Selected quad for the lemma: tradition_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
tradition_n	book_n	holy_a	scripture_n	2,474	5	6.0561	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A62326	Twelve sermons upon several occasions by Samuel Scattergood ...	Scattergood, Samuel, 1646-1696.	1700 (1700)	Wing S845; ESTC R39513	116,309	210

in no case obtain an entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven let us in the next place consider what manner of Righteousness ours must be which will bring us to those Mansions of Glory And 1. it must not have any of these Faults with which the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was tainted and rendred odious and abominable in the sight of God Their Righteousness as ye have heard was such as consisted only in the performance of external Actions according to the literal Sense of the Law but ours must proceed further even to the cleansing and purifying our Hearts from all manner of evil thoughts Blessed are the pure in Heart saith our Saviour for they shall see God They and they only shall enjoy that beatifical Vision whose Heart is undefiled for it is that which God chiefly respects and so long as that is right and sincere as to the Main though we do sometimes through the Frailty of our Nature and the strength of some Temptation that hath overcome us fall into any sin yet we shall certainly obtain Pardon at the Hand of God upon our true Repentance They thought themselves well enough if they did no evil nay more than so if evil was done them by another Person they thought they might with a safe Conscience revenge themselves but our Master hath commanded us not to resist Evil but if any man smite us upon the Right cheek to turn to him the other also and not only not to hurt our Neighbour but to love our Enemies to bless them that curse us to do good to them that hate us and to pray for them which despitefully use us and persecute us It is not sufficient for us that our outward Actions are not Evil but we must take heed to our Words and our Thoughts we must make a Covenant with our Eyes keep our Mouth with a bridle that we offend not in our Tongue and bring into Captivity every Thought to the Obedience of Christ for for every idle Word and every misguided Thought we shall give an account at the Day of Judgment 2. Our Righteousness must not be such as makes us presume that we can of our selves and by our own strength keep all the Commandments and fulfill the whole Law Alass we are not able of our selves to keep any one Commandment and S. James tells us that if we offend in one point we are guilty of all The Scripture hath most plainly and fully discovered to us our weakness in this case that we are so far from being able to perform any good Work that we cannot of our selves so much as think a good Thought without the Holy Spirit of God inspires it into our Hearts who work in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure that there is not a just man upon Earth that doth good and sins not but that in many things we offend all and that if we say that we have no Sin we deceive our selves and the Truth is not in us These and the like expressions in Scripture if we consider them are sufficient to satisfie us that we are so far from being able to keep the whole Law that we cannot perform any one Title of it as we ought and therefore we must not as the Scribes and Pharisees did place our Righteousness in this that we are able and do perform an intire Obedience to the Law And if so much less must we in the third place as they did and the Church of Rome who follows their Example doth at this day boast of and Glory in our own works as if they were meritorious in the sight of God The Scripture every where condemns this as the most dangerous and damnable Pride with which our Hearts can possibly be infected and nothing will more certainly bar the Gate of Heaven against us than our supposing that we can deserve that it should flie open unto us How can a Man be just with God saith Job and In thy sight saith the Psalmist no man living shall be justified And if no Man living can pretend to be just in the sight of God so as to escape his Condemnation surely much less can any Man pretend to have done him so great service as to merit a Reward from him No all boasting and glorying on our part is utterly excluded except it be glorying in our infirmities that the power of Christ may rest upon us We are taught a quite contrary Lesson a Lesson of Meekness and Humility when we have done our best to say that we are unprofitable Servants and to desire that the iniquity even of our most Holy things and the shamefull Nakedness of our Righteousness may be covered and hid from the pure Eyes of God by the white and spotless Robe of the Righteousness of Christ Fourthly we must not as the Pharisees did and as too many that tread in their steps do at this day place our Righteousness in our forwardness to censure the Lives and Conversations of other Persons and in our backwardness to enquire into our own Censoriousness in some men's Opinion passes for a Gospel-virtue and he that is most forward to speak evil of others and especially of his betters of his Superiours and Governours is for so doing lookt upon to be the greatest Saint But surely these are Saints of a new stamp and I know no reason why they arrogate that Title to themselves except it be by an Antiphrasis because they walk directly contrary to the Doctrine of the Gospel which hath expresly commanded us not to judge lest we be judged our selves and to speak evil of no Man especially not to despise Dominion and speak evil of Dignities except we have an ambition to be of the number of those mockers which S Jude prophesied should come in the last time who should walk after their own ungodly Lusts Separating themselves sensual having not the Spirit all incomparable qualifications for Saint-ship Fifthly we must not as the Pharisees did put on a shew of Religion purposely to gain the Applause of Men and to carry on our worldly Designs I am sure this unhappy Nation hath swarmed with Pharisees enough of this sort Men that with a specious shew of Piety led captive silly Women beguiled unstable Souls and gained Admiration of the credulous and easy Vulgar that with sanctified Pretentions Holy Looks frequent Fastings long Prayers and canting and treasonable Sermons carried on the most villainous and accursed Designs that ever publickly disgraced Christianity And God grant that there be not too many such Pharisees among us still but I pass them by their Names are odious and their Religion scandalous Lastly we must not as the Pharisees did and we know who doth Still preferr unwritten Traditions before the holy Scriptures God hath caused that sacred Book to be written on purpose for our Instruction and hath therein fully revealed so much of his Will to us as is sufficient for us to know in order to our obtaining everlasting

they drew from it might have been so too for if the Law had required no more of us than the bare abstaining from those outward Acts of Adultery and Murder and Theft and Perjury and the like which in express Terms it forbids perhaps then we might have fulfilled it by our own strength But when a wanton Glance is Adultery when a revengefull Thought is Murder when Usury or Extortion at least is Theft when not giving to the Poor is stealing from the Lord when a tatling Tongue bears false witness and every idle word is to be accounted for at the Day of Judgment who then can pretend to innocence who then can say that he hath made his Heart clean and that he is pure from his Sin No the best of Men must then be forced to acknowledge himself to be a debtor to the Law that he falls more than seven times in a day and that there is not a just Man upon Earth that doth good and sins not And yet that the Pharisees had this fond opinion of themselves is plain from the Parable of that proud Pharisee that justified himself in his Prayer to God Almighty Luke 18.11 God I thank thee saith he that I am not as other Men are Extortioners unjust Adulterers or even as this Publican I fast twice in the week I give Tythes of all that I possess and from the confident Answer of the young Man Matth. 19.20 who when our Saviour shewed him that the way to enter into Life was to keep the Commandments and what those Commandments were presently replies All these things have I kept from my youth but all this while though he thought that he had exactly kept the Commandments of the second Table he understood not the meaning of those of the first he knew not that Covetousness was Idolatry for when our Saviour to compleat his Righteousness and make him perfect exhorts him to sell all that he hath and give to the poor and to come and follow him though he promised him the Recompence of Treasure in Heaven yet he went away sorrowful for he had great Possessions upon Earth and was loath to part with them But thirdly they stay'd not here but they proceeded a step further and having entertained that false Opinion That they were able to perform a perfect Obedience to the Law they thereupon perswaded themselves that that Obedience of theirs was meritorious in the Sight of God and they boldly justified themselves upon the account of their own Works and arrogantly boasted of them even to God himself as ye may see by the instance I but now mentioned of the Pharisee that trusted in his own Righteousness and despised the Publican Fourthly this good Opinion they had of themselves puft them up with so much pride and vain Glory that they scorned and despised all Men that were not of their own Sect. They were so well satisfied and pleased with their own virtues that they took no care to examine their own hearts but they made it their business to invade the Prerogative of God to search the hearts of other Men and one of the most remarkable Instances of their Piety was their forwardness to censure and condemn the Lives and Conversations of their Neighbours Let a Man behave himself never so innocently and blamelesly both towards God and towards Man yet if he was not one of them he must pass for a Sinner The Temperance of John the Baptist if it be tried at their bar would be judged to proceed from his being possessed with a Devil and the free and chearful Conversation of our Saviour to be Gluttony and Wine-bibbing Friendship and Fellowship with Publicans and Sinners Fifthly they did all their good Works for an ill End and Purpose out of a vain-glorious Desire to gain the Applause of Men for this end they made long Prayers in the Synagogues and in the Corners of the Streets in the most publick places they could find that they might be seen of Men and perhaps none at all in their Closet For this end they made broad their Phylacteries and enlarged the Borders of their Garments disfigured their faces when they fasted and sounded a Trumpet before they did their Alms they put on demure and sanctified Looks that the People might have their piety in admiration when all the while it was nothing but gross hypocrisie and they made Religion only a stalking horse to their worldly interest Sixthly and lastly they preferred their own Traditions before the written Word of God upon which account they are sharply reproved by our Saviour Matt. 15. Why saith he do you transgress the commandment of God by your tradition For God commanded saying Honour thy Father and Mother and he that curseth Father or Mother let him die the death But ye say Whosoever shall say to his Father or his Mother it is a gift by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me and honour not his Father or his Mother he shall be free Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition Among these traditions of theirs were those of washing of Cups and of Pots and of Brazen Vessels and of tables but above all that which they observed with the greatest preciseness and strictness imaginable was their washing of their Hands before they eat which as the learned Dr. Hammond tells us upon that occasion they held to be so necessary and indispensable a duty that one of their Rabbies saith That he that takes meat with unwashed Hands is worthy of Death and that the same person being in Prison and having some water given him for his use to wash and to drink having accidentally spilt one half of it he washed his Hands in the Remainder thinking it more necessary to do so than to drink and to die than to violate the tradition of his Ancestours This is in brief the Summ and Substance of the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees as we find it described to us in the holy Scriptures and if we mark it narrowly and consider on the one hand the great veneration they had for unwritten Traditions their false and corrupt interpretation of the holy Scriptures and their great confidence and trust in the merits of their own works and on the other hand their rash and intolerable censoriousness and the ungoverned liberty which they gave to their tongues their vain-glorious Ostentation of Religion their excessive Pride and their ambitious desire of being accounted Saints the Children of Abraham and the precious People of the Lord it seems to be a compleat mixture of Popery and Phanaticism and however they pretend now to be ashamed one of the other and are at so much odds and variance that a large Kingdom is too little to contain them both yet there was a time when they shook hands together were both peaceably united in one mans breast Having thus taken a view of the false and Hypocritical Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees which shall