Selected quad for the lemma: knowledge_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
knowledge_n	know_v	nature_n	revelation_n	1,266	5	9.3823	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52291	An answer to an heretical book called The naked Gospel which was condemned and ordered to be publickly burnt by the convocation of the University of Oxford, Aug. 19, 1690 : with some reflections on Dr. Bury's new edition of that book : to which is added a short history of Socinianism / by William Nicholls.	Nicholls, William, 1664-1712.; Bury, Arthur, 1624-1713. Naked Gospel.	1691 (1691)	Wing N1091; ESTC R28145	124,983	144

failed in the former for if I mistake not his Confidence has generally the transcendent of his Sincerity which is the common fate of all Hereticks His Queries are these 1. What was that Gospel which our Lord and his Apostles preached as necessary to be believed 2. What alterations or additions have after Ages made in it 3. What Advantage or Damage hath thereupon ensued Now as to these Queries I am willing to follow him in the search of them and I pray God to give him grace to be better resolved in them hereafter than he was or at least would be thought to be when he was writing this Book And so I shall take my leave of his Preface AN ANSWER TO THE Naked Gospel CHAP. I. What was the Gospel our Lord and his Apostles preached as necessary to Salvation HERE the Authour shews a little Sophistry whilst in his Query at first he says necessary to be believed but in his transcribing it in the Front of this Chapter he says necessary to Salvation The first expression he uses as the more soft to make his Queries as they lie together seem more reasonable the second he makes use of as the more harsh thereby to insinuate the uncharitableness of the Orthodox who make a right Belief of the Trinity necessary to Salvation Now though we will not quarrel with the Authour about this change of his Terms which is never to be allowed in fair Disputes especially in the Question it self which is to be discussed yet we must allow a great deal of Difference between a thing 's being necessary to be believed and being necessary to Salvation A thing may be necessary to be believed when it is a certain Truth plainly revealed in Scripture so that a man cannot in all points believe aright without the belief of that too and the belief of that Point is necessarily required to make him a full compleat Orthodox Believer but then a thing is necessary for Salvation when it is so of the very Fundamentals of Religion that the Scripture does not allow of Salvation without the belief of this but whether the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity be of this necessity is another dispute only from hence it appears That necessity of believing and necessity in order to Salvation are not equivalent Expressions and which I am persuaded the Authour did not use without design The Authour in the beginning of this Chapter gives an account of the excellence of the Christian Religion and that it was propagated by our Saviour to deliver us from the discipline of the Ceremonial Law and to exalt natural Religion to its utmost perfection and so far right Then he goes farther to tell us that its Doctrines were the same which were so legibly imprinted in the most ignorant minds that every one without any Instructer might read and understand And so with this notion of the Christian Religion in his head and this Test as he calls it in his hand very champion-like as he safely may 〈…〉 1. What was the Gospel which our Saviour and his Apostles preached And here our Authour to make short work at first dash reduces the Doctrines to Two Faith and Repentance and then to Faith and no Repentance and then again to Repentance and no Faith he might as well have rung the changes once more and have reduced it to no Faith and no Repentance and then he had cut the Gospel short enough Now from all this he would make us believe That the Doctrine of the Blessed Trinity which the Orthodox require to be believed of good Christians is contrary to what our Saviour required of his Followers Now here are Three things which lack a little animadversion First His saying that the Doctrines of Christianity were so legibly imprinted in the most ignorant Men's minds that every one without any ●●structor might read and understand them Secondly That the Doctrine of the Trinity is contrary to this Plainness Thirdly That this Doctrine is contrary to the sewness of the Christian Precepts As to his First assertion I will readily acquit our Authour of Socinianism as to this point for the Gentlemen of that persuasion are generally so civil to our Saviour notwithstanding their depriving him of his Divinity as to allow him to be a distinct Legislator from Moses not only to have rectified and improved the old Law but to have given new precepts and to have advanced Morality to that height and perfection which it could never have come up to without such Revelation But our Authour here would have our Blessed Saviour who himself tells us that he came 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to fill up the Law and to compleat it and of whose Doctrines the Apostles give the great Eulogiums of a spiritual Law and a perfect Law only to have told the World something which they knew well enough before and which any Ignorant Man in our Author's phrase could understand without an Instructor Who the Authour calls ignorant Men I know not I am sure some Men of the greatest natural Knowledge have not been able by the light of Nature to come up to the Knowledge of some of those Laws which our Saviour does recommend in his Sermon upon the Mount The Jews who one would think should be most knowing in these Truths as having the assistance of so many particular Revelations yet they lived in opinions contrary to them all as appears by the whole tenor of that Discourse of our Saviour and even the most Learned of the Heathen were far from embracing the generality of them 'T would be too long here to shew the great defect of the Heathen Philosophy in respect of this admirable Lecture of our Saviour But to let our Authour know how far ignorant Men are from coming up by the pure light of reason to the Knowledge of these Laws let him consider how much Aristotle and Cicera two Men of the greatest strength of natural Reason perhaps that ever were in the world how much I say these great men were mistaken in the Rules of Charity which our Blessed Saviour does deliver He commands us to love our enemies to do good to them that hate us Matth. 5. 44. But Aristotle tells us that That man is void of all sense and pain that though he does forbear to be angry does not seek revenge But 't is the part of a Slave being contumeliously used to bear it So Cicero among the rights of Nature places Revenge by which says he we propel an Injury or an Affront And again in one of his Epistles to Atticus he shews his Prectice as well as his Opinion I hate the man and I will hate him and I wish I could be revenged of him Now I suppose Cicero and Aristotle were none of the most ignorant men and if they could not search out these Truths without an Instructor I cannot imagine how our Authour 's ignorant Men should So that in short this opinion of our Authour 's is

Nebuchadnezzar or Daniel who relates this matter understood by the Son of God was an Angel who from their nigh Conversation with God from the great Portion of Happiness and Glory he communicates to them and their so resembling him by their Purity and the Spiritualness of their Nature and from their living in Heaven with him like Children under the wing of their Parent from these and the like circumstances they were and not improperly called the Sons of God as we find in many places of Scripture as Psal 82. I said ye were Angels or the Children of the Most High So Job 1. 6. There was a day when the Sons of God or Angels presented themselves before the Lord. And the LXX translate this very place in Daniel by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the form of the Fourth was like the Angel of God So that we must grant That the Son of God here mentioned was an Angel of God But our Blessed Saviour was the Son of God in another manner than his for his Sonship is not founded upon any such Analogy as theirs is but upon the eternal generation of the Father for he being made so much better than the Angels as he hath by Inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they Heb. 1. 4. In short 't is impossible that our Saviour's Sonship should be such a Sonship as that of the Angels because the Apostle spends this whole Chapter to prove him a Person distinct from and above the nature of Angels and does besides set the Son of God in direct opposition to the Angels of God And of the Angels he saith c. v. 7. But unto the Son he saith c. v 8. When he bringeth in his first begotten into the world he saith Let all the Angels of God worship him v. 6. So that Christ's Sonship must be of another kind than that of the Angels or else there would be no ground for their contradistinction unless he was in a peculiar manner the Son of God in a supereminent extraordinary way not at all common to them The Authour having made these Remarks upon this Title of our Saviour The Son of God he proceeds to reckon up some others as the Messias or Christ Onely begotten Son of God which Characters he allows to speak a Person of unmeasurable Greatness a Person like his Emblem the Light so glorious that by our most intent view we cannot discover any thing of it but this That we cannot discover Now for all our Authour's haste one would imagine that something was discoverable in our Saviour by these Eulogies that God did design to manifest or discover something to us of him by these Revelations and not to make Revelations of things that were not revealable 'T is not to be expected indeed that by the help of Revelation we should dive into the Nature of our Saviour's eternal Essence for we are so far from a possibility of doing that that we are ignorant of the Essential Constitutions of the most inconsiderable Being we are conversant with But though we are ignorant of this yet we can tell when 't is revealed to us by God what kind of Nature our Saviour's is whether finite or infinite whether divine or humane The Gloriousness of his Nature does not so dazzle our Eyes as to make us confound distinct and express Idea's I have a certain though not an adequate Idea or Notion of God as a Being infinite incorporeal c. And when I am informed by Revelation t●at such a Person is that infinite incorporeal Being or that he has in such Revelation those Characters ascribed to him as are inseparable from the Divine Nature I must conclude That such a one is a Person of the Divine Nature such an infinite incorporeal c. Being which is my Notion of God Indeed the gloriousness of this Being keeps Men from discovering its Essence and from prying into its Nature but yet we may observe such Marks and Properties in it so as to have a distinct Conception of it from all other Beings in the World The Sun is a glorious Body and the more we strive to pry into its Constitution by gazing on it the more we are blinded and what then don 't we know the Sun when we see it for all this because our Eyes are so weak that we cannot stare into the Furnace of the Sun must we therefore take it for a Candle The Person of our Saviour is glorious and if it were a thousand times less glorious than it is I might not understand its Nature but when I am told that this Person is God that he is one of the Persons of the Divine Nature my Understanding tells me very clearly That all the marks and properties I have in my Mind of the Divine Nature must be attributed to this Person and though I understand nothing of his Essence or the precise modus of his Hypostasis yet I am sure he is that Being which I have a certain Idea of and which I call God So that 't is a great Fallacy in the Authour to say we don't know what our Saviour is because we cannot dive into his Essence for our discriminative Knowledge of one thing from another is not by discovering the Essences or internal Constitutions of them but by regarding their outward marks and properties and these every one has a Knowledge of for a Child knows a Rose from a Stone as well as a Philosopher though it knows not the Qualities and internal Constitutions of either Therefore when I am infallibly informed that such a Person is God I am infallibly assured he is that kind of Being I have the fore-mentioned Idea of though I am infinitely short of understanding its Nature II. Our Authour now comes to shew what is meant by believing in his Person which he branches into Two Parts First Believing in him with respect to his word Second In respect to his Person The First of which onely he speaks to in this Chapter and says that Christ is to his Followers as the Sun to Travellers 'T is no matter what they think of its magnitude or whether they think it be no bigger than a Bushel it guides them all alike and thus it is he says with the Sun of Righteousness 't is no matter what we believe him to be if we have but a Practical Faith which is all our Saviour he says requires And this he attempts to prove out of Joh. 10. a place than which one would have thought he should rather have chosen any Text in the New Testament besides How long dost thou make us to doubt if thou be the Christ tell us plainly Jesus said I told you by calling God my Father and ye believe me not Joh. 10. 24 25. And presently after he tell them I and my Father are one v. 30. at which they took up stones to stone him saying thou being a man makest thy self God Now what can the Authour draw from this Why he says our

which we have proved the Doctrine of our Saviour's Divinity to have So that upon our Authour 's own Principles we may reason thus If Eternal Life be promised to those and to those only that believe Christ's Divinity then those that do dis-believe it have no Title to Eternal Life But we have proved that Christ has promised it to those and to those only that believe his Divinity therefore c. For Christ's promising Eternal Life to those that should believe his Divinity supposes the Promise is to them only for if it were to be given to others it were no kind of Invitation and Encouragement to them for to believe it seeing then they might attain it without it If the Consequence which is naturally drawn from this be uncharitable 't is what results from the Author 's own Principles which he himself has laid down and then he may thank himself for that As to his Fourth Corollary That then there is no need of a Catalogue of Fundamentals this is a stroke too of his usual Confidence by which he taxes no less Men than the very Apostles themselves of a foolish uncessary labour For if there was no need of a Catalogue of Fundamentals why should the Apostle exhort Timothy so earnestly to hold fast the form of sound words which was undoubtedly in our Authour's Phrase a Catalogue of Fundamentals or some brief Summary of Faith probably that Creed which we have now under the Apostles Names Why should the Apostles or some other Apostolical Men set themselves to collect together the Chief Heads of our Christian Faith for the Instruction of their new Converts if it were nothing but a needless Work The Apostles hands were then too full of business to do any thing but what was absolutely necessary and the Holy Spirit which was to guide them into all Truth would certainly keep them from writing what was unnecessary as well as what was false for Impertinence though it is not a Contradiction to yet is a Hindrance of Truth as well as Falshood I shall not insist here how he reflects by this upon the Actions of so many Venerable Councils for 't is the usage of this Gentleman's Tribe to be saucy with those Sacred Assemblies but methinks he should be more civil to his beloved Friends the Arians and Socinians Will he allow that Arius and Euzoius and Eusebius of Caesarea c. were only playing the Fools whilst they were drawing up their Creeds Will he own his celebrated Arian Councils of Antioch Ariminum Seleucia c. to be only at his Push-pin whilst they were contriving their Heterodox Forms of Faith And had the Socinian Brethren nothing to do when they wrote their Summaries of Religion which are Catalogues of their Fundamentals I am afraid this is something more than upon second Thoughts he will readily grant But for all our Authour's Positiveness a Creed is no such unnecessary Work as he may think What though the Scripture be a compleat Rule of Faith a Creed may not be a needless one for all that Though the Scripture contains every thing necessary to Salvation yet Comments upon Scripture and Sermons and Catechisms I hope are not wholly impertinent All the necessary Points of Faith 't is true are found somewhere or other dispersed through the Bible but 't is too difficult for Children and Novices and many others who have not so much leisure to search them out there therefore 't is very necessary for these to have a brief Summary of Faith to be drawn up out of them for their use which they may quickly read over and easily remember Besides Creeds are of great advantage in the Church to shew us the Belief of the Primitive Ages which as they were nigher to the Apostolick times so they could know better the Apostolick Faith than others that were at a remoter distance and therefore by these we have a better Knowledge of the Primitive Faith than if we had the Assistance of the Scripture only Though the Scripture it self is a good and sufficient Rule yet these Ancient Creeds are useful Explanations of it though the Scripture be the great primary Rule of Faith yet the Creeds of the Ancient Church may be secondary ones as being formed by the first and more adapted to some particular Capacities and some peculiar Circumstances The Authour next I find is afraid that he has not laid his first Proposition firm enough upon which he has been building all these Corollaries and therefore he is for butteressing it afterwards as well as he can But instead of this he has unluckily made his Foundation weaker than it was before for whereas at first he allowed some Truths to be honoured with the Promise of Eternal Life here he will allow but one in all the Bible to be so and that is the Belief of our Saviour's Resurrection And now having brought the Q. of the 10th of the Romans v. 9. to prove this If thou shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised Jesus from the dead thou shalt be saved he very triumphantly asks the Question Do we in the whole New Testament find any other Doctrine so honoured Yes we have proved the Doctrine of our Saviour's Divinity to be so honoured and I wonder what the Authour thinks of the Doctrine of Repentance whether any Man can be saved without that or whether Eternal Life be not promised to it Whether it is not promised to the Belief of the true God This is life eternal to know thee the onely true God c. Joh. 17. 3. In short Eternal Life is promised either expresly or vertually to every Article of the Christian Belief and to the Practice of every Christian Precept but not to one singly without the other The Apostle tells us Rom. 8. 24. We are saved by hope and yet undoubtedly he requires the Exercises of other Vertues with it and though Salvation is promised to the Belief of Christ's Resurrection yet to be sure God expects our Assent likewise to all other Articles of the Christian Faith Bare Hope will as well save a Man without Faith and Charity as a bare Belief of our Saviour's Resurrection without a Belief of his Divinity for one is revealed in Scripture as well as the other and each of them have the same Promises of Eternal Life annexed to them But suppose one of them lacked this Promise expresly made to it it were not less to be believed for all that any more than we do not think our selves at liberty to neglect the Practice of Charity because we are not in Scripture said to be saved by it as we are by Hope The Reason why the Scripture particularly the Epistles of the Apostles does often back the Belief of the Doctrine of the Resurrection with this Promise is because this Point of all others in the Christian Religion was the most difficult to go down with the Heathens which the Apostles had to do withal it was so contrary to the received