Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	father_n	person_n	trinity_n	5,759	5	10.0629	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60586	A sermon of the credibility of the mysteries of the Christian religion preached before a learned audience / by Tho. Smith ...	Smith, Thomas, 1638-1710.	1675 (1675)	Wing S4250; ESTC R10064	33,935	84

Natural Philosophy It is as great folly to attempt it as to expect it both arising from a wantonness of Wit which quickly looses it self in a Labyrinth of wild Opinions and pleasing it self with new Notions and Ideas is more and more perplext and entangled and is scarce ever reducible to a right and sober temper What ill success the Schoolmen have had in their attempts this way upon the Articles of Religion Christendome has long since had sad experience of these men guilty of the other extream would scarce acknowledg any thing of Mystery in it all things seemed so clear to them as if they had had a particular Revelation they have thrown open the Vail that covers the Ark they define boldly and obtrude their Conjectures for Oracles St. Paul and St. John shall be explained and proved by the Writings of Plato and Aristotle thus prostituting the Majesty of the Sacred Scriptures and corrupting the Simplicity of the Christian Religion by their niceties and subtilities of Distinctions and exposing it the more to the Cavils of Hereticks who observing the falseness of their Principles and the weakness and incompetency of their Proofs are more encouraged to reject the truth of it Hereby too a Contentious and Disputative Theology has been introduced in the Schools and unnecessary and bold questions started impossible to be resolved with any satisfaction which perplex and confound the Understanding and are so far from Building us up in our Holy Faith and from explaining the Doctrine of it that it has scarce suffered by any one thing more Some things we may understand but we see more to admire which with all our art and subtility we can never attain to It is enough that the Christian Religion doth perswade us by Rational Arguments to the acknowledgment of its Doctrine that it laies down sufficient grounds of the certainty and necessity of our Belief that it gives us all the assurance we can with any modesty pretend to and all the proofs the nature of the things proposed to our belief are capable of and will bear 'T is Faith in Christ that He is the Son of God and the Saviour of the World that denominates us Christians to deny this how excellent a Person soever we make him for Meekness and Holiness of Life is to renounce Christianity and in effect to turn Mahometans for they acknowledg Christ to have been a Great Prophet to have been born of a Virgin to have been assumed into Heaven and the like Satis sit pro universis rationibus Author Deus as the same Salvian has it This is that that is equivalent to ten thousand Demonstrations this will level all those objections that are raised against the Mysteries of Christianity that will silence all the Sophistry of Corrupt Reason and cut off all those Arguments which presumptuous Men are wont to make and certainly if we rightly consider it the Mysteries of Christianity as they are proposed in the Scriptures are by reason of the great difficulties that attend the conception of them so far from being incredible that they ought thereby to become more credible that is they are more worthy of the infinite Majesty and perfection of God by how much they are above the reach of our Faculties 2. Let us remember that Christianity is a Mystery of Godliness and consequently that the Great Mysteries of it ought to have an influence upon our Lives and Practices As on the one hand to say that these Great Articles of our Faith are nice Speculations and the explicit Belief of them as they are proposed not necessary and to question that Sense of them in which they have always been received by the Catholick Church is to undermine the Fundamentals of Christianity So on the other side it takes off very much from the obligation to Obedience and dulls those affections which a reflexion on these Great Mysteries must needs cause in the mind That God should send his Son into the world to discover this Mystery to us in Person and in order to our Redemption was the Effect of an Infinite Wisdom and of an Infinite Love that God should be Manifested in the Flesh for our sakes and submit himself to the weaknesses and imperfections and contumelies of the humane nature that the Second Person of the Trinity Co-essential and Co-eternal with the Father should condescend to assume flesh and therein to suffer a reflection on this cannot but fill us with admiration and love One great part of the Worship we owe to God consists in our admiring his infinite Perfections all our Praises and Thanksgivings are but the outward significations of this and faint expressions of our thoughts which loose themselves in the contemplation of them Now these Mysteries afford us eternal matter for our admiration Besides what greater obligation to Obedience can there possible be than the Revelation of this Mystery upon which our Salvation is founded A Holy and Religious Life then is the best evidence of our belief of these Articles of Christianity beyond all subtility of Disputation This especially concerns us who are dignified with the Holy Priesthood who are Ministers of Christ and Stewards of the Mysteries of God This shews that we do more than barely assent to the truth of them when they produce in us all both Priests and Lay these effects for which they were principally discovered that so living in obedience to the will of God revealed to us by his Son whom he sent out of his own Bosom and in all holy conversation and godliness we may at last be admitted to the sight and fruition of his glorious Godhead to sing Praises and Hallelujah's to the blessed Trinity for ever and ever Amen Appendix IT must be confessed that this Verse is not to be met with in several Old MSS. as particularly in the mentioned Alexandrine now in the Kings Library at St. Jame's brought out of Egypt by Cyrillus Lucari when he removed from the See of Alexandria to the Patriarchate of Constantinople who was strangled by the Turks in the year 1638 and sent to K. Charles I. though not so antient I believe as is pretended as if it had been wrote by the hand of Thecla an Egyptian Woman of an honourable Extraction and a Martyr for the Christian Faith condemned to the Amphitheatre under Dioclesian as Eusebius relates in the Supplement to the Eight Book of his Ecclesiastical History which is found in several Copies if it be his cap. 3. before the first Council of Nice which is barely said and conjectured and I suppose that it may be proved that the Vatican exemplar is the more Genuine of the two and comes nigher the Original It is omitted also in an ancient Manuscript in the Archives of our Colledg Library containing the New Testament entire except the Apocalyps with the Psalter and several Hymns collected out of the Old Testament the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 being also wanting in the eight verse and in several others