Selected quad for the lemma: love_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
love_n	affection_n	know_v	love_v	6,073	5	5.9564	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A79784	Fiat lux or, a general conduct to a right understanding in the great combustions and broils about religion here in England. Betwixt Papist and Protestant, Presbyterian & independent to the end that moderation and quietnes may at length hapily ensue after so various tumults in the kingdom. / By Mr. JVC. a friend to men of all religions.	J. V. C. (John Vincent Canes), d. 1672.	1661 (1661)	Wing C429; Thomason E2266_1; ESTC R210152	178,951	376

God that is in us urges us to hate all the works of the devil So say they There is no communion with light and darknes God and Belial They say so too you will be friends anon Blessed is he that hates iniquity from his heart This is the very subject of their sermons you are now becom one of their disciples We their disciples no we bow not our head to any horned beast Very good they like your resolution and will not therfor bow their heads to you Second Chapter All things are so obscure that no man in prudence can so far presume of his own knowledg as to set up himself a guide in religion to his neighbour § 6. Obscurity of God OF the three abovenamed considerations which being well imprinted in our hearts I should deem sufficient to put all our animosities to silence the two last be rather moral then acroamatick topicks and therefore to be cast with their fellows into the last paragraff of the book The first which speaks the great ignorance our present condition is involved both concerning God and his works and providence requires a little more explicit discours and becaus it is a speculation very beneficial not only to the purpos I now aim at but absolutely in it self and for several uses of mans life it shall take up the three or four following paragraffs And if all these things and religion can be about nothing els but them both God nature and providence do prove so obscure as I find them to be and I think will to all that ponder the matter well evidently appear what is then the knowledg we boast of and of which we are so confident as to prescribe laws every one of us to the whole land and to bring all into confusion about it He that shall think upon God alone apart from heaven and earth and every whatever created substance visible or invisible as in the center of his own all-sufficient eternity before either earth or heaven was made must needs be swallowed up and darkened round about as if he stood in the center of a world of waters and for want of a proper idea to fix on melt away in reverence of that all venerable and and sacred being which is an unmeasurable and boundless ocean of wisdom power and goodness in himself And altho he may have much improved himself by the frequent study and meditation of the subtil books Christendom hath brought forth yet shall he find himself so infinite short of any satisfying knowledg concerning God that he must conclude himself to remain still in the wondring side and to know nothing Whensoever I think of that first Esse we call God both S Thomas and subtil Scotus and all writings or conceits of men fail and fall short and help me little or nothing no nor any scripture whatsoever they seem all to speak something about God nothing of him indeed they cannot In this our earth and exile we have no words to express him no notion to conceiv him as he is in himself no idea to represent him which perhaps is the reason moved subtil Scotus to teach that our divinity is not speculative but practical lest it should be a science that signifies nothing for love of that divine object makes up all Our Lord is verily a hidden God saith one no less piously than truly hidden in himself and essence hidden in his works hidden in his providence hidden in his own life and being and hidden too in all his emanations and the egressions of eternity Nor can any created being in the highest pitch of all possible excellency naturally approach that unaccessible presence in his state of pilgrimage and mutability The discovery of himself unto them is their bliss it is their condition supernatural and felicity of glory What then can poor man a worm and dust in this his state of sin corruption and darknes presume to know of Him whom no invisible creatur or the highest angel can pry into even in the highest excellency of his spiritual condition out of his state of immutability and beatitude No man can see God and live and no angel can see God and dye for the vision is inconsistent either with our mortality or their state of probation we must be elevated above our mortal life they exalted from their condition of mutability by that vision once imparted God is an abysse of beatitude reserved onely for the infinity of bliss in the state of eternity where new ravishing wonders and extasies and joyes shall spring up from him without end to the daily fresh beatifying of all those spirits that shall be thought worthy of that glorious never failing day Nor is there any way left for man to reach this infinite abysse but by affection The will of man is far longer winged than his understanding and love will find access where knowledg cannot approach For tho it be true that an unknown thing cannot be loved yet may a man love more of a thing than he knows and fasten his affection upon that thing in particular whereof he hath but a general and confused apprehension Thus I may love a mans person whom I never saw and consequently know not by a report of his goodness or sight of his hand writing which love will embrace the person himself tho it be guided by no more knowledg then that of his words or gesture or written conceptions so God represented unto us under the general and metaphysical notions of an infinite substantial ocean of goodness wisdom and power from whom do all things flow by whom they subsist and in whom finally they end the first caus eternal immense omnipotent the best and greatest creatour and conserver of all that is or can be substantial wisdom and sanctity immutable hater of iniquity and lover of good the beginning and end of things essential truth and light and life the very being of all beings the solace of all spirits and sole beatifying bliss and the like tho this and much more said of him as notions adjacent and metaphysical properties of that eternal and ineffable essence suffice us for our knowledg of him in this world yet is all the while that great essence from whence those properties flow unexprest and utterly hid and God still in his particular and specifick entity and unknown God to us and yet notwithstanding God or that unknown essence is supereminently estimated adored and loved even in his very individual being by that spirit who will think of him and love him as he ought even in this very state of our exile corruption and darknes So far extended so ingenious and quick is love that a very small sparkling of knowledg if it do but show her afar off onely the outward frontispiece and battlements where the beloved dwells will enough suffice her for a guide to throw her self into him bosom This great God and immens spring of life and being if he be compared to the univers and whole creation

consisting both of the millions of invisible spirits and the great machin of this visible world he will be found as the only substance and all things besides him a thinne shadow he solid entity and the great univers in comparison of him but a meer show far more differing than the body of a hous or tree and the shadow thereof in the Sun and therefor high contemplativs have called the world a vanity a lye a shadow a non entity and so indeed it is compared with God wherein all being is subsistent in its substantial primogenial perfection It must needs be so whereby we may see how deeply the sensual and carnal men of this world are deceived in their judgments whilst they look upon this world and the things of this world especially that part of it they use for their pleasur and delight as things of true real and solid substance but God the authour of all as an aiery flying fansy taking the substance for the shadow and the shadow for the substance so grosly do we delude our selves in our conceits of God and for his good deeds towards us dishonour him in requital But the inveiglement of pleasures brings us below our manhood and makes us think like beasts The obscurity of this most high God and his unaccessible light not to use any further argument than what is vulgar and before our eyes will be made more than manifest if we do but cast our eyes upon the sons of men round about this globe of earth our selves inhabit and their various both inquests after him and conceptions of him If men could do this one thing exactly all further pains of implanting in us true humility instead of pride amazement in place of arrogance fear in the room of presumption self denial in exchange of that prodigious self-confidence that abounds and rules in us might soon ceas Who is he that dare presume in any way of his own invention when he considers as very true it is all mankind so many several wayes in all ages groping after a deity like so many blind men in a vast plane by the help not of eyes for who can discover or see him but of that pittiful reed of weak imagination And are not all these equally his creatures do they not equally show their love in seeking after him have they not at their birth equal right to his favour which before they were born they could no wayes demerit And how then can infinite goodnes so neglect infinite wisdom so far unheed infinite power so desert this poor wretched worm that very fain would love him would be very glad to find him would think it a happines to serv him and for this end seeks after him so incessantly so variously and by reason that he is a hidden God so fruitlesly as he does In this perplexity remains mankind till there appear a prophet or teacher to each nation who may direct and lead them But when this happens how much is poor man the nearer There be haply as many several prophets as there be nations upon earth for though two or three nations may follow one yet some one nation hath two or three and all these equally pretend to be divine tho their laws and rules and religious rites be not only divers but oftimes opposite What can we think when we contemplate this where is truth and how shall we have it sith we cannot find it out our selves if not from the hands of such as pretend to come from God And yet they cannot all be true which then is fals and who is true is there any way in nature to know it for all establish their own way and honour by all inventions possible within their reach somtimes by miracles which their own disciples believ tho others deride them oftentimes by visions and prophecies generally by a show of sanctity with a concours of threats and promises both present and future to the violatours and observers of their law And therefor if any be true as it is but a surmise to think it so is it a meer chance to hit it which is generally done by birth or casual circumstance of perswasion Besides a religion once established be it true or fals when it is once received it is then taken for true in the space of some succeeding ages is reformed anew by other teachers or interpreters who in time lead men out of the former way into their own somtimes slowly gradually and insensibly that they are brought into another religion before they be aware sometimes by open hostility to the former which whether by covin or violence yields at last to the ingres of a new one This is the right case and business concerning religion in the world people still being vehemently bent upon that they fasten upon tho haply it be quite opposite to the former wherein both themselvs and forefathers lived Such is the miserable instability of mankind which is a sign that God and his truth how confident soever men may be is ever hidden and in-evident for men do not use to depart from evidence let Philosophers dispute never so subtilly to prove snow is black they will get no followers a contrary evidence detains even them that cannot tell how to answer their arguments from a submission unreasonable Nor is there all this while any one sect upon earth but condemns all other wayes besides his own which he no less admires than he disesteems them yea separating from a former religion to another either in all things opposite or a part onely men are apt to inveigh as bitterly against that now as then they did against this and with equal confidence of truth in both places Where then is truth and who sees it Is not God indeed hidden does he appear at all to any for although all say they see him and his truth with their eyes it is evident enough by the mutations both personal and national that be made in the world there is no such matter from God and from truth no man does willingly depart as also by the opposite professions of it with such equal confidence that it is not in the power of any man to say of himself assuredly where it is Archimed had an opinion that he could move the whole earth had he but a place out of the earth to set his foot on and so must he who shall judg of this controversie stand in some place a part where he may oversee all not interested in any in a word he must be out of the earth nor is the atheist a fit judg although he may bear himself for one for as none can judg of men but he that owns such a thing as humanity so neither can he give any plausible judgment of religions who acknowledges none nor yet is it an easy thing to pluck up the general connatural seeds of religion implanted in mans spirit and sprouting forth rather into the profession of a fals religion than none Who dare