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	union_n	11,677	5	9.6253	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70687	Doctor Wallis's letter touching the doctrine of the blessed Trinity answer'd by his friend.	Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719.	1691 (1691)	Wing N1506A; ESTC R211864	15,046	16

of excellence that is the Gospel Decree as it is taken also in Titus 1.3 where the Apostle Paul having mentioned the Truth which is after Godliness in hope of Eternal Life goes on and says which God that cannot lye promised decreed to promise or in purpose promised before the World began hath in due time manifested his Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 through preaching This Word was with or in God not yet manifested and the Word was God here God being the Predicate must have such a Sense as can agree to the Subject Word either most Divine as Spirit for Spiritual John 6.63 and the very term God Gal. 1.10 for the Doctrine of the Gospel and in the 18th Verse of this Chapter John 1. in the same Sense or as Grotius would have it for the Word of God but die former Sense seems far better All things were made by it to wit as a Rule or chief Design According to this Exposition the Word must not be taken for a Person in the first five Verses nor till the Evangelist had said in the sixth and seventh Verses That the Baptist being a Man sent of God was not the Light which was in the Word mention'd that is was not the Bringer or Preacher of the Light for that must be the Sense when a Man is said to be or not to be the Light But that which is denied of John is affirmed of another to whom he bare Witness and that was Jesus as appears afterwards He was the true Light that is Light-Bringer which coming into the World enlightneth every Man And now having laid a sufficient Ground for taking the Light in an improper Sense for Light-Bringer his meaning cannot easily be mistaken when in the fourteenth Verse he calls the same Man The Word that is the personal Word or Great Gospel-Prophet and says That The Word was was made or was born Flesh that is a Frail and Mortal Man not barely a Man for so the Word Flesh does always signify when it 's applied to Man and Christ is now a Man but not Flesh The Word wets made Flesh does not imply that this great Word Prophet or Messenger of that Word did exist before he was born no more than that Phrase in 1 Cor. 15.45 The first Man Adam was made a living Soul proves or implies that Adam did pre-exist before he was made a living Soul Here Sir I interposed and told my Gentleman That this Exposition seem'd very uncouth and strange I had never heard of it before and therefore it was not easy for me to apprehend it much more to receive it He readily consented to what I said and added That it 's a thing which makes Unitarian Interpretations seem forc'd and unnatural namely because we have imbib'd from our Youth and even from our Catechisms contrary Expositions But if they were both propos'd to one that had never heard of either of 'em before he was perswaded the Trinitarian Expositions would seem far more harsh and forc'd nay contradictious and absurd For to instance in this very Text of John what un-prejudiced Man could ever imagine that this Text should be the Ground of the Doctrine of Two Persons in God when nothing is more clear in Scripture and Reason than the Unity of God which necessarily implies the Unity of his Person I have been the larger in setting out this Exposition saith he because I knew it would be difficult for you to apprehend it There is yet another Exposition of this Scripture which is derived from the Great Grotius and may be found in the Brief History of the Vnitarians which I spoke of But I think I have said enough to convince any Man that is not extreamly prejudic'd that this is an obscure Scripture For as every one of these Senses finds some specious Grounds in the Text so never a one of them can clearly answer all the Objections that are levied against them and that of the Trinitarians least of all Therefore your Doctor writes either unlike a Divine or like a Censorious I will not say Malicious Person when he says If God say The Word was God and The Word was made Flesh shall we say not so only because we cannot tell How As if these Sayings were so clear that they admitted no Sense but his which understands by The Word an Eternally pre-existing Person whereas the term Ho Logos in Greek which we translate The Word Speech or Saying is found I suppose forty times in the New Testament taken impersonally for the Gospel or some Speech It 's Three and twenty times so used in this One Evangelist of St. John and for the most part oppos'd to the Person of Christ and on the other hand there is not one Text except this in 1 John 1.14 where it can reasonably signify a Person except we reckon that in 1 John 5.7 for one which I have shew'd to be uncertain and not to have the Authority of other Sacred Scripture As for that in Rev. 19.13 his Name is called The Word of God that is not the same with The Word simply and though it denote a Person yet it 's one whose Vesture was dipt in Blood which shews him to be a Man a glorious Captain Let all rational Men judge Whether it 's more reasonable to take a term in such Sense as it 's almost always to be found in in the same Divine Author than in the Sense of Philo a Jew or Plato a Heathen So that the Vnitarians have far the most reason to cry out of forc'd Interpretations whereby to deprive God of an incommunicable Attribute even his Unity And they defend these Interpretations with such Distinctions as are either not intelligible or which infer absurd Consequences Such are the Distinctions between the Essence and the Divine Persons of the threefold manner of Existence of God of Circumincession or the mutual Penetration or mutual Inexistence of the Divine Persons among themselves of God taken personally and essentially in Scripture of the Name Father sometimes signifying the Father alone sometimes the Father Son and Holy Ghost of the Eternal Generation or God's Eternal begetting a Son equal to himself and yet not another God of the Divine Operations within and without the Essence whence it is that the Internal are attributed to the Persons distinctly the External to them all Three though One only be named of the Incarnation or God the Son not being made a Man but joyning himself to a Man in an Hypostatical Union hence of two Natures in One Person of the Communication of Properties whereby that which is spoken of Christ's Divine Nature is understood to agree to him according to his Humane Nature and vice versâ and many more confounding Distinctions they use without which the Holy Scriptures cannot be understood in the Sense of Trinitarians but I am weary with reciting them Here he broke off and I rose to take my leave of him I told him as the truth is That I had long