Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
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A25447
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Religio clerici
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T. A.
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1681
(1681)
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Wing A32; ESTC R200747
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38,573
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248
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the like such monstrous Medlies and odd Landskips of Opinions as in another kind the most extravagant Conceptions of Poets and Painters have never equal'd And truly I think one and the other have some grounds much alike for their Whimsies I am sure they have each of them had too much of one priviledge and that is the Quidlibet audendi Horat. de art Poet. Potestas Christianity I say is now almost 1700 years old and though it as its Author is ever one and the same yet what by the Supineness of its true and what by the devices of its pretended Professours it is at this day so overgrown with thorns and briars and the mossy Excrescences of rotten and Corrupted Skulls that had not our God been very gracious we should hardly distinguish and discern its genuine beauty and Native Lustre through the Rubbish and Barricade of Schism and Heresie I always thought Gods holy word so plain that to invent an Heterodox Doctrine we must do a violence to that and our own Reason too And yet what nice diffections have been made of these Scriptures by too bold and curious Inspectours into the Secrets of God How many Texts have they set upon the Rack and endeavoured by cruel and unnatural distortions to make them say as they would have them and confess what they never knew from whence have followed such rents and dislocations in some Members of our Religion as I fear are almost become past Cure I would fain know what one thing material hath been discovered by the noise and bustle of all these busie and subtle Pates that was not as well or better known in the very first Centurie I believe that in all the whole prodigious Catalogue of Voluminous Tracts and laboured Controversies enough at this day to make Joh. Chap. last v. last good St. John's Hyperbole you cannot find one new Truth of any import or significancie to our Religion which was not known 1500 years ago On the contrary I am sure they have together with a thousand falsities invented perplexities and empty trifles without number which the purest ages of Christianity never dreamt of Some have stretcht their brains to grasp Mysteries beyond their reach and would crowd the Infinite Essence and Ineffable Attributes of that great God into the senceless rules terms of their Schools whom the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain What horrid Heresies have men run into by presuming to fathome the Mysterie of the blessed Trinity and whilst they have forcibly prest Reason on to take as large a step as Faith they have stumbled and fell to their utter confusion My humble yet stedfast Faith in the hidden Things of God can rest fully satisfied in the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 without presuming to no purpose so far as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 nay and my Reason too if it must needs be medling doth here most justly acquiesce without farther scrutiny in this conclusion 'T is certainly so because God hath said it And thus I can easily believe that the Godhead consists of Three Persons without the help of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 persona or suppositum and the Incarnation of my Saviour is a Mystery indeed in Divinity but none in Philosophy to me for that tells me 't was as easie to speak more humano for the Almighty to set Nature at work in Holy Maries Womb to frame a man of her Seed as to make a Woman out of the side of Adam But 't is my opinion that the truest Faith supersedes all arguing about the Mysteries of our Religion and when St. Peter bids us be ready to give a reasonable account 't is not of fathomless Secrets but of our Hope and 1 Pet. 3. 15. Faith in Jesus Yet that Faith I am perswaded was always most acceptable with our Saviour that acknowledged him with a plain and simple sincerity without a why or wherefore And I believe the nimble Confession of Nathaniel Joh. 1. 49 50. though upon a slight occasion was better approved of by Christ than the cautious proceed and deliberate advances of Judicious Nichodemus 3 Joh. 9. However I like not that high flight of the Father neither Certum est quia impossibile est nor his who said there were not Impossibilities enow in Religion for an active Faith such Hyperbolick strains do Christianity no kindness I am sure especially in the Mahometan and Pagan world For were Socrates Cicero or Seneca now alive I might with far better success attempt their Conversion by the rehearsal of Christs Sermon on the Mount or St. Pauls Epistles than by assaulting rashly their unprepared Reason with the difficulties and seeming contradictions of the Athanasian Creed It can no ways properly be said that there is any one Impossibility in the Bible For if the Letter and matter of fact be true as it may on that score justly claim a stronger title to verity than any Book of longer or later date which yet we own without scruple then the Concession that 't was of Divine Inspiration easily follows and then the consequence is as necessary That whatever it contains must be of infallible truth and certainty And what if we cannot solve its Mysteries Their first design was to be objects of Christian Faith and humble acquiescence not of Pert and Curious Argumentation If we will believe nothing but what we can make out and clear of doubts ay and strong ones too even in things obvious and familiar and with which we converse every day we must shut the whole Visible World out of doors and sit down content with absolute Scepticism I declare I have as even a notion of Spirit as of Body and understand Cogitation fully as well as Extension I am no more privy to the Mechanism of my own hearts Motion than I am to the Mysterie and feats of Memory and Imagination or to the way how my Soul by a detachment of nimble Emissaries commands my foot to move in an instant In a word I understand nothing of this kind by adequate and Commensurate Science but by Philosophick guess or Allegorick representations 11 Eccle. 5. I remember that a now Reverend and most Learned Prelate at whose private Lectures I had the honour long ago to attend amongst other most excellent notices told us that Immaterial Infinite and the like were Negatives indeed in words for the barrenness of Language and our own weakness and ignorance but properly and in themselves they were absolute Positivities and again that their Contraries Finite and Material were pure Negations in respect of the other Descartes who opened the way to his Philosophy by stopping his Ears and closing his Eyes and stripping himself naked to bare Cogitation found out one Original Truth as he thought viz. Cogito Ergo Sum what a prodigious fallacie past upon this acute man he might as well in that case have argued Curro Ergo Sum the argument had been as good though it lay at a little farther distance