Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	new_a	old_a	testament_n	3,965	5	8.0680	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A57730	The gentlemans companion, or, A character of true nobility and gentility in the way of essay / by a person of quality ...	Ramesey, William, 1627-1675 or 6.	1672 (1672)	Wing R206; ESTC R21320	94,433	290

Finisher of our faith is given by no less than GOD himself who though he be Omnipotent Å¿ Omnipotentia excludit omnes defectus qui sunt Impotentiae seu posse mori Peccare c. Thomas Aquinas 2. Quest 25. Art 34. yet cannot lye being Truth it self in the abstract His very existence then may be as well doubted as his Testimony And you have heard already the irrationality of Atheism in our proof of a Deity and that even among the Heathen a Deity has ever been acknowledged as also that their gods were true The Testimony God gives of Christ He was promised to Adam when fallen long before his coming The Seed of the Woman shall break the Serpents Head And his Testimony of him when sent was at his Baptism and on the Mount with Peter James and John This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased hear him And a little before his Death I have glorified it and will glorifie it again Likewise by the Star at his Birth which the very Heathen confest portended the descent of some God for the Salvation of Mankind Also by many Miracles wrought both by Christ and the Apostles and other wayes as well as by an Audible Voice As at his Death By Eclipsing the Sun at the time of the Full Moon contrary to the course of Nature so that many Astronomers in other parts of the World admired the strangeness thereof as a violence done to Nature whence Dionysius the Areopagite thus exclaim'd Aut Deus Naturae patitur aut Mundi machina Dissolvitur The Vail of the Temple was rent which the Superstitious Jews so adored And the saints dead Bodies arose and went into the Holy City and were seen by many Which things were so notoriously known that multitudes were Converted saying Of a Truth this was the son of God And lastly He himself did not only Rise but was taken up into Heaven both body and soul before their eyes So that the Question will be now whether there be any credit to be given to the scriptures that give such ample testimony of Christ from GOD or whether they are his revealed word more than other Writings Touching which I shall wholly lay aside those Arguments from their Majestickness and sometimes plainness of stile Their subject on which they treat or the power and influence they have on Mens Consciences as Idle frivolous not sufficiently evincing them to be Divine Oracles or to proceed from the Holy Spirit since our Consciences easily consent to what our belief is prepossest with in our Infancies Besides if this be all a Turk may plead as much for the Alchoran in every respect as we Whether the Old New Testaments be the Word of God can for the Bible Neither doth the sealing the Truth thereof by the blood of Martyrs signifie any thing in this particular since we daily see Jews Turks Pagans Hereticks Sects of all sorts Venners gang though in open Rebellion and before that the Regicides dye as resolutely couragiously with as much seeming assurance of their salvation as the best Martyr of them all in the affirmation and justification of their own belief and Deceits We must therefore endeavour to ground the Truth and Authority of Holy writ on more sure and sound Foundations Which I shall here at this time a little attempt notwithstanding the uncharitable censures of ignorant angry and narrow-witted Zelots accounting me in Discourses of this Nature an Atheist or at least one that contemns or hath but little regard for or to the Scripture And all because I have still endeavoured to bring them to a Rational ground of their Faith For although some things in Religion be beyond Reason yet it is not against Reason and most may be made out by Reason If this were not so our belief would be very Implicite I shall therefore endeavour to make it plain that the Books of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God and that upon the pure account of Reason only For to go about to prove any such thing to an Atheist or Pagan by the Scripture or any Argument deduced thence is when he believes no such thing to be ridiculous and to prove a thing to be so as Women do because it is so and compel another mans Reason too suddenly This I hope no Pagan or Atheist will deny that there is as much reason to believe the History of the Old and New Testament as any other since there is the same Reason first to believe the Tradition of the Old and New Testaments as the Tradition of any other i. e. That there was such a Man as Moses that wrote of the Creation of the Patriarchs of Gods Judgments on the Egyptians of his delivering the Israelites from the servitude of Pharaoh and leading them through the Wilderness And after him a Joshua who was their Captain and General in their possessing the Land of Canaan And so the Judges Kings and Prophets c. that did such and such Acts. A Matthew Mark Luke and a John that wrote such things as they saw and knew in their own times to be true of one Jesus of Nazareth I say we have as much reason to believe the Tradition of these Histories as any other Histories Or as that there was an Homer that wrote Illiads a Virgil his Georgicks an Ovid his Metamorphosis A Plato an Aristotle and the rest of the Philosophers or their Works Secondly it s as Rational to believe that those Books of the Old and New Testament were written by the same Men as are their reputed Authors as to believe Plutarch's Tacitus's Tully's and Caesar's works were theirs Thirdly that all that was delivered in the Old Testament in Christs time was true appears by his frequent quoting of and referring to it in his Discourse and Disputes Besides if it had been corrupted he would no doubt have taxt them with it as well as for their Teaching for Doctrines the Traditions of Men. And that 't is the same we now have and the Jews at this day acknowledge and that 't was never corrupted is evident from the multitude of Copies distributed after the first and second Captivities to every Synagogue where they were dispersed in which they read every Sabbath-day Now how it shou'd be possible for Men in almost all Nations and at different times to combine together in corrupting the Book of God on design let a prudent Man judge But we find they do all agree which they could never do if any and not all of them shou'd have been corrupted And that they shou'd altogether designedly or casually be corrupted when there appears no solid reason for such a contrivance seems more than improbable To which add if they were corrupted 't would have been in those places especially which speak and Prophesie of Christ and against them Besides if they were corrupted they shou'd have corrupted the Septuagint Translation which was extant in Egypt three hundred years before