Selected quad for the lemma: conscience_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
conscience_n	law_n	obedience_n	obligation_n	1,036	5	9.4199	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A45644	The notion of a God neither from fear nor policy a sermon preach'd at the cathedral-church of St. Paul, March the 7th 1697/8 : being the third of the lecture for that year, founded by the Honourable Robert Boyle, Esq. / by John Harris ...	Harris, John, 1667?-1719.	1698 (1698)	Wing H852; ESTC R15402	19,178	32

we may by that means frame Notions of things which perhaps did never nor ever will Exist Thus we may gain the Notion of a Flying Horse of a Creature half a Man and half a Horse a Man of a Thousand Foot high c. and therefore say they why might not the Mind of Man by this compounding and ampliating Power feign as well the Notion of a Deity To which I answer That this Power in our Minds doth not nor cannot extend so far All that we can do by it is to connect together two or more possible and consistent Idea's or to Ampliate or Enlarge any one or more of them in point of Time Extent c. Thus as was before said by connecting the Idea's of Wings and a Horse or of a Horse and a Man we may feign a Pegasus or a Centaure and I can imagine either of these Creatures or any other to live Five Thousand times as long or to be Fifty thousand times as big as is usual But all this is still short of what 't is brought for and will give no account at all of the Invention of the Idea of a God For suppose the Mind would endeavour to amplifie the Idea of a Man into that of God which is the Way Sextus Empiricus says Men might and did come by the Notion of a Deity First he saith the Mind can give him Eternity of Duration But how came it by that Idea of Eternity was that Idea previous to the Invention of a Deity and had Mankind a clear Conception of it if they had the Notion of God could not be then invented for one of his chiefest Attributes was known before But I suppose they will say that the Notion of Eternity was gained by Ampliating the Idea of Duration or Time beyond the common and ordinary Term And thus by imagining a Man to live a Thousand or Ten Thousand Years I may come to frame the Notion of a Being that should always exist But that is a gross Mistake for a Being that should endure Ten Thousand or Ten Millions of Years is not therefore exempt from dying at last any more than one that endures but Ten Minutes Had I not in my Mind before a clear Idea of Eternity I could no more by this Ampliating Power gain a Notion of an Eternal Being than I could believe my self to be Eternal for every thing about me would contradict that Notion and 't is very strange that I should come to believe any Being could have an Eternal Duration from considering of things that are all perishable and mortal That which leads Men into this mistake is I suppose this We have all of us a Notion of a Being Perfect or Eternal as to his Duration because there is such a Being in Reality And therefore whenever we go about to consider of Time or of the Period or Term of the Duration of a Being we can ampliate it so as to suppose it shall never cease to be but have its Being still continued on without end That is we can connect the Idea that we have of Eternity with a Being and so render it Eternal But this could never be done if there were no Idea of Eternity at all if there were nothing Eternal if there were no God The case is the same as to all the other Perfections of the Divine Nature We have clear Idea's and Notions of them in our Minds and therefore we can talk about them and be understood because there are real Idea's that answer to those words that we use and something really existing that answers to those Idea's But were there no such Being nor any thing Real in Nature to deduce our Idea's from were there no God 't is impossible there could be any such Idea's at all But however this Assertion That the Mind of Man was able to Invent the Notion of a Deity and communicate it to the World is a most flat and palpable Contradiction to what the Atheist at other times urges and that too as founded on Principles that he is very fond of In my last Discourse I shewed you That he objected against the Being of a God from our not being able to have any Idea of Him and this he endeavours to support by asserting also That we have no Knowledge but Sense and that all our Conceptions are Passive Now both these are absolutely inconsistent with the Original that he is now attributing to the Notion of a God For if it be true as he saith it is That we can have no Idea of God 't is very strange to suppose that a Politick Man should Invent and the World Receive the Idea or Notion of That which 'tis impossible for any one to invent or receive 'T is a little odd that a Man should first cunningly devise he knew not what and then the affrighted World believe they knew not what and that we should prove and assert and the Atheist ridicule and deny the Existence of That which we do none of us all know any thing about But so it must be according to the Atheist's Uniform Scheme of Things Again If as he asserts all our Conceptions be Passive and all our Knowledge Sense which way could this Cunning Inventer of a God come by his Notion or Idea of Him how could his Mind attain any such feigning and ampliating Power For according to the Atheist's Principles the Mind could have no Active much less Spontaneous Power at all but all our Idea's and Conceptions would be meer necessary Motions mechanically occasioned by the Impressions of External Objects So that as Protagoras tells us in Plato's Theoetet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 'T is neither possible to conceive that which is not nor indeed any thing else but only just as our Mind suffers it by Impressions from without And therefore no Man could ever possibly Invent any thing at all nor have any Power within him of putting or joining together two or more simple idea's or of ampliating or enlarging any Idea or Notion at all much less could he grow so very subtle as to Invent the Notion of a Deity And as no Law-giver nor Politician could we see have Invented the Notion of a Deity if he had had a mind so to do so it appears very weak and foolish in him to do it if he could For while there was no Belief among Men of any Divine and Almighty Power he would have been a mortal God himself as Hobbs calls the Commonwealth His Will would have been his Law and Men's Obedience to Him would have been founded in the Fear they were under of his great Power And this according to the Atheistical Principles would have been a much better Stay and Support to his Authority than the idle Obligations of Conscience and Religion For the aforesaid Author tells us That if the Fear of Spirits i. e. of a God were taken away Men would be much better fitted for Civil Obedience And in another place he