Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	humane_a	person_n	trinity_n	4,500	5	10.5435	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41099	The maxims of the saints explained, concerning the interiour life by the Lord Arch-bishop of Cambray &c. ; to which are added, Thirty-four articles by the Lord Arch-Bishop of Paris, the Bishops of Meaux and Chartres, (that occasioned this book), also their declaration upon it ; together with the French-King's and the Arch-Bishop of Cambray's letters to the Pope upon the same subject.; Explication des maximes des saints sur la vie interieure. English	Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-, 1651-1715.; Fénelon, François de Salignac de La Mothe-, 1651-1715. Correspondence.; Louis XIV, King of France, 1638-1715. Correspondence.; Noailles, Louis-Antoine de, 1651-1729.; Godet des Marais, Paul, 1647-1709.; Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 1627-1704. Instruction sur les estats d'oraison, où sont exposées les erreurs des faux mystiques de nos jours.	1698 (1698)	Wing F675; ESTC R6318	100,920	267

Soul to take up with a bare acquiesce with its own just Condemnation and Reprobation Moreover in such a state it will be to no purpose nay intolerable to speak to him of the Rule of Faith in relation to the goodness of God that is extensive to all Men or to offer him Reasons for his satisfaction All these things are clearly rejected by the Thirty Four Articles when an absolute consent is not allowed of in any probations or tryals God forbid it should be so this is a false pre-supposition and impossible that other Article being premised wherein all despair is excluded and much less should the Director of ones Conscience be allowed to suffer Souls simply to acquiesce with their own Condemnation and just reprobation But on the contrary he is required not to suffer any such thing to be He is so far from being advised not to preach the goodness of God clearly and distinctly as the said Book asserts that he ought to be ordered in conformity to St. Francis de Sales to assure those afflicted Souls that they shall never be forsaken of God and that his goodness is not only general towards all Men but that the effects of the Divine Mercy is more especially extended unto them Again you have in the Articles all Virtues both Divine and Moral set forth and distinguished with their Motives but in the said Books endeavours are used to render the distinction there made obscure by these words Pure Love doth of it self constitute the Internal Life it 's the only Principle and sole Motive thereof all other Motives are taken away save only Charity But the reason whereby Charity is even made to subsist seems also to be taken away when it is said that this Love becomes by turns to be every distinct Virtue but it seeks after no Virtue as it is a Virtue and so neither is Faith sought for as Faith nor Hope as Hope nor even Charity it self which is the life and form of Virtue as a Virtue And so allowing these Propositions to be true all Virtues are debased and thrown out of doors pure Love will have no other effect than to hinder us to be studious of Virtue and no one shall cultivate the same better than he that neglects it which makes way for this extravagant and to this day unheard of proposition that Mystick Saints exclude the practice and acts of Virtue from this state which are Paradoxes that divert the Mind from the study of Virtue and impose strangely upon Spiritual Persons and render the very name of Virtue it self suspicious and odious Now we come to another Proposition that is very agreeable to what precedes that transformed Souls may and ought according to the present Discipline to confess their Venial Sins to ask pardon for their faults and to pray for the Remission of their Sins not for their own purification and deliverance but as 't is a thing agreeable to the will of God which clearly overthrows the right and intrinsical motive of Repentance and the same is contrary to our Fifteenth Article Besides we cannot allow that the Confession of Venial Sins is to be referred only to the discipline of the present times As for Concupiscence being perfectly routed out of some Souls though they are but very few where the sensible effects thereof are suspended or else where the Flesh has been a long time subjected to the Spirit what the said Book says in Relation thereunto is manifestly contradicted by our Seventh and Eighth Articles taken out of the Councils whence the Author is brought to such a pass as to extenuate the usefulness and necessity of Mortification notwithstanding the practice of the Apostles and Saints to the contrary and this tends to favour the Doctrine disallowed of in the Eighteenth Article of our Censure As for what concerns Contemplation we find in the said Book that when 't is pure and direct it 's not taken up willingly with any sensible imagination with any distinct and nameable Idea that is with any limited and particular Idea of the Divine Nature but that the same is confined to an Idea that is purely intellectual and abstracted from an Infinite Being And thus Contemplation cannot have the attributes of God nor the Divine Persons in the Trinity nor consequently the Humane Nature of Christ for an Object of its own choice but only by the representation which God makes of the same unto him and by the instinct and impression of peculiar Grace because the Mind does not voluntarily adhere to these Objects as if neither the goodness of the thing it self nor the exhortations of the Holy Scripture nor the choice of ones own Will in conjunction with common Grace were not sufficient to make a Man seek after them These Principles tend to this conclusion that Contemplative Souls are in both Conditions deprived of the distinct view of Christ and of his presence by Faith that is both in the very beginning of their Contemplations and in their Tryals and these Conditions may last a long time Neither is the Party afraid to reject the distinct view of Christ to the very intervals of Contemplation as if to contemplate Christ was to descend from the height and purity of Contemplation as the Beguardians were wont to say By which Proceedings and Subtilties false Contemplators are furnish'd with excuses who take no delight in our Saviour Christ Jesus and are not freely carried into a contemplation of him and who remove the Divine Attributes and Sacred Persons in the Trinity far from it and separate distinct Acts of Faith therefrom thereby eluding the 1 2 3 4. and 24 Articles We read in the said Treatise that 't is never lawful to prevent the work of grace and that a Man is to expect nothing from himself by the way of his own industry and endeavours By which Proposition and all the rest that is contained in the Eleventh Article of the Book it appears upon exact examination that that act of the free will which is properly called excitation is destroyed those words of the Prophet David I will prevent his face and that other my Prayer shall prevent thee are thrown out of doors as is also that Maxim of St. Augustin whereon the whole dispensation of Divine Grace relies He cannot be helpt on unless he endeavour to do something of his own accord that famous distinction of Spiritual Men is at the same time destroyed who by common consent have distinguished between those acts that are the product of ones own industry and endeavours and those acts that are infused motitions which are wrought by God's act or impulse without any mixture of a mans effort therewith These and the like Propositions overthrow or at least obscure the 11. 25. and 26 Articles We do in the same Articles reject that continued Act which the Quietists have introduced into the state of perfection as being absurd in it self and foreign to the Scriptures and Fathers and the Author rejects the same also