Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	apostle_n	church_n	primitive_a	3,218	5	8.9699	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A63913	A phisico-theological discourse upon the Divine Being, or first cause of all things, providence of God, general and particular, separate existence of the human soul, certainty of reveal'd religion, fallacy of modern inspiration, and danger of enthusiasm to which is added An appendix concerning the corruption of humane nature, the force of habits, and the necessity of supernatural aid to the acquest of eternal happiness : with epistolary conferences between the deceased Dr. Anthony Horneck and the author, relating to these subjects : in several letters from a gentleman to his doubting friend.	Turner, John, b. 1649 or 50.; Horneck, Anthony, 1641-1697.	1698 (1698)	Wing T3313; ESTC R5343	198,836	236

a profound Judgment and substantial Knowledge must undoubtedly lead us to very great Devotion and the more exquisitely curious the Anatomist is the greater Reason will he have if he abuse not his Understanding to adore and admire the Infinite Power Wisdom and Goodness of his great Creator and consequently to worship to love and to obey him If you believe Reveal'd Religion which was never so question'd or refuted as to deserve the Answer of any soberly learned Man you must believe the Truth of God's particular Providence altho' you cannot reconcile every particular Phaenomenon either to your own Reason or the Corpuscular Philosophy The holy Scriptures are a System of Divine Philosophy and I should think that the Assertions of the Almighty ought to be received by Rational Men before the seeming clearness of any meer Humane Hypothesis Alas how little is it that we know and granting the Supream Being to have made our World in the Nature of a Clock is this an Argument that its first Fabrication or the Motions bestowed upon its several Parts can result from any thing short of an Almighty and Divine Power but our Philosophy is unable to inform us of all the Wheels the Pius and several Motions of this stupendious Frame 't is true we set it move according to Mechanick Laws but there may be many thousand Motions in it of which we are ignorant Let us bless our God for the Revelation which he has given us and let us as most certainly it behoves us rely upon his special Providence whoever does so will in the event find Comfort and Satisfaction nor do I see how a good Man can have any real Happiness or Consolation without it As for Mr. B s Divinity I must own there are many things in it both Rational and Solid but when he comes to spiritualize the Divine Ordinances and Institutions of Christ and his Apostles he not only sets himself up in opposition to the Churches of Christ to the Sense and Practise of the Primitive Christians as I am able to prove but exposes a want of knowledge in Scripture Interpretation The Novelty of the Sect and the dangerous tendency of their pretended Inspiration is argument enough to ●●e of their Inconsistency with themselves and true Religion and surely we ought to be extreamly cautious how we side with such whimsical upstart Opinions till we can reconcile the Possibility for Divine Goodness and Mercy to suffer Christendom to lye in Ignorance for Sixteen hundred years and that the Churches immediately planted by the Apostles shou'd make Mistakes of that vile Consequence even when their Founders were present to set them to rights if they had done so as we must believe they did if Q sm be true A well-grounded knowledge in the Primitive Christianity which may be truly fetcht out of Ecclesiastick History and the Fathers of the Church will give you this Satisfaction that the holy Ordinances from the first promulgation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ such I mean as Water-Baptism and the Eucharist have been practis'd even to this day by all good Christians by the use of the outward Elements in their Administration I deny not but there have been both great Abuses Misapprehensions and Mistakes in the performance of them or in the manner of their Reception and I think I may say there are 〈◊〉 more egregiously absurd than some of those derived from the Chair of supposed Infallibility but this will by no means extenuate our Crimes of neglecting their use or making light of putting them at all in practise I desire you at your leisure to consider well Mr. B s Comment upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 on which he lays a very great stress and if you compare it with some of those Places in Holy Writ which clearly justifie this manner of Baptismal initiation into Christ's Church you will find it so gross a Metaphor that neither Grammar Rhetorick nor the Rules of Logick neither which I prefer to them all the Reason of an understanding Man will ever be able to countenance We may set into what Absurdities even Learned Men are betray'd when they too much rely upon their own Judgments when they set up for new Discoveries and impose their own Phant●sies for Divine Revelations If you please to send me what you think the sufficient Proofs which this Learned Man has excogitated for the support of his new Religion I will if God enable me give you my impartial Thoughts for I must seriously profess to you I see nothing in his Works which ought to sway any true Christian to leave any Protestant Church for the sake of Q sm I have formerly been in Mr. B s Company but cou'd never discover any thing like fair Argumentation I must own him to have been a Man of very considerable parts yet his Scripture Quotations were for the most part manifestly wrested and his general Discourse a pure Invective or down-right Railery against the Church of England at which I must confess I was very much surprised having framed to my self other Notions of the Man before I left him with this undoubted satisfaction in my self that the Spirit of Self-conceit of Pride and Bitterness must needs be very re●●te from the true Spirit of Christianity I thank you for your Discourse concerning the Natural Power of Spasms or the Disorders of the Nervous System but as to what you say about Daemoniacs Fascination and the Operation of Evil Spirits I must refer my Opinion to a time of greater leisure or till you please to visit me in the mean time I pray God more and more to inlighten your Understanding c. I am your real Friend A. H. Some little time after this I receiv'd a Second Letter from that sincerely Religious and most excellent Divine by way of Answer to one that I had sent him which as I find it amongst my Papers begins thus SIR I Rejoyce with you that it hath pleased our good God to confirm in you such a Belief of his Existence and your own Creation after the Divine Image as may secure to you a Remembrance of the Duty incumbent on you and put you both upon a constant and fervent Prayer for the supply of Divine Grace together with a steddy and devout Submission to and Dependence upon his especial Providence I do look upon your last Letter to be the Picture of your Mind and bating the Ceremony I find no other fault than this that how lamentably true soever your Remarks may be upon the present Age for the most part yet I am free to acquaint you with my Thoughts that there are a much greater number of good People amongst us than you imagine I may say blessed be our God for it I have the personal knowledge of many whom I can call truly pious and sincere Christians Some of them such who as they by no means value themselves upon their Humane Acquirements are yet able to silence the Calumnies of the Profane

our selves unspotted from the World And it is in consequence of this Principle saith the Author that the whole Tenure of the Scripture declares unto us that we shall be judged not according to our Belief but according to our Works witness abundance of Passages both in the Old and New Testament particularly that of St. Paul where he says that we must all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ that every one may recive the things done in his Body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad Religion lyes not in the barely embracing this or that Opinion however Orthodox neither yet in associating our selves with this or that Sect of Professors in admiring or following this or that Doctor tho' even he were a Paul an Apollos or a Cephas but its important Work is to draw us from that which is Evil and to engage us in the practise of that which is good It is a wonderful thing to consider the Heats and Animosities which are sprung up in the World from difference in Opinion in what we call Articles of Faith Every Man will have his own to be the only true ones nay some alas too many are so barbarous that they not only condemn others to Death but deliver them also by their Anathema ' s as much as in them lyes to the Devil and Damnation for difference of Opinion in some Metaphisical Speculations It is nevertheless certain that neither Christ nor his Apostles have tied the Salvation of Mankind so indispensably to the particular Belief of any incomprehensible Mystery as some of the present Doctors of his Church now do We read that our Lord himself pronounced St. Peter blessed upon the bare declaration that he believed him to be the Christ the Son of the living God St. Philip in like manner baptized the Eunuch upon no other Profession of his Faith than in the terms of this short Symbol I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God St. John teaches us plainly that to confess that Jesus Christ is come in the Flesh is a certain Characteristical Mark of the Spirit of God and St. Paul explains himself in this point yet more particularly telling us That if we confess with our Mouths the Lord Jesus and believe in our Hearts that God hath raised him from the dead we shall be saved This simplicity of the Scriptures in those Articles of Belief which they propose to us as necessary to Salvation may justly raise our Astonishment at the imprudence of those Men who have perplexed all Matters of Faith with so many inexplicable Difficulties not content with what the Scripture teacheth of Christianity they have had recourse to a wordy Philosophy thereby to refine their Notions and adorn them with the Lustre of seemingly mysterious Expressions insomuch that a great Cardinal has not stuck to acknowledge That without the help of Aristotle we should have wanted many Articles of Faith and that which aggravates yet more the Extravagance of these Dogmatisers is that they themselves acknowlenge the Incomprehensibility of those very things which they undertake to explain with such Critical Exactness as if they had enter'd into the very Councils and fathom'd the Depths both of the Wisdom and Knowledge of God we may therefore without Danger shake off the tyranny of those Prejudices that have possest us the Names of Orthodox and Heretick are too partial and illusory any longer to deceive us they have these many Ages been made use of with so much Irregularity Interest and Passion that the ordinary Application of them cannot at this day be any just ground either of Assurance or Fear We may undoubtedly be assur'd that the Righteous Judge of all Men will not impute unto us the Guilt of any Criminal Heresie so long as we sincerely believe what he has expresly revealed to us and if peradventure we understand not clearly the whole sence of every Expression in which those things have been declared we ought certainly for that very reason so much the less presume to alter them or affect new forms of explaining our selves and least of all to impose upon others any doubtful Inferences drawn from such dark and intricate Premises But with Submission to this great Master of Humane Reason I shall take the Liberty to reply this That as I cannot think every thing a Fundamental in Religion which some Men would perswade us so on the other side I am satisfy'd that there is more requir'd to Salvation than some others seem to intimate I can well enough comply with that Opinion which supposes there is no more than one Essential in Christianity to wit the Belief that Jesus is the Messiah provided they take in the Genuine Consequences and the Natural Results of such a Faith such as his Divinity his miraculous Incarnation his Ascension into Heaven and his coming to Judge the World at the last Day Without these Attendants upon this one Fundamental the System of Christianity will be lame and incoherent and it cannot indeed be known what is meant by saying Jesus is the Messiah A Man may say so much and have no other Notion of him than the Jews had who expected him a Temporal Prince but we must believe that he will raise our Bodies and judge us at the last Day not to instance in all the other Fundamentals which the Apostle mentions Hebr. 6.1 2. If we believe him such a Messiah as the Scripture represents him such parts of our Belief will have besides the Explaining of our Faith a great Influence on the End of it viz. the making us good Men for he that believes Jesus only a Temporal Prince to govern him in this World will never think himself so much obliged to conform his very Thoughts and Desires to his Laws as he that is perswaded that he will one day judge him in another Again we ought above all things to be satisfy'd in his Divinity for if we do not acknowledge him to be one God with the Father and worship him accordingly we neglect a Gospel Duty and if we do worship any thing but the one God we are Idolaters As for his Satisfaction a right Notion of it is of that importance that without it he that believes Jesus to be the Messiah has no Notion for what he was anointed and sent or of what he has done for us These I say must all go along with that one Fundamental and to our Belief of this there is nothing more requir'd than our Belief of the Authority of Holy Writ where these things are plainly reveal'd to us If we do believe the Scriptures to be Authentic we must believe it our Duty not to dispute the Mysteries of Christian Religion it is sufficient for us that we consent in our Hearts to what is there plainly deliver'd as to these Points altho' we are altogether unskil'd in the Metaphysicks and unable by the Principles of Philosophy to account for the manner of Hypostatic Union the