Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A52616
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The Trinitarian scheme of religion, concerning almighty God and mankind considered both before and after the (pretended) fall : with notes thereoupon, which notes contain also the unitarian scheme.
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Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719.
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1692
(1692)
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Wing N1509A; ESTC R41717
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32,447
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30
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Infinite Persons and but one God Ask them How can these things be and what do you mean They answer our meaning only is God understands himself and willeth that is esteems and loves himself This is a very mean and despicable Sense to be couched in such mysterious and surprising Terms Why do they affect to speak fantastically when they might speak soberly and plainly But we would easily forgive them the Folly of their Mysteries if their Hieroglyphick Language were not as false and contradictory as 't is vain and trifling For after they have told us that by Son and Spirit they mean nothing but God's Knowledg and Love of himself that the Eternal Generation so much talk'd of is only God's conceiving understanding or apprehending his own Perfections and the Procession which we are so carefully to distinguish from the Eternal Generation is only the Love which proceeds from God towards himself after I say they have thus unriddled their Mystery and of a Mystery made it a very vulgar and ordinary piece of Knowledg how absurd and monstrous is it to tell us that this Reflex Knowledg which God hath of himself and his Love or Esteem of himself are Persons and Spirits really distinct from him One while the Second and Third Persons so called are only God's knowing himself and loving himself that is they are only two Acts of his Vnderstanding and Will At the next turn these two Acts God's Apprehending himself and Esteeming himself are metamorphosed into Two several Spirits and Persons whereof one you must call the Son and the other the Holy Ghost Of one you must say on pain of Damnation He was Conceived Generated or Begotten of the other you must believe and say under the same Penalty He proceeded I say now this is Egyptian all over 't is the very Genius and Spirit of the old Mystical Hieroglyphicks that is to say partly Foolish and partly False And to prove it I need go no farther than the Understandings and Consciences of all Reasonable Men or even of every Individual Man who hath not as much given up his Reason to Mother Church as the Good Man who would not believe his Eyes against his Dear Wife had given up to her his Senses To tell Men that to apprehend one's self is a Person and to love one's self is another Person and Spirit is in effect to ridicule Religion and to scare from it all Men of free Sense I know not why the prophane Wit was esteemed an Atheist for his saying God by his Almighty Power can turn a Tree into a Syllogism more than such may be justly suspected of Atheism who say an Action of the Divine Vnderstanding is an Infinite and Almighty Person whom under pain of Damnation we must call the Son of God And again an Action of the Divine Will is another such Person and him we must name the Holy Ghost For the Wit only turned a Substance into a Thought and Trinitarians turn Thoughts into Substances and Persons Did they alledg for these Mysteries but the least colour of Reason or Revelation we would hold our Tongues but to be obliged to believe such things without any pretence of Revelation and contrary to all Reason and common Sense this I think is what we owe to no sort of Men of what colour soever they dye their Coats For my part I never think of these whether Dotages or Impostures without such an Inclination as I very hardly resist of applying to our Athanasian Doctors what Cato said of the Roman Augures and Aurispices I wonder says Cato that an Augur or Aruspex can meet another of the same Profession without their Laughing in one another's Faces He knew their pretended Learning and Discipline was the Religion establish'd by Law warranted by Custom and Prescription and authorized by the Consent of Nations For all that 't was a Cheat so gross and palpable that he could not but admire that the Augurs were such stark Fools or such perfect Knaves that meeting they could carry a grave Look upon one another Of the Creation IN the Fulness of Time the before-described Trinity Created the World and all things therein Yet we are not to imagine that the Three Divine Persons divided the Work among them each of them taking a Part. Nor could every one of them Create the same things because a thing can be created but once But according to that Oeconomy as Divines speak that is the Domestick Order or Houshold-Government that is between the Three Persons it must be said and held that the Father is most properly the Creator the Son the Redeemer and the Spirit the Sanctifier of all Persons and Things So that when we say the Trinity Created Heaven and Earth and all Things this is thereby intended The Father Created all things by the Son through the Holy Ghost The Notes The Father created all things by the Son through the Holy Ghost I wish the Sages of the Party had thought fit plainly to tell us what they mean by such an odd way of expressing themselves But they have long since let the World know that all their care is to get Words and for Meaning they never think of it But the Father it seems is the Creator nay 't is he that is properly the Creator but then 't is by the Son and through the Holy Ghost That is to say the Father is not the Creator much less is He properly the Creator but the Son and Holy Ghost and these two are jointly Creators For if the Father created the World by the Son and through the Holy Ghost then the Father himself had no immediate Efficiency or Hand in the Work but only the Son and Holy Ghost these were the true Creators of the World and of all things And besides that the old Difficulty returns namely that the Son and Spirit divided the Work between them each taking his part or the same things must be created twice I know not how better to explain their Notion of the Father's being most properly the Creator than by saying he was just so according to them the Creator of the World as King Charles I. built the Royal Soveraign or was the Builder of the Royal Soveraign For we say that King built the Royal Soveraign by the Master-Builder through the Ship-Carpenter that is he built it not he only ordered it to be built the Master-Shipwright or Master-Builder and the Ship-Carpenters were the Builders But if this be so we are strangely misled by the Apostles Creed which instructs us to say that the Almighty Father is the Creator of Heaven and Earth and is wholly silent of the great Mystery that it was by the Son and through the Holy Ghost And the Scriptures do yet worse impose on us by an unheard-of Solecism and Impropriety while they speak of these two or three pretended creating Persons by the singular Pronouns I HE THOV HIM which in no Language are used but only of one singular and particular
't is not only not true but self-contradictory in the sense they use it For how is God most simple and uncompounded if he consists or is made up which is the very English of the word compounded of distinct Beings and divers and several Persons none of which is the other They may with the same Exactness of Grammar and Propriety of Speech say a Common-Council or a Common-Hall is one most simple uncompounded Being one is no more ridiculous than the other for the Propriety of Speech and Exactness of Truth is as verily lost in three as in three hundred or three thousand What is in God is God FOR the other Properties 't is the Orthodox and true Belief that whatsoever is in God is God Not only the Father is God and the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God but whatsoever else is in God by way of Immanence that also is God So the Justice of God is God the Power of God is God the Wisdom of God is God and so too is the Goodness of God Yet we make not hereby so many several Gods because these and all other Properties of God are not only the same with him but the same also with one another The Justice for instance of God differs not really from his Power and Mercy and his Power and Mercy differ not or are not really distinguish'd from his Wisdom but are verily and identically the same with it their distinction is only in our Conceit The Notes See here another brace of Mysteries whatsoever is in God is God and the Divine Properties or Attributes differ not but are the same with one another The Reader may perhaps suspect that when they speak after this wild fashion they have some secret and reserved meaning contrary to the usual Import of the Words or a learned Sense contrary to the vulgar Signification of the Terms but 't is not so they mean as they speak and whole Volumes are written in Defence of these Follies But let us consider what they say Whatsoever is in God is God the Justice for instance of God is God and so also the other Properties and Attributes As who should say every Property of a Being or Nature is that very Being or Nature of which 't is only a Property This is more monstrous than to say a Part is the Whole that very Whole of which 't is only a Part. For a Property being somewhat less than an Integrating Part because it may be away or at least be dormant and unactive without destruction of the Specifick Nature or of the Person an Integrating Part cannot therefore 't is more absurd to say a Property or Attribute is that very Being or Nature to which it belongs than to say an Integrating Part is the Whole Thus Body and Soul are Integrating Parts of Man take away one of them and he is no longer a Man but a naked Spirit and Risibility is an acknowledg'd Property of the Human Nature and yet it may be dormant or wholly away and the Human Nature not be destroyed but remain But they add the Properties or Attributes of God are the same with one another they differ only in our Conceit But why do they not tell us too that God pardons Sinners by his Justice and punishes them by his Mercy that he made the World by his Eternity and will judg it by his Immensity For if Mercy and Justice if Wisdom and Power if Eternity and Omnipresence are the same and differ only in our Conceit then the Effects of any one of these Properties are not to be appropriated to that Attribute or Property but must be equally and indifferently ascribed to all or to any of the rest Thus unlucky are our Opposers both at dividing and compounding they divide what is most intimately the same and they compound unite and identify what are and ever must be diverse and different That Unity of God or that God is one which should have been as carefully guarded as the very Belief of a God they have divided by introducing a Trinity of three equally All-mighty and All-sufficient Persons And the Properties of the Divine Nature to whose Distinction and Variety we must heedfully attend if we will have any adequate Notion of God or right Understanding of his Works and Providences these they confound by affirming they are the same But let us go on to what remains What we are to understand by the Son and Holy Ghost GOD is one substantial and most simple Act yet we say also God is two substantial and really distinct Acts. The two substantial and immanent Acts in God are Vnderstanding and Will For God most perfectly understands himself and also willeth that is loveth himself in the most perfect manner But whatsoever understandeth doth understand by conceiving an Image of the thing understood Therefore God as hath been said understanding himself from all Eternity conceived within himself from all Eternity a most perfect Image of himself Which Image thus conceived and as it were generated or begotten by him is called the Son And this Image being in God and a perfect Image of God and Eternal is God no less than the Father by whom it was conceived or generated in the manner aforesaid namely by his understanding or apprehending himself and his own Perfections But God also willeth and that is another of the substantial immanent Acts that concur to the essentiating the Trinity He willeth or loveth himself and the most perfect Image of himself and the Image willeth or loveth him This Mutual Love of the Father and the Image or Son is what is named the Holy Ghost So that what things in Men are Faculties Actions and Properties in God we must understand them to be Persons and Spirits Which is also farther both cleared and proved by this Observation The second Person or Son is the Understanding or Wisdom of God not Original Wisdom or Understanding for that is the Father but a reflex Wisdom that is the Wisdom which resulteth from the Father's understanding himself and his own Perfections The Holy Spirit as hath been said is the mutual willing Love and Power of Original Wisdom and of the Reflex Wisdom The Notes This they pretend is that Mystery hid from Ages and Generations but now made manifest to the Disciples of Athanasius There is no Parallel for it in all either History or Nature but the Mysteries of the Egyptians For as the Egyptians were at prodigious Cost in making and setting up a great number of Images in and about their Temples by which Hieroglyphicks or sacred Images they pretended to teach Men the Secrets of Natural Philosophy and the Precepts of Morality but when they were ask'd to explain the meaning of these Hieroglyphicks they gave a very mean and trifling Sense or a Sense very absurd and false So after Trinitarians have long amused their Disciples with Terms as Mystical as the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks such as Trinity Eternal Generation Eternal Procession three