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	union_n	3,953	5	9.3015	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47737	The charge of Socinianism against Dr. Tillotson considered in examination of some sermons he has lately published on purpose to clear himself from that imputation, by way of a dialogue betwixt F. a friend of Dr. T's and C. a Catholick Christian : to which is added some reflections upon the second of Dr. Burnet's four discourses, concerning the divinity and death of Christ, printed 1694 : to which is likewise annexed, A supplement upon occasion of A history of religion, lately published, supposed to be wrote by Sir R-- H--d [Robert Howard] : wherein likewise Charles Blount's Great Diana is considered, and both compar'd with Dr. Tillotson's sermons / by a true son of the Church.	Leslie, Charles, 1650-1722.	1695 (1695)	Wing L1124; ESTC R19586	72,850	37

Scriptures others all of it but some Particular Books which pleas'd their Fancies Others own'd other Scriptures never Received by the Church and publickly allow'd and practised Altering the Holy Scriptures which they called Mending of them and some of them said that Christ was begot by Joseph like other Men Nay by their Latudinarian Principles Mahomet himself and his Alcoran must be admitted into their Confederacy who speak more honourably of Christ than the Socinians themselves and deserve the Name of Vnitarians even in their own Sense as much as they can pretend to In the Church of Rome if you will but own Expressly the Authority of their Church to the Height they Assert it you shall be own'd a good Catholick and excused by an Implicit Faith in all other Articles of the Creed tho you be never so ignorant or hold particular Opinions different from the Church So with the Socinians if you will but reject the Consulstantiality of Christ you shall have Liberty to make him a God or a Creature or what you will You may talk of his Eternity his True and Real God-Head His being God of God Light of Light c. They have distinctions for all these And tho they love not nor like the Expressions yet they can make a hard shift with them They can puzzle People's Understandings tho by very foolish and contradictory Arguments How God by his Infinit Power might have bestowed True and Real Divinity upon another and that even from Eternity for what he can do to day he might have done Yesterday and so backwards for ever But then this would have been only a voluntary Act of God and what he did he might not have done if he had so pleased and consequently that this Adopted God tho from Eternity was still a Precarious tho a True and Real God and yet not properly to be called a Creature that is like Finite Things produc'd in time But on the other hand to make another Person Consubstantial that is of the same Nature with God the Father this infers the necessity of a Plurality of Persons in the very Nature of the Godhead and so to be of the Essence of God as Faculties are of the Essence of the Soul so that it could not be a Soul without the Faculties nor a God without the Persons and tho one depends upon another and springs from another yet they are all equally Necessary Co-Eternal and Co-Equal as being all of the same Nature This grows too hard for a Distinction and our Vnitarians as they call themselves will compound for any thing so you keep off from this Consubstantiality And therefore the Christian Church could find no other Criterion to discover the subtle Heresie of these pretended Vnitarians of several Degrees and Classes who tho differing never so widely among themselves yet all join and reckon themselves as Brethren against the most Glorious and most ample Revelations of the ever Blessed Trinity Recorded in the Holy Scriptures of God And whoever refuse this Test cannot be accounted sound in the Christian Faith But where there is unwillingness it will one way or another shew it self and it is easie to distinguish betwixt those Expressions which proceed from a hearty Conviction and those which are taken up out of force and necessity to clear our selves from an Imputation which lies upon Us. This your Dr. discovers pretty plainly in the present Case for being necessitated in a Vindication of himself as to the Doctrin of the Trinity to use the Word Persons he does it as brought to it against his Will very grudgingly and slightly he does pass it over and cannot conceal his Inclination rather to the Distinction used by the Anti-Trinitarian Hereticks to elude those Texts which speak of the Trinity which is that there are three Differences in the Deity which are express'd in Scripture by the three Denominations of Father Son and Holy Ghost and which they allow are spoken of after the manner of Persons as Wisdom is said to build hee House c. But they will not allow them to be truly and properly Persons or different Subsistences but only three several acceptations of the same Person according to the different Manner of his Revealing himself upon several occasions And thus they may make as many Persons in this Sense of theirs as their Fancy pleases to suggest And in this Sense and no other the Dr. is pleased to let the word Persons pass since we must have it tho at the same time he gives it such a stab as shews that he is by no means reconciled to it But take his own words which he gives as his determination of the whole Matter and the utmost to which he will be brought Serm. 2. p. 120. Here then I fix my foot That there are three Differences in the Deity which the Scripture speaks of by the Names of Father Son and Holy Ghost and every where speaks of them as we use to do of three distinct Persons And therefore I see no reason why in this Argument we should Nicely abstain from using the word Person tho I remember that St Jerom does somewhere desire to be excused from it Thus the Dr. and according to this where he has occasion to name the Three Persons of God he adds to explain himself his own word Differences which he likes better thus p. 122. The Three Differences or Persons in the Divine Nature expressed in Scripture by the Names of Father Son and Holy Ghost c. and so in other places And here He has fixt his foot you shall have no more of him if you be not pleased with this you must let it alone and trouble him no more about Socinianism Arianism or any of these like Matters But this somewhere of St Jerome's was a strange Quotation for so Grave a Dr. to bring into the Pulpit upon so serious a Subject if he thought it so For I fancy he spoke this with a Smile saying to himself I 'll make this poor Auditory believe that I have a place of St. Jerome under my Thumb to overthrow all this business of different Persons in God which word since they force me to use I 'll be revenged on it But I will not name the Place in St. Jerome for there are Rogues will be Examining of it and put me to a great deal of trouble It will do well enough for a Squib among the Crowd But these poor hopes are vanished for this Dr. has already been taken to task and stands Corrected for this by a much more Learned Person than himself The Author of the Animadversions upon Dr. Sherlock's Book Entituled A Vindication of the Holy and ever Blessed Trinity c. Printed 1693. There Chap. 8. p. 265. This Place of St. Jerome is quoted And it is shewn that St. Jerom did not Scruple to use the word Person or desired to be excused as our Author comically words it by way of wit but on the contrary that he did use

these forms in which he appeared into his own Person for then wou'd have follow'd the Communicatio Idiomatum such Fire or Body in which he appear'd would have been truly and Really God and God wou'd have been that Fire or that Body which as it is Blasphemy to affirm so this shews us a stricter Notion of Impersonation than the Dr. sets up which is only the Minds Commanding and Governing of matter In which Sense God must be Impersinated with every Body in the World for he Commands and Governs them Absolutely and he Inhabits and Dwells in every one of them for in Him they have their Being The Dr. in his Vindicatory Letter to Dr. Williams before Quoted p 99. adds further That this indwelling is a vital one like that of the Souls dwelling in the Body and not an assisting one like Inspiration or the Gift of Tongues or Miracles But this will not hinder the Consequence above told For in God we Live and Move as well as have our Being in Him Acts. 17.28 Therefore He may be even a VITAL Indwelling and yet short of Impersenation He says That this Indwelling of the Word in Christ is LIKE that ●f the Souls dwelling in the Body It may be like it but not of the same sort Every like we say is not the same He says above in the same page That the Vnion of the Divine and Human Nature in Christ is represented in Scripture as the Compounding one Person as much as in other Men the Vnion of Soul and Body makes one Man This indeed is fairly said if it be as sincerely intended For if this be so there must follow the Communitio Idiomatum betwixt the Divine and Human Natures in Christ as much as betwixt the Soul and Body of Man Which the Dr. will not allow For if he allow'd this there cou'd be no Cause of Dispute And if he had thought thus he cou'd never have explain'd it by the Indwelling of God in the Cloud nor found any scruple against the word Person nor have been forc'd to new and uncouth Expositions of Personality Nor wou'd he have made a Distinction as before told betwixt the Man-hoed of Christ or the Man Christ being advanc'd into God as the Athanasian Creed expresses it or the Communicating Divine Honour to Him as Dr. Burnet words it p. 120. of his Discourse above Quoted I say if he had Really and Truly believ'd the Impersonation of the Divine and Human Nature in Christ as the Soul and Body are Impersonated in Man as he would seem to speak in his Vindication he could not have made a Distinction between Christ's Assumption into an High Dignity or the Communicating Divine Honour to Him and betwixt the Dwelling of the Eternal Word Bodily in him For if by Bodily here he had meant a Bedily Impersonation as betwixt MANS Soul and Body then that Man CHRIST had not only Divine Honour Communicated to Him which the Dr. denies by the Indwelling of the Word but He Himself was the Word But the Dr's true meaning is that the Bodily dwelling of the Word in the Man Christ was only a dwelling in his Body without Impersonation or Communicating His Divine Attributes to Him and therefore that no Divine Honour was thereby Communicated to Him which the Dr. asserts as above Quoted in the 120th p. of his Discourse And instead of correcting this in his Vindication he re-asserts it more positively in another as he thinks more odious Form of words For there p. 96. He puts the Case of a Mans being made a God and that was so called and was to be worshipped as such And this he calls a new Doctrine that it seems says he scarce conceivable how any one can entertain this and yet retain any value for Religion I must confess says he I cannot and it is so natural for a Man to judge of others by himself that I do not think others do it or indeed can do it These are his words And by this it is very plain that he does not think the Man Christ to be God or that Christ is God and Man but only God in Man And consequently that there is no Hypostatical that is Personal Union betwixt the Divine and Human Nature of Christ as there is betwixt the Soul and Body in Man For if there were then the Communicatio Idiomatum must necessarily follow that is the Properties or Attributes of each of their Natures would belong to the Person who did partake of both And the Man Christ would be as truly God as he was Man And as for the Dr's Bug-bear word of a Man's being made Gods with which he thinks to frighten us as if God could be made let him know that there are none so absurd as to think that God can be made and that this is not the same thing as a Man's being made God because tho' the God-head cannot be made and in that Sense nothing can be made God yet a Man by being taken into a Personal Union with God becomes really God as much as the Body becomes a Man by its Personal Union with an Human Soul Notwithstanding of which Vnion the two different Natures of Body and Soul remain nothing the less distinct and Unconfounded in themselves and in their several Properties Incommunicable to each other tho' all equally Predicated of the same Person who partakes of both Natures And therefore Dr. Burnet by this Phrase in this place does plainly declare against the Divinity of Christ and that he neither does nor can believe it Nay he Ridicules it and Blasphemes it in setting up the Notion of a Man that was made a God And tho' as he says p. 99. The Vnion of the Divine and Human Nature in Christ irrepresented in Scripture as the compounding one Person as much as in other Men the Vnion of Soul and Body makes one Man He must mean by this only that this was a Comparison or Representation used in Scripture whereby the Dwelling of the Word in Christ was in some manner shadowed out or represented not that it was strictly so For if he had thought it strictly so that the Divine and Human Natures in Christ were as much Impersonated as Soul and Body in other Men he would never have made it an absurdity that a Man was made God more than that the matter of a Man's Body is made a Man or part of the Person of a Man He could never have stumbled upon such broad Blasphemy as to say That no Divine Honour was Communicated to Christ and that he was not our Lord by an Assumption into an High Dignity as before quoted Hence we must learn how to understand many of his Plausible sayings as thus p. 127. of his Discourse where having Explain'd Personality as above told to mean no more than a Power in the Soul to Command and Govern the Body he brings in a Plausible Sentence for the Personal Union of the Divine and Human Natures in Christ but yet with a