Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n
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A54854
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A seasonable caveat against the dangers of credulity in our trusting the spirits before we try them delivered in a sermon before the King at White-Hall on the first Sunday in February, 1678/9 / by Thomas Pierce ... ; published by His Majesties especial command.
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Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.
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1679
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Wing P2196; ESTC R36679
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18,442
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42
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severally as He will v. 11. to some in a greater and to some in a lesser measure And in this Gift S. Peter did very mnch excell S. Philip. For so 't is obvious to collect from the 8 th of the Acts by comparing the 13 th with the 23 th verse § 3. Now whatever can be meant by the Subjects of Triall we are to make whether Churches or Church-men whether Prophecies or Prophets whether Doctrins or Doctors whether Inspirations or men Inspir'd or every one of these equally however different they may be or inconsistent with one another 't is plain they All pretend alike unto the same Spirit of God And therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Try and prove them says our Apostle whether they are what they pretend whether really they are Gold or do but eminently glister whether they speak by Commission and as the Oracles of God or onely run ere they are sent inspir'd by Avarice and Ambition and by the Impulse of the Devil whether they teach the sound Doctrins of Christ's Apostles and of his Church whose Faith and Doctrins we are to follow or are but some of the foolish Prophets in the 13 th of Ezekiel who follow their own Spirit and prophesie out of their own Hearts are like the Foxes in the Desarts have spoken Vanity and seen Lies saying The Lord saith and the Lord hath not sent them In any case we must try them of what sort they are § 4. Nor must we onely try Them but we must also try the Rule by which they All are to be tried For severall Tests and Rules of Triall who are true or false Teachers and which Doctrins are right or wrong have been lately set up to the hurt of Souls by the Two sorts of Enemies whereof I spake in the beginning to wit the Pretenders to Enthusiasm and the Disciples of the Leviathan The first of these will allow of no other Test than the Sturdiness and Strength of their own Perswasion which it is their will and pleasure to call The Testimony within them And by running in a Circle they grow so giddy that the longer we Catechize the more we lose them And 't is worthy to be observ'd how they wrest and misapply the Word of Life to their Destruction For If we ask how they know they have a Testimony within them from God the Holy Ghost We know it say they by This that God hath given us of his Spirit If we ask how they know that He hath given them of his Spirit We know it they say by This that we cannot sin If we ask how they know that they cannot sin their Answer is We are born of God If we ask how they know This We know it they will answer because we have a new Name given us which no man knows but He that hath it If we ask how they know of a new Name given them they will answer We know it by that Spirit which dwelleth in us If we ask how they know the Spirit of Truth from the Spirit of Errour their Answer is still at hand and still out of the Scriptures He that knoweth God heareth us and he that is not of God heareth not us If we ask them for a Witness whereby to prove it The Spirit their Answer is beareth witness with our Spirits If we bid them produce their Witness He that believeth they will say hath the witness in himself If we call for any Witness of men they tell us The Witness of God is greater Thus they argue by their Circular and Identical way of discourse They have the Holy Spirit of God because they are forsooth assured and assured of it they are because of the Spirit which dwelleth in them So strongly does the Spirit of Perverseness shew it self in such as are delivered up to believe a Lie For that is sometimes the case 2 Thess. 2.11 The other Enemies of Religion who are withall by much the worst in a derision and contempt of supernatural Revelation will have no better Test of true and false Prophets or of right and wrong Doctrins than the Warranty and Allowance of the Sovereign Powers in every Kingdom and Commonwealth of whatsoever Denomination throughout the world Which Position of the Leviathan fetcht as 't is from Iaponia and there from the Sect of the Ienxuani is so prodigiously absurd that it either makes no difference 'twixt Right and Wrong and infers True and False to be a couple of empty words which signifie nothing or the same thing the Will and Pleasure of the Prince or else infers this Contradiction that the same Things and Persons are in severall Times and Places both True and False So that according to This Position the Christian Religion was a false one under all the Heathen Emperours who did publickly prohibit the Teaching of it yet a most true one under Constantine surnam'd the Great and under all the following Emperours who strictly commanded it to be Taught Iesus Christ with Mr. Hobbs must have been a false Prophet as not approved of by Herod and the Then-Emperour of Rome whilst Mahomed must be a true one because allow'd by the great Sultan supreme Governour of the Turks The Will and Pleasure of the Prince being set up by That Monster as the sole Touchstone or Criterion whereby a Prophet or a Doctrin or a Religion is to be try'd None says He but a Sovereign in a Christian Commonwealth can take notice what is or what is not the Word of God A greater power than is ascribed by the Iesuites themselves either to the Bishop or Church of Rome a power to abrogate the old and as often as he will to make a new Canon of Scripture or none at all § 5. Had such Seducers of the people appear'd in publick among the Iews a present Death without Mercy had been inflicted as the wages of Their Iniquity Deut. 13.5 and ch 18. v. 20. The Setters forth of new Doctrins in that Mosaical Dispensation could not escape their publick Trials in the Great Parliament of Israel they call'd The Sanedrim and were condemn'd as false Teachers either to be strangl'd or ston'd to death Yea though they had shewn Signs and Wonders and though their Signs came to pass too yet could it not exempt them from suffering Death in case they tended to seduce the silly Admirers of their Wonders to worship Idols or any other way to enervate the Law of Moses which none could be allow'd to doe and yet be thought a True Prophet unless he could doe as real Miracles as Moses and give as cogent Demonstrations as Moses had given of his having been inspired and sent by God Therefore None but the Messias who out-did Moses and that as well in point of Miracle as in Holiness of Life and in illustrating or compleating the whole Moral Law could lawfully abolish the Ceremonial Yea even Those Divine Prophets or Men of
A SEASONABLE CAVEAT Against the Dangers of CREDVLITY IN OUR Trusting the SPIRITS Before we Try them Delivered in a SERMON BEFORE THE KING AT WHITE-HALL On the First Sunday in February 1678 9. By THOMAS PIERCE D.D. Domestick Chaplain to His Majesty and Dean of Sarum Published by His Majestie 's especial Command LONDON Printed by E. F. for R. Davis Bookseller in Oxford MDCLXXIX A SERMON PREACHED before the KING 1 JOHN 4.1 But try the Spirits whether they be of God § 1. THERE are Multitudes of Deceivers in these our last and worst Times by way of Antidote unto whose Venom These words of S. Iohn are a good Provision And however they are numerous I think they may fall under two general Heads Some are so credulous as to believe every Spirit and some so Atheisticall as to believe none at all Both are Enemies to Religion though not Both alike For though the first are bad enough the last are very much worse The first are Meteors in Religion expressed to us in Scripture by Clouds without water and wandring Stars such as are carried to and fro with every Wind of false Doctrine men so unlearned and so unstable so in love with New Light and so given to change that not contented with one or two though the best and soundest they heap up Teachers unto themselves and by the Novelty of the Doctrine putting an estimate or value on him that brings it they are easily made Proselytes to every New Prophet who next bespeaks them little considering with S. Iohn in the next words after my Text that there are many false Prophets many even in His Time and many more sure in ours gone out into the World The second sort of Enemies which are the worst too are the Disciples of the Book which is call'd Leviathan the greatest Monster in all the World excepting onely the Authour of it For if the perfectest Definition of Man as Man is to be Animal Religiosum which still includes Rationale and therefore makes the most exact Definition as many great and good Writers have very rationally esteem'd it then He must certainly be a Monster more properly then a Man who is so destitute of Reason as wholly to be void of Religion too And for any one to Teach as the Monster of Malmesbury has been permitted to doe in Print that there is no Spirit at all or that there is no incorporeal Substance two Expressions of the same Thing what is it but to pluck up all Religion by the Root 'T is publickly to set up a School of Atheism For God if any thing is a Spirit not for This reason onely because our Apostle S. Iohn affirms it whom the Hobbists will not believe but for this other reason also which even our Hobbists cannot but yield to that supposing a God there is or that 't is but possible for him to be He must be Infinite and Indivisible and yet we know He can be neither if He is any way Corporeal For All Corporeal things have Parts and so by consequence are divisible and so by consequence are finite And for God to be finite or divisible is for God not to be God the worst and grossest of Contradictions From whence it follows unavoidably that for any one to teach and to teach in publick not publickly from the Pulpit but much more publickly from the Press that an Incorporeal Substance is in it self a Contradiction the Positive Doctrine of the Leviathan is publickly to open a School of Atheism It being publickly to teach There is no Spirit and by a Consequence unavoidable There is no God For every thing that is is either an Accident or a Substance What is neither is not And every Substance a nobler sort of Being then any Accident can be is either Corporeal or Incorporeal That denominates a Body and This a Spirit To say that God is the former implies the horridest Contradiction as hath been shewn and so He must be the latter by undeniable Consecution To say He is not a Spirit or not an Immaterial Substance is neither better nor worse then to say He is not It is to say There is no such Thing § 2. Against the dangerous Contagion of the premised two Extremes S. Iohn in this Text has timely given us Two Caveats one express'd and another imply'd First 't is express'd in plain terms that seeing many false Prophets or false Pretenders to the Spirit are gone out into the World we are bound for that Reason not to believe Every Spirit Next 't is as evidently imply'd as if it were expressed in words at length that though Many Prophets are False we must not thence reckon that None are True as though many Lines are crooked we must not thence argue that none are strait seeing every crooked Line must needs presuppose and imply a strait one Nor may we sottishly disbelieve the Spirit of Holiness and Truth for fear of believing with too much ease a Spirit of Errour and Uncleanness But as my Text is in the middle between an important Dehortation Believe not every Spirit and as important a Reason of it for many false Prophets are gone out into the World so our Course is to be steer'd in a middle way betwixt the Scylla of Credulity and the Charybdis of Vnbelief We must examin all Pretenders and try of what sort they are We must get a Lapis Lydius whereby to learn the true difference betwixt the two sorts of Spirits in the sixt Verse of this Chapter the Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Errour or to express it without the Metonymie which our Apostle here useth betwixt a True and False Prophet betwixt a man of God and a Dreamer of Dreams betwixt a Theopneust and a Daemoniack betwixt a reall Possessor of Divine Revelations and a phantastick Pretender to them For as there were Prophets in the Old Testament both True and False so are there also in the New As there were Spirits under the Law too many to be good so there are also under the Gospel There was in That a familiar Spirit Lev. 20.27 a lying Spirit 1 King 22.22 and a Spirit of Perverseness Isa. 19.14 There is in This a foul Spirit a deaf and dumb Spirit Mar. 9.25 a Spirit of Errour and of Delusion 2 Thess. 2.11 1 Ioh. 4.6 a Spirit of Slumber Rom. 11.8 Still the more and the worse the unclean Spirits are the greater need we have to Try them And though there are also as many Good Spirits as there are Angels who never fell yet all their Goodness is but derivative from the one Spirit of God who is God the Spirit To Him are ascribed the famous Gifts 1 Cor. 12.4 And amongst all the severall Gifts wrought by one and the same Spirit the Discerning of Spirits is worthily reckon'd to be a chief v. 10. Which Gift of Discerning 'twixt good and bad Spirits as all the rest The Spirit of God divides to every man