disciple Is it lawful to give any honour to the Images of Christ and his Saints And then he teacheth him to make this Answer Yes an inferior or relative honour inasmuch as they represent unto us heavenly things but yet not Gods honour nor yet the honour due to his Saints The same Author a while after propoundeth this Query Do not Catholicks pray to Images and Relicks And then to this he answereth No by no means We pray before them indeed to keep us from distraction and to help our memories in the expression and apprehension of Coelestial things but not to them for we know well that they can neither see nor hear nor help us There is some measure of sobriety in these words but some other of their writers ought to have had their Pens removed from them with as much reason as we take away the swords of madmen Amongst them I reckon Cornelius Curtius the Augustinian This Romanist thus spendeth some of the heat of his zeal I care not at all for Luther Calvin Wickliff and that most filthy Magdeburgian sink of impudence and blasphemy I say it and say it again that the most sacred Nails of our Redeemer do merit worship even the highest worship But we have heard better things from the Council of Trent and some who follow it And by such declarations their Church denieth to the Image it self the worship of the heart in Prayer Thanksgiving and trust and teacheth us to interpret the Forms used in their Letter to them as not to them directed Such a Form is that of Hail holy Cross our only hope the scepter of the Son the Bed of Grace Increase righteousness in the pious and to the guilty vouchsafe pardon All this it seems howsoever it soundeth must be meant not to the very matter and form of the Cross which Dr. Bilson will have to be adored in the Church of Rome but only to Christ crucified And this also I suppose they would suggest by the Cross pictured in their Books of Devotion and particularly in the front of their Missal of Paris together with these words of the Apostle God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord. Where St. Paul intended not to magnifie the wood of the Cross but the Sacrifice upon it And this way of speaking used by the Apostle is followed in our Litany in which we desire of Christ deliverance by his Cross explaining it by his Passion But still there are outward signs of Veneration given to the Image it self for Christs sake not indeed as brass or silver or gold or wood or stone or as a piece of excellent Art but yet as it relates to him and is his image Given however they are to the image though they are ultimately referred to Christ. Due honour saith the Council of Trent is to be given to them and the honour which is given to them is referred to the Prototypes We Christians said Leontius in the Synod of Nice adoring the figure of the Cross honour not the nature of the wood but the sign and ring and image of Christ. And again he that feareth God honoureth and adoreth Christ as the Son of God and the figure of his Cross and the images of his Saints In Images saith g the Synod of Bourges we worship not the matter but him that was represented As if it were one Act and the Image were worshipped together with Christs Godhead as is the Humanity by reason of its Personal union with it They that speak thus have deprived themselves of the usual Evasion that the Church of Rome owneth one God only and therefore cannot by her own principle worship an Image with absolute Latria For in the worship of that one God or the Divinity of Jesus Christ God-man they take in the worship of the Image or Relick as of a body made one with him To that effect there are dangerous sayings in the second Synod of Nice related by Photius It was there said by Adrian from Epiphanius Bishop of Constantia in Cyprus that a King having his Statue or Image is not presently two Kings but one together with his image It was there affirmed though not particularly and in those words decreed That by the worship of Images which seems divided we are carried up undividedly unto the indivisible Deity And again that in such worship we are carried up into a certain unitive and conjunctive vision As if we adhered to God by clinging with devout embraces to an Image made by humane Art Yet this in effect is said by many of their Doctors who tell us that Latria is given to the Image not absolutely but relatively not by it self but by accident as they are considered in conjunction with the Prototype and making one thing with it Suarez himself is one of these rash men and affirmeth that the Prototype in the Image and the Image for the Prototype may be adored with one interior and exterior Act. But amongst the Honourers of Images and Relicks there are not many sure who fly higher in their devotion than Cornelius Curtius He does not say things we hear every day and therefore let us listen to him a while in this present Argument Let us now see saith that Idolizer of the Nails of the Cross what kind of Veneration we owe to these Nails Divines distinguish three kinds of Worships which are wont to be expressed by the Greek words of Latria Hyperdulia and Dulia which because they terminate either in God or in intelligent natures therefore none of these do properly belong to the Nails as being things without life or reason and consequently not capable of such worships Wherefore to speak to them as such and to ask any thing of them would be a sign of madness and superstition So all Catholicks unanimously conclude Notwithstanding this because we may and we usually do adjoin the Nails to Christ in our cogitation hence it comes to pass that by reason of this connexion we may give them a certain right or direct worship for if we contemplate his Humanity we then give to the Nails the worship of Hyperdulia If we think of his Divinity we owe to them the Honour of Latria But for Dulia we bid it keep its distance as being less worthy Neither ought it to seem a wonder to any man that we give that Honour to Iron which we acknowledg to be proper to God alone for this is not given to this metal in respect of its nature but in regard of the person by whose contact or union into oneness