Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	apostle_n	receive_v	tradition_n	2,537	5	8.9791	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A76020	A treatise of adhering to God; written by Albert the Great, Bishop of Ratisbon. Put into English by Sir Kenelme Digby, Kt. Also a conference with a lady about choyce of religion.; De adhærendo Deo. English	Albertus, Magnus, Saint, 1193?-1280.; Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665.	1653 (1653)	Wing A876; Thomason E1529_2; ESTC R25226	62,177	159

of heate into a pot of water that is symply applyed unto it but if that pot be set in a vessell of Snow or Ice and so be held over the fire it driveth into the center the cold of the Snow formerly diffused without and in a very short space turneth that water into Ice which else might have stayed there long enough without congealing in like manner they who being rooted in Charity approach to that divine Sunne doe flourish and bring forth excellent and oftentimes supernaturall fruites of devotion fervour and sanctitie but those who have depraved affections so invironing the roots of their hearts as that the soyle of Charity cannot introduce her nourishing sappe into them and whose soules are compassed in with the Ice of sensuality and carnall cogitations if they come within the beames of this holy Sunne or within the heate of this sanctifying fire they doe but wither away the sooner and their hearts grow dayly more and more to be Ice till at length like that of Pharaoh amidst the wondrous workes of the lord happy to others they become miseerable and stony And againe we see that those who having addicted themselves wholly to such a course of seraphicall life and that being alwaies vehemently intent to the love and contemplation of the prime verity and that having no other object for their actions or thoughts doe thereby as we may reasonably conceive approach nearest to God allmighty and draw immediately from him who is the fountaine of light and truth strongest emanations and cleerest influences to illustrate their understanding and inflame their affections those persons I say have ever beene most earnest in the maintenance of those points of the Roman doctrine which are most repugnant to sense as in particular of that of the reall presence of Christs body in the blessed Sacrament unto which all other sacraments and acts of faith and devotion are reduced and adore them with greatest reverence and are inflamed with ferventest devotion unto them And therefore we may conclude that this confidence religiousnesse and fervour proceedeth from hence that these men and such among them as cannot be suspected for simplicity ignorance or sinister ends are thus confirmed in this faith and are thus set on fire with this devotion more vigorously and vehemently then ordinary secular men by the immediate working and inspiration of the holy Ghost from whose streames it is likely they drinke purer and clearer waters and nearer the well head then other men of a more worldly and vulgar conversation And it were not agreeable to the goodnesse of God to permitt those persons that most affectionatly seeke him and who for his sake out of pure devotion and desire of contemplating truth doe abridge themselves of all other worldly contentments to have their understanding worse blinded with false doctrine then other men that seeke him more coldly and care lesse for him and to have their wills more depraved then theirs with erroneous and false devotion as of necessity it would follow theirs were if the doctrine that the Catholicke Church professeth were not true and the holy Ghost resided not in it to worke those effects Now on the contrary part let us make a short inquiry whether it be probable that the late pretended reformers have beene illuminated by God in an extraordinary manner to discover truth which they say hath for many ages lyen hidd Surely if any such thing were they would have expressed in their manner of life by some extraordinary sanctity and excellent actions and supernaturall wisdome that extraordinary communication which they would perswade us they had with the divinity For as by a radiant beame of light shining in at the chinke of a window we know assuredly the Sunne beateth upon it although we see not his body so likewise there should have broken out from them some admirable and excellent effect whereby we might rest confident that the divine Sunn illuminated their understanding inflamed their Wil. Moyses when he came downe from the mountaine where he so long conversed with God expressed even by the luster glittering from his face that it was not an ordinary or naturall light which had shined unto him the Apostles when they were replenished with the holy Ghost received immediately the gift of tongues and a cleere intelligence of all the Scriptures whereby they made cleere unto the auditors the obscurest passages of them and continually wrought miracles And all those that ever since them have introduced the Gospell into any Countrey where formerly it was not received have still had their commission authorised by the same seales and shall our late particular Reformers be credited in their pretended vocation and in their new doctrine that shaketh the very foundations of the faith that hath beene by the whole Christian world for so many ages believed and delivered over from hand to hand when as nothing appeareth in them supernaturall and proceeding from a divine cause This Madame is as much as I shall trouble your Ladyship withall upon this occasion which indeede is much more then at the first I intended or could have suspected my pen would have stolne from me The substance of all which may be summed up and reduced to this following short question namely whether in the election of the faith whereby you hope to be saved you will be guided by the unanimous consent of the wisest the learned'st and the piousest men of the whole world that have beene instructed in what they believe by men of the like quality living in the age before them and so from age to age untill the Apostles and Christ and that in this manner have derived from the fountaine both a perfect and full knowledge of all that ought to be believed and likewise a right understanding and interpretation of the Scriptures as farr as concerneth faith the true sence of which so farr is also delivered over by the same tradition Or whether you will assent unto the new and wrested interpretations of places of Scripture made by late men that rely meerely upon their single judgement and witt too slight a barke to sayle in through so immense an Ocean and whose chiefe leaders for human respects and sinister ends not to say worse of them made a desperate defection from the other maine body since which time no two of them have agreed in doctrine and among whom it is impossible your Ladyships great judgement and strong understanding should find any solid stay to rely securely upon and to quiet all those rationall doubts that your perceiving witt suggesteth unto you And here Madame I shall make an end having sincerely and as succinctly and plainely as I can delivered you the chiefe considerations that in this affaire turned the scale of the ballance with me which in good faith I have done with all the simplicity and ingenuity that I can expresse my sense with being not at all warmed with any passion or partiality nor raised out of my even pitch

discerne Therefore we may safely conclude that this doctrine ought to be delivered unto us originally by God himselfe For after the first branch which is of withdrawing our affections from sensible goods although out of naturall principles that doctrine is to be collected yet that is not a sufficient meanes to settle mankind in generall in the beliefe of it For the discourse that proveth it is such an abstracted one as very few are capable of it being that it requireth both a mature age to be able to reason so before which time many dye and likewise strong and vigorous powers of the understanding which we see more doe want then are endowed withall And besides of those that have both yeares and capacity to wield such thoughts there are so few that are not in a manner forced away from such interior recollections by their particular vocations and the naturall necessities they are obliged unto as to beate it out by themselves is not a sufficient meanes to serve mankind in this case And to thinke that those few who haveing great partes may with much labour have attained to the knowledge thereof should instruct others that are simpler and are taken up by other imployments and courses of life were very irrationall since no man be he never so wise is such but may be deceived and then how can it be expected that another man should without sensible demonstration beleive his single word in a matter so contrary to sense and wherein he must forgoe so great contentments and present utility And for the other branch which is in the instructing mankinde concerning the right object that he is to know and love to be happy that is altogether out of the reach of any man whatsoever by himselfe to discover and therefore much lesse can he in his owne name instruct others therein And if any man should goe about to doe so and to introduce a new doctrine of faith not formerly heard of drawing the arguments for confirmation thereof onely out of his owne ratiocination and discourse that alone were enough to convince him of falshood since he should thereby undertake to know what were impossible for him of himselfe to attaine to the knowledge of Therefore it is necessary that the author of the doctrine we must believe the instructor of the actiōs we must performe and the promiser of the happinesse we may hope for be God himselfe who onely knoweth of himselfe what is sayd in matters of these natures who onely is neither liable to be deceived nor can deceive others as being the prime verity it selfe But because the weaknesse of our intellectuall nature is such whiles we remaine here in our earthly habitations imprisonned in our houses of clay as we cannot lift up our heavy and drousie eyes and steddily fixe our dimme fight upon the dazeling and indeed invisible Deity nor entertain an immediate communication with him like the children of Israel who desired that Moses not God might speak unto them it was necessary that God himselfe should descend to some corporal substance that might bee more familiar and lesse dazeling unto us And none was so convenient as humane nature to the end that he might not onely converse freely and familiarly with us and so in a gentle and a sweet manner teach us what wee should doe but also preach unto us by his example and himselfe bee our leader in the way that he instructed us to take The conclusion then of this discourse is that it was necessary Christ God and man should come into the world to teach us what to beleive and what to do 10. The tenth conclusion shall be that those unto whom Christ did immediatly preach this faith and unto whom he gave commission to preach it unto others and spread it through the world after hee ascended to heaven ought to be believed as firmly as hee himselfe The reason of this assertion is that their doctrin though it be delivered by secondary mouthes yet it proceedeth from the same fountain which is God himselfe that is the prime verity and cannot deceive nor be deceived But all the difficulty herein is to know who had this immediate commission from Christ by what seal we should discern it to have been no forged one The solution of this ariseth out of the same argument which proveth that Christ himself was God and that the doctrine he taught was true and divine which is the miracles and wonders he did exceeding the power of nature and that could be effected by none but by God himselfe for he being truth it selfe cannot by any action immediatly proceeding from him witnesse and confirm a falsehood In like manner the Apostles doing such admirable works and miracles as neither by nature nor by art magick could be brought to passe that must necessarily inferre God himselfe cooperated with them to justifie what they said it is evident that their doctrine which was not their own but received from Christ must bee true and Divine 11. The eleventh conclusion shall bee that this faith thus taught by Christ and propagated by the Apostles and necessary to mankind to believe as well that part of it which is written as the whole which is not dependeth intrinsecally upon the testimony of the Catholick Church which is ordained to conserve and deliver it from age to age By which Catholike Church I mean the congregation of the faithfull that is spread throughtout the whole world for we have proved before that the way to the true faith ought to bee open and plain to all men of all abilities and in all ages that have a desire to embrace it and this cannot be but either by the immediate preaching of Christ or else by the information either in writing or by word of mouth of them that learned it from him and their delivering it over to others and so from hand to hand untill any particular time you will pitch upon But from Christs own mouth none could have it but those who lived in the age when he did therefore there remaineth no other mens to have it derived down to after ages then by this delivery over from hand to hand of the whole congregation of fathers or elders dispersed throughout the world to the whole congregation of sonnes or youngers which course of deducing faith from Christ wee call tradition so that this conclusion proveth that the Church is the conserver both of the whole doctrine of faith necessary for salvation and likewise of the divine writ dictated by the Holy Ghost and written by the Prophets Evangelists and Apostles which we are also bound to believe And the same assent that we are to give to the truth of Scriptures that is to say that the Scriptures wee have are true Scriptures the very same we are to give to other articles of faith proposed unto us by the Church for they alike depend of the same authority which is the veracity of the Church proposing and delivering them unto