Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	common_a	esteem_n	great_a	45	3	2.1273	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A27428	The folly and unreasonableness of atheism demonstrated from the advantage and pleasure of a religious life, the faculties of humane souls, the structure of animate bodies, & the origin and frame of the world : in eight sermons preached at the lecture founded by ... Robert BOyle, Esquire, in the first year MDCXCII / by Richard Bentley ...	Bentley, Richard, 1662-1742.	1699 (1699)	Wing B1931; ESTC R21357	132,610	286

THese words are a part of that Discourse which St. Paul had at Athens He had not been long in that inquisitive and pragmatical City but we find him encountered by the Epicureans and Stoicks two sorts of people that were very ill qualified for the Christian Faith the one by reason of their Carnal Affections either believing no God at all or that he was like unto themselves dissolv'd in Laziness and Ease the other out of Spiritual Pride presuming to assert that a Wise Man of their Sect was equal and in some cases superior to the Majesty of God himself These men corrupted through Philosophy and vain deceit took our Apostle and carried him unto Areopagus a place in the City whither was the greatest resort of Travellers and Strangers of the gravest Citizens and Magistrates of their Orators and Philosophers to give an account of himself and the new Doctrine that he spoke of For say they thou bringest strange things to our ears we would know therefore what these things mean The Apostle who was to speak to such a promiscuous Assembly has with most admirable Prudence and Art so accommodated his Discourse that every branch and member of it is directly opposed to a known Error and Prejudice of some Party of his Hearers I will beg leave to be the more prolix in explaining the whole because it will be a ground and introduction not only to this present but some other subsequent Discourses From the Inscription of an Altar to the Unknown God which is mentioned by Heathen Authors Lucian Philostratus and others he takes occasion V. 24. to declare unto them that God that made the World and all things therein This first Doctrine though admitted by many of his Auditors is directly both against Epicureans that ascribed the Origin and Frame of the World not to the Power of God but the fortuitous concourse of Atoms and Peripatetics that supposed all things to have been eternally as they now are and never to have been made at all either by the Deity or without him Which God says he seeing that he is Lord of Heaven and Earth dwelleth not in Temples made with hands neither is worshipped with men's hands as though he needed any thing seeing he giveth to all Life and Breath and all things This is opposed to the Civil and Vulgar Religion of Athens which furnish'd and serv'd the Deity with Temples and Sacrifices as if he had really needed Habitation and Sustenance And that the common Heathens had such mean apprehensions about the Indigency of their Gods it appears plainly to name no more from Aristophanes's Plutus and the Dialogues of Lucian But the Philosophers were not concern'd in this point all Parties and Sects even the Epicureans themselves did maintain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the self-sufficiency of the Godhead and seldom or never sacrificed at all unless in compliance and condescension to the custom of their Country There 's a very remarkable passage in Tertullian's Apology Who forces a Philosopher to sacrifice c. It appears from thence that the Philosophers no less than the Christians neglected the Pagan Worship and Sacrifices though what was conniv'd at in the one was made highly penal and capital in the other And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the Earth and hath determin'd the times before appointed and the bound of their habitation This Doctrine about the beginning of Humane Race though agreeable enough to the Platonists and Stoics is apparently levell'd against the Epicureans and Aristotelians one of whom produced their Primitive Men from meer Accident or Mechanism the other denied that Man had any beginning at all but had eternally continued thus by Succession and Propagation Neither were the Commonalty of Athens unconcern'd in this point For although as we learn from Isocrates Demosthenes and others of their Countrymen they professed themselves to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Aborigines not transplanted by Colonies or otherwise from any Foreign Nation but born out of their own Soil in Attica and had the same Earth for their Parent their Nurse and their Country and though some perhaps might believe that all the rest of Mankind were derived from Them and so might apply and interpret the Words of the Apostle to this foolish Tradition yet that conceit of deriving the whole Race of Men from the Aborigines of Attica was entertain'd but by a few for they generally allowed that the Egyptians and Sicilians and some others were Aborigines also as well as themselves Then follow the words of the Text That they should seek the Lord if haply they might feel after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us For in him we Live and Move and have our Being And this he confirms by the Authority of a Writer that lived above 300 years before As certain also of your own Poets have said For we are also his Off-spring This indeed was no Argument to the Epicurean Auditors who undervalued all Argument from Authority and especially from the Poets Their Master Epicurus had boasted that in all his Writings he had not cited one single Authority out of any Book whatsoever And the Poets they particularly hated because on all occasions they introduced the Ministry of the Gods and taught the separate Existence of humane Souls But it was of great weight and moment to the Common People who held the Poets in mighty esteem and veneration and used them as their Masters of Morality and Religion And the other Sects too of Philosophers did frequently adorn and confirm their Discourses by Citations out of Poets For as much then as we are the off-spring of God we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto Gold or Silver or Stone graven by art or man's device This is directly levell'd against the gross Idolatry of the Vulgar for the Philosophers are not concern'd in it that believed the very Statues of Gold and Silver and other Materials to be God and terminated their Prayers in those Images as I might shew from many passages of Scripture from the Apologies of the Primitive Christians and the Heathen Writers themselves And the times of this ignorance God winked at the meaning of which is as upon a like occasion the same Apostle hath expressed it that in times past he suffer'd all Nations to walk in their own ways but now commandeth every one to repent Because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained whereof he hath given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead Hitherto the Apostle had never contradicted all his Audience at once though at every part of his Discourse some of them might be uneasie yet others were of his side and all along a moderate silence and attention was