Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
conscience_n	according_a	law_n	nature_n	1,394	5	5.7788	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A26960	More reasons for the Christian religion and no reason against it, or, A second appendix to the Reasons of the Christian religion being I. an answer to a letter from an unknown person charging the Holy Scriptures with contradictions, II. some animadversions on a tractate De Veritate, written by ... Edward Herbert, Baron of Cherbury ... / by Richard Baxter.	Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.; Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691. Reasons of the Christian religion.	1672 (1672)	Wing B1313; ESTC R4139	63,611	190

it was before his incarnation They that neither have nor could have the Covenant of Grace in the last edition are under it as they were before in the first edition further than as their after sins have deprived them of any of its benefits Therefore the coming of Christ hath not narrowed the Church nor repealed or diminished any grace that before was given but added much more Secondly When there was more Grace to be given it was needful that the Condition should be suited to it Would you rather be without the Graces and benefits than be obliged to Believe would you be cured by one that you would not believe nor take for your Physician would you be taught by one that you will not believe or take for your Teacher would you be ruled by one that you will not believe is your Ruler IInd I have proved to you that God bideth no man believe either without a meet object or meet evidence of the credibility yea the certain verity of that which he is commanded to believe And the belief required of us is but a means to our love of God and our belief of the everlasting glory and consequently is needful to our further duty to our perfection and our felicity Do you not think your self that the greatest demonstrations of the Divine Love are fittest to breed Love in us to God And is not this wonderful work of mans Redemption a wonderful demonstration of Gods Love If you say that it is incredible because wonderful and incomprehensible I answer you It is the more credible because so wonderful I cannot believe that any thing is a work of God especially one of his great transcendent works which mortal man can comprehend The work of the Father and of Omnipotency in Creation is wonderfully will you therefore say that there is no world The work of the Holy Ghost in Regeneration is wonderful c. especially in our perfection in Glory And will you say therefore that there is no Sanctification or Glorification so the work of the Son and Divine wisdome and word incarnate is wonderful And it is the fitter to be thought a work of God And would you not say your self that if God should send an Angel from Heaven to tell you his will and tell you what is good and evil and to tell you the certainty of the life to come and the Joyes thereof would it not be a singular help to your Belief of all these things revealed if he did but give you sufficient proof that he is sent of God What perversness is it then to quarrel with Gods greatest mercy as incredible meerly because it is wonderful and great and therefore fit for God to give Thefore observe here the error of those men that overlook the Benefit and taking all Duty for a Burden dispute against the necessity of the Duty whereas all our Duty is our Benefit like the duty of feasting rejoycing receiving money or honour when given us And the true state of our Question should be Whether all they that by the Gospel have the offer of a Saviour and Salvation and all those treasures of mercy which are brought to mankind by Christ above what they had before his incarnation are bound to believe that procurement and offer and to accept so great a gift When the same men that question this can be willing to accept of wealth and honours without disputing whether they may not live without them and will say Quis insimentis inops oblatum respuit aurum And he that can make a sorry shift with a Candle will not dispute whether it be his duty to open his Windows let in the light of the Sun It is Riches of Mercy which all they dispute against who think they speak against the necessity of some difficult duty Thirdly And remember again that your self confess an Inequality of Gods Benefits and that he is not bound to give them to all alike though there were no inequality of demerit in the Receivers If then he give more to the Church by Christ Incarnate then he did before his Incarnation or more than he giveth to the world that never hear the Gospel their Eye should not be evil because he is good much less ours who receive the benefit Fourthly And I am glad that all that you require of God for All the world is but that their Salvation or Damnation may be brought to their own free choice and not their perdition be a thing unavoidable by Gods meer will without their culpable mischoosing And all this we maintain as well as you And you can never prove that the Christian Religion doth deny it Nay tell me if you can what mercy your doctrine giveth to all the world which ours giveth them not Do you say that they are not under the meer Law of Innocency made with Adam but under the Law of grace which after was given him so do we But you say that this Law of Grace is the Law of Nature Let not names abuse us It is not the Law of Innocent Nature But it is so fitted to mans Lapsed State and doth also so fitly express the Gracious Nature of God and also hath such evidences in Gods merciful providence and dealing with the sinful world that in all these respects if you call it the Law of Lapsed and reprieved nature under its reparation we will not contend about the name But you say that all men may be saved if they reject not their salvation so say we that all should be judged according to that means and Law that is given them their Consciences accusing or excusing them in the day when Christ shall judge the world as the Gospel telleth us And none perish now for the meer sin of Adam nor meerly for want of the Innocency required by the first Law but for the refusing and abusing some mercy purchased by Christ which had an apt tendency to their Repentance and Recovery But you lay the main stress on this that All men may be saved by true saith in God and true Repentance without believing in a Crucified Christ And we say that no man in the world shall perish that hath true faith in God and true Repentance For all such do Love God as God and do devote themselves to his glory to obedience and Love and do hate sin as sin and so are holy And God cannot cast that Soul into Hell that loveth him and beareth his Image Holiness hath so much of God and Heaven in it that this would be to cast Heaven and Gods Image into Hell and to jumble Heaven and Hell together Do we not then grant you as much as you can reasonably desire Tell us but what Heathens or Mahometans are Holy truly penitent for all sin and devoted to God in obedience and love and we will grant you that they shall all be saved But you were ware that we would tell you that this Repentance and holiness is not a thing which sinful

Pleasure with a simple complacency though not alwaies by election To will all that is fully discerned to have omnimodam rationem boni and nill all that is discerned to have omnimodam rationem mali Now it oft falls out that Historical Narratives shall proceed from some of these necessary acts Salvation Life and Goodness and the necessary means of all may be the Motives Thirdly There are other acts of the will which though they are not absolutely necessary are yet so neer to necessary that they alwaies go one way except in some very rare extraordinary case As for example It is not of absolute necessity that a man feed or cloath himself or that he murder not himself But yet he will ordinarily do the first and forbear the latter because he is necessarily a lover of himself and life and therefore will not cast himself away nor destroy himself without some conceived cause Fourthly There are no causes extant in rerum Natura for the commonness of some such actions Therefore it is certain they will not be done because there can be no effect without its cause And the turning of the will to a mans known corporeal destruction is an effect which hath no common cause Therefore it is a point of more Natural Evidence and Certainty than many Conclusions from Natural premises are that all the people of Europe or England will not to morrow kill themselves nor go naked nor famish or wound themselves c. And consequently that formerly all never did so since it was notoriously so much their interest to do otherwise For there was no cause to produce such an effect If it must be a Miracle rebus sic stantibus which should make all the Europeans or the English to go naked to morrow or to kill themselves than it is Natural to them to do the contrary or not to do this for a Miracle is the over-powering of Nature But the Antecedent is evident to reason from experience Ergo c. There may be Causes for one mans actions which can never fall out to All or to very many All the Physicians in England never did perswade all men against Physick nor all the Lawyers against Law nor all the Covetous men in England the Labourers or Beggars were never against recieving Meat Drink and Money Because there never was a cause of such effects And as it must be a great powerful common Cause that must do this so also if the question be whether ever there were a Parliament in England Whether ever they made Laws with the Kings Whether our statutes were made by such Kings and Parliaments as they are ascribed to c. There is such a concurrent consent of competent Witnesses as could not be to it were it false because it would be an effect without a sufficient Cause Yea against the tendency or disposition of mans nature which would have caused the wills of some to contradict it except a miracle had hindred them For among so many there are cross interest notorious Some Mens interest is against the thing while other Mens are for it And to make multitudes go against their apparent Interest and Friends and Enemies of the event to agree must be done by the power of truth or by a miracle suposing the case such as they could not be all deceived in Fifteenthly But there is yet a fuller natural evidence of the truth of some reports Even when besides the report there remain some visible unimitable effects of the reported actions which could be caused by nothing else As if their Fathers told the Grand-Children of Noah of the deluge they might see such effects of it as might assure them that it was true If the Parents of the man born blind Joh. 9. were told by him that his eyes were cured when they saw it in the effects they must believe it If uncontroulled History tell our Children that London was burnt and new built that Pauls Church was burnt c. that multitudes died of the Plague the year before c. When they see the City the Church the Graves the change of Inhabitants the proved Testaments of the deceased besides uncontradicted testimony here is a natural evidence to assure it Sixteenthly Though some half witted Philosophers boast much of the certainty of their Physicks in comparison of Morality the truth is the most of Physicks are meer untainties and the wisest see it and busily pull down others doctrines but confess they are yet but searching and groping by extrinsick effects and experiments to know what to set up in the stead And so did others before them And long may they so search before they find Whereas there is a more satisfying Evidence in much of Morality as being Natural to Mankind and such as will no sooner cease to be believed than man will cease to be man whereon all the affairs of the world are turned and converse Societies and all the private Comforts of Nature are maintained God hath made known to us what pleased him according to his own wisdome and not at our direction or choice And he hath chosen that for us which is most usefull It is more usefull to us to know how to live well and how to be happy and how to please and glorifie God and do good to one another than to know Gods skil or mysteries in his workes to know what is in the center of the earth or how the active Nature doth operate on the passive whether cold be a privation or positive what is the cause of the continued motus projectorum Whether Light and Heat be bodies or Substances whether they penetrate other bodies c. As it is more useful for me to know how to keep my Clock in order than how to make one to know how to plow sow eat drink to my health than to know by what mysterious operations the Corn or other things do grow and my food is digested c. Therefore this Learned Lord doth truly and wisely enumerate his Notitiae Communes in Morality and Religion as certainties the denial whereof doth unman us God hath left such instincts powers inclinations and conscience in humane nature as shall naturally though with some degree of freedome in the exercise be an insuperable witness in the world to himself and to our common principles and duties Seventeenthly The Historical Evidence of the Gospel of Christ is such as hath all the advantages before described in its kind He lived and preached and wrought his miracles frequently before thousands friends and foes His miracles were never controlled as Moses did the Magicians by greater nor by any certain Truth which they contradicted The eye witnesses themselves were unbelieving till forced by Cogent Evidence They delivered his Doctrine Miracles Resurrection to the world not onely by credible report and to the ruine of their worldly pleasures and interests with the loss of their lives and all this meerly for the hopes of a reward in heaven from God that well