Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	father_n	holy_a	trinity_n	2,831	5	9.8465	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56742	Discourses upon several practical subjects by the late Reverend William Payne ... ; with a preface giving some account of his life, writings, and death.	Payne, William, 1650-1696.; Powell, Joseph, d. 1698.	1698 (1698)	Wing P902; ESTC R21648	184,132	418

our natural faculties or infinite goodness has not been pleas'd to reveal to us proposes it as a Compendious method to all usefull knowledge not to trouble our selves or others with what God has reveal'd because we do not understand all that belongs to its nature or manner of existence and yet after all this concession of the imperfection of our knowledge and that there are some things we cannot comprehend affirms that God and Eternity are no Mysteries for want of an Adaequate and compleat Idea of them and that Infinity and Eternity are as little Mysterious as that two and three make five these are certainly at present great difficulties but he has promis'd to solve them all only he refers this to a second Book but he is so cautious as not to limit himself to any time for the publishing it that depending upon health and leisure which he very wisely says are things in no Mans power to command at his pleasure and yet are much more so than what he has so very vainly made a shew of undertaking The Socinians may take it ill to be ranked with those who speak and write against Religion but 't is too apparent that they joyn with them in their attempts upon revealed Religion and with them carry those on with such Arguments as will at last bear very hard upon Natural which is not wholly without its Mysteries and God himself the belief of whose existence is the foundation of all Religion is as incomprehensible as any the objects of the Christian Faith These men were once strenuous asserters of the Authority of the Scriptures but being press'd hard with the unreasonableness of that Principle not to believe any thing tho' confest to be plainly and expressy revealed unless they saw how the thing could be they have bethought themselves rather to lessen the Authority of those Books than to insist longer on such a sense of 'em as no other Man and 't is hard to think they themselves can judge to be their meaning Is that great principle of the Reformation That the Scriptures are the sole rule of Faith come to this They deserve to be sent to the Island of Anticyra if they have any thoughts of utterly running down revealed Religion but they may prepare the way for that Church which by so many Arts and Stratagems has attempted to overthrow the Reformation and 't is an excess of Charity not to believe that some of 'em are employed to that purpose and designedly write to serve that cause Socinus himself did vigorously maintain the worship of Christ how agreeably with his principles may be seen in his dispute with F. D. but his Followers have given it up and take it ill that any should charge them with honouring the Son as they honour the Father will any man deny this to be a proper season to contend earnestly for the Faith once deliver'd and can a Christian not call to mind on this occasion those words of our Blessed Saviour whosoever shall confess me before men him will I confess before my Father which is in Heaven These considerations awakened the zeal of this excellent Man I am speaking of to stand betwixt the living and the dead and to try to stop the plague that was begun to this purpose he first drew up a discourse of Mysteries in Religion which not publishing at that time he afterwards contracted into two of those discourses that were in the Press at his death After this he applyed himself to examine the Socinian Controversie as it relates to the Doctrines of the ever Blessed and Adorable Trinity about which he spent much time and many thoughts he was fully perswaded that herein lay Christianity as distinct from natural Religion and that upon the Socinian principles it was impossible to clear the Scriptures from being purposely wrote to lead mankind into the grossest Errors and plain Idolatry and that take Christianity at the best it could amount to no more than an Institution of Morals that Mysterious Method of the Redemption of mankind by the Incarnation Obedience and Passion of the Son of God and all the hopes of sinners from a Covenant of Grace being hereby entirely given up These thoughts were enough to startle any one who had a concern for the honour or being of Christianity He first set himself carefully to examine the Sacred Records which speak so plainly of the Son and the Holy Ghost as distinct Persons from the Father and so expresly assert their Divinity that it was just matter of wonder to him how this could be overlook'd or mistaken we are indeed amused with Eastern phrases and proper Idioms of speech long ago out of use which if understood we are told would make that sence easie to us which some are pleas'd to put upon the Sacred Oracles but if the memory of these be perfectly lost how comes it to be known that there were ever any such in use and yet unless they know what they were how can they pronounce them serviceable to their cause but if any remain why are they not produc'd or some other Book instanc'd in wherein any footsteps of 'em remain The notion which the ancient Jews had of the Messias is That he was God who should become incarnate Of this there are sufficient intimations in the Prophets and it was the received sence of the ancient Jewish Church the Conception of him as a meer Man was an error which sprung from that gross expectation they had of him as a Prince and a mighty Conqueror who should advance the Jewish Nation above all the Kingdoms of the Earth And this ancient notion of the Messias is doubtless a better rule to follow in interpreting what is said of him in the writings of the new Testament than to confound these by putting a sence upon them contrary to what the words import and referring us to phrases that no body knows any thing of to make it out But whatever those Eastern Idioms of speech were the Primitive Church could not be ignorant of them and their Faith and Worship must be allow'd to be a full evidence of the sense in which they understood these Sacred Writings 't is true there were some whose Memory can be no credit to any Party who in the very age of the Apostles impugned our Saviour's Divinity but against these St. John wrote his Gospel beginning it with as full and express assertions of our Saviour's Divinity as can be imagined and in his Epistles he calls these Hereticks the Anti-Christ that were already come Afterwards arose Praxeas Noetus and after both about the middle of the third age Sabellius these prest with the Authority of Scripture which so expresly declares the Son and the Holy Ghost to be God asserted only one Person trinominem which was owning a Trinity only of names against these the Church declared the Christian Faith as it was written and as it had received and kept it that the Father is not the Son nor

the Son the Father nor the Holy Ghost Father or Son the Father alius à filio the Son alius à Patre the Holy Ghost alius a Patre Filio each to be consider'd under his proper Character and in himself as a distinct Person tho' all three united in one indivisible nature In the same age we meet with Paul of Samosata advanced by Zenobia to the Chair of Antioch he is properly styl'd the Father of our modern Socinians for he asserted that Christ was a meer Man and had no existence before his Conception in the Womb of the Holy Virgin and was the Author of that foolish contradictory Notion of a Deus factus and the Socinians have only reviv'd his Heresie which was condemned in the Council of Antioch and in a second himself depos'd In the beginning of the next age Arrius a Presbyter of the Church of Alexandria sets up to be Patron of a new Heresie differing both from Sabellius and Paulus but agreeing with them in opposing the Divinity of our Blessed Lord he maintain'd another Essence of the Son and denied his Coeternity and Equality with the Father and many falling in with him the whole cause was publickly heard the controverted Texts of Scripture and the constant Tradition of the Church about the sence of them carefully examin'd and the Worship of the whole Christian Church appeal'd to and by these was the Christian Faith explain'd and asserted The fourth age being the time fix'd on and the Eastern Church the Stage on which these things were done our Author who had a mind to look thorough this Controversie set upon examining the Records and Writings of that time that are extant particularly he carefully perused the Confessions and Decrees of the great Councils of Nice and the first of Constantinople wherein were no new Articles of Faith fram'd but the old ones declared and explain'd which the Church has both Authority and Obligation to do as the rise and growth of Heresies make this necessary and the works of those two great Men St. Athanasius and St. Basil and he found full satisfaction and met with a Compleat recompense for all the pains his search had cost him Being to Preach in his course at Westminster on Trinity Sunday he pitch'd upon those words of the Apostle 1. Cor. 8.5 but to us there is but one God as the Theme of his discourse this he did not only with respect to the day which was sufficient to justifie him in undertaking such an Argument in so Learned an Auditory but with regard to the boldness of our Socinian Adversaries who have been very free in charging the Doctrine of the Trinity with Absurdities Contradictions and Impossibilities What he propos'd was to defend our Common Faith of the Divine Trinity and Vnity which is the peculiar Scheme and Constitution and Character of Christianity and to resolve that obvious difficulty of believing those Divine Persons of Father Son and Holy Ghost to be each of them God which is the Christian Faith and yet to maintain with the Apostle that to us Christians there is but one God It so fell out that some passages or rather words as is very common in the transient hearing a discourse were not rightly apprehended which had like to have been the occasion of a dispute betwixt him and some of his Brethren very eminent for their Learning and of known zeal for the Common Faith This occasion'd his Letter in defence of his Sermons to the Right Reverend Bishop of R. who as he was by his place a proper Judge to be appeal'd to is upon all other accounts so qualified that no Man who knows him would refuse his Vmpirage in any thing wherein Learning and Judgment joyn'd with Integrity and Candor are required but it went not so far for he was soon better understood and both sides satisfi'd 'T is not necessary for me to say why that discourse has not been yet published the reason is not that any thing new is advanced in it or what is not exactly agreeable with the Notion Language and Terms of the Church in constant use at the time when this Question was discuss'd some of the Authorities produced by him the World has already judg'd of I say some for he has collected a great many more to the same purpose but he thought these sufficient The last Winter of his life he spent in reviewing his thoughts on this Argument and examining them with all possible strictness by the Scriptures and the Church Records and it was great satisfaction to him that he had clear'd his own thoughts about this Adorable Mystery and found nothing to lie uneasie to them in believing with the whole Christian Church upon the Authority of Revelation that there is but one Essence which we call God and yet that in the Godhead there are three Persons of the same Essence and Power and Coeternal taking the name Person in the sence of the Church not for a meer different mode or manner of subsisting or in a metaphorical sence but for what properly subsists and he hop'd he had done something for the clearing other Mens thoughts however the honour of our Saviour and of the Christian Faith and Religion were the things he had in his Eye and were sincerely intended by him in all that he had either Preach'd or Wrote on that subject The World seems at present to stand very much in need of such Men who want neither Learning nor Courage to stop the insults of the Enemies not to this or that particular Church but to Christianity it self and tho' God whose counsels are unsearchable takes away some at a time when they were likely to have been most usefull yet he will always leave a sufficient number thus qualified to defend his own cause I dare not now undertake to give a full and just Character of our Author I will venture to say something but what I am ready to own falls short of him he was a Man of great natural endowments and what is more to his commendation of indefatigable industry he never left a subject till he had search'd it to the bottom and perfectly cleared his own thoughts about it In his younger years he was much taken with Experimental Philosophy having from his first enquiry into Books and Things always set the highest value upon that knowledge he thought most usefull and by a Collection of observations left under his hand it appears that he had spent some time and pains that way In the year 1681. Novem. 23. I find him admitted Fellow of the Royal Society but upon his settling in London he laid aside those studies and wholly apply'd himself to that which was his proper Profession his chief aim being now to do the utmost good he could among those over whom he had a pastoral care in that renowned City The effects of his Labours remain to my own knowledge among some of his Parishioners who have own'd to me the great benefit they have