Selected quad for the lemma: authority_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
authority_n	believe_v	scripture_n	tradition_n	2,838	5	9.5550	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61606	A sermon preached November V, 1673, at St. Margarets Westminst by Edward Stillingfleet ...	Stillingfleet, Edward, 1635-1699.	1674 (1674)	Wing S5645; ESTC R7707	26,239	53

did it because they that are in the flesh cannot please God which is in effect sending all married persons to Hell This was one part of the pretended mortification of false Teachers about Marriage the other was about Meats S. Paul knew no such holiness in one sort of Meat above another as though men could fast their bellies full of one but the least taste of the other destroyed it What a pleasant thing it is to account that fasting which the unmortified Epicures of old accounted their most delicious feasting viz. Fish and Wine This is not doing so much as the Pharisees did for they appeared unto men to fast but in the Church of Rome they cannot be said to do that unless fasting and eating be the same thing But may not the Church call not eating prohibited meat fasting No doubt it may as well as call that no bread which we see and taste and handle to be bread However I cannot understand but if their Church had so pleased the eating Flesh and abstaining from Fish might have been called fasting and so they might have made one entire Fast of a whole years eating and notwithstanding all the pretence of fasting and mortification in that Church I cannot see that any man is bound by the Laws of it to keep one true fast all the dayes of his life But if all the mortification required lyes only in a distinction of meats the false Apostles went beyond them in it for they utterly forbid some sorts saying touch not taste not handle not and not meerly to shew their obedience to the commands of the Church but that they might not gratifie the desires of the flesh and therefore the Apostle saith these things had on that account a shew of wisdom in them being in all probability taken from the severe precepts of the Pythagorean Philosophy which makes him bid them Beware lest they were spoiled through Philosophy and vain deceit after the tradition of men and the principles of the world and not after Christ. For if this sort of mortification were a thing so pleasing to God the Heathen principles were more agreeable to his nature than the doctrine of Christianity This only requires the subduing our inward lusts and in order to that to keep the body in subjection but in the mysteries of the Heaten Religion far greater severities were to be undergone in order to their participation of them And the hardships were so great in some of their initiations especially those of Mithras that some dyed before they could pass through them and yet for any to be admitted without them was present death to them They were to make confession of their sins shave their heads change their habits lye upon the bare ground fast for several dayes and when they eat it was to be only of some certain meats these and many other severities they were to go through in order to the purifying their souls as they thought and bringing them to the state they were in before they came into the body Some part of these hardships the Pythagoreans took into their Philosophy and from them the Colossians began to be infected with them but S. Paul calls them only vain deceits the commandments and doctrines of men things that made a fair shew but he looks upon them as corruptions of the doctrine of Christ. Yet afterwards the Montanists and Encratitae and others were much stricter and more frequent in these fasts and abstinence than the Catholick Christians but the Church thought fit to condemn them as corrupters of Christianity By all which we see how apt men are to be deceived by false Teachers when they pretend to so much Mortification above what Christianity requires from them 3. They pretended to know the mind of Christ better than the Apostles did they pretended that they had conversed familiarly with Christ upon earth and understood his meaning better than the Apostles did And therefore their Disciples in the Church of Corinth were neither for Paul nor Apollos nor Cephas but they were only for Christ and gave out that from him they understood that what he had said concerning the Resurrection was only to be understood of the state of Regeneration which doctrine it seems had gotten great footing in the Church of Corinth by their means They reported that the Apostles understood only some common and ordinary things but the deeper and more hidden mysteries were only made known to them which makes S. Paul in his Epistles to those Churches which they had corrupted speak so often of his understanding the mysteries of God But we speak the wisdom of God in a mysterie even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world to our glory having made known unto us the mysterie of his will whereby ye may understand my knowledge in the mysterie of Christ. The true Apostles declared that they kept back nothing of the counsel of God but delivered it openly and plainly to make all men see and understand what that mysterie was the false Apostles pretended that the Doctrine and Writings of the Apostles did not contain all the great mysteries of the Gospel but they were received from Christs own mouth and conveyed to others by a secret and oral tradition The things written by the Evangelists they could not deny to be true but they were dark and obscure and could not be understood but by the help of their Oral Tradition and upon this principle Cerinthus Basilides Valentinus and Marcion went as appears by Irenaeus For when they saw they could never make good their Doctrines by the writings of the New Testament they sought to blast the reputation of these and set up the Authority of an Oral Tradition above them Men do not use to pick quarrels with their Friends and therefore when we find any charging the Scripture with obscurity and imperfection we have reason to believe they hope for no comfort from it 4. They made use of the most subtle and crafty methods of deceiving To this end they were very busie and active watching every opportunity therefore S. Paul charges them with sleight and cunning craftiness lying in wait to deceive i.e. with using all the arts and tricks of deceivers as 1. By deep dissimulation and disguising themselves not appearing at first to be what they really are nor letting them understand what their true doctrine and design is If any of those they hope to gain object any thing against them how do they pity their ignorance and revile their Teachers that did so foully misrepresent their Doctrines to them Alas for them poor men they neither understand us nor our Religion They have taken up things upon trust their prejudice will not suffer them to examine things as they are Have you not been told thus and thus concerning us and not one word of it is true Never trust such men more come be perswaded by us and then you shall be truly