Selected quad for the lemma: religion_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
religion_n	able_a	evil_n	great_a	50	3	2.0923	3	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A86451	The grand prerogative of humane nature namely, the souls naturall or native immortality, and freedome from corruption, shewed by many arguments, and also defended against the rash and rude conceptions of a late presumptuous authour, who hath adventured to impugne it. By G.H. Gent.	Holland, Guy, 1587?-1660.	1653 (1653)	Wing H2417; Thomason E1438_2; ESTC R202443	95,057	144

very forcible which were able to enforce an opinion of life even after the ruines made upon man by death at which time no power in nature was able to make a restauration and then also when few or no messengers came to them from the dead but contrariwise man after his departure was heard of no more nor any news was sent them from the other life It is true that Epicurus stood astonisht at the sight of death and of the many disorders and disturbances in this world and therefore wickedly denyed both providence divine and also immortality which was a consequent thereof But other Philosophers were wiser and more considerate then so and would not forsake the Truths of providence and of immortality because of an encountring difficulty which they could not overcome and therefore touching the other world Aristotle held it the wisest way to be silent Plato had recourse to fictions of his own touching circulations and Palingenesiae after every of his great yeares to be accomplished Pythagoras fled for succour to his transmigrations or Metempsychoses the Stoicks to open falshoods and improbabilities telling us contrary to the expresse determinations of Aristotle and Theophrastus that men might be happy by vertue alone and that no corporeall miseries were evills In fine here Ethnick Philosophy was deficient not being able to satisfie or come home unto us nor to resolve us in our greatest doubts but these great vacancies of Philosophy were to be supplyed by Christian religion alone just as the doubts about the Antipodes were to be cleared by the discoveries of adventurous navigatours for it is Christian religion alone which doth solve this Gordian knot Et caeteri tanquam umbrae vagantur and all the rest like shadows do wander up and down It was Christ the Lamb of God who opened the books of providence which formerly had been sealed up and the contents hidden from the eyes of any mortall man Against the Antipodes and the habitation of the burning Zone great difficulties were urged yet notwithstanding them the reasons on the contrary side were so considerable as they carried many of the wisest with them as by name Polybius the historian Clemens Romanus as we may see in his Epistle to the Corinthians Virgilius B. of Saltzburg which Virgil. being miss-understood by his unskilfull auditours that made a false report of what he taught he had like to have incurred a heavy censure for it Aventin l. 3. hist The two cases viz. of the torrid zone and of immortality be not much unlike for as the Antipodes were denied by many because they were beyond the torrid zone which for the extremity of heat was esteem'd unpassable so the beatitude of man unto which immortality is addressed was held in doubt by many by reason of the frozen zone of death which lyes between our present life and that which icye climate by reason of the extremity of cold could not as it was thought be passed over by any mortall man All which difficulty was encreased by the seeming deficiency of providence over the affaires of man the consideration of which did move even the ablest and the best men as namely Job David Salomon Jeremy and amongst later men Seneca and Boetius although it prevailed not with them as it had done with Epicurus who if he had pleased might have perceived easily that the want of some order and equalities in this life did plainly argue another to come after it and againe the admirable contrivement of the world for the naturall part does evict as carefull a provision also for the morall What shall we think that the great Authour of things was a better naturall Philosopher then a morall or that he was more powerfull then he was good no greater an absurdity then this could be swallowed down by any and so Epicurus while he sought to fly a seeming inconvenience sell into a reall and for the avoyding of a lesser dissiculty fell into a greater This world is the Stage men the Actours our life the Play An action must not be judged by one Scene but by all together and chiefly by the last and before that be shewed no condemnation can passe nor Plaudue be given God then being so great an Artist in composing and also in continuall ordering of this Theatre and of the various lights that hang about it may be presumed not to have been lesse provident in the Action which is to be represented on it then he was about the Theatre it self unlesse we would admit that the Stage should be more artificiall then the Play and that the Architect was better and more skilfull then the Poet. By the actions then of God in his works of Nature he hath given us a most sufficient security for his works of Moralitie and neither Epicurus nor any other had cause sufficient to call it into question Wherefore the other lise must be the last scene and that one must bring all to order and make amends for all the defects and disturbances in the former and so consequently for the finishing of all a succeeding life and a continuated immortality must be allowed us This inference seems so cleare and evident that if no ship of nature could passe the line of death but after a tempestuous voyage and a perilous poor laboursome mortality it must be thrown over board into the deeps and there perish everlastingly then if humane understanding might presume to give a judgement the spectatours of this tragedy would not doubt to say this play was neither worth the acting nor the making yea and besides that so curious and well-built a stage was ill-bestowed upon so mean a historie If all that is of man must end in death and come unto a totall dissolution we can scarce withhold from setting upon it this censure namely That in the Architecture there wanted much symmetry or proportion because the gate was made bigger then the city and besides that mighty were the preparations but the feast was hungry and penurious It was not then the false and flattering desire in man of living ever and of surviving his short and transitory pleasures of this world which did persuade him immortality according as Pliny vainly did surmise but Nature her self it was which did rise up in us for vindicating of her own right of which the unadvised school of Epicurus did labour to dispossesse her And doubtlesse those arguments in favour of immortality could not be otherwise then very powerfull and weighty that in the midst of Ethnicisme were of ability to prevail and by their force to stemme the violent tides of so many advancing difficulties as daily did arise and also to charme the Furies which out of the dark retreats of humane ignorance and imbecillity did incessantly molest them For in very deed it was the unknown and then undiscovered hemisphere of the other life which caused many but the Epicurcans especially utterly to despaire and to conclude our little light and joyes within the

in proportion to these we are to think that the degree of reason though never so imperfect is essentially distinct from that of sense though never so perfect and is superiour unto it As then it would be no small absurdity for us to confound the confining degrees of life and no life sense and vegetation so also would it be to confound sense and reason and to allow between them a difference no greater then accidentall secundum magis minus Secondly the same appeareth by the different objects of either faculty Reason for example is sensible of religion of spirits of future times of shame of compassion but Brutes have no sense at all of these no feeling of them neither more nor lesse neither perfect nor imperfect But if the degrees of sense and reason differed onely accidentally that is to say according to greater or lesse graduall perfection and no more then would it follow that whatsoever reason apprehends perfectly sense also would apprehend at least imperfectly in one degree or other which seeing sense does not we may safely inferre from thence that reason is essentially different from sense and again that sense is not an imperfect reason but contrariwise no reason at all perfect nor imperfect Again we see that Reason bridles Sense and like a shoar confines it and therefore Reason and Sense are no more one thing then the Bridle and the Horse or then the Shoar and the Ocean Of which point more may be seen in Aquinas his Commentatour Ferrariensis l. 2. cont Gentes c. 66. Thirdly the same also doth appear out of the contrariety and disagreement which we daily do experience betwixt the two judgements of reason and sense as also between the two appetites sensuall and rationall and the great repugnancy we find between them throughout our whole life and by the great businesse and sharp conflicts which are caused thereby much to our cost and labour The opposition betwixt the indication of sense and the judgement of reason is evident because the sense for example judgeth the sunnes diameter to be but a span reason here opposeth and concludeth it to be much greater then the diameter of the whole earth Infinite other examples might be given but this one may suffice for all The disagreement of the two appetites and how they draw severall waies and torture the heart of man is evident First by every mans experience Secondly by the suffrages of the Genes Ovid brings in Medaea complaining tragically in these words Metamorph. l. 17. Aliudque cupido Mens aliud suadet Video melioraproboque Deteriora sequor A new-felt force my striving powers invades Affection this discretion that perswades I see the better and approve it too The worse I follow Seneca in Hippolyto accords Quae memoras scio Vera esse Nutrix sed furor cogit sequi c. Good Nurse thy counsell I confesse is true But forc'd by fury I the worst pursue The writings of Plato Cicero Seneca Hierocles and other Philosophers abound with the doctrine of making resistance against passions and the unruly appetitions of the body Aristotle l. 1. Ethic. c. ult l. 7. c. 23. The pleasures saith he of the minde be repugnant to those of the body and those actions which delight the minde are praeternaturall to the body So he The same lesson is taught us by the Authour of Pythagoras his life extant in the Bibliotheca of Photius Wherefore saith the Authour we being made up of various faculties do lead a toilsome life and incommodious forasmuch as every other creature is governed by one simple nature but we by severall which natures do draw wayes contrary to one another as namely we are sometimes moved to the better by that within us which is divine but at other fits the portion irrationall being predominant we are overwrought unto the worse But admit say you all this is so yet it proves no peculiar perfection in man above that of other creatures of sense because this same contrariety of appetites is common to him with brute beasts for example it is found in a dogge which having an appetite to a piece of meat dares not touch it for fear of blows lo then here is one appetite of eating and another contrary unto it which is of keeping his bones whole which later being the greater crosses the former and makes him to refrain I answer by denying that here is any contrariety between those two appetites but onely an accidentall inconsistency between the objects of them which hinders him at that time from satisfying of them both no contrariety I say because one of them does not oppose directly or condemne the other for he both likes the meat and likes also the saving of his skinne harmlesse just as a man thievishly disposed likes to steal a horse and likes also the keeping of his person safe from the severity of the laws in which case the dogge and the thief are much at one both of them being disposed like beasts but now with an honest and rationall man it is farre otherwise for as with one appetite he is incited to the stealing of the horse so with another he disapproves it and condemnes it as an act unjust and irrationall and herein consists the difference of these appetites from the former So in fine although the objects of the appetites such as beasts and bestiall men do covet might be consistent as many times they may as for example that a man may both steal a horse which he likes and also escape the law which to do he likes as well yet neverthelesse the rationall appetite would contradict and countermand the theft as an act irrationall and unjust Lastly the Holy Scripture is plentifull in this argument The Spirit saith our Blessed Saviour is willing but the Flesh is weak And his Disciples advise Walk ye in the Spirit and the desires of the flesh you shall not fulfill The spirit coveteth against the flesh and the flesh against the spirit I find in my members a law leading me captive unto sinne I do not that which I will c. Mark 14.38 Gal. 5.17 Rom. 7.22.23 Also Rom. 7.21 I am delighted with the law of God according to the interiour man but in my loins I see another law repugnant to the law of God and captivating me in the law of sinne Yea so apparent was this disagreement as that Galen l. 5. de dogmat Hippoc. thought they could not subsist in one and the same soul and therefore concludes that in man there must be two different souls and into this same errour afterwards fell the Manichees as S. Augustine testifyeth l. de duab Animab l. 1. Retractat c. 9. Which erroneous believers deduced also falsly that there were two first principles or Gods one of them good the other bad that from the good the rationall soul proceeded and from the bad the sensuall from one the appetites of good from the other the desires of evil Pythagoras Aristotle Julianus