Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
doctrine_n	age_n	church_n	tradition_n	3,033	5	9.4226	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52603	An accurate examination of the principal texts usually alledged for the divinity of our Saviour and for the satisfaction by him made to the justice of God, for the sins of men : occasioned by a book of Mr. L. Milbourn, called Mysteries (in religion) vindicated.	Nye, Stephen, 1648?-1719.	1692 (1692)	Wing N1502A; ESTC R225859	84,564	68

An ACCURATE EXAMINATION OF THE Principal Texts Usually alledged for The Divinity of our Saviour AND For the Satisfaction by him made to the Justice of God for the Sins of Men Occasioned by a BOOK of Mr. L. Milbourn CALLED Mysteries in Religion vindicated London Printed in the Year 1692. THE PREFACE TO Mr. L. MILBOVRN SIR I Began to read your Book with very close attention and regard but when I had gone over some part of it I perceived you were not so qualified that you might reasonably undertake to intermeddle in these Questions or deserve to be heard concerning them If in defect of other necessary Endowments of a Writer you please your self however in the bulkiness of your Book you may be advised for the time to come that on the contrary every Trifle is so much the better by how much the shorter it is and that a verbose Trifler is nauseous even to Friends In your Dedication you say the Bishops ought to use a just Severity against and to frown effectually upon such whom the late Act of Toleration excludes from all Benefit thereby that is they ought to fall to persecuting the Socinians for the supposed Errors of their Conscience Truly Sir we are beholden to you But what if the Socinians against whom you publickly excite the Bishops should write the Farce of your Life They know very well the several Scenes of it and the Part you have acted at Pembr Hall at London and afterwards at Yarmouth from whence 't is said you ran away Are you not aware that it were easy for them to make you a Town-talk as you have made your self a Country-talk and at best withdrew your self Your Preface has two Parts The First is an Apology for your Book the other is taken up in conplementing T. F. I will speak briefly to both I. That you have said but a little in a great deal that the Parts of your Book are ill put together that you have been impertinent in diverting to Matters that were beside your Text and Vndertaking all these you confess but you excuse the Meanness of your Performance by your Poverty and your Poverty you lay to the Charge of the People of Yarmouth who could not you say be made sensible of your Learning and Worth that is the meaning of what you have said at Pag. 1. of your Preface But such as know Yarmouth how populous and wealthy it is will not be perswaded out of it but that a Person of no more Learning or Parts than L. M. were he withal but Modest Peaceable and Exemplary might live at Yarmouth in quality of their Minister very handsomly and comfortably and besides be esteem'd and belov'd They tell us that seeing your Sermons against us have been so little liked at their Majesty's good Town of Yarmouth we ought to make trial how that discerning People will entertain our Pamphlets they have already refused the Evil there is therefore reasonable hope that they will chuse the Good and will rejoice in it The second Part of your Preface is all Complement on T. F. Thus you begin calling him pert Smatterer in Ignorance so says the Reverend Mr. L. M. and this was the best he could say when he undertook to give a Character of T. F. But I find that the most Reverend are in a very different Story concerning this Gentleman The Metropolitan of all England thought fit to say of him That Worthy and Useful Citizen Mr. T. F. Fun. Sermon on Mr. Gouge p. 63. What may be the Reason that T. F. is drawn in such different Colours I think 't is not hard to find the Reason Some because they heartily love God and reverence Vertue and Well-doing can think and speak respectfully even of those from whom they differ very widely in their Sentiments about the controverted Points of Christianity for God's sake they can cordially smile upon a good Man though they think him in an Error and they are of Opinion because the Holy Scriptures have said it that fervent Charity is greater than Faith But others measuring all Persons and Things by only the narrow Interests of themselves and their Party and wholly excluding God and the relation to him rail against their Adversaries giving all Men to the Devil that are of a Belief contrary to theirs Which brings to mind what Mr. Calvin has observed Vt quisque eorum pro ventre est maximè sollicitus ita pro fide suâ deprehenditur Bellator acerrimus i. e. As any of them are more concerned and afraid for their Bellies so he is found to bawl and rail loudest on behalf of his own particular Faith and Party Calv. Praef. ad Institut p. 7. Well but what might be the very meaning of this Witticism on T. F. pert Smatterer in Ignorance I suppose the meaning is T. F. has had his Education at London not at Cambridg or Oxford he knows nothing of Predicables Predicaments and Syllogisms nor has ever learned there to drink the third or fourth Bottle for his own share What an unhappy Education was this that his Friends took no care to make him a Fool and a Debauch that the Gifts and Impressions of God and Nature have not been effaced by a sort of Institution which sometimes to make a Scholar defaces both the Man and the Christian T. F. has only Reason and good Sense how unlucky was it that he should not destroy them by Logick and Metaphysicks However I am of Opinion T. F. will make his natural Talents go as far and do him as much Service and Credit as Logick and Metaphysicks and skill of the Bottle will do for L. M. or for his Cause The next Charge upon him is in these words The Socinians Hawker to disperse their new-fangled Divinity Hawker of all Men living L. M. should have forbore this word Hawker unless he has forgot because 't is a good while since how unluckily the hawking off Books succeeded with himself in a certain place which at present I forbear to name See Sir we can be affronted and abused without making haste to revenge our selves But why is our Divinity new-fangled It hath two such Marks of Antiquity by confession of our very Opposers that could they show either of them for their Divinity we would make little difficulty of coming over to their Party For first 't is acknowledged by the most Learned of our Opposers that the Patriarchal Ages and the Church of the Old Testament never knew the Doctrine of the Trinity We are confess'd by our Adversaries to believe concerning God as the Patriarchs and Prophets believed namely that there is but one who is God or that God is but one Person Secondly The Apostles Creed the only Monument of true Antiquity besides the Bible which the Christian Church has is owned too to be wholly Vnitarian for it gives the Appellation God to only the Almighty Father Maker of Heaven and Earth and speaks of our Saviour under no other Characters but those

Made and Measured by the Motion of the Sun and other Heavenly Bodies and that Duration is by them called Eternity which preceded those Bodies and the Motions which make Time Therefore when they call the Son Coeternal which I think is not found in all their Writings above once or twice they do not mean that He was Really and Actually Coexistent with the Father from all Eternity But 't is their Intention to say He was made by the Father in that Duration which Philosophy calls Eternity some space before the World was made that he might be the Father's Instrument and Minister in creating all things Hereby they acknowledg that the Son was in some sense a Creator and God but it was only as He was the Father's Minister Instrument and Servant those are the Terms they use in making all things He was a Creator and God with respect to all other Creatures but with respect say they to the true and most high God He is only a Servant and a Creature In a word the Ante-Nicen Fathers i. e. those of the first 325 Years whose Works have been suffered to be extant neither held as the Unitarians do that the Lord Christ began to have a Being when He was born of the Virgin nor as the Church now does that He was true God and always actually Coexistent with God but they held with the Arrians that He was Created Begotten or Made for these are with them equivalent Terms in that Tract or Duration which is called not Time but Eternity and that He was the Father's Servant and Instrument in making first the Holy Ghost then the rest of the Creation This is that which is granted by Petavius Huetius Mornay Erasmus Grotius and other Criticks on the Fathers not as our Author supposes that those Fathers held the Doctrine concerning God and our Lord Christ that is now called Socinianism But though this be so yet we doubt not that we are able to prove that the general Body of Christians and an incomp●●able majority of their Learned Men believed as the Unitarians now do till about the Times of Victor and Zephi●in Bishops of Rome that is till toward the Year of our Lord 180. It has not availed our Opposers that they have suppress'd the works of those most Ancient Fathers who are known and confess'd to have been Unitarians such as Aquila Symmachus and Theadotion who so excellently translated the Hebrew Bible into Greek and Lucianus who restored the Greek Copiet to their first Integrity Artemas and Theodorus Men noted by their Adversaries to have been incomparably Learned and ancienter than any of the Orthodox Fathers as we now call them Paul also Patriarch of Antioch Photinus Archbishop of Sirmium Marcellus Bishop of Ancyra I say it has not advantaged our Opposers that they have destroyed the Writings of these Fathers for the Fathers that are still extant give us an account of the Opinion of those other Fathers thô concealing their Arguments Moreover they confess that those first Unitarians claimed to be the true Successors and Descendents of the Apostles and that they derived their Doctrine from them Euseb Hist Eccl. l. 5. c. 28. Besides this the only Creed of all the Churches till the Council of Nice and which is called the Aposties Creed because it contains the true Apostolick Tradition is confest on all hands to be wholly Vnitarian That Creed acknowledges but one God the Father Almighty and but one only Son of God even him saith this Creed who was conceived generated or begotten by the Holy Ghost on the Virgin Mary not as our Opposers feign an Eternal Son begotten of the Essence of God his Father But I will not Sir now dilate on these things it shall be done in a Treatise by it self if it please God to give me Leisure and Opportunity in the mean time I appeal to those Learned Criticks Petavius and others before mentioned that the ordinary pretence of such Scriblers and Sciolists as our Author is utterly false and ungrounded even this that the Ante-nicen Fathers held the Doctrine of the Trinity as the Church now does As for the Scoffs of Lucian on the God who is Three and One One and Three not having the Book by me I cannot tell whether he meant to jeer the Trinity of the Platonick Philosophers or of the Christians I conjecture he means the former Neither was he so ancient as some give out the best Criticks make him to have flourish'd about the Year of our Lord 176 when the new Doctrines were grown very rise and common The Account that Pliny gives of the Christians to the Emperor Trajan is ancient but in the particular objected to us very uncertain The Copies of Pliny in Tertullian's Time exprest the matter thus Ad canendum Christo Deo They sang Psalms of Praise to Christ and to God not ut Deo to Christ as God The very words of Tertullian are these Pliny in his Letter to Trajan objects nothing else to them but that they were obstinate in refusing to sactifice and that they held caetus ante lucanos ad canendam Christo Dio Meetings before day to sing to Christ and to God Tertul. Apol. adv Gentes c. 3. I make use of an Edition of Tertullian with the Notes of all the Criticks published by Rigaltius at Paris yet none of them dislikes the Reading by Tertullian or prefers to it the Modern Reading But admitting now that we were to read ut Deo as to a God Pliny in these words might speak only his own Opinion not the Opinion of the Christians He might conjecture that because the Christians sang certain Compositions in Praise of the Lord Christ in their Meetings therefore they held him to be a God Or ut Deo may be translated as if he were a God so as to make this sense They sing Psalms and Hymns to Christ as if he were a God whom themselves confess to have been a Man for Hymns are not usually sung but only to the Gods However it be this Citation makes not much to the purpose at most it only proves that even in Pliny's time some began to corrupt the Evangelical Doctrine concerning the Unity of God CHPA X. On divers Passages out of the Evangelists and Epistles FRom the Fathers our Author returns again to the Scriptures and advances an Argument to prove our Saviour's Divinity from those Texts which seem to intimate that the Lord Christ is to be prayed unto and also from others in which 't is said that even while he was upon Earth he was worshipped by some and did not refuse the worship paid to him He saith no Person can be the proper Object of Divine Worship such as Prayer is but He who is Omniscient Omnipotent and Omnipresent and that if the Socinians ascribe these Properties to our Saviour they make him to be true God That Jesus Christ was worshipped and that he ought to be worshipped he proves from these Texts Phil. 2.9 10

one who is God and but one Maker of the Visible and Material World and therefore this Context ought to be interpreted in consistence with those two Great Commandments spoken by God himself Sure it must be evident hereupon that they ought not to relie on a dubious Context against two such Proofs as are those two Commandments When Points of Faith are turned into Commandments or Laws it argues the great Importance of those Articles of our Faith And it must needs be very dangerous to advance a contrary Faith and very foolish to advance a contrary Faith on the Credit of a Context which at best is of doubtful and uncertain Construction of so doubtful Construction that if it may be Translated and Interpreted in favour of their Opinion yet it may be also so Rendred and Interpreted as Flatly to contradict it and Perfectly destroy and overthrow it You will perhaps say Sir but in this Dispute concerning the Truth of Translations What can an Unlearned Man do which side can he take or rather How can he take any Side at all being not able to judg between the contending Parties ought he not in prudence wholly to suspend his Judgment I answer He must consult his Reason concerning the thing in Question If he consults his own Reason he will find an absolute Impossibility in the Trinitarian Doctrine his Reason will assure him that an Almighty Father and an Almighty Son are most certainly Two Gods and that two Creators can be no other but two Gods therefore he may and he must infer that the Explication of this Context of St. John which advances such a Doctrine is certainly false and such a Mistake as subverts Christianity God forbid that our Faith should depend on the Quarrels and Debates of Learned Men or on an uncertain Criticism or on the contrary Traditions of contending Parties No no Faith has a certain Rule even Holy Scripture interpreted in consistence with evident Reason this is the Infallible Rule and of this the Unlearned are as competent Judges as he that has all the Learning in the World That cannot be true which is contrary to clear Reason for Clear Reason is nothing else but clear Truth Therefore if the Unitarians have made it appear that the Doctrines which they oppose are Manifest Contradictions to Reason and Unlearned Man is as sure as the most Learned that such Doctrines are not the meaning of Holy Scripture or of any Context therein Our Opposers tell the People they are not to believe the Transubstantiation tho grounded on those express Words of Scripture This is my Body because that Doctrine implies several Contradictions to clear Reason Why do they not keep to this Rule to which they would oblige their People Why do they not renounce the Errors of the Trinity and Incarnation which imply so many more Contradictions to Reason than can be pretended of the Transubstantiation While they argue against the Common Enemy the Papists about Transubstantiaon or against the Lutherans about Consubstantion Reason is all in all with them and you can get nothing out of them but Reason and the Judgment of Sense But when the Dispute is with the Socinians the Tables are turned then you hear nothing from them but the necessity of submitting Reason to Revelation then they give in their Catalogues of things which they say are contradictory to our Reason and yet must be believed Thus while they Argue against the Papists 't is on Socinian Principles that the Scripture must be interpreted in consistence with Evident Reason which is a yielding all the Controverted Points to the Socinians But when they think fit to fall foul on the Socinians 't is on Popish Principles that the Scripture must be interpreted by the Determinations and Decisions of Holy Mother-Church as she is represented in General Councils which are directed by the Holy Ghost Which implies the yielding Transubstantiation and many other Points to the Papists who can show for them Councils as truly General as any that can be alledged for the Trinity or Incarnation In fine such of our Opposers as are Protestants must either come over to Vs or revolt to Rome If they will not be obliged to interpret Scripture by Reason they are obliged to turn Papists for the Decisions of the Church in Councils and the meer Letter of Scripture are against them but if they admit no Interpretation of Scripture but what is consistent with Reason both They and the Papists must be Unitarians because the Trinity and the Incarnation are contrary to and inconsistent with Reason much more than the Transubstantiation is CHAP. VI. On the other Texts of St. John NEXT He takes notice of some words of our Saviour at John 10.30 36 38. I and my Father are one I am the Son of God The Father is in me and I in him He saith the Jews from those words I and my Father are one did infer after this manner Thou being a Man makest thy self God He adds if the Jews mistook in the Inference they made from those words nothing can excuse either our Saviour or his Apostles from extream Unkindness since they would take no pains to rectify a Mistake which in all appearance was Involuntary A little more Deference would have become our Author in making a Judgment concerning what our Saviour or his Apostles ought to have done towards rectifying the Mistakes of the Jews And I think too he needed not to be so concerned on behalf of the poor Innocent Lambs the Jews who only mistook true Hearts and did not designedly pervert the words of our Saviour On the contrary I take it to be certain that the Mistake of the Jews was not Involuntary but Affected and Malicious and however that be yet our Saviour hath said enough both in that Context and elsewhere to rectify the Mistakes of any whomsoever concerning his words I and the Father are one I am the Son of God the Father is in me and I in him Our Opposers ordinarily object to us that the Jews understood those Expressions of our Saviour as themselves do namely as signifying that he professed himself to be God But the Jews put a malicious Construction on our Saviour's words that they might expose him to Hatred and Persecution To be satisfied of this we need only to consider that they came to him with design to ensnare him in his words as they had done oft-times before and did many times afterwards Let us hear what they say v. 24. Then came the Jews round about him and said to him How long dost thou make us to doubt if thou be the Christ tell us plainly To comprehend the true meaning of their putting this Question we must look back to the foregoing Chapter where at V. 22. we are told The Jews had agreed already that if any Man should confess that He Jesus was the Christ He should be put out of the Synagogue i. e. He should be Excommunicated We may add to this Observation