Selected quad for the lemma: doctrine_n
Text snippets containing the quad
|
ID |
Title |
Author |
Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication) |
STC |
Words |
Pages |
|
A40080
|
A friendly conference between a minister and a parishioner of his, inclining to Quakerism wherein the absurd opinions of that sect are detected, and exposed to a just censure / by a lover of truth.
|
Fowler, Edward, 1632-1714.
|
1676
(1676)
|
Wing F1706; ESTC R1363
|
82,434
|
183
|
that either that passage of the Apostle or any other part of the word of God doth contradict Right Reason or prohibit whatever is so requisite to the relief of the common and evident necessities of Mankind 2. Other Scriptures do both allow and establish secular Government and enjoyn obedience to the Civil Powers even to those that were Heathen and call them God's Ordinance Rom. 13. 1 2. and command Magistrates to prosecute with all diligence and integrity all Acts of publick justice 2 Chron. 19. 6 7. Fsa 1. 17. And this implies the warrantableness of going to Law for how shall injur'd persons be righted and defended by the Magistrate if it be not lawful for them to bring their Causes before him that is to go to Law 3. If you read on in that Discourse of the Apostle you will find that the fault he reproves in the Corinthians is not all going to Law upon necessary and just occasions but their bringing their private quarrels and disorders before the unjust that is before the Unbelievers which were the Heathen and Infidel-Judges as he interprets himself in v. 6. But brother goeth to Law with brother and that before the unbelievers Which would have been to the scandal and reproach of Christianity among those who hated it and who would improve such occasions to bring it into greater derision And he exhorts them v. 7. rather to take a great deal of wrong and to suffer themselves to be defrauded viz. in their private rights than thus to go to Law one with another to expose their Christian Profession to so open Contempt and to give occasion to the enemies of God to blaspheme But fourthly Though the Apostle there forbid all such unbrotherly contentions and bringing them before Infidel-Judges yet he there if you mark appoints them a Judicature before which they might lawfully bring their reasonable and just Complaints that is a Christian Judicature consisting of Believers v. 1. And expostulates with them sharply for not having appointed such a Court among themselves before whom wronged persons might bring their Causes pertaining to this life v. 2 3 4 5. While therefore we live under a Christian Prince governing us by Christian Laws and appointing us Courts consisting of Christian Judges we cannot suppose our selves to be in the fore-cited Scripture forbidden to make application to them in cases just and necessary Par. I have given you diligent attention and cannot but thank you for the satisfactory account you have given me for I must needs acknowledge my self convinced by you of the unreasonableness of my scruple and of taking any Scripture in such a sense as makes void all Law and Government But when I come in a Quakers Meeting I fear new doubts will arise and when I hear them speak such things as I cannot answer I am apt to conclude their Arguments to be unanswerable Min. If so then you have reason to observe in your self such an unstableness of mind as is common to the vulgar no question but your wavering mind would be under the same perplexities did you frequent the meetings of other Separatists A Jesuite Socinian Pelagian nay A Turk or Jew might bring such arguments in vindication of their respective Heresies and Tenents as might puzle you to give a solution to would you therefore conclude them all in the right If you hear the Quakers bring such reasons in vindication of their tenents and ways as your self cannot answer will you conclude they are unanswerable And because you know not a way to China and Japan will you therefore suppose there are no such Countries at least no way to them The consideration of this instability of yours should teach you 1. Humility not to look upon your self as a person fit to trust to your own judgment not to be confident in your own opinion nor to lean to your own understanding Prov. 3. 5. 2. Prudence to withdraw your self wholly from the Meetings of those by whose Sophistries your judgment is in most danger to be perverted and to be carried away from those good Principles you have already recover'd and of the soundness and reasonableness whereof you have already confess'd your self convinced and satisfied For to be led away by a gadding humor to every Conventicle and irregular Meeting is a presumption which may provoke God to withdraw his protection from you and to give you up to a spirit of delusion which makes it very necessary to advise you to keep out of harms way and the reach of so taking an Infection And 3. it is hence fit and seasonable to exhort you to be willing to be taught and to that end to have recourse unto pious and sober men especially Ministers of the Gospel who being by their education and calling separated to Study and Devotion are the fitest persons to advise you and resolve your scruples they being such as by your own experience and acknowledgment have administer'd to you the most rational satisfaction You are ready to consult a Physitian in order to your health and to take the advice of a Lawyer for the settlement of your estate and methinks in matters of Religion and Conscience a Divine will be no less fit to be consulted with The Priests lips should keep knowledge and they should seek the Law at his mouth for he is the Messenger of the Lord of Hosts And in case of doubts our Church adviseth you to consult either your own or some other discreet and learned Minister of Gods word c. And when you have compared the Discourses of the Quakers and the Ministers of our Church together and weigh'd them well and consider'd them in your heart I doubt not but you will judge our Doctrine to be in your Conscience most agreeable to right reason and to make most to the honour of God and the promoting of godliness righteousness and sobriety wherein the sum of Religion consists Iu which things you will find the Doctrine of our Church far to exceed the new upstart tenents of the Quakers Par. You cannot call their Doctrines new when they are the same which the Primitive Christians had in the Apostles days Min. You may easily perceive this to be a manifest untruth For you know the Primitive Christians were quite different from the Quakers They did not contemn the two great Ordinances of the Gospel Baptism and the Supper of the Lord but with due veneration received both as I am ready to make appear at large when there is occasion for it The Primitive Christians had Bishops and Deacons to govern and teach them and when they had them did not revile them as do the Quakers And these were ordained to their Functions by prayer and imposition of hands The Primitive Christians had no Women-teachers being observant of Saint Paul's injunctions who said in plain words that it was a shame for a woman to speak in the Church 1 Cor. 14. 35. The Primitive Christians had no silent Meetings as the
to be the meaning of the words so as to make all Oaths unlawful Min. This objection of yours is so far from so doing that it hath in part forestall'd the explication which I was prepariâ—…g to give you of the scope of our Saviours discourse for by the relation you rightly take notice of it is evidently restrained to that abuse of the tongue in common talk and communication here particularly mentioned and so to that very prophanation whereby both Jews and Gentiles had then most licentiously corrupted their conversation yea and that by allowance from the Jewish Interpreters of the Law which therefore it was high time for our great Law-giver to correct and tell them that in ordinary communication those plain asseverations of yea and nay or yes and no which are the same or other words of the like importance either used singly or else for more vehemence sake repeated if need require are enough to give credit to what we say if we would use our selves to speak truth And that these are as much as can be safely used in such promiscuous discourses wherein passion interest transportation and too much haste or inconsiderateness do usually carry the tongue out of its bounds and therefore would provoke men to multiply words and Oaths and bring them in danger not only of rash irreverent swearing but even of perjury it self Par. But is not the explication of this place disproved by that passage in James 5. 12. where he saith But above all things my brethren swear not neither by heaven nor by the earth nor by any other Oath Doth not the Apostle here expresly forbid all manner of Oaths Min. The Apostle St. James do's mean only all Oaths of that kind there mentioned and then so much used by Jew and Gentile for he leaves out some of those which our Saviour had instanced in and breaks off with this clause nor by any other oath which implyes his meaning to be that as we are not to swear by heaven nor the earth so neither by any other such like Oath which our Saviour had forbidden viz. neither by Jerusalem nor by the Temple the Altar c. and consequently by no created being for if Christ has not forbidden all kinds of Oaths St. James has not for the servant is not greater than his Lord either to institute any new law or to repeal any which Christ left in force Neither can we think St. James intended any thing he said to charge St. Paul's Oaths with sin which we find in those Epistles he writ by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost and which were used by him for the more solemn confirmation of those truths he wrote to several Churches And as little can we think that he accuseth the holy Angel in Revel 10. for swearing Without doubt St. James offers at a repetition of our Saviours doctrine for while he saith Let your yea be yea and your nay nay his meaning is Let your promise be performance and let your word be the truth to the end that amongst all with whom you converse you may be believed without an Oath And so he adds lest you fall 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as some authentick Copies have it that is into hypocrisie and so into lying and perjury by occasion whether of your passions of any sort or of those frequent inadvertences which we are so subject to in our common talk Par. I thank you for the large pains you have taken in giving me the sense of this Scripture which has so much puzled me and that you may see I have not heard you without attention I thus apprehend your meaning An Oath being in it self an act of Religion towards God and of so much justice and charity towards my Neighbour in determining publick causes it remains that it is a part of that Moral Law which our Saviour came not to repeal and therefore this Text must not be interpreted to do so but hath a peculiar reference to those errours in doctrine and practice among the Jews which the words are designed to correct that is all swearing by the Creature which the Jewes falsly suppos'd to be no Oaths and so not binding and all swearing by the Name of God in our common talk because such a license might daily expose men both to rash and false swearing in place whereof our Saviour hath therefore substituted those plain asseverations of yea yea nay nay or such like but the use and lawfulness of swearing remains when I am called by lawful Authority to declare my conscience in order to the ending of any controversie wherein my evidence may be concern'd I shall give you no further disturbance in the case of an Oath having had all my scruples about it sufficiently answer'd I shall now only desire to know whether the Quakers tying themselves to the strict use of yea and nay in all their communication do not live in a stricter conformity to that precept of the Gospel then those who neglect the use of them Min. I wish the Quakers did as seriously consider the meaning and occcasion of these phrases as they superstitiously affect the use of them Our obedience to this command of Christs consists not in the precise use of the words yea and nay but in the truth and integrity of the speakers heart in what forms and phrases soever he expresseth himself No words being of further use than as they are the Interpreters of the heart For it is not words and phrases wherein good and evil consisteth but truth and honesty which commends us to God and the only thing commanded in his Law Par. I have no other objection concerning Oaths I pray therefore let us pass to some other subject of Controversie wherein if you can give me as much satisfaction as I have received in this beyond my expectation I hope neither will you have cause to think your pains nor I my time ill bestow'd Min. I shall readily embrace your motion and therefore let me hear what your other scruples are Par. You pretend your selves to be the Apostles successors and imitators if so how comes it to pass that you preach not as they did but single out a Text out of which you compose your Sermons What warrant have you for so doing Min. The Apostles themselves took texts out of Scripture to expound and apply them St. Peter did so in his Sermon Acts 2. and St. Paul in the Synagogue at Antioch Act. 16. And they both preached Christ out of the same text namely Psal. 16. 10. And the whole fourth Chapter to the Romans is but an enlarged discourse upon Gen. 15. 6. Again you may consider the Apostles and we act under different circumstances They might sometimes without a Book speak by the sole authority of infallible inspiration But now such extraordinary gifts being ceased we take texts to shew we have no other Doctrine to deliver but what is taken out of the written Word of God And our only work is