Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	believe_v	faith_n	holy_a	1,533	5	5.3032	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A47133	The deism of William Penn and his brethren destructive to the Christian religion, exposed and plainly laid open in the examination and refutation of his late reprinted book called, A discourse of the general rule of faith and practise and judge of controversie, wherein he contendeth that the Holy Scriptures are not the rule of faith and life, but that the light in the conscience of every man is that rule / by George Keith.	Keith, George, 1639?-1716.	1699 (1699)	Wing K156; ESTC R6589	71,572	164

with any Blood outwardly shed for them Is not this the ready way to open the Flood-gate and to let in Deism and Heathenism to over-run not only England but all Christendom and not only to destroy the Protestant Christian Religion but any remains of Christian Doctrine that are in the Popish Countries But from this Cure of W.P. we have all great cause to pray Good Lord deliver us But nor would this Cure he proposeth be successful upon the Hypothesis of his general Rule if universally received for a Rule The Heathen Philosophers many of whom professed and owned the Light in every Conscience as it did enlighten their Reason yet how many great Controversies were there among them notwithstanding and oft great Heats and Animosities And if this Cure of W.P. be so effectual how comes it that it has not healed the breaches and great Controversies that have been on foot these Forty Years chiefly about G. Foxes orders his party contending that they were the Dictates of the Light both in G.F. and all his followers the other party as strongly denying it that they were any Dictates of the true Light within and let W.P. tell us when any such Controversie arises which are the true Dictates of the Light and true Spirit abstractly considered from the Scripture what shall be the Cure in that Case He seems indeed to give an answer to this in Page 42. Answ By the same Spirit as well said Gualt Cradock the way to know whither the Spirit be in us is its own Evidence and that is the way to know it in others too and the Man that hath the Spirit may know the Spirit in another There is saith he a kind of Sagacity in the Saints to this purpose To this I answer where the Spirits Doctrine which is the Doctrine both of Christ and the Father goeth along with the Spirit according to Isaiah 59 21. and many other places of Scripture there is a great Truth in it but whatever Spirit either teacheth another Doctrine or draweth Men away from the necessary belief of Christ's Death in the Flesh in being a Sacrifice for our Sins and other Fundamental Principles peculiar to Christianity is not the true Spirit of Christ whatever Unity or Sagacity W.P. and his Brethren may think they have to know it in one another while he and they make nothing to be the Rule of Faith but the Light in every Conscience John 2.9 which teacheth not this Doctrine of Faith nor proposeth this great Object of Faith to wit Christ Crucified to the Conscience they destroy all necessity of that Faith as concerned in our Salvation However with plausible shews he and they will say it is necessary where the History as he terms it has reached but how not for Salvation but historically as we believe the History of Alexander or Julius Cesar or as W.P. and his Brethren pretend to believe G. F's Journal The Difficulty that he moves P. 41. about Interpretation of Scripture is easily resolved without any new material object of Faith if the Spirit of God be acknowledged inwardly to enlighten the Understandings of the faithful and that they faithfully receive the same it will infallibly give to all the Faithful so much of the true knowledge and Faith of all Scripture Doctrine as is necessary to Salvation Page 46. As unfair and fallacious as he hath been in his Definitions and Arguments about the Rule of Faith and Life no less unfair and fallacious is he in his representing many Orthodox and sincere Protestants as if they Judged the Quakers for their asserting an unerring certain or infallible Judgment in things necessary to Salvation This is a very unfair representation of them The Question lyeth not about an unerring certain and infallible Judgment given by the Spirit of God to all the faithful in the things necessary to Salvation which they fully assert But the Question lyeth here whither they have this infallible Judgment either by the common Discoveries and Dictates of the Light in every Man's Conscience or by any new discoveries of the Spirit abstractly and seperately considered from the Scriptures so that the Doctrine as delivered in the Holy Scriptures is not the Rule or Instrument whereby the Spirit works or begets this infallible Judgment in them in all the necessary things of Salvation which ●et are more and others than those assigned by W.P. to wit Faith in Christ crucified and raised again and other fundamental Doctrines of the Christian Religion A Second part of the question is Whither all or any of the Quakers when met in their Yearly Meetings or any other Meetings or the most enlightned among them have an infallible Judgment given them in all things as their chief Teachers have asserted so that they are not only infallible in the most necessary things but in other things Yea in all that they have given forth either in Preaching or Writing as the Word of the Lord and with an Authority the same in kind with the Prophets as W.P. doth in the Conclu●ion of this Book where he pretends that he has a Message to tell them and that from the Spirit of the Lord God of Truth and that is Page 48. That Men unregenerated for all their external imitations of the Ancients in some Temporary and figurative parts of Worship will never be accepted But this is no extraordinary Revelation it is a Doctrine that is daily taught and generally believed among all true Christians that never were under the profession of Quakers But the fallacy is here that all are unregenerate in his Sense who own that what they are taught and helped to believe know or practise is by the Doctrine contained in the Holy Scriptures as the Rule of their Faith and Life and Instrument of the Spirits preparing and giving them the Spirit himself being the principal efficient Author and Cause and primary principle of their Knowledge Faith and Practise Yet all this is Judged by W.P. here in his Conclusion to be nothing but a literal Knowledge Historical Faith and outward Religion that is but as the Old Heaven that are to be wrapt up as a scroul and the Old Wine and Bottles that belong not to the Kingdom of God For which Uncharitable and False Judgment I heartily pray God that he may forgive him and giving him a better understanding and reclaim him if it be the blessed Will of God from those most dangerous errors he is intangled in and especially from this that is the foundation of his other errors to wit his Deism and setting up the Light within or Spirit or whatever he calls i● abstractly and seperately from Christ's Doctrine and Words even those divine Oracles and Words which the Father gave to Christ and Christ gave them by his Holy Spirit to the Apostles John 17.8 And by the same Holy Spirit by means of the Apostles writing has given to all the faithful since thus dividing what God and Christ have Joyned together surely this cannot be the true Light nor Spirit in him or his Brethren that leads away People from hearing the true Shepherds Voice either as it is outwardly sounded in the outward Ministry of the Word outwardly Preached or as it is inwardly sounded and Eccho'd by the Holy Spirit in Teaching the faithful to believe the same Doctrine that is outwardly delivered in the Holy Scriptures My Sheep said Christ hear my Voice they that draw from Christ's Doctrine being the Rule of Faith and Life to every true Christian draw from the Spirit of Christ and from his Voice whatever seeming pretences they fallaciously make to exalt the Spirit by rejecting that Instrument to wit the Rule of the Holy Scriptures by which the Spirit doth both enlighten the faithful and beget Faith and Hope and Love in them by the precious Oracles and Testimonies therein contained and also doth refresh quicken and comfort them If the Spirit and his divine influences be the Wine that refresheth and cherisheth them the Scripture so to speak are the Flagons that convey it to them according to the words in the Song Cant. 2.5 Stay me with Flagons comfort me with Apples and many other plain Testimonies of Scripture that hold forth in God's ordinary way the Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures as outwardly delivered to be the means and therefore the Rule by which the Spirit doth both Teach and also Quicken Comfort and strengthen them such as these following places which I recommend to W.P. and his Brethrens Consideration Psal 19.7 8 9 10 11. Prov. 6.23 Psal 119. 4 5 6 18 49 50 105. Psal 147.19 20. Isaiah 8.20.59.21 John 10.3 John 17.8 20. John 20.31 John 5 39. Acts 10.44 Rom. 16.17 Rom. 16.25.26 Gal. 3.2 Eph. 1.13 1 Thes 1.5 1 Tim. 4.16 2 Tim. 1.13 2 Tim. 2.20 2 Tim. 3.15 16 17. 28th of the First Month 1699. G. K. FINIS Nam cum humana mens pro sua imbecillitate pervenire ad Deum nullo modo queat nisi sacro ejus verbo adjuta sublevata omnes tunc mortales exceptis Judaeis quia Deum sine verbo querebant necesse fuit in vanitate atque errore versari Calvin Instit Lib. 1. c. 6 S. 4

another Rule of Faith and Life than what is the true Rule indeed If he persist in so doing he will not only bring his own Blood upon himself but the Blood of many others that are and may be mislead by him And whether he will yet better consider it or not which I heartily wish and pray that God would be pleased to open his Eyes and give him Repentance and a better Understanding It is a plain Case That the true Knowledge of the true Rule of Faith and Life is very necessary yea so necessary that the Danger for want of it is Perishing or Destruction Yet I mean not that every Error in Circumstance about the true Rule is of that Danger or that some loose and indeliberate Expressions that some have used in Preaching or Printing while their Meaning hath been more sound than their Words even about the RULE are of that Consequence It hath happened to some well-meaning People as it had happened to my self that they and I have both spoke and writ unadvisedly As in some other Matters so in this running along or rather being carried along with the Stream of some of the ancient Friends so called of the Ministry in asserting both in Speech and Print too frequently that the Spirit within meaning the inward Evidence of the Spirit as touching the great Matters of the Christian Faith and Practise was the principal Rule of Faith and Life wherein I acknowledge my Error and great Mistake and do here particularly retract it notwithstanding the general Retractation I have lately made in my late Book called G. K ' s Explications and Retractations But tho' I was then in an Error and under a great Mistake in my way of wording the Matter and darkned too much and clouded in my Understanding in that very Point yet I crave leave of my Reader to shew that even then my Error was not Fundamental nor such as this is of W. Penn's and his Brethren whose Error in the Case has carried them to plain Deism My Mistake chiefly consisted in this in confounding the Term Rule of Faith with the Term Inward objective Medium which I ought to have distinguished for the Rule of Faith is not properly speaking that formal object of Faith called by some Objectum formale quo or objective Medium and Motive of Credibility but the material Objects of Faith to wit all the Credenda or things in Scripture that ought to be believed are the Rule of Faith And therefore instead of saying the Spirits inward Evidence and Testimony was the Rule of Faith and principal Rule I should have said it was the principal objective Medium of Credibility Which as I then did believe and assert so I do still and hope never to retract it And therefore while I continue adhering to this Perswasion I remain as to the main the same I was in my Judgment as when I wrote my former Books touching these Matters my chief Bent and Zeal being against that which I judged a very Erronious Opinion and Hurtful held by some counted Learned Men and which I judge still that so it is to wit That the inward Evidence of the Spirit in the Souls of the Faithful to the Truths of the Christian Religion is only Effective and not Objective and I pleaded warmly that the Spirits inward Evidence otherwise called Testimony Witness Inspiration Illumination or Operation in the Souls of the Faithful is not only Effective but Objective also to wit by way of formal Object or objective Medium and Motive of Credibility And this I reckoned then and do still the greatest Certainty and Assurance that the Scriptures are of Divine Authority and infallibly true wherein I knew and still know I had the best Protestant Authors both for Piety and solid Learning on my side as also my Feeling and Experience to the Praise of God's Grace I say it in the Case hath confirmed me though I know some called Learned Men who have more of that called Divinity Learning in their Heads than in their Hearts do contradict it yea to a Degree of Ridiculing it under the Name of Fanaticism and Enthusiasm not well regarding the Authority of their worthy and judicious Ancestors who in the Articles of the Church have expresly mentioned the Feeling of the Holy Ghost in his Operations and Motions But I erred in calling this either inward Feeling or the Object of it the principal Rule for properly and rightly speaking it is not the Rule of Faith but the principal Motive of Credibility That which is only strictly and properly speaking the Rule of the Christian Faith is the Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures especially respecting the great Fundamentals and Essentials thereof To give a preference to the inward Operation of the Spirit and his writing his Law in the Heart to the same Law as writ on leaves of Paper and to the experimental part of Christianity above all that can be outwardly told or heard or read I think no true Christian will deny but when it is ask●d which is the greater Rule the Inward or the Outward they compare things that are not to be compared that cannot be said to be either the greater Rule or the lesser which is properly speaking no Rule at all but the moving or impulsive Cause that moves and inclines me to take the Holy Scriptures to be my Rule being infallibly true and of Divine Authority And whoever be yet in the same Mistake and Error that I then was in God forbid that I should judge so uncharitably of them as to conclude they err Fundamentally for want of not giving right Names to things or not having so clear inward Idea's and Conceptions of them when as to the main they mean well I am bold to appeal to my Books from first to last whither according to the Strain and Intent in all that I have Printed on that Subject I have not always acknowledged that the Doctrine of Christ Crucified and Remission of Sin by his Blood and other Doctrinal Principles of Christianity were absolutely necessary to be believed by us for our Eternal Salvation And that the Doctrine of the Holy Scriptures as outwardly conveighed to us by Preaching or Reading is the ordinary Means whereby God works Faith and Conversion and Regeneration in them that shall be Saved And that therefore so long as we live we are not to lay aside either that or any outward means of Grace and Salvation that God has afforded And how far I have formerly denied that the Scripture was the Rule of Faith I meant that as it was not the Letter or Writing so nor the Doctrine as simply and wholly limited and confined to the Letter As if it should happen by Divine Providence that a Person or Company of Persons should have the Holy Bible by Violence taken from them or not have it in any Language they can understand that therefore they are not in a possible State of Salvation For though in God's ordinary way the