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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	new_a	old_a	testament_n	18,420	5	8.4579	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A43970	An answer to a book published by Dr. Bramhall, late bishop of Derry; called the Catching of the leviathan. Together with an historical narration concerning heresie, and the punishment thereof. By Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury	Hobbes, Thomas, 1588-1679.	1682 (1682)	Wing H2211; ESTC R19913	73,412	166

and Sanctity are indeed not very frequent but yet they are not Miracles but brought to pass by Education Discipline Correction and other natural wayes I would see the greatest Pelagian of them all fly higher T. H. I make here no jest of Inspiration Seriously I say that in the proper signification of the words Inspiration and Infusion to say virtue is inspired or infused is as absurd as to say a Quadrangle is round But Metaphorically for Gods bestowing of Faith Grace or other Vertue those words are intelligible enough J. D. Why should he trouble himself about the Holy Spirit who acknowledgeth no Spirit but either a subtil fluid body or a Ghost or other Idol or Phantasm of the imagination who knoweth no inward Grace or intrinsecal Holyness Holy is a word which in Gods Kingdom answereth to that which men in their Kingdoms use to call publick or the Kings And again wheresoever the word Holy is taken properly there is still some thing signified of propriety gotten by consent His Holiness is a Relation not a Quality for inward sanctification or real infused holiness in respect whereof the third Person is called the Holy Ghost because he is not only holy in himself but also maketh us holy he is so great a stranger to it that he doth altogether deny it and disclaim it T. H. The word Holy I had defined in the words which his Lordship here sets down and by the use thereof in the Scripture made it manifest That that was the true signification of the word There is nothing in Learning more difficult than to determine the signification of words That difficulty excuses him He says that Holiness in my sence is a Relation not a Quality All the Learned agree that Quality is an Accident so that in attributing to God Holiness as a Quality he contradicts himself for he has in the beginning of this his discourse denyed and rightly that any Accident is in God saying whatsoever is in God is the Divine Substance He affirms also that to attribute any Accident to God is to deny the simplicity of the Divine Substance And thus his Lordship makes God as I do a Corporeal Spirit Both here and throughout he discovers so much ignorance as had he charged me with error only and not with Atheism I should not have thought it necessary to answer him J. D. We are taught in our Creed to believe the Catholick or Universal Church But T. H. teacheth us the contrary That if there be more Christian Churches than one all of them together are not one Church personally And more plainly Now if the whole number of Christians be not contained in one Common-wealth they are not one Person nor is there an Vniversal Church that hath any Authority over them And again The Vniversal Church is not one Person of which it can be said that it hath done or Decreed or Ordained or Excommunicated or Absolved This doth quite overthrow all the Authority of General Councils All other Men distinguish between the Church and the Common-wealth only T. H. maketh them to be one and the same thing The Common-wealth of Christian men and the Church of the same are altogether the same thing called by two names for two reasons For the matter of the Church and of the Common-wealth is the same namely the same Christian men and the Form is the same which consisteth in the lawful power of convocating them And hence he concludeth That every Christian Common-wealth is a Church endowed with all spiritual Authority And yet more fully The Church if it be one Person is the same thing with the Common-wealth of Christians called a Common-wealth because it consisteth of men united in one Person their Soveraign And a Church because it consisteth in Christian men united in one Christian Soveraign Upon which account there was no Christian Church in these Parts of the World for some hundreds of years after Christ because there was no Christian Soveraign T. A. For answer to this Period I say only this That taking the Church as I do in all those places for a company of Christian men on Earth incorporated into one Person that can speak command or do any act of a Person all that he citeth out of what I have written is true and that all private Conventicles though their belief be right are not properly called Churches and that there is not any one Universal Church here on Earth which is a Person indued with Authority universal to govern all Christian men on Earth no more than there is one Universal Soveraign Prince or State on Earth that hath right to govern all Mankind I deny also that the whole Clergy of a Christian Kingdom or State being assembled are the representative of that Church further than the Civil Laws permits or can lawfully assemble themselves unless by the command or by the leave of the Soveraign Civil Power I say further that the denyal of this point tendeth in England towards the taking away of the Kings Supremacy in causes Ecclesiastical But his Lordship has not here denyed any thing of mine because he has done no more but set down my words He says further that this Doctrine destroyes the Authority of all General Councils which I confess Nor hath any General Council at this day in this Kingdom the force of a Law nor ever had but by the Authority of the King J. D. Neither is he more Orthodox concerning the Holy Scriptures Hitherto that is for the Books of Moses the power of making the Scripture Canonical was in the Civil Soveraign The like he saith of the Old Testament made Canonical by Esdras And of the New Testament That it was not the Apostles which made their own Writings Canonical but every Convert made them so to himself Yet with this restriction That until the Soveraign Ruler had prescribed them they were but Counsel and Advice which whether good or bad he that was counselled might without injustice refuse to observe and being contrary to the Laws established could not without injustice observe He maketh the Primitive Christians to have been in a pretty condition Certainly the Gospel was contrary to the Laws then established But most plainly The word of the Interpreter of the Scripture is the word of God And the same is the Interpreter of the Scripture and the Soveraign Judge of all Doctrines that is the Soveraign Magistrate to whose Authority we must stand no less than to theirs who at first did commend the Scripture to us for the Canon of Faith Thus if Christian Soveraigns of different Communications do clash one with another in their interpretations or misinterpretation of Scripture as they do daily then the word of God is contradictory to it self or that is the word of God in one Common-wealth which is the word of the Devil in another Common-wealth And the same thing may be true and not true at the same time Which is the peculiar priviledge of T.H. to make

innumerable Such a Prophet was his Lordship and such are all Pastors in the Christian Church But the Question here is of those Prophets that from the Mouth of God foretell things future or do other Miracle Of this kind I deny there has been any since the Death of St. John the Evangelist If any Man find fault with this he ought to name some Man or other whom we are bound to acknowledge that they have done a Miracle cast out a Devil or cured any Disease by the sole Invocation of the Divine Majesty We are not bound to trust to the Legend of the Roman Saints nor to the History written by Sulpitius of the Life of St. Martin or to any other Fables of the Roman Clergy nor to such things as were pretended to be done by some Divines here in the time of King James Secondly he says I make little difference between a Prophet and a Mad-man or Demoniack To which I say he accuses me falsly I say only thus much That I see nothing at all in the Scripture that requireth a belief that Demoniacks were any other-thing than Madmen And this is also made very probable out of Scripture by a worthy Divine Mr. Meade But concerning Prophets I say only that the Jews both under the Old Testament and under the New took them to be all one with Mad-men and Demoniacks And prove it out of Scripture by many places both of the Old and New Testament Thirdly that the pretence or arrogating to ones self Divine Inspiration is argument enough to shew a Man is Mad is my opinion but his Lordship understands not Inspiration in the same sence that I do He understands it properly of God's breathing into a Man or pouring into him the Divine Substance or Divine Graces and in that sence he that arrogateth Inspiration into himself neither understands what he saith nor makes others to understand him which is properly Madness in some degree But I understand Inspiration in the Scripture Metaphorically for Gods guidance of our minds to Truth and Piety Fourthly whereas he says I make the pretence of Inspiration to be pernicious to Peace I answer that I think his Lordship was of my Opinion for he called those Men which in the late Civil War pretended the Spirit and New Light and to be the only faithful men Phanaticks for he called them in his Book and did call them in his Life time Phanaticks And what is a Phanatick but a Mad-man and what can be more pernicious to Peace than the Revelations that were by these Phanaticks pretended I do not say there were Doctrines of other Men not called Phanaticks as pernicious to Peace as theirs were and in great part a cause of those troubles Fifthly from that I make Prophetical Revelations subject to the examination of the Lawful Soveraign he inferreth that two Prophets prophecying the same thing at the same time in the Dominions of two different Princes the one shall be a true Prophet the other a false This consequence is not good for seeing they teach different Doctrines they cannot both of them confirm their Doctrine with Miracles But this I prove in the page 232 he citeth that whether either of their Doctrines shall be taught publickly or not 't is in the power of the Soveraign of the Place only to determine Nay I say now further if a Prophet come to any private Man in the Name of God that Man shall be Judge whether he be a true Prophet or not before he obey him See 1 John 4. 1. Sixthly whereas he says that upon my grounds Christ was to be reputed a false Prophet every where because his Doctrine was received no where His Lordship had read my Book more negligently than was fit for one that would confute it My ground is this that Christ in right of his Father was King of the Jews and consequently Supream Prophet and Judge of all Prophets What other Princes thought of his Prophesies is nothing to the purpose I never said that Princes can make Doctrines or Prophesies true or false but I say every Soveraign Prince has a right to prohibite the publick Teaching of them whether false or true But what an oversight is it in a Divine to say that Christ had the Approbation of no Soveraign Prince when he had the Approbation of God who was King of the Jews and Christ his Vice-Roy and the whole Scripture written Joh. 20.31 to prove it When his Miracles declared it when Pilate confessed it and when the Apostles Office was to proclaim it Seventhly If we must not consider in points of Christian Faith who is the Soveraign Prophet that is who is next under Christ our Supream Head and Governor I wish his Lordship would have cleared ere he dyed these few Questions Is there not need of some Judge of Controverted Doctrines I think no man can deny it that has seen the Rebellion that followed the Controversie here between Gomar and Arminius There must therefore be a Judge of Doctrines But says the Bishop not the King Who then Shall Dr. Bramhall be this Judge As profitable an Office as it is he was more modest than to say that Shall a private Lay-man have it No man ever thought that Shall it be given to a Presbyterian Minister No 't is unreasonable Shall a Synod of Presbyterians have it No For most of the Presbyters in the Primitive Church were undoubtedly subordinate to Bishops and the rest were Bishops Who then A Synod of Bishops Very well His Lordship being too modest to undertake the whole Power would have been contented with the six and twentieth part But suppose it in a Synod of Bishops who shall call them together The King What if he will not Who should Excommunicate him or if he despise your Excommunication who shall send forth a Writ of Significavit No all this was far from his Lordships thoughts The power of the Clergy unless it be upheld legally by the King or illegally by the Multitude amounts to nothing But for the Multitude Suarez and the School-men will never gain them because they are not understood Besides there be very few Bishops that can act a Sermon which is a puissant part of Rhetorick So well as divers Presbyterians and Phanatick Preachers can do I conclude therefore that his Lordship could not possibly believe that the Supream Judicature in matter of Religion could any where be so well placed as in the Head of the Church which is the King And so his Lordship and I think the same thing but because his Lordship knew not how to deduce it he was angry with me because I did it He says further that by my Principles he that blasphemeth Christ at Constantinople is a true Prophet as if a man that blasphemeth Christ to approve his Blasphemy can procure a Miracle for by my principles no Man is a Prophet whose Prophesie is not confirmed by God with a Miracle In the last place out of this That the lawful