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A54036
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Reason regulate[d], or, Brief reflections upon a l[ate] treatise of human-reason by T.P.
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T. P.
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1675
(1675)
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Wing P117; ESTC R25516
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24,178
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78
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Conversion of Nations Fulfilling of Prophesies which baffles all Cavils and strikes all Objections dumb a Miraculous Propagation Now he who prefers the Dictates of his own Private and naked Reason and Understanding in matters that concern Religion before the Guidance of a Church thus Adorn'd thus Mark'd thus Signaliz'd deserves not nor truly has he either the one or the other Nothing certainly can be more contrary to Humane Reason than to think we ought to believe nothing above it For there are Truth 's Un-intelligible by the most Exalted and Sublimated Souls in Heaven viz. The Total and Perfect Quality of the Divine Essence which nothing Created nothing Inferiour to God himself can Comprehend The Saints and Angels enjoy Eternity without knowing what it is the most Towring Wisdom and Depurated Reason can no more reach or fathom that Inscrutable Infinity than Ten Millions of Oceans can be crowded into the smallest Cockle-Shell For it drowns or rather as a Bottomless Abysse swallows up all Philosophy and Learning 'T is the Philosophers-Stone in Divinity too hard to be Penetrated by the Knowledge of Men or Angels In fine We know that such a thing there is but never shall it 's full and perfect Definition it being no less than the Eternal Tri-Une God whose Deep brief Character of Himself was Sum qui Sum. Whence I inferr That Men are not endued with Understanding Presumptuously to stretch beyond it's Strength and Power or to use it as they themselves list But according to the Will and Pleasure of the Divine Donor who certainly gives Man Reason not absolutely but Conditionally that in Matters of Faith at least it should retribute and pay Homage to Him I mean be Regulated by His Beloved Spouse the Church For as that is no true Liberty which has no Limit so that is no true Reason which has no Restriction Besides if most Men are allowed and granted to have Reason certainly the Church do's not want it Vis unita fortior but has in it a more Ample Perfect and incorrigible manner because more immediately and perpetually accompanyed and Assisted by the Holy Ghost And this is true nay infallibly true if Scripture be not false How those Headless-Members the Acephalists would answer here I cannot tell but am certain that As that is not true Reason but Delusion which flowes not from the right Fountain So a Visible Congregation or Body of Men without a Visible Head or with more than one is equally Monstrous But those Spiritual Privateers who slight the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy or Convoy contemn the Doctrine of the Church and resolve to believe no more than their Understandings can Chew and their Reason Digest there being many things in Nature which pose Mortality as the Flux and Re-flux of the Sea the Effects of the Loud-Stone c. will live Infidels and dye Atheists Nor is this said To remove the Cognizance of Divine Truths out of the Court of Reason but to quell it's Pride and Arrogance and bring it to Submit and stoop by an Humble Faith to those Divine Truths for certainly a mans Reason may Rebell against his Faith as well as his Passion against Reason and this Limitation or Coaction does not at all deprive man of his Power nor abridge him of the Liberty and natural priviledge of Election or Choice Religion says he appears and what Christian dares deny it to be the Principal End of mans Creation and therefore as if Horses are made for Burthen they have a Natural ability given where-with to do it If Birds do fly they have Wings given them for that purpose because where an end is Natural the means are so too So if Religion be the End of Man as he is Partaker of a Rational Soul that Reasonable Soul hath some Power naturally placed in it for the excercise judgment and choice of Religion All this is Undeniably true But yet the Author may please to consider That the Horse may be over-loaded and the Bird fly too high and so certainly Reason may soar above it's Natural Pitch Meridian Altitude and Consequently into a Region where 't is a mere Stranger and cannot subsist without some stronger Principle than it 's own proper Strength to support it And so granting the Antecedent I deny the Consequence That because GOD gives man Reason as I have said to light or introduce him into the right Entrance of Religion therefore being once initiated he needs not to ask any more questions or be guided by others but let him follow his own Reason I might as well have said his Nose and he cannot possibly go astray Briefly In the Search or Choice of our Way Reason I grant must rule but that once found Obey For that private Spirit which is not first quickned or animated and then constantly Actuated by that of God's Church which was Authoriz'd and Sanctify'd by the Divine Breath of JESUS is a False Conception no true or lawful Issue of the Understanding but a Spurious or Abortive Embrion of the Brain a Falle Light a Deceitful Phantasm But the Author says If this Doctrine that is for every Man to believe ad libitum were Generally planted in the Minds of men both the Reality and Pretence of Fighting for Religion were utterly Cancell'd Truly so far I should like his Doctrine especially if he could warrant men that Intellectual or Religious Differences should never come to Blowes But Alas Experience makes me more than doubt 't is but an Airy or imaginary Notion For as I do not deny but that those who endeavour an Establishment of Unity and Uniformity in Faith and Religion may possibly occasion War So those I fear of contrary Principles can never long prevent it But I hope that GOD who rules the unruly Ocean will Thus far I do most willingly agree with him That I would have none who disturbe not the publick peace tranquility of the Government be persecuted upon a purely conscientious score For I think it a most uncharitable and unreasonable method because impossible to reduce mens Judgments 't is but one remove from convincing them with Beetles and Halters by taking away their Estates and Starving their Bodies But against those who are found any way machinating against our true and lawful Governours especially the Supream with all Severity and Rigour Currat Lex But yer let every man smart for his proper Fault and not a whole Community or Body of men be made the very Buttocks of the Nation to be kick lash'd and slander'd for the Crimes of Particulars For that certainly is as remote from Reason Equity and Justice as it would be To Pistol a man because his Nose stands awry or knock his Brains our because he Squints Or indeed because the Serpent seduced Eve and she Adam whose Original Guilt corrupted and deprav'd their whole Progeny By the very same Crooked Rule the Apostles themselves might be call'd Traytors because Judas betray'd his Lord and Master Nor can or shall I ever believe
Plenitude of Bliss and Delectation to Himself but 't is as certainly true that he may be pleas'd with one kind of Worship and abominate an other unless Jeroboam who the Holy Scripture more than once saith made Israel to sin committed no Crime nor consequently offended GOD in setting up the Calves in Dan and Bethel Without doubt saith he but that 's no proof He who gave Rules which might accept of several Interpretations when he might have made them as plain to all in one Sense as they seem now to every man in his own is likewise well contented that they shall be Interpreted severally Truly if our Blessed Saviour had not Constituted Select Judges and Expositors of his Divine Laws which no Laws ever were without I might perhaps be of his mind too but since GOD be thanked 't is evidently otherwise without doubt this Author is egregiously mistaken Certainly GOD Almighty if he had intended Reason to be absolute Lord Paramount independently to Rule and Instruct in every particular Emergency Ambiguity must have given all Men the same measure to compass the same end For as a Ship though it lies in the Water if it has not enough to make it Float can no more move forward than if it lay upon dry Land So it can never sink into my Understanding How he that has less Reason should as safely and effectually proceed as he that has more unless this Author could prove a part of any thing to be as much as the whole or demonstrate Reason to be of the Miraculous Nature of the Manna among the Israelites whereof he who gather'd much had nothing over and he who gather'd little had no lack Were this seriously consider'd I am confident upon second Thoughts and they are best this Author would be convinc'd that a Man's Reason alone can never doe the Work I mean steer him securely over that deep Ocean of Scripture to the Port of Eternal Happiness without Embarking in that Ecclesiastical Ship the Church in which if they Conform to her Doctrine the Poor are as safe as the Richest and the Weakest as the Wise and in this Reliance we doe no more desert our own Reason than a Man does his Corporal Strength in taking a Staffe to help and support him in a dangerous and slippery Passage And whatever Arguments are advanc'd to enervate the solidity of this Ground let them never so briskly sally out they can be no better than meer empty Ebullitions or Bubblings of Reason As well says he the Mud by growing hard as the Wax by Melting obeys the Sun nor is it less glorify'd by the one than by the other It is true the same Sun and I grant 't is equally though variously obey'd by both softens Wax and hardens Mud their Natures being by Heat to melt and grow hard but I cannot conceive how the Parity holds exactly between those Inanimate material Substances and our Immortal and Immaterial Souls For certainly the Divine Insuser of Faith created them with Identical Capabilities and fitted them Uniformly for the Reception of their Proper Objects viz. the Mysteries of Christianity which whosoever Obstinately Dis-believes or rejects is deservedly Excommunicated because he wilfully exclude himself from that Mysticall Ark the Church of GOD. But by the way me-thinkes this Author talkes very incongruously of more than one Religion the very word bearing witness against him for the Substantive Religio I take to be deriv'd from the Verb Rebigo to Tye or Bind together but his Latitudinarian or Socinian Doctrine does not onely Untie and Unbind but Blends and Shuffles all into a Chaos Yet Faith with him must still be Properly one and the same though according to the diverse Receptions says he it produces not only divense but contrary Effects This I shall believe when he hath evinc'd that because all things which are potable are comprehended under the Denomination of Liquour therefore White-Wines Rhenish Canary Claret Syder and Muscadine are Certainly that Man would be censur'd to have drunk too much of these that could be brought to swallow so great a Contradiction Yet this the Author must say if he speakes consequently to his own Arguments is as defensible as his Hyperbole that the Diversity of Religious Opinions because injuriously produc'd by him under the Venerable Name of Faith are not several but one and the very self same belief which certainly is as far from right Reasoning as a Confusion of Fancyes is from purely Divine Faith I should have found no fault with His comparing the Vnity of God's Church to Wed-lock but that he spoyles the Similitude in allowing every Particular Member to believe contrary to one another nay to themselves by which he pulls down again what he built up and makes that Conjunction-Disjunctive by a new-found-Negative or Counter-Creed No body at all questions but that a Foot when it hath the Gout as he sayes or a Hand when it shakes with the Palsie remain still Parts of the Body but if they are Irrecoverably useless they are no otherwise so than as a Dead Bough is a Member of a Living Tree there may be Continuity but no Communication between them and this Debility or decay must needs happen through some secret Perversity or Obliquity in the Recipient not any Defect or Deficiency in the Radical Aliment The same I say of those that wilfully persist in Incredulity and Errour but yet withall must add this that they are never Irrevocably GOD's Grace being ever busie Anathematiz'd by this Church which is much more willing and ready upon Submission and Recantation to Re-embrace than for Obstinacy to Excommunicate any There may certainly be though he thinks otherwise a full and intire agreement in all Points of Faith of one Member with an other either Actually or Votively which to GOD is Aequivalent or else the Athanasian Creed admitted by most Protestants is not to be Credited which without Haesitation begins thus Whosoever will be saved it is needful before all things that he hold the Catholick Faith The which unless each one shall keep whole and Inviolate mark that he shall without doubt eternally perish now if this be as certainly it is true he that wilfully disbelieves any one Article forfeits his whole Faith and Consequently the least Defect therein is a total Privation Now as for Controversie at which he briefly touches like the Bloud I know it incessantly Circulates but Alas To no better purpose that I can perceive than to foment the Quarrel and keep it still alive For through the Immoderation and Unnatural heat of some Polemick Writers 't is so far from effecting a Reconciliation or Union which ought to be the Principal Design and end of it that it do's nothing else but breed an Implacable if not incurable Itch the scratching whereof may perhaps afford some present Titillation or Delight but 't is usually perform'd with so much violence and rage that it does not only not allay but more inflame and ferment the