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	son_n	substance_n	12,161	5	9.0981	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29395	Some reasons why Robert Bridgman, and his wife, and some others in Hvntington-shire, have left the society of the people called Quakers, and have join'd in communion with the Church of England and some passages contained in a letter of George Whitehead to R.J., and R. Bridgman's reply to the same / by Robert Bridgman.	Bridgman, Robert.; Whitehead, George, 1636?-1723.	1700 (1700)	Wing B4494; ESTC R18987	9,724	25

SOME REASONS WHY Robert Bridgman and his Wife And some others in HUNTINGTON-SHIRE Have left the Society of the People called QUAKERS AND Have join'd in Communion with the Church of ENGLAND And some Passages contained in a Letter of George Whitehead to R. J. and R. Bridgman's Reply to the same By ROBERT BRIDGMAN LONDON Printed for Brab Aylmer at the Three Pigeons over-against the Royal Exchange in Cornhil and Char. Brome at the Gun at the West-end of St. Paul's Church-yard MDCC ROBERT BRIDGMAN's REASONS For Leaving the QUAKERS SOME REASONS WHY ROBERT BRIDGMAN and others Have left the QUAKERS IT has been matter of Sorrow and Shame unto me and many others that have now left the Quakers Communion that we so long professed the Christian Religion whilst we remained so ignorant of the fundamental Principles of it the Doctrine of the Trinity or three Persons of one Nature and Substance in the Godhead The Incarnation of the second Person or Son of God our Lord Jesus Christ. The Satisfaction and Atonement made unto God the Father by his Obedience and Death upon the Cross. The Resurrection and Ascention of his Body and Person into Heaven His remaining in our Nature at the right hand of God in the Glory of his Father our Head High-Priest and Intercessour The Faith and full persuasion of his second last and outward appearance and coming again to raise the Dead Bodys of the Saints and of all Men in the great Day and solemn Assize of all Nations in which an Infallible and final Sentence will be passed upon all according to the Deeds done in the Body agreeable to the plain and positive sense of divers Texts in Holy Scripture These Doctrines and the Faith of them wrought by the Operation of the Holy Ghost the third Person in the Blessed Trinity are Essential or Fundamental Parts and Principles of the Christian Religion without which in the true Faith of them we cannot be saved in this or in the World to come And therefore 't is of great Weight and Consequence yea of the greatest Importance to every one under a Christian Profession to be duly Instructed and rightly Informed in these great and necessary Truths of the Christian Religion and without which in some good measure no Man can be rightly denominated a Christian Man or Believer The Faith of God as a Great and Mercyful Creator and the Seal of his Power and Providence in and over all his Creatures is indeed a necessary work and our Love and Obedience to the Law and Light with which he instructs and enlightens our Nature is a pretious and necessary condition on our parts to sit and prepare us for the due reception of the Christian Faith and indeed without some experience of this sort 't is in vain to pretend to any Religion much more to the Christian Religion Yet the order and progress of our Faith and Hope ought to be duly distinguished for to reduce all Religion and Faith towards God under a Profession and Experience of Light and Truth without any distinction of common and special Illumination or Grace is dangerous to the Soul and very destructive to the real Foundation of the Christian Religion How far the People call'd Quakers in general and some of their most noted and approved Authors and Ministers in particular have Ignorantly and Blasphemously opposed this work of Faith and Reformation begun and carried on in the Souls of many by hearing the Word and Doctrine of the Gospel declared in the Holy Scriptures from Men qualified to Read and Expound the same is now become so evident to such whose Eyes the Lord in Mercy hath opened that to contradict or deny it must bespeak very great Ignorance or Obstinacy How far they have withstood and rejected the Institutions of our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ in the due administration of them and the sincere and faithful practise of such as are convinced of their Duty and Profit in receiving them is also as evident to such as have had occasion to deal with them or peruse their Writings constantly published from their beginning And how under pretence of higher Attainments and farther Glory a Spirit of Pride and great Uncharitableness hath possessed them is sufficiently manifest by its fruits in Censuring and Reproaching all other denominations of Professed Christians whom they set to a great distance and account as the World which yet lieth in Wickedness And by a shew of Spirituality Simplicity Humility and Patience have deceived themselves and many of the most ignorant and inadvertent Professors who inconsiderately and rashly conclude they are the most holy and reformed People and Church of God because they appear in a more sedate retired and self denying manner as a Society and Body of People than generally is observed of other Societies But whoever arrives to any tolerable understanding of sound Christian Principles and attends an impartial Examination of what the Quakers preach and publish shall not only find them very disagreeable one with another but in general very opposite to true Christianity And that which also very much exposeth them to contempt with all True Intelligent and Religious minds is the liberty they take in their Apologies and Defences to quible and shuffle with dull and apparent Sophistry 'T is now become their repeated Practise to alter the sense of their own as well as their Opponents writings by adding or diminishing of words by Transposing them by playing upon such as are equivocal by connecting Matter that lies disjoynted and disjoynting Matter that lies connected by questioning the autography of their own Prints when they cannot otherwise vindicate or defend them And thus they inherit the Jesuites practice ' tho through want of their Education they fall short in their skill and by this very means ruine their Cause notwithstanding their Zeal and specious Pretences 'T is a mercyful Providence so many are delivered from the snare of their Spirit which with soundings and Echoes works on the Imagination and Fancy of the more Ignorant and Credulous Did they regard Truth and Justice without respecting Persons in Judgment they would have never declined to be brought to the Test before any competent number of Sober and Judicious Persons without making such Pleas and Pretences to excuse and be excused as they have done Being detected they became greatly inraged and breath out their spite in Prophecies and Curses both in private and publick against such as oppose them whilst they are blessing and magnifying themselves and their Faction in such flights of Devotion as allarms and amuzes the Ignorant and Unwary The account given by George Keith in his Books and Narratives of Matter of Fact so well attested is such a Load upon them that they are very uneasie and not daring to appear to justifie themselves are labouring to abuse and misrepresent him They have endeavoured to insinuate that Covetousness Pride and Envy are the motive of his practice An Apostate a Judas a Renegado are the

Heavens and he being now in Heaven in his Body out of the reach of our Bodily Senses One end of the Supper is to Receive and Establish the Faith of his Existence and assurance of his coming in his Body to Judge us and those Arguments of Dr. Cranmer and Ridley which George Whitehead recites were at that time advanced to oppose the Erroneous Conceit of Transubstantiation See the Book of Martyrs page 74. Where t is said that to believe the Wafer and Wine to be Transubstantiated into the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ Argument the second it varieth from the Articles of Faith He ascended into Heaven and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father from whence and not from any other place saith St. Augustin he shall come to judge both the quick and the dead Thirdly It destroyeth and taketh away the Institution of the Lord's Supper which was commanded only to be used and continued until the Lord Himself should come if therefore He be now really present in the Body of his Flesh then must the Supper cease For a Remembrance is not of a thing present but of a thing past and absent and there is a difference between Remembrance and Presence and as one of the Fathers saith a Figure is in vain where the thing figured is present Here you see the Fathers and Martyrs intended one thing and George Whitehead wou'd make them to intend another the Supper is a Figure and Sign not only of the Inward and Spiritual Grace received by the Faithful in their partaking of it but also of the Body of Christ now absent in Heaven the Faith of which being lost among the Quakers and so much denyed and opposed by their obstinate pervertion the reason of the Institution appears the more necessary and the frequent and due practice of it appears the more seasonable and 't is to be hoped that these poor Elements as they are pleased to call them with the Blessing of God at the Administration and Reception of them will prove two such Pillars and Supports of the Christian Faith and Experience that the Combination of Hell shall not prevail tho her Gates many ways are set open to furnish the Army of Abaddon 'T is a specious pretence the Quakers have made to the Virtue and Efficacy of the Inward Principle as having therein an Art of Extraction by which they perform as by one single Still all that can be proposed from the variety in a Laboratory This very Comparison and Illustration I heard from William Penn in a publick Meeting at Grace-Church-Street and as much he delivers in his Primitive Christianity where he Rants at a very unreasonable rate and as much disparages the Reputation of their Principle by the extravagancy of his Notion as George Whitehead has done by the Irregularity of his practice I am sure no Principle of Truth ever taught William Penn to advance such a Notion of the Composition of Man as he delivers in p. 71. of his Primitive Christianity Man says he as I said just now is a Composition of both Worlds his Body is of this his Soul of the other World by the Body the Soul looks into and beholds this World and by the World it beholds God the World that is without End So that the World without End and God are with him Terms Synonimous and of this endless World is with him a part of Man's Composition his Soul is of its Essence and beholds its being a kin to God not only by a Relation but in Substance And in his Book called Judas and the Jews p. 130. he hath the following Words The new despised flock of God shall rest with him in that World which never had beginning and is without end thus he gives us a Description of God and of the Soul of Man its being a part of him And thus after all the Shuffling and Cutting about the Soul and Soul of the Soul 't is easie to see how naturally William Penn jumps in with George Fox in his Notion of the Soul so fully exposed and explained by George Keith in his fourth Narrative p. 61 62 63 64 65 66 67. And as in this his Book entituled Primitive Christianity he defines the Soul to be part of God so in his Book entituled The Invalidit● of John Faldo p. 365. he defines the Nature of the Body and opposes the conclusion of his Opponent who speaking of the Resurrection of the Body says it shall have the same Matter tho' not the same Grossness it shall have the same Essential Form tho not the same Accidents William Penn's Answer will not allow that he ever read in Scripture any thing favourably towards such a Conclusion His words are I never read yet of a Body having the same Matter and not the same Grossness the same Substance and Essence and not the same Accidents by which account we must believe that either William Penn never read the Scripture or that he believes the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ and the Bodies of those that arose after his Resurrection were changed in Substance For according to him if they had the same Substance they must also retain the same Grossness and Accidents and consequently that the Body of our Lord Jesus now in Heaven is a gross and mortal Body if they believe he has the same Body now which he had upon the Earth And yet notwithstanding this sort of Reasoning the Quakers Objections and constant Clamour against all sorts of Christians has been to insinuate the Carnality of their Notions And thus do they raise such a dust of Confusion by their Doctrines and Distinctions that many poor People are led entangled in a Mist of thick Darkness I could give a large and particular Relation of sundry Conferences I have had with several of Note among them appointed to hear and examine my Reasons for declining their Meetings from whom I cou'd never yet obtain any plain and positive Answer to this necessary and seasonable Question Whether our Lord Jesus Christ is now in Heaven above or without us in the true and intire Nature of Man glorified the same for Substance which he had on Earth and forever to come united with the Godhead But finding this Doctrine so fully and so safely expressed in the Articles of the Church of England as also those other necessary and essential Principles of the Christian Religion inclined me to make a farther Search into the Matter and Manner of her Publick Worship which appearing to me so sound and instructive I could not in Conscience delay my adventuring to make some Approaches towards her Communion And through a merciful Providence it has pleased Almighty God so to influence and to bless due means of Instruction that my dear Wife with several of our Neighbours who were also in Communion with the People called Quakers are become religiously affected with the Publick Worship and I hope the Lord will preserve us in the Sincerity of our Intentions