Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	conceive_v	divine_a	subsistence_n	3,611	5	15.0046	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36211	The Doctrine of the Catholick Church and of the Church of England concerning the blessed Trinity explained and asserted against the dangerous heterodoxes in a sermon by Dr. William Sherlock before my Lord Mayor and the court of aldermen.		1697 (1697)	Wing D1774; ESTC R1156	21,435	32

Man living knows any thing at all for this Enumeration Substances Essences Reasons Unions Properties Operations comprehends all things even the whole of created and uncreated Nature It is certain and confess'd by all Men but this Gentleman who seems to delight in nothing so much as Paradoxes and thinks the Pulpit and Press the likeliest Places to make 'em famous and remarkable that our Reason can be no otherwise imployed but either about Substances or their Unions essential Reasons Operations or Properties What is it Sir I pray but either it is a Substance or the Property or Operation of a Substance For as to essential Reasons and Vnions the former as well as Modes and Accidents come under the general name of Properties Risibility for instance is an essential Reason of Man as he is Man and yet it is reckoned among the Properties as well as Gracility Grossness Agility Slowness Whiteness Redness and such like Modes and Accidents are called the Properties of particular Men Properties by which they are distinguished from one another As essential Reasons are but Properties so Unions are but the Operations of Substances or their Properties In short I say that without being needlesly nice Substances with their Properties and Operations will denote the whole Complex of things their Reasons and Vnions are superfluously added And if these are not the Objects of Reason Reason has no Objects at all In truth they are the only things about which Reason is conversant Metaphysicians consider spiritual Substances their Properties and Operations Natural Philosophers consider Bodies or corporeal Substances their Operations and their Properties Particular Arts and Crafts are conversant about particular Bodies as Physicians and Chirurgions about the humane Body Chymists about Plants and Metals the Lapidary about Jewels the Apothecary about Drugs Do these Artists know nothing about the Substances their Properties or Operations their Vnions and essential Reasons about which both their Minds and Bodies are every day imployed Assuredly when the Court desired Mr. Dean of St. Paul's to print this Sermon they could not have done him a greater Disservice than thus to prompt his Vanity to expose his scandalous Inadversions to the View and Scorn of every body It is well seen why this Dean has preach'd against Philosophy Because he hath very little himself He has heard of Essence Properties Operations essential Reasons and not knowing well what they mean he guesses they are things that a zealous Preacher ought to bestir himself against A little more Zeal and Ignorance might have qualified him to be one of my Lords the Inquisitors in the Inquisition-Office at Lisbon where lately they condemned an English Mare to be burnt as a Witch because she could signify the Hour of the Day on a Watch or Clock could dance to a Fiddle with several such little Feats as are easily taught to Beasts Some Persons interceded with the Holy Fathers for the Mare telling 'em she had been shown all over Christendom and that these Tricks had been often taught to other docile Beasts especially to Elephants But the Fathers as zealous as some body else against what they did not understand answered she shall be burnt for admitting she is not a Witch be sure coming from England she is a Heretick He says Lastly This that the Question is about Essences Vnions Properties is all the Incomprehensibleness that can be charged on the Doctrines of the Trinity and Incarnation For my part to deal frankly after all the bustle and noise that has been made on both sides about Mysteries and Incomprehensibles I know no Incomprehensibleness or Mystery in the Catholick Doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation I mean as they are explained and declared by the Church and now received by the Unitarians themselves not as they are perverted and misrepresented by a little Faction that have learned from Dr. Cudworth to call themselves Realists as if their Tritheism were the only real Trinity The Church teaches that there is but one Eternal All-perfect Spirit but one infinite spiritual Substance and this is what we indifferently call GOD the Divinity the Deity the Divine Nature the Divine Essence or Substance As to the distinction of Persons in the Deity to use the Words of the Bishop of Worcester When we consider a Divine Essence there can be no distinction conceived in it but by different Modes of Subsistence or what is the same different relative Properties The Trinity then is the Divine Essence Godhead or Deity consider'd under three different Modes of Subsistence which are called Relative Properties because they distinguish and because a threefold Relation arises in the Deity from them and Persons they are called because distinguishing characterizing Properties whether in a common Nature or in particular Natures or Substances when considered with the Nature or Substance make what antient and constant Custom nameth Persons These Modes or Properties are by some more particularly described St. Austin and from him the Divines of the Schools insist upon Intellectus Notitia Amor or Original Mind or Wisdom the Logos or reflex Wisdom generated by Mind and the Spiration of Divine Love The first as generating is named the Father the second being generated by a condescension to humane Language is called the Son the third being a Spiration has the name of Spirit I know not as I said what Mystery or Incomprehensibleness there is in this account which has been the Language and Explication of the Church ever since St. Austin and not of the Latin Church only but of the Greek as I intend to prove at large whenever leisure and a fit opportunity shall serve I see plainly that the occasion of calling the Trinity a Mystery except only among the Unlearned or not Learned in Scholastick and Philosophical Terms and the various Acceptations of them I say the occasion of calling the Doctrine of the Trinity a Mystery was this because the term Persons and again Father Son and Spirit are used concerning the Deity in a very different Sense from their Import or Meaning when used of Men or other created Beings For all humane Persons and Father and Son among Men are distinguished not only by different Modes and Properties but by distinct Substances Intellects and Wills but the Deity is but one Essence or spiritual Substance with one Understanding Will and Energy in number Thus the Idea of Persons and of Father Son and Spirit in God implying a Notion so very different from the meaning of the same terms when spoken of Men and created Beings 't was thought sit to say they are used concerning God in a mystical Sense concerning other Beings in a profane or common Sense A Sense of Words or Terms not so usually applied or rather contrary to the vulgar and secular Use of them was named Mystery at first I judg only by the less Learned afterwards to conciliate the greater Reverence to the Article by the more Learned also As to the Incarnation The Doctrine of the