Selected quad for the lemma: nature_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
nature_n	mystical_a	person_n	union_n	3,769	5	10.8414	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A44434	An exposition on the Lord's prayer with a catechistical explication thereof, by way of question and answer for the instructing of youth : to which is added some sermons on providence, and the excellent advantages of reading and studying the Holy Scriptures / by Ezekiel Hopkins ...	Hopkins, Ezekiel, 1634-1690.	1692 (1692)	Wing H2730; ESTC R17498	215,674	332

may persuade you to a diligent search and perusal of the Scriptures The Jews indeed were so exact or rather Superstitious in this that he was judged a despiser of those Sacred Oracles who did not readily know how often every Letter of the Alphabet occurred in them This preciseness God hath made use of to deliver down his word to us unvaried and uncorrupted It is not such a scrupulous search of the Scripture I now exhort you to but as God hath left it to us a rich Depositum a dear pledge of his Love and care so we should diligently attend to a rational and profitable study of it There are but two things in the general that commend any writing to us either that it discovers knowledge or directs practice that it informs the Judgment or reforms the Life Both of these are eminently the Characters of this Book of God And therefore David tells us Psal 19.7 The Law of God converts the Soul and makes wise the simple It is a light not only to our heads but it is a Lamp unto our Feet and a light unto our paths Psal 119.105 Let us consider it as to both First In point of knowledge as it perfects the understanding and so it will appear in sundry particulars how excellent a study it is For First The Scripture discovers unto us the knowledge of those truths that the most improved natural Reason could never sift out and are intelligible only by Divine Revelation God hath Composed two Books by the diligent study of which we may come to the knowledge of himself The Book of the Creatures and the Book of the Scriptures The Book of the Creatures is written in those great Letters of Heaven and Earth the Air and Sea and by these we may spell out somewhat of God He made them for our instruction as well as our service There is not a Creature that God hath breathed abroad upon the face of the Earth but it Reads us Lectures of his infinite Power and Wisdom So that it is no absurdity to say that they are all the Works of his mouth so they are all the works of his Hands The whole World is a speaking workmanship Rom. 1.20 The invisible things of God are clearly seen by the things that are made even his eternal Power and Godhead And indeed when we seriously consider how God hath poised the Earth in the midst of the Air and the whole World in the midst of a vast and boundless nothing how he hath hung out those glorious lights of Heaven the Sun the Moon and Stars and made paths in the Sky for their several courses how he hath laid the Sea on heaps and so girt it in that it may possibly overlook but not overflow the Land when we view the Variety Harmony and Law of the Creation our Reason must needs be very short if we cannot from these collect the infinite Wisdom Power and Goodness of the Creator So much of God as belong to these two great Attributes of Creator and Governour of the World the Book of Nature may plainly discover to us But then there are other more retired and reserved Notions of God other truths that nearly concern our selves and our eternal Salvation to know and believe which nature could never give the least glimpse to discover What Signature is there stampt upon any of the Creatures of a Trinity in Unity of the eternal Generation or temporal Carnation of the Son of God What Creature could inform us of our first fall and guilt contracted by it Where can we find the Copy of the Covenant of Works or of grace printed upon any of the Creatures All the great Sages of the World though they were Nature's Secretaries and ransack'd its abstrusest mysteries yet all their Learning and Knowledge could not discover the Sacred Mystery of a Crucified Saviour These are truths which Nature is so far from searching out that it can scarce receive them when revealed 1. Corinth 2.14 The natural Man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God neither can he know them because they are Spiritually discerned The light that can reveal these must break immediately from Heaven it self And so it did upon the Prophets Evangelists and Apostles the Pen-men of the Holy Scriptures And if it were their singular Privilege that the Holy Ghost should descend into their breasts and so possess them with Divine inspirations that what they spake or wrote became Oracular how little less is ours since the Scriptures reveal to us the very same truths which the Spirit revealed to them God heretofore spake in them and now he speaks by them unto us Their Revelations are become ours the only difference is that what God taught them by extraordinary inspiration the very same truths he teacheth us in the Scripture by the ordinary illumination of his Spirit Here therefore whilest we diligently converse in the Book of God we enjoy the privilege of Prophets The same word of God which came unto them comes also unto us and that without those severe preparations and strong agonies which sometimes they underwent before God would inspire them with the knowledge of his Heavenly truth That is the first Motive and Argument Secondly The knowledge which the Scripture teacheth is for the matter of it the most sublime and losty in the World All other sciences are but poor and beggarly Elements if compared with this What doth the Naturalist but only busie himself in digging a little drossie knowledge out of the Entrails of the Earth The Astronomer who ascends highest mounts no higher than the Coelestial Bodies the Stars and Planets which are but the out-works of Heaven But the Scripture pierceth much farther and lets us into Heaven it self There it discovers the Majesty and Glory of God upon his Throne the Eternal Son of God sitting at his right hand making a prevailing and Authoritative intercession for us The glittering train of Cherubims and Seraphims an innumerable company of Angels and the Spirits of Just Men made perfect So that indeed when you have this Book laid open before you you have Heaven it self and all the inconceivable glories of it laid open to your view What can be more sublime than the nature of God And yet here we have it so plainly described by all its most glorious Attributes and Perfections that the Scripture doth but beam forth light to an Eye of Faith whereby it may be inabled to see him who is invisible But if we consider those Gospel Mysteries the Scripture relates the Hypostatical Union of the Divine and Humane Nature in Christ's incarnation the Mystical Union of our persons to his by our believing that the Son of God should be Substituted in the stead of guilty Sinners that he who knew no sin should be made a Sacrifice for sin and the Justice of God become reconciled to Man through the blood of God these are Mysteries so infinitely profound as are enough to puzzle a whole College of