Selected quad for the lemma: hand_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
hand_n	body_n	see_v	soul_n	4,672	5	5.0400	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29845	A letter in answer to a book entitled, Christianity not mysterious as also, to all those who set up for reason and evidence in opposition to revelation & mysteries / by Peter Browne ...	Browne, Peter, ca. 1666-1735.	1697 (1697)	Wing B5134; ESTC R19095	82,171	238

of Prescience as it is in God who sees them actually and ex parte rei Nor can we conceive how this Prescience of his is reconcileable with the contingency of things thô we are sure it is so from those Prophecies of very minute circumstances many hundreds of years before they came to pass I might thus run through all the Attributes of God and shew in every one of them how we make to our selves some representations of them by compounding and enlarging those Idea's we have either of sensible Objects or of the operations of our own Minds And thus we represent the Wisdom and Power and Justice and Holyness and Mercy c. of God from the scanty notions we have of these things in our selves thô they exhibit to us no more of the real nature of these things as they are in God than continu'd extension doth of his Omnipresence or a great number doth of his Infinity or many ages of his Eternity So that in all our thoughts of that divine Being we don't proceed thus The nature of God is such therefore these things follow But these things are the greatest perfections we are able to conceive and therefore by help of these we form the best and most honourable Idea of God that is possible for us in this condition of infirmity and blindness that we are now in Not but that after we have fram'd the biggest Idea of God our Minds are capable of by the greatest enlargement of these perfections after all 't is as gross a representation of him as Darkness is of Light and expresseth nothing of the reall nature of that incomprehensible Being to us nor do they give us the least glimps of him as he is in himself 2. But 2dly As we can have no such proper and immediate Idea of God himself so neither have we such Idea's of any thing relating to another World And therefore it is that the Glory of Heaven is reveal'd to us under the notion of Light the greatness and splendour of that place by that of a Kingdom and the joys of Heaven by sensual pleasures such as Eating and Drinking the operation of Grace by the nourishment of our Bodies c. and when God himself is spoke of 't is always by analogy with the Members of a Human Body and the operations of our Minds Thus he is mention'd as having Hands and Feet as Seeing and Hearing and as being affected with all the passions of a Human Soul because he hath no other way to speak of himself to us now since we have neither Words nor Idea's to think or speak of him after any other manner or indeed of any other Objects of another World And therefore it is that the Spirit of God in all his Revelations hath made use not only of the Words and Phrases commonly receiv'd and understood but likewise of those common notions in the minds of Men of things in this World to represent Truths which are in respect of us now unconceivable and for which there are as yet no capacities in our nature So that in truth all the Idea's we at present have of the things of another World are no other than a sort of Types and Figures of things the real nature of which is totally obscur'd from us And this is the literal meaning of those words of St. Paul That now we see through a Glass darkly i. e. by analogy only with the things of this World But then Face to Face i. e. we shall have as immediate a view of those heavenly Objects as we have now of these things which only represent them to us So that when we are said to have these divine Truths reveal'd to us in part the meaning is not that any real part of the thing as it is in it self is exhibited to our view and the rest obscur'd or that we have any indistinct view of the thing it self as we see an Object at a great distance But the meaning is that the whole is reveal'd to us under the resemblance of some things in this World whereof we have clear and distinct Idea's And thus it is plain that thô we may be said to have Idea's of God and Divine things yet they are not immediate or proper ones but a sort of composition we make up from our Idea's of Wordly Objects which at the utmost amounts to no more than a Type or Figure by which something in another World is signified of which we have no more notion than a Blind-man hath of Light And now that I am fallen into this Metaphor which seems well to explain the nature of the thing let us pursue it a little and suppose that to a Man who had never seen or heard any thing of it it were to be reveal'd that there was such a thing as Light This man as yet hath neither a name nor a notion for it nor any capacity of conceiving what it is in it self 'T is plain therefore God wo'd not reveal this to him by the name of Light a word wholly unknown to him nor by stamping on his Mind any immediate Idea of the thing it self for then it were utterly impossible for him to communicate this Revelation to others as blind as himself for nothing but the same Almighty impression cou'd do that So that this Revelation must be made by Words and Notions which are already in him And accordingly when he is told that it is a thing which can diffuse it self in an instant many thousands of miles round and enable him to know in a moment what order all things lay at a great distance from him and what proportion they bore one to another nay that it cou'd make him know where the Heavens lay and by the help of this he shou'd there discern at once a vast and almost infinite number of very pleasant Bodies and in short that without the help of his Stick or his Hand he shou'd know every thing that lay before him After all 't is plain this Man wou'd form to himself an Idea of Light from his Touch he wou'd think it very like feeling and perhaps call it by that name because this was the best way he had of distinguishing one thing from another and therefore wou'd conclude that those Bodies he heard of must needs be wondrous soft and smooth Just thus do we conceive the things of another World so that we may rack our invention and turn and wind all those Idea's we have into ten Thousand different shapes and yet never make up any likeness or similitude of the real Nature of those Objects of another World And now I hope he will grant it a thing possible for God to make such a Revelation as this to a Blind man And yet by this concession he destroys his whole Book For upon his Principles it were a thing utterly impossible for any man that was born Blind to believe there is such a thing as Light upon the testimony either of God or Man