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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	adhere_v	england_n	great_a	14	3	2.1254	3	false

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43454	Piety the best rule of orthodoxy, or, An essay upon this proposition, that the conduciveness of doctrines to holiness or vice is the best rule for private Christians to judge the truth or falshood of them by in a letter to his honoured friend H.M. / by Hen. Hesketh.	Hesketh, Henry, 1637?-1710.	1680 (1680)	Wing H1613; ESTC R27424	45,058	144

towards the Jewish Converts you will soon perceive how far they were from censuring any errors presently for Heresies if they maintained the necessity of holiness and a good life For you will scarcely be able to instance in a doctrine more truly contrary to Christian Faith and the whole purport of the Gospel than that of those Jewish Converts was which thought it absolutely necessary to Salvation to observe the Ancient Rites and as S. James informs S. Paul Acts 21.20 were all zealous of the Law of Moses And yet we know these were always tolerated no ill characters fixed upon them fellowship always allowed them indulged and permitted to their error which lasted among them for the time of fifteen Christian Bishops who were all Circumcised yea till the final destruction of the City and Temple and all under Adrian the Emperor and long afterwards And this was the reason we know of the Apostolick Canons in that first great Council which were all contrived in favour to them and counted necessary only in order to the avoiding scandal to them as was also the observation of the seventh day Sabbath for some Centuries of years only for the same reason From whence we may safely collect thus much that in those best and most charitable of times no man was counted an Heretick that did erre bonâ mente and retain'd a necessity of holiness and a belief of the great grounds upon which that necessity was founded And now Sir this Addition will not be impertinent to our purpose for all Heretical doctrines are some way or other contrary unto holiness and their being this is the reason of their being the other and while they are not one we ought by no means to call them the other unless we will imitate the passion of those men who can indure none no not the least dissenting in opinion from them in any thing under any kinder character than Heresie So that he that maintained the being of Antipodes was like to be branded once with that name and Galileo hardly escaped the same character for maintaining the Copernican hypothesis But Sir if you desire to see this matter of Heresie more fully discoursed I refer you to a place in Dr. Taylor 's Works where it is insisted on at large with that plainness and candor and strength of reason that is so common and usual to that most excellent man it is his Liberty of Prophesying a good Book under an ill name But truly I know not for what reason unless it were for endeavouring by much truth to asswage and mitigate the rash zeal and unjust severity of the late times against the Church of England and all that adhered unto her From whence whoever takes liberty to traduce that great man as an allower of all Opinions and any Medley in Religion will be very unjust and proclaim himself either ignorant or unobservant of his design which though it be to gain favour to some speculative Opinions yet no man reflects more severely upon all that contradict holiness and a good life and are vented to the disorder and disturbance of the Government either of the Kingdom or Church And therefore I do not well see what disservice it can do that Church which is far enough from imperiously imposing upon the Consciences of men and rigorous tying them up to exact compliance with it in all doctrines but allows as all Churches must whether they will or no a liberty to mens thoughts provided they reserve them to themselves and vent them not in order to Schism and Faction But whether it be thus or not is not my business to determine much less becoming me to undertake to reach those above me what to say or think but this I freely say I have so great an honour for the name of Dr. Taylor that I would not willingly have any ill thing to blot his memory and would do more than this were it in my power to cause it might not CHAP. VI. The Arguments from reason for the proof of the Collection Four of these propounded and Two insisted on in this Chapter The first taken from the ends of these Two Spirits in the World The second from the great design of Christian Religion AND now I am at liberty to advance to the Second way I proposed for the proof of this Assertion and that is from Reason and Arguments and there are Four of these I shall chuse to insist on not that I think them the only ones we have in this matter but so sufficient that they may supersede all need of others 1. The first shall be taken from the consideration of the different ends and designs of these two Spirits in the World 2. The second from the great end and design of Christian Religion 3. The third from the inconvenience of substituting any other Rule besides this in this case 4. From the manifest advantage of this above any other that can be so substituted These Four things will give assurance enough to this truth and make it very evident 1. I begin with the first which is taken from the consideration of the designs that these two Spirits have in the World The strength of which argument to our present purpose will discover it self in these two or three consequential notices 1. First As these are directly contrary to each other so they must needs be supposed to intend and drive on different aims and designs in the World The Spirit of truth is the Spirit of God the Spirit of error is the Spirit of the Devil And when light and darkness are reconciled each to other when Christ and Belial become friends then may we suppose these Two Spirits to consent and agree together in the fame designs but not before There is no communion saith the Apostle 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 2 Cor. 6.14 nothing that 's in common nothing that 's mutually shared betwixt light and darkness But as soon as one appears the other presently flies away as when the rayes of the morning discover themselves the dark shades run away and hide themselves on the other side of this Globe And so it is with these two Spirits they are inconsistently opposite and contrary each to other and can never be any more reconciled in their designs than they are in their natures But those will still be as different as these are as we see it still to be in all other things whose natures are contrary each to other 2. Secondly all the doctrines that issue from or are suggested to men by these two Spirits must needs be supposed to be directed to these different ends and designed on purpose to promote the same To suppose otherwise were to imagine them false to their own Interests and neglectful of them or at least dull and short-sighted and unable to chuse or pitch upon proper means for the promoting of the same when no man hath any reason to imagine either of these things For the Spirit of God is both

done if you require it hereafter In the mean time this will render it mighty necessary and wise not to consider erroneous doctrines only in their fair appearances but to examine carefully what the consequences and effects of them are And so on the other side likewise there are many doctrines in the Christian Religion Orthodox and Divine that perhaps at first sight may appear very irrelative to practice or at least of no great moment to the purposes of life Yea which to some men may appear unreasonable and purely speculative which yet when a man hath examined closely and consider well of may be found very important and greatly concerning and very conducive to many real purposes of goodness And it will not be easie to instance in any which I cannot shew to be conducive to some great instances of holiness and whose truth and divinity I dare not undertake to make good by the same 3. The third Rule is that we be sincere and honest in our considering doctrines before we bring them to this standard I mean that we bring with us no other design in the world but really to know what such doctrines are and tend unto For if any other thing be had in aim any other design or prejudice be permitted to mingle with our searches into these things there is no doubt but we shall deflect and warp from the truth in judgment A very little skill if there be not a great deal of honesty will enable a man to expose any doctrine and those men that can so easily wrest the holy Scriptures doubtless can as easily pervert any doctrine though never so holy Facile est invenire baculum said the old adage and it holds true both ways he that comes either with a prejudice against or a prepossession for any doctrine will easily find faults against the one though never so rationally and something to justifie his kindness to the other though never so weakly asserted And when men will permit interest or passion or humour or prejudice or any such thing to sit upon the Tribunal and have a hand in judging doctrines it is not to be expected that they should be judged according to the real merits and truth of them A gift saith Solomon blindeth the eye Eccles 7.7 or destroyeth the heart and a receiver of them is seldom upright And it is equally true of any other by-respect or sinister inclination Nothing but a fixed resolution and purpose to be honest and just and truly to inform our selves can enable us to be true to our discoveries and pronounce aright concerning doctrines in this case It was no very unreasonable project in the Platonists of old to institute some previous purgations of mind to be submitted unto by those that were in quest of truth well knowing that till the mind of man was unprejudiced and free it was not capable of Divine irradiations nor in a capacity to understand truth And upon the same reason Aristotle prohibited young men the study of Moral Philosophy till they had in some competent measure subdued the vigour and tamed the hurry of their animal passions and sensual inclinations And it were very well if men would do something like this free themselves from all manner of partial anticipations when they are going to consider and judge for their Souls And let me add Sir there was never any age wherein the observation of this Rule was more necessary never a time certainly wherein the effects of partiality and prejudice more discovered themselves to the warping of mens judgments and clapping false biasses upon them so that they either cannot or will not impartially and truly weigh things or deal with any degree of candor by them wherein unjustly to pervert and misrepresent Books is to answer them and the fastening on them a design which the Author never thought of a sufficient confutation of them When men read Books on purpose to misunderstand and traduce them and think the most effectual way to baffle and defeat them is to buffoon and turn them into Ridicule Let me give you a few specimens of this though I doubt not you have already observed them your self Can you think we should ever have heard of a Rehearsal Transprosed or an Ill Play thought a good answer to a serious Book had not this perverse humour possessed some men that were proud of their great wits and too fanciful to be able truly to consider things Could any honest-hearted man that sincerely read over an excellent Book called The Design of Christianity ever have traduced it as a plain undermining the purpose of the Gospel Had we ever heard of an Antisozzo or a Melius Inquirendum if that Author had had as much honesty as he thinks he hath wit or considered the doctrines in those Books he would expose with half as much integrity as he hath taken pains unworthily to misrepresent them Can you imagine Satan would ever have been brought upon the stage complementing Sherlock if the Devil had not mightily assisted one Danson to misunderstand and pervert the design of that Book Could that perfidious doating Exil'd Frenchman have ever espied and reported such advances of the Church of England to Popery had not himself made greater advances first towards Frenzy or Knavery Or the late furious Collector of the Invidious Parallels made such a clamor with them and seek so basely to disturb the Ashes and deface the Monuments of those that rest in honour but that something made a noise in his own head and hindred him from hearing or attending to the checks of his own Conscience for such a piece of injustice I pray God Sir deliver you and me and bless us from falling into the hands of such men who read Books on purpose to misunderstand them and consider doctrines only to expose them who react the cruelty and injustice of Ancient Persecutors that cloathed the poor Christians in skins of Beasts and then glutted their malice and envy in worrying of them And deal with Books as Procrustes did with men rack them till they come up to their own humour or cut them in pieces for not doing so Who first tincture their own eye and then apprehend every thing to be of the same colour or having their own palates vitiated reproach as unsavoury and bitter every thing that comports not with the ill affections of it If it be my hard fate to fall into the hands of such men and be treated by them as some of my Brethren have been I will yet have this to comfort and support me that it is not truth or honesty but spleen and malice only that persecute me I should be concerned indeed should I offend the first but if men acted by the other speak evil of me I know who hath bade me rejoyce and be glad CHAP. IX The Fourth Fifth and Sixth Rules are mentioned and insisted on 4. THE fourth Rule is that doctrines and Modes of Religion formed by them be not considered only