Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	good_a	read_v	see_v	2,579	5	3.2518	3	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A56743	Learning and knowledge recommended to the scholars of Brentwood School in Essex in a sermon preached at their first feast, June 29, 1682 / by William Payne ...	Payne, William, 1650-1696.	1682 (1682)	Wing P904; ESTC R32171	13,563	38

because if Learning were any way prejudicial to Religion all its other uses and excellencies would signifie very little and it would be improper for me to recommend it to you in this place I shall particularly shew its manifest usefulness to that as it destroys the greatest Enemies to it which are these Atheism Prophaness Popery and Fanaticism 1. Atheism and yet that has been laid to the Charge of being great Scholars but very unjustly tho' we should reckon Epicurus Vaninus and Hobbs among the Atheists 't is certain they were none of the great Clerks of their Age and 't was chiefly their singularity and boldness to confront the natural sense and universal opinion of all wise men that made them considerable or taken notice of they might have past else unobserv'd and unregarded in the common crowd and we very well know that most of their Followers in our Age can scarce understand and often are not able to read them unless for the common benefit of Atheism they are translated into their Mothers Tongue and by those helps he that resolves to be lew'd and debaucht thinks it best to set up for a wit and an Athiest and to laugh at the Contradiction of spiritual Substances and immaterial beings and he can concieve nothing but matter and motion and will not let the Priests inpose any thing upon him that he can't understand but had this man but a little more Learning and Sense he would presently find that 't is as easie to understand spirit as matter and that there are nigh as many difficulties in the most ordinary Phaenomina of Nature as in the Mysteries of Religion and that he can as little give a full Account of the most obvious things the colour of grass or his own hair the natural paints of Flowers the Species and Seeds of Fruits his own Figure Shape and the like as how Spirits think and move and converse without a Body and that a Man may as much lose himself in those things the further he goes on and must at last stop at the Will of the First Cause as in the other and 't is as easie to conceive an infinite God as infinite Matter or Space and how he is present in all places and yet has no parts as how Matter is made either of divisibles or indivisibles how the Center is equal to the Circumference and how two Lines may approach nearer one another and yet never touch tho' drawn in infinitum so much Learning as will make a good Philosopher will spoil an Atheist and the right knowledge of Nature will bring him to the knowledge of a God when he sees in every part of it the footsteps not of Chance but of wise Counfel and by considering that he will find the nature of good and evil to be as certain and immutable as that of a Circle or triangle and if he go on to read Books he will find that all the wise Men that ever were in the world have been against Atheism that the belief of a God has been the belief of all ages and nations of the wisest and the freest thinkers as well as the unlearned and ignorant and that there have been few such Monsters of Men as have denyed it 2. Prophaness and debauchery which you have observ'd I am sure the smallest proficients in Learning and the most idle truants from their Book to be most apt to fall into Alas 't is much more easy to discourse loosly and idely then coherently and to the purpose to be fluent in fashionable oaths then in any true eloquence to talk Ribauldry and Prophaness than sence and reason and therefore you shall often find that he who could hardly be brought to construe Cato at School shall afterwards out of spite and revenge despise and laugh at all Vertue and Morality and he who could never read the Greek Testament shall become a notable Jester up the Bible in English and the raw and simple Fop that has not the Learning of the meanest Curate shall be confidently drolling upon God and Religion and exercising his wit and railery such as it is upon all the Learned Men in black Now had this witty dunce ever had the skill or the patience to Study and know what Learning was he would have had more esteem for it where e're it is and have known how to put it to a better use And tho' I shall not reckon either Greek or Latin no nor Hebrew neither Aristotle or Cartes or Averroes among the Instruments of Conversion or the ordinary means of Grace yet I am confident that the applying a Mans mind to study and employing it in the business of Learning and Knowledge will both take him off and divert him from most of that lewdness and debauchery that idle and unemploy'd and active minds fall into and will help to fix the quick-silver and settle the extravegancies they are inclined to and turn that loose and wild and frothy humour which is the usual vehicle of Prophaneness and effect of Idleness into solid and consistent Sense and Learning and that is the best prepared seed-plot and nursery for true Religion 3. Popery which sprang up in the darkest and most barbarous Ages of Christianity in the Night when men were asleep the Enemy sow'd those tares in the Church that have since over-run the true Corn when Learning degenerated into fabulous Legends and Monkish Stories when it was suspected to be a good Latinist and almost Heresy to understand Greek then they foisted in those false and spurious Readings into the Antients and put out feigned Books under false Names and took the advantage of an ignorant and undiscerning Age as dishonest persons do of the Night or the duskish twilight and when it was become an Heresy to believe the Antipodes it was a good time to make Purgatory or Transubstantiation an Article of Faith and even now in those Countrys which are the truest vassals to the Popedom the decay of Learning is very manifest so that there is little of Greek in Italy and scarce any at all in Spain the Scool-Men and the Canonists making up almost all the Learning amongst them and 't is not to be doubted that the restoring Learning by Erasmus and others about his time made great way for the Reformation and disposed the world very much to receive it and that Learning and free Phylosophy and exammination of things which has been the temper of the world ever since has not a little thratened and affrighted them and they sufficiently show'd their dislike of it in the usage of Galileo it being their whole design to keep Mens minds in Ignorance and Captivity in Darkness and Slavery and by no means to allow that liberty of thinking and reasoning of enquiring examining and judging which the Reformation doth 4. Learning as 't is an Enemy to Popery so 't is no friend to Faniticism every one knows that grows out of an unskilful Head that has great heat in it but without