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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	church_n	faith_n	scripture_n	5,932	5	6.0033	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A66427	A short discourse concerning the churches authority in matters of faith shewing that the pretenses of the Church of Rome are weak and precarious in the resolution of it.	Williams, John, 1636?-1709.	1687 (1687)	Wing W2734; ESTC R7663	18,741	33

of Honesty insomuch that whatever Miracles tend to the Damage of Mankind or the Corruption of Manners they cannot be from God nor can they authorize any Doctrin as Divine that is inconsistent with the forementioned Standard of Justice and Reason And this makes a real Distinction and sensible Difference betwixt the Miracles wrought by Christ or his Apostles and those by Heathen Magicians On the one hand the Miracles always tended to good and were such as might invite Love as well as Admiration On the other hand they were for the most part hurtful to Mens Persons and Estates unless it was sometimes that the Devils cured the Diseases they had caused but it was still to establish a greater Tyranny When the Jews taxed our Saviour with casting out Devils by Beelzebub the Prince of the Devils he answers to this effect That the Devil was too Wise a Creature to destroy his own Kingdom by casting out Devils especially when sometimes they were made to own themselves to be Devils and to confess Christ to be the Son of God But says he if I cast out Devils by the Spirit of God then the Kingdom of God is come unto you And this was frequent in the Primitive Church that the Christians by a Divine Power overruled all the Powers of Darkness imployed by the Magicians of those times For as to do Works above Nature speaks a Power above her so when those Works tend to the good of Men by promoting Vertue and establishing true Piety they must reasonably be concluded to be from a Divine Author Let this then be the first Step or the Ground of all That whatsoever Doctrin or pretended Revelation destroys Justice or contradicts Reason cannot come from Heaven and ought not to be Believed In the next place when once a Law is established as Divine upon a sufficient Testimony of Miracles no other Revelation that is contrary to it may be allowed until it be repealed and no repeal can be but from the same Authority that enacted it And therefore the repeal cannot be of force till the Authority upon which it stands makes it self manifest by as great if not greater Miracles than were wrought at the Promulgation In this Point was the Prophets Miscarriage that went to cry against the Altar in Bethel who suffered himself to be overcome by the pretence of the old Prophet contrary to his own Commission But without pursuing this farther at present it is manifest and by all Christians acknowledged as such That the Gospel which our Saviour and his Apostles published to the World is neither contradictious to Reason nor destructive of Vertue or good Manners or inconsistent with former Revelations but that on the contrary it proposes the noblest End viz. Eternal Life and directs to the fittest and most agreeable Method for attaining it and therefore must be accounted Divine This being granted it follows That no Doctrin or Revelation which is not reconcilable to this Gospel can be from Heaven or have Power to bind us If an Angel from Heaven preach any other Gospel let him be accursed Gal. 1. 8. My present Business being not with Heathens but with Christians I will take it for granted till I see more occasion to prove it That the Apostles and Evangelists who were Divinely Inspired committed to Writing that Gospel which they had received that is as much of the Will of God as might be necessary for Men to Know and Believe in order to their Salvation The late Representers of Popery seem to allow as much when they own the Scripture to be the Word of God of the greatest Authority upon Earth and capable of leading a Man to all Truth It must also be granted That these Scriptures are no otherwise the Word of God than they are rightly Understood and Interpreted And here the Controversie begins about the Sense of Scripture For the Gentlemen of the Communion of the Church of Rome tell us we must receive the Canon of the Scripture and the Sense and Interpretation of Scripture upon the Authority of the Church for so the matter is stated even by their late Writers And this being of great Importance we will consider it Carefully and proceed with as much Clearness as may be a sufficient though short discussion of the Point If we are to receive the Canon and Sense of the Scripture upon the Churches Authority then the Churches Authority is the Ground upon which the Canon and Sense of Scripture depends as to us and if the Canon and Sense of Scripture depends as to us upon the Church then the Church has Authority to ingage and determine our Faith in these two Questions 1. What Books are Canonical and 2. What the Sense of them must be For if I know not the Sense of them I know not the Will of God without which it signifies nothing to have the Books although they had been written with God's own Finger And If the Church has Authority to declare what Books and what Sense of those Books is Divine then the Church has a Power to make me Believe its Declaration I say the Church must have a Power if it has Authority to make me Believe because no Man can Believe more than he can Believe nor help Believing what for the time he does Believe If the Church has a Power to make me Believe it either has it of it self as it were by Nature or it has it from God But of it self the Church can have no such Power because God only has a Dominion over the Minds of Men and is therefore to be Believed by virtue of his own Authority If therefore the Church as it consists of Men who in their private Capacities that is as they are Men may err has no Authority of it self to determine my Faith then the Authority of the Church if it have any to make me Believe must be Supernatural and Divine Which I think is granted by the Author of the Papist Misrepresented and represented when he says he believes no Divine Faith ought to be given to any thing but what is of Divine Revelation 'T is then an established Point That the Churches Authority is not to be believed as Natural but as Supernatural and Divine and if it be Supernatural it cannot be proved out of Natural Principles This the Papists seeing very well lay down Infallibility for the Ground of the Churches Authority So that the Churches Authority arising from its Infallibity no Man can be bound in matters of Faith to submit to the one farther than he can be Convinced of the other and the Church can no longer have a Power over Mens Faith than she is Infallible The Infallibility then of the Church being the Ground of her Authority the Papists expect we should resolve our Faith into it and we will consider how reasonable their expectations are in this Case But first let us remember That all this Authority and Infallability is

let it alone Though to say the Truth if I had been told the contrary the Errors which some Popes have fallen into would have hindred me in despite of any good will from owning him so Is this Infallibility shared among them so that every one has some For Infallibility they must have or their Authority is lost No this cannot be neither for Infallibility is a Quality that cannot be divided or enjoyed to the halfs And if it could it would not do the business for then they would be Fallible in part as well as Infallible in part And so we should be as hard put to it to find which part their Infallibility reaches to as we are to find that they have any at all Here peradventure it may be thought because it has been said heretofore That though the Pope and his Council may be Fallible in their Arguments and Discourses yet in the Result of them viz. their Definitions which only concern the Church they are Infallible This indeed is to the purpose if it could be as easily proved as said But since neither Art nor Nature does allow an Infallible Conclusion to issue from Fallible Means it must be wholly Supernatural and Divine And so we are come in the third place to ask How they came by a Power to make the Conclusion Divine the Means being Humane or How they will make it appear to me or any Man else that they are endued with such a Power Certainly a Claim so bold as this ought to be very well made out But here alass we are turn'd over to Motives of Credibility which are sometimes called the marks of the Church however we will see what can be made of them By Motives of Credibility must be meant such as may work upon my Reason and so incline my Mind to believe or assent to any thing for a Truth and so I can be induced to believe no farther than the point is made Credible to me Well but whatever is Supernatural can never work upon my Reason as being quite above it without some Divine Evidence and Testimony and that must either be Miracles or Scripture For Miracles they have of late been little pretended to But from Scripture they tell us Christ has promised to his Church a perpetual Assistance of his Grace yea such a measure of the Spirit as made Caiaphas prophesy Truth almost whether he would or no. But how can they pretend Scripture in this Case who have told us we must receive the Sense and Interpretation of Scripture from the Infallible Authority of the Church And that not in a few Points but in every Doubt and never presume upon our own private Sentiments howsoever seemingly grounded on Reason and Scripture If we must thus absolutely depend upon the Authority of the Church for the Interpretation of Scripture then the Authority of the Church must be better known to us than the Sense of the Scripture And if it be better known it cannot be proved by Scripture for every thing that proves another must it self be more evident And if the Churches Authority cannot be proved by Scripture it can never be proved without Miracles and by consequence can never be believed But if Christians must read and judg of Scripture and believe it in this Point I can see no reason why they may not in every one else that concerns Religion since there are few Points in it that are not much more cleary expressed Here Traditions would put in to help out But to spoil all we are told we must receive them too upon the Authority of the Church for it would be as dangerous to trust the World with a liberty of judging Traditions as of judging Scripture and more contests there are and would be about them And yet which is an insuperable Difficulty Tradition is silent in many Points of the Romish Faith nay in all whereabout any Difference is I mean as to the Primitive Church and sure Tradition cannot be produced where there is none If Tradition could be produced still the Difficulty returns That Tradition would be more manifest and therefore above the Churches Authority And how acceptable a Point that is at Rome Mr. White and Mr. Serjeant could have told at their own Cost But though Scripture and Tradition are insufficient perhaps Succession may make out this Matter or else why are we so often told of it and truly I must needs say I do not know why we are For if they mean a Succession of Bishops that can prove nothing to Rome because it is common to other Churches who have as undoubted a Succession as they If they mean a Succession of Doctrin from the Apostles to us 't is what we allow and for want of it refuse those other Doctrins they would impose There is behind a very forcible Argument to prove That the Pope and his Council together are not Infallible or that the Papists themselves do not think them so I Instance in the Lateran Council under Pope Innocent the III. where it was decreed that Princes may be Deposed He that Represents a Papist answers That this is no Article of Faith and that they are not bound to believe it But if this be not to be believed it is because the Truth of it is not evident enough and if it be not evident enough it must be because the Churches proposing or decreeing is not sufficient to make it evident which is the Point I aim at If he will as some have acknowledge the deposing Doctrin to be true let the World consider what kind of Subjects those must be that are in such a Communion and if he disavows it he makes it appear that he does not think their Church Infallible Nor can I think that Church has sufficiently cleared it self from the Charge of this Doctrin which some of them call a Calumny till it be as Publickly and Authoritatively Repealed as it was Decreed Nor can I imagine how that Author could tell us in the fourteenth Chapter of his Book that he thought himself obliged not to rely on his own private Judgment but upon the Authority of the Church in any Doubt and yet in the twentieth Chapter of the same Book tells us in Consequence what the Church has peremptorily Decreed is not to be believed I am sorry when that Decree passed such a powerfull Measure of the Spirit which made Caiaphas Prophesie was absent And since it was so then I do not see how they can reasonably presume he was not absent in other Points too Damnation being so particularly denounced against Rebellion we cannot think that a Point so inconsiderable as to be passed by in advertency It now plainly appears that this Challenge of Infallibility is very unaccountable and to shew its absurdity yet more you shall see that though we should grant as we do not that they have Infallibility some where yet in the resolution of Faith it would be useless The Church at this day is vexed