Selected quad for the lemma: ground_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
ground_n	church_n	doctrine_n	faith_n	3,656	5	5.5334	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A70046	Reason and judgement, or, Special remarques of the life of the renowned Dr. Sanderson, late Lord Bishop of Lincoln together with his Judgement for setling the church, in exact resolutions of sundry grand cases very seasonable at this time.	D. F.; Sanderson, Robert, 1587-1663. Judgment in one view for the settlement of the church.	1663 (1663)	Wing F10; ESTC R224352	48,079	100

will by no means hold neither in the rigour of it nor yet in the mitigation We are therefore to beware of it and that so much the more heedfully because of the evil consequents and effects that issue from it to wit a world of superstitions uncharitable censures bitter contentions contempt of superiours perplexities of conscience First it filleth mens heads with many superstitious conceits making them to cast impurity upon sundry things which yet are lawful to as many as use them lawfully For the taking away of the indifferency of any thing that is indifferent is in truth Superstition whether either of the two wayes it be done either by requiring it as necessary or by forbidding it as unlawful He that condemneth a thing as utterly unlawful which yet indeed is indifferent and so lawful is guilty of superstion as well as he that enjoyneth a thing as absolutely necessary which yet indeed is but indifferent and so arbitrary They of the Church of Rome and some in our Church as they go upon quite contrary grounds yet both false so they run into quite contrary errours and both superstitious They decline too much on the left hand denying to holy Scripture that perfection which of right it ought to have of containing all appertaining to that supernatural doctrine of faith and holiness which God hath revealed to his Church for the attainment of everlasting salvation whereupon they would impose upon Christian people and that with an opinion of necessity many things with the Scriptures require not and that is a Superstition These wry too much on the right hand ascribing to the holy Scripture such a kind of perfection as it cannot have of being the sole directour of all humane actions whatsoever whereupon they forbid unto Christian people and that under the name of sinne sundry things which the holy Scripture condemneth not and that is a superstition too From which Superstition proceedeth in the second place uncharitable censuring as evermore they that are the most superstitious are the most supercilious No such severe censurers of our blessed Saviours person and actions as the superstitious Scribes and Pharisees were In this Chapter the special fault which the Apostle blameth in the weak ones who were somewhat superstitiously affected was their rash and uncharitable judging of their brethren And common and daily experience among our selves sheweth how freely some men spend their censures upon so many of their brethren as without scruple do any of those things which they upon false grounds have superstitiously condemned as utterly unlawful And then thirdly as unjust censures are commonly entertained with scorn and contumely they that so liberally condemn their brethren of prophanness are by them again as freely flouted for their preciseness and so whiles both parties please themselves in their own wayes they cease not mutually to provoke and scandalize and exasperate the one the other pursuing their private spleens so far till they break out into open contentions and oppositions Thus it stood in the Roman Church when this Epistle was written They judged one another and dispised one another to the great disturbance of the Churches peace which gave occasion to our Apostles whole discourse in this Chapter And how far the like censurings and despisings have embittered the spirits and whetted both the tongues and pens of learned men one against another in our own Church the stirs that have been long since raised and are still upheld by the factions opposers against our Ecclesiastical constitutions government ond ceremonies will not suffer us to be ignorant Most of which stirs I verily perswade my self had been long ere this either wholly buried in silence or at leastwise prettily well quieted if the weakness and danger of the errour whereof we now speak had been more timely discovered and more fully and freqvently made known to the world than it hath been Fourthly let that doctrine be once admitted and all humane authority will soon be despised The commands of Parents Masters and Princes which many times require both secrecy and expedition shall be taken into slow deliberation and the equity of them sifted by those that are bound to obey though they know no cause why so long as they know no cause to the contrary Delicata est obedientia quae transit in causam deliberat vam It is a nice obedience in St. Bernards judgement yea rather troublesome and odious that is over curious in discussing the commands of superiours boggling at every thing that is enjoyned requiring a why for every wherefore and unwilling ro stir until the lawfulness and expediency of the thing commanded shall be demonstrated by some manifest reason or undoubted authority from the Scriptures Lastly the admitting of this doctrine would cast such a snare upon men of weak judgements but tender censciences as they should never be able to unwind themselues again Mens daily occasions for themselves or friends and the necessities of common life require the doing of a thousand things within the compass of a few dayes for which it would puzzle the best Textman that liveth readily to bethink himself of a sentence in the Bible clear enough to satisfie a scrupulous conscience of the lawfulness and expediency of what he is about to do for which by hearkening to the rules of reason and discretion he might receive easie and speedy resolution In which cases if he should be bound to suspend his resolution and delay to do that which his own reason would tell him were presently needful to be done until he could haply call to mind some precept or example of Scripture for his warrant what stops would it make in the course of his whole life what languishings in the duties of his calling how would it fill him with doubts and irresolutions lead him into a maze of uncertainties entangle him in a world of woful perplexities and without the great mercy of God and better instruction plunge him irrecoverably into the gulph of despair Since the chief end of the publication of the Gospel is to comfort the hearts and to revive and refresh the spirits of Gods people with the glad tidings of liberty from the spirt of bondage and fear and of gracious acceptance with their GOD to anoint them with the oyl of gladness giving them beauty for Ashes and instead of sackcloath girding them with joy we may well suspect that doctrine not to be Evangelical which thus setteth the consciences of men upon the rack tortureth them with continual fears and perplexities and prepareth them thereby unto hellish dispaire Quest. What are the dreadful consequences of scrupling some indifferent things Answ. Althouugh difference of judgement should not alienate our affections one from another yet daily experience sheweth it doth By reason of that self-love and envey and other corruptions that abound in us it is rarely seen that those men are of one heart that are of two mindes St. Paul found it so with the Romans in his time whilest some

very doctrine or where they are commanded so to believe or teach One of their chiefest refuges is the Text we now have in hand but I shall anon drive them from this shelter The other places usually alleaged speak only either of divine and supernatural truths to be believed or else of workes of grace or worship to be performed as of necessity unto salvation which is not to the point in issue For it is freely confessed that in things of such nature the Holy Scripture is and so we are to account it a most absolute sufficient direction Upon which ground we heartily reject all humane traditions devised and intended as supplements to the doctrine of faith contained in the Bible and annexed as codicils to the holy Testament of Christ for to supply the defects thereof The question is wholly about things in their nature indifferent such as are the use of our food raiment and the like about which the common actions of life are chiefly conversant Whether in the choice and use of such things we may not be sometimes sufficiently guided by the light of reason and the common rules of discretion but that we must be able and are so bound to do or else we sinne for every thing we do in such matters or deduce our warrant from some place or other of Scripture Before the Scripture were written it pleased GOD by visions and dreams and other like revelations immediately to make known his good pleasure to the Patriarches and Prophets and by them unto the people which kind of Revelations served them to all the same intents and purposes whereto the sacred Scriptures now do us viz. to instruct them what they should believe and do for his better service and the furtherance of their own salvations Now as it were unreasonable for any man to think that they either had or did expect an immediate revelation from God every time they eat or drank or bought or sold or did any other of the common actions of life for the warranting of each of those particular actions to their consciences no less unreasonable it is to think that we should now expect the like warrant from the Scriptures for the doing of the like actions Without all doubt the Law of nature and the light of reason was the rule whereby they were guided for the most part in such matters which the wisdome of God would never have left in them or us as a principal relique of his decayed image in us if he had not meant that we should make use of it for the direction of our lives and actions thereby Certainly God never infused any power into any creature whereof he intended not some use Else what shall we say of the Indies and other barbarous nations to whom God never vouchsafed the lively Oracles of his written word Must we think that they were left a lawless people without any Rule at all whereby to order their actions How then come they to be guilty of transgression for where there is no Law there can be no transgession Or how cometh it about that their consciences should at any time or in any case either accuse them or excuse them if they had no guide nor rule to walk by But if we must grant they had a Rule and there is no way you see but grant it we must then we must also of necessity grant that there is some other Rule for humane actions besides the written word for that we presupposed these nations to have wanted Which Rule what other could it be then the Law of the Nation and of right reason imprinted in their hearts Which is as truly the Law and Word of God as is that which is printed in our Bibles So long as our actions are warranted either by the one or the other we cannot be said to want the warrant of Gods Word Nec differet Scriptura an ratione consistat saith Tertullian it mattereth not much from whether of both we have our direction so long as we have it from either You see then those men are in a great errour who make the holy Scriptures the sole rule of all humane actions whatsoever For the maintenance whereof there was never yet produced any piece of an argument either from reason or from authority of holy writ or from the testimony either of the ancient Fathers or of other classical Divines of later times which may not be clearly and abundantly answered to the satisfaction of any rational man not extreamly fore-possessed with prejudice They who think to salve the matter by this mitigation that at least wise our actions ought to be framed according to those general rules of the Law of Nature which are here and there in the Scriptures dispersedly contained as viz. That we should do as we would be done to That all things be done decently and orderly and unto edification That nothing be done against conscience and the like speak somewhat indeed to the truth but little to the purpose For they consider not First that these general Rules are but occasionally and incidentally mentioned in Scripture rather to manifest unto us a former than to lay upon us a new obligation Secondly that those rules had been of force for the ordering of mens actions though the Scripture had never expressed them and were of such force before those Scriptures were written wherein they are now expressed For they bind not originally qua scripta but qua justa because they are righteous not because they are written Thirdly that an action conformable to these general Rules might not be condemned as sinful although the doer thereof should look at those rules meerly as they are the dictates of the law of nature and should not be able to vouch his warrant for it from any place of Scripture neither should have at the time of the doing thereof any present thought or consideration of any such place The contrary whereunto I permit to any mans reasonable judgement if it be not desperately rash and uncharitable to affirm Lastly that if mens actions done agreeably to those rules are said to be of faith precisely for this reason because those rules are contained in the word then it will follow that before those particular Scriptures were written wherein any of those rules are first delivered every action done according to those rules had been done without faith there being as yet no Scripture for it and consequently had been a sin So that by this doctrine it had been a sin before the writing of S. Matthews Gospel for any man to have done to others as he would they should do to him and it had been a sin before the writing of the former Epistle to the Corinthians for any man to have done any thing decently and orderly supposing these two Rules to be in those two places first mentioned because this supposed there could then have been no warrant brought from the Scriptures for so doing Well then we see the former Opinion