Selected quad for the lemma: faith_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A26963
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The nature and immortality of the soul proved in answer to one who professed perplexing doubtfulness / by Richard Baxter.
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Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing B1317; ESTC R37298
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29,645
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74
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life after this The Body hath more parts than Earth and Water The Spirits as we call them which are the igneous parts lodged in the purest aereal in the blood c. are that body in and by which the Soul doth operate on the rest How much of these material Spirits the Soul may retain with it after Death we know not and if it have such a body it hath partly the same and God can make what Addition he please which shall not contradict identity Paul saith of Corn God giveth it a body as pleaseth him in some respect the same c. in some not the same that was sown We do not hold That all the flesh that ever a man had shall be raised as that mans If one man that was fat grow lean in his sickness we do not say that all the flesh that sickness wasted shall rise It shall rise a spiritual body God knoweth that which you and I know not § 35. You add how easie it would have been to you to believe as the Church believeth and not to have immerged your self in these difficulties Ans 1. The Church is nothing but all individual Christians and it is their Belief which makes them capable of being of the Church As we must be men in order of Nature before we are a Kingdom of men so we are Believers before we are a Church of Believers A Kingdom or Policy maketh us not men but is made of men and Church-society or Policy maketh us not Believers but is made up of Believers Therefore Belief is first and is not caused by that which followeth it And why doth the Church believe Is it because they believe And whom do they believe Is it themselves I doubt you have fallen into acquaintance with those whose Interest hath made it their Trade to puzzle and confound men about things as hard to themselves as others that they may bring them to trust the Church and then tell them that it 's they that are that Church as a necessary means to the quieting their minds And they tell them You are never able by reason to comprehend the mysteries of Faith the more you search the more you are confounded But if you believe as the Church believeth you shall speed as the Church speedeth But it 's one thing to believe the same thing which the Church believeth and another to believe it with the same faith and upon the same Authority If a man believe all the Articles of the Creed only because men tell him that they are true it is but a human Faith as resting only on mans Authority but the true Members of the Church believe all the same things because God revealeth and attesteth them and this is a Divine Faith And so must you If you love light more than darkness and deceit distinguish 1. Believing men for Authority 2. Believing men for their Honesty 3. Believing men for the natural impossibility of their deceiving And the foundation of this difference is here Mans Soul hath two sorts of acts Necessary and Contingent or mutably free To love our selves to be unwilling to be miserable and willing to be happy to love God as good if known c. are acts of the Soul as necessary as for fire to burn combustible contiguous matter or for a Bruit to eat so that all the Testimonies which is produced by these necessary acts by knowing men hath a Physical certainty the contrary being impossible And this is infallible historical knowledg of matter of fact Thus we know there is such a City as Rome Paris Venice c. and that there was such a man as K. James Ed. 6. Hen. 8. William the Conqueror c. And that the Statutes now ascribed to Ed. 3. and other Kings and their Parliaments are genuine For Judges judge by them Lawyers plead them Kings own them all men hold their Estates and Lives by them Contrary mens Interest by Lawyers are daily pleaded by them against each other and if any one would deny forge or corrupt a Statute Interest would engage the rest against him to detect his fraud 1. The certain effect of natural necessary Causes hath natural necessary evidence of Truth But when all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg a thing true this is the effect of natural necessary Causes Ergo it hath natural necessary evidence of Truth 2. It is impossible there should be an Effect without a sufficient Cause But that a thing should be false which all knowing men of contrary Dispositions and Interests acknowledg to be true would be an Effect without a Cause for there is no Cause in nature to effect it It is impossible in nature that all men in England should agree to say There was a King James K. Edward Q. Mary or that these Statutes were made by them if it were false This is infallible Historical Testimony It were not so strong if it were only by one Party and not by Enemies also or men of contrary Minds and Interests And thus we know the History of the Gospel and this Tradition is naturally infallible II. But all the Testimony which dependeth on humane Acts not necessary but free have but an uncertain moral humane Credibility For so all men are Lyars i. e. fallible and not fully to be trusted And I. Those Testimonies which depend on mens Honesty are no farther credible than we know the Honesty of the men which in some is great in some is none in most is mixt and lubricous and doubtful Alas what abundance of false History is in the world Who can trust the Honesty of such men as multitudes of Popes Prelates and Priests have been Will they stick at a Lye that stick not at Blood or any wickedness Besides the ignorance which invalidates their Testimony II. And to pretend Authority to rule our Faith is the most unsatisfactory way of all For before you can believe that Jesus is the Christ and his Word true how many impossibilities have you to believe 1. You must believe that Christ hath a Church 2. And hath authorized them to determine what is to be believed before you believe that he is Christ 3. You must know who they be whom you must believe whether all or some or a major vote Whether out of all the world or a party 4. And how far their Authority extendeth Whether to judg whether there be a God or no God a Christ or no Christ a Heaven or none a Gospel or none or what 5. And how their determinations out of all the world may come with certainty to us and where to find them 6. And when Countreys and Councils contradict and condemn each other which is to be believed Many such impossibilities in the Roman way must be believed before a man can believe that Jesus is the Christ In a word you must not puzzle your head to know what a man is or whether he have an immortal soul but you must 1. believe the Church
THE NATURE AND IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL PROVED In Answer to one who professed perplexing Doubtfulness By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed for B. Simons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls 1682. SIR I Have Reason to judg you no Stranger to such Addresses as these and therefore have adventured more boldly to apply my self to you Others would it may be rigedly censure this Attempt but your more Christian Temper will induce you I hope to judg more charitably did you but understand with what reluctancy I undertook this task I have had many Disputes with my self whether or no I should stifle these Doubts or seek Satisfaction Shame to own such Principles bid me do the first but the weight of the Concern obliged me to the last For I could not with any chearfulness or with that vigor I thought did become me pursue those unseen Substances those Objects of Faith Religion holds forth except I did really believe their existence and my own capacity of enjoyning them I thought at first to satisfie my self in the certainty of the things I did believe to confirm and establish my Faith by these Studies that I might be able to render a Reason of the hope that is in me but instead of building up I am shaken and instead of a clearer evidence I am invironed with uncertainties Unhappy that I am I had better have taken all upon Trust could I so have satisfied my Reason than thus to have involved my self in an endless Study For such I am afraid it will prove without help for that I may not in this Concern rest without satisfaction and yet the more I consider and weigh things the more are my doubts multiplied I call them only doubts not to palliate any opinions for I have not yet espoused any but because they have not yet attained so much maturity or strength as to take me off those things my doubts being satisfied I should conclude of indispensable necessity they are but yet in the Womb assist to make them Abortives I have not been wanting to my self but in the use of all means to me known have sought satisfaction both by Prayer Reading and Meditation I have weighed and consulted things according to my Capacity I have been as faithful to my self in all my reasonings as I could and void of prejudice have passed impartial Censures on the things in debate so far as that light I have would enable me and what to do more I know not except this course I now take prove effectual you inclining to assist me that I know have studied these things My request to you therefore is If your more publick Studies will permit you That you would condescend to satisfie me in the Particulars I shall mention I assure you I have no other design but to know the Truth which in things of such moment certainly cannot be difficult tho to my unfurnished Head they have proved so I hope my shaking may prove my establishment That I may therefore put you to as little trouble as I can I will first tell you what I do believe and then what I stick at First therefore I do really believe and am very well satisfied That there is a God or a first Cause that hath created all things and given to every thing its Being For I am not acquainted with any independent Being I know not any thing that is able to subsist without the Contribution of its Fellow-Creatures I am conscious to my self when sickness invades me and death summons my Compound to a dissolution I can do nothing to the preservation of the Being I enjoy And if I cannot preserve my self as I am much less could I make my self what I am For when I was nothing I could do nothing And Experience and Sense tells me As it is with me so it is with others as there is none can preserve their Beings so there is none could acquire to themselves the Being they have and if none then not the first man And indeed that was it I enquired after from whence every species had at first their Beings the way how and means by which they are continued I know not any Cause of the Being of any thing of which again I may not enquire the Cause and so from Cause to Cause till through a multitude of Causes I necessarily arrive at the first Cause of all Causes a Being wholly uncaused and without Cause except what it was unto it self My next Enquiry was into my self and my next business to find what Concern I have with my Creator which I knew no better way to attain than by searching the bounds of humane Capacity For I concluded it reasonable to judg those attainments I was capable of in my Creation I was designed for Now if man is nothing more than what is visible or may be made so by Anatomy or Pharmacy he is no Subject capable of enjoying or loving God nor consequently of a life of Retrobution In this Enquiry I found Man consisted of something visible and invisible the Body which is visible and something else that invisibly actuates the same For I have seen the Body the visible part of man when the invisible either through indisposition of its Orgains or its self or being expelled its Mansion hath ceased to act I speak as one in doubt the Body hath been left to outward appearance the same it was yet really void of Sense and wholly debilitated of all power to act But then what this invisible is what to conclude of it I know not Here I am at a stand and in a Labyrinth without a Clue For I find no help any where Many have I acknowledg defended the Souls Immortality but none have proved the existence of such a Being and a life of Retrobution and that copiously enough but none have proved a Subject capable of it I know all our Superior Faculties and Actings are usually attributed to the Soul but what it is in man they call so they tell us not To say it is that by which I reason or that now dictates to me what I write is not satisfactory For I look for a definition and such an one as may not to ought else be appropriated Is it therefore a real Being really different from the Body and able to be without it or is it not If not whatever it be I matter not If it be is it a pure Spirit or meerly material If meerly material and different only from the Body gradually and in some few degrees of subtilty it is then a question whether or not that we call Death and suppose a separation of the Compound be not rather a Concentration of this active Principle in its own Body which through some indisposition of the whole or stoppage in its Orgains through gross Corporeity hath suffocated its actings If it be a pure Spirit I would then know what is meant by Spirit and whether or no all things invisible and imperceptable