Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	faith_n	justification_n	meritorious_a	2,679	5	11.7565	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52291	An answer to an heretical book called The naked Gospel which was condemned and ordered to be publickly burnt by the convocation of the University of Oxford, Aug. 19, 1690 : with some reflections on Dr. Bury's new edition of that book : to which is added a short history of Socinianism / by William Nicholls.	Nicholls, William, 1664-1712.; Bury, Arthur, 1624-1713. Naked Gospel.	1691 (1691)	Wing N1091; ESTC R28145	124,983	144

our Church speaks spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith in so much that a true and lively Faith may be known by them as a Tree is discerned by its Fruit. But still it is Faith not works that do justifie for they having no intrinsick value of their own cannot conferr it on any but Faith alone which takes hold as some speak of the all-sufficient merits of our Blessed Saviour Or as our Church speaks sends us directly to Christ for the remission of our Sins and by which we embrace the Promise of God's Mercy and of the remission of our Sins which thing none other of our Vertues or Works properly doth therefore the Scripture useth to say That Faith without Works doth justifie Not that even Faith it self is a proper and necessary cause of Justification but that it has pleased God to accept it as a cause or means by embracing or taking hold of the merits of Christ which are the true proper meritorious cause of Justification Which justification or righteousness which we so receive of God's mercy and Christ's merits embraced by Faith is taken accepted and allowed of by God as our perfect and full Justification And this is the reason that the Gentlemen of the Authour's persuasion are so unwilling to have Faith onely to justifie Secondly This ought to be an Orthodox Faith in all Fundamentals at least All the admirable Effects which the Scripture does attribute to Faith must be understood of a true Faith such as is agreeable to God's word which is to be the rule of our Faith and not of a false or Heterodox Faith which any one takes up from a Party of Men or from his own Imagination A Heterodox Faith is no more Faith than a dead man or a painted man is a Man they agree in one common equivocal Name 't is true and in nothing else So that an Heterodox Faith can no more pretend to those supernatural Effects which a true Faith by God's grace does produce than a dead Man can pretend to all the Properties and Operations of a live one There is but one Faith as well as one Baptism so that to hope to be justified by a false or another Faith is as unreasonable as to expect to come into the Church by another Baptism So that they that teach a Justification by works or any other Faith than an Orthodox one do themselves for ought as I see teach another Gospel Thirdly The reason why Faith is so pleasing to God as that he should make this the great Means of Justification And here I hope to give an Answer to the Authour's Dilemma and to shew that our Faith in Christ is not irrational and then we are no Fools and as for our merit by Faith we are far from pretending to it we acknowledge it as an infinite mercy of our gracious God that he will accept our Faith in Christ's blood for our Justification and do not go about to argue the worth of it which is none And as for the grounds of our Faith in Christ for Justification I know not what can be more reasonable than to expect only to have our weak Performances accepted for the sake of his all-sufficient Merits And of all our Actions that we can perform I know not what can be more pleasing and acceptable in the sight of God than for an humble and desponding Christian considering his own unworthiness and the insufficiency of his Repentance it self and all other Vertues to incline God to mercy so far as for their sakes to accept him for just and innocent he as the last refuge he hath quitteth all worth and merit in himself and fleeth with a full and undoubting Faith in all God's revelations and a firm confidence in all his promises unto the free grace of God revealed in Christ Jesus and hopes for the sake of his Righteousness alone that he will justifie his imperfect Performances This certainly when we have done the utmost of our Endeavours is more pleasing to God than any action we can do more For if we could be justified by our works it would tempt us to reflect with Pride upon our vertuous Actions but this teaches us a pious despondency in our selves and to cast all our hopes upon our blessed Saviour And this is the summ of the Apostles Arguments Eph. 2. 8. For by Grace ye are saved through Faith not of your selves nor of works least any one should boast And the learned Cassander though a Papist says thus much in favour of this Doctrine of the Protestants that in this Question by the word Faith they mean only the grace of God which is correspondent to faith quae fidei ex adverso respondet and to be justified by faith alone signifies the same as by grace alone in opposition to all kind of works CHAP. III. What figure Faith made in natural Religion OUR Authour in the beginning of this Chapter lays down Faith as a duty in natural Religion that it is a branch of Justice by which we pay to God what is due to his Veracity that this was before all positive Law and that upon this the Gospel is built because the Faith of Abraham which is recommended for our pattern Rom. 4. was nothing else but this Justice that the lack of this Faith was reproved by the Angel in Sarah and was punished in Lot's Wife Gen. 18. and in the incredulous Lord 2 King 7. And that this is the Faith lastly which is commended in the Worthies mentioned Heb. 11. And last of all he endeavours to shew the excellency of Abraham's Faith to consist in believing God against so many difficulties from this natural notion of his Veracity Any one that understands the nature of the Authour's Book will easily see into his design here which is to bring down all Faith to be a meer Creature of Reason to be no longer that which the Schools call an infused Habit or the inspiration of God but only a bare rational belief upon divine Testimony Now as to his notion of Faith its being a branch of Justice and that by the light of nature we are taught to believe God upon his Testimony this is in some measure most certainly true as appears by the practice of the Heathens themselves who had nothing but the light of nature to walk by in their believing their Oracles Auguries Prophesies c. and in suiting their actions according to them So that 't is plain that natural Religion tells us God is to be believed upon his Testimony so that when a Man under natural Religion does believe any thing upon God's Testimony our Authour may if he pleases call this Faith But Theological Faith or Faith under the Gospel is quite of another kind this is not only an assent of the understanding but a divine Grace or Habit infused though our Authour would have them the same by saying the Gospel is built upon this and moreover That Faith in Abraham

Principles of their Philosophy and the avowed Opinions of the great Masters in the Grecian Schools and therefore 't was but reasonable that the Apostles should give the greatest Encouragement they could to further the Belief of it when it lay under so many Prejudices amongst them CHAP. XI Of the Manner of the Resurrection whether in the same Body or another I cannot imagine why the Authour should single out this Heterodoxy alone out of all the Socinian Errours to join with his Denial of our Saviour's Divinity One would have thought He might rather have contested the Doctrine of the Satisfaction or the Divinity of the Holy Ghost which would have made his Book look more of a piece than now it does But why he should single out this above all the other Points of the Socinian Controversie I can give no reason for unless having talked about Resurrection in the last Chapter that gave him a hint to make a ramble into a discourse of it here How ever the Case stands I shall give an Answer to what he says against the received Doctrine of the Church in this Point as short and as plain as I can And in order to this I will shew First the Necessity of Mens rising again in the same numerical Bodies Secondly I shall answer those Arguments which this Authour brings against the Truth of this Doctrine First The Necessity of Mens rising again with same numerical Bodies they laid down in the Grave 'T is not easie to guess what 't is these Socinian Gentlemen would have to rise again if not the Body 't is impossible that the Soul should be said to rise again because that never fell for all Rising supposes a Falling Resurgere non est nisi ejus quod cecidit Nothing can rise but what has fell says Tertullian in the same case adv Marc. lib. 5. cap. 9. Therefore it does necessarily follow That 't is the Body must arise if there be any Resurrection Besides our Saviour who is the great Original and Archetype of our Resurrection or as the Apostle speaks the first fruits of them that sleep he arose in the same Body that he deposited in the Grave and therefore our Bodies that are to be fashioned like to his glorious Body must be the same Bodies as his was the same or else they will not be conformable to their Original but farther I know not what Truth can be revealed plainer than this is in the holy Scripture Not to insist upon Job 19. 26. I know that my Redeemer liveth c. nor on Dan. 12. 2. Many of them that sleep in the Dust c. though these are evident Proofs enough of this Doctrine yet several Texts in the New Testament are unexceptionable as particularly Joh. 5. 28 29. For the Hour is coming in which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth they that have done good unto the Resurrection of Life and they that have done evil unto the Resurrection of Damnation Now what is that which is in the graves but only the Bodies of Men to be sure their Souls are not there therefore if these Words have any propriety of speech it must be that then the Bodies of Men that are in their Graves shall arise The consequence of this is so plain that Smaltzius the Socinian will have this to be understood only in a figurative sense that nothing is meant here but the Calling of the Gentiles that by the Dead are meant Aliens from the Faith that by hearing the Voice of the Son is understood the Hearing the Gospel preached but how foolish this Interpretation is may be known from the Distinction which is here made of those that are to arise into Good and Bad. For if here be meant only such a Resurrection as he means from Sin to Grace then all were Bad because they all were in a state of Sin and so there is no room for the other Branch of the Distinction those that have done good so that this must be perfectly superfluous And so again this is as plain from Rom. 8. 11. He that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your Mortal Bodies by his Spirit which dwelleth in you Where those Bodies which are to be quickned or revived are the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the mortal or dying Bodies and therefore the Bodies to be quickned or raised cannot be any other Bodies than those which did die Besides those Bodies are said to be quickned in which the Holy Ghost dwells now they are these very Bodies which are the Temples of the Holy Ghost 1 Cor. 3. 16. cap. 6. 15. therefore they are these very Bodies which are to be quickned or raised again To this may be added the constant Consent of the Catholick Church The Latins understood this by their Carnis resurrectionem in their Creed and the Greeks by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in theirs but of all the Aquileian Creed was most particular for this had hujus Carnis resurrectionem the Resurrection of this very Flesh This was the Doctrine of the Ancient Fathers of the Church Justin Tertullian Anaxagoras Cyprian Austin Hierom and all others till the Socinians began to turn all the Articles of the Christian Faith upside down and among the rest to overthrow the Orthodox Belief of the Resurrection This is enough to shew that this was the belief of learned Men in the first Ages of the Church not was it less the belief of other Christians Or else what should be the cause that this Doctrine of the Resurrection should seem so difficult to be believed if the Ressurrection was nothing but the Soul 's being cloathed with another Body why should that be more hard to be credited than that God could cloath it with a Body at first For he that gave it a Body at first could with as great ease give it another Body when that was gone Here is no difficulty at all here but this was the thing that confounded their Faith how a Body should be raised again that had so long lain rotten in the Grave that had passed through so many Transmutations that was turned into the substance of so many different Bodies how all these scatter'd parts should leave the Bodies they should then help to make up and be ranged together into their old form This indeed would be apt to strain the Faith of a great many but no one could be so foolish to stand out against Christianity upon the incredibility of the other opinion Besides if this was not the Faith of the Ancient Christians what meant those malicious exprobrations of the Heathens to them by shewing them the Bodies of their Martyrs half devoured by Lyons by burning their Bodies and then scattering their Ashes into Rivers but only because they thought this did make the Resurrection they believed utterly impossible What else could be the meaning of the great care which the Primitive Christians took of

deduction be drawn from it And when the Authour shall offer any proof that we do he shall not want an Answer But I hope he does not take this for proof to lay down Propositions against the Orthodox in general and make his proof only against the Papists 2. His second Charge of Innovation is That we exalt Faith above Holiness and against it too But here he lets the Papists alone and turns his Pen chiefly against the maintainers of Justification by Faith alone and those that hope to be justified by the Application of Christ's Merits to themselves And is very angry with some modern Authours for using the Expressions of application of Christ to our selves the Hand of Faith imputed Righteousness c. There is no intimation says he of any such Doctrine as this in the Scriptures but it was invented by false Apostles This is a bold Charge in good truth and if the Authour's Arguments were as good as his Confidence he would make something of it But instead of Argument he gives us nothing but a simple Parable about a Physician and his Nostrum which as it proves nothing so 't is not worth reciting As to Justification by Faith alone I hope I have made that Point good in Answer to the second Chapter and there too we shewed how the Doctrine of our relying on Christ's Merits for our Justification was founded on Scripture I know not how some Men may abuse this Doctrine by talking so much of and infusing such Notions of Christ's imputed Righteousness into their Disciples as to exclude all good Works of their own and to make them take little Care what Wickedness they do themselves if they have but Confidence enough to think they shall be saved by Christ's Righteousness This is a wretched Abuse of a good and comfortable Doctrine but after all 't is by Faith and not by Works we are justified 't is Christ's Infinite Merits that God does accept as the true meritorious Cause of our Justification and 't is Faith only can apply these Merits to our selves I say apply these Merits to our selves for these terms of applying and taking hold of Christ's Merits are not only to be met with in Calvin and Amesius c. but in several of the greatest Men of Antiquity But to consider a little who those Persons are which the Authour thus entitles with the Name of false Prophets And truly these false Prophets are no less Persons than St. Chrysostom St. Basil Theophylact Oecumenius with several others of the Latin Church St. Chrysostom in his second Homily upon the Romans on these words of St. Paul I thank my God c. He does not say I thank God but I thank my God who as the Prophets makes that proper to himself which is common to all And so on the words of St. Paul who hath loved me c. he thus comments What say you O blessed Paul You said just before who spared not his own Son now you say who loved me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and apply to your self or make your own the common benefit Id. Hom. 34. in Gen. St. Basil says 'T is the Son of God that is Righteousness and that we are righteous 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by change of his Righteousness for ours If you desire to attain Righteousness 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 lay but hold upon Christ by Faith and you shall have all Now if these great Men must be branded with the Name of false Prophets for asserting that we are justified by applying God's Promises to our selves by Faith by taking hold on Christ for Righteousness that we are justified by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of his Righteousness I know not who in God's Church were true Pastours for I think very few if any have bore a greater Character than these His third Charge is That we advance Faith above Charity If he means by this we the Church of England he has answered himself a page or two further where he says She is the best constituted Church in the World because in her departure from the Church of Rome she departed not from Charity But besides we extend our Charity as far as we can with our Duty we make the Terms of Salvation as large as the Gospel allows them but we must not with our Charity make other Terms of Salvation than what our Saviour has done We may hope and have a charitable Opinion that a Man does perform these Conditions of Salvation but we can never hope that a Man can be saved without them We hope that such a one has repented and is therefore saved but 't is unreasonable to hope he can be saved without Repentance Now Faith is as much necessary to Salvation as Repentance and therefore we cannot hope that any one can be saved without such a Faith as the Gospel does require What God may do by dispensing with his own Laws is nothing to us but 't is his revealed Will that is to govern our Thoughts and Actions and not his hidden and unrevealed one which we know nothing at all of And thus much I have to say as to the Charity of our Thoughts to Hereticks As to the Charity of our Actions we are to allow them all the courteous treatment that the Laws of the Church and Realm will allow and to converse with them if occasion require so far as to avoid Scandal and Contagion We ought not to be sure to make a bosom-Friend of a Heretick when St. Paul bids us to reject him we are to do him any good turn we can but he has no Right to our ordinary Conversation as other good Christians have till he returns again to the Catholick Faith The Ancient Writers tell us That St. John the Evangelist when he entered into a Bath where the Heretick Corinthus was he hastened out again and desired his Friends to do the like least the Bath should fall upon them whilst such a wicked Heretick was there The Apostolick Canons prohibit all Communion with them and the Council of Laodicea forbids to pray with them or to contract Marriage with them and certainly Heresie in this Age is not grown more Innocent than it was then to deserve our Charity so much the more As to the punishing of Hereticks which the Authour makes another Breach of Charity against them whatever the Romanists do our Church contents her self with Punishment purely Spiritual and leaves all the other to the Secular Power Or to speak in the words of Photius We are taught to cut off Hereticks from the Body of Christians but otherwise to punish them we have not learned but when they grow incorrigible we deliver them over to the Civil Power that sentence may be passed on them by the Magistrates Neither is our Secular Power in the least to be taxed with Severity now the Act de Haeretico comburendo to the Authour's comfort has now for some time been repealed or else