Selected quad for the lemma: sense_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
sense_n	faith_n	reason_n	see_v	6,880	5	4.6981	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A65709	Aonoz tez kisteōz, or, An endeavour to evince the certainty of Christian faith in generall and of the resurrection of Christ in particular / by Daniel Whitbie, chaplain to the Right Reverend Father in God, Seth, Lord Bishop of Sarum ...	Whitby, Daniel, 1638-1726.	1671 (1671)	Wing W1731; ESTC R37213	166,618	458

not Sow and Plant and trade only in hopes of an encrease and should not then the hopes and probabilities of infinite eternal Happiness provided for the pious Christian engage us to obey Gods Precepts and to resist all those Temptations which flesh and blood suggests against them If thus to seek the false uncertain Mammon be the great Wisdome of the world can it be Folly to pursue with equal diligence and vigour but with better Hopes the true lasting Riches If then it be but probable that all the world throughout all Ages did not embrace the Doctrine of a Providence without some plausible Inducement so to do If all the primitive Martyrs and Confessors did not suffer for the Name of Christ and all succeeding Generations did not embrace or continue in the Profession of the Faith of Christ without all reason motive or even probable inducement If any of those probabilities we have amass'd together in the close of this Discourse deserve to be esteemed such or any of those Arguments which in this Treatise we have urged be probable then must the Folly of the Atheist be exceeding great and clear beyond exception 3. It must be Folly to renounce that Faith which hath been Generally owned by men of strongest Parts and most discerning Judgments in very many Nations and through many Generations and which delivers matters of so great Moment and Concern that our eternal Happiness or Misery depends upon them till we have used the Greatest diligence to search into the Reasons which induced them to believe it true Let then the Atheist say what he hath done to satisfie his judgment in this great Concern whether he ever did peruse the writings and Apologies of Antient Fathers or the most eminent Divines who have discoursed upon this Subject to the Satisfaction of the knowing World Whether he ever did consult with Persons of the best abilities propound his scruples and consider of the Answers given before he ventured to scoff at and renounce his Faith If not this is sufficient to convince him of the greatest Folly in the World If any that pretends to have used all this diligence and all these Endeavours continue still to question and suspect the truth of Christian Faith and of the Doctrine of a Providence let me intreat him to consider 1. Whether those motives which induce him to renounce a Providence or Christian Faith will not compel him to renounce those things of which he hath the evidence of Sense and Reason to convince him if so we have as great assurance of the falshood of those motives as Sence and Reason can afford If then you do reject a Providence because you are not able to conceive Gods Omnipresence or any other Attribute on which this Providence depends if you renounce the Mysteries of Christian Faith because you cannot apprehend them have you not equal reason to reject the Notions of Infinite unbounded space of an Eternal Flux of Time or an Indivisible Eternity which yet your reason must acknowledge Must you not question the Existence of the Souls of Men and Brutes as being not sufficient to conceive that Spirits if confined to points can performe any of those actions which we ascribe to them or that they can diffuse themselves through Bodies receive impressions from them or make impressions on them or that meer matter should perceive reflect and reason or have any sense of pain and pleasure Lastly must not this Principle oblige you to Question the Existence of all material Compounds For who is able to conceive that Indivisibles can be united or that a Grain of Sand can be for ever divisible and have as many parts as the whole World If you do question or dispute the truth of any Miracle Revelation or Prediction because you are not able to perceive the manner how it was or may be done this will oblige you to denie the Ebb and Flowing of the Sea till you are able to acquaint us with the true Causes of it and to distrust that ever you were born because you never can explain the manner of your own production For as thou knowest not the way of the wind nor how the bones do grow in the womb of her that is with Child even so thou knowest not the works of God who maketh all things Eccl. 11.5 If you are tempted to disown these Revelations because you are not able to conceive Gods Ends and Reasons in them Why he who hath proclaimed Himself the God of Mercy should threaten an eternal punishment to finite transitory Sins why he should leave the World so long in Darkness and the like Might not a Subject on the like account reject the precepts of his Soveraign because not able to perceive the Wisdome of them or the necessity of all the Sanctions he annexeth to them Is it not certain that if there be a God he must be infinite in his perfections and so incomprehensible and then his Wisdome must exceedingly transcend the reach of finite Apprehensions the Secrets of it must be double to that which doth appear to us and there must be such depths both in his Judgments and his Acts of Mercy as we can never fathome So that unless the Notion of an Infinite and all-wise Being includes a contradiction in the Terms we cannot doubt but that he may reveal what we can never apprehend Besides we cannot understand the Beauty or Wisdome of Divine Transactions but we must be acquainted with the Ends and Motives the Tendence and result of all he doth for otherwise what seems absurd to us may admirably comply with the Designes of Providence what seems confused in the Beginning may conclude in Order and the Greatest Beauty Since then we do not know the minde of God since we are not acquainted with the Designes and Purpose nor are we able to look forward to the Results of Providence it is sure we cannot pass a Judgement on the Wisdome of them If you are tempted to disown the Christian Faith because you are not able to reconcile it to your shallow reason and infirm Conceptions This will oblige you to denie the Being Propagation the Swiftness or Continuation of all Motion it being certain we are not able to give an Answer to all the Arguments produced against the different degrees of Swiftness or the Continuation or the very Being of it or to conceive how Motion can be propagated It is acknowledged that an immediate plain indisputable Contradiction cannot be matter of our Faith or of a Revelation from the God of truth But seeing it is also evident that all matters infinitely great as infinite Duration Power Space and infinitely little as the indivisible parts of Space Time do as much bafle and confound our understandings as do the Attributes of God and do abound with difficulties as stubborn and unweildy as any Revelations of the Gospel do afford it must be rashness to reject these Revelations as inconsistent with the Dictates and Apprehensions of

just occasion to cry out on the Impostor The Testimony of St John concerning him the voice from Heaven the Holy Ghosts descent in likeness of a Dove Gods Declaration to him by these Tokens that he was the Lamb of God must be Delusions too What Zacharias and his Virgin Mother did pretend to see and hear what Simeon Elizabeth and Hannah Prophesied must be the issue of distempered Brains however they were Men and Women of unblameable Lives and Reputations Both they who tasted of the Water which he presumed was turned into Wine and those Five thousand Persons which were fed with five Loaves and with two little Fishes must have their Eyes and Appetites and Palates all deceived Christ having as it is here supposed no Design to put a Cheat upon them All Christs Predictions must be false and all the Spirit of Prophesie to which the Primitive Christian did so much pretend must be the Illusion of the Fansie Imagination must produce that Star which led the Wise Men to our Saviour and form those Voices which both he and his Disciples and the whole Multitude did seem to hear It must produce those frequent Apparitions of Angels and that Transfiguration which his Apostles seemed to see It must rebuke the winds and make the Sea obey him and must enable him to walk upon it It must form a conceit in him that he was the Son of God and Saviour of the world one sent into it from his Fathers bosome to take upon him flesh and suffer for the sins of men and all these great and strong delusions must consist with an exemplary life and an excellent wisdome so visible both in his Doctrine and discourses as he that runs may read it and lastly with a Glorious resurrection and the abundant Graces of is Spirit Again it must prevaile upon himself and his Disciples and the whole body of Believers dispersed through the then known world not only to believe that they did dayly cast out Divels cure diseases raise the dead that they did prophesy and speak with tongues but also on the eyes and eares of his and their Spectators and their Hearers and make them flock with their diseased to the places where they were and press to touch their Garments and come within the compass of their shadow or beg they would but speak the word that so their dead might live and their diseased might be whole Imagination must prevaile on those who were before possessed to believe that afterwards they were not and so upon the very devil to lie dormant in them it must prevail on those that were sick of what disease soever to conceive that they were well and think their sores and issues did not run upon the Lame to think they walked upon the Deaf to think they hear'd upon the dead to think themselves alive and lastly upon those with whom they did converse that is on their professed enemies throughout the world me learned and inquisitive and most concerned to find out the truth not only to believe the same but own the Christian faith upon the strength of those delusions In a word this phansie must give eyes unto the Blind and feet unto the Lame and eares unto the Deaf and life unto the Dead through divers centuries together or it must have deluded the whole world with those pretentions for divers Generations no man intending in the least to put a cheat upon them Or lastly it must prevail upon mankind to credit and to venture both their present and future even their eternal welfare to confirme what both their eyes and eares and other senses told them was but the vain delusions of some brain-sick Persons and what is now recorded thus that Many when they sew the miracles that Jesus did believed should be written thus that many when they saw the Great Delusions Christ and his Disciples suffer'd believed on him Now to conceive so strong and spreading a delusion should seaze upon so many millions throughout all climates of the world and this alone in the first ages of the Church never before or after that it should be peculiar to the Christian never should agree to the Apostate or the Heathen is a phansy so prodigious that nothing can be more If we can once imagine that the eyes and eares and apprehensions of so many millions should throughout diverse centuries be so continually and universally deceived what reason have we to believe either our senses or our undestanding or to expect that others should do so Why do we not continually suspect the like in all we seem to see or hear or understand and so set up for Scepticks and seekers in all things whatsoever In a word it was never heard since the foundation of the world that men of a deluded phancy did pretend to matters of so high a nature and yet deliver precepts of so confess'd an excellency that no Philosophy could match no Laws or Rules of Living how ever framed by long experience hard study and the greatest strength of humane reason could compare therewith And hence it is that never any of their malicious Adversaries however they pretended things as frivolous and as absurd as this did ever charge them with such Gross delusions or once imagine that they could prevail upon such feeble Grounds and therefore it would be folly to proceed to Confutation of what no Atheist Heathen Turk or Jew did ere object against them CHAP. IV. The Contents THat we may safely take an estimate of Christian doctrine from what we find recorded of it in the books of Scripture Proleg 6th those writings not being corrupted nor yet containing any thing repugnant to the Christian Faith Corol. concluding that those Scriptures which we dayly read must be the works of those Apostles and Evangelists whose names they bear But 6ly we premise §. 1. that we may safely take an estimate of Christian doctrine from what we find recorded of it in the books of Holy Writ For it is incongruous to conceive that Records which pretended to derive from the Apostles and Evangelists whilst both they and many of their Converts lived and did receive the Gospel from their mouthes and which exhorted all with so much passion to retain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Faith delivered to the Saints and which denounced such dreadful curses and Anathemas upon those who preached another doctrine and charg'd them to shun the man who did not own their platforme and not bid him God speed I say it is incredible that records of this nature should undermine that Faith which those Apostles had so largely planted and should present the Churches they converted with such a standing contradiction to that doctrine they had so lately taught and yet obtain and be received as the sacred Oracles and only Records of the Christian faith still more incredible it is that such a writing should be indited by those very men and yet they pass for the Embassadors of the King of Heaven and