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	scripture_n	word_n	1,385	5	4.3491	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A84760	A sober answer to an angry epistle, directed to all the publick teachers in this nation, and prefixed to a book, called (by an antiphrasis) Christs innocency pleaded against the cry of the chief priests. Written in hast by Thomas Speed, once a publick teacher himself, and since revolted from that calling to merchandize, and of late grown a merchant of soules, trading subtilly for the Quakers in Bristoll. Wherein the jesuiticall equivocations and subtle insinuations, whereby he endeavours secretly to infuse the whole venome of Quaking doctrines, into undiscerning readers, are discovered; a catlogue of the true and genuine doctrines of the Quakers is presented, and certaine questions depending between us and them, candidly disputed, / by [brace] Christopher Fowler & Simon Ford, [brace] ministers of the Gospel in Reding,	Fowler, Christopher, 1610?-1678.; Ford, Simon, 1619?-1699.	1656 (1656)	Wing F1694; Thomason E883_1; ESTC R207293	63,879	81

have suggested to him Viz. That that Scripture did not expresly forbid Jesus of Nazareth to throw himself down from the Pinnacle And in the third Tentation according to your Tenet our Sect. 67 Saviour had been hard put to it to prove that it was unlawfull to worship the Devill himselfe had Satan been disciplined by your principles and required of him an expresse Text That it is not lawfull to worship the Devill Whereas it seemes for want of your Artifice the silly Tempter was put off with a Scripture that requires us to worship and serve God onely and concludes the unlawfulnesse of Devill-worship by this Argument If we must worship and serve God only ergo not the Devill But we must worship and serve God only therefore not the Devill And the Sadduces afterwards were very silly animalls that Sect. 68 they would let our Saviour go away in triumph for putting Mat. 22. 32. Exod. 3. 6. them to silence by so weak a proof of the Resurrection as the words of God to Moses in the Bush I am the God of Abraham the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Why had they not required in so fundamentall an Article of faith especially a positive and expresse Scripture affirming in so many words that the dead shall rise againe But you think our Saviours example will not beare us out in Sect. 69 our interpretations and deductions because he was infallible in P. 6. what he spake and neither did nor could erre in what he said which you suppose cannot be said of us or our meanings and arguments To which we answer we do not compare our selves with our Saviour in point of infallibility although your generation do who account themselves equally perfect with him But this we say that our Saviour in these places and others where he argues from the Scriptures doth not urge his owne infallibility as the ground upon which he requires beleif neither did Satan or the Sadduces acquiesce in the acknowledgment thereof but in the conviction wrought in them by the strength of his Arguments And we must tell you that any one who can draw an Argument rightly from Scripture is no lesse infallible in the conclusions so deduced thence then our Saviour was in his The question therefore will be Whether any person in interpreting and arguing from Scripture be infallible but whether such interpretations and deductions be truly and bona fide according to the mind of the H. Chost in Scripture whether they be drawn by a person that is fallible or infallible For be the person never so fallible that gives the interpretation or drawes the argument yet if the interpretation be sound and the argument rightly concluded he is therein infallible For you cannot be altogether ignorant of that common Maxime That nothing Ex veris possunt non nisi vera sequi but truth can rightly follow from truth and a false conclusion can never be regularly drawn from true premisses So that all that flourish which you afterwards make is but a meer rhetoricall vapour and signifies just nothing to an understanding Sect. 70 Reader For whereas you bid us either tell the people P. 6. plainly that we are infallible that they may receive our deductions from Scripture for true Doctrine nay Scripture it self or else say that we are fallible that so they may take liberty of proving our actions and doctrine We answer we need not tell the people we are infallible and yet they are no lesse bound to receive our deductions if rightly drawne from Scripture then if we were indeed so Because although we be not infallible yet so far as we regularly argue from Scripture we are not deceived nor can deceive them The authority of our deductions from Scripture depends not on our fallibility or infallibility but upon the evidence they carry in them of their necessary connexion with the truth we argue from And this because we owne our selves fallible we allow our hearers to use their owne judgments and consciences to prove and try whether it be so or no. God forbid but they who as you say must dye for themselves and account to the Lord for themselves should interpret for themselves and beleive for themselve But what then will it therefore follow that they must not receive our interpretations or beleive our deductions Or that we may not help them to interpret or draw deductions which they cannot so well do themselves They interpret for themselves that by the light of the Scriptures and their owne Judgments led by them see cause to owne our interpretations And they beleive for themselves who are upon a serious weighing of our Arguments convinced that they ought to admit them as just and lawfull deductions from Scripture What you add in the close of that Paragraph that it may so Sect. 71 fall out that six of those that esteem themselves the ablest Doctors if shut asunder shall so vary in the interpretation of one Scripture that scarce two of the six shall agree in the same interpretation Whence you would infer how little credit is to be given to our deductions we might take for an unsavoury scoff and so passe it by But we shall forgive you this and many more such if it will do you any good and vouchsafe to answer even where you deserve no answer but silence and scorne Be it therefore as you say which yet in Scriptures that containe matter of saith and practise we cannot suppose most of us we conceive in such are at least till the new-fangled conceits of these times infected some of the Ministry as well as others were of the same mind in most of them yet herein we are no more to be blamed then the Apostles and other primitive Teachers themselves who differed as much in those times of clearest light about the Scriptures that enjoyned the observation of Jewish Ceremonies whilest some of them earnestly contended that they extended to converted Gentiles and others affirmed the quite contrary And will you thence conclude that there is little credit to be given to any of their deductions because they disagreed among themselves All that can be hence solidly inferred is no more but this that therefore it concernes Gods people to search with the Noble Beroeans whether the things the one or the other saith be most consonant to the Scriptures But you that will not beleive our interpretations or deductions Sect. 72 because we are not in all things agreed will you beleive them in those things wherein we are all or the greatest part of us of a mind Surely if so most of the quaking Doctrines will fall to the ground for very few if any of us shall dare to interpret Scriptures to the countenance of those horrid Doctrines before mentioned In a word this whole discourse about infallibility and differences Sect. 73 among our selves in interpretation of Scripture as one hath very well observed before us smells rank of your Popish

whether you vvill submit your Revelations to this Touchstone or no If so you yeild the question If not then whatever Commands or Prohibitions you receive in the way of revelation you must obey vvhether agreeing or disagreeing to the written Law of God And then how far the examples of Abraham offering up his Son and Phinehas executing vengeance yea and vvhen time serves Ehuds message from God to Eglon may be witnessed in you as you speak we know Judg. 3. 19 not and shall pray vve never may by experience Q. 9. Whether the Scriptures do not establish it selfe as the rule of Faith in referring all pretenders to new light to the Law and the Testimony and telling us expresly That if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no light in Isa 20. 8. them And whether the light in you and in your companions be not darknesse that will not undergo this tryall Q. 10. Whether the phrases of walking in the Law of the Lord keeping Gods Testimonies taking heed to a mans way according to Gods word not wandering from Gods Commandements Ps 119 1 2. 9 10. 21. 30. 35. 51. 102. 110. 133. 157. laying Gods Jugdments before him going in the path of Gods Commandements not declining from Gods Law not departing from Gods Judgments not erring from his Precepts ordering his steps in Gods word not declining from his testimonies Are not cleare evidences that David made the written word that then was his Rule And you owne Davids Rule for yours p. 8. Q. 11. Whether you think in your conscience that Deut. 5. 32 33. doth not convincingly prove the Scripture to be the Saints rule The words are Yee shall observe to do therfore as the Lord your God hath commanded you and before vve have the repitition of the written Law You shall not turn aside to the right hand or to the left c. Your answer in your book is in summe P. 7. that all the Scripture was not then written But did not Moses therein establish as much as was then written for the rule the Saints of those times were to walk by Besides these words immediatly refer to the Morall Law before repeated in the same Chapter And will you exclude that from being the Saints rule as well as other Scriptures Then indeed there vvill be no duty or sin but as a man thinks Q. 12. Whether you deale honestly with Calvin in that P. 20. Scripture Eph. 2. 20. whilest you tell your Readers that he saith in Terminis That the Apostle doth in that Scripture intend Jesus Christ to whom the Prophets and Apostles did beare witnesse Whereas Calvin saith expresly It is without doubt that the foundation in this place is taken for the Doctrine of the Prophets and Apostles And therefore Paul teacheth that the Quin fundamentum hic pro doctrina sumatur minime dubium est Et itaque docet Paulus fidem ecclesiae in hac doctrina debere esse fundatam Calv. in l. Churches faith ought to be founded on this Doctrine And there is not any mention at all of those vvords in Calvin vvhich you quote from him To say the truth vve much vvonder how you could have the brazen face to father a saying upon Calvin vvhich he never said till vve looked upon Marlorate whose mis-quotation or rather the fault of his Printer it seemes deceived you for there vve find among other things there ascribed to Calvin this passage you mention But it concerned a man of your acutenesse not to have taken up a report from another vvhen Calvins vvorks are so common in every Shop and Study that vvith a little paines more you might have conversed vvith the Originall Author whence Marlorate makes his collections But it seemes you vvere vvilling to snatch at any thing that seemed to support your cause vvhere ever you found it And yet you shewed no part of ingenuity in your usage of Marlorate himself vvho together vvith that passage vvhich you quote and under the same note by which he distinguisheth Calvins vvords cites Calvin point blank against you saying that the Apostle shewes in that place how the Ephesians vvere made fellow Citizens vvith the Saints Nempe si fundati sint in Prophetarum Apostolorum Doctrinâ to wit If they be founded on the Doctrine of the Prophets and Apostles These words and others to the same purpose immediatly precede your owne quotation vvhich renders your dis-ingenuity the more culpable as shewing a vvilfull designe of abusing so reverend a name to delude your Readers Q. 13. In a vvord tell us ingenuously Whether we must or must not beleive the Doctrines which the Scriptures lay downe upon their owne authority If vve must vvhy do you quarrell at those that call them the rule ground foundation of faith seeing every intelligent man will tell you that it is the same thing to beleive the Doctrines of the Scripture upon the Scriptures authority and to make the Scriptures the ground rule foundation of faith If vve must not then tell us what superadded to the Scriptures owne Authority renders their Doctrines more credible We observe the Papists state this question as you do But they vvill answer us ingenuously That they beleive the Scriptures because the Church hath confirmed them And the Socinians are of your mind also but they deale fairely too and speak out That they will beleive the Scriptures as far as reason votes with them Would you speak out vve doubt you must confesse you are very neer these last in your judgment Why do you not tell us plainly that you beleive the Doctrines laid down in the Scripture as far as the light within you concurs with them And then vve shall know vvhat you mean in denying the Scriptures to be the rule and ground of faith Viz. That as much as pleaseth you you vvill beleive and vvhat dislikes you shall be cashiered as an old Declarative or an Almanack out of date as some of your Cater-cosins the Familists have blasphemously called the Bible Q. 14. Lastly Whether God vvill not judge every man vvho lives within the sound of the Gospell by the written word If not what meanes the Apostle Paul when he saith that as many as have sinned in the Law shall be judged by the Law in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my Gospel Rom. 2. 12. 16. And seeing we are upon this subject give us leave to enquire yet a little further what are those Books out of which the dead shall be judged and whence one day God will draw the rule of his proceedings in the day of Judgment as you may find Apoc. 2. 12. If God vvill judge us out of the written word after death surely we are not to be blamed if we study that Statute-Law and labour to conforme our beleif and practise thereunto whilest we live which must judge us when we dye Or else we pray you