Selected quad for the lemma: tradition_n
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A52293
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A conference with a theist part I / by William Nicholls.
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Nicholls, William, 1664-1712.
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1698
(1698)
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Wing N1093; ESTC R25508
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121,669
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301
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men presently discern this false light and the little Arts which are used in the management of it and consequently do not suffer themselves to be deceived by it they consider these holy things as they are and not as they are wantonly represented all the mischief that this Discourse is like to do is among your little unthinking Things that set up for Wit without common Sense and cry up every thing for extraordinary reason which has nothing in it but Clinch and Jingle I desire therefore the favour of you Sir that you would make use of Argument instead of Raillery whilst we are disputing of these sacred Truths that you would propose your objections with all the strength you can that you would conceal no difficulty you can espy in this divine Relation but I can never endure you should rack and tenter the passages of it clap one part of it incongruously and ridiculously with another only to make sport and banter with it For I am sure Philologus you can find nothing ridiculous in the whole Relation but what you make so Nor do I reprimand you for the only Man that are delinquent this way but it is the general fault of all the Gentlemen of your persuasion who are wont especially to muster up all their Railery and Malice too to expose the Relation of this unfortunate miscarriage of our first Parents and to ridicule the belief of it out of the World Here I find lies the Masterpiece of your Irreligion and a Man must not pretend to set up for Theism without variety of Blasphemy upon this subject Phil. I perceive dear Credentius that this is touching you in a tender place and therefore I shall forbear all reflections which are not necessary to my Argument But I must needs tell you that there are a great many things in this relation of the Fall which you call difficult and we call ridiculous but let them be what they will they are such that will keep a thinking Man from heartily believing your Religion till he sees them handsomly cleared up And the first of these is the Temptation of Eve by the Serpent Now is it not a little odd Credentius that such an ugly Beast as a Serpent should venture to accost such a fine Lady in all her Supralapsarian Beauty O. R. p. 39 40 c. I pray what kind of Language did Serpents then speak for we find they have no other than that of hissing now Methinks Eve should have run away from such a speaking Beast faster than from an Apparition and never have enter'd into a Conference with it Why should a Serpent I pray of all the Beasts of the field have all this Reason and Elocution bestow'd upon it Methinks a Lyon or a Bull would have made a good full-mouthed Orator but for a pitiful Snake to have such mighty Talents of Rhetorick and Perswasion is really very surprizing But supposing you say that the Devil possessing the Organs of this Serpent tempted the Woman I answer I think he made as silly a choice of a Body as ever Devil did to perform this Temptation in To have seen such an odd kind of stupid Beast of a sudden turned rational to hear that speak which was dumb before would probably have scared the poor Woman out of her Wits she would quickly I suppose have left the Devil and the Apple together and have betook her self to her Heels and her Husband to secure her Besides here is not a word of the Devil 's possessing the Body of the Serpent in the Relation of Moses for he imputes the Woman's being circumvented wholly to the Subtilty of the Serpent this is only a shift of your Divines to bring in the Devil as the Poets used to do the Gods to help them out at a dead lift Come Credentius what do you say to all this Cred. Not unreasonable that the Devil should tempt Mankind in the form of a Serpem Say Sir the best thing I can say is to say my Prayers for you to God to deliver you from this hardned infidelity But in the mean time I will answer this terrible Argument of yours as satisfactorily as I can 1. Therefore I assert that the Tempter which deceived our first Parents was the Devil some wicked malicious Spirit that envied the good of Mankind and those extraordinary favours which God has so plentifully bestowed on our first Parents which enclined him to tempt them to disobedience thereby to bring them into the same forlorn condition with himself and the other fallen Angels That the Serpent is only mentioned whose Body the Devil made use of is owing to a Metonymy common in the Hebrew Tongue which uses the Instrumental for the Efficient Cause and the Efficient for the Instrumental of which multitude of Instances may be given out of the Scripture Thus the Angels which God employ'd about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrha are called by the name of the Lord. Gen. 1. and what they say and do is said to be done by the Lord. So on the other side the Divine Predictions of God-Almighty are said to be the words of the Prophets which he employ'd as Instruments to speak them Thus Amos 1. 1. The Words of Amos who was among the Herdsmen of Tekoa c. So Jer. 1. what is called v. 2. The Word of the Lord is called v. 1. The Words of Jeremiah the Son of Hilkiah So by the Word by Faith and by the Sacraments we are said to be saved whereas these are only the Instruments God makes use of in our Salvation So the Ministers of the Gospel are said to bind and to loose whereas 't is God only which does it by their Ministry Therefore it is no wonder if by the same Metonymy what is spoken or done by the Devil is said to be spoken or done by the Serpent whose Organs he usurped But further it is plain that it was the Devil which managed this Deceit not only from the Incongruousness of a Brute Beast's over-reaching Mankind in his highest pitch of Reason but from the Attestation of the Holy Scripture it self The Author of the Book of Wisdom who well understood the Doctrines and Traditions of the Jewish Church and the sense of the holy Scripture tells us expresly that by the Envy of the Devil Death came into the World Wisd 2.24 And our blessed Saviour who was a better Explainer of the Scriptures tells us the Devil was a Murderer from the beginning or the first Creation alluding to his mischievous destruction of Mankind that he is a Lyar and the Father of Lyes both in the first and all the following Temptation of Mankind Nay farther than this the Devil is expresly in Scripture called the Serpent and the Dragon was cast out that old Serpent called the Devil and Satan Rev. 12.9 and he laid hold on the Dragon that old Serpent which is the Devil and Satan Rev. 20.2 All which places are undoubted references to his first