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spirit_n father_n life_n son_n 10,349 5 5.4228 4 false
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ID Title Author Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) STC Words Pages
A31061 A brief state of the Socinian controversy concerning a trinity in unity by Isaac Barrow ... Barrow, Isaac, 1630-1677. 1698 (1698) Wing B930; ESTC R10201 4,087 24

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Advertisement A Defence of the Blessed Trinity By Isaac Barrow D. D. Price twelve Pence A BRIEF STATE OF THE Socinian Controversy Concerning a TRINITY in UNITY By Isaac Barrow D. D. Late Master of Trinity-College in Cambridge LONDON Printed for Brabazon Aylmer at the Three Pigeons against the Royal-Exchange in Cornhill 1698. Price two Pence A BRIEF STATE OF THE Socinian Controversy THe Sacred Trinity may be considered either as it is in it self wrapt up in unexplicable Folds of Mystery or as it hath discovered it self operating in wonderful Methods of Grace towards us As it is in it self 't is an Object too bright and dazling for our weak Eye to fasten upon an Abyss too deep for our short Reason to fathom I can only say That we are so bound to mind it as to exercise our Faith and express our Humility in willingly believing in submissively adoring those high Mysteries which are revealed in the Holy Oracles concerning it by that Spirit it self which searcheth the Depths of God and by that Only Son of God who residing in his Father's Bosom hath thence brought them forth and Expounded them to us so far as was fit for our Capacity and use And the Lectures so read by the Eternal Wisdom of God the Propositions uttered by the Mouth of Truth it self we are obliged with a Docile Ear and a Credulous Heart to entertain That there is One Divine Nature or Essence common unto Three Persons incomprehensibly Vnited and ineffably Distinguished united in Essential Attributes distinguished by peculiar Idioms and Relations all equally Infinite in every Divine Perfection each different from other in Order and Manner of Subsistence that there is a mutual inexistence of One in All and All in One a Communication without any Deprivation or Diminution in the Communicant an Eternal Generation and an Eternal Procession without Precedence or Succession without proper Causality or Dependence A Father imparting his own and the Son receiving his Father's Life and a Spirit issuing from both without any Division or Multiplication of Essence These are Notions which may well puzzle our Reason in conceiving how they agree but should not stagger our Faith in assenting that they are true Upon which we should meditate not with hope to comprehend but with disposition to admire veiling our Faces in the Presence and prostrating our Reason at the Feet of Wisdom so far transcending us There be those who because they cannot untie dare to cut in sunder these Sacred Knots Who because they cannot fully conceive it dare flatly to deny them Who instead of confessing their own Infirmity do charge the plain Doctrines and Assertions of Holy Scripture with Impossibility Others seem to think they can demonstrate these Mysteries by Arguments grounded upon Principles of Natural Light and express it by Similitudes derived from common Experience To repress the Presumption of the former and to restrain the Curiosity of the latter the following Consideration improved by your Thoughts may perhaps somewhat conduce We may consider That our Reason is no competent or capable Iudge coneerning Propositions of this Nature 'T is not sufficient nor was ever designed to sound such Depths to descry the Radical Principles of all Being to reach the extream Possibilities of Things Such an Intellectual Capacity is vouchsafed to us as doth suit to our Degree the lowest Rank of Intelligent Creatures as becometh our Station in this inferior Part of the World as may qualify us to discharge the petty Businesses committed to our Management and the facile Duties incumbent on us But to know What God is How he subsisteth what he can what he should do by our natural Perspicacity or by any means we can use farther than he pleaseth to reveal doth not suit to the Meanness of our Condition or the Narrowness of our Capacity These really are the most elevated Sublimities and the abstrusest Subtilties that are or can be in the nature of things He that can penetrate them may erect his Tribunal any where in the World and pretend justly that nothing in Heaven or Earth is exempted from his Judgment But in truth how unfit our Reason is to exercise such Universal Jurisdiction we may discern by comparing it to our Sense It is obvious that many Beasts do by advantage of a finer Sense See Hear Smell things imperceptible to us And were it not very unreasonable to conclude that such things do not exist or are in themselves altogether insensible because they do not all appear to us Is it not evident that we ought to impute their Imperceptibility respecting us to the defect of our Sense to its Dulness and Grossness in regard to the Subtilty of those Objects Even so may Propositions in themselves and in regard to the Capacity of higher Understandings for there are gradual Differences in Understanding as well as in Sense be true and very intelligible which to our inferiour Reason seem unintelligible or repugnant to the Prenotions with which our Soul is imbued And our not discerning those Truths may argue the Blindness and Weakness of our Understanding not any Fault or Inconsistency in the Things themselves Nor should it cause us any wise to distrust them if they come recommended to our Belief by competent Authority It cannot be reasonable out of Principles drawn from ordinary Experience about these most low and imperfect Things to collect that there can be no other kind of Vnions of Distinctions of Generations of Processions than such as our own gross Sense doth represent to us Reason it self more forcibly doth oblige us to think that to sublimer Beings there do pertain Modes of Existence and Action Vnions and Distinctions Influences and Emanations of a more high and perfect Kind Such as our course Apprehension cannot adequate nor our rude Language express Which we perhaps have no Faculty subtile enough to conceive distinctly nor can attain any congruous Principles from which to Discourse solidly about them No Words perhaps which we do use to signify our Conceptions about these Material and Inferiour Things will perfectly and adequately suit to a Mystery so much remote from the common Objects of our Knowledge so far transcending our Capacity Shall we then who cannot pierce into the Nature of a Peble that cannot apprehend how a Mushroom doth grow that are baffled in our Philosophy about a Gnat or a Worm debate and decide beyond what is taught us from above concerning the precise manner of Divine Essence Subsistence or Generation I do saith St. Chrysostom eat Meats but how they are divided into Phlegm into Blood into Iuice into Choler I am ignorant These things which every day we see and taste we do not know and are we curious about the Essence of God Wherefore do we stretch our Judgment beyond its Limits unto Things so infinitely exceeding it Why do we suffer our Reason to be Pragmatical unjustly Invading the Office not belonging thereto intruding into Things which it hath not seen