Selected quad for the lemma: scripture_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
scripture_n	article_n	believe_v	creed_n	2,820	5	10.5298	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A38046	Some thoughts concerning the several causes and occasions of atheism, especially in the present age with some brief reflections on Socinianism, and on a late book entitled, The reasonableness of Christianity as delivered in the Scriptures / by John Edwards ...	Edwards, John, 1637-1716.	1695 (1695)	Wing E215; ESTC R18870	42,384	151

disbeliev'd on the account of the improbability if not impossibility of Spirits So that it is plain the rejecting of the being and commerce of Daemons or Infernal Spirits opens a door to the denial of the Deity of which we can no otherwise conceive than that it is an Eternal Spirit There are Other Doctrines which advance Atheism and may be reckon'd among the Dangerous Luxuriances of these Inquisitive Times Such is the vilifying of the Hebrew Text of the Old Testament the proclaiming it to be faulty and erroneous in order to establishing the Seventy's Version as only Authentick Such is the building the Authority of the Books of the Old Testament on the pretended inspiration of certain Publick Scribes or Notaries among the Iews in imitation of such among the Egyptians the avouching that the Leaves or Volumes on which those Books were wrote are misplaced and put out of order the professed declaring that the Canonical Books are not the same that they were at first but that several words and passages are left out All mere Fiction and Conceit unworthy of so Excellent a Genius as F. S's Such also is the maintaining that the greatest part of the Religious Rites and Constitutions which God himself settled among the Iews were a Transcript of those that were in use among the Idolatrous Pagan Nations and that the All-Wise Lawgiver borrow'd those immediately from these The two former of these Attempts null the Authority of the Sacred Writings and the last of them disparages not only them but the Blessed Founder of the Jewish Oeconomy I speak not this as if any of these Opinions can be thought to be True Reasons on which a man may ground his disesteem of the Scriptures or of the Holy Doctrines contain'd in them or of the Sacred Inditer of them for they are the Sentiments but of a very few and of those whose Learning though it was exceeding great had not wholly conquer'd their Prejudice or freed them from Misapprehensions in some things I cannot charge them with any direct design of favouring the Cause of Atheism but ill-disposed men have made use of their Notions to that purpose Wherefore as we value the Reputation of our Religion and the Honour of the Divine Author of it let us be careful that we split not upon any of these Rocks nor endanger our selves on any of the Shallows before mention'd and thereby make Shipwrack of our Faith and Holy Profession or so endanger our selves that we can hardly be brought off again I might in the last place take notice of a Plausible Conceit which hath been growing up to a considerable time and now hath the fortune to come to some maturity Not to speak of its reception if not its birth among some Foreign Authors chiefly Socinians it seemed among our selves to be favour'd by that Learned but Wavering Prelate who writ the Liberty of Prophesying and afterwards by another of his Order who compos'd The Naked Truth Lately it hath been revived by the Author of the Naked Gospel and since more particularly fully and distinctly it hath been maintain'd by the late Publisher of the Reasonableness of Christianity as deliver'd in the Scriptures He gives it us over and over again in these formal words viz. that nothing is required to be believed by any Christian man but this that Iesus is the Messiah He contends that there is no other Article of Faith necessary to Salvation this is a Full and Perfect Creed and no person need concern himself in any other This takes up about three quarters of his book for he goes through the History of the Evangelists and the Acts of the Apostles according to the order of Time as he thinks to give an account of this Proposition But yet this Gentleman forgot or rather wilfully omitted a plain and obvious passage in one of the Evangelists Go teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Mat. 28. 19. From which it is plain that all Proselites to Christianity all that are adult Members of the Christian Church must be taught as well as baptized into the Faith of the Holy Trinity Father Son and Holy Ghost And if they must be taught this Doctrine which is the peremptory Charge and Commission here given to the Apostles Go teach c. then it is certain that they must believe it for this Teaching is in order to Belief This will be denied by none I suppose and consequently more is required to be believed by Christian men and Members of Christ's Church than that Iesus is the Messiah You see it is part of the Evangelical Faith and such as is necessary absolutely necessary to make one a Member of the Christian Church to believe a Trinity in Unity in the Godhead or in plainer terms that though God is One as to his Essence and Nature yet there are Three Persons in that Divine Essence and that these Three Persons are really the One God for we can't imagine that Men and Women should be required to be baptized into the Faith and Worship of any but the Only True God This Epitomizer of the Evangelical Writings left out also that famous Testimony in Iohn 1. 1. In the beginning was the Word Christ Jesus and the Word was with God and the Word was God Whence we are obliged to yield assent to this Article that Christ is the word of God And there is added in Verse 14. another indispensable Point of Faith viz. that the word was made Flesh i. e. that God was Incarnate the same with 1 Tim. 3. 16. God manifest in the Flesh. And it follows in the same Verse of this first Chapter of St. Iohn that this VVord is the only begotten of the Father whence we are bound to believe the Eternal though ineffable Generation of the Son of God Our Author likewise takes no notice that we are commanded to believe the Father and the Son Joh. 14. 10 11. and that the Son is in the Father and the Father in the Son which expresses their Unity This is made an Article of Faith by our Saviour's particular and express Command And other eminent parts of Christian Belief this Writer passes by without having any regard to them and yet pretends to present the World with a Compleat and Entire Account of all that is the matter of our Faith under the Gospel This cannot but seem very strange and unaccountable to any man of deliberate Thoughts and who expects Sincerity from a Writer who makes some shew of it But this is not all this Learned Gentleman who with so much industry amasses together Quotations out of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles yet is not pleas'd to proceed to the Epistles and to give an Account of them as he did of the others though the Epistles are as considerable a part of the New Testament as the Gospels and the Acts and the Pen-men of them were equally inspired by the Holy