Selected quad for the lemma: church_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
church_n	believe_v	faith_n	fundamental_a	3,198	5	10.0998	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A60612	Two sermons preached at two publick assizes for the county of Svffolk, in the sheriffalty of Will. Soame of Hawleigh, in Suffolk, Esq. by Will. Smyth, D.D., Pr. Nor. and vic. of Mendlesham in Suffolk.	Smith, William, b. 1615 or 16.	1674 (1674)	Wing S4283; ESTC R21663	29,870	126

Faith are either expresly declared or evidently deduced from the holy Scriptures and none to be believed as such but those that are so And as to the super-super-fundamental Articles of Doctrine contrived for the common peace and order of particular Churches such as are our 39 Articles and as the Confessions of other Churches ought to be so accounted if they be not refutable by the Scriptures and the analogy of Faith nor be contrariant to right reason ought also to be reputed the Doctrines of God 2. But then secondly Because God was pleased so to deliver his truths in Scripture for reasons before mentioned to which many more might be added with some obscurity though not so much so by it self as made so by the moral infirmities of mens understandings therefore Christ did provide and immediately send another guide which the Apostles themselves did seem to stand in need of though they were blest with Christs personal instructions and that was the Holy Ghost which he promised should guide them into all truth Joh. 16.13 And lest it should seem to have concerned the Apostles onely in their time it was also promised to abide with them for ever Joh. 14.16 that is for the benefit of their successors and the whole Church to the end of the World Therefore whosoever would afterward understand the doctrines which were of God was obliged not onely to be governed by his own private reading the Scriptures and judgment upon them but also to enquire for and to submit to the conduct of Gods Spirit wheresoever it was to be found Now this is principally to be understood as to cases in controversie and to difficult places but as to the fundamentals of the common Faith and rules of Holy Life as they are plainly set down in Scripture and easily discoverable to every honest mind so every man ought to be encouraged to a constant reading of them for the confirmation of his Faith and government of his Life 3. Therefore thirdly and lastly Our next enquiry is to understand where those promises were or are fulfilled and where the guiding Office of the Holy Ghost was or is executed and performed that men may attend to it and be guided by it in all cases of different perswasions and professions that they may know which are of God The Romanists would engross it to the Churches of their Communion onely and that by as an infallible a conduct as the Apostles enjoyed it But because this pretence hath been so lately examined and sufficiently baffled I shall only enquire how some Popes themselves should be recorded to have been notorious Hereticks as particularly Liberius and Honorius and then how he that relies on that pretence can reasonably think himself secure The Fanaticks on the other side if as to us they may be thought altogether to be of two sides lay claim to it by an especial particular light given to them of God or as the soberer sort of them by a private sufficient assistance from God in the use of the best mears they can for the understanding the Scriptures But there needs no other confuration of this pretence but their certain disappointment that have trusted ' o it made evident by their own unconstancy of opining and the perpetual disagreements of those that have made that claim There is but one more that I know of was ever pretended to and indeed then which I cannot imagine any other that can with any shew of reason be offered in satisfaction to this Enquiry and that is the Holy Ghosts guidance of the universal Church in all Ages and places to be observed in those doctrines and interpretations of Scripture according to the famous rule of Vincentius Lirinensis which claim to Primitive Antiquity universal Profession and Consent Quod ubique quod semper quod ab emnibus hoc vere proprieque catholicum cap. 30. So that the sum of this Enquiry is that those are the doctrines of Christ and his Apostles which have been received as such in the first and purest Ages and that have continued to be acknowledged as such by the most universal Consent and Profession Against the absoluteness and unexceptionable exactness of this rule of Vincentius whatsoever may be alledged or granted it must for ever stand uncontrolled till any other rule can be produced or imagined which I think no man hath pretended to attempt that may in any degree demonstrate the promises of the Holy Spirit guiding into all truth Now this is the Glory of the Church of England and which hath made her the envy of all her dissenting Neighbours round about her that in all her Doctrines Government and Worship she alone can offer her self to this most reasonable and antient Rule to be tried and judged to which no other Church in the World dare pretend to submit Therefore it is that all those doctrines wherein we differ from the Church of Rome cannot be from the conduct of Gods Spirit and so not the doctrines of the Spirits that are of God because they want the first part of Vincentius his rule that is succession from primitive antiquity And therefore the great Archbishop offered this challenge p. 382. That if any Jesuite can prove that by a visible continued succession to this day either Transubstantiation in the Eucharist the Eucharist in one kind or Purgatory or Worship of Images or Prayers in an unknown Tongue with divers other points have been so taught I for my part will yield the cause As to the private opinions of some ancient Fathers as those of Tertul Orig. St. Austin and others though they had antiquity yet they wanted universal consent and so were maintained against that part of the evidence of being the Doctrines of God And then as to the new opinions of these times so strongly contended for by our present dissenters such as concern their new models of Government manner of Worship and several opinions as they stand in opposition to the present established Church of England could not be from Christ and his Apostles and they that teach them not the spirits that are of God because they want all the marks of Gods Spirit as having neither primitive Antiquity nor universal Consent Profession or Practice and we challenge them to shew it if they have any which if they do I shall willingly sacrifice all that I have said against them to shame and Recantation All the Arguments that I know they have to tempt them from their conformity to this excellent Church is either ignorance because they understand it not or perverseness of humour and discontentedness of mind which in some men must for ever be gratified by opposition or else an habitual dislike which they call tender Conscience which we may then believe to be sincerely pretended when we see the same tenderness expressed in the most considerable practices of Christianity and Holy Life as Justice Mercy Obedience to Authority and the like as well as in the declining a poor innocent Ceremony or formation of substantial Worship no where forbidden by God and commanded by the just Laws of men This is the third and last mark and Character of the Spirits that are of God to whose conduct we may entrust our souls and that is such as teach the Doctrines that are of God And now you see by the transient applications that I have made and the clear evidence of the matter it self upon what a sure foundation the present constituted Church of England stands above any Profession of Christianity in the World As to my endeavour of offering all the marks of a true Church and its Ministry I thank God I can testifie to him that I have with-held no evidence that I know of that may discover the truth nor offered any thing in my applications of them to our own which my soul hath not as faithfully dictated as my Tongue expressed Time gives me not leave to offer any further applications onely I desire and pray to God that those that yet truly adhere to this Church may by what I have said find reason to love and honour it and the true Spirits of God within it more and more and that those that are departed from it may timely and seriously consider upon what slender evidence they have done it and may speed their return to it as to a Church that hath all the marks of God and Characters of truth upon it And I hope there be many amongst us that have so much compassion for them as to be willing if God Almighty should grant it as a condition of so great a mercy to be something that may resemble St. Pauls noble Charity when he wished himself accursed that is at least to be deprived of the happiness of an outward Profession of Christianity to bring the Romans to it Rom. 9.3 that such our dissenters were returned in mind and practice to serve God with us with one heart and mouth Which God grant for Jesus sake FINIS

adherence in some and a speedier return in others to the Communion of the Church of England as being a Church accommodated more to the designs of the Gospel as to all morals and the safety of all Societies then any Church or Profession in the World And as because woful experience hath taught us to date the Peoples declination from the blessed practices of Justice Honesty Veneration of an Oath obedience to Authority and all other Christian Vertues which only necessarily suits the happy mannagement of such affairs as these to the late confusions so to endeavour to bring men back to the same Church whence they were fallen must be believed the most reasonable expedient to recover them to the same excellent Vertues they lost by departing from it It is too pregnantly observed that ever since the breaking up the Foundations of this excellent Church we have sunk every day more and more in all the neglects of our duty to God and Man we have looked ever since like a People in ill handling possessed with an Evil Spirit and bewitched as Rebellion well resembles it to our mischief and undoing and to an universal unthriftiness in the enjoyment of Gods greatest mercies both spiritual and temporal O then it is high time to put to our hands for the Churches recovery and to bring back the People as fast as we can to her Communion that they may learn again to be honest and good and recover the excellent Genius of the old English spirit It is high time that we no more smother our defence for fear of offending or to preserve the Mistaken Title of Moderation Nor meal our mouths so long till we be choaked against all purposes of after-help and lest by pretending an over indulgence to men of weak minds we rock the People asleep in their Schism and Folly beyond all possibility of being ever awakened Designing therefore to do something which besides the respect I had to the present affairs I judged might be of the more publick and universal concernment in so general an Assembly I found nothing as the state of the Church now stands could answer my purpose so fully as to endeavour to confirm and fortifie them that yet adhere to the Church of England against all temptations to decline or desert it and to undeceive all those that already have unhappily departed from it And my Text offers a fair opportunity to attempt both in which are two parts to be discoursed 1. An Inhibition Believe not every spirit 2. An Exhortation But trie the spirits whether they be of God First The inhibition where it is fit we explicate the terms The meaning of Believing as to Spirits offers no difficulty though in reference to God and Christ it hath been perplexed with as many idle and extravagant notions and to as many ill purposes as any word in Scripture ever was But the word Spirit will admit some little examination Originally it signifies the Wind Scripturally and by Analogy may other things sometime the Soul of Man in general and then the several faculties in particular oftentimes it is taken for Angels and those good and bad most eminently it is taken for the Deity and then most distinctly for the third Person of the Trinity and particularly for it in its guiding and reaching Office whether immediately by it self or mediately by others and thus it is here taken really or so pretended And then the inhibition imports thus much That Christians should not credulously and without sufficient trial follow and be governed by every Teacher that pretends to the Office by a Plea or Commission from the Spirit of God Now the Text it self offers two Arguments against such a credulity and aptness of belief First because as the comprehensive indefinite 〈◊〉 every purports there be many kinds and varieties of Spirits by which Teachers may be deceived and be able to deceive others and which how many soever they be must be all false but one Thus the Devil when God permits turns a teaching Spirit I will saith he be a lying spirit in the mouth of the Prophets 1 Chron. 18.20 And there is a spirit of perversness Isa. 19.14 vertiginis as St. Hierome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the Lxx that is as they render it a spirit of turning about or errour which God suffers to be dispersed among a People as a punishment upon them St. Paul mentioneth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the spirit of a man that is his own fansie and opinion which is as various as the several humours and imaginations of men 1 Cor. 2.11 He adds 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a spirit of the world which St. Augustine calls the spirit of Pride and Ambition And this spirit sets up many a Teacher and is as various as the different circumstances and humours of Times to which it must be always garbed and accommodated Further No man ought to wonder at the great variety of spirits when he considers what a strange gift of propagation every Evil spirit hath been observed to have and how if it hath had any the least respite from restraint it hath presently branched it self into many several Families and divided apartments of new Spirits And thus early the Mother-spirit of Gnosticism which we find so often reproved in the New Testament did in a short time become the Parent of such a fruitful Progeny that from its loyns descended the spirit of Valentinians Saturninians Macedonians and others as Ireneus and other Ancients testifie And St. Augustine observed of the Evil spirit of Donatism that it procreated so fast that it begat a very great company of new and disagreeing Parties But to go no further then our own experience No sooner was this glorious Church broken to pieces in our late Rebellion no sooner had one common spirit of Opposition known then but by the one name of Puritanism sacrificed the Churches Peace and Unity Government and Worship to its Rage and Lust but it begat Legions spawned an Offspring of such hideous shapes brought forth such Litters of so many deformed stocks of new Spirits as might make Heresie it self blush to bear their names and shamed any sort of men in the World into repentance but one for being the unhappy Parent of such a monstrous and equivocal issue And then to consider how far every one of those new Spirits had prevailed over the minds of men to be deceived by them I think it were alone enough to arm us with a resolution most carefully to observe the inhibition of my Text. But that which makes it yet more reasonable and necessary is because all such spirits how inconsistent soever they be among themselves do always contrive by some pretence or other to make themselves as like the Spirit of God as the case can possibly bear and the Folly and credulity of their Followers admit For since the Devil can transform himself into an Angel of Light as S. Paul argues 1 Cor. 13.14 it will be much easier for

all other Spirits to make an assimilation All which being thus represented as it must needs put the credulous into a great sense of the danger of being deceived so it makes their suspension of not believing every spirit very just and necessary This the first Secondly The second Argument from the Text by the words which do immediately follow it is Believe not every spirit because many false Prophets are gone out into the World that is because as there be varieties of spirits to delude the minds of men so those spirits while there is Folly Pride and Passion in in the World can never want agents in every place to execute their unkind offices and that will be sedulously active by gratifying the base humours and designs of some and by surprizing the weakness and credulity of others to disturb the Church and mislead the People Now there is no man that seriously considers the multitude subtilty and unwearied diligence of such Officers of Evil spirits when they are abroad but must believe himself to run a very great hazard of being deceived without the greatest care and strictest enquiry whom to trust And that the Church was never without such kinds of men to offer temptations to the most stedfast will appear by a very few instances What considerate person might not tremble at the thoughts of his danger of being deceived if he reads but the story of Core and his complices that such persons should ever mask their wicked designs with such a prevailing disguise of Piety as should be able to seduce so many thousands to their destruction Who would not dread his own instability and be engaged in the carefullest suspension of mind whom to trust and follow when he reads of the Jews prodigious defection in the Samaritan Schism or if ever he should meet a parallel temptation to go astray as they had who were obliged to believe one Elias against 450 Prophets of Baal set to deceive him And if such presidents of danger be not sufficient to chastize and awaken mens credulities how should our Saviours Cavear admonish them Beware of false Prophets Mat. 7.15 How should the frequent Apostolick predictions of such Seducers advise them as when it was foretold Acts 20.29 that grievous Wolves should enter in not sparing the Flock Lastly How should the almost incredible multiplication of such Prophets in every Age engage them in the severest care what spirits they should believe and by what Teachers they should be instructed St. Augustine reckons up 88 several sorts of Hereticks to his time and Philastrius 128 and so proportionably they increased in every following Century Of all which whosoever desires to see a perfect and yet compendious prospect to terrifie him from the danger of seducement through his own credulity let him but overlook the Churches Tragoedy lately acted in this Nation and as in a short Scene he may see almost all the heresies that ever were before besides a progeny of new ones upon the Stage together and may behold the subtle Professors of them not only acting over again all the ancient Arts of seduction but practising new tricks frauds and pageantries of Piety to cheat and deceive the World All which put together makes it very reasonable that because many false Prophets are gone out into the World the inhibition in my Text of not believing every Spirit should be as strictly and carefully observed as men would prize and secure their eternal safety This the second Argument And now shall common observation of former dangers make us wary whom we believe or relie upon in our secular affairs and shall we be carelesly credulous in matters of spiritual concern Shall Wordly wisedom teach us to trust no body in temporal things and yet believe every body in matters of eternal moment Shall we be more then wise men in the one and less then fools and babes in the other Can we suspend our faith in things in which sensible demonstration may direct our prudence And shall we easily trust where the Arguments are spiritual and in the dark as to sense and Evidence at distance and the danger of miscarrying the greatest that can be O let us be wary where we trust our souls And since every spirit is not of God and our precious souls lie at stake upon a right choice let us and there never was a time in which it was more needful take all possible care and use all our faculties and skill to try which are truly of God And that leads me to the second part of my Text the Exhortation But try the spirits 2. The duty is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to try where we are first to observe as an incouragement to undertake it that God hath so delivered the things of our Peace in Scripture as we are Creatures of Reason Choice and Judgment and therefore he was pleased that much in Religion should depend upon the exercise of our Reason by trial and examination For so it is as to the matter and general substance of our happiness we are obliged 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Phil. 1.12 to try and search for the things that are excellent but there is no case wherein we are more concerned then in this the trial of spirits the guides of souls upon whose Offices and Gods Ordinances in their hands depends the Peace and Unity of the Church and the great event of every mans particular salvation Now that which makes this duty very reasonable is that as God was pleased there should in natural things be differential marks and incommunicable characters to guide mans understanding in distinguishing one being from another so much more in spirituals where the concern is greater we cannot suspect that God should impose a duty to try and chuse and leave us without sufficient means to discriminate and distinguish Not ought we to doubt it in this instant case in hand that since God hath put it upon our Trial and Choice what Guides we are to follow what spirits to trust too t●●t he hath also allowed us some differencing notes and characters how to understand the spirits that are of God from those that are not For the finding out of which at this needful time in which there appears so many different pretenders to conduct Religion and the souls of men is the business of this hour And that I may be sure not to miscarry in this great trial I shall first lay down the characters which false spirits or Teachers may have in common with those that are of God and then describe those that do really evince the difference 1. The first Character in common and undistinctive is a natural aptitude or a well acquired ability to Teach Though they be improved to a more then ordinary dexterity of the most gratifying and zealous utterance in Praying and Preaching Therefore St. Paul when he commanded the Romans to mark them that make Divisions renders them not distinguishable by their words and manner of speaking for saith he they