Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	add_v	holy_a	scripture_n	1,651	5	5.5616	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A36018	Protestant certainty, or, A short treatise shewing how a Protestant may be well assured of the articles of his faith	Dillingham, William, 1617?-1689.	1689 (1689)	Wing D1485; ESTC R1392	22,130	40

might have been done by some other Man So that I might fold up what hath been said into this form of Argument That which pretending to be revealed by God and penned by his Assistance hath been owned by his special Providence and which having manifest Characters of of Divinity shining in it hath been owned believed and attested by all the Churches of Christ in all Ages as the Word of God revealed by him and penned by the infallible guidance of the Holy Ghost and containing the Doctrine of Christ and his Holy Prophets and Apostles That is the Word of God revealed by him and penned by the infallible Guidance of the Holy Ghost and doth contain the Doctrine of Christ and his Holy Prophets and Apostles But the Holy Scripture pretending to be revealed by God and penned by his Assistance hath been owned by his special Providence and having manifest Characters of Divinity shining in it hath been owned believed and attested by all the Churches of Christ in all Ages as the Word of God revealed by him penned by the infallible Guidance of the Holy Ghost and containing in it the Doctrine of Christ and his Holy Prophets and Apostles Therefore the Holy Scripture is the Word of God revealed by him and penned by the infaillible guidance of the Holy-Ghost and doth contain in it the Doctrine of Christ and his Holy Prophets and Apostles And if all Men would be brought to have such a certainty as these Arguments are in themselves apt to produce in well disposed Minds they must needs think themselves under the highest obligations to provide for the Salvation of their Souls by following the Directions prescribed in the Holy Scriptures in order thereunto And for the number of Canonical Books in Scripture we have the like uniform Testimony of the Churches of Christ in all Ages ever since the Epistle to the Hebrews was received by the Latin Church and the Apocalypse by the Greek Church Which two Books do not add any Article of Faith necessary to Salvation which was not contained in those other Books which were before that time universally received But every faithful Soul hath a far greater Certainty of the Holy Scriptures being the word of God than hath been hitherto mentioned which I shall shew when I have considered the second Proposition which is this That all the Articles of Faith which we Protestants do believe and profess are recorded in the Holy Scriptures as taught by Christ and his Holy Prophets and Apostles and there contained either in express Words or in Principle from which they may be firmly deduced and concluded Now having such an assurance as I have shewn above that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God we have built the Articles of our Faith upon this Rock and shall be ready to receive any more which we can be convinced to be contained in it but no other till we have good assurance that they have been revealed from God some other way For divine Faith must be founded on a divine Testimony But for the better clarifying of our Thoughts and Apprehensions in this our second Inquiry it will not be amiss for us to distinguish 1. Of the Assent given to those Articles which must be alway an Assent of divine Faith but a divine Faith is sometimes Explicit and express when we do actually apprehend and conceive of the Proposition which we assent unto whether it be expresly laid down in Scripture or we plainly see it to be deduced from what is there laid down But sometimes it is implicite and vertual only as when we assent unto some general Proposition actually apprehended though we do not distinctly consider the particulars included in it and in like manner when we assent unto some Principle laid down in Holy Scriptures though we do not actually apprehend those other Truths which have a necessary consequential Dependance on it we are said to believe these latter also implicitly and as it were in semine because we do expresly believe that which implies or infers them For instance when I assent unto this General God knows the Hearts of all Men I do implicitly assent unto this God knows my Heart though perhaps I may not have as yet particularly assented unto it And so when I assent unto this that Christ was true Man I do vertually assent unto this that Christ had a reasonable Soul because it may be firmly inferred from the former though I have not yet actually inferred it or assented to it 2. Of the necessity of such assent which is diverse according to the diverse Nature and import of the matters to be believed Some are necessary to be believed and done necessitate medii or else we shall never be Saved Some things are necessary necessitate Praecepti only that is without the Belief and doing whereof we sin For the first sort they are such things without the believing and doing whereof God has determined never to save a Man for both our Salvation and also the means and terms of it depend wholly upon God's Good-will and Pleasure and therefore we must take our Measures of such Necessity from God's revealed Will only And from that we learn that God has afforded greater Discoveries of things to be believed in some Ages than in others and given greater abilities and advantages to some Men than to others and acordingly doth require more things to be believed and more explicit Faith of them from some Men than from others unto which by his Providence he will bring them and not save them without such a belief of such Truths And as for the latter sort if they be necessary to be expresly and explicitly believed though we sin if we do not so believe them being sufficiently propounded unto us and we having abilities to apprehend them yet upon a sincere Repentance the Non-belief of them shall not prejudice our Salvation But in many things if we do but use our best endeavours to attain the knowledge of them having a readiness to believe and obey whatsoever we can get a particular Knowledge of to be the Will of God such an implicit Faith and readiness will be accepted for the Deed as if we had expresly believed them Now for such things are necessary to be explicitly believed by all Men with a Divine Faith or else they cannot be saved They are not many and are all contained in the Scriptures and may be clearly learned from thence by any ordinary Capacity The Ancients made account they were all comprised in the Apostles Creed the Lords Prayer and the ten Commandments and Bellarmine himself confesses that they are all contained in the Scriptures omnia sunt scripta quae sunt omnibus necessaria Lib. 4. De verbo Dei non scripto cap. 11. And that they are so will be evident to any one that will examine the Particulars And therefore they may be clearly learnt from thence and we may be as much assured of them as of any thing which we

apart Now we assent unto all the Articles of our Faith by a Divine Faith and this Faith is firm and certain subjective But the Romanists pretend to give an infallible subjective Certainty of them and so by out-bidding us invite Men over into their Communion And it is to be considered whether our subjective Certainty be sufficient for saving Faith or an infallible subjective Certainty be required to it As for our parts we do not at all doubt but that God will infallibly in the event bring all his Elect unto true Faith and by it unto Salvation though he do not make them all infallibly perswaded of it in this Life A Subjective Certainty of what we believe is sufficient for adhering unto Jesus Christ and Obedience the Fruit thereof and for our own Comfort and therefore to bring us to Salvation without being infallibly certain Subjective of all the things which we do believe And one cannot readily give an account why any Men should so covet to be infallibly certain of their Belief and yet in the mean while take up and content themselves with a conjectural Certainty or certainty of Hope only concerning their own Salvation unless it were because it is the Interest of some Men to have others fully perswaded of their Doctrines of Purgatory Superogation Infallibility c. that so they may lead them by a blind Belief and Obedience to what they please but to keep them in the mean while uncertain of their Salvation that they may the more willingly take off their Masses Merits and Pardons and such like Commodities in barter for their Earthly Gold and Silver But let us come now to consider the first Proposition and how we are assured of it which is That the Holy Scriptures are the Word of God revealed by Him and committed to Writing by the infallible Guidance of the Holy-Ghost and contain the Doctrine of Christ and of his Holy Prophets and Apostles And that we may take our Rise a little backward That there is a God and he infallible in Knowledge and Veracity and that he Created Man after his own Image are Truths which the World hath been so long in quiet Possession of that I think I may take them for granted at least for the present and then it is a thing most agreeable to the Wisdom Goodness and Justice of God to believe that seeing God doth expect that Man should know worship and obey him according as Man's dependence on him and the Preparations which he hath laid in for it in the Fabrick and Furniture of his Nature do require and it seems necessary that he should have made some sufficient Promulgation of his Will and Pleasure unto Man as a perfect and certain Rule of his Faith and Practice according to which he may take an account of him hereafter For which purpose the natural Reason of Man in this corrupt Estate is not a sufficient Rule as woful Experience teacheth and therefore it was necessary that God should make some further Revelation of his Mind unto us to clear up and correct our natural Notions and to discover what further he doth require us to believe and do in order to Salvation And for the certainty of such Rule it is very consentaneous to the Wisdom of God in this shortness of Man's Life and multitude of the Persons concerned to commit such Rule to Writing rather than to intrust it to the conveyance of oral Tradition which all just and wise Law-givers have found it necessary to decline But however a revealed Rule there must be and there is nothing in the World which can with any Reason or Probability lay claim to it but only the Holy Scriptures and this they do accordingly For we often find them challenging to themselves this Prerogative Thus saith the Lord and I the Lord have spoken it Jesus answered and said and he taught the People saying and all Scripture is given by divine Inspiration Holy Men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost For tho' all the Books of Scripture were not then written when the Apostles wrote that yet all the necessary Articles of Faith were and many more Which claim had it not been a true one it would certainly have been the greatest Forgery Usurpation and Blasphemy against God himself that is Imaginable and then we might have rationally expected that the great and good God would have been so Jealous of his own Honour and Man's Salvation as in all this time by some signal Act of his Providence to disown it and discover the Imposture But since he hath not done any such thing but on the contrary hath made it his Work by his wonderful Providence to maintain and preserve it for so many Hundreds of Years and accompanied the Preaching of it for the Conversion of Souls unto himself and the Reformation of the World of Mankind What else can be thought but that he thereby owns it to be his Certainly such a Proof as this concerning any Man's Book would be a violent Presumption that he were the true Author of it and he would be thought a very unreasonable Man who should but call it into question But we have greater Certainty than this for the Matters contained in the Holy Scriptures I mean the Heavenliness of the Matter the Majesty of the Stile the Harmony of the Parts the Consent of the several Writers the design of the whole to lay Man low and to advance God's Glory in Man's Salvation These and such like Beams of divine Light are so agreeable to the Notion of God written in our Hearts that both of them do plainly appear to have been written by the same Finger of God and the one to confirm explain and perfect the other Which Heavenly Characters and claim have been owned and admitted and the certainty of the Holy Scriptures being the Word of God revealed by him and penned by the infallible direction of the Holy Ghost been thereupon believed and attested by all the Churches of Christ in all Ages notwithstanding other differences that were and are among them unanimoully by so many wise holy and learned Men in a matter which was of infinite concernment to them to be well assured of and wherein they could neither have any design nor opportunity of combining together for the deceiving of others Now this unanimous Testimony of the Church although it be but a humane Testimony and not infallible yet being corroborated by the aforesaid Considerations it is sufficient to give any reasonable Man a satisfaction and an assurance that the Holy Scriptures were revealed by God and penned by his infallible Guidance as great as any other matter of Fact and this is such can at this distance by humane testimony be capable of yea and a far greater For there is no Effect wrought by any Man that can verge forth so many Rays from the nature of the Act or thing done pointing at and singling out its Cause and owning its Original but that it