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
A80008	The hinge of faith and religion or, a proof of the deity against atheists and profane persons, by reason, and the testimony of Holy Scripture: the divinity of which is demonstrated, / by L. Cappel, Doctour and Professour in Divinity ; translated out of French by Philip Marinel, M.A. and fellow of Pembroke-College in Oxford.; Piuot de la foy et religion. English	Cappel, Louis, 1585-1658.; Marinel, Philip.	1660 (1660)	Wing C482; Thomason E1845_2; Thomason E2265_1; ESTC R209659	84,739	200

most noted Heathen Philosophers comes nothing near that sinful and corrupted man as he is naturally inclined to evil could not have invented so perfect a Rule to live by as that which is shewed unto us there Much less is the Devil Authour of chese things who is so great an enemy to all Virtue and Holiness that he would not have recommended or taught it unto men Besides if Damons are granted to be it must be consequently acknowledged That there is a God as hath been shewed before Whence it appears that these things proceed necessarily from Divine Revelation As to the Narrations and Histories they are so tyed and connexed unto the Doctrines that they cannot be separated one from another So that if the Histories are true and no forged things the Doctrines which are annexed to them must needs also be true For in every part of them you have a God Creatour and Governour of Heaven and Earth represented to you who doth see conduct and order all things a Judge of men who punisheth and chastiseth the one and doth reward and recompense the others who worketh wonders above and beyond all Natures Power who stiles and in effect shews himself to be such as he is there described viz. Eternal Infinite Immortal Invisible Incomprehensible Almighty VVise Good Just and Mercifull c. VVe see in the New Testament a man Jesus Christ our Lord stiling himself The Son of God and The Saviour of the World shewing and evidencing by his Miracles that he was indeed such a one dying for mens salvation arising again ascending into Heaven and there sitting at the right hand of God his Father and sending from thence the Holy Spirit upon his Apostles There he is seen ministred to by Angels preached to the Gentiles believed in the World and by the strength of his Spirit bearing down all Heathenish Idolatry and Superstition demolishing the empire of the Devil and triumphing gloriously over Sathan and over all his Power These Narrations are not Fables artificially invented as those of Homer and those of the Old and New Romancès of all sorts but are true Histories and genuine Relations of things which have really and certainly came to pass so as they are there related to us Which appears First by the Connexion and admirable contexture of these Relations which do strengthen follow and maintain one another with so exact and just an agreement that there is nothing there unjoynted or that doth bely any other matter therein contained Which in so great a multitude and variety of Narrations so well continued with all their Circumstances of Times Places and Persons and of which we do see many Traces and Footsteps in the most authentical and certain Monuments of Antiquity and so well continued by so many Ages from the Beginning of the World to our Lord Jesus for the space of four thousand years add to this the connexion and coherence there is between the Relations and Doctrines of the New Testament with those of the Old cannot have been compiled nor so admirably invented by any humane Industry though such a Writer had been as subtile and ingenious as it may be although one man alone which is not true had undertaken to write and continue such a design which he had before invented out of his own brain Much less could it be that so many and so different Writers as to Time and Place some in the Desart others in Judea others in Babylon others in Samaria two Kingdomes so contrary and Enemies one to the other some Jews other Christians two people so different in such a wonderfull variety of matters and so differing arguments of their Writings as are Histories Laws Political and Ecclesiastical Ordinances Moral Precepts Prophesies of many kinds Epistles Discourses Disputes of so differing stiles the one low genuine and popular the other figurate and sublime to which all humane Eloquence cannot attain the one terse and polished the other harsh and unpleasing it is I say impossible that so many and so different heads which have neither seen known nor combined together should have so well agreed in all points to divulge and put forth and give credit to a Fable so well continued and to suit so wonderfully all the Narrations Doctrines and Precepts which they lay there before us Secondly it appears That these are not sabulous Narrations and Tales made to deceive the VVorld because the Nation of the Jews the Origin and History of which is held forth to us in the Old Testament and is continued for the space of two thousand years and which is almost all the subject matter of all the Books of the Old Testament and makes a good part of the Books of the New Testament is and doth subsist yet at this day scattered upon the face of the Earth even so as their own Prophets had fore-told them Their Sanctions Customes Ceremonies and Religion the very same as was prescribed to them by their Law-giver Moses and by the Prophets It cannot be denied that Jesus Christ and his Apostles have been and have Preached in the World since that their Doctrine and their Writings are received and held by so many millions of Christians which have been for these 1600. years upon the Earth known and noted among men But it may be it wil be objected that the ground and basis of these Histories is true and hath some reality in it that there have been a Moses Joshua Judges and Kings of Israel a David a Solomon c. but that these Histories have been sluffed and garnished with Fictitious Tales as Homer's Iliad and Odyssea the Foundation of which is Historical since that once Troy Priam Hector Achilles had a real being but they have not done all that Homer tells and writes of them and as the Romances of Roland and Regnault who once were but never did that which the Romances written of them tell us So the Miracles and Wonders of Egypt of the Desart of Joshua of the Judges of the Kings of Jesus Christ and his Apostles are Ornaments invented by these Writers to set an higher value on what they present there to us Let us see whether there is any ground of Reason in this First Moses writes himself his own History and that of the people of the Jews which he had drawn from Egypt and led through the Desart for the space of fourty years with so incomparable an ingenuity and so far from suspicion of fraud or deceit that he notes there his own defects and faults and doth not bestow the most Honourable charges of this People the Priesthood or Royalty upon any of his Posterity And a little before his death he makes a long Sermon to them which is all the Book of Deuteronomy where he represents to them all things that had befallen them in the Desart and a little before their going out of Egypt just in the same manner as he relates it in the Books of Exodus Leviticus and Numbers Was it then any

time place and likelihood that they could be made to believe forged Tales and could he take them to witness those things which they never saw nor knew Will it be said That he never made this Sermon That we only suppose it to be so That he hath not writ these Books Or That these Writings so replenished of Fabulous Stories have been hid for a long time and have not been published of a great while after he was dead when the Memory of those things which happened at the going out of Egypt and in the Desart was past and abolish'd in this people which was very glad and content to receive and believe these fine Tales as tending to the Honour of their Nation Or else will it be objected That some body after his death hath framed and published these Books under his Name First This is objected without the least Colour Appearance or Ground in Reason Secondly This is against the Testimony of the most ancient Monuments of History which father these Books upon none other then Moses and accuse no body of having compiled them for him Diodorus Siculus writeth that Moses gave the Jews their Laws and that he received them from the God called Jaoh which is the proper Name of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Thirdly The Authour of those Books doth not flatter that Nation but represent it to us as the most perverse and stiff-necked in the World Fourthly How could these pretended impostures have so universally in so many Ages taken so deep a rooting in the spirit of this Nation Fifthly The best part of their Laws and Political and Ecclesiastical Constitutions are grounded and have their Foundation upon these Narrations which these men do pretend to be fabulous These I say are wholy built upon them as the Pass-over the Feast of Tabernacles the Jubilee the year of Release c. Again The Tabernacle so splendid so ingeniously and artificially erected so divine and admirable by whose Model and Pattern Solomon that glorious and magnificent King hath afterwards builded his Temple that stupendious and wonderfull piece of workmanship to which the most sumptuous Buildings which the Vanity Power and Riches of the most potent Monarchs have erected is nothing comparable with all its Services and the Order of its Ceremonies which is so admirable where all the Mysteries of Christian Faith and Religion are seen pourtraied and as it were drawn to the Life as we know it by the Relation which the Sacred Writers of the New Testament do make and in their imitation the Fathers and Doctours of the Church could this be an Invention and Chimara of Moses's own fancying or of some body else after him Could he have divined so many Ages before all that our Lord Jesus Christ should do teach and suffer for the Salvation of men and accordingly erect this Tabernacle with all its Ceremonies and Appertenances which were so perfect and accomplished a Model of these things Now since there is no ground to doubt that Moses hath invented these things which he writeth of the Children of Israel's deliverance of their going out of Egypt or their going through the Red Sea of their Adventures through the Desart for the space of fourty years since he relates these things himself to a multitude of six hundred thousand men which could have given him the lye if he had forged these things Why should not he be believed in all those things which he recites to us in the Histories of Abraham Isaac Jacob and his Children of the Deluge of the Tower of Babel of Sodom and to go yet higher of the Creation of the World What is in all this more incredible then the History of the Children of Israel in Egypt and in the Desart The same may be said of all that which is recited to us in the Books of Joshua of the Judges and of the Kings for all this is not more incredible then this History of Egypt and of the Desart and it hath an indissoluble connexion with all the Narrations of Moses And why shall we esteem them past belief since they are represented to us as the Works and Effects of a God which is Eternal Infinite Almighty All-good All-wise Infinitely-exalted above Nature seeing it is he who hath given its being to Nature And that we have shewed by so many preceding Arguments that above this Nature there ought to be such a Deity the Cause and Rise of it Again It cannot be denyed but that Moses and the Prophets have promised and fore-told that the Messias should come and he came The Jews expected him they thinking that his time was come or near at hand For to this very day they are forced to confess that that time is past by above fifteen hundred years And when they are urged upon this Confession they have presently recourse to a pitifull and impertinent evasion to wit that this time hath been prolonged because of their sins and that the coming of the Messias hath been retarded upon this account although they are not able to shew what great sin they have committed that may have been the cause of this delay and of so signal a Desolation in their Nation And the Apostles and Christians do evidently prove that this promised Messias is come in the time prefixed by their Prophets and that this is Jesus Christ whom they have rejected upon no other account but that they falsly imagined to themselves that the Messias was to be a Great and Potent Monarch who was to free them from the slavery they suffered under the Romanes and give them Domination over all other People of the Earth An imagination quite contrary to the intention of the Spirit of God which the Prophets were inspired withall Neither can it be denyed but that Moses and the Prophets and Jesus Christ and his Apostles after them have fore-told the destruction of Jerusalem and of the Temple by the Romanes and that miserable Dispersion of the Jewish Nation wherein they have been for so many Ages their Rejection their Exclusion from the Covenants of God and the Vocation of the Gentiles in their stead and their being brought to the Service of the God of Abrabam Isaac and Jacob who is Creatour of Heaven and Earth with the utter abolishing of all the Heathenish Superftition All which hath came to pass since these sixteen hundred years as it was fore-told by them which is an invincible Argument that these Predictions were not made at adventure neither can they be any product of Humane Wit which cannot dive so far into Future Events nor foretell so certainly and constantly by so many different person those wonderfull Effects which so many Ages since have came to pass To these we might add the Miracles of Jesus Christ and of his Apostles which the Jews themselvs though they be their sworn enemies do not deny although they falsly and foolishly impute them to I know not what imaginary Virtue of the Name of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉