Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	wonder_n	word_n	work_v	20	3	5.9130	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A28442	Miracles, no violations of the lavvs of nature	Blount, Charles, 1654-1693.	1683 (1683)	Wing B3310; ESTC R7329	20,726	38

yet notwithstanding there are found in them many places from which rightly understood the same may be concluded easily and genuinely Among these chiefly from that of Deuteronomy 13. where Moses commands the people of Israel to put to death a false and seducing Prophet though he should work Miracles The words of the Text are these in our most correct Translation If there arise among you a Prophet or a dreamer of dreams and giveth thee a Sign or a Wonder And the Sign or Wonder come to pass whereof he spake unto thee saying Let us go after other Gods which thou hast not known and let us serve them Thou shalt not hearken unto the words of that Prophet or that dreamer of dreams for the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. And that Prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death c. From which it clearly follows that Miracles may be wrought even by false Prophets and that men unless they be well guarded by the true knowledge and cordial Love of God may as easily be induced by Miracles to embrace and serve false Gods as to acknowledge and worship the true God For he adds because the Lord your God proveth you to know whether you love him c. Secondly The Israelites could not from so many Miracles form in their minds any sound Conception or Notion of God or his Providence as Experience it self testifies For when they had perswaded themselves that Moses was gone from them presently they importune Aaron to furnish them with visible Deities and to the indelible shame of their Nation embrace the Image of a Calf for an Idea or Representation of their God which they at length from so many Miracles form'd to themselves Asaph also though he had often heard of and believ'd all the Miracles done among his Ancestors yet doubted of God's Providence and had deflected from the right way of absolute dependance thereupon had he not at last understood true Happiness to consist only therein and Religion in Justice and Charity as we read in Psalm 73. Nor was Solomon himself though excellent in Wisdom and King of the Jews too even when the Affairs of that Nation were at the highest point of Prosperity able to form to himself any competent Notion of God after all he had read concerning the Miracles recorded in the Books of Moses For he more than once Eccles. 3. v. 19 20 21. and Chap. 9. v. 2 3 c. confesseth he suspected all things to happen by Chance so far seems he to have been from concluding a divine Providence from belief of those Miracles And as for the Prophets it may be without much labour collected from their Writings that few or none of them well understood how the Order of Nature and the Events of men could be brought to consist with the Conception or Notion they had form'd in their Mind of the Providence of God which yet hath been always very clear to Philosophers who endeavour from clear Conceptions rightly to understand things as they are those I mean who constitute true Felicity in nothing but Vertue and Tranquillity of Mind not studying to bring Nature to obey them but on the contrary to bring themselves to obey Nature as certainly knowing that God directs Nature as the universal Laws thereof not as the particular Laws of humane Nature require and so that he takes care not only of Mankind but of the whole Universe Constant it is therefore and that too even from sacred Writ that Miracles do not give a true knowledge of God nor clearly teach his Providence which is what I designed to prove And as for what is found in some places of the Scripture that to some unattentive Readers may seem perhaps irreconcileable to this my Doctrine as in Exod. 10. v. 2. that God hardned the heart of Pharaoh and the hearts of his servants and shewed wonderful Signs before them that the Israelites might know him to be God it doth not follow from thence that Miracles do in truth teach us to know and acknowledge God but only that the Jews had such Opinions as that they might be easily convinced by those Miracles For evident it is that the Prophetick Reasons mentioned in Scripture or such as are form'd from Revelation are drawn not from universal and common Notions but from the granted however absurd Opinions of those to whom the things are reveal'd or whom the holy Spirit intends to convince Which might here if I had not firmly resolv'd not to prolong this Discourse by Digressions be prov'd from many Examples and also by the testimony of St. Paul who with the Greeks made himself a Greek and with the Jews a Jew that is conform'd his Doctrine sometimes to the common Opinions of the Grecians sometimes to those of the Jews But though the Miracles done in the sight of the Egyptians might convince them and the Jews also from their common Opinions yet could they not give a true Idea and knowledge of God but only bring both Nations to concede that there was a divine Numen more powerful than all things known to them and that this divine Numen took more care of the Hebrews all whose Affairs at that time succeeded most happily even above their hope than of the Egyptians or any other People whatever but not that God takes equal care of all men which Philosophy alone can teach And therefore the Jews and all other men who have not unless from the disparile state of humane Affairs and the unequal Fortune of men known the Providence of God have perswaded themselves that the Jews Nation was more beloved by God than the rest of Mankind though the Jews exceeded not the rest in the Perfections of humane Nature or in their Inclinations to Vertue and Piety as may be soon collected from their History I conclude therefore that Miracles teach not men the true knowledge of God and of his Providence and find my self at liberty to proceed to my X. THIRD Position which you may remember to be this That according to the true sence of the holy Scriptures themselves by the Decrees and Commands of God and consequently by the Providence of God nothing else is signified but the sixt and immutable Order of Nature that is that when the Scripture saith that such or such a thing was done by God or by the Will of God it doth really mean no other but this that the Fact was perform'd according to the Laws and Order of Nature not as the Vulgar thinks that Nature ceas'd to proceed in her due course whilst the thing was in doing or that her Order was for some time interrupted The Scripture indeed doth not directly teach such things which belong not to the Doctrine thereof because it designs not to shew the Natural Causes of things nor to teach things meerly speculative and therefore what I here propose to my self to