Selected quad for the lemma: book_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
book_n	old_a	prophet_n	testament_n	5,085	5	8.1969	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A42781	Demonologia sacra, or, A treatise of Satan's temptations in three parts / by Richard Gilpin.	Gilpin, Richard, 1625-1700.	1677 (1677)	Wing G777; ESTC R8221	552,054	651

whereof they conclude to be such and so general that most Men are in hazard to be imposed upon by delusive Appearances But with far greater shew of likelihood do some make all such things to be nothing else but the Issues of Melancholly and corrupt Humors which makes Men believe they hear see and suffer strange things when there is nothing near them or really to undergo strange fits as in Lunacy and Epilepsy Leaving these Men as not capable of Information from Scripture evidence because disowning it Let us enquire what mistaken apprehensions there have been in this Matter among those that have pretended a reverence to and belief of Scripture The Sadducees deserve the first place because they are by name noted in Scripture to have denied the Resurrection and to have affirmed that there is neither Angel nor Spirit Acts 23. 8. Matth. 22. 23. This opinion of theirs could we certainly find it out would make much for the confirmation of the Truth in question seeing what ever it was it is positively condemned in Scripture and the contrary asserted to be true Many and that upon considerable grounds do think that they do not deny absolutely that there were any Angels at all but that acknowledging that something there was which was called an Angel yet they imagining it to be far otherwise than what it is indeed were accused justly for denying such a kind of Angels as the Scripture had every where asserted and described For considering that they owned a God and at least the five Books of Moses if not all the other Books of the Old Testament as Scaliger and others judge not without great probability for neither doth the Scripture nor Josephus mention any such thing of the Prophets it is unimaginable that they would altogether deny that there was Angel or Spirit at all They read of Angels appearing to Lot to Abraham and met with it so frequently that believing Scriptures to be true they could not believe Angels to be an absolute fiction for one Fable or Falsity in Scripture which so highly asserts it self to be an unerring Oracle of the true God must of necessity have destroyed the credit of all and rendred them as justly suspected to be true in nothing when apparently false or fabulous in any thing Again If we call to mind what Apprehensions they had of God which all consent they did acknowledge we might more easily imagine what apprehensions they had of Angels for in regard that Moses made mention of Gods Face and Back-parts and that frequently Hands and other parts of Mans Body were attributed to him they concluded God to be Corporeal and seeing the best of Creatures which God created cannot be supposed to have a more noble Being than was that of their Creator and at the utmost to be made according to the Pattern of his own Image and likeness they might upon this Bottom easily fix a denial of Incorporeal Spirits and by consequence that the Soul of Man was mortal and therefore that there could be no Resurrection so that the nature of Angels being described under the notion of Spiritual Substances they are judged to deny any such thing supposing that to be Incorporeal was as much as not to be at all and yet it were unreasonable to deny that they had not some Interpretation for those passages of Scripture that mentioned Angels which in their apprehensions might be some Salvo to the truth of those Historical Writings which they acknowledged but what that was we are next to conjecture And indeed Josephus by a little hint of their Opinion seems to tell us that they did not so much deny the Being of the Soul as the permanency of it and so by consequence they might not so much deny absolutely the existence of Spirits as their Natural Being and continuance Something there was that was called by the name of Angel that they could not but own and that this must be a real and not an imaginary thing is evident from the real Effects and things done by them yet observing their appearances to have been upon some special occasion and their disappearing to have been on a sudden they might conjecture them to be created by God for the present service and then reduced to nothing when that service was done Their Opinion then of Angels seems to be one of these two Either that they were Corporeal Substances created upon a special emergency but not permanent Beings or that they were but Images and Impressions supernaturally formed in the Fancy by the special Operation of God to signify his Mind and Commands to Men upon which they might fitly be called God's Messengers and Ministers I put in this last into the conjecture because I find it mentioned by Calvin as the Opinion of the Sadducees but both are noted by Diodate on Acts 23. 8. as with equal probability belonging to them his words are They did not believe they were subsisting and immortal Creatures but transitory Apparitions or some divine Actions and Motions to produce some special and notable Effect Others also have been lately hammering out the same apprehension concerning Angels and profess themselves delivered from it with great difficulty differing only in this from some of the Heathens before mentioned that what those ascribed to the Puissance of the Stars Natural Powers or to weakness of Senses and corrupt Humors they by the advantage of the general notions of Scripture have ascribed to God putting forth his Power upon the Minds and Fancies of Men or working by the Humours of the Body upon this foundation they will easilier make bold with Devils to deny if not their Being yet their Temptations imagining that we may possibly do him wrong in fathering upon him these Sollicitations and Provocations to Sin which we by experience find to be working and acting upon our Minds thinking that our own Fancies or Imaginations may be the only Devils that vex us and this they more readily hearken to from the nature of Dreams and Visions which happen to Men in an ordinary Natural way where our Fancies play with us as if they were distinct from us as also from this consideration that the Lunatick Epileptick and Frenzical Persons are in Scripture called Demoniacks as Matth. 17. 15. with Luk. 9. where the Person is called Lunatick and yet said to be taken and vexed by a Spirit so also Joh. 10. 20. he hath a Devil and is mad But these reasonings can do little with an intelligent considering Man to make him deny what he so really feels and is so often forewarned of in Scripture for suppose these were called Demoniacks by the Vulgar it doth not compel us to believe they were so Men are apt to ascribe Natutural Diseases to Satan and Christ did not concern himself to cure their Misapprehensions while he cured their Diseases This some suggest as a Reason that may answer many Cases though indeed it cannot answer that of