Selected quad for the lemma: faith_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
faith_n	cause_n	instrumental_a	justification_n	4,285	5	9.3979	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A91862	ʼIgeret HaMaskil Iggeret hammashkil. Or, An admonitory epistle unto Mr Rich. Baxter, and Mr Tho. Hotchkiss, about their applications (or mis-applications rather) of several texts of Scripture (tending cheifly) to prove that the afflictions of the godly are proper punishments. Unto which are prefixed two dissertations; the one against Mr. Baxter's dangerous problems and positions, about the immanent acts of Gods knowledge and will, as if any of those could be said (without blasphemy) to begin in God, in time, and not to be eternal as himself is: or, as if God could be said (without derogation to His infinite perfections) to begin to know and will in time, any thing which He did not know and will before, yea from all eternity: the other, both against Mr. Baxter and Mr. Hotchkiss, about their definition of pardon and remission of sins, in opposition to great Doctor Twisse's definition of pardon, as it is in God from all eternity towards his elect in Christ. / By William Robertson, Mr. of Arts from the University of Edenburgh.	Robertson, William, d. 1686?	1655 (1655)	Wing R1610; Thomason E1590_1; ESTC R208822	104,273	182

Scholars and Preachers whom I did hear speak of your Apologie for your Aphorisms and upon the occasion of their discourse about some points in that Apologie of yours and because of my own former thoughts about your book of Aphorisms I was very desirous to peruse it having never had the opportunity of perusing it before And therefore the next morning I made enquiry for it and had the sight of it which when I had got I did immediately fall to a cursory perusal of it being confident you would in it explicate your mind more clearly in some things delivered very ambiguously as I thought in your Aphorisms and indeed I found it so ●●r although that in the first three or four hours reading that morning of the first part of your Apologie to Mr. Black I was very much taken with so much of a profound deep and rational judgment with such a clear and solid understanding and with so great a height of a piercing wit as I did apprehend in some of your reasonings and explications of some points by you holden forth there yet in the afternoon I was forced to pitch my thoughts for some time upon that exclamation 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 mah hebel Enosh How vain a thing is frail mortal man and to consider how diligently we should give heed to that advertisement 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Chidlu lachem min haadam asher neshamah boappo ki bemmeh nechshab hu Cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils because wherein is he to be esteemed How mutable is he as in his purposes in his resolutions and most affectionate estimations So 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 becol asher bo in all and every excellencie that is in him For that very day How great a change did I apprehend both in you and my self For turning over for my afternoons work to your Apologie against Mr. Kendal me thought you looked upon me there with quite another countenance the very glances whereof did so much affright me when either I looked upon it or when it stared me in the face that I do profess I could not behold it nor so much as think upon it without trembling aversation A sudden change you will say and yet no more strange then true at least I am sure that I did apprehend such a change in your countenance and that I did feel such a change wrought thereby in my breast that although I had set before-noon your accurate rationality in some of your disputing discourses upon one of the highest seats of my affection and estimation yet in the afternoon I never did abhor with greater detestation indignation the principles of any man and the defence of them then I did that one most blasphemous I must crave permission from you so to stile it because that is the best title I can give it in my thoughts and therefore I can give it no better in words so that I must say again I never read of any Principle in any mans writing and the defence thereof with greater indignation and detestation then I did that most horrid Principle of yours and your defence of it about the Immanent acts of God in his Knowledg and Will as if they or any thing immanent in God were or could be de novo arising or beginning to be in him in time and not from all eternity as if there could be any thing in God which is not God himself and eternal as himself is This this I say Sir is that Monster of your mind which did and doth so much amaze me that I shall be loath hereafter so suddenly to think so much or esteem so highly of any man as knowing experimentally from you that he may be so far left to himself and to his own understanding as that he may like the goat with his foot in the evening cast down and spurn over all the good milk hath been given all the day and by his self-willed affection biassing his judgment to defend his own principles or to make good his own expressions in opposition to others he may strain his wit to the utmost to maintain contradictory Tenets not only to truth made known by divine revelation but even to truths that are evident of themselves by the very light of rational nature or natural reason The truth is Sir when I do think upon all the Opinions that your Antagonists do challenge you with and do endeavour to fasten upon you setting aside this and the consequents of it and although you should professedly own and maintain them all they would not all of them taken together besides this so much have stumbled and offended me nor would they so much have caused the publique recording of this my abhorring detestation of your defence of them as this one doth because I do think that all the Errors that are laid to your door though taken in cumulo and bound in a bundle or bulk together are not so heinously derogatory from the glorious Majesty of God nor do they all of them so much blaspheme his name in his infinite perfections as this doth in its self and in its consequences That is that although one should openly maintain that Faith is not the instrumental cause of our Justification and that we are justified by some works as Repentance Hope and Love c. as well as by Faith and that we were saved by some of our Works as well as by Faith and that our works were meritorious of eternal life by Gods appointment and Christs merit and that the afflictions of the Godly were real and properly so called punishments and that Christ hath redeemed all the World universally by the price of his blood though that were indeed a sad saying and most irrational to say that our Lord did pay the price of no less then his blood and death for those for whom he saith himself he did not so much as pray unto his Father and although that one should deny the final perseverance of all the truly godly as conceiving that some might be such and yet not peremptorily elected to salvation I say although these be dangerous Tenets indeed yet if one should maintain all of them and many such like Popish and Arminian errors yet I could not abhor the defence of any one or all of them so much as I do abhor and detest this one of yours Sir if it could be severed from them and they from it to wit in that you do frame to your self and would endeavour to impose upon others the horrid fiction of a God like in imperfections unto frail and miserable man in the actings of his Knowledge and Will by maintaining God to begin to know in time that which he did not know from all eternity and to begin to will in time that which he did not will from all eternity and that in time he doth begin to love in Christ those whom he did not love in Christ from all eternity yea that he loves to day whom he did hate

quoad nomen was taken in or catched in interpreting a Text of any of his Scriptures And I hope Sir you are a wise one that will willingly suffer your self to be informed about the words in the Original when they are mistaken You know Sir how you use to inform others your self and you know your self well enough when you know you can inform them But yet now that that which you may call my passion is over for indeed I was offended with you in your mistake methinks there is yet an evasion left for you by which you may escape the challenge laid against you and that therefore there hath been too great rigor used unto you And the evasion may perhaps help you at a dead lift for it is such a one indeed that I know a man that hath no less then Eagles eyes in his head Sir as you think who does see it so fit for his purpose as that he frequently makes very much use of it if he be challenged with errors and mistakes in his Tenets and it may be that he may make use of it to shelter you from the storms that seem here to be blown against you as I am sure it is a shield to himself to keep off many blows that would fall heavily upon him if he lacked it And the way to escape is this Sir or at least it may be thought to be so to wit That it may be said and conceived you did not speak so much your own opinion concerning the words of the Text above rendred as that you had what you spake about the words from another hand and so they were as much the words of another as your own which you spake But first Sir as to that I say That that is the most sophistical and jugling way of speaking that ever any free rational or ingenious man did speak in nay which doth not become such a one to speak so at all if he doth not expresly manifest whether he do own or not and how far he owns or how far he disowns the words which he relateth For unless he do so no man can take hold upon what he saith for always he will have a back-door to get out at whensoever he fears to be nonplust and silenced then will he say he spoke that but as the mind of others whatever he meant of that or of any other thing besides that before But again Sir if either you your self or he for you will use this shift to free you in the particular between you and me at this time then I have two things to say to stop either or both your mouths with either of them and the first is this That if ever you produce an intelligent Author understanding the Hebrew Text that doth sense or non-sense the words in controversie in your way I shall be the first that shall challenge my self as having with a too virulent Pen carped at your mistaken Criticism and I shall humbly and heartily crave your pardon for it and that you may oblige me by my promise and acknowledged duty to do so Sir if you can I intreat you produce one unto me by your next In the mean time secondly I will tell you and your friend That if you do produce any such nonsensical babler that doth say that in those words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Erem gnoreph velo panim I will cause them to see or I will shew them the neck or back and not the face the face of God is stiled the back of God then I will answer Sir if you think to evade and escape that way that your remedy is as bad and worse then the disease because the remedy then would be the cause of the disease For this is your sin and this is your shame That you have nothing of understanding and knowing your Masters own words but onely an implicite faith to take upon trust your translators words so that if any one whom you take to be your Interpreter speak non-sense before you then you your self do know nothing but to follow him and to dictate non-sense with him And so I will conclude this first place Sir by telling you lastly and minding you seriously of it that into danger of such inextricable difficulties and perplexities doth that man put himself to who runneth as a Messenger and Ambassador about his acknowledged Lord and Masters business and yet knoweth not understandingly to read his Masters Commission and his Instructions in the proper Language in which his Lord did deliver them to him I have done now Sir with the first Text of Scripture in your Exercitation much misapplied in prosecution of your Tenets and I have a little more fully descanted about it first because it was a grosly material mistake secondly because I would in one place put several of my thoughts that in several such cases afterwards they may be reflected and looked upon here as if they were just repeated over again in the same or such like words when the like need or occasion requires And thirdly this I did here so largely that hence I might be more brief in prosecuting the rest of those misapplications and misconstructions of other Texts of Scripture which I have marked in your Book yea I do resolve to be now as brief as I can in all the rest of the places that I shall take notice because I am not well contented that Epistolary lines are drawn by my hand to such a length as I see they are onely Sir remember that by an equitable rule you must suffer your self to be informed c. ABout the beginning of your Book when I first perused it there were several places which I did mark as impertinent and inconsiderate Applications of some Texts with such mistakings as did bewray indeed little knowledge or study in the original but yet not so gross and absurd ignorance as the first which is already past over Now as I am looking out those marks which I had laid in your Book the first day I did see it I cast my eye upon a passage of yours which I had marked indeed but had quite forgot when I did present to your view those two passages which I did so much commend and count praise-worthy in your Exercitation For if I had minded it it would have been as highly commended and approved by me as the other two or at least I am sure it had been joyned to them as a fellow for a third The passage is this Sir Page 11. wherein your Observations upon the Negative phrases used in Scripture about forgiveness of sins this you put down as one of the chief and most insisted on of any other I do take notice of there to wit onely let it be noted say you concerning the two last places viz. 2 Tim. 4. 16. and Acts 7. 60. That albeit the phrase in the translation be all one both being rendred a not laying sin to the charge of the sinner nevertheless the phrases in the original