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	faith_n	tradition_n	3,058	5	9.0436	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A95370	A sermon preached before Sir P.W. Anno 1681. With additions: to which are annexed three digressional exercitations; I. Concerning the true time of our Saviour's Passover. II. Concerning the prohibition of the Hebrew canon to the ancient Jews. III. Concerning the Jewish Tetragrammaton, and the Pythagorick Tetractys. / By John Turner, late fellow of Christ's College in Cambridge.	Turner, John, b. 1649 or 50.	1684 (1684)	Wing T3318AB; ESTC R185793	233,498	453

occasions to advance their secular designs under the specious covert of a Concern for Liberty or a Zeal for Religion it behoves those in publick Authority as they tender the reputation of their own wisedom and justice or the quiet of the World to cut off all occasions of disturbance by seeing that all things be done decently and in order which rule of the Apostle's is founded upon the same reason upon which all Laws whether humane or divine are founded and from whence alone they can and do receive their obligation namely the common Interest of mankind and the particular Happiness of private persons it depends upon the same reason and the same necessity for which Injustice and Robbery are forbidden or upon which Industry Sobriety and usefull Arts are encouraged which is nothing else but the consideration of the publick Good which if it be as plainly concerned in this as in any other case this is sufficient to defend the Authority of the Church and to make its Sanctions in indifferent matters so long as they are steered by principles of undoubted Interest to be of perpetual force and obligation Those actions are properly said to be indifferent which may either be done or let alone without inconvenience or advantage to the publick or to the interest of any private person but if any prejudice or advantage will accrue then there is a plain reason why they should be done or omitted and consequently they cease to be in different and become necessary in proportion to the weight of those reasons upon which their performance or omission is founded So for example we will suppose it for the present indifferent in what posture we say our Prayers in a publick Congregation yet if we say them at all thus much is of absolute necessity that we say them in some posture or other but now if the Civil or Ecclesiastical Magistrate for the avoiding of Confusion and for the preventing of those Piques and Animosities which frequently happen among men about things of little or no value in themselves especially when Religion is concerned shall ordain that all men shall say their Prayers in one and the same posture and shall determine and assign what that particular posture shall be then here is a reason of Interest for the good of the World and for the quiet of that Society of which we are members why this posture should be used rather than any other and consequently this posture though indifferent before does now derive a necessity from that reason of State and interest upon which it's imposition is founded To be sure men of common sense and understanding if they have but common honesty joyned together with it will take their measures of obligation as to the lawfulness or unlawfulness of what is commanded from it's design and tendency to promote or obstruct the interest of the Publique and the happiness of particular Persons and if either the pretended or the real Scruples of any might be sufficient to stop the course of Law against the common interest there could be no such thing as Order or Government in the World There are many Laws enacted by the sublime Wisdome of the King and his three Estates in Parliament assembled which though they be for the interest of the whole Kingdome all things considered yet they manifestly tend to the Prejudice of particular persons but yet those very persons are as much obliged by these Laws as they who reap the benefit and advantage of them because the obligation of these Laws is to be taken from the fundamentall Constitution of all Societies that a greater Interest be preferred before a less and that when the publique advantage shall interfere with a private the private must give place because otherwise the Society cannot be preserved how much more strictly therefore are we obliged by those Laws whose design and tendency being nothing else but to keep us all at unity and peace together are so plainly for the advantage of the Publique and of every particular Person And if notwithstanding the manifest Conducibleness of such an Uniform way of Worship to the publique Peace and the experience of those sad Effects which our Religious Differences have produced every private man shall yet after this take upon him to Judge of the Reasonableness or Expedience of what is Enacted by his Superiours and shall from thence proceed upon I know not what Pretences ridiculous in themselves and destructive of the publique Wellfare to withdraw his Obedience to their just Commands he may as well take upon him an insinite and boundless liberty of questioning the Reasonableness and Equity of all Laws whatsoever and either upon the same or more warrantable Exceptions for the expedience of no Law can be more evident than of that which enjoyns Uniformity in Divine Worship he may withdraw his Obedience from all kind of Government and Subjection whatsoever But here it is Objected That if there were nothing but the Civil Interest or the Interest of this World to be considered the experience of all Ages and Nations will sufficiently demonstrate that an Uniformity in Religious matters is the best Expedient that can be thought of to secure the publique Peace But alass we carry souls and Consciences about us and these are precious things there is an immortal Interest lyes at stake which it would be great folly and madness to part with upon any temporal consideration But to this I answer first in the general That the main design of Christianity being to promote Peace and Charity in this world as well as to procure us Eternal peace and happiness in the next and indeed the one in order to the other it follows plainly that Uniformity in Religious Worship as being a necessary means to Peace is in the general of Divine Institution though what the particular terms of that Uniformity shall be the Scripture has no where prescribed as in truth it could not do for a reason which I shall shew hereafter it remains therefore that the Church it self be in all Ages furnisht with a right and power of prescribing what those terms shall be and that all her members are obliged to a necessary Observance of them But here because I have made so frequent mention of the Church that I may avoid Ambiguity and leave as little room as may be for Exception before I go any further I will explain what I mean by that term and without descending to too much nicety the Church is one of these three things First it is the congregation of Christian People dispersed over the whole earth and agreeing together in the fundamental Articles of the Christian Faith which are either expresly or by direct and lawfull consequence revealed in the Scriptures of the New Testament to be of necessity to Salvation And in this sense it is not only unnecessary that there should be every where the same Rites and Ceremonies observed in the Church but it is in the nature of the thing

reason and common sense and hath believed the gr●ssest contradictions as Articles of Faith condescended to the most Contemptible and Apish Follies as parts of a Serious and Devout Worship is ultimately resolved into their unacquaintance with the Scriptures which as long as they were in common use among the people so long the Christian Faith continued as to the main free from that foul degeneracy and corruption to which it was afterwards for so many ages condemned and under which so great a part of the Christian World is to this day so fatally opprest but when once the Greek and Roman Tongues became from vernacular to be learned languages when neither the Fountains themselves nor their purest streams could be repaired to by the ordinary people and in too many instances not by the Priests themselves while Translations were either not thought of or not permitted this gave occasion for ignorance and superstition by insensible degrees to corrupt and adulterate Religion and for the craft and wickedness of designing Priests who gain by nothing more than by the credulity and superstition of ignorant and foolish men to introduce those opinions and practices into the world which it is hard to say whether they were better fitted to promote the outward pomp and splendour the secular interest and advantage of the Romish Church and Clergy or more expressy contrary to the positive and declared Revelations of Christ and his Apostles such as are the sacrifice of the Mass Prayers and Masses for the dead denying the Cup to the Laiety in the Holy Eucharist and the Celibate of the Clergy or forbidding Clergy-men to Marry of which the first and third were intended to create a respect and reverence for the person of the Priest the second to be a perpetual Tax and Subsidy upon the Laiety the last to secure the grandeur and external pomp of the Church and all of them to fill the peoples heads with such absurd and grosly superstitious opinions as are the most effectual means for the promoting and perpetuating to ●uture generations all these unwarrantable interests and designs Secondly As unacquaintance with the Scriptures which to the Romish Church are as a talent hid in a Napkin or a Candlestick put under a bushell was the true cause of that Universal Idolatry and Corruption which prevails among the deluded Votaries of that Communion so on the other side the true reason why the Reformed Churches have shaken off that yoke of absurdities and abominations why they have embraced a Religion more agreeable to nature and more suitable to revelation is to be referred to the Holy Evangelists and Apostles speaking to every one of us as they did to the multitude on the day of Pentecost in his own proper Idiom and Language which it is utterly impossible they should do but they must at the same time discover plainly to the world God's utter detestation of all such Idolatrous practices and of all those absurd and unwarrantable opinions upon which those forbidden practices are founded But thirdly to bring the matter a little more home to the Jews themselves if it be demanded why before the Captivity of Babylon they were so often guilty of Idolatry but never after it as it is plain they were not the true reason of this is that soon after the established worship was again setled upon its old foundations by Esdras and Nehemias the Translation of the seventy was made out of the Original Hebrew and from that time forward the Law was layed open both to the Jewish and the Gentile World And these three things as I have said which are matters of fact and arguments drawn from experience I take to be a plain and undeniable demonstration of the matter in question that the ancient Jews were not permitted the reading of the Law for themselves or in their respective families or persons This is the fourth reason a fifth no less demonstrative than that is shall be taken from the peoples calling to Esdras to bring out the Book of the Law and of their having lost not only the memory of those rites and usages with which their solemn Feasts were to be observed but of the very Feasts themselves of their having lost their language in so great a measure that Esdras was forced not only to produce the Law but to explain it to them as I conceive in the Chaldean or Assyrian tongue which was then more familiar to them than their native Hebrew All which it is utterly unconceivable how it should ever have come to pass had it been the custom of every private person to transcribe the Law for himself as the Rabbins and their adherents would make us believe and to reade it to his Children and Domestiques in his family I say it would have been impossible at this rate that in so small a period of time there being several who had seen the first Temple who likewise returned again from the Captivity and saw the foundations of the second lay'd so strange an ignorance and so utter a forgetfulness of the whole Law should over-spread the whole Nation of the Jews Insomuch that it was the opinion of Ireneus Eusebius and several other of the ancient Fathers that the Law of Moses in this Interval was utterly lost and that by a supernatural revelation it was renewed by Edras nay Tertullian in his book de habitu Muliebri is so positive as to affirm it for a certain and undoubted truth Hierosolymis Babiloniâ expugnatione deletis omne instrumentum Judaicae literaturae constat per Esdram esse restauratum It is certain that after Jerusalem was demolished by the King of Babylon all the Monuments of the Jewish Learning or Law which were now perfectly lost were restored by Edras Which opinion as being grounded upon no other foundation than that extreme ignorance of the people in the Law after the return from the captivity and their importuning Esdras to bring out the Book of the Law may without any unwarrantable disrespect to antiquity be rejected especially since I hope I may pretend to have given a better account of those matters because it hath nothing precarious in it which is the fault of this for it does not follow because Esdras was desired to bring out the book of the Law that therefore it was revealed to him by inspiration but he could not bring it out unless he had it in possession is certain which is all that I contend for Neither need we be so scrupulous of rejecting the testimony of the Fathers in this case if we consider that the divine inspiration of the seventy Interpreters and their exact jumping together notwithstanding every man made his Translation apart is asserted by every whit as strong nay a much stronger suffrage of antiquity than this of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or supernatural illumination of Esdras nay Justin Martyr tells us that he himself saw those very Cells in which this miracle of a Translation was wrought and yet nothing in

the Books of Moses that is to say the Origine of all things in the first Chapter of Genesis the distinction of foods or abstinence from unclean things in the History of the Flood and afterwards in the Body of the Law it self and lastly the rites and ceremonies of lustration which are no where more nicely adjusted than in the Levitical Law And if in these particulars he be not in every thing conformable to the platform of Moses yet this is no argument that he had no knowledge of that Law or of the Religion and Manners of the Jews but only that it was Traditionary confused and obscure besides that there are two other causes which might and did probably conspire to make a variation as to particular instances though the Genius and Spirit of the Pythagorean Philosophy were much the same with that of the Mosaique Law First out of a particular affectation to be the founder of a Sect and to be thought as well by himself as others to have been the inventor of a new Doctrine and the introducer of a new Philosophical institution into the World Secondly He did not only converse with the Jews but with all other Eastern Nations and so his Philosophy was probably little more than a Medley of the Hieroglyphique and Symbolique Mysteries of divers nations as all the Philosophy and Religion of the East was wrapped up in Symbols jumbled into a Philosophical Oglio together It was much such another thing in Philosophy as the Phoenician History of Sanchuniathon was for an account of time where there are many very plain and undoubted strictures of true and genuine antiquity jumbled together without any regard either to truth or shame though I do not say the composition of Pythagoras was equally frivolous and indiscreet with the Heathen Mythology of all the barbarous Nations and fabulous times But after all though the converse of Pythagoras in Babylon be at the same time an argument of his acquaintance with the Jews yet it may well enough be that that knowledge which he is said to have received from Zabratus may be only a Transcript out of the sacred Volumes in the Temple of an Idol such as that which by the Midianites and Amalekites in the book of Judges was called Bahal Berith for as Bahal though it be for the most part applyed to the signification of an Idol may yet notwithstanding in its genuine and first acceptation denote and signifie the true God so may Jah also which is the proper and incommunicable name of the true God who is only self-existent and is what he is from himself be apply'd not improperly by the Heathens themselves to the most contemptible and silly Idol in the world because let it be what it will in it self it is looked upon by them that worship it under the notion of a true and proper Deity and that it was actually apply'd to the Idols of the Heathen I shall immediately make appear and and if I do it will then I hope be granted for another reason besides what hath been already urged that this incommunicable name of God which is every whit as sacred as the Tetragrammaton and consequently that also was not so great a secret among the neighbour Nations as the superstition of the later Jews would make it So then Zabratus though it may most properly and fitly be understood of the true God yet nothing hinders but a false one may also be signified by it and at that rate it will be the same with Baal Berith whom Philo Byblius the Translator of Sanchuniathon calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the King of Berith or of the Berytians and whom he confounds very unskilfully with Abibalus which was the name of the true God and was I make little or no question the same with 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the words of Philo in Eusebius are these 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. In which words when I consider what a strange Miscellany that History of Sanchuniathon was and as it seems a designed imposition upon the credulity of after-ages I cannot but believe that this Abibalus whose name does so exactly hit to the pat and proper signification of the true God was one of those names by which he was used to be called For what is Abibalus but El Abib that is Deus spicarum as he was called from changing the beginning of the Jewish year to the month of Abib from Tisri of which so much hath been already spoken And that which confirms me very much in this conjecture is one of these four things which follow and much more all of them together First Eusebius saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which if you understand of a dedication such as hath been usual to great persons in the more civilized and learned times I doubt it will be hard to find any instance of such a dedication at a time when letters themselves were scarce known in the world and without being able to produce an instance it is very absurd and ridiculous to suppose it you may suppose any thing else though never so extravagant with equal reason But if you will understand it so as that the Monuments of Sanchuniathon were lay'd up in the Temple of Abibalus which is the most proper sense of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Greek then let the thing it self be true or false here is a kind of a confused and obscure acknowledgment that Abibalus was the name of a God which since he cannot be the same with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 whether you understand by those words the King of the Berytians who was a mortal man or the Idol of Baal Berith to which the Etymon of Abibalus will not so well suit as to the true God here is one though a faint and obscure indication that Abibalus was the name of the true God Secondly We meet with other compositions exactly of the same form and analogy with this in the Monuments of the Eastern Antiquity For as the God of the Hebrews for the reason above mentioned was by the Phoenicians or by the men of Berith called Abibalus so by the Aegyptians Neptune was called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from El and Mos which signifies water exactly by the same Analogy with the other as Tztzes hath recorded which is a new argument against Scaliger in his Controversie with Philo Judaeus which is likewise backed by the testimony of Josephus who saith that among the Aegyptians Mos or Moy hath the signification of water Thirdly It matters not though this name be no where found in Scripture for the Phoenicians called even those things and persons for whose knowledge they were indebted either to the Scripture it self or to a Tradition derived from it by names of a very different sound from those by which they were called in the books of Moses themselves though by their signification as in this instance of Abibalus they did sufficiently discover from whence they came