Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	ancient_a	doctrine_n	father_n	2,828	5	4.7388	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91323	The life of that incomparable man, Faustus Socinus Senensis, described by a Polonian knight. Whereunto is added an excellent discourse, which the same author would have had premised to the works of Socinus; together with a catalogue of those works.; Vita Fausti Socini Senensis. English	Przypkowski, Samuel, 1592-1670.; Biddle, John, 1615-1662.	1653 (1653)	Wing P4136; Thomason E1489_1; ESTC R203303	35,107	77

it self envyed her own fortune or finally the counsel of almighty God that vertue might never want a ●●fficient combate certain it is that the hope of so happy a condition together with the way thereunto hath been for many ages involved with the greatest difficulties For first the very confidence of our hope which onely is able to set us on the top of true happiness began to be undermined and shaken with engines well-nigh planted against it Next the very Religion of Christ which alone gave assurance of so great a hope to mankind was on several accounts called into question Finally a great impediment lay in the way to hinder us not only from conceiving but also venturing on this hope And which would most of all move you with grief and indignation all these things were done by them who professed themselves competitors of the felicity hoped for For that we may return unto what was proposed in the first place what engine was fitter to undermine our faith then the difficulty of returning to life That life might perhaps be extended to a very great length would though with some difficulty be assented unto by reason but that being once taken away it should be restored again for ever was though not contrary to reason yet above belief In so great a miracle thwarting the custome of nature mankind could hardly believe without an example And therefore God exposed to the view of all a certain experiment thereof having recalled him to life who did not at all exceed others as to the condition of mortal nature This so evident a prop of our faith is taken from us by the common opinion of Christians if Jesus that was raised from the dead be the very most high God not differing in essence from the Father For neither did he really dye for who would imagine that the Supreme Power can dye who would affirm that a person coeternal and coessential with the Father was killed nor when he was dead did he like us stand in need of anothers help so that returning unto life in a glorious manner he did by his own strength and such a power as was neither taken away from him nor laid down by him rescue himself out of the jaws of death Tell me now what is there in us like hereunto It is not something added unto us but we our selves that dye and what hope is there in our strength being altogether broken and quelled by death Certainly the Ghosts or persons of the dead do not watch an opportunity to raise themselves by their own power out of so profound a sleep Moreover as if it had been a small matter to have our faith so dangerously shaken in a thing of the greatest moment a very provident care was also taken that it might not make use of some other means to erect it self For whereas it was the chief duty of a lively faith sincerely to believe so sublime promises of God the generality of Christians was made to believe that the main business of faith was to believe certain opinions touching the nature of God and other the like doctrines Thus did the Publick error wrest and turn aside the minds of all from the true exercise of faith to the affectation of vain opinions Whereby it came to pass that all disputed concerning the nature of God but few believed his promises and accordingly not many obeyed his commandments So that with a little adoe faith degenerated into opinion religion into Philosophy vertue into contemplation zeal into contention love into faction Nor could it be otherwise when once the maners of men were slighted and their wits only began to be improved and examined I come now to the second engine wherewith our faith was shaken and which strook at our hope through the side of our whole rel●gion No sect no religion besides the Christian doth solidly promise heaven and the stars to them who have well deserved The pledge of so great a promise perisheth if the promise● himself is called into question But they have taken the direct way to make it be condemned of falshood or burthened with a very just ground of suspicion who deem such doctrines fundamental thereunto as are false and repugnant to all reason Who would not fall a weeping for the miseryes of the Church when he considereth how much she hath degenerated from her primitive chastity And in the midst of grief a just indignation sometimes breaketh-out to see that those ancient Bishops should in the doctrine touching God not be ashamed violently to draw the sense of the Holy Scripture to the opinions of the Greek shall I say or Barbarous Philosophy The ancient Church heretofore laughed at the Gnosticks for corrupting prophane Philosophy with shreds taken out of the Christian doctrine and prodigiously patched together When in the mean she her self forsooth making a more sober use of Philosophy had rather seem to have defiled the Christian Divinity then the Learning of that age Did those Fathers think it so miserable a thing to be accounted ignorant of those arts which were then so ardently affected by the times But as they who desire to sit on two stools fall from b●th even so those Bishops did neither sincerely retain the primitive simplicity of the Sacred Revelation nor the conjectures of prophane wits Whereupon the Doctrines of the Church were stuffed with absurd and contradictions opinions which inasmuch they pull-up by the roots the notions naturally implanted in us and consequently reason it self are obtruded under the pretence of Faith Which might notwithstanding be endured first if they onely surpassed the power of our mind and did not overthrow it For there is a wide difference between nor perceiving the reason of a thing and seeing the falshood thereof Because the truth is oftentimes so deeply hid that it can hardly be brought to light whereas falshood can seldome lye so close but that it may be traced out Wherefore I could wish that it were as easie a matter to cure ignorance as to convince errors of falshood Otherwise to what purpose doth our mind serve if it shall on any pretence be afraid to condemne that which implyeth a contradiction Furthermore that desense of paradoxes under the buckler of Faith might be endured did men in very deed fly from the examination of Reason to the authority of Divine Testimony But when the cause beginneth to sink under the judgement of Reason a sudden supply is fetched from Sacred Revelation When this very Revelation cometh to scanning we find it as we formerly hinted to be more evidently discovered by Platonick Wits then by the Apostolick Writers Again if there be any place in the Holy Oracles which may seem to prove it it is so obscure that we must again return to those flying and aiery contemplations of mans brain to have some certainty concerning the ambiguous sense thereof In framing which consequences if the cause begin again to totter a ridiculous return is also made again to the

THE LIFE OF THAT Incomparable Man Faustus Socinus Senensis Described by a POLONIAN Knight Whereunto is added An Excellent Discourse which the same Author would have had premised to the Works OF SOCINUS Together with a Catalogue of those WORKS London Printed for Richard Moone at the seven Stars in Pauls Church yard neer the great North-doore 1653. TO THE READER THe Life of Socinus is here exposed to thy view that by the perusal ther of thou maist receive certain information concerning the man whom Ministers others traduce by custome having for the most part never heard any thing of his conversation nor seen any of his works or if they have they were either unable or unwilling to make a thorow scrutiny into them and so no marvel if they speak evil of him To say any thing of him here by way Elogy as that he was one of the most pregnant wits that the world hath produced that none since the Apostles hath deserved better of our Religion in that the Lord Christ hath chiefly made use of his Ministry to retrive so many precious truths of the Gospel which had a long time been hidden from the eyes of men by the artifice of Satan that he shewed the world a more accurate way to discuss controversies in Religion and to fetch out the very marrow of the Holy Scripture so that a man may more availe himself by reading his works then perhaps by perusing all the Fathers together with the writings of more modern Authors that the vertues of his will were not inferior unto those of his understanding he being every way furnished to the work of the Lord that he opened the right way to bring Christians to the unity of the faith and acknowledgement of the Son of God that he took the same course to propagate the Gospel that Christ and the Apostles had done before him forsaking his estate and his nearest relations and undergoing all manner of labours and hazards to draw men to the knowledge of the truth that he had no other end of all his undertakings then the Glory of God and Christ and the salvation of himself and others it being impossible for Calumny it self with any colour to asperse him with the least suspicion of worldly interest that he of all Interpreters explaineth the precepts of Christ in the strictest maner and windeth up the lives of men to the highest strain of holiness to say these and other the like things though in themselves true and certain would notwithstanding here be impertinent in that it would forestall what the Polonian Knight hath written on this subject To him therefore I refer thee desiring thee to read his words without prejudice and then the works of Socinus himself and though thou beest not thereby convinced that all which Socinus taught is true for neither am I my self of that belief as having discovered that in some lesser things Socinus as a man went awry however in the main he hit the truth yet for so much of Christ as thou must needs confess appeareth in him begin to have more favourable thoughts of him and his Followers I. B. THE LIFE OF Faustus Socinus Senensis TO pursue the Life of Faustus Socinus in a brief and perfunctory manner would be below the dignity of so great a man but to do it fully and elaborately would perhaps be above our strength For to relate the praises of renowned men by snatches and in a negligent fashion is an injury to vertue and if there was ever any certainly this is the man who deserveth to be described not only with care but also with wit Yet since it is better that excellent endowments should be commended below their merit then wholly passed-over in silence it is unreasonable either that the meanness of the Relators should prove prejudicial to famous men or the greatness of those who are celebrated be any prejudice to the wit of the Writers But as for my self pardon is due to me upon another account being cumbred with many cares and hurrying my discourse within the limits prefixed to a pittance of time Socinus was born in Sene a most famous City of Tuscany The Nobility of his stock was ancient and the splendor of his Alliances exceeding the condition of a private man His father besides the honors of his own Family was on his mothers side further ennobled by the Salvetti Which family sometimes flourished with so great power amongst the Florentines that Pandulphus Petruccius being expelled out of Sene was chiefly beholding to the assistance and wealth of Paulus Salvettus for the restitution of his Country and shortly after of his Princedome By which benefit being obliged he conferred on him the freedom of the City and perswaded him to leave his countrey and dwell at Sene. This Paulus was father to Camilla who being marryed to Marianus the yonger was mother to Alexander and Laelius Socinus and grandmother to Faustus His mother born to the hope of more then a private fortune was daughter to Burgesius Petruccius sometimes Prince of the Commonwealth of Sene and to Victoria Piccolominea who being the daughter of Andreas Piccolomineus Lord of Castilio and Piscaria and Niece to Pope Pius the second and third of that name and either Sister or Kinswoman to Cardinal John Piccolomineus to the Dukes of the Amalphitani to the Marquisses of Capistranum to the Earles of Calanum and many other Italian Princes marryed into the house of the Petruccii which then held the Fortune of the Princedome of Sene. But Burgesius succeeding his father Pandulphus and not long after by a fatal change expelled out of his countrey did not long survive his dignity Nevertheless Cardinal Raphael Petruccius was his successor in the Government of his countrey and held for a while the helm of that Commonwealth But Victoria being left a widow suffered not her mind which in the splendor of her former height she had never lifted-up to be quailed with so disastrous a vicissitude of things So that for the space of fifty six yeers wherein she survived the life and common fortune of her husband she did with singular modesty and approved integrity and chastity endure the solitary condition of widowhood Her daughter Agnes whom according to the dignity of so great a family she had trained up in most holy manners she gave in marriage to Alexander Socinus a young man of noble extraction but private condition He was the Father of our Faustus and born in such a family as had for a long time not by Arms and Power but by wit and Scholarship seemed to hold a kind of Princedome in one sort of learning For this very Alexander was called the master of subtilties and his Father Marianus the younger the Prince of Lawyers and Bartholmew the Un●kle of Marianus the younger was by Angelus Politianus stiled the Papinian of his age finally Marianus the elder Bartholmews father a most grave Lawyer is by Aeneas Sylvius so highly extolled that that the