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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38046	Some thoughts concerning the several causes and occasions of atheism, especially in the present age with some brief reflections on Socinianism, and on a late book entitled, The reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures / by John Edwards ...	Edwards, John, 1637-1716.	1695 (1695)	Wing E215; ESTC R18870	42,384	151

disbeliev'd on the account of the improbability if not impossibility of Spirits So that it is plain the rejecting of the being and commerce of Daemons or Infernal Spirits opens a door to the denial of the Deity of which we can no otherwise conceive than that it is an Eternal Spirit There are Other Doctrines which advance Atheism and may be reckon'd among the Dangerous Luxuriances of these Inquisitive Times Such is the vilifying of the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament the proclaiming it to be faulty and erroneous in order to establishing the Seventy's Version as only Authentick Such is the building the Authority of the Books of the Old Testament on the pretended inspiration of certain Publick Scribes or Notaries among the Iews in imitation of such among the Egyptians the avouching that the Leaves or Volumes on which those Books were wrote are misplaced and put out of order the professed declaring that the Canonical Books are not the same that they were at first but that several words and passages are left out All mere Fiction and Conceit unworthy of so Excellent a Genius as F. S's Such also is the maintaining that the greatest part of the Religious Rites and Constitutions which God himself settled among the Iews were a Transcript of those that were in use among the Idolatrous Pagan Nations and that the All-Wise Lawgiver borrow'd those immediately from these The two former of these Attempts null the Authority of the Sacred Writings and the last of them disparages not only them but the Blessed Founder of the Jewish Oeconomy I speak not this as if any of these Opinions can be thought to be True Reasons on which a man may ground his disesteem of the Scriptures or of the Holy Doctrines contain'd in them or of the Sacred Inditer of them for they are the Sentiments but of a very few and of those whose Learning though it was exceeding great had not wholly conquer'd their Prejudice or freed them from Misapprehensions in some things I cannot charge them with any direct design of favouring the Cause of Atheism but ill-disposed men have made use of their Notions to that purpose Wherefore as we value the Reputation of our Religion and the Honour of the Divine Author of it let us be careful that we split not upon any of these Rocks nor endanger our selves on any of the Shallows before mention'd and thereby make Shipwrack of our Faith and Holy Profession or so endanger our selves that we can hardly be brought off again I might in the last place take notice of a Plausible Conceit which hath been growing up to a considerable time and now hath the fortune to come to some maturity Not to speak of its reception if not its birth among some Foreign Authors chiefly Socinians it seemed among our selves to be favour'd by that Learned but Wavering Prelate who writ the Liberty of Prophesying and afterwards by another of his Order who compos'd The Naked Truth Lately it hath been revived by the Author of the Naked Gospel and since more particularly fully and distinctly it hath been maintain'd by the late Publisher of the Reasonableness of Christianity as deliver'd in the Scriptures He gives it us over and over again in these formal words viz. that nothing is required to be believed by any Christian man but this that Iesus is the Messiah He contends that there is no other Article of Faith necessary to Salvation this is a Full and Perfect Creed and no person need concern himself in any other This takes up about three quarters of his book for he goes through the History of the Evangelists and the Acts of the Apostles according to the order of Time as he thinks to give an account of this Proposition But yet this Gentleman forgot or rather wilfully omitted a plain and obvious passage in one of the Evangelists Go teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Mat. 28. 19. From which it is plain that all Proselites to Christianity all that are adult Members of the Christian Church must be taught as well as baptized into the Faith of the Holy Trinity Father Son and Holy Ghost And if they must be taught this Doctrine which is the peremptory Charge and Commission here given to the Apostles Go teach c. then it is certain that they must believe it for this Teaching is in order to Belief This will be denied by none I suppose and consequently more is required to be believed by Christian men and Members of Christ's Church than that Iesus is the Messiah You see it is part of the Evangelical Faith and such as is necessary absolutely necessary to make one a Member of the Christian Church to believe a Trinity in Unity in the Godhead or in plainer terms that though God is One as to his Essence and Nature yet there are Three Persons in that Divine Essence and that these Three Persons are really the One God for we can't imagine that Men and Women should be required to be baptized into the Faith and Worship of any but the Only True God This Epitomizer of the Evangelical Writings left out also that famous Testimony in Iohn 1. 1. In the beginning was the Word Christ Jesus and the Word was with God and the Word was God Whence we are obliged to yield assent to this Article that Christ is the word of God And there is added in Verse 14. another indispensable Point of Faith viz. that the word was made Flesh i. e. that God was Incarnate the same with 1 Tim. 3. 16. God manifest in the Flesh. And it follows in the same Verse of this first Chapter of St. Iohn that this VVord is the only begotten of the Father whence we are bound to believe the Eternal though ineffable Generation of the Son of God Our Author likewise takes no notice that we are commanded to believe the Father and the Son Joh. 14. 10 11. and that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son which expresses their Unity This is made an Article of Faith by our Saviour's particular and express Command And other eminent parts of Christian Belief this Writer passes by without having any regard to them and yet pretends to present the World with a Compleat and Entire Account of all that is the matter of our Faith under the Gospel This cannot but seem very strange and unaccountable to any man of deliberate Thoughts and who expects Sincerity from a Writer who makes some shew of it But this is not all this Learned Gentleman who with so much industry amasses together Quotations out of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles yet is not pleas'd to proceed to the Epistles and to give an Account of them as he did of the others though the Epistles are as considerable a part of the New Testament as the Gospels and the Acts and the Pen-men of them were equally inspired by the Holy

above them it is impossible that the Apprehensions of finite Creatures should reach these things therefore according to the foresaid Principle the Unitarians are not obliged to believe any such things they must not admit of the Infinite Nature of God concerning which our Conceptions will always be obscure and unproportionate yea they cannot but infer from their own Maxim that God is an impossible Being at least that His Immense Nature is such They cannot comprehend and conceive the Manner of the Immense and Infinite Presence or Knowledge of God therefore they must disown the things themselves Thus by vertue of their own profess'd Principle the Godhead it self as well as the Trinity is shock'd by them and consequently one would be apt to gather that a Socinian so far as he is led by this Principle is an Atheist or lest that should seem harsh one that favours the Cause of Atheism For he may as well quit the belief of a God because of these Difficulties and Abstrusities in the Nature of God as renounce the Doctrine of the Trinity because there are some inexplicable and unintelligible things that accompany it But because all men do not follow the natural Conduct of their Principles the Divine Providence over-ruling in these cases I do not here pass an Universal Censure I do not speak of every individual man nay I hope charitably concerning most of them However it is to be fear'd that some are unhappily under the force and sway of the foregoing Principle and these are the Persons I speak of and no other These things I freely and openly suggest Which the Learned and Ingenious Gentlemen of the Racovian Perswasion cannot dislike unless they disapprove of themselves unless they disclaim their own Writings for they cry up in almost all of them and in one very lately a Freedom of Discourse a Liberty of speaking their Thoughts which they applaud as a very Generous and Noble thing and much value themselves upon it They cannot deny that to me which they allow of and magnifie in themselves especially when I most sacredly profess to them that I have sincerely delivered my Thoughts and spoken what I conceive to be the words of Truth and Soberness Wherefore I expect to be approved of by Persons of their Ingenuity and Free Temper who as I find blame others even some of the Clergy for palliating and dissembling and not speaking out I think they will not charge me with this Fault for I have acted according to their own Generous Principles and I must tell them there is not a Friend of theirs in all their dear Eleutheropolis that is more disingaged and unbyass'd than I am But though I have used a becoming Freedom yet there are some things that I omit because I would let the World see that I am not eager and lavish in blaming and censuring any Party of Men especially since it is suggested to me by some that are Learned and Sober of that Perswasion that it is hard that their Opinion should suffer for the Ill Consequences of it or for the Insincerity of any that profess it or by reason of the Rash indiscreet Passages which occurr in some of their late Writers I do it likewise because I would give the World an Example of Moderation and Temper in this Disputing and Wrangling Age that it may be seen that whilst I remonstrate against the Errors and Mistakes as I suppose them to be of any Side I can forbear to publish the Aggravations of them and that I had rather the Truth should prevail than the Contrary Opinion or the Maintainers of it should be exposed Finally I consider that it is improper and unseasonable to contend among our selves at home whilst our Armies are engaging the Enemy abroad The Proper Antidote belonging to this Head of my Discourse is this Let us make a Difference between Finite Beings and that which is Infinite for seeing there is such a Vast Difference between them we ought to observe it We cannot form the same Conceptions of one and the other yea the latter is exalted above our reach and comprehension wherefore let us be satisfied that the Properties of an Infinite Being such as God is are incomprehensible and therefore that may be possible in the Infinite Nature of God as namely that it is communicable to Three Distinct Persons which is impossible in the Finite Nature of Man or other Creatures Let us attend to that which may be known and that clearly and distinctly and not trouble our thoughts and wrack our brains about Unsearchable Mysteries A Lover of Peace as well as Truth should not be so much sollicitous about the Manner of the Three Personalities or Subsistencies as about the Trinity it self We are sure of the latter as sure as the Scripture can make us therefore it doth not become us to wrangle about the former especially when we find that ill-minded men make use of this Quarrel to promote the Cause of Atheism and truly they make advances towards it every day I proceed to Other Doctrines which administer to this Great Evil which I have been speaking of and which may justly be reckoned among the Blemishes of these Inquisitive Times Such is that of a late Writer that the Books of the Old Testament were not written by those Persons whose Names they bear that the Historical parts of the Bible are lame and imperfect and repugnant to themselves that the Writings were not carefully and faithfully transmitted to us but abound with many faults and mistakes that the Books of the Prophets are mere scraps and fragments and taken without order and method from other Writings All which put together destroys the Authority of Divine Revelation and consequently of all Reveal'd Religion from whence we have the strongest and most pregnant Arguments for a Deity Again The same Design is advanced in these Learned Times by thrusting of Opinions and Theories on the world in defiance of the plain Letter and Historical Part of the Bible as if the Sacred History which was written by Inspired Men were not as credible and authentick as that of Prophane Authors The frame of the Primitive Earth is represented opposite to what Moses tells us it was the account which he gives of Paradise as it is a Particular Place is contradicted yea it is strongly averr'd that there never was any such thing What Moses relates concerning our First Parents is laugh'd at as a Romantick Story The Universal Deluge in Noah's time is attributed to an accidental diruption of the Earth which when scann'd is found to be fictitious and imaginary and thence the Deluge it self is concluded by many to be so and Moses is reckon'd by them as an Impostor Which is taken notice of and thus animadverted upon by a Curious Observer and One who as becometh so Learned an Head joyns Religion with his Philosophical Researches The Atheistical Party had hereby an occasion saith he boldly to give out that such a